Taking on the Ancients in HC

[davcol]

I've made my first foray into harcore playing with an online friend. After a false start (we each lost a character in Act1 Hell) we've gotten ourselves into Act 5 Hell and are about to face the Ancients.

I'm playing a throw barb with rather low damage (600-1200 per jav) and a cold spewing act 3 merc. My friend has a sorc using orb and firewall as his main attacks, a rather wicked thunderstorm and a holy freeze merc. With my battle orders I have about 1900 life, he's a bit lower.

I'm level 70 and he's 72 or so. The barb has good damage reduction and is able to tank rather well, but I'm not sure at all that he can stand up to the ancients.

So do any of you hardcore players have strategy advice for our upcoming battle? This "not dying" thing puts a whole new twist on the game :)

-davcol

[Occhidiangela]

Does she also use static? Static, teleport static, teleport static, teleport, can often help speed up their demise. What she cant afford to do is stand still and get whacked unless mucho damage reduction equipped and stout ES.

The faster they die, the less likely the death of you.

Check auras when they spawn. If you dont like the auras, cast a TP. When you trigger them again, different auras spawn. If they have Holy Shock, Conviction, and HF, you could be toast awfully fast. :)

1. set up a bunch of purple pots to run to, and to pick up to reload the belt, in various corners. but dont get stuck in that corner.
2. Hit and move. Pick one to kill first, and work to evade the others.
3. dont be shy about feeding pots to your merc, but it is very likely they will die.
4. My experience is that Thrower is best first one to kill, he seems to die fastest.
5. To avoid getting nailed by WW, keep bashing Talic once thrower is gone. Hit and move is how I find that the Leap Attack never hits me.
6. If you can find a Druid with Oak Sage, ask him along. Extra life can never hurt. :)

This is not a guaranteed success formula. I have lost a char or two to ancients in Hardcore, usually due to my having clicked on a place to move and hitting a stone, which results in me NOT moving and standing there. Standing there means, usually, that it is

Time To Die. :)

[Baajikiil]

I've fought them in hell HC several times and haven't had much of a problem. I do usually wait a few more lvls than 70 though, about 75 is my standard.

The advice already given is on the mark, especially the preprepared potions.

One thing that I have found quite useful is to have one player attempt to disract 1-2 of them, and have the other player spend their time killing the third.

Madawc is a good choice for first kill because of lower phys resist, as well as the fact that his quick ranged attack can make him the most dangerous of the three.

Alternately, Korlic's leap attack is often a one hit kill if he gets a good one in. Also, he will often leap out of melee with mercs/minions to attack a player.

My best suggestion would be to have the barb tank and kill Korlic(preventing leap attack), and have the sorc distract Madawc/Talic (BTW, Talic gets stuck fighting mercs/minions rather easily).

Also another tip is to be sure to get shrines before activating the ancients. If one of them spawns with curse(overriding the shrine), it would be a good idea to make a tp and start over.

A barb sorc combo is quite a good one to fight the ancients with, and you should be okay with a little skillful playing(and no bad luck).

[Brista]

They have items, generated when they spawn

I think many one-hit kills have been because the weapon gets a good modifier - Cruel for instance

You have no way of knowing unless one-hit killed which is something of an indication

So although this is sometimes a disappointingly easy fight it is always dangerous

I usually do the following if being careful:

Fill the belt with purple, fill the inventory with charms

Hit the altar and immediately tp. This pre-loads the graphics

Hit the altar and run to the bottom left corner. Not right into the corner - you may need to run either way. This gets your mercs in the way and in your case will allow Holy Freeze a chance to work

Look at them. If you see a dangerous aura, hit tp. Fanaticism, Might, Conviction can all be lethal

Tp on Amp. Giving these guys double damage is not good

Your mercs might be able to stand them off. I doubt it here. If they are holding them off, don't be afraid to feed them purple. If you let them die the purples will get used anyway and you'll have lost your tanks

Nail Korlic first

Run if you have to. Jink as you run, they love chasing in long straight lines




Well, that's about it, best of luck :)

[Zath]

Haven't played in a while, but I still remember a neat trick that used to work great against the Ancients. As soon as the Ancients pop up, run to some corner of the map and make sure they follow you. Keep your fingers over the potion hot keys, let Korlic hit you with a leap attack first, then heal up quickly. As long as you keep your back against a wall or cliff and stand your ground, he will no longer be able to use leap attack again. The same tactic works well against Talic too, since the wall or cliff behind you will break up his WW, greatly decreasing the number of hits he can deliver with it. You can fight Madawc after finishing up Korlic and Talic or just kill him with ranged attacks first since he doesn't move while throwing axes. Try to practice this a few times in normal first; it'll help your confidence in hell greatly.

[Thecla]

In addition to the other good advice, I'd emphasize to be very careful of Korlic -- his la has the potential to do horrible amounts of damage, and you don't want to risk taking even one hit from his la on hell diff, or to be caught flat-footed when he leaps. If you can melee him, you should be fine, but the safest thing to do is probably to keep moving round the summit (with a bit of a zig-zag motion) and have the sorc spam orbs behind her, plus ts, plus some static if it has good range and she can cast it safely. Make sure you have a good level of fast run/walk.

I also prefer to focus on Korlic first because he's the most dangerous, and leave the thrower to the end (he's the dumbest and the easiest to lose as well). Until Korlic's dead, your barb might be best off just equipping an axe and a shield, and running around like a lilly-livered coward "guarding" the sorc while she does her thing.

[SwiftSlayer2]

I find this strategy best:

Open the red portal in act 1 and have a necro summon about 3543541 cows. Then IM the ancients and go to town (not literally) :P

Swiftslayer2

[Albion Child]

If you are patient, and since this is HC, here is what I would do. RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN (okay enough). Just keep running and avoid being hit whie the Thunderstorm kills off any of the Ancients who are not immune to lightning. When they (or he) are (is) dead, just continue running but throw a jav whenever it is safe. I have always found the ancients to be incredibly easy, but they require muchos time to kill.

Also, I would definitely recomend that our friend stick with orb once TS wears out its usefullness. Thiss will slow them and make it easier to avoid being hit and the ancients run around so much that I doubt Firewall would be very effective. (though now that I think of it, perhaps throwing some firewalls right near the "statues" right before releasing the ancients would be a good idea, just to get in a litte bit of damage from the start.)

Also, I tend to deal with Madawc first, then Talic, then Korlic. Madawc must have less HP or less Phys resist because he dies very fast. Talic makes Korlic very dangerous because he can stunlock(EDIT: not really stunlock, just hit recovery) you with WW and allow Korlic to land a LA. Once Talic is gone...Korlic is a cakewalk and with no lag he should never be allowed to hit you.

EDIT: one thing I forgot...before you release the ancients...cover the summit with a but load of healing potions. Like about 100....I always do this unless being rushed (duh)

[Mikedok]

Most people covered everything so far, but people seem to have a little different opinion on who to fight first so I'll make my vote on order.

1. Korlic
He can one hit kill you with a leap attack. If you stop for a second to fight someone else he can target you and jump before you even realize it, and he will leap at you even if he is fighting someone else. Running up to him and fighting so that you are toe-to-toe prevents him from leaping. If you can't stay toe-to-toe I advise that you run up attack him, flee and heal, then run up to him again and attack, repeat until he's dead. While healing always keep moving. Avoid staying still when Korlic is still alive. I guess if you have tons of percentage damage reduced stuff this isn't as much of a problem, but I've never had that advantage.

2. Talic
Talic or Madawc could be second, but I like to use a little trick that makes this order better. Maneuver so that Talic and Madawc have a pillar in between them then attack Talic. Madawc will throw axes at you, but they hit the pillar. Madawc will not try to correct this, he will continue throwing axes at the pillar until you move. This arrangement is pretty easy to set up. You can set it up just by getting Madawc on the other side of a pillar from you then wait there. Talic will come and fight you while Madawc trys to kill the pillar.

3. Madawc

[Kandir]

Hi,
I remember that the first time I took on hell ancients in hc with a few friends I was shaking in my boots. We spent like an hour muling in our best gear for ourselves and even our mercs, gathering purples, planning the ideal tactics, etc. Then when the moment of battle finally came we killed them in like 20 seconds -- Talk about anticlimatic! How hard they are really depends on a) The mods they spawn with and B) the makeup of your group.

I guess your biggest problem, groupwise, is that you are both ranged attackers (not to mention that merc). You really do need a good tank. Its no problem though, just as long as you they don't spawn with terrible mods. Here's a few survival tips from me to help you out:

1. Dedicate one row of your "potion" belt to tp scrolls. This way you can with one click (say "1" for example) open a tp, increasing the odds that you will survive a worst case scenario (like cursed and might).
2. Don't fight out in the open, but rather move down to one of the corners. This way you won't be whirlwinned, and in general it dramatically lessons their attacking capabilities.
3. Dont be afraid to cast a tp if you see either yourself or your partner's life getting in the danger zone. He who fights and runs away, lives to run another day ;)
4. If you click on the altar and don't move away directly, it will give you time for the graphics to load (while you listen to their eerie speach "we are the ancients..."


Good luck! Ancients are great fun -- only wish it was rewarding to kill them more than once. Well, aside from the honor given each time.

[Vash]

From my experience with Hell Ancients on my SC sword/shield WW barb on single player:

It took me 40 tries to finally kill them (how do I know that? because I went through 2 full tp tomes...). Each time I tried a different tactic, but none seemed to work until I tried my 40th one =)

1) Concentrate on one of them at a time. It gets easier as their numbers decrease. Don't try to kill them all at once.

2) My advice is to kill Korlic first. As others have mentioned, his attack can be quite lethal. His prescence forces you to keep running around wildly. With him gone, you can have more time to stop and attack before running away again. The best way to get him is to get close to him. Don't let him use his leap attack. Melee with the barb and have the sorc stay fairly close and static/FW/Orb. With my WW barb, I found it quite useful to just stand there and use Concentrate on him (no WW at all). That way you won't have to worry about misclicking and WWing a bit too far away. Plus Korlic's attention will be focused on you and not your friend if you just stand there and tank.

3) If your barb has a shield...WALK. Make use of your blocking.

4) Whomever you target next is up to you. Remember that you don't always have to use WW. Standing there and using a one-hit type skill is what got me through Hell Ancients.

[Master Oake]

Okay, I'm lamer than you guys (I only play solo), and have not gotten to the ancients hell level yet, but my paladin seems to have the most luck pulling this off in nightmare. I hotkey holy freeze, meditation, and the stamina boost on the right key, and Fist of the heavens on the left. The run like mad. Freeze 'em, blast 'em. as your mana runs down, switch to meditation, and as your stamina runs down switch to fix that. I usually keep a +3 to FOH in reserve for just this scenario. I just blash whichever on is closest and move on. toe to toe never works, even with thorns. I was really bummed when I realized my conversion/thorns tactic wasn't going to work here back in normal the first time I played through the Summit.

[Ice]

My fist of heavens paladin took out hell ancients solo at level 77.

Korlic was definitely my first choice of target as I do not want him to even have the chance to launch his leap attack on me at all. One-hit kills can occur very easily if he happened to spawn with extra strong, might or fanat.

Let merc wandered somewhere between Malawc and Talic, then activate the ancients and stuck right next to Korlic. Flash conviction and switch to meditation while blasting away at Korlic with FoH. Merc was able to survive just long enough for me to kill Korlic.

In that spawn, Malawc was lightning immune so I left him out for last and went after Talic first. Same procedure as above, flashing conviction and switch to meditation... if I need to break away for some reason, switch to zeal and run off. Talic went down.

For Malawc, I switched to level 9 (1+8) fanat and zealed away with Hand of Blessed Light. Took twenty full rejuvs (largely due to his lightning enchantment) but eventually went down as well.

Death wasn't an option. So I had went in fully prepared and pretty much as twinked as I could get.