[1.86b ~ 1.99d] The Pathfinder [v2.0]

Original post by bastardodentro on the old forums (forumer).
Most formatting is lost.
-WolfieeifloW

Pathfinder?

Wherever you are, with whichever skills, be they lightning, poison, or magic damage, there will always be a stable path to defeat your enemies, and all within the one sub-tree of
skills. Those of the holy paladin order do not have such luxuries; their elemental based disciplines are not as flexible as ours and will struggle in the face of certain evil, whereas
we have the intellect to master several varied disciplines to help us along our path... [Continued in skills section]

YOUR PATH..

XIX. Skills & Attributes
I. Unholy
II. Neutral
III. Allocation Paths
VIV. Gear
I. Gear Options
II. My Setup
LIL. Tactics..
I. .. In General
II. .. In Uberquests
[Footnotes]

XIX. SKILLS & ATTRIBUTES

Each skill in this section has three numbers beside it. These correspond to the amount of skill points (suggestion only) to put in the skill with respect to the allocation path it matches up to. All 3 paths are explained at the end of the skills section (III).


I. UNHOLY

This is a healing which can be cast on yourself or allies. It provides a 4% bonus to Mind Flay damage with hard points. In hatred difficulty, you will love this skill for its healing. Cast on yourself and your merc, run into battle and unless in the face of a pack of elites, you have a strong chance of survival. There was not a moment from lvl 1 to 50 when I did not have this cast. It saved my life dozens of times. As difficulty progresses, you may start to find it less and less useful on a regular basis. At the start of terror, it won’t help much to have 3k life regenerated in 20 seconds when elites can hit you a couple of times for that easily. However, I still invested wisely for its damage effect on Mind Flay, and it is a good replacement for potions since it crucially does not dispel superbeast.


This skill sends a beam of lightning at the enemy, very quick, very simple. It gains the 4% bonus from hard points in TB as I mentioned above, and for every 10 levels in slayer, it gains one lazorbeam on firing. In the first half of hatred this was my core skill. Due to its low mana cost, it is the most spammable skill of the 3 offensive spells used, and with 4 beams at lvl 30 (hard points) in slayer, you could be doing anywhere from 150k to 500k of damage with Mind Flay every time you cast it, and with 8k+ mana, there won’t be an un-melted face in sight.


This is a very well-known skill. It fires a slow-moving “bolt of doom” at the enemy, inflicting massive poison damage over a short period of time. It gains a 7% poison duration bonus from hard points in mind flay and for every 10 hard points in slayer, you get an extra punisher added to your ammo per cast. Early on, you may find yourself using this to take out elites one at a time, or to kill andariel without lifting a finger, but later on, with 4 punishers, assuming a high investment in slayer, you will be sending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of poison damage at packs of elites and ubers and they’ll be dead before you have time to grab the loot. This skill morphs from a pre-destruction single target killer to a multi-crowd-crippling barrage of death.


Spawn stationary phantoms to blast enemies with magic projectiles. Although a little wasteful with their ammo at times, these 5 little effigies will fire 10 shots each at the nearest enemies, and they won’t show mercy. If you treat them well, they will gracefully return the favour; as you can count on the magic properties of these phantoms to increase the number of punishers and flays to fire per 10 hard points invested in them. In hatred they may cost most of your mana to cast, but with some %Regen and rapidfire positioning you can make that mana cost all the more worthwhile. Baal’s minions will be begging for mercy when they realise these buggers are waiting for them in the throne room.


Increases your attributes with greater effect for more hard points. However, to gain the maximum advantage from the unholy killers above, I spared very few points for this discipline. A single point here will also form an (argueably) magnificant shroud around you at all times, so you'll really stand out from the crowd. But just because i overlooked this doesn't mean you must. Concentrate your power here and you could be in for a nice surprise..


If you were thinking about getting plague uberskill, then you are on the wrong guide. Superbeast is the best path to take with a pathfinder. Get it to lvl 30 and you'll have about 200% spell damage bonus from this skill alone. Keep tainted blood on at all times when superbeast is active for obvious reasons. The skill morphs you into an unholy matyr with super-fast-cast rate and greater attack speed. With enough beams on mind flay, and the high cast rate on superbeast, you can pretend to be your very own death projector


II. NEUTRAL


By "Neutrals" I mean the following skills, voj, rapture, light & shadow, holy armour, and apparition. I couldn't be bothered to make images for all of them as i'm rapidly running out of time to submit this guide. Voj is a debatebly good skill. It periodically sends divine bolts at the enemy. Some forum posts have quote 50k damage per bolt per second when maxed and with good gear. Personally i just don't like the skill, so i don't use it. Simple as that. The next skill, rapture, is not really for this build. You do however need a point in it to get to holy armour and light/shadow. Speaking of which, if you want to hit that 50k mark, you'll need a point in light & shadow. This skill makes VoJ a whole lot more powerful, even with 1 point. Get lots of +skills to get the best out of L&S, Voj could help you out in a lot of destruction-level situations with enough damage, and it's a skill that requires no, well, skill. Holy armour is an extremely useful skill, every Pathfinder needs a point here one way or another (by charms or by hard points). It will help in every uberquest you will do, and will make or break your success in destruction. Divine apparition is the last neutral, it's actually a reward skill from the Enhead challenge, and every Pathfinder should put 1 hard point here. Not only does it give you the advantage over approaching enemies, but it will save your life in many situations, and except for holy armour it's the best 1 point you will ever use.






III. EXAMPLE ALLOCATION PATHS

Orthodox Path: Top numbers: 30/30/30/30/5/5 [D.A=1][H.A=Charm]
This path gets the maximum damage out of the 3 offensive skills as possible. 30 Points in tainted blood gets you 120% damage bonus to Mind Flay. 30 Points in mind flay gets you 210% poison duration on punisher, and 30 points in slayer gets you an extra 3 beams/punishers. Get as much %spell damage and + skills gear as possible, otherwise all those points will have gone to waste, and put 75% of APs in energy. This is the path I originally set out for, but it is not easy untwinked, and difficult if it's your first character. You are not able to use holy armour either because you have no points in neutrals except divine apparition - so you must get it from an uberquest charm in destruction difficulty. However, what it lacks in noob-friendliness it makes up for in damage. 2 Million poison damage per punisher over 5 seconds? 50-60k damage per mind flay beam per cast? Have fun.

Suggested stats: S = 75, D = 75, V = 150, E = Remainder

Passive Path: Middle Numbers: 20/25/25/30/15/10 [+1 in all "Neutrals"]
This path takes points away from the first 3 unholy skills, and shares them out evenly between dark king and superbeast. You will have higher overall attributes than an orthodox Pathfinder with the same gear, and because you'll have more energy than the orthodox Pathfinder, it gives your skills damage which you lost by taking points away from mind flay and punisher. As well as this, we now have another extra skill that the orthodox Pathfinder doens't have, which is VoJ - for this path one point there is enough. This route is a solid, newbie-safe path with more freedom and will be able to complete the LC/AC challenges with greater swift and cunning than any other kind of Pathfinder.

Suggested stats: S = Base - 50, D = Base - 50, V = However many you feel like, E = Remainder

Classic Path: Bottom Numbers: 15/25/1/30/15/15 [Voj = 25][All other "neutrals"=1]
You're asking yourself why this is the classic path. Well, most people who start an unholy caster realize that punisher does a lot of damage, and they only put the 1 point there because there is a poison length synergy from mind flay. The other difference in this path is that it takes points from mind flay and tainted blood, and puts them in VoJ, which ends up at around 25 hard points. This is due to the perception that Voj is an extremely powerful "cast-and-forget" no-skill discipline. You either love it or you hate it. This Pathfinders on this path also put a few more points in superbeast as a damage sink to make up for the fewer points in the main offensive skills, and more in dark king for more attributes, allowing them the ability to run in and help take down the enemy via melee, because up close is where VoJ works best. This is also a great class to complete challenges with, and it's a classic skill allocation path which has been used for years, so it's proven to work.

Suggested stats: S = Base, D = Base, V = However many you feel like, E = Remainder

Be wary that the examplar paths here may not be the wisest or best use of skill points - for a start i have rounded to the nearest 5 for every skill and have not optimised these for maximum damage or helpfullness. The best path may still be undiscovered...

VIV. GEAR
I. GEAR OPTIONS

Crafts and Honorifics

The only shrine i've crafted anything spectacular with is hidden shrine (reanimate) so far. I crafted sacred boots to allow 3 seperate elite reanimates to help in uberquest and general destruction gameplay. Craft gear to fill a voids in your stats - e.g craft boots or belt using stone shrine for more resists and maybe even some attribute bonuses. Honorific items are even better for resists. Going into terror i had very bad resists and made a +100 resist to lightning/poison/cold. It helped alot and i had it until i could get enough sacred/set gear with +resists to be able to replace it. I then had max resists in terror and destruction which was nice.

Runewords, Uniques & Sets

For the following runewords and uniques i've taken a G.R.A.S.U.D.N.E approach. That is, a Great-runewords-and-sacred-uniques-do-not-exist. This means i will list only tiered uniques and various levels of runewords, and i'm sure you readers are clever enough to be able to work out that great runewords and sacred uniques are the ideal end-game gear, so i shouldn't need to list it for you! Heh

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Spoiler:

Gemwords

Haven't found any of the gear above? Dont have enough crystals to make any uniques? Assuming you are unlucky enough not to have found any good gear, then you can make gemwords. Place a gem into the last socket on an item, and put jewels in the previous sockets. The item will gain the bonus of the jewels, and the gem bonus multiplied by: [number of sockets + 1]. So get a 3 socketed shield, put 2 jewels in it, a flawed diamond in the last slot, and you'll get +10% to all resists! Here are the most useful gems to use in gemwords for this build:

In Weapons: Diamond, Ruby, Sapphire, Turquoise.
In Shields: Any except onyx/bloodstone/amber
In Armour: Use any at your discretion!

Jewels, Jewellery and socketables

There are a couple of good unique amulets i've listed, but the best amulets and rings are rare ones. This rings below shows the kind of thing you'll be looking to make.



The first one took about 70 runes to create, made by finding a high ilvl ring and rerolling using the appropriate recipie. I added %mana regen and +%lit dmg to this one; it originally spawned with just under 30% lit dmg. Don't worry about +skills - if you can get this much spell damage on a ring you won't need 'em - none of mine have them. You cannot use the dupe recipie on anything except crafted jewels and gems anymore, so i had to roll a seperate ring (the one on the right). It's not as good as the first in terms of spell damage, but that EF certainly helps. Also i should point out that both rings have had the successful random extra modifier recipie on it too, hence the other +10% spell damages. I wasn't too bothered adding -%lit res to my rings; the unholy caster set i'm using gives -50% and my other charms and gear makes that to just over -100%.

Another extremely important piece of equipment are jewels. For these, you'll be looking to craft one or two good ones, then use the dupe recipe on them like there's no tomorrow. Here are my pride and joys of zod-crafted jewels:



The first two were crafted by me and the third was generously donated for this char . You may be surprised to here that (mine, at least) did not take long to craft. It should require less attempts to get something good compared to 10 patches ago, and the spell damage ranges are much lower than before so 3% for all damages is the best you're gonna get anyway.

As you can imagine, with these in every socket in view, i have about 25% more damage on mind flay, punisher and slayer than someone without them. Late-game these are extremely important if you want more damage. There is also a unique jewel with -enemy resists - if you can get that, you will be very powerful indeed against elemental immunes as well.

VIV. GEAR
II. MY GEAR

This is the gear i have at the moment [Updated 14/4/09]. I am completely happy with it now, i doubt i will change it must more except for adding mystic orbs to things.

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Spoiler:

I hope this gives people an idea of the type of things to aim for - note that i traded to get the imperius set pieces and all sacred uniques i am wearing. Here is some vague ranting reasoning for my gear choices. I love runewords but uniques/sets for this build are so much better.

Jewellery - Witchmoon is a good alternative, but i rerolled a rare ilvl99 amulet until i got +3 skills then attempted the r.e.m modifier on it. I've yet to upgrade this one, will probably put mana regen and +% lit dmg on it. A +4 amulet with spell damage, EF and mana regen is the best you're going to get. There are several procs that can spawn on rare amulets/rings (nightmare when damage taken, doom on kill) but none of them are particularly useful to this build and they are pretty uncommon.

Body Armour/Shield/Main hand/Helm/Boots - This set is fantastic. Look at the full set bonus i get from it and take a look at my stats. Without this set i would not be able to reach 3k energy - with it i could hit 5k energy easily with 500 signets. (Currently i've eaten 190 or so signets).

The energy factor bonus is always useful. As you cannot get 11% spell damage jewels anymore, we must stack as much energy and energy factor on as possible to get a nice energy based spell damage bonus. The -resists also help, doubling your damage against non-lit-immune mobs when you have -100%.

The attribute bonuses on this set are incredible. Combined with dark king and +%att jewels you will be soaring into the 1k+ range of attributes. I left all of mine at base except for energy and yet they still exceed 1000.

1% reanimate imperius doesn't seem like a lot, but he is summoned way more often than you'd think. His attacks are deadly - giving you a druid-charm-command like lightwell above your head when he gets near you, he shoots blue light beams, casts beacon and liche form. Incredible.

And finally we have the defensive mods. The 20% avoid is good, but the 33% attacker flee is extraordinary. With this set you'll have a good chance of not getting hurt.

Belt - The first thing you realise about this belt is that not only does it give you yet more spell damage and energy, there is a whopping 10% damage reduction on it. There are many belt options that rival this without the D.R, but with it, it cannot be missed.

Weapons on Switch - As it helps massively in uberquests, i always keep the slightly unironic runeword, "Path", on switch along with the witch drum SU shield to boost the length of holy armour. If i'm every in trouble, i'm just one click from switch and another from invincibility and insane proc damage for 15 seconds. This switch effectively turns me into a proc pally for 15 seconds at a time, and boy is it deadly.

Socketables - Nothing special here - I used the jewels shown up the page in my gear, and 8x P.Topaz for 64% more energy to increase the effectiveness of my 600 EF.

LIL. TACTICS
I. IN GENERAL


These tactics are for common situations you will find yourself in when levelling up solo, before you get lots of reanimates or minions later on.

Skills Video

HERE is a short video showing the almost maxed out skills of the pathfinder. Apologies for bad quality, click "watch in high quality" beneath the video to see skill damages more clearly. Disclaimer: Damages in the video are obtained using the exact gear and jewels i posted above in the gear section.

Did You Know?

Did you know that your can actually control the dispersion of your mind flay/punisher skill (w/ more than one beam) by clicking near your model or on the edge of the screen? Yep, that's right, i find that that best dispersion in places like Tran athulua is to click 1cm in front of your model, and in open areas like the dry hills, really spread those beams by clicking on or close to your feet.

Retreating Offensively

This is a situation you may find yourself in very often. You're in act 2 hatred, you load of pit walkers (or whatever they're called) appear on top of you and you manage to cast holy armour to protect yourself. You start running away, but they follow you.



You are blue. Here's what i'd do. Yep, turn around, create an arc of Slayers in front of you, then start firing mind flay. Both things will occasionally lock the enemy and stop them from moving. So they are very good come-back skills. Keep retreating backwards and shooting mind flay, then position your slayers close to you once again as in the inital situation. Alternatively, flank your first line of slayers, get in close and finish any off with punisher as your slayers are dissapearing. You could also spawn new slayers around the sides to circumvent them and give you the advantage.

Approaching Offensively

Different situation this time. You're in act 3, gidbinny things those annoying frog-type-things come towards you, and you're getting pretty worried about dying.



That's okay, just place a load of slayers behind them in an arc and by the time they are placed, the enemy will be pretty close to you. Run through or around them, (use H.A) if necessary, then proceed to melt the back of their head until their brain pours out of their ears. As shown in the diagram, you could alternatively spread your slayers out in amongst the enemies, which in some cases can be more effective, especially with ranged attackers or spellcasters. You want your slayer's firepower (of which they have very little) to be used effectively and to cover the greatest range possible to give you the advantage.

Choosing a Mercenary

Once I got to act 2 hatred, I got the shape-shifter mercenary (lvl 30), and i advise you to do the same. I gave him the strongest runewords and items I could find and make at the time. I advise you to give yours Ravenbeak spear unique - flamefront on attack. Don't underestimate it. I levelled him up to 100, but by act 5 terror he was starting to die very frequently. So after completing the required quest, I hired an act 5 Barbarian, and I don’t regret the decision at all. In Act 1 destruction (players VIII) I found a Lai rune, made the 2nd highest Barbarian weapon runeword there is in a superior sacred bronze sword, and gave it to my merc. He then tanked Radament solo on Players: VIII destruction difficulty. He is extremely useful with shower of rocks which lowers enemy resistances. Could be very useful indeed in Kurast 3000 BA and other such levels where is he most likely to survive.

Challenges

Not going to tell you how to do these. I am giving tips on uberquests incase any readers cannot do it via their own tactics, but not on challenges, because they're a challenge - and I wouldn't want to spoil the challenge for you . Sufficed to say, they are easy. The level challenge is the easiest. I didn't die once (lvl forty-eight) and with the right gear even my merc could tank small groups of amazons for me. Stay back from fights and lock up the enemy by constantly spraying mind flay (but watch out for those arrows!), place slayers on corners so you can get on the offensive when retreating, and never run into big packs. The attribute challenges are okay, the only bad thing about them is that it stops you putting too many points in energy, so you do less damage when levelling up. You could always just farm signets when you're level 120 though. All except the black road are easy, but scourge isn't vital for this build, even if it is a nice extra. Besides the BRC has no level req. anymore so just do it when you're lvl 120. As i said in the skill paths section, if you want to make sure you can do all the challenges, don't go for the strictest route.


LIL. TACTICS
II. IN UBERQUESTS

Each Uberquest has a difficulty rating based on the amount of the amount of attempts (added up) it took me to: realise the task, think of a sensible plan of action, and successfully complete/clear the area. I cannot stress this enough: If i have listed an uber as hard below it is because I could not do it - you may very well find it the EASIEST uber to do, the following is based on my experience only and should not be taken as the absolute truth in all cases.

Any uberquests with a star [] are ones which you will need to do at some point to get +10 max skill levels, to get lvl 30 hard points in slayer (for that all-important 4th beam/punisher)! Some of the starred ubers are for the AC500 challenge which gets you +2 max skill on your class charm. Others are ubers which give you independant +max skill lvl charms. See documentation for more info.

Painless – Lifting the 5 fingers on your hand is more work.
[Five attempts or fewer is all it takes]
Elusive – Concentrate. A 15th of a second is all it takes for you to die.
[Tricky uberquests which took 15 or fewer attempts to complete]
Suicidal – Walking 25 metre path is a lot harder when your torso is a mile behind you.
[Either it took me 25+ attempts, or i still haven't completed it yet]



Creature of Flame – Punisher the familiar, use divine apparition to freeze the large group, and mind flay them while they are melting.

Infernal Machine– You can either put on H.A, run in and punisher the infernal machine then finish the others off with punisher/mind flay, or do what I did and run just into range of the machine, and hold down mind flay on it until it and everything around it is laying in a pool of blood on the ground.

Death Projector – Put on Holy armour, run in and punisher the death projector and start running in circles until it dies. Alternatively you may be able to hit it with mind flay from a distance, but using punisher is quicker and easier.

Azmodan – Put on H.A, run in and find the boss. Use punisher to kill azmodan, then finish the rest off with mind flay/slayer. If you’re getting swamped after killing azmodan, try running out of the area. When ready and recharged, go back in all guns blazing.

Rathma Square – Move swiftly, or else you will get stuck in a loop of killing the Gore Crawlers. I had hidden shrine boots so my tactic was to run in, put on H.A, run all the way to the tiny room next to where Primus stands, spray mind flay and slayer, keep killing the respawning Gore crawlers until you have enough reanimates up to take a few hits for 5 seconds, then put on H.A, run in and get the charm. Alternatively, if you get some +buff duration, and an adrenaline elixir, try going straight for Primus, with punisher (H.A active), and picking up the charm (if it drops) before H.A wears off.

Toraja – Move slowly, there is no need to rush. Summon Edyrems constantly, behind the bars, and in front of you if any enemies get too close. Clear out the level from left to right, slowly and carefully, stay back from any fights and use mind flay effectively to take out packs of distracted archers. Also use divine apparition if you are going to die to help retreat from the arrows, and also give you some time whilst the enemies are frozen. Make sure the left side is clear so there aren’t any enemies which will creep up behind and kill you when you are attacking the boss. Find Lillith and lure back from any large packs. Spawn edyrems to surround Lillith and throw down slayers too. Finally, give Lillith a taste of punisher. It took me about 15 minutes to clear the level and kill Lillith. Didn’t die once. An extremely fun Uberquest if you ask me, I enjoyed it more than any other.


SUMMONING HINTS

For maximum ease in summoning uberquests, get +1 to each minion possible from MOs (can be bought from vendor) i.e. Daystar, Bane Monster, etc. and put them on a ring or amulet. Before summoning the ubers, summon all your minions and teleport (Jitan’s gate/blink charges/Divine apparition) them into one spot in a corner of the room/area. Then while still standing on top of your minions, place slayers around them and summon the uber on top (then run! Fast!)

Adrenaline elixers will come in handy in many sticky situations. If you're running out of perfect ambers to make them, get some +%buff/debuff duration so holy armour lasts longer then you won't need as many of these.

You can also use Kali Runeword if you are struggling, to convert (possess charges) the enemies to attack each other. Not only is it a good distraction, but they might killing each other in the process.


The Butcher – Once your minions are in place, summon the butcher on top of them and stand back. Fire a punisher wave at him then keep mind flay held down. He should go down easy. Without minions, just use punisher and run around in circles. To make sure he doesn’t kill you, keep H.A active as one punisher should be enough.

The Binding of Baal – Get minions in place in a corner then stand back and, just like the butcher, fire punishers at the pack then mind flay them. Don’t be afraid to retreat, they will do aoe spells and a few waves will come at you, so put H.A on once the punisher timer has expired and continue firing mind flay.

Assault on Mount Arreat – Punisher each one in turn. Summon minions to distract them while the punisher timer is running down, and mind flay them while you wait.

Akarat – This one took 4 attempts for me. As usual, I summoned minions, put them in one spot, surrounded them with slayers then summoned the ubers. If you’re lucky you can spray mind flay at them and kill akarat in one go. However, I found it hard to do that. Try to get all but one of them to die then lure them to the end of the bridge (upper kurast side). Teleport down off the bridge to the grass and they should be stuck on the bridge, looking at you. Don’t go too near or they will kill you. Now, run side to side and mind flay the final follower. Run up to akarat and use punisher to land the kill. Adrenaline elixir may help here if you are finding this tough, so you can activate H.A before you go in for the kill.

Lord Aldric Jitan – Summon, after placing your minions and slayer, and use D.A to freeze the enemies. Use possess charges if you have them (mentioned above in hints), and constantly fire mind flay at them. This was another slightly irritating one for me which took 4/5 tries, because they like to spread out making it hard to kill Jitan quickly. Place a T.P on the opposite end of the area so where you are summoning to make it easier to retrieve your corpse if you are very close to killing Jitan. Strafe at all times and I advise you to run away if guard towers spawn right next to you.

Legacy Of Blood – Did this on my 2nd try after figuring out a good tactic. Go to the tower level below the place to summon them. Place a T.P on the entrance and summon all the minions you can. Go into the summoning room and teleport your minions into the right-most corner. Place slayers around them, and summon the ubers. Run to the opposite corner of the area (the one next to the entrance to the lower level) and hold down mind flay. I died at this point after getting Bartuc to half health. But here’s the tactic. Go through the T.P you placed earlier and place another T.P. Put on H.A and go into the summoning room to retrieve your corpse, then go back down to the next level. Summon all your minions again, go back up just keep shooting mind flay at them. Your minions will take most of the hits and by the time they’re dead you will have damaged Bartuc even more and probably killed some of the golems. Rinse and repeat until they’re all dead and collect the charm. I died 3 times before Bartuc perished, but it’s nice to be able to use dying as a tactic. Quick too.

Judgement Day – There are a few ways to do this. Get minions (oskills or scourge) and teleport them into a corner of the inner cloister. Try to distract the main armoured target as he's the one that will spawn the avatar which drop the charm. Now go to the stairs which go down to the jail (make sure it's clear beforehand by the way) try to go down at the exact time he teleports onto you, and he will go down there with you. Now that you have him in your own, summon constantly on top of him until the avatar spawns, mind flay it before it spawns too many enemies, grab the charm and get out of there. That's how i did it. Alternatively you can summon up again, retreat offensively and as soon as the avatar spawns, lure all the enemies into the cathedral area. Get in a TP by the stairs then go back through the inner cloiser waypoint. Now you have the avatar on its own, kill it before it spawns too many enemies, and grab the charm. The final (and easiest) method of doing this is to get to lvl120 and do as many of the other ubers first. This ensures you have enough mana to constantly spawn scourge on top of the enemies when summoned. An avatar will spawn way before you run out of mana. Periodically cast mind flay (stopping to spawn more scourge so they dont teleport and kill you) and collect the charm. Easy.

Inarius's Revenge – See the unendurable section to find out how to clear CoV. Once it is clear, go to the left most benches behind where the crystal ball used to be. There should be 4 benches next to the wall and a small path between them that you can fit down. Summon all your minions, put down slayers, then teleport into this gap. Summon the ubers then get out of there. Spray Mind flay and punisher into the gap and your minions should distract them long enough for you to lock up Inarius and his minions with mind flay and melt them till there’s no tomorrow (thankyou equal area effect damage of mind flay!).


UBERLEVEL HINTS

Reanimates come in handy for these. I say come in handy, you almost have to have them if you want to clear the level in less than an hour. You can get them from anywhere, the unholy caster set (imperius reanimate and a couple of others) or best of all from hidden shrine crafts.

Adrenaline elixers will come in handy in many sticky situations.

Use Power exliers in uberlevels to increase your damage very heavily. Players VIII kurast/khalimgrad/tran athulua farming will be a lot faster with some of these.



Kurast 3000 BA – Easy as long as you have reanimates. Use H.A to cover yourself while you punisher the towers, then mind flay what’s left over. Use slayer in small concentrated groups to take out any lightning immune monsters (this is why it’s annoying sometimes), or even use your Act 5 if you have one (shower of rocks is very useful here especially).

Isle Of the Sunless Sea – Easy, as usual mind flay everything you see. Surround Malic with slayers to slow down his punisher-shooting then finish him off with whatever you like. Take it slowly the rest of the way as there are plenty of invisible enemies. Shoot mind flay in dispered beams (see tactics section) to detect any monsters in front of you and cast slayer on any bridges or corners to help take care of the enemies waiting for you on the other side.

Khalimgrad – Flay everything you see. With enough reanimates this is easy, put concentrated groups of slayers on corners and punisher the avatars whilst they are vulnerable. Watch out for the punisher towers, which can take you down to 1 health making you an easy target.

Note: With enough reanimates you can comfortably farm this area on players: VIII.

Tran Athulua – Put groups of slayers on corners, activated H.A when going down tight alleyways and spray mind flay in front of you at all times. In this area knowing when to retreat is half the battle.

Note: With enough reanimates you can comfortably farm this area on players: VIII.

Heroic Areas – Very easy to farm, use slayer on doorways for lightning immunes and with a few reanimates and a 200k mind flay you can surf through these areas. I prefer to farm these more than uberlevels. This means places like the stony tomb, the mausoleum, or the secret cow level. Oh, but watch out for Astrogha/Quov Tsin/Rodeo who can randomly spawn here!



Cathedral of Vanity – Before you come here, make 3 adrenaline elixers and put them in your belt slots (P.Amber + ident scroll). Once you get here place a T.P outside and go in. Stay in the small annex to begin with. Right, now put on H.A, quickly run in and while you are doing so drink your first adrenaline elixir. Punisher the crystal ball and run out of CoV completely, at which point H.A should wear off (or sometime slightly before you get out). Repeat this with the priests. Then run in with H.A on a final time and melt everyone into a puddle with mind flay/slayer. I found this one extremely hard to do/almost impossible without adrenaline elixers.

Ghosts of old Bremmtown – This is irritating. The Howling spirits do quite high damage and it'd easy to die. Try to keep H.A on at all times, when i've tried it with H.A on i've actually got quite far in it, but as soon as H.A turned off, i was dead in a couple of seconds. Use mind flay to lock up the mobs around you and place slayers in front of you after each group attacking is dead, to prepare for the next one.

ALTERNATIVE [EASY] TACTIC COURTESY OF AMBULANCE -
Stick a Ber rune in a scepter, put it on your paladin, cast HA, walk in to Bremmtown and let the Spirits go to town on you. They should die either instantly or close to it. Make sure you have a very long Holy Armour Duration. With all our points in energy, crossed with incredible +%spell damage boost on gear and superbeast, and finally our energy factor, will make the cataclysm proc on the runeword deadly (not forgetting that spell procs on runewords act as if you yourself had just cast the spell, so inherit things that would contribute to it's damage!). If you have no adrenaline elixers, make TPs into town to wait out the H.A spell timer. If you have a long enough H.A duration you will only need to cast it a few times before you've progressed to the boss of the area. This is the hardest part - killing the Dragon while he's healing (watching out for his spirals).



Fauztinville – I have only tried it a couple of times, so whilst I find it impossible, if you are extremely skilled and have tonnes of avoid on your gear (of which has tonnes of defense) then you stand may stand a chance here, otherwise it is totally impossible. (I guess this is where some people stop reading eh? Heh)

Kingdom Of Shadow – Another hard uber. Get lots of run/walk speed and constantly drink adrenaline elixers when swamped to keep H.A active and to replenish D.A. Drink tonnes of health pots before you go in (don't activate superbeast because they'll dispel the regen of the pots!). Use rapture to gain velocity quickly and make sure you know where you're going. Good luck.

Heroic Bosses – Very hard, long and almost impossible fights. Find long topics for tips and useful tricks on Astrogha and Quov Tsin in the following places:

Quov Tsin 13-Page Topic
Quov Tsin 7-Page Topic
Astrogha Tsin 10-Page Topic


Bull Prince Rodeo - Make the cow portal, stand still when you go in. Summon up everything you have then teleport it to one spot in front of you, retreat a little, a huge wave of cows will come at you then flay them as much as possible. Oskills like blast wave will help here to periodically stun enemies to give you a slight advantage, and don't forget the Bremmtown sceptre trick which will also work well here. When you find the bull prince, all you need to do is put on holy armour to prevent damage (poison penetrates though) run in, punisher him and run like mad. Note: If you're orthodox or any other kind of path with 20+ hard points in punisher and mind flay, it will probably only take one punisher to take him down due to the extreme poison damage. The only problem is, hitting him with it while his poison resistance is down. The resistance only flicker off for a second, so you need to be very close when shooting it. Another tactic is to yet again get Path runeword (how delightfully appropriate?) with ctc cataclysm when struck. Run up to him, slayer all around him, shoot mind flay, cataclysm will proc now and then, and shoot punisher whenever timer expires. This means you're attacking with 4 of the 5 things he's resistant to so are more likely to do damage to him when one of them goes down. He does heal, too, so in the interest of getting him down in one shot so he can't heal, the most obvious thing to go for is punisher spam. He doesn't do too much damage, i can tank him for 4/5 seconds before i die, but since i've tried this one almost 140 times with no success, i'm listing it as one of the hardest.

MEDIA

Here are some screenies for your viewing pleasure:

Spoiler:

FOOTNOTES

I eat Paladins For Breakfast

If you are the kind of person that only plays paladins, here are some other paladin guides to study. Note that there are a lot of universal tips in these that all paladins should know about, it's always good to read more than one source on a subject before you hammer down the details.

Retaliator Paladin[1.70] - By xMeox
Shadow Sorcerer[1.80] - By vei
The Blackguard Paladin [1.80] - By Smiling Hobo
The Turtle Priest (Holy Tankadin) [1.94] - By penco

How Does skill/concept/thingy "X" work?

Number-Crunching for Soft-Points and Synergies Thread for how to get the most damage out of MF without wasting points.
Poison Damage Explained Thread for calculating poison damage from items/skills and general poison info which is always good to know.
How Spell Damage Works Thread for other spell damage related info and general facts to dispel those myths.

Contribute

If you have any good screenshots of playing the Pathfinder, post ‘em here and I’ll upload them all and shove 'em with the other screenshots just above these footnotes!

Thank you and good luck

There you have it. Thank you readers, for studying my guide, and special thanks to Koiu Lpoi who provided some unique insight with his own Pathfinder experiences, even before I had reached Act 2 hatred with mine, along with Ambulance, pointed out some good tips which i've written into the guide. Also thankyou to everyone who traded me pieces of gear i needed to make my Pathfinder and thus, write this guide.

.. And finally, good luck to everyone in the guide contest. I’m sure we all had fun writing our guides for this fantastic Diablo 2 Mod, and even if I don’t win I know I’m more than happy with mine; i just spent 3 weeks making/levelling this char, and 10 hours writing and designing this guide so I hope I have resurrected (get it? ZZzz..) the unholy casterdin, or Pathfinder, for you!

Changelog

Since this guide was originally made (v1.86b) a number of things have changed that will affect the build since then:

- [1.86] Mind flay damage range reduced. This is a balance thing to avoid unnececcary damage overflow. It means no longer will mind flay do 1 - 15k but 7.5k to 10k instead.
- [1.90] "Nerf" to spell damage jewels. No more 11% lit damage jewels, 7% for one element is the most you are going to get, and you will far more likely get 2 - 5% spell damage when zod-crafting now.
- [1.99] Mind flay nextdelay changed from 4 to 3. Nextdelay is the delay after attacking an enemy with X skill before that enemy can take damage from the same skill again. Theoretically, holding down mind flay on an enemy should do 33% more damage compared to the same amount of time firing in any of the earlier versions.
- [1.99b] Unholy caster set: "33% howl-thorns added" - Also, the +2 paladin skills for the full set was removed, but this attacker flees was added instead.

All prose & images were written/designed by Gravyman who has intellectual rights on them!

Go ahead, comment, criticise, praise.

Thanks again.