Elelar, Ultimative Melee Sorceress - XVc Updates in Progress

*This guide was originally written in patch XIV, I'm currently in the process of doing a fresh playthrough with patch XVc and updating this as I go.
Skills section has been added.
UMS1-4 and 11-18 updated.

I decided to write this guide because I love the “battlemage” concept (a melee person who uses elemental spells to augment their fighting) and because I couldn't find a guide for the melee sorceress when I started.  This guide is written under the assumption that one isn't twinked, has little-to-no experience with the mod, and is designed to try and help teach.

Note that this guide is rather long, so be sure to use ctrl+f to find things.  UMS<number> is all you have to search for to quickly find the area you're after.

Table of Contents:

General Tips
Character Orb (UMS1)
Low Level 1-59 (UMS2)
Mid Level 60-99 (UMS3)
High Level 100-120 (UMS4)
Destruction/Baal (UMS5)
End-Game (UMS6)
Dungeons (UMS7)
Summons (UMS8)
Uberlevels (UMS9)
Heroics (UMS10)
Challenges
Challenge Level 0 (UMS11)
Challenge Level 1 (UMS12)
Challenge Level 2 (UMS13)
Ennead Challenge (UMS14)
Black Road Challenge (UMS15)
Crafting (UMS16)
Gear
Jewels
Acronyms (UMS17)
Video Guides (UMS18)
Skills - A bit lengthy of an addition, click link to go to the post on page 5

General Tips:  Below you will find tips on various things that are either too generalized to go into a specific area or are specific to a certain item.

Stats - Get just enough STR to equip your gear then dump everything else into DEX.  At lower levels you will be str-limited in regards to what gear you can use, but when you start collecting charms you're going to need to periodically remove excess stat-points from STR.  If you're still unsure of how much STR you need check the video section as each video shows the stats and gear used.

IAS/FBR/FHR Numbers – The top three numbers for each are 39/80/180 IAS, 75/129/280 FBR, and 60/109/280 FHR.  

Maps - A few maps can be found here.

Fire Dance – This increases both your damage and your elemental damage (by varying amounts).  While I normally mention it when talking about the alternate spec, don't forget to use it just because I didn't mention it.  

Beacon (SSSU Brandistock) – The velocity buff stacks with Baneblade, but you won't randomly cast the damage portion unless the weapon is your active weapon.  So you can buff with it, but if you want to run circles around something and let this do the work (such as in the Cathedral of Vanity) then you need to not switch back to your primary weapon.

/players X – This improves your chances of a drop among other things.  So if a “chance to drop” charm is alluding you, then consider doing this prior to getting to the boss (preferably before entering the uber).  It must be done before the game spawns the mob for it to affect the mob.

SoV (SSU Bone Helm) – The helm comes with two charges, but you can only use one before needing to repair it.  If you try to use the second charge then you lose the ability and it unsummons the SoV (much like if you respec with summoned minions out).

Destruction Nihilithak – He always drops 3x Signet of Learning and 2x Uniques.  This means that he can be a good place to farm since you're going to need the signets eventually and the uniques have a chance of being sacred items.

Signets of Learning – These are NOT needed when first starting off.  There's plenty of Ubers that can be completed without these and only using RWs.  So while you will eventually want to get 500 of them, don't think you need to rush out and start getting them before doing ubers.

Sacrifices (AotOR) – This spell can be used to gain HP/MP via “Life/Mana after each kill” effects since it summons hostile mobs and then kills them.  Given that Rune of Fire is what kills the mobs it can't proc other “on kill” effects (see the LFAQ for more info).

Character Orb (UMS1) - After coming from MXL and only recently finding Ultimative I must say that this is a very nice item.  But with that I would recommend one to not become overly reliant on this since you can't use it at lvl120.  So then, what should be put on it?  Mana on Kill, Life Steal (this suffers on higher difficulties but is great on Hatred), life on melee strike, character def%, dex%, and str% are all useful.  Some of it doesn't seem useful to a dex-based melee char, but the mana on kill can really help out with early game mana problems (especially if using Spiral Dance), while the str% lets you put fewer points into str and still equip some of the higher str req items.  Oh and don't forget to cube your median charm (the one that lets you do the lvl0 challenge) with the orb for the teleport.

The primary use of this should be to help ease the issue of being screwed by RNG in regards to drops, easing the lower lvl stat crunch, and filling the gap between TU gear and high-tier RW/sacred gear.  If you use this as a crutch you will be in for a rude awakening when you hit lvl120 and suddenly lose access to it.

One last thing, if you cube 15x of a gem with it, then whenever you cube another gem of the same type with the orb it returns a random quality gem of said type.  Thus this can let you turn a chipped gem into a perfect if you just keep cubing the two.  Consider having a second orb for non-dex/str gems.

Low Level 1-59 (UMS2):

Gear - Your primary things are going to be the TU Warp Blade and TU Ceremonial Armor.  Both of these can be gotten from the gift box from Griswold in Tristam.  So while it might take a bit of time to get them (it took me 15-20 kills to get the armor, and I only saw 2 Warp Blades in that timeframe), you are going to want to get them ASAP and uptier them whenever you meet the requirements to wear the next higher tier (if you have to choose which one to upgrade due to lack of crystals, go with your weapon).  From there it is just filling in what you feel you need.  The TU bone or spiked shields are good choices as they don't need any str to use but you might be short on arcane crystals to make these due to upgrading your weapon and torso.  At some point you should use Oil of Renewal on Rare gloves in order to get CtC Lorenado.  These gloves can easily last you until lvl100 depending on their tier and the other bonuses (namely at the upper end of the low lvls where you can get a pair with +1 sorc skills and lorenado).  But really, at this point in the game it doesn't really matter what your other gear is so long as you have the TU Warp Blade and Ceremonial Armor upgraded (especially the weapon).

Something else to realize is that the Ceremonial Armor gives a decent boost to STR, so make sure you have the chest equipped before putting points into str.  Also since we're a DEX-based class make sure that you're not selecting items with an overly high STR req as the fewer points needed in STR the better.

Skills - At this level you can use pretty much anything for the regular play, but I would highly recommend Lightning/Ice.  They synergize really well and give a huge boost to your survivability.  Then there's Ice Elementals which help you survive by distracting enemies, make it easier to get back your corpse if you die, increase your armor, give you 25% DR, and can do decent damage at this stage.  During this time frame you're going to want to max out Familiar, Fusillade, Warp Armor, and Ice Queen while putting a single point into all other available skills (exception being the mana tree, it's up to you if you want to go past familiar.  I personally didn't use Mana Sweep or Antimass, but some people will find these skills useful).  You can put spare points into Ice Elementals and Sword familiars as you see fit (see the Skills section for more info on each).

Gameplay - Not much to say here.  You shouldn't have any problem playing on "/players 8" which will also help you get more xp and better drops (you might want to set it back to 1 for the underground pass if you don't have a good weapon though, due to the mobs with crazy high hp regen and you potentially not having the damage to kill them on 8 at this point).  Just make sure to do your Level Challenge 0, Level Challenge 1, and Ennead Challenge (Ennead Challenge doesn't "need" to be done yet, but no need to wait and the sooner you do it the sooner you can throw a +1 Sorc Skills onto your Character Orb by cubing a spare sorceress class charm with the orb).

Mid Level 60-99 (UMS3):

Gear - Your TU gear is going to hit lvl6 at this point, and as you approach the upper end of this area it might start to seem a bit dated.  Don't forget to use MOs to help extend its usefulness while waiting to hit lvl100.  By now Arcane Crystals shouldn't be an issue, so consider using them to make unique rings/amulets.  There's plenty of useful ones that you can get, and if you get a bad one you can always turn it into a Signet of Learning.  Also be on the lookout for sacred gear.  The things that you want to keep an eye out for is high lvl runes (as of XV the special box no longer gives lvl100 runes and can go as low as lvl59 runes), sacred leather gloves, boots (the ones actually labeled "Boots" and not heavy boots or some other pair; this is due to "Boots"  having the lowest str req), crystal sword, warp blade, any sorceress chest, dex helms, and shields (preferably bone/spiked shields but others can work if you use -req jewels) .  If you find a Warp Blade don't bother to keep a Sacred Crystal Sword.  Same goes for if you find a higher grade of sorceress armor or dex helm (circlet-type).  The reason you're grabbing things like the crystal sword or any sorceress armor is because there's no guarantee you will see a warp blade or ceremonial armor by the time you hit lvl100 or even 120 (especially in regards of the Ceremonial Armor).  Also feel free to grab other sacred items but given the str reqs on such items just realize it will be awhile before you can likely use them.  You can also start crafting decent items in this range (see crafting section for more info).

Skills - I would recommend being Lightning/Ice here just like at the lower levels.  At 90 pickup Baneblade and max that skill as you lvl as well, while putting only one point into Symbol of Esu.  Basically just keep on like from the low lvls.  Given the aging of your TU gear the survivability from these two trees is all the more important.  Once you hit lvl90 could switch to Lightning/Fire for better damage as Baneblade grants a huge survivability boost and makes stacking Warp Armor+Ice Queen less useful.

Gameplay - Stuff is going to start getting more dangerous in this range.  You also might need to work to stay res capped, though a pair of crafted boots/gloves can easily solve that.  Overall Terror isn't that bad, but the gap from ~80-100 can be a bit hard as your gear ages.  I didn't think to use MOs to help upgrade my gear during this time, so make sure to not make rookie/noob mistakes like I did.  Make sure you complete Level Challenge 2 no later than lvl90 (you should be able to do it in the mid 80s if you want).  Also you need to pay attention to your level if you're clearing everything (or have been farming an area) and not just blitzing through the acts.  If you don't you might find yourself getting dangerously close to 90+ before getting to the Lost City for the Level Challenge.

High Level 100-120 (UMS4):

Gear - Hopefully you were collecting sacred gear and runes because you're about to have an explosion of new gear.  As for what jewels to put into this stuff see the jewel section.  When creating RWs be sure to upgrade them to “Superior” status and then use Oil of Renewal in order to get an item that has good base bonuses (enhanced damage+accuracy for weapons and +enhanced def for armor) before creating the RW.  This is an easy way to get some extra power out of your gear.  Also be sure to use Oil of Luck/Blessed Oil of Luck on your gear (see game documentation about these items).  Note that when you apply MOs you're going to want to apply it to the base item since if you apply it to a RW item and then unsocket it you lose the MOs, but MOs applied to the base item before the RW is made are kept.  So at 120 unsocket your RWs, apply the MOs, then resocket (and unsocket/resocket until you get modifiers you find acceptable).

Here's a heads up for those of you doing SP and thinking you can dupe an item or just C&P save files to keep retrying the Luck Trial/Shrine Blessing/Oil of Luck/etc.  It doesn't work.  These things are determined when the item is created (using an Oil of Renewal "creates" a new item and thus rerolls these chances) and using such things simply shows you if the item had that modifier or not.  Though doing such things will let you reroll the bonus if an item was already selected to succeed such a test.

   Weapon - "Xar" in either a Crystal Sword or Warp Blade is awesome.  It diversifies your damage a bit, which is nice since by this point various enemies are going to have 1-2 random immunities and this lets you still damage hem.  This weapon will also lower enemy resistances and...

   One thing to note is that if you're putting this into a Warp Blade you're going to want to do a luck trial on the base weapon.  As this adds +2req lvl you can either wait until lvl102, or wait until lvl120 for this.  Personally I would wait until lvl120 before doing this as it is going to take some time and would be annoying at lower lvls given what all has to be done.  Once you get a good stat Superior Warp Blade do the luck trial and check to see if you got the double MO effect like with honorific/shrine crafted gear.  If you didn't then use Oil of Renewals until you get good stats again and do another Luck Trial MO.  Once you get the bonus put 9x Enhanced Damage MOs on it (so +20req lvl total).  This will take a while (unless you get lucky), but will give you a MUCH better weapon.  If you're still waiting on a Sacred Warp Blade to drop then I wouldn't bother with the luck trial and just throw 10x Enhanced  Damage on the Crystal Sword instead.

   Helm - "Yul" in some type of circlet.  You can use other helms, but these only require Dex to use as opposed to str, which means that you won't need -req jewels and can use them at a lower lvl.  The helm provides some nice bonuses and goes well with your Torso.

   Torso - "On" inside of the highest grade of Sorceress Armor that you've managed to get.  This chest is great because it goes well with your helm, increases all of your sorceress skills (but not oskills), and lowers enemies resistances which goes well with the elemental damage on your weapon, gloves procs, etc.  The damage avoidance on this torso is also nice since avoidance is pretty rare at this point of the game.

   Shield - "On" inside of a Bone/Spiked Shield.  You can use a different shield if you meet the str reqs, but these shields are dex-only shields and are the only ones to get 6xSockets.  This RW is going to give you a good boost to str, which in turn will help you use other STR items while also giving you +1 skills.  Initially I thought that the +500 fire damage to attackers would be nice, but I've found that they have too much hp and generally die too fast for this to really matter.

   Belt - "Vith" is nice even though it gives you some negative effects.  I noticed that the documentation is rather out-of-date for this RW so don't be surprised when you see various things pop up that aren't listed (like the -5 life drain).  If you're worried about the negatives know that the bonuses on a gem are higher than the negatives on this RW.  The point of using this RW is that it is one of the few ways to get damage reduction at this stage of the game.  You can also craft a belt for the CtC Disintegrate ability, but I would wait until lvl 120 and you have a few upgrades before doing so.

Boots/Gloves - Crafted items are the best here imo.  I personally used the boots to meet my resistance needs (the ones crafted for the Level Challenge 2), while using a good pair of shrine-crafted gloves.  If you can't get a good pair of shrine-crafted gloves (or boots if you get your res from another source like jewels) you can use Oil of Renewals on a Rare (yellow) pair of gloves to go for a good pair of gloves but without the shrine bonuses (also means no 2x bonus to MOs).

Skills - Now is when I would switch to a Fire/Lightning build if you didn't at lvl90.  Fire is a great tree as you get Living Flame, Fire Dance, and Flamestrike.  Living Flame is a talent that at lower levels is only ok, but really shines at these higher levels for both the life regen and and +life bonus (+life gets better the more points in Living Flame).  Fire Dance is good because it increases all of your damage (and that of your minions/merc), while Flamestrike gives you a powerful way to deal with physical-immune mobs and mobs that are out of reach for whatever reason.  

As for where to put your skill-points, you want to 20xFamiliar, max Baneblade, max Living Flame, max Warp Armor, 10-15pts in Fire Dance, 15-20pts in Moonstrike, and 1 point everything else.  Fire Dance provides a larger total damage boost than Moonstrike, but a slightly smaller damage boost per additional point than Moonstrike, though extra points in Fire Dance lowers its timer making it easier to use with other timered abilities.  Note that your actual end-game build will be slightly different due to all the +max skill level bonuses that you will get.

Some of you might be asking why are we switching and/or why didn't we use this from the start?  The Lightning/Fire build can work at the lower levels, but it isn't as strong due to Living Flame's way of working (the "Increasing Gains" from the hardpoints makes it weaker at lower lvls).  Then there's how Warp Armor+Ice Queen stacks which makes up for your lower survivability before Baneblade and lower grade gear.  The primary point of going Fire is for Living Flame followed by the damage boost of Fire Dance, while Ice gives us a survivability boost from Ice Queen and Ice Elementals.  This also means that if you feel that your survivability is lacking at some point feel free to try going back to a Lightning/Ice build.

Gameplay - You're going to be finishing up Terror and you should notice a decent improvement in performance from all the new gear.  Now is also when you should be finishing up your Black Road Challenge.  The skill is pretty useless for us since it can't be used while Baneblade is up so don't feel like you need to put a point into it if you don't want to, but the other bonuses are nice.  If you finish up Terror and aren't lvl120 that's fine.  The RWs that you made at lvl100+ are plenty good for Destruction and a lot of the various Ubers; just be sure to upgrade the base items with MOs once you hit lvl120.  Optionally you can do a few clears in Terror in order to hit 120 before going into Destruction if you want.

Destruction/Baal (UMS5):

There really isn't much difference between 100-120 and clearing all of the acts of Destruction (NOT the Ubers).  In fact I found Destruction to be at times easier than Terror and I only had the RWs that we made at lvl100.  So sit back, relax, and clear all of the acts with little-to-no problems...and then die horribly on Baal.  So what just happened?  Well, Baal on Destruction is buffed and is basically a mid-grade Uber boss.  This means you need to understand his mechanics and you're going to want to do various intro-level Ubers for their charms (not needed, but it will make things a lot smoother).  There's two main things that you're going to want to get before attempting Baal. 

The first is Jitan's Gate.  This gives you a teleport without needing to switch to an alternate weapon.  While that doesn't seem like a big deal, it can be a huge boost.  Why?  One, you don't give up armor to use your teleport since you get to keep your shield.  Two, if you set the teleport from Pax Mystica to a hotkey it likes to mess up.  This is especially clear when you die and recover your body.  Nothing like getting your body back, needing to teleport, and not being able to select it fast enough due to the hotkey being cleared.  And three, Jitan's Gate gives you a teleport when you need to recover your body.  This makes it easier to get your body as you can either lure enemies to the north/south and then teleport to the center area to have an easier time getting your body, or you can grab your body and then teleport away quickly before dying to a swarm. 

The second thing you want is an ammy with CtC Mythal.  This is easy enough to get as all it takes is a rare amulet and Oil of Renewal.  Just keep rerolling it until you get one that you're satisfied with it (I did it until I got one with +2 skills along with CtC Mythal).  Since we don't "need" this item, why do we want it?  Because Mythal lowers base resists and it is base resists that determine if an enemy is immune.  So -100 to +99 and a mob isn't immune, but 100+ resist and the mob is.  The boss is constantly rerolling his resists (similar to the Jester's Cap TU), so lowering the base resist means that he will drop his resists more often.  While a 2% CtC isn't great, it is better than nothing and thus is more helpful than pretty much any other neck that you could use.  Oh and if you think "I'll just stack a ton of -resist" know that won't break immunity.  It is still nice since if he has 99 resist your -resist will apply and can make a huge difference, but don't think it will let you break immunities.

Next up is the actual strategy that we're going to want to use.  The fight itself isn't that hard, it's just long.  First off place a TP upon entering in case you die.  Then you're going to want to pull Baal to either the top or the bottom.  Once done just start attacking him and hope that he drops resistances.  Eventually there's going to be a lot of Shardspawns.  For those that don't know, when they die little things float around the area that can give you a debuff where you die on next hit (they must hit you and not simply attack).  This is a problem because even if you could tank them all (which I wouldn't recommend trying) you will end up killing some over time due to our mechanics.  Nova Charge, Warp Blade's Area Effect Damage, Bladestorm, Familiars, and gear procs are all working against you in trying to not kill them.  So what do you do about it?  You kill them!  But before you do that you need to deal with Baal.  So once you feel like it's getting crowded you want to run to the north/south (whichever side you're not at), making sure Baal follows you.  Once there attack Baal some more and once that side seems a bit full you're going to want to go back to the first area, but without Baal following you.  So either teleport to the center area with Baal as far east as possible, or simply run past all of the enemies and hope Baal gets left behind (pretty standard, but doesn't work all the time).

Once this is done start killing the spawns.  Be careful while doing this and if there's a lot be sure to move when one dies so that you don't get the debuff and then 1-shot.  The nice thing here is that they die pretty fast and that your familiars can stunlock them.  If they're stunlocking 1-2 then you can just spam Bladestorm and don't really need to worry about getting 1-shot (this is up to your comfort level).  Once you clear that side then work your way to the other side, clearing as many spawn as possible before getting back to Baal.  How many spawn you can clear will depend on where Baal was at.  If he is close to the west side of the map then you're going to pull him again before being able to do with very many spawn that are in the middle or on the top/bottom where he is.

And that's the fight.  Just keep attacking Baal and clearing shardspawn when needed.  It just takes time and a bit of luck in regards to resistances dropping.  The CtC Mythal ammy makes it faster, but it's still pretty slow.  Since Baal doesn't drop a charm don't feel like you need to rush into doing this fight, but if you want to go to the Destruction Cow Level (who's boss does drop a charm) you will need to do Baal.  So give Baal a shot, see what it's like, and don't feel bad if you need to come back after getting charms from other Ubers.

End-Game (UMS6):

So, you're lvl120, you've cleared all of Destruction (except maybe Baal), and you're looking to get into the various ubers.  Below you'll find what you need to know about several of the places, but before that I'll go over the basics.  Some of these strats are taken from here but applied to the sorceress, while others I figured out on my own.

Gear – The gear that was made at lvl100 (see UMS4 for the gear) is good enough to do most Ubers up to “Tricky” and it can even do some hard ones.  In fact using the melee build, the lvl100 RW gear (well, lvl120 from MOs) and no Signets of Learning, I was able to clear Baal, CoF, Infernal Machine, Death Machine, Azmodan, Butcher, Tal Rasha, King Koth, K3kBA, Sunless Sea, Tran Athula, Rathma Square, Cathedral of Vanity, and Inarius.  While some of these places were a bit slow and/or about luck, don't think your RW gear can't clear anything.

That said, you're going to need some upgrades if you're to try the harder places, increase consistency, and/or improve the speed that you clear places.  Starhawk and AotOR are huge upgrades that you can hopefully either find or trade for.  Some other good SUs are Veil of Magic, Metalhead, and Stormflyer.  Hopefully by now you have at least a decent idea of what type of gear works, and the only real issue is digging through the large list of SUs/RWs followed by getting the gear to try it out.

The gear that we made at lvl100 and upgraded with MOs at 120 will let you do a lot of the various ubers.  In fact so far I've cleared Baal, CoF, Infernal Machine, Death Machine, Azmodan, Butcher, Tal Rasha, King Koth, Kurast 3kBA, Sunless Sea, Tran Athula, and some of Duncraig using this gear (I've also done all of this without a single stat signet so don't think you need an extra +500 stats to pull this off).  Once you will find some good SUs like Starhawk and Armor of the Old Religion as these will let you socket for +dex% via gems, something you can't do with RWs due to the jewel req for making RWs (though you can find +1-2% on jewels).  With better gear and/or Signets of Learning you can take on the harder places.

Skills – There's several ways that you can do this.  I personally like going 20xMoonstrike, 20xFamiliar, Max Baneblade, 28xWarp Armor, Max Living Flame, leftovers in Fire Dance, and 1x everything else.  You can also put more points into Moonstrike and not put a point into Force Blast since it can't be used with Baneblade active and doesn't lead to anything.

Moonstrike – This skill is primarily used for the HP boost and fights where you don't want to damage enemies around you (like Baal and Athulua).  Even with this skill at lvl20+ and Bladestorm at lvl1 Bladestorm does more damage than Moonstrike even against a single target due to all of the blades.  As such the primary point of putting points into the skill is to increase the duration of the HP boost.

Bladestorm – If you're building a physical damage sorceress that uses Life Steal (which requires physical damage to work) then you will want to consider putting points here.  But for the focus of this guide that focuses spell damage added to our attacks, this skill is as effective at lvl1 as at higher levels since the primary thing gained is less damage converted to magic damage.

Alternate Spec/Gear - Some things are just not melee friendly (such as Malic and his spamming of slow moving Death Bolts).  As such you're going to want a caster spec and gear to go with it.  I went with a Fire/Ice build as this gives you amazing burst damage via Fire Dance+Flamestrike (substitute Flamestrike for Frozen Sphere against fire-immune mobs), while also giving you plenty of meatshields via Ice Elementals.  Thus your primary skills are Flamestrike, Fire Dance, Living Flame, Frozen Sphere, Ice Elementals, Witch's Blood, and (optionally) Familiar.  Personally I like 20xFamiliar as this gives an equal number buff for both hard-point bonuses and gives you minions that can stun enemies while only being able to be killed by reflected damage.

For the gear I used honorific helm, gloves, and boots that are designed to play into my strengths.  Thus the MOs used are +fire damage, -enemy fire res, +minion HP, and +minion resists (no more than 75%), with +energy% gems in all the items.  When doing -res there's no need to go over -199 since that is the max that you can pen (-100 is the lowest an enemy can go, so -199 lets you take a boss that rolls a +99 on their resistance and put them at -100).  From there I used “On” RW Jared's Stone, “On” RW sorc armor, and TU Tower Shield.  For the weapon I would recommend doing the Luck Trial like with our weapon and then dropping +cast speed on it.

The strat of this is to nuke down enemies with Fire Dance+Flamestrike while typically using your Ice Elementals to keep the enemy busy (some fights like Akarat don't need the use of elementals, or on Malic where they simply clutter up your screen).  It's pretty simple, and even if you don't respec you can use this gear to help with some anti-melee fights (Malic, CoF, etc) since you already have Flamestrike and Fire Dance.


Alternatively you could craft an Arrow Swarm bow.  This lets you use your melee gear and is generally this is faster than switching to a cold/fire build for a specific fight, but the cold/fire build can be better if actually farming an anti-melee fight.  Note that I got the idea for this from here but primarily just use the weapon as a way to avoid the time it takes to completely respec/regear.  While I'm sure it isn't as effective as playing the bow-sorc from that guide, it's effective enough for our purposes and works decently with our melee gear.

Dungeons (UMS7):

Creature of Flame (CoF) - Out of all of the fights that I've done so far, I find this one to be the worst.  Not because it's the hardest or anything, but because of the mechanics of it and how they work with a melee sorceress.  From the documentation the concept is simple enough, the enemy casts deathstrike and other enemies give you a curse when they ATTACK that makes you immune to deathstrike.  Now let's look at the problems of the fight.  First off, you only get the protection curse if they HIT you, which is very different from them simply attacking you.  Next up is how easily these mobs die.  If you use Bladestorm on CoF then the mobs that give you the protection buff just get trashed.  Oh and don't forget about your familiars and close-range passives like Lightning Shield just destroying them.  Plus the fact that you're going to have so much armor that they pretty much can't hit you.

So then, how do we do this fight without switching out of melee?  Here's what I found that works, if a bit annoying.  First don't summon any familiars, don't put on any of the spells that auto-attack enemies who are close to you (my lightning proc could kill them in 3-4 hits and kept the mob that buffs you perma-stunned), and remove most of your armor (I took off my chest, shield, and boots).  This makes it so that you can be reasonably hit.  Once you get hit (your character will change color) go and take several swings at the CoF.  After a few swings run away (around a corner is best) and get the buff again.  Do this until the boss is dead.  You can try bringing one of the buffing mobs with you and just let him hit you while you fight the CoF, but the issue I had with this is that even with so much of my gear off I would still randomly lose the curse and get 1-shot.  Note that if you kill the curse mob you can use Dark Summoning to summon another (as I used Bladestorm I had to do this every time I retreated).

Infernal Device - This isn't too hard, but can take some time depending on gear.  The strat that I would recommend is for you to work on running down to the Infernal Device.  The device will spawn packs of enemies.  When a pack spawns run back to the exit and kill them there so that you don't get overwhelmed.  Once you get to the device you are going to want to periodically run away so as to not get caught by its deathstrike retaliation attack (this also lets you deal with the new packs that it spawns).  The other strat that you can do is to teleport to the device and kill it ASAP ignoring all else.  Issue with this is that if you're reading this you likely don't have the gear to pull off such a move and will get overwhelmed by elite packs before you can deal with all the mobs.

Death Machine - It seems annoying at first, but once you get some practice it isn't so bad.  The only things on the floor is the Death Machine and the untargetable mechanics.  The mechanics hurt enough that I couldn't just ignore them and focus on the machine, so I would lure them away and then run back to the boss.  After a few swings (which was about the time the mechanics caught up with me) I would run away again.  Reason for running away?  The machine will occasionally fire out a 1hko beam that rotates in one direction, oh and when it takes damage it has a chance to let out a 1hko beam that rotates in the opposite direction as the standard beam.  Running away periodically makes it easier to react to these beams (it sucks to get stuck in the middle of two beams with no way to escape unless you have a teleport) and lets you continuously lure away the mechanics.

Azmodan - The hardest part of this is simply figuring out what to do and what random mobs spawn in the place.  The previously linked page with strats on everything says that you should try each of the 4 corners to find a place where the mobs aren't invul.  I tried this multiple times and it didn't end so well.  Every time mobs were invulnerable regardless of which corner I went to.  On one of the attempts there was a Wandering Sandershim who ended up filling the whole place with invul Flits so I couldn't even move enough to enter the TP that I cast.  So what to do?  Figure out where Azmodan spawns (same spot every time) and teleport to him.  He dies pretty quickly, so then the only hard part comes from the mobs around him since you can't kill them and are likely to get surrounded and unable to move.  Nothing like having something like Shower of Rocks constantly cast on you and being unable to move, making an otherwise easy fight exponentially harder.

He is killable in the high level RWs, though this requires a bit more luck in regards to what spawns.  If you've gotten some upgrades then the only thing that can really make it a challenge is if his random immunities/resistances are stacked against you (like being magic resistant AND physical-immune).  With enough upgrades even that isn't much of an issue.

Rathma Square – With no upgrades you need a bit of luck in order to get Primus separated from other mobs (pull them to an area and then teleport past a wall) while hoping he doesn't summon too many Flying Scimitars.  With a Starhawk you can plow through the Gore Crawlers so fast with Bladestorm that they aren't even a real concern.  Doing this after Azmodan also helps a bit as it gives you more fire resistance to help out against Gore Crawlers.  If you have Starhawk and AotOR then you can easily breeze through this place and be out in ~30 seconds (or faster).

Cathedral of Vanity – This place can be painful given that the nuns don't like to stay in their room and that the boss shoots lightning that will 1shot you, but the charm is useful (the trophy from the place isn't really useful except when using your alternate spec though).  Strat is relatively simple.  You enter from the NW part of the map, run around getting a lot of the mobs to follow you, run back towards the entrance, and then teleport south with most enemies still in that room.  Hopefully you got most in there and hopefully they stay in there.

From here make a TP in the main area and just start hitting the crystal ball.  You will occasionally want to move away because it fires out a beam that goes in a circle and will 1shot you.  Also if you have nuns attacking you then running (well, walking really really fast) can help get them off of you for a bit and mean you take less damage.  Once you've killed the Crystal Ball and cleared the room don't forget to summon Inarius and kill him to upgrade your charm (see Summon section for this fight).

Toraja - The main things here are Great Runes and killing Lilith to upgrade your Crystalline Flame Medallion (charm) that you got from Judgement Day.  You also need this charm to even be able to do this place given that the edyrem are the only ones that can remove the invul shield on the mobs here.  This place pretty much doesn't like non-summoners.  Why?  Because the edyrem get shredded by the enemies here and there's enough enemies to make being a meatshield by yourself pretty daunting (or impossible if you haven't gotten any upgrades/SoL).  So go Fire/Ice and use your Ice Elementals to give cover for your edyrem so that they can get into melee range and remove the enemies invul shield. 

As for killing Lilith, she is due north of the portal.  So clear the starting area (that way you're not getting shot in the back), then go north slowly.  Once you run into her she will likely have a bunch of adds with her (though it is possible she will come alone).  Keep up your ice elementals and edyrem, but your ultimate goal is to Flamestrike her down ASAP and then transmute your charm.  Once you know that you're dealing with her I would get a TP up if you don't have one already, so that you can jump through it the second she dies and not have to worry about getting killed while trying to transmute the charm in the uber.

Kabraxis - From the videos that I've seen he used to not be that bad, sadly that isn't the case anymore.  You need to keep moving since whenever he teleports to you he will 1shot you.  Oh, and he summons crap-tons of enemies both when he teleports and whenever he kills something.  Now they aren't really a threat, but they prevent you from moving which will get you killed.

So what do you do when you're melee-based but can't use melee?  Simple, switch weapons.  For this fight you're going to want a decently crafted Tantrum bow.  If you've never used Tanrum before it is a close-range AoE that you can stack on top of itself.  The premise is simple, spam Tantrum, move, spam Tantrum, move, repeat until dead.  Now chances are at some point you're going to get caught and killed.  For this you are going to need to lure Kabraxis two teleports away from your body (where you will probably die).  Once he is away from your body you can work towards it, using Flamestrike to kill the minions that are around it (Edyrem make this a LOT easier).  Once you recover your body you can continue until Kabraxis is dead.

    Elemental Bosses - Overall these guys aren't that bad.  Them and their minions pierce resistances and can only be hurt by whatever element they are.  So throw on your resist boots and gloves, a Starhawk if you're using a different weapon, kill the minions first (the bosses are immune whenever a minion is around), and then kill the boss.  Know that the bosses have powerful attacks that you're going to want to avoid and that they occasionally summon more minions that you need to kill.  Outside of that they are pretty easy.

Oh and this doesn't work too well for Ultra Earth.  His special attack is a trap that will shred you generally before you can react.  With enough practice/luck you could do this as melee, but the easier way is to melee down the adds and use Arrow Swarm on the boss while SoV distracts him.  

Vizjun - Not much to say about this place.  You need Purify to kill the boss and you want to apply OW to it.  Pretty much once you hit the boss with Purify it just melts, so quickly hold alt and pick up the charm.  As for getting to the boss, check the linked map in the General Tips section.  Don't bother trying to kill your way to the boss as you will likely fail horribly.  Instead just run to the boss (can be done practically naked if you know what you're doing), kill it, and get your charm.  

Uldyssian - Not melee friendly. If you get the positioning just right you could do it with a crafted bow, but the star pattern 1hko like in Yshari Sanctum (final boss) pretty much precludes actually meleeing him. Also realize that some waves on your way to him aren't melee friendly either, though these waves are easy enough with a properly crafted bow.

The Witch - Not attempted

The Void - Not attempted

Summons (UMS8):

Note about these fights, you can summon the enemy as many times as you want.  This makes it easy to farm for a perfect charm, or at least for a charm that you're willing to settle for. You also don't want to use items with Respawner or Reanimate as Gore Crawler since both of these cast a Dark Summoning spell and I think you can see how that would be bad...

Butcher - Not hard, but he can be annoying.  Use the same strat as in the Black Road Challenge, for those of you who haven't read that section yet, keep reading.  You or someone else (merc/summon/minion) needs to get hit in order to get the pentagram to appear.  Issue with him hitting Ice Elementals/merc is trying to move him to the pentagram and that if he kills your merc it can get expensive constantly rezzing him.  I would recommend using a summon like Daystar and only having 1-2 out at a time.  Every time he kills one you cast another.  Once a pentagram spawns you quit casting the summon and move to the pentagram.  Since there's nothing else for him to hit he will move to you.  You shouldn't have a problem tanking him on the pentagram and once it disappears you go back to summoning 1-2 Daystars until the next pentagram appears.  This method helps lower the chances of getting insta-gibbed thanks to RNG.

Tal Rasha - This guy is a joke.  On Destruction it takes longer than when you did it on Terror, but the strat is the same.  Just put on your crafted gloves and boots (see challenge section for more info on these), use the Claw Viper Temple to divide up the enemies, and kill them.  Retreat if you find yourself getting overwhelmed.  Once all the other adds are dead you can kill Tal Rasha.  I killed him over 20 times going for that perfect charm before deciding to move on with a 20/19 charm.

King Koth - He's a bit harder than Tal Rasha, but not much.  I honestly found him and Tal Rasha to be easier than the Butcher since if you get unlucky with the Butcher while tanking him he can drop you in 2-3 hits, while these guys generally aren't going to insta-gib you.  King Koth is a bit harder than Tal Rasha due to the smaller space and towers that he summons.  Strat is to get in several hits and then move so as to not get overwhelmed by multiple adds/towers.  Once all of the adds are dead you can kill King Koth.  I would recommend hit-and-run tactics as he can do a lot of damage fast with his whirlwind and towers.  Oh and don't forget to kill the ancients before summoning.  If you don't then you can't leave the area while fighting King Koth.

Akarat - Time to bust out that caster gear (and spec if farming for a trophy, probably one of the easiest trophies to farm for).  The adds spam a magic hammer that will just rip through you, so the best way to deal with them is to simply not get into melee range.  Cast a Fire Dance at the middle point, summon the boss up at the north, run back to your bonfire and just spam Flamestrike.  When done right you will be out of range of the hammers and their static nova (or whatever the proper name for it), while the enemies won't make it past your Flamestrike area.  Killing the adds is how you remove the immunity shield of Akarat, which shouldn't be an issue.  If Akarat somehow survives and there's no more adds, just summon a second Akarat for more adds while keeping the first one busy with Edyrem/Ice Elementals.

Another strat that doesn't require caster gear would be to use the Arrow Swarm bow if you crafted one.  It's even easier if you have an SoV distract them so that you can stay further back and avoid their on-death nova.

Alderac Jitan - This guy and his adds are painful.  Even with 80% resistance/all you're going to drop fast from their attacks.  Oh and he summons arrow towers, which force you to keep moving unless you want to get overwhelmed.  So what do we do?  The easiest way is to be Fire/Ice and let your Ice Elementals tank while you nuke down adds.  When you get low on adds or feel like you're getting overwhelmed with towers just jump through the portal and wait a bit/summon more adds. 

If you've gotten some upgrades then it should be easier to melee this guy.  Just be sure to use hit-and-run tactics to avoid the arrows, and if too many towers spawn jump out of the portal and wait a bit for them to despawn.  Oh and when adds die they cast an on-death spell that hurts so be sure to move away once they die (looks like singularity from Empyrean Band).

The charm from this guy is great as it replaces your Pax Mystica staff and a teleport not only makes various tasks easier, it is mandatory for some things like Duncraig.

Bartuc – This guy is pretty much just a gear check.  You need to be able to survive being bombarded with various attacks when he is immune, while also being able to kill him fast enough that he doesn't summon too many blood golems.  Oh and I wouldn't recommend using summons/minions in the fight.  I flooded the room with Crystal Witches via AotOR and he would cast a spell that would effectively 1shot me.  I never had this issue when it was just me and my familiars, but every time I tried to use summons/minions it would happen.  This is opposite of what the linked guide says, but was my personal experience when farming for my trophy.

Judgement Day - If you have gotten gear upgrades you might be able to tank these guys as melee, but then you have to keep spamming a heal and could find yourself in a position where you're surrounded and unable to move (thus unable to kill Imperius/Maltheal when they spawn).  If you haven't been able to find any gear upgrades you won't be able to tank them, and given the threat of getting swarmed I wouldn't recommend it even if you have gotten gear upgrades.  So what do we do?  Go Fire/Ice!  This fight is amazingly simple as Fire/Ice.  Summon 25 Ice Elementals, cast a Fire Dance, and then summon the boss.  The second he spawns move away and just start spamming Ice Elemental at where the boss is, not bothering to heal from his tremor.  Whenever your Fire Dance fades quickly cast another and then get back to spamming Ice Elemental.  Once one of the Avatars spawns (you can tell because they say something when they appear) immediately pop a Symbol to heal (the Avatar can throw homing missiles at you even if he's attacking your elementals), then just nuke down the Avatar with Flamestrike.  Collecting the charm can be hard as you have to go near the untargetable enemies, but congrats on your charm.

So now that you have the charm you want to upgrade it.  The strat is the same as getting it, only now you need both Avatars to spawn.  This might take a bit (per the previously linked strategy post this is a 1 in 20 chance), but basically just spam Ice Elementals and then Flamestrike down both avatars.  It takes a bit to get both to spawn and you might mess up the first few times given how fast you need to be, but the strat itself is simple.  I would also recommend having a TP behind you so that the second you kill both you can immediately jump through it and then transmute your charm.  One last thing, I would recommend nuking down the Avatar even when only one spawns.  This gives you practice for quickly targeting the Avatars and gives you a chance at a trophy.

For those of you that are dead-set on doing this the melee way, the linked post for strats has a way that you can do this without summons that lures away the adds from Dark Uldyessian.  I personally only got it to work once, all the other times that I attempted it he would come with them no matter how careful I was, so I quit trying it as I saw no need to make a potentially hard fight even harder (and without summons it really is a hard fight).  Also with the proper gear you can pretty much tank the Tremor which would also make it a lot easier as melee.

Inarius – This guy is pretty easy.  The only thing to really know is that his minions hurt if they hit you (they are butchers but without the immunity shield) and that when you kill them they do a Death Strike the same as the Infernal Machine and minions of the Countess.  Feel free to use Edyrems to distract the adds and just be sure to move after killing one.

Chrysaor - Attempted, lacking Magic Resist gear for the Tremor

MarcoNecroX - Not Attempted

Laz - Attempted, need more practice

Uberlevels (UMS9):

Kurast 3k BA - This place can be a bit of a pain depending on your damage and def on Destruction (place is pretty much a joke when done for the Ennead Challenge, covered in that section).  You need to be able to tank multiple enemies while you kill the totems, and you can easily get surrounded by invulnerable mobs if you don't kill them fast enough.  Start by taking out the totem that is SE of the entrance, followed by the totem due east of the entrance.  From there you have a lot of space to attack other totems.  If you find yourself struggling note that you can often lure a lot of the enemies away from the totems and that the Necromancer in the NE corner requires you to destroy only two totems to be able to reach him (making it potentially faster to only farm him and reset as opposed to clearing the place for all three Necromancers).

Sunless Sea - For me this place ranks just below CoF.  The mobs aren't horrible.  Kill the Feyr mobs ASAP since they spawn more mobs, and be careful of the Sunless Revelers as they have the potential to do a lot of damage quick if you aren't careful.  The real problem comes from the boss Malic.  He is on a small platform and spams a "slow" moving 1hko attack.  Unlike with CoF, there's no way to go immune to it.  The previously linked guide says that minions can soak the "floating axes" but I didn't have that experience.  First off, they don't look anything like axes (it sucked getting 1shot multiple times cuz I was looking for an axe).  Secondly, the familiars and lolsummons didn't stop the homing shots of death and the death bolts would just travel straight through them.  Luckily they have a limited range so you can retreat and they vanish after a while.  Since there's no way to do this fight as melee, I hope you have some caster gear (not needed, but speeds it up vs casting in your melee gear).  Your strat for dealing with Malic will be to drop a Fire Dance a bit of a ways back, and then the second that you see Malic you cast Flamestrike several times on him.  Faster Cast Rate is key here so that you can get off as many spells as possible before running from the homing shots of death (and it sucks to die due to a shot catching you in the middle of only your second spell).  Alternatively you can run past him, then start casting.  This will typically get you more casts, but runs a greater risk of getting hit by a death bolt until you get this strat down.  The nice thing about Malic is that he doesn't pretend to be melee possible.  Oh and another warning, if you try to go to the other boss first there's a bend in the path that if you're not careful will take you close enough to Malic for him to cast his death shots at you.  Always fun to get hit by a 1hko from an off-screen enemy that you don't even know the location of on your initial clearing.

As for Lucion, he's pretty easy.  Just make sure to lure the enemies away from him before attempting him as he makes the enemies around him invulnerable.  There really isn't much to say about him.  He can hurt in melee range, but he dies so fast I didn't even notice.  In fact he was at 50% hp from my merc before I even saw him (my merc was in front of me while I was pulling Lucion back from some of the mobs on his pedestal) if that gives you any idea how fast he can drop.

Khalimgrad - The easiest thing to do is to teleport to the angel located NE of the entrance portal and spam Bladestorm on the angel.  In order to hurt him you have to kill the other enemies in the area, but the blades from Bladestorm will kill them so you can just focus on him.  If you kill all of the enemies in the area and he isn't dead yet just lure a few more to you.  Know that there are other angels around the map, but this one is the easiest to kill.  The issue with the others is that there's untargetable mobs all throughout the map which are rather painful, but are avoided if you only go after the one angel.

Tran Athula - For the challenges see the applicable challenge sections.  Know that on Destruction the enemies have a 5% chance on death to spawn an arrow trap that will utterly wreck you if you don't get out of the way.  When it starts going off it sounds like a lot of "clink" noises in rapid succession.  Due to this and how hard the mobs can hit I would recommend only getting in 3-5 hits and then pulling back before charging back in to kill a few more (as you get more comfortable with the place and/or better gear you can take more hits if you want, but 3-5 will keep you safe).  It's a bit slow, but it helps make sure that you have enough time to react to a trap.  Also I would recommend pulling the mobs to a bend in the path.  This serves two purposes.  The first is that most of the enemies won't come around the corner, making them easier to pick off and lowering the damage you take due to fewer attacking you.  The second is that since you're constantly running in-and-out this lowers the distance you need to run, which also lowers the damage you take (since they're shooting at you for less time before you're attacking).  Just work your way through to each of the priestesses.  I personally like to use the route as used in the Black Road Challenge.

Duncraig – You're going to want edyrems as they provide a bit of a distraction and the upgraded Idol of Vanity with Death Spiral (both are especially useful when recovering your body), oh and a teleport is required for this place (Jitan's Gate is HIGHLY recommended in case you die after teleporting).  The basics here is that there's a lot of enemies and some throw barrels that explode after a short time.  Thus if you see a barrel flying through the air, MOVE!  Now this can be easier said than done, especially when you teleport into certain areas.  When teleporting into an area you're going to want to start moving ASAP to try and prevent yourself from being boxed into a corner and thus unable to escape from barrels.  If you do die in a teleport area it can take awhile to recover your body back, but if you have CtC Death Spiral you can “eventually” clear out enough enemies to grab your body (not the most fun of things to do, but it works).

The other things you need to know is that there's five “bosses” that drop sigils (not really bosses, more like regular mobs with extra HP) and that you need to cube these sigils with a “Ring of the Five” that is found from the enemies here (I saw three of these rings just clearing out the guys around the entrance, but never saw another ring after picking it up so I'm not sure if I had crazy RNG or if it only drops if you don't have one).  Once you have done this you can kill the actual boss (oh and one of these other bosses is past where the actual boss is).  This new ring gives you the “Purify” spell and it takes four hits with Purify to kill the boss Assur.

For Assur I found it easiest to clear out the place west of the entrance and then clear your way to Assur.  Once you get to him you can pull him back to the cleared area so that you have a larger area to fight him.  You will need to hit him with four Purify spells to kill him, or a single Purify if you apply Open Wounds to him.  If you're struggling you can use Daystars since he is a fire boss and they are fire immune.

Yshari Sanctum – This place is pretty cool.  There's five different areas and then the final boss once you have both sets.  Each area has different mobs and it is a maze, but nothing really feels excessively hard.  Only downside is that Starhawk is ineffective against three of the sub-bosses (though still usable against one of them).  Oh and do NOT use Dark Summoning in here for any reason (this includes not using the Steel Terror SSSU boots).

    Mephisto – The only thing to know here is that he is immune to elemental damage, so if you're using Starhawk then the fight will take a bit longer.  Consider switching to a different weapon, but it isn't needed.

    Andarial – Nothing in this area is really a threat either, but once you get to her you're going to want to switch to your alternate spec.  While you “could” do the fight as melee, she spams Plague Avatar that poison res won't help with and has a very high hp regen rate, meaning that you're going to get either killed by the poison or get pushed out of melee range and she will heal to full.  With the alternate spec just use a Fire Dance and then spam Flamestrike, and she will die faster than Plague Avatar can kill your elementals (might take a few tries to get it down).  

You can also use the alternate bow option and have an SoV tank her.  The kill-speed is lower than using your alternate spec, but overall it is faster since you don't have to respec/regear to do it.

    Diablo – This is the first area that can really be a threat to you.  First thing you will encounter is the Iron Giant.  He has some immunities, extremely high regen, and randomly goes immune to everything when his health gets low.  Either you can try and melee him down (possible, but kinda random when it works), or you can drop Baneblade and Flamestrike him.

Next thing you need to know about is Polar Worms.  They aren't dangerous, but the issue is that when they die they summon a LOT of elite mobs.  Now, these mobs aren't even that dangerous, but the issue comes in how many are summoned.  It is so many that your computer will potentially lag until some are dealt with, and this can get you killed due to being unable to react (especially if more dangerous mobs haven't been dealt with yet).

The final thing to know is that Chimeras hurt.  Oh and they explode on death.  As such you need to be careful when killing them (either use Crystal Witches or SoV to keep it facing away from you when meleeing it) and run away either as it dies or just before, so that you hopefully don't die.

Diablo himself is pretty easy.  Just melee him and he goes down pretty quick.  The only danger comes when you're out of melee range as he casts various spells, but he doesn't cast them once in melee range, so when you see him charge him asap to prevent him from casting them.

    Duriel – There's less to worry about here.  Kill the stationary worms that spit poison and be careful when fighting Demon Lords as they can randomly 1shot you (rare, but happens even at over 13k hp).  For Duriel you don't want any targetable minions (familiars are ok, reanimates and SoV are not).  Whenever he hits something he will turn silver and gain an invul shield.  When this happens just run away for a short time and then attack again when he goes back to his regular color.  Easy

    Baal – Nothing horribly dangerous here.  The Red guys can be a pain but that's about it until you get to Baal.  As for Baal, the biggest issue is that he can only be hurt by physical damage.  So put on items that increase your physical damage (Ripstar Ring is a good one since it increases your damage and guarantees that OW will be up) and a good physical-damage weapon (Stone/Dark Exile RWs or the SSU Warp Blade are all good options).  From there just keep attacking until he dies.  You shouldn't be in danger of dying to him, but you might run out of mana on occasion, so either drink a mana pot or a Symbol.

    Valthek – The fight is relatively simple in regards to mechanics.  You get a boss-killer spell, a summon-killer spell, and an invul shield that is useless due to timers.  The primary things to know is that he summons adds, he teleports to you, he does an insta-kill attack that shoots in 8 directions after he teleports, and there's black shadow-summons.  The shadow-summons do a lot of damage if they hit you but don' move, regular summons don't pose a threat damage-wise even when trying to get back your body (issue is just getting surrounded and being unable to kill them without the set) but you need at least one relatively close in order to use any of the abilities (a Godsman Guard summoned via Dark Summoning does NOT count, can't be killed, and will 1-shot you so don't think you can summon one if there's no guards around!  And yes I tried).  The strategy is relatively simple.  Run around until he summons adds, clear out most of them, and then once you have space wait until he teleports to you, move into one of the safe-spots from his insta-kill spell, and hit him with the boss spell.  Repeat until dead.  The issue comes both in just getting used to this and in getting your body back.  For body recovery lure Valthek away from it and then work on luring the guards off of it enough that you can reach it (they don't do a lot of damage, but just don't get surrounded).  Other than that, I would recommend putting your TP in a corner and then do your fighting as far away as possible.  If you put it before he burning trail to the area then you run the risk of him teleporting to you while in the confined area followed by him summoning minions and being unable to get your corpse or even use the TP.  

Ghosts of Old Bremmtown – This place isn't that bad if you go slow, but that is a direct odds with upgrading our charm.  As such you're going to want to have eaten several SoL before attempting to upgrade your charm (I did it with 300, though you might be able to do it with fewer).  The main thing is that we need survivability and the SoL give it to us (so to speak) by increasing our block rate.  You're also going to need a good kill-speed to make the time limit.  Outside of that it is a simple race of going SW from the portal, take the first SE bridge, and then keep going SW to the dragon.  Don't forget to have your cube already empty and preferably have an Arcane Crystal inside of it

Sewers – This place is really simple.  Keep hitting the elementals and you shouldn't really be at risk of dying due to your LAEK and LOSIM.  Only real danger was the witches by the door to the second level and a few overly crowded section.  The boss goes down pretty quick as well and there's nothing to really say about how to kill him besides the fact that he is immune to physical and poison damage.

Fauztinville – Not much to really say.  The place is crowded, but as a rainbow build you shouldn't have much of a problem in regards to damaging things.  Just make sure you have a good amount of armor and block to survive, while Klaatu ammy will help with killing Necrobots.

Triune - The first thing you need to know about this place is the four main enemies. The most dangerous is the spire because it casts meteor that will generally 1-shot you (can be cast from off-screen). Luckily after our successive casts it takes a bit of a break, so keep moving until then and kill ASAP. Then there's the golem who is physical-immune and casts SoR, an archon who does lightning damage, and a kraken who does massive cold damage.

Next up is the three bosses. The first one is a cow. He hurts if he hits you (like potentially 1hko hurts), but depending on your gear and number of SoL you've eaten that shouldn't be a problem. He also has a very weak heroic shield. The second boss is called Primus' Messenger, can't be killed, summons bats, casts a random teleportation area, and throws out bolts that do massive burn damage. And the final boss (Arihan) is immune to all of our damage, has 100% avoid, and does a curse that sets our max hp to 1 while also slowing us down to a crawl

So, how do we kill the boss? First you start by killing the cow and picking up the book. This book gives us an aura that reduces avoidance by 100% and gives us Dire Charm (either keep this book in your cube or unidentified until the boss fight so that your avoidance isn't needlessly dropped while clearing to the boss). Next clear all monsters on your way to Primus' Messenger and Arihan.

Once you've done this make sure you have the Book of Possession in your inventory, have Dire Charm set to a keybind, and get Arihan to follow you back to where Primus' Messenger is. Now the fight begins. You have to move out by the Messenger and then use Dire Charm on Arihan. Once he is charmed he will be affected by your -100% avoidance aura and can be damaged by the Messenger's burn damage. Keep doing this until Arihan is dead...

...And two things to note. First is that when you die you have to pick up and put down the book in order to reapply the aura since it shuts off when you die. The second is that once Arihan hits 50% hp he basically enrages. This means that he starts moving very fast compared to before and he uses an AoE ability that can be quite lethal if under the effects of the curse.

Kingdom of Shadow (Ureh) - there isn't a lot to say here.  Check the map for the route and know that at the start it can be faster to take the non-blink route due to the CD on Jitan's Gate.  Once you get to the long bridge the best way to get across is to run as far as you can, teleport, open a TP and go to town.  From there wait until the CD on your teleport ends, enter the portal and repeat.  Once you reach the end you will come to the boss.  He is rather easy to kill, but you want to cast a Sacrifices or two back by the bridge to keep the Citizens busy.  Once he dies jump through a TP to avoid his death spell to be safe.  Only thing left is to collect your charm, which can be a bit tricky if the area became flooded with citizens.

Bracheyceran's Lair - This place is pretty simple.  First you want to hit 95% poison and fire resist with 500%+ actual resist in each since the enemies have pierce.  The fire resist is only for the boss.  The first level is full of untargetable ghost worms and eggs that prevent healing from potions.  The second level is filled with maggots, maggot larva, and snakes.  The larva and snakes love to block the way, but other than that this level isn't a big deal.  On level three there's everything from level 2 and the ghost worms from level 1.  You're also going to want to clear a decent area around the boss because he teleports.

Now for the boss fight.  The abilities are all timered and are:

1)  Maggot Larva Morph - This ability turns you into a maggot larva, sets your fire resist to -155, and lasts for 2 seconds.
2)  Barrel Throw - Throws out barrels that explode and do fire damage.
3)  Red Punishers - Punishers that do fire damage.
4)  Lorenadoes - Multiple lorenadoes that do poison damage.

While fighting the boss you want to get down the feel for the maggot morph ability.  You want to run away just before getting turned into a larva because if you're in larva form and get hit with the Barrel Throw or Red Punishers you run a high risk of getting 1-shot.  When not in larva form these abilities aren't a threat so long as you stacked fire damage.  The lorenadoes aren't a threat either.  Outside of that the fight is simply chasing after the boss, hitting him, and retreating from the morphs.  Oh and any time that you have to chase down the boss you can use that to also bait out a morph.

Heroics (UMS10):

Athulua – The fight itself is relatively simple, though I hate heroic shields given that we have no reliable way to lower base resists like various other classes can (be sure to use your CtC Mythal neck, but at only 2% CtC it just isn't that reliable).  The only real issues come from the rats.  They will slowly surround you so that you can't move and whenever you kill one it will cast Tremor.  So unless you can tank Tremor you will need to periodically move away from the boss to clear out the rats as they are the only real threat.  But between needing to clear out rats and waiting on the shield to drop this fight can take quite a while dropping nothing of use for us.  Outside of doing the fight just to say you did it, I would recommend doing Baal if you want practice with heroic shields.

Belial – This guy is a pita for melee.  He dies pretty quick when his shield drops, but he spits out burn damage, summons adds that cast punisher (massive poison damage), and he has other adds that you can't target.  First up you want a map that doesn't have Belial on it.  Once you clear the whole place use Dark Summoning until he appears. From there just attack him and as he summons adds you pull him away.  Be sure to occasionally get away from him and clear out the adds (TP and then use the WP to run back is the easiest way).  Not much else besides that.  It's a painful fight, healing potions remove poison, and expect to die since you can't avoid the burn damage or punishers in melee range, but it is doable.

Bull King Rodeo -  All you need for this guy is a wall.  Either pull him to one of the wooden walls (the ones where you can go on either side, not the boundry walls) or summon him by one.  Then just tank him, making sure to stay behind the wall (a 90 degree wall can be even easier) so that the stampede hits the wall and not you.

Astrogha - You "can" melee him, but you don't want to.  The main issue with meleeing him is that he summons statues around you that summon adds, and if you kill the statue then it heals all around.  If you're meleeing him then it is very easy to accidentally kill one from procs, mis-click, AoE damage, etc.  The second issue is his Frozen Orb spell.  He almost never casts it if you're in actual melee range, but if you (or a minion/reanimate) are standing just out of melee range he will use it.  I got killed several times because of reanimates who were too close.  After several hours and seeing him heal to full from ~10% I gave up on trying to melee him.

An effective way that I found to beat him was to go Cold/Lightning and focus on Frigid Sphere while using melee primarily melee gear (aka the gear you already have).  Frigid Sphere is a relatively small AoE and since you're standing away from the boss you don't have to be as concerned with accidentally killing a statue.  And since you're in melee gear it means that you can pretty much ignore the adds and that if you kill a statue and get the coth curse you aren't as likely to be killed since they can't hit you.  You can change around some pieces to increase your cold damage and -ER to speed up the fight, but it isn't really needed unless you're trying to farm him.  From there it's simply about waiting on the cold resist to drop, I think it took his resistance dropping 4-6 times before I killed him this way.

Challenges:

Challenge Level 0 (UMS11) - You've probably completed this before finding this guide, but just in case you found this guide before the mod, here's what you need to know. You must be lvl5 (can't summon him before lvl5 and you don't get credit if you're higher) and you can't take any damage from the boss as he will 1shot you. So clear out an area just outside of town and do NOT set it to "/players 8" as this risks you lvling up to lvl6 when clearing out a safe area (almost happened to me). Just run in circles destroying the traps, and once all of the traps are destroyed kill the boss (Immersion works great on both the traps and the boss). Word of caution, just because you killed him does NOT mean that it is safe to run up and loot the charm and cube it. He will let out a final beam that needs to be avoided. If you just charge up to loot him the second he dies you will also die and have to do it again as you lose the required red swirlies to cube the charm. Ask me how I know...

Challenge Level 1 (UMS12)- This one is pretty easy with the only real threat coming from the Tremor of the Priestesses that leave you with a sliver of life. Just make sure that your weapon and torso are max upgraded and you should be good to go once you hit the lvl42-45 range. If you're playing as something other than Lightning/Ice I would recommend switching to this build as it gives you minions to distract the hordes of enemies, greatly increases your def, and gives you a chance to avoid incoming damage. Fusillade works well at clearing out a crowded corridor, as does Spiral Dance on large groups (needs mana on kill via Character Orb or some other way to quickly regain mana if using SD).

Challenge Level 2 (UMS13)- This one can seem impossible if you don't know what to do. You need to hit 375% resistance in Fire/Lightning/Ice (Ice seems to be used the least, so if you're short anywhere it should be here) since the enemies have -250 to resistances and Terror reduces it by another -50%. This means you need to stack a LOT of resistances, but how? If you've never crafted, well you're about to. See the "Resistance Gear" section under crafting for how to reach this.

Given that you likely are using TU(6) gear you might have a bit of an issue due to old gear. Be sure to upgrade your gear to your current lvl (enhanced damage for weapon and +dex for armor IMO). This is normally where I switch to a Fire/Lightning build (even if I'm doing it sub-90). Drop Fire Dance, use hit-and-run tactics, and be sure to be using Fusillade. Overall the fight is pretty simple, just don't try to tank a bunch of adds for any extended period of time.

Ennead Challenge (UMS14)- This one is amazingly easy. In MXL I was able to do it as low as 42-45 with no problem, while in Ultimative I was in the low to mid 50s (I needed to upgrade my Warped Blade for more damage in Ultimative). That's saying something given that it's a lvl80 challenge. The Ice Elementals and Sword Summons are helpful as they distract skeletons, further lowering how much damage you take. If you're having issues just come back after uptiering your TU Warped Blade and Ceremonial Armor. For Ultimative the tier 4 Warp Blade just didn't give me enough damage to deal with the necromancers, but the tier 5 one was plenty. Oh and one last thing, the first Sorceress charm that you get you should cube with your Character Orb for +1 to Sorceress Skills, then get a second charm to complete this challenge. The only part that can be challenging is the SE corner on the map where you start in the NW as the necromancer in the SE corner can attack you while you're trying to destroy two of the totems.

Black Road Challenge (UMS15)- Overall this isn't too hard, though it takes a bit of time as you have to get all the way to the Ancients in Act 5 to complete it. Thus if you aren't in Act 5 I wouldn't rush to try and do these (though if you have the gold for Greed feel free to knock it out). Also you want to be at least lvl100 for the various rune words as they will make things a lot easier, though I only really used RWs for Knowledge (and I got the runes for the RWs while clearing it). I'm listing this in no particular order than the order I'm thinking of them.

Greed - This seems like a lot of gold, but as you continue on gold is amazingly easy to get. By the time you hit Act 5 Terror you can sell items for up to 250k, so don't worry too much about this. If you find yourself short on funds due to rezzing your merc and crafting gear, just go and pick up higher tier rare items and sell them or do runs through caves in A1/desert A2 for the gold pinata mobs. Armor is the most reliable in regards to selling for a lot, though some runewords in the right items sell for a lot too.

Blood - This one can be a bit tricky. I've had issues where I've accidentally killed a priestess, my merc killed one (recommend you have your merc dead), and where I killed the wrong priestess by not realizing it was the fire priestess. So then, onto the strat. First we're going to clear out the area for where we want to position the Ice Priestess. When you enter take the path to the SE of the entrance. It will bend to the south and then make a T. Take path to the left on the screen (goes NW). Take this route and it will turn SW, and eventually SE where it dead ends. At this dead end is where we're going to eventually pull the Ice Priestess to. Now work your way to the Ice Priestess and pull her to this spot and then teleport to the other side. Once on the other side you can remove Baneblade and use a spell such as Flamestrike to get her really low on HP (her hp doesn't regen).

An alternative spot is to pull her to the dead end that is SW of the entrance (where you would normally go SE to the rest of the area). This lets you use Flamestrike on both the Ice and Lightning Priestesses to get both extremely close to death without risk of accidentally killing one via melee and it means you don't need to teleport to kill one.

Next up is pulling the Lightning Priestess to this area. With where we're currently at you're going to come across the Fire Priestess next. Kill her and move on. Take the path that goes SE and eventually turns SW. Stay on this path until it opens up to a big area to the NW. In this area is where the Lightning Priestess is. Be careful while clearing this area as the Priestesses just melt under Fusillade and can be accidentally killed while trying to remove the regular amazons. Find her and start luring her back the path you took towards the Ice Priestess, removing the adds that likely followed once you get along the path (do this on the path and not in the big area to help prevent pulling even more adds). Once you get the Lightning Priestess back into the area where the Fire Priestess was feel free to kill her, run back to the Ice Priestess, teleport across the gap, and kill her too. Cube your class charm, profit.

Knowledge - Fautzenville is a large level with a LOT of enemies. As such it isn't very hard and our build is uniquely set up so that it can handle all types of mobs here without needing any special gear. Since Necrobots are immune to physical damage they generally take the longest to kill, but it isn't that bad. If you don't have any of the suggested RWs and are still using the TUs it can be a bit tricky, but this place is a great place to get high lvl runes (I walked in with only the helm and had .weapon, belt, jewelcrafting, and chest before I had got my third brain). Also if you see a large group of Necrobots stuck behind a wall consider dropping Baneblade and using Flamestrike on them. There's only two things to know about this place. First is that the northern section requires you to either find the secret door, or to teleport up there (dangerous since if you get killed before carving out a safe spot for your TP you have to restart the game to get your corpse back). Second is that there's a section that can only be accessed by teleport and it is on the eastern side of the map.

Wisdom - This fight is pretty straight forward. Summon King Koth at Arreat Summit. The fight is often described as the physical version of Tal Rasha where we stacked resistances. I find this fight slightly harder than Tal Rasha simply because of how confined the place is. Start by killing the ancients if you haven't already so that you can use the doors to escape if you need to. Summon him, move away, and then just run in, hit the Bear Shamans' a bit (how much is up to you), cast Fusillade, and then pull back again. Reason for this is that towers are summoned which can really hurt if you stand still for too long. Overall the fight is pretty straightforward and shouldn't be too hard.

Fear - The Butcher needs to hit something (you, your merc, your minions) for a pentagram to have a chance of spawning. Once it spawns you simply need to move him onto it and then attack him. These pentagrams don't last for long so you're going to have to keep doing this. Tricky part is simply getting him to move if he isn't already attacking you. Just run away and then back to the pentagram in order to try and get your minion/merc to leash back to you. You can also try to use lolsummons which he will just 1shot (thus returning to you after killing them). You should have enough def to tank the butcher as he won't hit you too often (takes longer for pentagrams to spawn, but less likely to get gibbed), and your Symbol of Esu will take you out of danger range, but if you do tank him know there is always the chance that he will hit you multiple times in a row and kill you due to RNG.

Congrats you've now completed the challenge! The skill isn't that useful given that you can't even use it while Baneblade is up (I wish this was changed as I think the ability would synergize really well with a melee sorc and the mana cost helps prevent you from spamming it), but the bonus hp/mana is nice.

Crafting (UMS16):

The basics of crafting are covered here. As such this area will go over things that are specific to us.

Gear - The primary things here that we will be crafting is resistance gear, gloves, belt, and boots. The item level of the gear is important as it controls what random modifiers can appear when shrine-crafting. Also upgrading an item from “Magical” to “Rare” status removes 15% of the item level (rare being needed for shrine-crafting), so don't forget about Act 2 Destruction Baalspawn. Using his cube recipe will put your rare back at ilvl 99 for those better affixes.

While most of the random modifiers are going to vary, you're going to want +def% as one of your modifiers if doing end-game crafting. Gear without this can still be useful, but this modifier can be a huge boost to survivability given all of the +TCD% that we have and it means that you need fewer MOs to get up to the 350% cap on +ED%.

Resistance Gear - Use either the T6 gloves and/or boots for this. Know that gear can only be crafted to have a max of +155% resist on it before sockets (the game ignores anything over 155% unless it's from sockets). Put one of each +max resist gems in the sockets, the +All Resists is the best MO, but caps at only +60% resists so you're going to want to put an extra 8x MOs of Fire/Cold/Lightning/Poison (poison should be last if using this gear for Level Challenge 2) in order to hit the cap. Outside of specific fights that pierce resistances you should only need to use a single piece of resistance gear until you get enough gear/charms to move away from them (and you don't really need it if you get your resistances from jewels/etc. I'm just lazy so I used the boots). Also when you don't need as much resistance think about shrine-crafting a pair of sacred boots (highest type that you can use) and only applying enough resistance to cover what you need or using crafted jewels with resists.

Gloves - The main thing to look for on higher lvl gloves is +1 sorc skills and CtC Stormblast. If you're doing this on yellow gloves this is pretty simple because it just requires Oil of Renewal. When shrine-crafting it can be a lot harder, but you will get a better pair of gloves. I personally used leather gloves and did an str shrine so that they could help me wear better than the most basic of sacred boots/belt, but dex is better once you have enough stat points to equip both the str and dex items. Also since shrine-crafted items get 2x bonus from MOs consider putting on 1-2x Eye of Malic if you can get them as this will give you some decent procs and +30-60 damage per UMO (before your +spell damage and -ER are factored in). Don't forget to also do a shrine-blessing once you've crafted a good pair of gloves.

An alternative would be to go for CtC Lorenado. The issue with this is that various bosses don't drop poison immunity and that this requires a lower level item. As such you have to have an affix level (see documentation if you don't know what this is) of 48-50 to get CtC Lorenado and +1 Sorc skills on the gloves. This also greatly restricts other bonuses that could appear on the gloves. As such I wouldn't lower the ilvl of an item for CtC Lorenado over Stormblast, but if you get it know that it is a good CtC.

Boots - I use this piece of gear to fill my gap in resistance until I have enough gear/charms to not need it. If you aren't using this for honorific resistance gear then try to get Whirlpool and +Enhanced Defense% at least. You can use Whirlpool as another active ability, just know that it is a timered ability and as such will lock you out of other timered abilities (like your teleport). CtC Celerity can occasionally be useful, but generally I found no use for it given the speed we already move at. It is even less useful once you get the Idol of Vanity since it makes you immune to being frozen.

Jewels - This is pretty straight forward. I recommend the "Nih" rune over "On" for this. Reason for this is that “Nih” heals for so much more than “On” that you need three kills for every one strike for “On” to heal more than “Nih.” Not that you should totally forsake LAEK for LOSIM, but most should be LOSIM. Outside of that look for jewels that have indestructible, attack speed, -req, and +run/walk in addition to the obvious +dex% and +all%. Indestructible is especially useful in the weapon since Warp Blade breaks pretty fast and the fact that sacred RW gear can be rather expensive to repair (I once had a 3.1m repair bill with my sacred torso being 2.5m of that). Try to balance these given that they have diminishing returns. Run/Walk might not seem like a good choice at first but is nice because you want to be "walking" everywhere and while Baneblade gives you a good boost in speed, this further makes sure you can either chase down an enemy running away or get away yourself without having to resort to actually running.

You can also look into using jewels to fill in for resistances if you don't have enough from your gear/charms (such as if you prefer to use a different pair of boots over resistance crafted boots).

Alternate Spec - Go with “Zod” and look for faster cast and additional +fire damage. On a max roll you can get +6% fire spell damage per jewel (3% all from rune and then 3% fire as a random bonus) in addition to your other bonuses.

Mystic Orbs – What MOs you put on your gear is going to depend on your current stats. For high-end armor it is often useful to use +def% to get you close to the 350% cap and then +TCD% after that (note that if turning said armor into a RW then the cap is 350% on the base item and then 350% from the creation of the RW, for a 700% cap if the item is able to be MO'd enough times).

Weapons are good with +ED% until at or very close to the 350%. From there consider EWD%, CtC Miasma, or anything else you think will work well with your gear.

For Rings/Amulets going with +dex, UMOs, or something related to elemental damage can be good. Also don't forget to put on a single summon MO like Daystar on a spare item until you get the Edyrem Summon charm. Putting this on an item makes it easier to deal with enemies like the Butcher or Witches (if it is on a spare piece of gear then you can move the witch away from your body safely if she killed you). Also at lower levels it can be useful to use +str in order to meet str requirements for gear without actually using stat points on str.

Acronyms (UMS17):

Since not everyone has English as their first language or you might just be new to the mod, here's a list of acronyms in the guide. If you come across one that I missed and you don't know it feel free to ask and I'll update the list.

TCD% - Total Character Defense %
LAEK – Life after each Kill
LOSIM – Life on striking in Melee
MO – Mystic Orb
UMO – Unique Mystic Orb
CtC – Chance to Cast
ASAP – As Soon As Possible
TP – Town Portal
K3kBA – Kurast 3000 Before Akarat
TU – Tiered Unique
SU – Sacred Unique
RW – Rune Word
RNG – Random Number Generator
CoF – Creature of Flame
EWD% - Enhanced Weapon Damage
AotOR – Armor of the Old Religion
SoV – Spirit of Vengence (from SSU Bone Helm)
IAS – Improved Attack Speed
FBR – Faster Block Rate
FHR – Faster Hit Recovery
SoR - Shower of Rocks

Video Guides (UMS18):  If a link breaks all videos can be found on youtube by searching "UMS - <name of area/challenge>"  Note that videos marked with an XIV after them were made prior to the new melee skills being added to the game (Fusillade, Blade Spirits, and Wraithsword), hence their absence in the videos.

Challenges -

Level Challenge 1 - XIV

Level Challenge 2 - XIV

Ennead Challenge - XIV

Black Road Challenge - XIV

Uberlevels -

Yshari Sanctum - Sub Bosses - XIV

Yshari Sanctum - Valthek

Brachyceran's Lair - XIV

Dungeons -

Infernal Machine - XVc

Well, I finally got around to posting this, though I still need to clean it up some. And yes I'm working to get strats up for the ones that don't currently have it, though I haven't (yet) beaten all the bosses.

Was lightning/cold too boring for you---Why did you choose fire as a building block? Just wondering.

I find it MUCH easier to do that combo and go Chrono (bc ur fine on D with soso armors and ofc the 3 passives!).

I have some alt suggestions for gearing/jewels/different fights but have to think more first)

P.S. Fantastic writeup. Admittedly it was a bit cluttered BUT tons of info, and if you use ctrl-F this guide is damn fun! (to just give a friendly reminder, pph spacing after 5 short sentences and formatting helps a lot)

Yours is certainly post of the day...damn 1 am cookie giver I am

(OT: HEY KELLAM.... REMEMBER WE WERE SUPPOSED TO MAKE A GUIDE by now!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Will wrote:Was lightning/cold too boring for you---Why did you choose fire as a building block? Just wondering.

I find it MUCH easier to do that combo and go Chrono (bc ur fine on D with soso armors and ofc the 3 passives!).

I have some alt suggestions for gearing/jewels/different fights but have to think more first)

I went fire for the damage increase via Fire Dance, how powerful Living Flame is, and the utility of Flamestrike as a ranged ability. My original build was a Fire/Cold melee build but it simply couldn't survive as well once I hit Terror, so I picked up Lightning for Warp Armor for survivability. This also makes it a bit easier for challenges where def matters. The reason I don't go back to Fire/Cold later is because I feel like Lightning provides better survivability and Nova Charge seems uniquely built for a melee sorceress (dex->energy conversion), while the main thing I gain from Cold is the extra meatshields that take some of the pressure off of me (can be useful for places like Toraja or JD).

Someone else mentioned Chrono, so I need to give that a try at some point. One thing about Baneblade is that it also increases your melee damage, not just your def/block. Also I'm working on updating several of the sections, but I wanted to at least get it posted since I've been sitting on this for at least a month now. Since initially writing various sections I've either learned new ways to do things or more efficient strats, but haven't gotten around to updating the sections yet. I'll probably try to tackle one area a day as well as put in the info for bosses I've killed that aren't mentioned.

Block pct above say 20 very bad for sorcs so be careful. Easy for melter to get block locked Bc of bad frames with shield.