Mrbaird's Budget Smiter Guide To Uber Ancients - Topic

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Jun 27 2026 03:05pm

Introduction

Four months ago Diablo II had it's first major update in years. Among the long list of changes and additions was a new endgame event: The Colossal Ancients. While the new loot they brought was exciting, the excitement was somewhat undercut by how easy the encounter was -- most players could kill them with their same character for Uber Tristram. Then, in the subsequent patch 3.2 and ladder season 14 that we now find ourselves in, Blizzard drastically increased the difficulty of the Colossal Ancients encounter. Many players struggled to kill them even with extremely expensive gear, and there was an immediate outcry for them to be nerfed. Thankfully, Blizzard did not listen to these players. And to those of you who are still struggling to kill them, I am pleased to share with you my (relatively) affordable Smiter Build for Colossal ancients. You will not need a torch. You will not need exile. You won't even need Call To Arms. You will not need full rejuvs. (Though CTA and full rejuvs are recommended)

Core of the Build
The most important thing to understand about the buffs to Uber Ancients is that their elemental damage was massively increased. So, how do we counteract this? Resistances, obviously. This can be tricky as each colossal ancient has a -100% resistance conviction aura for their respective elemental damage type. Luckily, it is incredibly easy for a Paladin to acquire resistances. Moreover, we will not only be focusing on our resistances, we will be increasing our maximum resistances to 95% for Fire, Lightning, and Cold. In other words, our character will have +295% Fire, Lightning, and Cold resist. Additionally, we will be equipping gear that gives us Fire, Lightning, and Cold absorb.

It is worth noting that reducing physical damage is not required for this build, but defense is very important. For that reason, I would recommend leveling to at least level 85 before attempting colossal ancients. The higher your level, the better. When physical attacks do land on you it will do a notable chunk of your health, but it will be immediately healed up by Life Tap. Because we care about defense, it is important that you are toggled to walk and not run. If you are unaware, running reduces your characters defense to 0. This can cause you to suddenly get melted when chasing down a whirlwinding Talic or a fleeing Madawc.

Gear

At this point I'm sure many of you are wondering about the gear. Or you just immediately scrolled to this section. I promise I won't judge. I will include both what I consider to be the bare minimum gear to comfortably and consistently do ancients, and then I'll share my current setup for my Ladder character

Starter Gear
Body Armor - Upgraded Guardian Angel with an Um rune This is the linchpin of the build. It's what enables us to obtain 95% max resistances with relative ease. Additionally, it provides a substantial amount of defense
Amulet - The Rising Sun. This provides a ludicrous amount of Fire Absorb.
Rings - Raven Frost and Dwarf Star. The combination of Dwarf Star and Rising Sun trivializes Talic's fire damage. It's also worth noting that Raven frost provides Cold Absorb
Belt - Thundergod's Vigor. Provides Max Lightning Res and Lightning Absorb
Helm - GFace with an Um Rune
Weapon - Grief in a Phase Blade with at least 35% increased attack speed (Note: less IAS is fine for a starter build, but we will eventually want to hit the 65% IAS breakpoint for Smite)
Shield - Upgraded Herald of Zakarum with an Um rune
Gloves - Dracul's Grasp. Note that we care about the Lifeleech percent as there are certain situations where we will cast Zeal.
Boots - Goblin Toes
Charms - All resistance charms to get you to +295% resistances with Salvation Aura active (excluding poison resist). Get a cheap anni and ideally a cheap Necro/Druid/etc torch. Prioritize resistances on them over attributes. Any remaining slots can be used to increase your life/mana pool
Weapon2 - Wand with life tap charges. The higher rank of life tap the better as it both increases the duration and radius.
Shield2 - Spirit Shield with 30%+ FCR in a Pally Shield base that has decent resistances
Mercenary - None.
Note: CTA is recommended but not mandatory. Ideally with 4+ BO

Current Ladder Gear - Most of my ladder gear is similar to the starter, but I will make note of the changes
Body Armor - 15% IAS jewel with enough all res to hit +295%
Helm - 15% IAS jewel with enough all res to hit +295%
Grief - 35% IAS. This will allow your smite to hit the 65 IAS breakpoint
Boots - I still use Goblin Toes as I prefer the damage. You can choose to use Gore Riders instead if you feel the lack of FRW is too painful.
Prebuff - Seraph's Hymn Amulet for a stronger Battle Orders. Additionally, you can also use a Shako for pre-buff if you don't mind the inventory juggling.
Charms - Get a paladin torch (again prioritizing resistances). Get enough FHR from your charms to hit the 48% breakpoint. More on this in the "Strategy and Tactics" section. If you have the inventory space and/or wealth, you can also acquire some faster run/walk from charms

Attributes

Enough Strength to equip gear when on our secondary weapon set.
Enough Dexterity for max block with holy shield active.
Remaining attribute points into Vitality.

Skill points

20 Smite
20 Holy Shield
1 Zeal
10 HARD POINTS Resist Fire. This if for the passive +5% Maximum Fire Resistance to hit 95%
10 HARD POINTS Resist Cold. This is for the passive +5% Maximum Cold Resistance to hit 95%
0 Resist Lightning (we get max Light res from TGods)
X points in Salvation. Enough to hit +295% Fire, Lightning, and Cold resistance. Note that Salvation starts to hit pretty significant diminishing returns around Rank 12.
Dump remaining points into Defiance for the +% Defense Synergy with Holy Shield
You will still have points remaining that you can do whatever with. Your main options are to put them into salvation to give you a bit more freedom with your gear and charms, or you can put them into Fanaticism for a bit of versatility outside of Colossal Ancients

Strategy and Tactics

As I'm sure you've gathered by now, our main aura will be Salvation and not Fanaticism. This will negate the overwhelming majority of damage and allow us to clear the encounter with relative comfort and consistency. I should note that it is still doable to use Fanaticism and hit +295% Elemental resistances from charms and gear, but that is outside of the scope of this guide. Similarly, I should also note that I experimented with several different Mercenary setups but generally found them to be a liability. For anyone that has landed on a solid Mercenary that both improves clear speed and is self sustainable, feel free to share your findings. With those disclaimers out of the way, lets get back to more strategies and tactics.

As noted in the gear section, before starting the event you can have pre-buff gear for your battle orders. Namely a Seraph's Hymn and Shako. Eth Shako if your budget is tight. Make sure you use your CTA with your secondary weapon set to get the bonus +skills from spirit. After casting Holy Shield, Battle Orders and Battle Command, equip your lifetap wand and re-equip rising sun and GFace. If you use quick cast, ensure that your hotkey for lifetap is still set properly as it can occasionally get removed, which can be quite the unpleasant surprise if you don't realize this has happened until after starting the event.

Before starting the event, make sure you are toggled to walk and not run. As stated earlier, this is because your character's defense is set to 0 while running. Note that there is a bug that causes the run/walk toggle to not function properly and your character will be stuck on run. If anyone has any idea what causes this bug, how to reproduce it consistently or a consistent way to fix it when it occurs, please let me know. The only way I've found to fix it is to leave and rejoin game, which is not an option for single player. I suspect this bug occurs due to some combination of using quick cast, interacting with your inventory, and toggling between run and walk. That all being said, worry not if this happens to you as your run is not bricked. But it will make the encounter more difficult and require you to pay more attention.

Once you have started the encounter, there are two main locations where I like to fight the ancients depending on which one I am killing last for their respective jewel. Locations are displayed in the image below. I will initially cast life tap on my first kill target, and then charge to the fighting location and cast a second life tap. When targeting the Madawc or Talic facet, I prefer the corner near the bottom right of the map. When targeting Korlic last, I prefer the corner in the top left of the map.

These corners will make it easier to reduce the frequency of Talic's whirlwinds as well as shepherd Madawc into a corner. For the spot in the top left, it's worth noting that the corner just to the left does not seem to act as a true corner as Talic and Madawc seem to constantly slip out of it. Additionally, be careful when killing Korlic last as he can single-handedly body block you if you lodge yourself fully into the corner. If this happens while one of the other ancients are still alive you will need to intentionally die.

On the subject of dying, I have found it to be relatively consistent to recover your body should the worst occur. Kite the ancients and their mini barbarians to the opposite side of the arena using charge. Make sure that it is also to a location that is far away from the red portal. Then, charge back to your corpse and reclaim it and immediately charge to the red portal. If done correctly, the barbarians should be far enough from the red portal to not insta-gib you. Now that you are back in town, restock on your potions and take a safe waypoint to put on your pre-buff gear and cast holy shield, battle orders, and battle command and then swap back to your main gear. You are now ready to re-enter the red portal. There is a very good chance that the portal will be mildly to moderately hot when you enter it. Be ready to lifetap and start smiting. Depending on how erratic the barbarians are moving around, and how many targets your life tap hit, it may be better to start with Zeal on the mini barbs until you get a life tap proc from your Dracul's. We target the mini barbarians with zeal as we have a higher chance to hit them compared to the Uber Ancients.

After killing an ancient, the other ancients will start casting their additional spells at an earlier stage of their life total. Similarly, when two ancients are killed the last ancient will heal himself back up to full health. When you kill an ancient, it can be worth it to kill their respective mini ancients for more safety and ease of maneuverability. Once you are more geared, this is usually not required and will slow your clear speed in most situations.

You can avoid aggroing Talic at the start if you immediately spam charge to the bottom right location after starting the event. This is not necessary, but it could be helpful if you are struggling with the ancients.

For fighting Talic, try to lodge yourself into a corner to reduce or eliminate the frequency of his whirlwhind attack. When he whirlwinds, I prefer to stay in place and smite or zeal nearby mini barbarians as opposed to try and chase Talic down. He will return to you eventually for more smiting. Be mindful if Talic is especially eratic as this will result in you killing more mini barbarians, and you'll likely run into a situation where a notable portion of mini barbarians do not have lifetap applied to them. Make sure to recognize this situation and cast Zeal instead of Smite, both for the inherit lifeleech from Drac's that zeal will benefit from, as well as the increased rate of proccing a lifetap from your Drac's. This is one of the few situations where you'll want to be mindful about using a Full Rejuv. The other situation is when you encounter the run/walk bug mentioned earlier.

If you encounter the aforementioned run/walk toggle bug, you will either need to slowly inch your way towards Madawc while occasionally zealing the mini barbarians. Alternatively, you can cast Charge to Madawc and then start smiting. Either way, be prepared to use full rejuvs should you encounter this bug.

The mini barbarians can body block Madawc from retreating. Use this to your advantage if the opportunity presents itself. Be aware that on rare occasion this will cause some brief desync in online mode. It will appear as though you are smiting Madawc, but you'll hear a "missing" whoosh noise and you'll notice your health not increasing from lifetap. Usually it takes a second or so for the client and server to get back in sync and you'll see Madawc instantly teleport well out of Melee range from you.

Generally speaking, you should only have to drink 1-2 mana potions depending on if you have battle orders or not.

Lastly, if a player joins the game during the encounter it will reset in order to prevent P1 cheesing. This can be helpful for retrieving your body or resetting if you mindlessly kill the wrong ancient.

Videos

Below is a video of me killing each of the ancients on the starter version. Additionally, the channel has a video of me killing Madawc and Korlic on my ladder character. As far as I'm aware you are not able to embed multiple videos on a JSP post

Conclusion and Soapbox

So there you have it, a character that is obtainable relatively early in a ladder season that can consistently make fairly short work of the Colossal Ancients. I really enjoyed the challenge of building out this character and it was a key component of my ladder strategy this season. Upon seeing players reactions to the ancient buffs, I was motivated because I knew there would be a demand for the service. However, it was also really disappointing to see such a reaction from many players. In my mind, Diablo II has always been a game where players are given a vast array of options to customize their characters strengths and weaknesses. There are so many great community built resources. The builds and strategies of today rest on the shoulders of giants. I hope that players that are newer to Diablo II will instead recognizes the challenges for what they are. At the very least, if you are unable to overcome a challenge, give it some time for other players to figure out. It's okay if the very first things you try don't work and it does not mean the source of your struggles is in need of immediate reconciliation. I know that this is a common trend in the overwhelming majority of modern games, but I hope that both the community and legacy of this game allow it to stand resilient against those modern trends. Thank you for reading.

This post was edited by MrBaird on Jun 27 2026 03:28pm