Where to aim blizzard?

[hackedagainanda]

View attachment 5694

Where should my cursor be to blizz him? Its been very hit and miss of whether blizzard hits him or not.

 

[uglyfred]

Its been very hit and miss of whether blizzard hits him or not.

That's the inherent weakness of blizzard. Period. I dunno what to tell you other than I just namelock him and spam IceBlast while waiting for the timer to elapse.

You can always moat-trick him too.

 

[japanzaman]

Blizzard is better for dealing with groups, and Frozen Orb is usually better for single targets. A moving target is generally better for Blizzard, as it is more likely to enter the field of damage.

 

[Delsy]

Namelock Blizzard and Ice Blast inbetween as uglyfred's said. Mephisto is a big target so Blizzard hits him very well. Also bear in mind that Blizzard hits less when the target is touching a wall, which applies doubly when the target is in a corner. Sometimes Mephisto will stuck himself in the corners by the stairs or wander to the circle island. Try to avoid both situations but especially the corner one and fight him on the open field as it is in the screenshot.

 

[maareek]

Generally with Blizzard you want to aim slightly off your target if it isn't moving and in its path if it is. It really is the kind of thing you have to fiddle around with yourself more than be told about, but at the end of the day you're only increasing your chance to hit with the Blizzard shards by a few percent with any technique. Still for something with high HP like an act boss Ice Blast is the real killer spell. Teleport over, drop a Blizz near Meph, static him down, then start spamming Ice Blast. Generally I won't even cast the second Blizzard, but I wouldn't say for sure it doesn't speed things up over time (ie. it probably hits often enough to be worth casting because a Blizzard shard hits hard enough to be worth the cast time). Certainly if it takes longer than two Blizzard cycles to kill Meph you should be recasting them when they time out, though.

Also just general Meph stuff: remember Meph has 0% leech efficiency, so the merc can't keep himself alive that way. Stacking res or damage reduction on him helps, if you can (I admit it's been awhile, but I think Vamp Gaze + Gladiator's Bane was my preferred setup for the merc, though Guardian Angel + Kira's Guardian wasn't bad either - not a requirement, but it helps keep you from having to support his drinking habit), or just feed him potions. Also, I tend to teleport basically on top of him then run the sorc a couple steps away, so that the merc gets in there immediately and I'm not far enough away from him to drop his own Blizzards on me. Leaves me in range of his poison cloud, but meh.

 

[krischan]

The problem ist that your merc fixes Meph in place and he might be on a blind spot of Blizzard (all castings have the same blind spot). I would make a tactical teleportation, so the merc has to run to him again. Meph will probably be at a different position then.

I assume that you purposely don't use the moat trick, correct?

 

[Darkthrone]

I find the moat trick takes too long. I teleport more or less into the centre of that chamber/room, but just close enough to the moat for the path to come up. This will bring Mephisto out into the open and keep him away from any corners or walls. Let him engage your mercenary and then just spam blizzard and ice blast back until he dies. For best results on mercenary, use Kelpie Snare in conjunction with a defiance mercenary. Once you get to a high enough level Mephisto won't even hit him, allowing you to comfortably sit there and kill him quickly.

 

[krischan]

The moat trick takes significantly less time than getting to Meph, even on the most favourable map. It depends on how you are doing it, however. Besides, the moat trick is much safer. I don't think that my sorc ever died when doing it in SP and I'm a rather reckless player with slow reflexes... a pretty bad combination, I admit

 

[Gripphon]

Perhaps I'm not familiar with all kinds of Mephisto moat tricks, I know for two where you either trap Meph to the left over the river or on that island where is portal so you shoot at him from distance. Both are presented in first few videos on youtube. Is there some faster variant of moat trick?

For those two variants you have to get to Meph, or at least at the centre in front of him to drag him down so you can tele over the river to start killing him. First part is exactly the same thing player does using merc, but instead of teleporting over river and waiting for Meph to come close, he instead starts killing Meph right away using merc as a tank. In time user of moat trick starts killing Meph, player with merc as tank already took half, or even more hp from Meph. That is reason why moat trick, at least those two variants I know of, cannot be compared to direct killing Meph in killing speed.

Blind spot of Blizzard... I must admit this is the first time I hear about it. Even if that does happen, it's incredibly rare. I guess you still finish off meph with ice blast very fast.

Here in second post are presented some results of how fast is possible to run Meph and with what equipment to be "perfectly safe" from Meph without using moat trick. As for moat trick... I know I can't really come close to 25 sec range running time using moat trick, but I'm interested to see others try to do it that fast. Or faster.

To answer question, I namelock Meph with Blizzard and just throw. No science there. Sometimes it hits a lot, sometimes it misses. Strategy is to throw blizzard, then spam static field as Meph is approaching you and your merc. Get him down to half hp, then just blizzard + ice blast him to death. Moat trick is great for weaker characters who are undergeared to take on Meph directly with merc. Perhaps it is possible to run him faster with moat trick, but I don't have knowledge about that.

Also, just for a note, fireball sorc using infinity merc is by far fastest Meph runner, but then again I'm not sure why would anyone who has Infinity run Meph excluding farming essences. Still, if someone has a reason to do it, try it.

 

[helvete]

You can tele to the right of meph, by the chest in the corner. That makes meph run right, and when you tele back, he's stuck on the elevation between the stairs. Much faster than traditional moat trick, but slightly harder to pull off. Much used on battle.net due to council members spawning in different positions but the map layout being static.

However, teleporting right on top of meph with a merc, then walking back a little still beats this method in run times. It's not really something I give much thought, since I run other areas or bosses as soon as I've reached a certain wealth when playing untwinked. Generally, if you're worrying about those 3-4 seconds in a meph run, you should be running AT or pindle instead. Only when missing Arachnid Mesh would I ever run meph this vigorously.

(or on battle.net where you can use the quest bug)

 

[Darkthrone]

Maybe there's some variant of the moat trick that I don't know about, but I don't see how it can be faster than straight up killing Mephisto. It would seem to me that regardless of the method you are using, you are still using some time to lure him to the edge. It's definitely safer but you can reliably run Mephisto even with mid-range gear, it just becomes more of a priority to turn your mercenary into a tank.