AotL Solo build

Used in UW and for hydras.

Aura of Chaos

N/mo

Blood: 11 (8+3)
Death: 16 (12 + 1 + 3)
soul reaping: 3 (+3)
protection: 10

Required: 20% sword/axe/staff, -50 offhand item, 55hp, a wand

Skills:

1 Balthazars spirit
2 essence bond
3 protective
4 Aura of the Lich
5 blood renewal
6 dark aura
7 dark pact
8 touch of agony

activate 1 and 2 Once you reach full health, get closer to the aatxes to the left (not too close) and activate 3,4,5. Use your wand to attack the closest aatxe, while your attack is still in mid-air walk backwards and position yourself between the two spirits, slightly to the left. If done correctly, the aatxes will get stuck, a nightmare will remove you enchants and you can wand him to death. Put 1 and 2 back on, at full health activate 4,6,3,5 and engage the aatxes. Use 5 as soon as you can, every time. use 7 and 8 when it is safe to do so. Use 5 and 6 only after using 7 and 8 (to make them run off). You can do this for every skill, afraid blood renewal will get interrupted? use 7 and 8 before using blood renewal. Your routine should be similar to this:
(NM is dead, you did 1,2 and 4,6,5,3 and attacked)
7,8,5,7,8,3,7,8,5,7,8,3,7,8,4,7,8,5,7,8,3,7,8,6

alternate the spirit, renewal, lich and dark aura after 7 and 8 for maximum safety. If you find yourself short of time, use BR and dark aura without using 7 and 8 first. They should be fine.

I might be wrong with this, did it from memory. Just cram as many 7ns and 8s in between 5es as you can without interfering with 5. [

VERY IMPORTANT]
use your longer spells after casting 7 and 8 this will make the aatxes run away, giving you time to use them without interruptions.
[VERY IMPORTANT]

5 regen from blood renewal is enough to fight off 3 aatxes while bleeding.

After killing the first group, there will no longer be the need to use the ghosts. All the other nighmares should spawn when you get near aatxes, not when you engage them. Simply get close to the other groups and walk away, the nightmare will follow you can you can wand it to death, put you enchants back up and engage the aatxes.

Once you kill all the aatxes, you kill the grasping darknesses. The are insanely easy. I don't think an explanation is needed here.

Smites, this is where it gets interesting (more ectos and golds)

They dont have enchant removal, or interruptions. just stand there, using the above routine. You will have no problems.

Coldfires.

Coldfires, are easy. Use the routine, but make sure you move away when they cast maelstrom.

I suggest you stay away from the chamber until the very end. Honestly, I have never made it that far. (only made this build 2 days ago)

Any suggestions/comments?

Might want to move your deathly chill as an alternate slot up to #3 rather than beside #4.
The way you have it set up now makes it look as if you ditch Prot Spirit if you want to bring Deathly Chill!

You probably want to get your Dark Aura up before you engage the Aatxes, as I can't see you getting the cast through their interrupts once they're in range. Touch of Agony will also do more damage than Dark Pact, and since you're in touch range anyway you may as well go with that.

As you mentioned, Dark Aura will cause them to scatter, but if you wait 3-4 seconds between casts then the AOE fleeing won't get triggered. If you see your AotL & Dark Aura going down it'd be worthwhile spamming BR & ToA to get them to flee so you can recast in safety

Looks like a fun alternative to the Spiteful solo nec

I have a couple questions.... As far as Blood renewel.... and recasting AotL.... how do u avoid them getting interupted..... and is Blood Renewel usually enough to keep you alive.... no mending or healing breeze..... I'll have to try this build out

to tigernz:

the deathly chill replacing protective spirit is a typo, I will correct this thank you

You can use dark aura before engaging to avoid getting interrupted, although this hasnt happened to me. Dark aura only takes 1 second, and 8+6 sends them running.

I put a bit in between brackets saying [VERY IMPORTANT], this stresses your point about casting 6 and 8, right after eachother followed by 5 to avoid it getting interrupted.

If you use the [VERY IMPORTANT] bit correctly, you will be fine using the routine. If youre having trouble with this, cast 5 everytime you use 6+8 instead of every two times you do it.

You mentioned ToA instead or DP. This depends on preferance. I like dark pact, because it has a faster recharge, and 1 second casting time will not get interrupted very often. If you use ToA, you will do about 18 more damage to one opponent, but your recharge is 3 seconds instead of 2, and the decrease in casting time is minimal. Dark pact wont get interrupted often, so there is little need to use something faster. Use whichever you prefer. Just know the advantages of both.

to undead preacher:

to avoid interruptions, as I said previously you use blood renewal and dark pact right after eachother. This will make them flee. You use this time to cast AotL without getting interrupted.
For BR, this has a 1 second casting time, and I have rarely gotten it interrupted. The spamming of dark pact and BR usually has one or two aatxes running, and the third aatxe will not interrupt your BR often (he is usually just finishing his attack, and then runs off while the others come back). If you have trouble finding a routing that works for you, that deals nice damage and makes the aatxes run away in an order which allows you to cast BR, DA and AotL uninterrupted, just keep in mind that dark pact + BR is your safety: just use this, and they will run off allowing you to cast what you need.

If dark aura is the first thing the aatxes see you use, I have found it that they will often try to interrupt this. (and usually fail) Use this to your advantage

As a safety, you can bring guardian instead of deathly chill/watchful spirit to give you a 5 sec opportunity to cast whatever you need. But I tend to get unlucky with this skill.

If you only use blood renewal, you have a constant regen of 5. This might seem like way too little, but this is not the case. Bleeding will lower your maximum health, which decreases the damage you get from enemies from 2 to 1. Thats right, if you are bleeding you will only get one damage. Bleeding causes a degeneration of 4. You have a regeneration of 5. Your regeneration of 1 will be enough to handle 3 aatxes who deal 1 damage each. The graspings will not make you bleed. You will get 2 damage from them, but you will have 5 regen. This is enough to stay alive. (unless you mess up and get interrupted too often.)

Something that might help, is let them all attack twice, then use whatever you need. I found it that graspings will use their interrupting attacks on the very first skill they see you use (they will see you when you are in their aggro circle). If you use a skill before they hit you, they will all have used their interrupt for nothing, and you can safely use another skill. (I let them attack twice in case one of them is being a pain)

I usually prefer to bring watchful spirit instead of deathly chill. The 2 extra health regen will allow you to make a mistake once or twice, depending on the situation. Dont forget that taking away watchful spirit will heal you for 170. Needles to say, this is a full heal and then some.

Every solo build out there is special in its own way, some require counting sheep, others involve hit and run, this one uses a routine and a fleeing trigger. My routine is posted in the original, but a different one may work better for you. Every routine needs is a combo that makes aatxes run off so you can cast AotL and DA.

I am sorry about the typos, I will correct them. If you see any grammar or spelling mistakes let me know, I am Dutch and English is not my first language.

on a sidenote, keep in mind that because of the constant use of 8, 2 out of 3 aatxes are probably not attacking you. (cowards ran off) Effectively making the odds of you getting interrupted very slim.

This build takes a lot of practise, A LOT. Once you get the hang of it, it gets easy. Don't come to me saying: It doesnt work, your routine is flawed blahblah before having attempted it at least 20 times. It took me 15 runs or so to get my routine working, knowing how to use the skills instinctively pressing the right buttons. I managed to get to the chamber today (after killing the smites), so if you keep dying it wil either because of a mistake you made, or me forgetting to mention something (which I doubt, previous two posts are huge)

think you can fraps it?

noob question, whats "fraps"?

video recording software which you can use to record what's happening in game so you can save it & post for others to see.

It's easier to understand what people mean when it comes to builds when there's a video of it in action

I use gamecam to record mine (not that they're worth watching yet!) and filefront or rapidshare are used by a lot of people to host the video's they've recorded.

alrighty, if you guys can supply me with a link where I can download this software I will do it.

*starts praying for a godly run with 10 ectos to show off*
lol

Never mind, got the software. Uploading is gonna take like 3hours, I will do this tomorrow. Going to bed now.

I am too cheap to pay for fraps, so my movies are 30 sec

30 secconds and it takes 3 hours to upload? hmm...

oh now that i think of it, when you record it the file is huge, you need to convert it with VirtualDUB so the size is only like 5 megs

LOL

alright, ill get that. Look for the hydra movies within a few hours, and the UW movies as soon as we get favor, and I can get online.

edit

The stupid fraps is giving me major issues. (30 second limit) I can't fit one fight in just 30 seconds. The stupid virtualDUB wont let me compress properly. Bah ill try to find a different program.

I changed the build a bit, to make it easier and less prone to interruptions. I removed the deathly chill/watchful spirit for Touch of Agony. Deathly chill isnt needed because of the ghost trick, and the +2 regen safety is just as good as an extra damage spammer, but the damage spammer would be more damage.

Instead of using dark pact + BR to make them run (which is risky, since if BR gets interrupted you can kiss your ass goodbye) you will now use dark pact + ToA to make them run, so you can cast either blood renewal, aura of the lich, dark aura or protective spirit safely. (you have 2 seconds, so either AotL or a combination of the others)

You can also bring guardian I guess, but this would be less damage.

I tried the changes, and it works a lot better. More damage, less interruptions, overall a faster and safer run. (this doesnt mean it is now easy, getting the routine right is still a pain)

heres the link to me fighting against 9 hydras. I lost after about 100 seconds, because an enchanted patrol showed up.

http://hosted.filefront.com/markalexander

despite having compressed the file, it still took me a little over 2 hours to upload just 30 seconds. 4 hours to upload 1 fight is a bit too much for my patience so here is the beginning of a hydra farm. The entire fight took me about 100 second. I made a few movies of me taking down groups in less than 30 seconds, but those were only 3 to 5 hydras, not worth uploading.

Since this file is only 1/3 of the actual fight, here is a summary of the other 2 parts. I got lucky in part 2, managed to spam some damage killing 3 hydras leaving the, 6 I think others badly wounded. In part three, another patrol decided to participate (a group of enchanted rangers and warriors). Im not sure why I died, but I died real fast when those showed up.

important lesson learned: Dont aggro more than 6 hydras., especially if another 6 can show up later along with 2 enchanted warriors and 2 enchanted rangers. You can't handle that many knockdowns.

I will upload some aatxe fights later, when I have to go somewhere so I can upload the file while im away.

something else I learned: if you have your life at 105, by not equipping the -50 item and then die, you can get your received damage down from 2 to 1. This way, you wont need blood renewal. Just bring watchful spirit.

I just tried kcp's solo build, so I could compare it with mine. To be honest, there is no comparison. My build is faster. His is so much easier. If you are a hardcore player that want to do stuff the fast hard way, use my build. If you are like me, go for Kcps. (in UW)

I will still upload my aatxe fight tho, if you guys still want it.

I spent uncountable amounts of platinum searching for a non invincie-monk build to solo UW and FoW. Tried the AoTL build with various skill sets(before they nerfed AoE)....if something goes wrong=your done. I didnt like that aspect. Thats why I settled with the SS build w/ guardian. If you get interrupted....Np cast guardian...9 times out of 10 your gonna live through it and be able to recast w/e vital enchantment that was interrupted. Ive lived through countless fights hovering on the verge of death in the 1-5hp range with bleeding while aatxe swing away at my necro under guardian. YA guardian wont save the day everytime...but its a nice failsafe.

The decreased amount of damage you recieve is lovely dont get me wrong, I use AoTL build daily to solo things that cant be solo'd with 55 hp build in large quantities when we dont have favor. It's a great build, I'm ashamed it never caught on b4 the big AoE nerf and the introduction of dying nightmares into the UW. But fleeing monsters gets on my nerves, allows regen,and I dont like going 1 on 1 with an aatxe with the aotl build it has too many "refreshable, vital" enchants to maintain to be able to surive and kill the enemies at hand. 1 interrupt of blood renewal even with perfect 20% enchant mod is gonna put you face down in the dirt w/o mending to lvl the playing field vs the constant bleed.

Upload some UW clips I would like to check them out.

P.S use game cam it's free, no limit either on the amount you wish to record you just get the little advertisement in the corner like my vid's have...no big deal it gets the point across.

yeah, the running away nerf made me think: what if I can exploit it? Thus, the AotL build that depended on them running off was made.

I agree with you on all points, and will most likely stick with AotL in areas where the opponents are casters (and SS has less of an effect). But for now, your SS build rocks in UW.

I will try game cam...fraps REALLY gets on my nerves, it stops recording just before I finish them off every time. Great, no proof it works once again

I made one aatxe clip with fraps yesterday, and I will upload it today (it stops before I can kill them unfortunately, youre just going to have to believe me when I say it worked) Wait for it a bit, it will take a few hours to upload. stupid compression....

*bows down to the SS UW build*

*edit*

updated the link above, first aatxe fight is there. (30 seconds of it anyway)