Diablo 1 HD Hellfire Mod | Awake

Hello. How do you guys deal with strong melee monsters on difficulties above Normal as a sorcerer?
I'm in Nightmare atm and there's plenty of bosses that when they engage me in melee, they freeze, stun-lock me etc.
Some of those can be dealt with with help of golem, stone curse and/or kiting. Some others thought (especially ones immune to Stone Curse), I have no idea how to kill them. Especially in higher difficulties when they're immune and have affixes like Haste, Mastery, Bloodlust etc.

For example, Brutallus is one such example, but I can skip him, so he doesn't bother me much (although I don't like skipping monsters). But how to deal with for example Hephasto? Can't be turned to stone, Golem dies in like 2s (lvl10), he's only vulnerable to cold, but every cold spell I use does little to no damage to him and he's super fast, so I can't even effectively kite him. When he gets to me at melee range, I'm just done and many times are stun-locked from his fast attack that I don't even manage to teleport away, the less deal any damage to him.

Any tips how to deal with bosses like that (and Hephasto in particular as I can't get past him for now)?

Thanks in advance

Sorcerer should not be getting into melee combat at all if possible. Keep teleporting away and always keep your golem up.

As far as Bruttalus, when he rolls with poison is especially dangerous.
Keep working at him.

like Ugily said, kiting, TPing around all the time. Bone spirit helps a lot with bosses, but if they are immune to magic, and only cold dmg is efficient, use Blizzard. It is underrated, many don't use it, but Blizzard and Meteor Cluster can often help.

Also try to get staffs with negative resistances.

Well, thanks for responding, I hoped I was missing some basic concept or doing it wrong, but guess not. Some of those fights take ridiculously long with kiting, but it seems I'll have to adjust ...

Will try Blizzard for those cold-vulnerable ones.

It's extremely slow and can be dangerous if Hephasto is lightning enhanced and you don't have high resist and a bunch of blue pots but there is a spot you can teleport to where he can't hit you.

After entering the River of Flame, head down the past that goes SouthWest. There will be a lava pool and in the bottom right there is a square against the wall that you can teleport onto and no melee monsters can get to you.

Its a long walk to lure Hephasto all the way there but if you absolutely can't kill him, it might be worth the effort. Another bonus is after getting him there and not having to worry about running away constantly you can test all of your spells to see which are the most effective.

Hope this helps!

There are 2 spots you can exploit in River of Flame, one is the wall that rises when you meet Brutalus, you can lure him on the other side and teleport in and out on both sides of another short corner wall when he is on the other side but you have to wait 3 sec between jumps so his agro stops, and you can let loose 4-5 Bone Spirits before he agroes again, repeat and use whatever to finish him off. And the other one is the wooden pen you can teleport in and out of, it's just when you come down and turn right to head to Hephastos. I mean these are the ones i use but i'm sure there are also other ways to stay safe, if it's not clear i'll post some screen shots showing where to Teleport and exactly how i've done it.

And generally never be in melee with casters or ranged characters, the hit recovery sucks and even if you increase it and stack up AC it's not worth it to sacrifice dmg/resistance/-DFE/etc for this. Also only quest bosses are unaffected by Stone Curse, and immunities can be broken, some more then others, luckily Sorcerer has a skill for this, plus whatever -% enemy (element) resistance on rare/crafted staff or other uniq/set items provide.

It's extremely slow and can be dangerous if Hephasto is lightning enhanced and you don't have high resist and a bunch of blue pots but there is a spot you can teleport to where he can't hit you.

After entering the River of Flame, head down the past that goes SouthWest. There will be a lava pool and in the bottom right there is a square against the wall that you can teleport onto and no melee monsters can get to you.

Its a long walk to lure Hephasto all the way there but if you absolutely can't kill him, it might be worth the effort. Another bonus is after getting him there and not having to worry about running away constantly you can test all of your spells to see which are the most effective.

Hope this helps!

Here's a screenshot of Hephasto unable to reach me in this spot

Wow, congrats on finding a new spot! I think it's cool that "the need" can help one discover new ways of dealing with a situation so far along from the release, even if i don't play anymore i still find it interesting to learn new stuff.

Thanks for that spot, I used it to kill Brutallus, because no other "normal" strategy worked for me.
I try to avoid "exploits" like that, but sometimes it's the lesser evil.

Also managed to kill Hephasto using kiting, it took me some 10 minutes or so, but was managable.

Didn't know about the quest bosses being immune to stone curse, thanks.

Another question of Sorc's/spells in general, so thought to post this here.

The quests for Guardian + Golem spell increases on Normal-Torment, do those increase spell skill upto 15, or do they go beyond 15 like the gear affixes do, but not as the spell books that're capped at 15?

They can be learned up to, they can't go beyond 15. Only +Spell Levels on gear or Lore Shrine (temporarily) can increase spells over 15.

kk thank you for response/answer.