How to deal with phasebeasts as DH?

[Deleted]

So far act 3 has been a breeze. I died a few times on Grom but after learning I can kite him so the first stink spots vanish, he went down easily.

And even though I'm not really trying to progress that hard and am just farming what I can, I've had to log out twice now after getting an elite phasebeast pack in those towers. There's just nothing I can do. The damage is too high for just tanking them and I die before doing any considerable damage and kiting is out of the question too.. even with those caltrops with torturous ground rune. It works on normal phasebeast well enough and they aren't a threat but the elites are a completely different story.

I can't skip them either by kiting them into some corner with the towers being so tight on space and linear.

So any idea how to deal with them or I just need more gear? I currently have around 50k damage, 29k health and 700 all res (800 physical) and 51% mitigation from armor. Getting more defenses is proving to be challenging unless I go 1h and shield and I don't think more damage would help either. Even if I had 100k.. I can't bring them down to half health now and am barely making a dent before I die.

[nightshark]

So far act 3 has been a breeze. I died a few times on Grom but after learning I can kite him so the first stink spots vanish, he went down easily.

And even though I'm not really trying to progress that hard and am just farming what I can, I've had to log out twice now after getting an elite phasebeast pack in those towers. There's just nothing I can do. The damage is too high for just tanking them and I die before doing any considerable damage and kiting is out of the question too.. even with those caltrops with torturous ground rune. It works on normal phasebeast well enough and they aren't a threat but the elites are a completely different story.

I can't skip them either by kiting them into some corner with the towers being so tight on space and linear.

So any idea how to deal with them or I just need more gear? I currently have around 50k damage, 29k health and 700 all res (800 physical) and 51% mitigation from armor. Getting more defenses is proving to be challenging unless I go 1h and shield and I don't think more damage would help either. Even if I had 100k.. I can't bring them down to half health now and am barely making a dent before I die.

Phasebeasts 2 shot me but the way I deal with them is keeping them on the edge of the screen so they dont teleport. Frost arrow helps a lot with this as the phasebeasts are slightly slower than me with frost arrow which allows me to kite and DPS. Kite them as far as you can until you hit a dead end, then smokescreen/vault past them and kite them back the other way. If I get them in a small area I'm rather screwed unless I can spam SS and kill them before they kill me. Extra health + small kiting space = skip pack

I think your resist/armor is a bit out of whack, your diminishing returns on AR right now makes dropping resist for HP or armor worth it. My DH was a bit more tanky before I got the nat's and I've slowly been moving toward pure glass cannon :/ But really as long as stuff doesn't 1 shot me I don't have "random deaths" very much.

---------- Post added 2012-08-13 at 11:58 PM ----------

Also how much disp do you have, do you have the nat's? I found before buying the nat's the best bet was to get close to 50 disp and use the reduced cost rune on SS.

[Deleted]

Also how much disp do you have, do you have the nat's? I found before buying the nat's the best bet was to get close to 50 disp and use the reduced cost rune on SS.

Just 30, I don't really need more as I use the ability that restores 45 over time, forgot what it was called plus every crit restores 1. Don't have nats but I can't tank them with gloom anyway, tried already kiting them to spawn point and just tanking them down just to get past them.

Anyway, I use this specc

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...SYV!eYX!ccYZZY

So no frost arrow etc. and I wouldn't really want to change it, it works like a charm since I have high crit (45%) and life steal from weapon and rings, so even without gloom, the nether tentacles fired into packs of enemies heal me pretty much full. Changing things just for one type of enemies would really mess up things when fighing everything else.

[Redblade]

Relog...

It's one of the more imbalanced elite packs around, even my Wiz with 1200+ resists and 8k+ armor in Archon form gets annihilated by them.

[Resentful]

Going Defensive on PB doesn't really do anything actually but hurt you more; You want them DEAD asap like really those things are OP and even cut through me like butter and I'm a tank mind you

Full damage OP and use

''Cluster bomb'' It's been the new NT for a very very long time now

[abijax]

If there's some room to kite I kill them with spike traps and caltrops kiting around, if they're just at the entrance some combos can be done with caltrop stacking and gloom tanking.
Also if there's room to kite evasive fire (instant hit and I think increased stagger chance) with tactical advantage is really good after a bit of practice (you don't want to keep shooting when you backflip and waste your discipline, just turn and gain distance with the speed burst).

[chadwix]

''Cluster bomb'' It's been the new NT for a very very long time now

Monsters with big hit boxes like phasebeasts get hit more from cluster bombs. Chances are when you switch over from nether you will get nothing but shielding/wallers.

[Deleted]

I pretty much just open with a few Devouring Arrows, use Caltrops to get them in place and try to drop some well-placed Cluster Bombs. 50% of the time they blink out of them, but if they do that's a + for you, since they won't be teleporting on you. Other than that, you'll just need to learn to the reflexes of a Korean with their offensive blinks.

[Deleted]

Finally managed to complete act 3:P keeping them at a distance worked like a charm without changing specc. Might have just been an easy pack.. teleport, vortex, molten and something.. but they never teleported on top of me or behind me. Good thing I had lots of room to kite though, it wouldn't work if the pack is at the entrance.

[Trotheus]

If you have room to kite them, keeping them just off your screen will prevent them from porting onto you. Otherwise just use SS, and prep if needed, to skip them. It's not possible for a DH to kill phasebeast packs without a lot of kiting room.

[Deleted]

If you have room to kite them, keeping them just off your screen will prevent them from porting onto you. Otherwise just use SS, and prep if needed, to skip them. It's not possible for a DH to kill phasebeast packs without a lot of kiting room.

Unfortunately true.. or well, maybe if I get 30k more health and 200 more all resists.

Fortunately after 1.04, they stop regenerating so it's possible to just zerg them down, even if it takes 5-6 deaths, I think it's better than logging out and losing the neph stacks.

[nightshark]

Unfortunately true.. or well, maybe if I get 30k more health and 200 more all resists.

Fortunately after 1.04, they stop regenerating so it's possible to just zerg them down, even if it takes 5-6 deaths, I think it's better than logging out and losing the neph stacks.

I would take a look at how resist and armor work if you haven't already. You would take a lot less damage if you focused on upping your armor instead of resist, which you have very high diminishing returns on now.

[abijax]

Take a look and find out there's no diminishing returns on damage reduction offered from either of those stats? The only "diminishing" is on ah prices because stacking 1 stat is usually more expensive than getting average values from 2.

[Maelstrom51]

Take a look and find out there's no diminishing returns on damage reduction offered from either of those stats? The only "diminishing" is on ah prices because stacking 1 stat is usually more expensive than getting average values from 2.

While its true that stats' value don't exactly diminish, stacking one stat diminishes relative to other defensive stats.
For example, compare 900 resists and 3000 armor to 600 resists and 6000 armor, at say 30k health:

Effective health = health / ((1 - (resists/(resists + 300))) * (1 - (armor/(armor + 3000)))

900/3000 allocation: 30000 / ((1 - (900/1200)) * (1 - (3000/6000))) = 240,000 effective health

600/6000 allocation: 30000 / ((1 - (600/900)) * (1 - (600/9000))) = 270,000 effective health

The more of one stat you have, the more valuable the other stats become, which is why having one huge stat and one small stat is usually a bad idea.

[abijax]

Except the gear budget is not even close to 1:10, max possible bonus armor with shield is like 4k while max all resist around 1k. That 600/6000 should be 600/4500.

[Maelstrom51]

Except the gear budget is not even close to 1:10, max possible bonus armor with shield is like 4k while max all resist around 1k. That 600/6000 should be 600/4500.

You're mostly right, but it varies by class. Intellect classes get a bit more resist, while barbs are able to have their resists and armor closer to each other.
My main point, though, is that there are diminishing returns relative to other stats.