§$%§$"$ Elite Lashers and you!

[melianor]

Okay, i can't really tell you how annoyed i am by those lashers, especially the elite versions. Can anybody advise me about tactics for those tongue lashing hell spawns. I do manage to kill them in the end, but apart form any other elite group, they will mostly kill me at least once or twice before i get them down.

Any input on tactics to deal with them would be greatly welcome. Currently in Act3 Hell. I don't know how i could survive them in Inferno!

I do have Diamond Skin, which helps, also armor is around ~3k, resists are around ~300. Maybe i need to increase physical resistances?

[konfeta]

Depends on the area.

In the keep, find yourself a circular labyrinth formation and kite around doors. They can't hit you with ranged if you take a potshot and dive behind a door. If you are using Hydra and Templar, you might get lucky and have the process sped up by the Templar glitchblocking them at a door.

In Hell towers, well, the best way is to basically skip or abuse terrain (i.e. bombard from an upper level into the lower). While you can theoretically repeat the keep tactic if you get a nice bit of terrain to kite around, their AI isn't as dumb founded by as it is by you constantly disappearing.

If you get a Teleport/Extrafast/Invulnerable Minions, just skip. Those are unkitable. These things are the quintessential gear check, if you cannot simultaneously tank and kill them, it's Blizzard's way of saying "you need to go spend millions in the AH on survivability gear."

[zakaluka]

These things are, on the most basic level, a gear-mitigation check.
1) run force armor (seems required for progression until you outgear everything, from crater on in hell)
2) get enough mitigation/vit so that you rarely over-cap the force armor absorb.
3) illusionist with teleport/fracture. This will be the only thing that allows you to stand still even for moments.
4) stack enough life regen/life on hit to get back the 35% of your health you lose resetting teleport each time, before your images wear off or die.

That's actually quite a lot of gear. So you can just zerg it and pray to trim enough of them before your res timer gets long, or you can hide them in a corner every time you find a pack. I usually go with option #2. I don't want to be underprogressed just because 3 kinds of monsters in the game are over-tuned.

The tongue attack on soul lashers is dodgeable, they have a pre-cast animation and if you strafe it JUST right they miss. But you can't dodge 4-6 of them at once. Only hope is to be able to absorb 1 hit - teleport, redirect to fractures, spam for 5 sec or so to get back health, teleport again next time you get hit, repeat infinitely. Fracture takes some getting used to, the AI is pretty stupid, so you have to learn how to position them so that they actually absorb hits.

[magicrectangle]

Mirror image helps a LOT, although on hell difficulty maybe not as much as diamond skin. On inferno mirror image is way better than diamond skin for these. With illusionist you just spam out 5 duplicates any time you get hit.

Also abuse the heck out of terrain wherever possible.

Ultimately, some packs you just have to skip. Kite them to a dead end, die and leave them there.

[DayDream]

Found mirror images duplicate to help. Though it is especially hard when most wizards use teleport w/ fracture or diamond skin and switching kills the NV. I never bothered with the inv/fast ones, ridic..

[magicrectangle]

Found mirror images duplicate to help. Though it is especially hard when most wizards use teleport w/ fracture or diamond skin and switching kills the NV. I never bothered with the inv/fast ones, ridic..

If you use duplicates you should use wormhole. I like wormhole better anyway, often one teleport just isn't enough, particularly when you need to reverse your kiting direction in a restricted space.

[MRR]

I'm presently hitting a brick wall on these things in Inferno as well. Haven't had much time lately to put in a solid effort, but from what I can tell the only way to really deal with them is to kite them mercilessly and pray you don't get a fast pack.

[magicrectangle]

Decided to go back and do the keep depths just 'cause I was getting tired of siegebreaker. I Got a champ pack of lashers, as well as a rare pack of lashers. Champ pack was mortar, desecrator, fire chains, jailer. Rare pack was waller, teleporter, electrified desecrator. I kited them both to death with the usual blizz/hydra style, spamming out duplicates with illusionist to absorb the lashes.

[melianor]

Oh thank you everyone Some good input there and what seems to help a lot against those is Mirror Skin and a gearcheck, judging from the comments. I just want to find a setup where i can kill those without any hassle. Because any other combination of elite boss or champion packs is never a problem.

I noticed being able to doge them as well. Currently when i switch form Diamond Skin to Mirror Image the character feels a lot more vulnerable though. So i will indeed have to look at the gear as well.

[konfeta]

If you are using Diamond Skin to absorb hits while kiting, there are better spells for that. Diamond Skin is most useful when you have the gear to let you facetank enemies for free full DPS mdoe.