Dealing with +reflect elites?

[lanceuppercut]

Prep (99% of gear setups) > Gloom > Prep (with 4-piece Nat's) > Marked For Death

With Nat's I recommend Gloom, Special Recipe, Tumble, and open slot. For my open, I use Bat Companion because I love me some Multishot, and it gives me enough hatred regen to put Frost Arrow on my left-click; however, Caltrops is a more fool-proof snare against things that Frost Arrow can't touch.

The thing about dropping Prep is you can't spam SS as much as you used to when you had Prep, because SS is one ability that Nat's regen actually can't keep up with, and with Prep gone your max Discipline pool is much smaller. You'll need to lean on either Gloom or Vault in most situations where you used to SS; Nat's is great at supporting both of those abilities. You can't go totally glass-cannon; like a Wizard using Force Armor, you want to grab just enough defense where you aren't killed too fast when you have Gloom up. Generally speaking, you SS only to break CC on Jailer or Nightmarish (or Frozen if you Vaulted poorly), so Special Recipe is the rune to go for here.

Actually thats a very good call on special recipe, all I use SS for is breaking CC as it is cheaper to vault/tumble away for the same cost, I had by default simply picked lingering fog.

I though I had posted my build but I gues I didn't, it's:
evasive fire/cover fire
impale/overpenetration
caltrops/tortuous ground
vault/tumble
SS/lingering fog
prep/battle scars

It's quite a defensive build but I am playing HC, impale's main reason to make the cut is shielding and invunerable packs. Being able to stop more or less any monster dead, even if only briefly means it's so useful even in Inferno, making caltrops tough to drop.

[lanceuppercut]

try smoke screening before throwing your impales. repeat when disc is up.

I've never been successful in using SS to quickly go invunerable before taking damage, it's too risky in HC mode and my reactions aren't that good, if I was then SS then impale would be perfect but when I use impale I tended to dump my whole hatred pool at once which is 5 impales. I don't feel comfortable enough with such a short duration to use it as a way to prevent damage.

[wcparker]

Cluster arrows works better with Smoke Screen. I pop smokescreen, hit with 2-3 Cluster Arrows (depending on passives), and vault away. Wait for discipline to recharge and repeat.

[lanceuppercut]

Messed about with SP/Gloom a bit more and now *really* wanting to fit it in somehow, considering dropping vault but that would mean getting to the max of 25 MS which i don't have the items to do so without dropping functionality.

It's annoying for me, that SS will be used maybe 1% of the time but that 1% is when it's needed most for escaping frozen as escaping jailer isn't as essential as you can still fire when jailed and DPS mobs down before they get to you. Whereas SP/Gloom even in Inferno, has much better life recovery than I could ever get with LoH items.

[Dethklok]

Messed about with SP/Gloom a bit more and now *really* wanting to fit it in somehow, considering dropping vault but that would mean getting to the max of 25 MS which i don't have the items to do so without dropping functionality.

I thought SS didn't prevent damage from Reflects Damage, but I could be wrong.

In softcore I'd say to drop SS actually, since it actually has nothing on Gloom except breaking CC. A splash of CC reduction gear could essentially cover the same weakness.

In hardcore, however... I think you're right and you'll need to drop Vault. If you want to make it work without getting legendary gear, I'd recommend using Tactical Advantage in combination with SS to get a temporary +60% move speed for those "oh crap I'm gonna die" moments, making it an expensive pseudo-Vault for those situations where you need to GTFO (the speed rune on SS actually isn't that bad for situations like this). Evasive Fire could also trigger it if you were already in melee/near-melee range.

If you go with that plan, do not drop Evasive Fire for any reason. In addition to being your no-or-low-hatred attack, it's a pseudo-Vault and a way to get out of being surrounded; popping SS when you can't actually move out of your location isn't going to help you. Additionally, keep a particular mind to avoid getting caught in a corner. If you're surrounded AND cornered, there is no angle at which Evasive Fire will get you un-surrounded. Even plain walls are dangerous; although you can Evasive Fire in one direction or the other, doing so will usually back you into a corner, and you'll need to manually move out of it before getting surrounded. For HC all of this talk is pretty scary, but if you pop Caltrops before you Evasive Fire out of a surround, you should have time to properly manuever yourself before you're at risk of being surrounded again. Just keep in mind that you no longer have Vault, you can't be greedy about positioning anymore, and if you go for DPS instead of keeping a mind out for corners that could be the death of you.

The most dangerous corners are Waller corners. As soon as you find yourself Walled, get out before the situation gets any worse. If the entrance appears blocked, try to get on the other side of any one monster (popping SS to walk on top of plagued/arcane if you have to) and Evasive Fire through the blockade. It is possible to get in an unwinnable situation against Fast Wallers without Vault; you might want to just forget Gloom and avoid Reflects Damage elites altogether.

If you like Overpenetration, I highly recommend Multishot - Fire at Will. It does less damage to single targets, but costs less hatred per shot, does great DPS against mobs, is very friendly to poor aiming (such as when stutter-stepping very fast), has Evasive Fire-like instantaneous travel time, and -- the key property you care about -- it goes through invulnerable minions to hit anything behind them.

I'm a Hooked Spines guy myself, as I feel 80% movement debuff for whole 6 seconds is stronger than 2 seconds of 100% debuff; however, you might be using Torturous Ground a specific counter to things like Act 3 Soul Lickers, so I can see why a HC character might go Torturous.

[lanceuppercut]

I will give multishot a stab and as much as i want SP/gloom, it doesn't outweigh my perceived usefulness of the skills I'm using (I did play around with spike traps but unless i built specifically for it, it didn't seem that much more powerful than an impale), met a few more packs of +reflect and learning to pace myself, not do my usual tactic of unloading 5 impales into the crowd asap but instead use potions and prep to heal me up mid battle, as I suppose it should be doing.

Do miss seeing +2000 numbers in green on the odd occasion though. Dropping a 70% emerald for a +300 LoH doesn't seem like a good enough trade-off imo.

I do actually tend to drop a caltrop at my feet and make a stand and let EF backflip me when they get too close, I thought bait the trap would be useful but it again goes back to the stun and the time it affords me vs fast monsters (both naturally and +fast)

I'm running the skills mentioned earlier along with tactical advantage/archery/steady aim.

edit: it's nice but not for me for two reasons, 1) as it changes the attack to lightning, it renders my +cold puzzle ring less useful and 2) with evasive and multi, I have no single target attack which impale was. Evasive with TA is just too damned good!