Anti-Swarming Kung Fu

[Crystalion]

Melee classes are dealing with a single dominant, troublesome situation in 1.10 beta:  Swarming.  The improved speed and AI of the monsters are combining to have characters activate and be surrounded in the blink of an eye.  In Hell, this is by far the deadliest situation that arises from various murderous monster types.

Cool, ain't it? "The Monsters Strike Back; Diablo part V"

Holy Freeze, especially once they allowed everyone to get it on their act 2 nm merc, was just too powerful. While they publicly claim a "no nerf" policy on the patch, I think anyone who studies the changes will agree that quite a few things got *deliberately* nerfed. Having been one of the original Holy Freeze advocates in D2C I am nonetheless pleased to see it now has an active downside (monster activation, LEB spark triggering).

So, more directly to your problem. as a Paladin... while Sanctuary, Holy Freeze and Smite are great monster controls available to the Paladin, the first two don't work vs. all monsters, and the last is a bit slow to control a crowd when you are swarmed.

Since your partner's Valk (AI) is so lackadaisical and Paladin's don't have (non-Hireling) minions I should perhaps mention that this swarm/activation problem is even more common for some other classes with summonables (e.g. I love my Shadow Master, but her nickname is "Looking for Trouble", which is rather opposite to my usual style of play).

So, assuming you can't/won't run away to fight another day, you need to import one of several (easily acquired) abilities for this situation via items. Generally speaking, crowd control on regulars and minions is pretty easy. So the real horror is having Aura bosses next to Champion packs (afaik Champs follow the same default exemption rules as bosses for the various crowd control effects). If your Smite has enough stun duration, then that would be my suggest to control Champs. But for swarms of regulars and minions...

Some candidates:
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(switching to/having) knockback/blind or 100%flee with Zeal (at least to get them going) can be very effective
(I don't mention freezes target because, in hell, the duration typically is way too short)
weapon switch to items with charges of Confuse, cast, switch back
weapon switch to items with charges of Dim Vision, cast, switch back
weapon switch to items with charges of Terror, cast, switch back
runeword helm with charges of Cloak of Shadows (naturally followed by isolate/assassinate boss(es))


Misc. notes:
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I don't list Attract for the same reason I don't mention Convert: in a swarm situation Confuse is going to be vastly quicker to throw off and be effective. Additionally Attract can not be overridden with another curse, making it potentially a liability.

If Smite carries Blind these days but you have a low Stun duration on Smite then that might "fix" it for crowd control without bumping your Smite skill points/duration.

Another factor to consider, is that with swarms you are more likely to be splitting your damage up, both due to the chaos and as a side effect of monster control. This puts a huge premium on the elimination of monster regeneration through poison (harder these days due to low durations), Open Wounds (better these days due to 8 second duration and much higher damage) and Prevent Monster Heal. If you look at the new uniques and runewords you'll see a lot of OW/PMH--Blizzard is broadcasting a hint there.

Naturally I omitted the exceptional unique grave wand Blackhand Key with charges of Grim Ward because I figured that is a bit hard to acquire (fyi, items with charges of Confuse are very easy to come by in the shops) and also requires that first corpse to get it going.

Also worthy of note is that items with charges of Lifetap and Teleport could sometimes save a melee class a world of grief (Lifetap ignores all the norm/nm/hell difficultly and monster leech nerfs--only physical resist is relevant to the 50% physical damage returned as life). Lifetap is easy to purchase (for weaponswitch) in shop. The new gambling %s make going for a rare Circlet/Coronet and rare Amulet very doable, and (level 48 req.) you can get Teleport there (without having to use a weapon switch to a sorc staff).

I do not know if imbue would allow you to hunt for a weapon switch item with, say, both charges of lifetap and confuse, but that would be pretty handy. Barbs have it "easy" in this regard, as they can weapon switch to a dual wield (daggers/throwing daggers) for dual temporary charges. Of course they already have an arsenal of crowd control skills, so it hardly seems fair, eh? ;)

IMHO, a big being-swarmed win for the Paladin in v1.10 beta is that you can get a huge passive DR boost now with Holy Shield if your build had points to spare for Defiance. Monsters have pretty good AR but not 4xAR cheese anymore, so, as far as I can tell, a max block high DR Paladin ought to be a pretty sturdy tank (for, say, being in the midst of a swarm and smiting them senseless--duration of stun again being key to allow time to get in your primary attacks).

Loved the screenshots. Hope you're having more fun than frustration.