Thread: Monster types that cause problems FAQ

I've decided to start an interactable FAQ about monster types that tend to be hard and kill your character a lot. In here I include the types/ranks for each monster types, their monster heroes that I came across (feel free to suggest any more if you've seen them), and the main part - strategies on how to defeat them that can help new players. You can submit your own strategies in this thread and I will add them on here (and give you credit), but however some rules:
1) Try to keep them as short as possible 2) Try not to repeat a lot of what was said already by other users and 3) Base your strategies mostly on Epic and Legendary difficulty (or at least act 3 and 4 normal, not any earlier).

Act 1 - Greece
Centaurs
Types:
Marauder
Trapper
Elder
Ranger

Heroes:
Sergos Longstride
Sildor Barb Net
Mulgor Flamespear
Panos - Lord of the Briarwood

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
Well Centaurs tend to be fast, so you can’t outrun them and therefore I think melee players will find it easier against them than the casting and bow ones. Ranger types tend to cast ‘Study prey’ very often and so it is good to have piercing resistance relatively high. With Elder Centaurs, move away from the area where they placed battle standard as it will help to take them down quicker. The Elder centaurs will tend to always be in a group with other centaurs, so be careful there and don’t draw too much aggro.
{Poinas}
The elder centaurs tend to stun you with war horn, so it's good to have some stun resist.
{lord demion}
For fast moving monsters like scorpos, maenads, and centaurs: It is often good for a caster to trigger the mob and drop an AOE attack at thier own feet. The creatures charge quickly and by targeting yourself (or your pet if it trigers them) they will likely be in the area by the time it goes off.

Maenads
Types:
Vanguard
Tracker
Huntress
Stalker
Sorceress
Rogue
Shadowblade
Alchemist
Scout

Heroes:
Nenea Sharpclaw
Nymea Swiftshot

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
Maenads have a relatively low health, but they are very fast and agile, making slow projectiles completely useless against them. Usually weapons that can put them down in one or two hits are the most useful otherwise Maenads will start running away and while you play cat and mouse with one of them, the others will shoot you down in no time. The sorceresses and alchemist types really love to cast lightning bolt, so perhaps some lightning resistance is good there, as lightning bolt is hard to dodge.
{Poinas}
Maenads do some poison dmg, which can be deadly especially with x3/xmax mod + low psn res.
{lord demion}
For fast moving monsters like scorpos, maenads, and centaurs: It is often good for a caster to trigger the mob and drop an AOE attack at thier own feet. The creatures charge quickly and by targeting yourself (or your pet if it trigers them) they will likely be in the area by the time it goes off. Sandwraiths and Maenads - You can spread your attacks from one wraith to another and they seem to retreat pull back. This can allow you to keep the mob busy running away rather than attacking you.

Act 2 - Egypt
Scorpos
Types:
Scorpos
Scorpos Manslayer

Heroes:
Kaalt Speartail
Errak Bonecarver
Sartt Soulrender
Beast of Legend (quest)

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
These guys tend to go down slowly and they can deal quite a fair bit of damage when in a group. Perhaps the attack you should watch out for the most is when they sting with their tail as that rips off a lot of health. Their heroes are not that special, so no need to worry if you see one.
{lord demion}
For fast moving monsters like scorpos, maenads, and centaurs: It is often good for a caster to trigger the mob and drop an AOE attack at thier own feet. The creatures charge quickly and by targeting yourself (or your pet if it trigers them) they will likely be in the area by the time it goes off.

Sandwraiths
Types:
No types

Heroes:
none yet

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
I only see these guys guarding random bone piles in the middle of the deserts. Hence it gives you time to pull out a skill while they are still coming out of the sand. Good area attacks usually work. They are not so high on health but damage-wise they can kick butt, especially that they attack altogether majority of the time.
{Minervian}
I would always recommend warhorn against sandwraiths - they love to surround you when you hit the bone pile, so I just head for the bone pile, *let them come near* then I blast them with warhorn. It works even in legendary, so my warfare characters have no issues with sandwraiths. Or Formicids for that matter.
{lord demion}
Sandwraiths and Maenads - You can spread your attacks from one wraith to another and they seem to retreat pull back. This can allow you to keep the mob busy running away rather than attacking you.
{claudius}
A good trick for rogues is to lay a trap when the wraiths are spinning up from the ground. The trap (if it has multi bolt upgrade) will pepper the wraiths with missiles which doesn't kill them immediately but does cause them to run aimlessly in circles (not attacking).
{Boombaye}
If you're a Conqueror with a high Batter, you can beat down 1 of the Sand Wraiths before it has a chance to hit. Magma beetles must die first. Use Batter to put down its health.
{Gasconron}
Although I would agree with most people that they definitely do hurt in high lvls, I think they are easier to care off compared to the other listed critters, just as long you know when & where they will be popping up. It would be to a newbie's interest to re-run the desert regions in normal to familiarize themselves with the pop-up location of sandies. If you have a pet use it to spawn them. Also, they can be spawned in 2-3's which is less threatening in xmax. So if you want to be more careful you can just make "mouse click intervals" close to your previous one when dealing with them. The worst case scenario is that you don't know a pop-up is in that area and you spawn all of them.

Act 3 - Orient
Tigermen
Types:
Prowler
Elite Prowler
Warlord
Pack Leader
Sorceror
Elite Sorceror
Archer
Elite Archer

Heroes:
Jun Shan – Warrior Monk
Miao Miao
Shao Hsin the Wanderer

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
Tigermen in my opinion can be some of the most difficult challengers. Why is that you may ask? Well because of general success at teamwork. Their pack leaders/warlords are very durable and deliver a lot of damage, plus they put battle standard which makes them and their teammates stronger. And the sorcerors are pretty durable too, unlike the mage types of many other monsters. Their monster heroes are some of the strongest I’ve ever encountered. I would definitely retreat if I saw one and then aggro a few tigermen at a time.
{Minervian}
One thing I could say though is that a) whenever you see a Tigerman mage, ALWAYS assume there is a Tigerman Pack Leader nearby. b) When you see a Tigerman boss, always assume there is ANOTHER boss nearby. They love to come in pairs.
{lord demion}
Tigermen - The main trick to these guys is the fact that the heroes are always behind the rest of the mob. You need either to draw the mundanes away from the leaders or charge past them to get the leaders up front. The battle standard and spell casting will hammer you. If you do trigger the boss while the mob is hitting you, drop an AOE attack or target the boss right away.

Dragonians
Types:
Headhunter
Firetalon
Wyrm-Mage
Ravager
Lancer
Deathlance
Frost Scourge
Warlock

Heroes:
Sargoth Manbane
Vort the Red
Tarthon Na’Arak

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
These monsters have got to be the most annoying enemies in the game. You will almost always see them in a big group. The headhunters are not too bad, but the others do a lot of damage so you have to be moving all the time. If a group contains a Wyrm-mage then take him out first and as fast as possible, or he will stun you with one of his spells allowing others to finish you off. A lot of Dragonian types seem to be using a spear or a bow, so I suppose piercing resistance can help out there.
{hacknslash}
My few cents on the specific Dragonians with the Take Down in Wusao Mountain which do tend to surprise each time. Sorry not sure on names.

First hint is caution. If you hear that Dragonian whine sound, you should not rush to the battle but try to draw aggro in pairs if possible. Weapons are important.

I ran across a great weapon for my Conqueror in Epic and even though the attack was slow, the effect was exactly what was needed: Crippling Rhapalon of Agony. Such a nice sound! Attack slow was 66% for 4 seconds plus 15% for 3 seconds, plus a slow effect charm bonus I equipped. This meant those normally nasty Take Down spear guys could only get in one hit and then they were nearly frozen in time after I hit them, enough for me to decimate. Felt great! Others toon types could benefit with a certain amount of slow, but melee, especially dual-wielders and any other lower defense types, will really breeze by with a bit of caution.
{Boombaye}
Dragonians...Deathlance and Headhunters can be lured 1 by 1 away from the pack. Fire Talons pose a nasty threat with their flamebreath. Deathlances seem pairs or trios. Mages don't seem well armoured, a well placed batter can put one down fast.
{Gasconron}
*melee approach; if you have no patience in kiting and you feel like leeroying the whole mob.
*warfare is a must IMO should you try this approach
In xmax, the standard dragonian mob composition is "x-type + 2 mages". Agro the group and warhorn, dragonians are very susceptible to stun even in Legendary. With a decent investment in the warhorn tree you should be able to shred an xmax mob even before stun expires (firetalon mobs maybe an exception, you will need to do 2 rounds of this on a Legendary FT mob). Kill of the mages first, but be wary of their reflection spell that looks like a yellow heat shield, it should expire after 2-3 secs. If your toon has UBER DPS, this is definitely something you have to be cautious about.

Yerrens
Types:
Eagle-eye
Tribesman
Thunderfist
Spiritmaster
Clan Chieftain
Warchief

Heroes:
Wolfbiter – Clan hunt master
Swiftstream – Chieftain of 5 clans
Mountainstrider – Tribal Elder

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
You won’t meet these guys much. There are only two places where they are abundant and that’s all. Mostly watch out for the Clan Chieftains and the heroes, because those usually dual wield and can pack a punch.

Act 4 - Hades
Anourans
Types:
Pygmy
Hunter
Tribesman
Witch Doctor
Mighty Bullfrog
Elder Hunter
Elder Tribesman
Honoured Witch Doctor

Heroes:
Chief Bullfrog Longbellow
C.B. Gleek the Nimble

Stretegies:
{Matseb2611}
Anourans tend to be pretty annoying if you ask me. They go down very quickly, but they tend to always be in massive groups and so surround you in seconds before you notice how low your health is already. Because there are so many of them and each goes down quickly, I’ll suggest some form of crowd control. Area attacks (AoE), dual wield and using shield as a weapon can help you there a lot.

Nightstalkers & Anteoks
Types:
Grunt
Archer
Underling
Shadow Lord
Shadow Caster
Anteok – Protector
Anteok – Forest Lord
Anteok - Archon

Heroes:
Minkah – Lord of Fury
Elatos – Lord of the Greenwood
Kafele the Silent
Myrto of the Shadow Grove
Syrreln (quest)

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
I don’t know why, but big groups of these guys tend to create problems for my characters, especially the Shadow Lords. Perhaps this is to do with their shadow surge attack, which I think can be countered with vitality resistance. Occassionally some groups of nightstalkers will have anteoks to aid them and anteoks are very durable, but slow, so you can kite them. Also watch out when they raise their arms because that means that they will shoot out poison darts in all directions.
{Arkeyla}
On Nightstalkers - I advise using an AoE attack on a group of these before they surround you, then taking out any nearby Shadow Lord without getting too close, if possible. Then, if your AoE didn't kill the others fast enough, they'll only need one or two hits at the most to finish them.

Lamias
Types:
Lancer
Ravager
Dark Ranger
Clan Mistress

Heroes:
Damaris the Cruel
Hilaera Stonerunner

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
These creatures are a lot similar to centaurs. They are fast, ugly and annoying. They won’t cause many problems on normal and epic, but on legendary they can be a great pain, because you can easily get surrounded by a swarm of lancers who spear you to death if you have a low pierce resistance. So movement speed and pierce resistance would be your friends here. Also some area stunning skills such as war horn and distort reality can be very helpful when dealing with swarms of lamias. You might also want to consider poison resistance against dark rangers who shoot poisoned arrows.

Empusas
Types:
Venomancer
Pyromancer
Frost Reaver
Soul Carver

Heroes:
Helike – Dark Temptress
Proseia (quest)
Thyia (quest)
Canace – the Serpent Queen (quest)
Metriche (quest)
Night’s Mistress (quest)

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
All empusas are casters, so to fight them you basically have to use techniques that you would use against most other mage enemies, like dodging their staff attacks, using charge moves, stunning or disabling them in some way or taking them out from a distance. And watch out for life and energy draining ring that soul carver types create around you. It can really hurt if you stay inside it for too long.

Pale formicids
Types:
Soldier
Captain
Priestess
High Priestess
Corporal
Phalanx Commander

Heroes:
Queen K’kiitr
General Ptch’k’k’ath the Manslayer

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
Most of them are straight forward to defeat. However some can cause problems. First of all the captains/phalanx commanders. They use onslaught and therefore their damage output builds up and they deliver more damage with each consecutive hit. I find it useful to disable/stun them once I enter combat with pale formicids. Therefore moves such as shield charge, distort reality, etc come handy here. With priestesses it is easy to tell when they are going to shoot at you, so just dodge left and right, especially the lightning arcs as they can deal a lot of damage if you don’t have good lightning resistance. Also note that they will try to run away if you come too close to them. I also find pale formicid heroes to be very challenging. Queen K’kiitr is a storm based hero and will attempt a lot of cold and lightning attacks. General Ptch’k’k’ath is a fire based hero. Just keep that in mind.

Machae
Types:
Archer
Scout
Guard
Master Archer
Grandmaster Archer
Warden
High Warden

Heroes:
Sentinel Kar-Nahk
Warlord Aorg
Sentinel Nok-Hai – Guardian of the Necklace
Envoy Kor-Lhrut (quest)

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
This daemon guys are very fast and can deal huge amounts of damage when in groups, but tend to go down quickly. Therefore any forms of crowd control and AoE attacks that you have use on them. Also any area attacks that stun, slow down and/or disable can really help you especially with Grandmaster archers and the High Wardens who are very tough. Also beware of machae heroes. They tend to have an impressive arsenal of special attacks and do not go down easily. If you saw one then try not to aggro too many machae soldiers while fighting them.
{Gasconron}
* melee approach, can also work as an AoE setup for mages, but not when you are playing a hardcore char.
* Hades' Palace and Domains leading to ToJ; won't work on open areas.
Use a peek-a-boo style of approach. Since most machae mobs are spread out, approach a mob (sometimes you will have to get in deep to get as much critters as possible) and immediately retreat. This will cause the agroed mob to kite after you and cluster in a bunch when you stop. You will want to "cluster" them in an area where the line of site of archers are blocked (preferably behind a pillar, or a "door-type" opening ). This advantage will enable you to do a couple of things depending on your profession:
* Warfare - warhorn, for some reason machaes are very susceptible to this and i usually rip most of the mob apart after the stun duration expires.
* Defense - the clustered mob is a setup for your Pulverize
* Rogue - Flashpowder and you'll see a couple of machaes
* Hunting - study prey
Then, feel free to tear them apart...
{The Fallen One}
Here's a tip for Machae. Get War Horn and Doom Horn maxed. If you are a Spell Breaker, get Necrosis as well. War Horn will keep those infernal archers from running around and take a nice chunk out of their health. Not to mention the fact that a maxed War Horn as a decent radius. This probably could go with Gascaron's tip of hiding behind a pillar.

Gigantes
Types:
Vanguard
Armorite
Vindicator
Dactyl

Heroes:
Warden of Souls (quest)
Ephialtes

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
Gigantes are huge, powerful and enduring enemies. You just have to take extra care when fighting them. Some will tend to perform shield charge and stun you. By far the most dangerous type is Dactyl. There are numerous strategies on how to defeat them, but putting them to use is very hard as Dactyls have huge amounts of health, defensive ability, high % chance of dodging projectiles and very devastating damage. From long range they will prefer to shoot an energy wave at you which does huge amount of damage and is hard to avoid if you fight in narrow spaces. Perhaps the best idea is to find wide open space and fight them there. It will make life A LOT easier. Secondly is to know when to retreat. And thirdly is to just hope for the best.
{lord demion}
Dactyls - Everyone's favorite!!! They are particularly vulnerable to sleep, vitality/life leech, and fear effects. (They're also vulnerable to bleed, but they'll kill you before bleeding to death.) Also thier wave attack will not get used if you charge them to meele range. Now normally this is a bad idea for a caster or bow user, but frankly it is better than getting killed in one shot by the blue wave of death. Bolstering defenses does not particularly help here. The blue wave is 2000 physical plus 800 lightning with 0 recharge. (with 2 hits per wave) It does so much physical that your armor will be mostly useless. Damage resistance and damage absorbtion will work, but they're fairly rare. Also, if using damage from anything but the ones listed above you will want to have resistance reduction. On legendary the Dactyls are immune to almost all of the main damage types and they have 75% dodge versus missiles. (this includes most spells that deliver damage by projectiles.) Lastly, if you are having troubles with them, I encourage you to just run pass them. They typically do not notice you till you reach them and by then you're gone.

Universal (all acts)
Skeletons & Liches
Variants:
Awakened
Desecrated
Exhumed
Gilded
Embalded
Swamp skeletons
Abyssal liches
Shadow skeletons

Types:
Archer
Acolyte
Hoplite
Captain
Assassin
Soldier
Flame liche/lord
Frost liche/lord
Spirit liche
Warrior
Guardian
Plague Lord
Warlock

Heroes:
Frost Marrow
Rot Bone
Cinder Bone
Bonelord
Fenuku – Martyr of Crimson Brotherhood
Xenokrates of the Shadowblade
Ji Bao the Dishonoured
Theophrastos the Plump
Polypas, prince of blade (quest)
Menon, prince of bow (quest)
Aristeus, prince of staff (quest)
Undead tyrant, Leucus I (quest)

Strategies:
{Matseb2611}
Skeletons are the most common enemies in the game and there are many varieties of them. Perhaps the most dangerous of them are the liches. They are relatively durable and their staff attacks have a relatively high elemental damage. Also some of them in legendary Wusao mountain will tend to use spellbreaker a lot that disrupts your skill use. Perhaps skill disruption resistance can help there. One of the advantages of undead in general is that you cannot life leech off them or perform any form of vitality based attacks. They can’t even bleed or feel poison.
They have a handful of basic heroes, which shouldn’t be much of a problem providing you have enough resistance to the element that hero is special at.
Also watch out for Leucus I on epic and legendary. He can greatly slow you down with his hamstring skill, foiling any attempts of a retreat.
I recently came across a hero called Xenokrates of the Shadowblade and this guy was very tough. This is because of the shadow projectiles that he shoots in all directions every now and then. I think they deal vitality damage. If this is true then they deal monstrous damage as my vitality resistance was above 100% when I encountered him and my life was almost depleted in no time after receiving a couple of shots.
{Minervian}
When you begin your ascent of Olympus, the first bunch of monsters you meet are quite likely to be a deadly combination of 1) Gilded Undead Mages + 2) Elder Limos.

This group, if they spawn are particularly dangerous because 1) the mages will Spellshock you - important buffs you rely on, eg. Heart of Oak, Deathchill, Earth Enchantment are switched off and you may not even notice it in the heat of battle.

As if this weren't bad enough the Elder Limos will descend on you, they are fast, leech your life and slow you down. Frankly quite deadly.

If you are ever caught in this mess, try a (Divine) Scroll of Ice Nova to freeze the lot, then quickly kill the Mages, then the Limosi. Otherwise, try to draw them to you in small groups rather than fight as big group just before the right turn on the platform.

Above all, pls don't go in with little life leech/vitality resistance.

Limos
Types:

Heroes:

Strategies:
All coming soon

_____
More updates will be coming up soon.

Sandwraiths in act 2! Ouch they hurt.

Machae Archers are probably the worst kind of enemies for any class. Especially the Champions.

The Elder Centaurs have Doom Horn as well...
And some elders only use Regrowth...

Personnally strategies will depend a lot on your mastery, but one strategy I love to use is equipping one or two accursed jewelry to drain the mana from mobs and bosses so they can't use their abilities. For me it always solve a lot of problems with casters and heroes.

I`ve found THE monster which is the absolute killer! Its so bad you`ll just end up killng yourself:

Say Cheese!!

LoL Devoras! That's an excellent picture. Do you want me to add Sanwraiths to the list? I can add any requested monster types but within reason, e.g. I won't be adding satyrs or carrior crows for example, they're too easy compared to all other monster types.

So, were those the 'ready to submit' strategies, Poinas? Oh my bad, I'll correct 'prey'.

I'll be updating this daily until it's completed. Today added my Anouran and Yerren strategies as well as 3 more Anouran types.

Add sandwraiths. The piercing (?) damage they blow is paaainfull.