Orc patrols... anyone else having trouble?

[PowerWyrm]

My current Yeek Mindslayer had no trouble killing anything... until he started to encounter orc patrols in the Far East. So far I've lost one life for each ambush I met...
How are you supposed to deal with high pyromancers/cryomancers, elite berserkers/fighters, corruptors and blood mages ALL AT ONCE on an open level???

[edge2054]

Curse of Vulnerability ate my Wardens Blood of Life (well CoV and how ever many other orcs attacked me when I got ambushed).

So yeah, they can be hard that's for sure.

[Susramanian]

As with most classes, the first order of business is to get behind cover as best you can. Superhuman Leap is quite helpful here. If you haven't started filling out the Augmented Mobility tree, hopefully you have a controlled phase door rune. If you need to buy time to get behind cover, you can spike all your shields instantly to give you five somewhat safe turns. Absorption Mastery will bring them off cooldown again so you're not defenseless when they wear off.

Once you're behind cover, spiking Charged Aura produces a chain lightning that can easily blast enemies out of line of sight. Use Projection Mastery and you get to fire off another one. Between chain lightnings, melee anything that comes near. If you can't catch those new tricky AI casters and you don't have Augmented Mobility, spike auras to chain lightning or heat beam them.

As for the question in the title, the answer is yes. Those patrols are brutal. They're especially bad when you first hit the Far East.

[Freddybear]

1. There are generally enough trees to use for cover to break the archers and casters' LOS so they can't just blast you every turn.

2. Kill the blood mages and necros first. They're the ones with the nasty diseases and curses that enable the other orcs to kill you quicker.

3. You don't have to kill all the orcs, you just have to make it to the exit. Controlled phase door?

[paboperfecto]

This may go away at some point but in the current beta move from dungeon stair to dungeon stair when possible on the world map. Wait on a stairway for all visible patrols to "attack" you and then move on to the next one. Currently they do nothing if you are on a stairway.

[HesDeadJim]

I hope the patrols get tweaked, right now they seem like one of the major roadblocks for quite a few characters. My warrior rouge hadn't lost a life until he went east and had to contend with multi-pyro/necro patrols.

[HenWen]

By the time you make it to the east you should have at least 2-3 invisibility runes. Keep them equipped until you have the abilities you need to tackle the patrols yourself. Invis is the best defense against ranged characters in open areas.

[Wombat]

I don't get to play so much that I get many characters east. When I do, I find the patrols much more challenging than the actual dungeons. From what I'm hearing, I'm not the only one. Is this really the intended dynamic of the east? I'm not saying that they should be as trivial as the western encounters (those should be beefed up), but perhaps tone them down such that the slightest tactical mistake doesn't always result in death.