Battle Tips: Terrain

In the various landscapes of Diablo III you don’t usually get to choose where to fight but rather fight where the demons and monsters find you. The type of places you fight in however, does offer its fair share of advantages and disadvantages and knowing these can be the difference between life and death for your character.

There are basically two types of battlefields you’re going to find yourself in: enclosed and open space.

Enclosed Spaces are, either because of man-made (fences, walls, etc.) or natural (rocks, trees, etc.) structures, forces your opponents into a bottle neck. Wikipedia defines a bottle neck as a term “taken from the 'assets are water' metaphor. As water is poured out of a bottle, the rate of outflow is limited by the width of the conduit of exit—that is, bottleneck’. Simply put, there’s not a whole lot of space to move.

This a classic military tactic most famously used by the Spartans against the overwhelming numbers of the Persian Empire. Taking advantage of a bottle neck 300 Spartans held off the Persian Army (supposedly composed of over one million soldiers but projected today to have been much smaller, around between about 100,000 and 150,000) in the Battle of Thermopylae. Because of the bottle neck, Persian Army was unable to use its superior numbers and the Spartans were able to hold their own for a while exploiting this advantage as well as their superior training and equipment.

By finding natural bottlenecks in the terrain and positioning yourself in the right place, your opponents will be forced to come at you 2-4 at a time, giving you a better than average chance of overcoming a horde which would have otherwise overwhelmed you in open space, attacking you from every direction. This is very helpful when you’re faced with monsters that can inflict high levels of damage since they can only attack you taking turns instead of all at once.

The drawback with contained spaces is that you can very well get trapped with no means of escape if you find yourself getting overwhelmed so pick your battles carefully and don’t bite on more than you can chew.

Open Spaces are environments which don’t have a lot of hindrance for movement and you’re pretty much free to run (or dash) in whichever direction you might choose. These kinds of terrain are ideal for hit and run tactics when battling multiple opponents. You can just pretty much deal damage, run away before the enemy can retaliate, and then swoop back in and repeat as needed.

A word of caution however, without a plan you’re bound to spread yourself too thin and get yourself killed in the process. If you’re not too careful, it’s easy to get surrounded by enemies (especially in cases where you’ve taken on more than you can fight effectively). If ever you find yourself in such a situation the best thing you can do is try to get away, regroup (if you’re with a party), and resume your tactic before you get killed.

That being said, this kind of tactic is best for characters with an overabundance of brute force (such as the Monk and the Barbarian), a high armor rating, and natural resistance to damage (both characters receive 25% less damage compared to the other characters). Plus it wouldn’t hurt if you’ve got armor and/or weapons that increase your regenerative capabilities.

Stack the odds in your favor as much as possible and don’t be afraid to run away if needed.

What battle tactic do you prefer?