Also check out the Mob Affixes page.
Champion mobs (mobs with blue or yellow names) are probably the hardest things you'll ever face in Diablo 3. You WILL die.
You WILL lose gold. Blizzard wasn't kidding when they said D3 was going to be hard.
Champions often come with several modifiers, or special buffs.
Learning to control these modifiers is the key to facing champion mobs in Diablo 3. This guide is purely based on personal experience after playing through NM and Hell and smashing my keyboard a million times.
General Strategy
- Kite, kite, kite - Just don't kite them into more enemies. Kite them into areas you've already explored. Give yourself some breathing space. Doorways are your friend.
- Skip the ones that you know you can't beat - Trying to kill an Arcane Enchanted Mortar Shielding champion is just a huge waste of time, exp, and gold. Have a teammate bait them, and another teammate run far ahead and away from the champions. The baiter will die and teleport to the teammate that escaped. Move on. The loot isn't even that good, especially in NM/Hell.
- Get some vitality - Yes I know you can do 6k dps as a demon hunter, but if you run around with 15k HP at hell you're just going to get one shotted and the repair costs will pile up like mad. Get at least 25K HP.
- Clear the room first, then focus on the champions - You don't want 20 mortars shooting at you.
How to deal with some of the most annoying modifiers:
- Shielding - The champion is shielded temporary - giving him invulnerability for an amount of time. Kite the champion mob when it's shielded, kill when it's not.
- Mortar - The champion will sporadically shoot out fireballs about 15 yards away from them. The trick to beating Mortar mobs is to stay close to them as their mortars don't have melee range capability.
- Arcane Enchanted - The champion will spawn arcane sentries, or spinny lightsabers that remain on the ground. Avoid these sentries at all cost. After they cast sentries, kite them away from the sentries and attack them.
- Plaque - This is actually an easy modifier once you understand it. The mob basically throws down a greenish circle wherever he walks. Don't stand in it. Same with Molten.
- Desecration - Fire circles will spawn under you. Step out of them.
- Frozen - The champions scatter freezing bombs all around it. If you don't get away fast enough you freeze and the monsters will 1 shot you. Watch out for the exploding orbs and it shouldn't be that hard.
- Fire Chains - Kite one of the three mobs and quickly kill it. The last two should be easycake. Don't touch the fire chains.
- Immune Minions - The elite has 3 henchmen who are invulnerable. Kill the main elite who isn't shielded and the rest will disappear.
- Immune minions - The minions that come with the champion don't take any damage, however they can still be CCed and still count as getting 'hit' for skills like Revenge. Do your best to separate the champion from the minions; they all die instantly when the champion does.
- Immune minions - Run away and / or rage quit.
