Hey there, I've always had trouble with soloing large groups of devilites, especially once they have been promoted. I am a swordmaster. I can handle any other monster group in the game, but this monster family has proven really tricky for me to figure out. Does anyone have any tactical advice, besides the obvious use piercing weapon/shadow defense? Thank you!

I suppose I should clarify my issue: I know that interrupting these guys is really simple. I have trouble, though, in that their attack animation is so fast that I have no time to react. If I lower my guard to attack one devilite, then another one nearby might just break my back with an office chair. The chances of death by office chair multiply as the number of devilites in my vicinity increases. I need some way to attack while maintaining my defense.

I am working on the 8-1 missions, both of which feature fiends. The hardest encounter I've had yet is in the level where you pop blue cubes in the middle of a small area with a circle of spikes around you. The area is full of promoted devilites, your retreat is gated off, and the circle of spikes cuts down on your movement. I try to rush a corner to limit being surrounded and to aggro as few devilites as I can, but they are all so fast they follow me very easily, forcing me to run somewhere else where I aggro even more devilites. Pretty soon it's like animal house in an office, and they beat me like a broken printer.