Sure if you have the Phantoms and the myriad of undeads chasing you you'd rather just run instead of looting every single undead. But if you can handle yourself against the phantoms why not go with the latter? I'd imagine all those undeads giving up a lot of crowns after you've finished defeating them. The phantom isnt' that difficult to kill, either.
So why not kill every single undead in a graveyard? Why does everyone prefer to run through it instead? It's a waste of 10 energy IMO.
Zoa: ... if you can handle yourself against the phantoms ...
Asking the question = giving the answer?
Four players can work together to take down each phantom in turn. They often don't spawn as a group, and if you defeat them as they appear, you should not encounter the entire group of four.
A party of four does not mean that combat is more difficult because it takes more time on your own to down a creature. Players should be working together, rather than squaring off against phantoms individually and hoping for the best. Don't try to solo in a group; you're being silly and will probably get whomped.
The only exception to this is when you begin a graveyard with a large group and someone leaves; the number of phantoms that spawn will remain the same. Being outnumbered by phantoms, I think the best course of action would be to run.
@JVoltage - I'm assuming most people PUG and you aren't always going to get that kind of teamwork, or experience. People get overwhelmed, groups get split up by mobs. Stuff happens. Mike Tyson said it best:
"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."
Because big boohoo crybabies can't find their testosterone to poke phantoms in the eye with a Divine Avenger.
This forum is really forcing double posts on me lately.
A party of four does not mean that combat is more difficult because it takes more time on your own to down a creature.
Normally, this is true, because normally monsters only get tougher, they don't get more numerous. And if they got more numerous but not stronger, teamwork could still come out way ahead. However, if you don't have four divine avengers it's hard to get the DPS going. A party of 4 in 4* gear in a T3 graveyard, with decent teamwork, is going to spend well over half of their time fighting phantoms. Since phantoms don't have drops, you never get healing from that fighting and yet it provides the chance to make mistakes and get hurt. Basically, you have to play a perfect game, every time, as well as be lucky to not get pincered by another phantom coming from out of your field of view.
Also, in T2 graveyards, teamwork absolutely compensates for the phantom's power, but in T3 they have a triple-shot and you have to swing -way- wide around to dodge it successfully (blocking it is suicide if there's more than one phantom alive at the time, viable if there's only one, at least with my shield.) That means you're taking more time. Time for the other phantoms timers to run out and create a perpetual phantom fight.
Now, I don't like to run, but in groups bigger than 2, I'm not having a lot of luck with fighting through no matter how good our teamwork is. With duos, it's still iffy... unless the other person has a DA of course.
Still, if you have to have -one particular weapon- to survive a level that can appear randomly in any strata.... that's not good.
I'm in favor of extending the phantom timer with each additional member of the group. Even if I become perfect at the T3 phantom fighting techniques, I don't -want- to spend more than half of my graveyard time fighting phantoms. They're annoying. I learned to beat them in T2, and that didn't make fighting them any less annoying, just less deadly, and I'm getting better at beating them in T3 too... and they're even -more- annoying with that wide curse shot and doubling the amount of time spent dodging and blocking.
No, you do not have to dodge wide to dodge the three sword charge. You have to dodge just as far as you had to for the single sword, and no further or one of the outer swords will hit you.
There's a phantom for each player present.
With a full party, that's four phantoms.
Plus, enemy health up-scales with the number of players present.
That's four harder-to-knock-out phantoms.
As a result, it's often uncertain that you'll actually survive to the elevator if you try to clear everything out in a full party.