Hey guys, threw together a short guide for elite group hunts. Its a work in progress, feedback is welcome.

First thing to remember about elite fights is they are endurance battles. Everyone wants to get that big melee weapon hit (backed up by a damage orb) or big melee spell hit (Tier 1 spells: Wave, Whip, etc are melee spells), but in the long run you are better off keeping your team alive.

Checklist

A: Balm of your choice, use before jumping in the fight (blue potion tab in the store) (These last 40 minutes, in a perfect world you're part of a hunting group that pops these potions and then wrecks face on several elites in a row, maximizing your investment)

B: Seven Glyph of Life on belt (better then potions since most of your time will be spent watching the elite, the effects stack, you can heal others with glyphs and you can carry two additional glyphs on your belt over health/fortitude potions)

C: Thrity to fourty Orbs of weakness or retribution set to auto (link them to your belt from your backpack, then mouse over them to set to auto) (Ideally everyone should be hitting the Elite with Weakness or Ret every attack. Yes you don't get the big numbers, but on the plus side, the elite doesn't either. You've just sacrificed a small jump in your damage in order to keep everyone alive to the finish line, good teamwork, way to go) (The debate between Weakness and Ret isn't cut and dry. Weakness reduces less then Ret per stack; It last longer however allowing for more total stacks, making for a greater total reduction. Ret on the other hand adds a damage per round element to the orb discussion. I'm of the opinion that as long as everyone in your group in on board with hitting with ret every round, then its probably better since you've now convinced the elite to kill itself to the tune of 15% of its damage every round, but if you have a few holdouts (I'm looking at you damage orb zerks) then weakness is probably better due to the greater total damage reduction (6% over 5 attacks vrs 7% over 3 attacks).

D: Shards of Ice (Water tier2 damage over time spell) Now i know what you're thinking "I'm a zerk, i can't access water magic!" Try again you raging maniac! In order to access water magic, all you need to do is unequip your current pendant (have to do this first, since if you try to just equip a new pendant the game won't let you) then equip a witcher or paladin pendant and there you go, water magic. Now this means you have to spend precious resources on a spell you'll only use in elite group hunting, if that's a deal breaker understood. Chaos DoT is an acceptable stand in (but really what are you going to use chaos Dot on other then this, so if you're at the point where you are ready to buy chaos DoT, buy Ice instead pretty please). Now that i'm off that tangent back to why this is a part of the checklist. Works like this, if you're using Orb'd melee hits each time the elite looks your way, you're going to have a lot of extra mana lying around (because your mana generates even when someone else is fighting the elite), but fear not, Shards of Ice (and all tier 2 DoT spells) can be used on the elite even its fighting another player. This makes it a great mana dump, and a great way to up your damage per round while waiting for your turn to swing at the big guy once maybe twice. (Not to mention the random effects on Ice can be amazing, including but not limited to a debuff that reduces the elites next hit by 55%)

P.S. It might seem like i'm picking on Zerks throughout this guide, but that's just simply not the case. Truth is your tiny Zerk minds just can't grasp sarcasm, stupid Zerks. ">