What went wrong (leapslammers)?

First burst race today went really well, third ranger. Second one I died in a stupid way, mistake recognized and will be kept in mind.

The third however:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Sbgd-a_yw

I'm reaching out for help here because I want to avoid this kind of death. I reckon half my deaths in races are to leapslammers.

-Climb, Prisoner's Gate and (often) Ledge have lots of leapslammers. Aside from the fact that they randomly kill traps and desync like mad, they are actually a lethal threat whenever I stand still.
-I can't kill them all, it takes too much time and I need to progress if I want to push for the ladder.
-I can't completely ignore them, I need some kind of farm before brutus, and you don't survive prisoner's gate without killing mobs.
-Speccing the life nodes instead of the projectile damage is not an option. The impact on clearspeed is way too severe.
-I even had heart of oak. 30% stun avoidance.

I usually manage to get through, but my question is:
Is this kind of death really unavoidable? Is there really an x% chance to immediately die when you have 5 leapslammers on screen and perform any action other than running in a straight line?

How can I maintain my competitive edge while not taking these completely discouraging random deaths?

Kill the first pack of leapers before moving to the second one.

Use the QS to run past them.

Use a life flask when you get down to 2/3 health.

I considered the first pack to not be an issue (I did run right past it). Only one of them actually followed me, which is around what can be expected. He did make a difference here, but you don't know that in advance. I can't kill every pack of leapslammers (it already pains me to think of having to kill a pack of them with traps+poison arrow), and until I meet the second pack there's no need to. Going back to kill the first one would be even more dangerous once you pulled the second one.

Running past them with the quicksilver might have been option, but the issue still stands: I can't quicksilver every single pack of leapers, sometimes you need to kill things. As you saw, I did QS for the first pack, and seeing as the area exit was right ahead, I didn't want to waste my last charge (since using it means I shouldn't kill mobs but run in order not to waste it).

Indeed, I recognize that a life flask might've saved me. But I was doing exactly as you suggested (pot at 66%), the moment the issue arrived I still had 75%.



I guess the life flask part is something I can actually do differently. Immediately pot when you lose ~10% life around them, especially with full flasks.
Often the issue is (especially in climb) with having the flasks constantly running and still taking lots of damage. I can usually handle the climb though.

Thanks for the help!

The first time you potted when they started jumping on you was about 25% health. I'm also not expecting you to kill every pack, but kill them until they become manageable. This is a very basic death, they jumped on you and died because you're undergeared (I know it's because you're racing). What are we supposed to say?

You try and bait out the goat train whenever you think there's a possibility of it happening. Through experience you learn when those situations are (it's not complicated - when there are a bunch of goats on and just off your screen that haven't made a leap in a little while). That being said, even the most experienced racers still die to the goat conga line once in a while.

You did get unlucky that so many of them hit, and for so much damage.

And yeah, use your potions. You should be able to run only one life flask, and do fine, so there's no reason to not always have a life flask running when you have two. Not to mention that you were very close to a level here. You should've used the quicksilver as well expecting the level up, which could've helped you avoid the train.

Well, half the leapers right there (3) leapt right before the fun-train. At least so far I could not figure out a pattern in their actions, and the usually more continuous stream of leapslams tends to be a real pain in landing traps in ledge. Luckily it's not always a train :)

But true, I need to anticipate my levelups more. I find myself leveling up with full QS way too often, good point!

Any comments on this?
http://youtu.be/HHOpAYSQiFs

Anything I could (reasonably) do differently?

Don't forward kite like you did, when you see a pack (especially goatman) kill them, you just dragged 3-4 packs into each other and then died. I would have killed the goatman first, then proceeded onwards to skellies and cannibals.