Which enemies to kill first, and how to read the telegraphs

The enemy that makes everything else worse

Healers are the priority target in any wave. A horde that can top itself back up will not thin out no matter how much damage you do, and every second you spend killing the wrong target is a second the healer is spending undoing your work.

Kill support before damage. The correct target list is not "the weakest thing in front of me" — it is "the thing that makes the fight last longer". Healers and shielders are always on that list.

There is one important detail about healers: their healing scales with your own damage output, and the game caps it. That means a stronger build faces a slightly tougher version of the same problem, but it never becomes unbounded — the cap exists precisely so the fight cannot spiral.

The five roles in the horde

Role	What it does	How to handle it
Healer	Restores health to nearby enemies	Kill it first, even out of position
Shielder	Grants a shield to allies around it	Kill it before the shielded group commits to you
Summoner	Calls reinforcements while alive	Kill it early, then reposition while the adds are still walking in
Exploder	Detonates, damaging a wide area	Keep distance; do not let it touch you
Ranged shooter	Fires slow beams across the ground	Walk out of the marked strip before it fills

Reading telegraphs

Every enemy attack in the game is announced on the ground before it lands. Circles fill, stripes fill, and the fill is the timer. A player who watches the ground instead of the enemies takes almost no avoidable damage.

Watch the ground, not the sprites. The sprite tells you what is coming; the shape on the floor tells you where.
Move the moment the shape appears, not when it is full. Waiting for the last second means you are always late.
A strip that cuts across your escape route means you commit to a different side early.
Explosion markers and beam strips are not the same threat: one is instant and local, the other is slow and line-shaped. Keep the large shapes in mind when you pick where to stand.

Positional habits that pay off

Keep open ground on at least one side. Being surrounded is a positioning failure long before it is a damage failure.
Circle rather than reverse, so the horde strings out behind you and support enemies get isolated.
Let adds walk into your coverage instead of chasing them. Chasing is how you end up inside an explosion.
When a rift opens, clear the wave you are in first. Starting a legendary fight with a healer still alive is the most common avoidable death.

What to do when you are surrounded

Everyone gets surrounded eventually. The recovery is boring and reliable: stop trying to kill anything specific, walk through the least dense direction, and let your move do the work. Most surrounded deaths are caused by a player mashing towards a target instead of leaving.

If your build can kill things fast, being surrounded costs health. If your build cannot, being surrounded costs the run. That difference is why early damage cards are worth more than defensive ones.

Questions about this

What is the most important enemy to kill first?

Healers, then shielders. They extend the fight for everyone else; everything else is a normal kill.

Do enemy attacks always telegraph?

The reference pages describe enemies as telegraphing their attacks on the ground, including the slow ranged beams. Treat the ground marking as the source of truth.

Why do healers get stronger as I get stronger?

Healer output scales with your damage and is capped by the game, so stronger builds face harder support waves without the fight becoming impossible.