March Progress

Time for a progress report.

I have been pouring all experience and HB into my Ghoulem.  Have not rolled any dupes for him, so double evoed him using shards.

Costly, but it's Ghoulem.

Had to pause giving him experience only a few short times when low on HB.  Still not selling anything other than greens.  Gave Druid a level or two instead.

Ghoulem is now 187ee, with skill 8.  Put Corrode 5 on him that I rolled soon after he was born.  Not as good as Bulwark, but certainly useful for the time being.

Formidable.

Ghoulem has made a significant difference in my game.  I have him in LBF now, and I have been flirting with breaking 1000.  Sad story: I was at 988 last Saturday.  Was guaranteed to break 1000 on Sunday.  Except... not if I forgot to play.  Oops.

But Ghoulem's main effect is in GW.  He's quite helpful with a sniper team as the "send in someone for that last DD."  But also he opens up a new strategy: cheesing.  Now I can do DD-cheesing in GW reasonably effectively.  So I have been looking for opportunities to do that.

For those who don't know, the idea in cheesing is you isolate an enemy tank who can withstand very large amounts of damage, but whose damage you can tank also with the right team.  Then you put in your own heroes on him, and use remote damage output of your heroes' procs to win the battle.  (I plan to make a "how to cheese" post here eventually.)

I am still getting the hang of DD-cheesing.  I failed a few times where I got 50%+ and then something happened: my heroes kill the enemy DD I am keying on, or my heroes get killed.  You really want to be sure the situation is stable before you pass 50%, which is kind of hard to do.)  But that was last week: got a rotten GW score, about 1800 IIRC.  Anyway, last night I finally got a cheese really working well against a supertanky enemy DD:

Cheesing, cheesing, over the bounding main...

You can see my Ghoulem, Aries, DD, and Treantar in there if you look hard.  I tried doing a sniper-cheese, but the enemy has a Bubblow (you can see it above) and I was not making a dent.  So, it's a building-cheese.  DD and Doom Balloon, with other heroes there to keep them alive.

Result: all buildings dead, no heroes killed on either side.

Take that you buildings!

Took down a ~220000 might base, worth 511 points.  I finished in my guild's top 5.

Ha.  Extra HB.

In other progress news... heroes.

No really interesting heroes rolled in a while.  Got a Beast Tamer dupe last night.  This may have some value in the very long run, but my BT is already single evoed.  (I did this because I am using him on archdemons, and I wanted him to wield an artifact.)  His priority for 2evo is way, way down unless IGG adds some new boss with really good rewards that he is needed to get.

My plan was to keep pouring all experience in Ghoulem.  He's mostly done, but getting him to 200ee will help a little bit.  Still, I was starting to look at my options for bring up other heroes.  I have 2 Aries dupes, so maybe double-evoing him.  (I also have many other heroes at 200e that I'd like to 2evo, but they have either zero or one dupes.)  Or maybe bringing up Revenant for LBF.  (I rolled a Rev a month or two back, don't recall exactly.  It's just been sitting at level 1 in my altar.)

Then I rolled one hero for a quest this morning:

A late present for February.

OK, Val is now top priority.  She was born with flameguard 3: meh.  Fortunately I had an enlightenment 1 talent sitting around unused from a talent roll last night.  Here she is now, after the morning's experience:

That skill needs work.

She's inscribed to level 63.  I actually care about mana for another day.