Where next?

I have come to a decision point in CC.  (Here's my latest progress post.)  I have finished Heartbreaker experience-wise; she's now at 200ee.  She still needs a good talent, but experience-wise she's done.  Meanwhile, I have built up a sizeable reserve of experience books.  So, I can bring up quite a few heroes quite a bit quite quickly.

My shard reserve is about 100000 right now.  My fame is 25000.  Herowise, I have 9 useful devoes (I also devoed Succubus for books), and another 12 useful evos.

I need to make a decision as to where to focus resources.  As I see it, there are basically three alternatives.

First, I can continue pumping resources into my LBF team.  I score above 900 most seasons but have never broken 1000.  I am hoping that with HB and some other recent additions, I will be able to do that.  My team is currently limited by the lack of a Revite 5 Aries; on the last few days of a season it is hard to win 2 of 3 when you lose one almost automatically.

The gain from increasing LBF is marginally more fame, about 100 per week perhaps if I can normally break 1000, and an additional 190 gems per week.  Pretty low rewards, but on the other hand it's fame, and the cost of doing this is low.

Second, I can built out my base to do Challenge III in HBM.  This may need Vlad (who I have now and a dupe for, so I can single evo him).  Mainly it needs blue and green heroes.  It's not clear to me whether you might get by without them, so I am assuming I need at least level 4 garrison levels, and perhaps level 5.   Currently I have two blue heroes and one green hero well above that (the useful ones, Ice Demon, Shaman, and Frost Witch).  The other heroes have skill 3 and level 50-60 for garrison 2.  So it will take 62600 shards to get to a full level 4 garrison.  (Here's the wikia on Garrison.)  If I need level 5, it will take a lot more: 117600 shards and 990000 honor badges.

The gain from increasing HBM (assuming I can get through AF, which is by no means certain) is better sweeps.  Currently I sweep T, getting 90 shards and (on average maybe) 900000 experience per sweep.  AF gives 120 shards and perhaps 1.2m per sweep.  The increase in daily income would be 180 shards and 1.8m experience per day.  So, a decent increase in both things, but nothing to write home about.

My remaining option is to attempt again to push to Insane Dungeon 5-10.  I tried this about a month back, and was shut down over many attempts by ID 5-9.  I was close a few times though usually slaughtered with 12%.  It's really hard, and it appears you need a Skull Knight to tank the enemy SK.  Al_fun used a SK and says it takes a lot of tries.  I still have no SK so I can't do what he did.  What I might do is evo my Santa.  I am not really keen on this, since I have but one dupe for SB.  So it requires 40000 shards, and I don't use SB that much.  I can also possibly sub in a different 6th hero.  (I assume PD/Cupid/Druid are required for amp-up, SB for damage, and a tank to, uh, tank.)  One DPS slot is potentially changeable.  Currently using TG for this.  I could try my shiny new HB here, or perhaps some other hero.  PK?  I could also try increasing a few heroes' skills.  All of them are at least at 8, but I might buy a 9 for Druid, or TG.  And I could potentially buy a 10 for DD, Cupid or SB.

So what would it get me?  Currently I sweep ID 4-10 for 88 shards/HB and 113610 EXP.  If I can get to and 3-star ID5-10, that would increase to 96 shards/HB and 138010 EXP.  I use most dungeons per day, and my amount will increase with the new compendium bonus.  Assuming I get to 66 of them, my daily income increases by ~158 shards/HB and 1610400 EXP.

UPDATE: Consulted with reddit, and their assessment is that Vlad is not needed for HBM.  So, decided to go after HBM using level 4 garrisons.  I figure the experience the garrison heroes will get doing the HBM tries will help bring them to 140, so I can go after level 5 garrisons on the cheap.

Mid April Progress

My Heartbreaker is now almost done with experience, currently at 199ee.  So it's time for a progress post.  Here's the last progress post.  Two days after that post, I rolled this:

Heartbreaker goes to college.

Oh my!  My Heartbreaker had a mediocre talent and I was bringing her up anyway.  So, obvious place to put it.  (As I said before, HB is now almost done.  Got a lot of books from this enlightenment.)

I went ahead and spent big fame to bring Harpy Queen's scatter talent to 8.  This prepares me for HBM III when I am ready for that.  Meanwhile, it's useful in LBF.

Ready for demon scattering.

Also I evo'ed and booked her to 180e.  Later I brought her up to 181e so she'd be easier to find among all my other heroes at 180.

Literally the next day, I rolled this:

Grimfiend gets more dangerous.

Another Scatter 5!  Nice.  I wish I'd have rolled it before spending all that fame on HQ.  But oh well.

There have been three Spend Gems and Win events.  In the first, didn't get much.  I did get a Pixie dupe:

Spare Pixie #3

This is my 3rd Pixie dupe, so now I can double-evo her without paying shards.  Not sure I will do it, though, because fame is quite finite and she seems distinctly C grade at this point in the game.  I no longer snipe much, so I see little need for her.  Currently I use her only as bait for the Rage Goblin.  This does use her scatter, but otherwise could be many heroes.

In the second SG&W, I rolled an Aries:

Aries dupe.

This was my third dupe.  So, given the books I was getting from HB I went ahead and devo'ed Aries.

Another day, another devo.

Aries is now 199ee.

Here's a roll from the most recent SG&W, last Monday:

Double purple.

The GF is my first dupe for him (he's already evo'ed though; paid shards).  So that's nice but won't be used for some time.  The Vlad is a first dupe and my Vlad is still non-evo level 1.  So that is quite welcome, assuming I do bring him up.  Not sure I will yet.  Vlad seems nice but rather outdated.  I'd use him in HBM for sure.  Not sure about LBF.  And pretty sure nowhere else.

On the talent front, I got a Revive 4 which I put on my Valentina.  I have a level 4 Revite crest set on her, and she is now helping me in Arena (go ahead and laugh) and the Lost Battlefield.

Valentina ready for battle.

I got two Level 5 Talent Chests.  One was from the Lucky Goblin (in Castle Crisis) and the other was from a Fortress Feud.  The first contained Lifedrain 5.  This is not an awful talent, but all of my top guys already have a decent talent.  Except my Aries, with Lifedrain 3.  Lifedrain 3 really is enough for most of my uses.  Still, what the heck, it doesn't hurt him.  

The second Level 5 Talent Chest yielded up Tenacity.  Also pretty crap as talents go.  On the other hand... now that I live by cheese alone in GW, I was reasonably content with it:

Ghoulem gets 30% more hitpoints.

Corrode was always a placeholder on my Ghoulem.  Tenacity is not GH's best talent, but it's quite decent on him.  I have not decided whether to spend the 3000 fame for 15% more hitpoints.

I did a quest in between writing this.  Heartbreaker made it to 200ee.  And look, I just happened to have a level 5 talent sitting around!

I didn't tell you about this level 5.

Well, it's something.  Enlightenment is nothing at this point.  So on it goes.

One other thing worth mentioning: my highest GW score to date by far:

Cha-ching.  Cheesing FTW.

This is purely due to cheesing.  This is one of the rare GWs when I could cheese many bases well above 200000 might, and I cheesed all five bases successfully.  (That is, all three stars.  It's easy to screw it up and get two.)

Tested Heartbreaker's Proc Speed

TLDR: Heartbreaker's proc fires 2 streams of missiles even at a single target, 10 missile per stream, over 4 seconds.

Since I got Heartbreaker, I have wanted to know how her proc works.  The text says it fires every .3 seconds for 4 seconds.  The game has ticks of .2 seconds.  So what does that mean?  Does the proc fire 13 times?  14?  Or maybe 10?

Also, the proc has two streams of damage.  I also have wanted to know how that works if there is just one target.  Do both fire just at it?  Or is one nullified?  (I expected the former.  But worth testing.)

The test was a normal Boss 3 run, done twice on two subsequent days.  In both cases, my team was just two heroes.  One is PD.  The other is either Phantom King, or Heartbreaker.  In both cases I added Angi to the team to heal and protect PD.  PD has Berserk 8, the Blitz Scroll, and Revite 4 for maximum ramp speed.  Neither PK nor HB has any extra-hit talent or crest.

Here's the teams and their results.

Heartbreaker:

Testing Heartbreaker

Result: 94,734,436 damage.

Heartbreaker result.

Phantom King:

The control: Phantom King

Result 95,073,376 damage:

Phantom King result.

These two results differ by about .35%, or looked at another way, about a half second of damage for either team.  As such, they are well within experimental variance caused by my drop, critical hits which happened before PD fully ramped, etc.  Thus, the two heroes must be doing the same number of hits per second.  Since PK hits 10 times per second, so must HB.  The model best fitting this is 2 streams, each one hitting each .4 seconds.

 Thus I conclude as per the TLDR.  For fights with (a) max speedup, and (b) low damage caps, PK and HB are practically identical in damage.  If either condition does not obtain, then HB is the superior DPS machine.