The Boss3 Test

For most heroes, we can understand what they do fairly well by reading their skill description and thinking about it.  However, sometimes these descriptions are misleading or incomplete, or the function of a hero is very complicated.  It is nice to have an empirical test of a hero's performance.

The Boss3 test is a test designed to test a hero for the effective number of hits he or she generates in conditions of maximum speedup.  This is typical of boss fights of various sorts, where you use a Pumpkin Duke to speed up everyone to maximum speed.

The test uses a PD and one hero to be tested.  The PD has the same configuration every time.  This team faces Boss3, which you can do once per day.  The total damage they do can be compared to that of heroes that have already been tested to compare the tested heroes.  We can also (with some assumptions) use it to estimate heroes' hits/second.

Ingredients:

Here are the heroes I am using for the test, along with their configurations.

Pumpkin Duke: 200ee.  Skill 10/10.  Berserk 8.  Revite 4 crests.  Blitz Scroll.  Angi.

The PD is configured to speed up the "ramp up" period to a minimum.  This makes it easier to compute with than a slower ramp-up.  Angi is there to keep PD alive.  Boss3 does not do huge DPS, but it's plenty to kill your PD in 3 minutes unless there is a bit of healing.

Hero to be tested: any level, any talent other than "extra hit" talents (slowdown, heavy blow, deadly strike).  Scatter 4 crests.  Artifact (if any) does not matter.  Don't assign a damaging pet.  (So, can have Angi, Yule, Doom Balloon, Bubblow; all the others do damage.)

The to-be-tested hero is configured mainly to prevent the boss from proccing.  This is done via the "last hero scatter trick".  Scatter is applied after energy is raised by hits, and truncation to 100 energy max happens after each hero goes.  Thus, if the final hero hitting a boss has scatter 4+, that boss will always end up below 100 energy and can thus never proc.

It should be obvious, but if the to-be-tested hero has an "extra blows" talent, you can still test, you just need to account for that.  Also, if the to-be-tested hero has scatter, then you can use whatever crests you want.

Deployment:

Drop both heroes right on the boss and immediately hit Invigorate.  Drop PD first, so that the boss aggros on him (which speeds the ramp-up), and also so that the hero being tested is the last hero dropped, meaning the boss cannot proc (due to scatter) once you hit max speed.  Also dropping PD first means he tanks, which means that you can test very low-hitpoint heroes.  Just be sure that their damage per hit is maximum once PD is spooled up.

Documentation:

Take a snapshot of the final screen, showing total damage done.  Also take a snapshot during battle, so you record which heroes are being tested.  (On my phone, and probably yours, snaps are stored by date; so these two will be next to each other.  This helps you remember later which hero was being tested that got the total damage.)

If the damage done is 120m, then the battle will end early and you need to carefully note the seconds left.  This requires watching the battle like a hawk.  (This should not happen except for extremely damaging heroes.)  It also requires careful computation afterward.

Tests I have done:

Here's a rundown of the Boss3 tests I've done:

• Phantom King and Heartbreaker -- showed that PK and HB have the same number of hits,
• Medusa -- showed that her snakes do in effect get two auto hits.  Also, strangely, shows that snake hits either don't add energy or they hit early enough so that her scatter makes the boss not proc.
• Harpy Queen -- done to have a baseline to work with for TT.  TT needs special handling due to her pumpkies being summoned, and thus nullifying the "last hero scatter" trick.
• Trixie Treat -- same post as HQ, since I did HQ to do TT.
• HQ again with Deadly Strike -- done to test how deadly strike works.  Concluded it works via extra hits, just like Slowdown and Heavy Blow.
• Vlad -- done to test his proc.  It gets more hits than was previously believed.
• Immortep -- gets more proc hits than was previously thought.  Unclear why.
• Beast Tamer -- confirmed he works as predicted.

I plan to update this listing as I add tests.

Late March Progress

Last time I wrote, I had started bringing up Valentina, who I had just rolled.  She's now at 180e, capped:

Love trumps lack of energy.

Since I have a new use for honor badges (read on), she'll probably stay where she is a while.  I'll put a decent talent on her if I roll one.  But possibly she's still have Enlightenment when I get back to her.  I have put her into my LBF lineup.  I'm very hopeful that I'll break 1000 for the first time with this addition and another...

Ghoulem is now 198ee, having gotten all the experience when Val was blocked on honor badges.  I'll take him though 200ee eventually.  No real rush on that.  It's good to have a place to dump experience when HB are lacking.

The first big news since last time is I rolled this guy, who has eluded me since I started over two years ago:

He's still at level 1, because Val was already past 180 when I rolled him.  I have no immediate plans for him.  Mid term, I'll get him to 180e and that should be enough for him to help me through HBM III.

Vlad was going to be next on my to-give-experience list after Val, probably Val to 200e since there's no huge hurry on him.  But then yesterday there was a "Spend Gems and Win".  Rolling time!  And I rolled this lovely girl:

Nice hero, crap talent.

Yowza!  My buddy has a Heartbreaker, and from his experience I want her ASAP in my LBF lineup and perhaps also available for GW.  She's definitely A list, right up there with SK, DD, Ghoul, etc.  On her own she can (a) keep many enemies from proccing, and (b) heal herself.  Not to mention being the most damaging single target hero in the game other than Trixie.  [UPDATE: that last sentence is incorrect.  Still, she's as damaging as PK, and that's quite good.]  I'll definitely put her in my Challenge a Boss lineups.  A bit low on hitpoints, so not really a tank.

I think HB might work well in a brute-force sort of attack in GW.  The plan is HB, DD, Ghoulem, Grimfiend going straight into a HtH with enemy heroes, with sniping support from Cupid and Aries.  (I'll definitely post about it if it works.)

One other big event since last time.  I rolled an A grade talent!

Scatter ninja!

This was a tough one to place.  According to the wisdom of reddit, the placement for Scatter 5 is PK, Grimfiend, and HQ -- other things equal.  But I have several scatter 4 sets, so I can crest that on PK and Grim.  And I have no Molt, so I want HQ for pushing HBM.  I asked for advice at reddit and got people recommending all three choices.  (Sigh.)  As always, you can't push responsibility away easily.  And then the very next quest board, I got a talent refresh quest.  Had to decide.  Some of the names I recognize as old timers seemed to go with HQ, and I was leaning that way anyway.  So...

HQ is now at scatter 6.  I suppose I should just go ahead to 8 since I have more than enough fame, and I will upgrade to scatter 8 anyway eventually.  Also I am not going to be double-evoing many heroes for quite a while.

That's a lot of fame.

One benefit of blogging.  It makes you think.  I still have 26000 fame left, which is four devos and a bunch of evos as needed.

So, right now I have an embarrassment of riches.  I want to pour experience/honor into five different heroes, all of them at least B grade: Ghoul, Val, HB, HQ, Vlad.  All of them need at least single evo, and HB should be double evoed ideally.  And I have a C-lister -- Revenant -- still waiting also.  Not sure if I'll ever get to him.

Three Minutes with the Centaur Ruler

the target

This is my new strategy for doing mass damage to Boss 5 (Centaur Ruler and Rage Goblin).  Note that this strategy works only when both bosses are alive, since it relies on using the procs generated by the easily-hit Centaur to remove the hard-to-hit Goblin from the fight.  I have a different lineup for fighting only the Goblin; you can read about it at this post.

My strategy requires a Pumpkin Duke to work.  If you have no PD, sorry, you won't be able to do mass damage to boss 5 (and probably not other bosses either).  Other than PD, however, all of the important heroes that I use can be bought for shards.

Note also that this strategy works without using Skull Knight.  (I don't have SK.)  If you have a Skull Knight, you may be able to use him as a tank so that you get all six heroes beating on the enemy for 3 minutes; and if so, that would be a superior strategy.

Overview

Here's the general idea: use healing and debuffing to deal with the Centaur Ruler, who is easy to hit.  The Rage Goblin is not easy to hit, and thus terribly difficult to debuff.  You deal with him by slowing him.

Your team is basically a scatter team, but you need to have Ice Demon in among them.  Your PD is your tank.  You need at least one good debuffer on the team to debuff the Centaur Ruler.  You'll use one hero as a sacrifice to keep the Rage Goblin away from the rest of the heroes long enough for the team to amp up, and thus for Ice Demon to slow the Rage Goblin to a crawl.  The Rage Goblin will kill the sacrifice, but by that time he is too slowed to reach a second hero.  

The Team

It doesn't matter who your sacrifice hero is.  His identity, level, and skill level are not important, since he will be in the fight only about 12 seconds or so before dying.  Be sure to give him enough scatter so that he does not cause the Rage Goblin to proc.  (It is helpful to have Phantom King as one of your other heroes, since PK's proc scatters both bosses.)

my boss 5 team

I use Cupid for my sacrifice hero, because he does help PD amp up, and my calculations suggest that after the ramp-up period I do not benefit from Cupid's damage boost.  Also my Cupid is fairly high level, so he does a bit of damage to the Rage Goblin before dying.

Your PD is there to get the team sped up.  (He also amps up damage.)  You need a quick amp up.  I am not sure how quick.  My PD has Celebrate 10, Berserk 4, Revite 3, and Blitz Scroll 5.  He also gets energy from Cupid.  This definitely gets it done.  You probably don't need this much.

Your Ice Demon needs a medium-high skill level.  I am not sure how low you can go and succeed.  Mine has skill level 7.  You probably don't need that much.  His level and other attributes don't matter.

Your debuffer needs to debuff about 70000 HP/s down to a level that your PD can tank.  Obviously Druid helps with this.  My current debuffer is Shaman, with skill level 7.  He works great; when amped to max speed he stacks ~6 times which reduces the DPS to about 5200 DPS, which my PD can tank easily with Druid's healing.  I am going to experiment with using Succubus instead.

For my two remaining heroes, I have Druid (for healing PD), and Phantom King, whose proc I need to help my Cupid scatter the Goblin.  Also, PK is among the most damaging heroes in the game at max speed.

Remaining slots (if you have any; I don't) should be filled with high DPS heroes.  Just be sure that you have enough scatter so that neither boss procs.  

Deployment

The drop sequence looks like this:

(1) Wait for Rage Goblin and Centaur to separate at least a little.

(2) Drop PD on the far side of the Centaur from the Rage Goblin.  Keep enough range so that he will move into the Centaur's range in about a second

(3) Select your sacrifice hero.  Mine is Cupid, so I am assuming that.

(4) As soon as Centaur targets PD, drop Cupid in on the far side of the Rage Goblin from the Centaur.  Drop him just at the edge of the Goblin's targeting range.

(5) Drop all remaining heroes close to Centaur; exact placement doesn't matter, but on the far side from the Rage Goblin.

(6) Quickly hit Invincible before the enemy hits either PD or Cupid.  If you are too late and either hero dies, "End Battle" and restart.

Result

If you did it right, when Invincible ends, the Rage Goblin will kill Cupid and then move to a next target, but super slowly.  So slowly, in fact, that he does not normally reach it before 3 minutes are up.  

Your five remaining heroes are amped up to max speed and beating away on the Centaur Ruler.  So you go the full 3 minutes and score massive damage.

Here's an example showing my team in action:

In the screenshot, you can see the tombstone where Rage Goblin killed Cupid earlier.  He has been moving towards the Druid for a minute and a half at this point.