Boss3 Test: Ronin

I recently rolled a Ronin, lucky that.  So, next up for Boss3 testing: Ronin.  

Here's the setup.

I put Scatter 4 crests on Ronin for the test.  As expected, the boss could not proc.  Good.

Here's the result:

71559684 damage.

Analysis: We want to figure out how many proc hits Ronin does.  PD is assumed to take 3 seconds.  Normally I assume that heroes other than PD (with the Blitz Scroll and Berserk 8) ramp up in 5s.  However, Ronin has a 650ms attack time naturally.  So I am assuming that he will take 4s to ramp up.  

Thus we have PD active for 177s.  He gets 5.0 HPS (all auto hits); 885 hits total.  Ronin gets 176s active, where he will get 880 auto hits.  Total auto hits: 1765.  Each one does 35000 damage, so these should have done 61775000 damage.  This leaves 9784684 damage unaccounted for, which must be Ronin's proc damage. 

We can divide by 35000 to get the total proc hits: ~279.6.  We can divide that by 176 to get the proc's HPS: ~1.59.  This does not match well with the assumptions made by Mr_Perfect in his reddit thread.  (He derives 1.25 HPS.)   My guess is that Ronin gets 6 hits per proc.  This would yield 1.5 HPS, which is reasonably close to our observed amount.

Boss3 Test: Beast Tamer

I ran a Boss3 test for Beast Tamer last night.  Given how much damage he does, and the fact that Grizzly cannot be given Scatter to pull the last-hero-scatter trick, I decided to run three heroes for the test: PD, HQ, and BT.  Adding a third hero has the downside that the boss will run out of hitpoints. 

I have previously tested just PD+HQ; that test can be found here.  So, with that result in hand we proceed to the BT test.  My BT normally crests Slowdown 4, but I removed it. 

I feel naked.

HQ has her talent, scatter 8, and her normal crests (berserk 4).  That should be enough scatter to keep the boss from proccing.   Here's the setup:

Let's kill a boss.

I did the run and it worked smoothly -- no procs.  The result?  As expected, 120m damage exactly: killed the boss before time ran out.  I knew this would happen, and so was carefully watching the time.  There were 18 seconds left when it ended.

18 seconds left out of 180.  So, 162 seconds spent.  But some of that was spent when PD was ramping up.  As in previous boss3 tests, I assume PD ramps in 3 seconds, non-berserk-8 heroes in 5 seconds. 

So now we can compute what BT got.  Over a run of 162s, PD should have gotten 159s of damage, and HQ 156s.  Thus, they should have totaled 27825000 damage and 28350000 damage respectively.  Total: 56175000 damage.  The remaining damage is BT's: that is 63825000 damage.  This was done by BT in 159s (effectively), so his DPS is ~401415.  We divide by 35000 to convert this to HPS: ~11.47.

How does this compare to what we'd expect?  Well, each of BT and Grizzly get 5.0 HPS individually from their autohits.  In addition, Grizzly has Heavy Blow 8, which gets another 1.25 HPS.  Then are their procs: BT's proc has a 12s cooldown, thus .0833 HPS.  Grizzly's proc has a 5s cooldown, thus adding .2 HPS.  [see comments]  Total expected hits is 11.333 HPS.  

The test confirms the prediction.

Boss3 Test: Heavy Blow

Heavy Blow is supposed to work via extra hits, 1 in 10 chance each.  Time to test it!  I am using my Harpy Queen again for this, removing her normal crests (Berserk) for Heavy Blow 4 crests.

Here's the setup...

HQ + HB

And here is the result:

HQ+HB damage.

67921653 damage.

When I tested this same pair of heroes, except using Berserk crests on HQ, I got 64953661 damage.  The difference is 2967992 damage.  Divide by 35000 to find extra hits from HB: ~84.8 hits.

As we have done before, we estimate HQ's ramp-up as if she was full speed for 175s.  So, at 5 auto hits per second, that's 875 hits.  The extra hits are almost exactly 10% of the auto hits.

Thus, the test confirms our model of HB.  Yay.

Boss3 Test: Grimfiend

Next up for Boss3 testing: Grimfiend.  In this case I feel it is known pretty well how he works, but there is still to some extent some question.  In particular, Grim's demon form has a cooldown of 3 seconds, but lasts 12 seconds.  At max speed, how does this shake out?  Does he proc 3 times per demon form (at 3 seconds, 6s, and 9s), or does he proc 4 times (also on 12s)?

Here's the setup.

I'm ugly.

As you can see, my Grim has scatter (it's at 6), so there should be plenty of scatter to stop the boss proccing.  His crests are Bulwark 4, which won't change the test more than trivially.

Here's the result:

PD + GF damage.

63806836 damage.

Analysis: We want to figure out how many proc hits Grim does.  Grimfiend has Berserk 8 in demon form, but he starts human, and he is not berserk in human form.  So I am assuming that he will take the same 5s (estimated) to ramp up as any other normal hero.  PD is assumed to take 3 seconds.

Thus we have PD active for 177s.  He gets 5.0 HPS (all auto hits); 885 hits total.  Grimfiend gets 175s active, where he will get 875 auto hits.  Total auto hits: 1760.  Each one does 35000 damage, so these should have done 61600000 damage.  This leaves 2206836 damage unaccounted for, which must be Grim's proc damage.

We can divide by 35000 to get the total proc hits: 63.05.  We can divide that by 175 to get the proc's HPS: ~0.36.  This matches fairly well with the assumptions made by Mr_Perfect in his reddit thread.  (He derives .32 HPS.)

We can also calculated expected procs.  GF will proc first at around the 4 to 5 second mark.  (Why not 7 seconds?  He does not get energy from being hit, but the PD is ramping up and GF is swinging faster.)  Assume it's 4 seconds.  Then at that point he transitions to demon form every 15 seconds.  Thus he gets exactly 12 transformations to demon form during the course of the run.  In all of those transformations except the final one, he gets either 3 or 4 procs.  (This is what we want to know.)  So we know he should get either 36 proc hits, or 48 proc hits.  Obviously, 48 proc hits is closer to what we observe (63 hits).  So I guess he is getting all four procs as a demon.  But the estimate is still low.  What explains the additional 15 hits?

Should run this again.

OK, next day.  Same lineup.  Result:

More PD + GF damage.

64263405 damage.  This is .7% more than last time, that is, easily within experimental variance.  But it's higher, so it's in no way suggestive that my result last time (with extra 15 proc hits) was a fluke.  Not sure what's going on here.

UPDATE: UraniumSnail pm'ed me to suggest the GF has Berserk 8 in both forms.  The wikia page is unclear on that; I guess I assumed wrong.  That speeds him up by 2 seconds in the ramp-up at the start, thus adding 10 hits.  (Estimated, natch.)  This gets us close.

Immortep Exceeds Expectation

I ran the Boss3 test on Immortep.  Like Vlad, I think Immo can trigger a proc if the only energy reduction on the boss is him with Scatter 4.  So I added my HQ to the lineup to make sure that doesn't happen.

Here's the setup:

Immo not evo.

Immo has on Bulwark crests, but you can't see that.  HQ has Berserk.  Neither of these should chance the test result more than a tiny amount.

And here's the outcome:

Better than Vlad!

106022552 damage. My earlier test of just PD+HQ got 64953661 damage. So we can see the delta from adding Immo is 41068891 damage. Immo has 1000ms attack speed, so as in the previous tests, I model his ramp-up as 5 seconds of nothing followed by full damage. So, 175s. We find the number of hits by dividing by 35000: that's ~1173.4 hits.

In 175s, there should be 875 auto-hits. So, we find ~298.4 hits from procs. According to the wikia article on Immo, he procs every 5 seconds, so we estimate 35 procs during the run. Thus, he's hitting ~8.53 times per proc.

The wikia article says that Immo's proc pulses every 0.2s, for "just under 5 seconds", with a 20% chance per pulse to hit. Taking "just under 5" as 4.8, that works out to 4.8 hits per proc.  Incorrect!  4.8 HPS is clearly ruled out by my test.

My test shows a roughly 35.5% chance to hit each pulse (assuming pulses of 200ms, and 24 pulses).  This is unexpected.  On the other hand, since the wikia is already claiming that Immo's in-game description is wrong for the duration of Sandstorm, it's not too shocking that we might have the percentage wrong too.  (Where did the asserted 20% come from?)

I plan to re-run the test tomorrow.  At the least I can replicate the result, and verify visually that Immo is continually proccing (as the wikia article suggests should happen).

Update: here's another run.  Same setup and double checked for nothing wrong.

Ditto.

105959354 damage.  That is .05% less damage than before, that is, basically indistinguishable from the earlier run.  I did watch it carefully, and I can verify two things asserted at the wiki.  First, the proc really is 5 seconds.  Second, there really is a brief gap where it's not on.  That might be a graphical glitch or it might not, but you can certainly see it.

Anyway, the conclusion stands.  At max speed, Immo hits substantially more than he has gotten credit for.

Tested Vlad for Proc Hits

I have not done a boss3 test for a few days because I ran out of things I was curious about that I could test.  (There are several heroes I'd love to test but I can't since I don't have.)  But as I was cheesing in the recent guild war, I was reminded again of how nasty Vlad is.  It always seems like he gets a lot of hits.  So I wondered if our understanding of how he works is correct.  Hey, I can test it!

Setup for Boss3 test of Vlad

The setup is a bit more complicated than the vanilla Boss3 test, because I was afraid that Vlad's proc would give the boss enough energy to proc.  So I added my HQ to make sure the boss stayed flat.  (My HQ has scatter 8.)  I was not sure if this would cause the test run to end early, so I watched carefully.  It didn't, though: the test went the full three minutes.  Here's the result:

Is this too much? 

99394792 damage.

My earlier test of just PD+HQ got 64953661 damage.  So we can see the delta from adding Vlad is 34441131 damage.  Vlad has 1200ms attack speed, so as in the previous tests, I model his ramp-up as 5 seconds of nothing followed by full damage.  So, 175s.  Assuming all hits are full damage, we find the number of hits by dividing by 35000: that's ~984 hits.

In 175s, there should be 875 auto-hits.  So, we find ~109 hits from procs.  Vlad procs every 6 seconds, so we estimate 29.16 procs during the run.  Thus, he's hitting ~3.74 times per proc.

The wikia article on Vlad says that his proc hits every 0.4s, for 4 seconds, with a 30% chance per pulse to hit.  That would suggest he averages 3 hits per proc, but that is clearly ruled out by my test.

One anomaly about Vlad is his fear infliction.  I don't think it varies when it happens, and I think it happens immediately every time.  So I'd suggest a different model for his proc: in the tick that it procs, it hits all enemies in range and inflicts fear.  For the remaining time, it works as wikia indicates (9 pulses, 30% chance per pulse).  In this model, we expect 1 guaranteed hit plus an average of 2.7 over the rest of the time.  This gives an expected 3.7 hits, which is within experimental error.

Verified Slowdown Hit Operation

I have run out of obvious things I wanted to test with Boss3.  So instead of a new hero I thought I'd experimentally verify something that "everyone knows": how slowdown crests work.  Since I think I know how they work, I am going to work out a damage prediction before I collect data.

At max speedup, we know that HQ gets 5.5 HPS, and PD gets the minimum 5.0 HPS.  They are in the fight for 180 actual seconds, but we estimate that PD ramps up in 3 seconds, HQ in 5 seconds.  So, the total hits we expect are 885 for PD, 962.5 for HQ.  Total is 1847.5.  At 35000 hitpoints of damage per hit, expected damage is 64662500.

The actual number from the earlier run was 64953661 damage.  Now let's add on the effect of slowdown.

Slowdown has a 25% chance to happen on each auto-hit.  When it does happen, it adds one extra hit.  At max speed, all heroes get 5 HPS of auto attacks.  Thus, we expect slowdown to add on average 1.25 HPS.

This raises HQ's expected hits by 218.75, for an expected hit total of 2066.25.  Expected damage is thus 72318750.

Now, we run the test.  I realized last time that showing a snap of the two heroes in the "challenge a boss" team UI is not very useful for the purpose of testing crests, since you cannot see the cresting on that UI.  So, instead I have a snap of HQ crested:

HQ with slowdown crests.

And here's the result of the run:

Boss3 result for HQ with slowdown.

72711760 damage.  My prediction is off by just ~.5%.  We have experimentally confirmed the existing theory of how slowdown works.

Deadly Strike Works Via Extra Hits

TLDR: see the title?

I've never been 100% certain how Deadly Strike works.  Does Deadly Strike multiply an "existing" autoattack hit, or does it provide an extra hit that is multiplied, the way that Slowdown and Heavy Blow work?

I did a test last year that seemed to indicate the latter (extra blow), and since the other two talents work that way, it makes the most sense to me.  But it's better to have a rigorous test.

Since I have some data with Boss3 tests, I figured to test it next.

To test, I needed a hero with both scatter (to stop the boss proccing) and heavy blow.  Since my Harpy Queen has scatter as her talent, and I have already tested her, she's perfect.

To set the test up, I took off her Berserk 4 crests and replaced them with Deadly Strike 2.  As such, we can expect a slightly longer ramp-up time, so perhaps slightly less damage.  However, the difference should be not more than a second or two of damage at most.  A second's damage in the Boss3 test is ~200000 hitpoints.

Now the actual test.  In the previous test, HQ scored 64953661 damage.

Here's the setup:

Test setup.  Pity you can't see the cresting.

And here's the score:

Boss3 score with Deadly Strike

67936102 damage.  That's 2982441 more damage than the original run without DS crests.  Over 175 seconds (this is approximated time of engagement to account for PD having to amp up), it is 17042 DPS.  In terms of extra hits, it is 0.487 HPS extra.  This is almost exactly the 0.5 extra HPS predicted.

Conclusion: Deadly Strike works via extra hits.

Tested Trixie Treat for Max Speed Hits per Second

I did the "Boss3 test" for Trixie Treat last night.  The "Boss3 test" is ... I think I need to write a post about that.  OK, done.  Read that.

Actually I did my first run at testing TT a few nights ago.  But it failed horribly: I put it down, then looked and PD was dead!  Oops, oh yeah, you can't test summoners using the "standard" boss3 test.  The problem is that whenever a hero summons, the heroes that are summoned are now "last".  And thus the "last-hero-scatter" trick fails.

On that run, I quickly added a few random devoes and did the run.  It did not test anything, but I did at least get the honor badges.

So how to test TT?  Well, at max speed, 2 heroes plus four pumpkies should be adding 450 energy/s to the boss. Then the boss adds another 15 from his own hit. To get rid 465energy/s, we need 93 energy scattered per 200ms. That's challenging. With scatter4 crested on TT, would need 73 from some other hero. I can do that with HQ because mine has scatter8. There's no other way I can do that.

So I decided to run three heroes for the TT tests: PD, HQ, and TT.  Adding a third hero has the downside that the boss will run out of hitpoints. So I'll have to make more assumptions to get a decent number. Challenge accepted.

Testing HQ

First things first, though.  I did a run with just PD and HQ.  This gives me a good baseline to work from.

Boss3 testing HQ.

Here's the result:

Boss3 HQ result.

64953661 damage.  We know that at max speed HQ gets 5.5 HPS (hits per second).  PD gets the minimum 5 HPS.   Somewhat arbitrarily, I am estimating the ramp-up by removing 3 seconds from PD, and 5 seconds from other heroes.

(How long does my PD ramp up take?  He starts out hitting every 600ms; because he is being hit he'll proc after his first or second hit.  I am guessing 2nd.  So, 1200ms to one stack.  Then his speed is 400ms.  Over the next 2 seconds the boss hits him twice, and he hits 5 times.  Then he procs again: 2 stacks.  Now his speed is 200ms.  PD is fully ramped at this point.  Over the next 1.2s, the boss hits him once and he hits 6 times.  Then he procs to 3 stacks.  At this point he has spent 3.4s.  It takes him 4.6s to reach 4 stacks, and 5.8 to reach 5.

Even 3 stacks is enough to get 30000 damage on Boss3 from any reasonably high level hero.  But speedwise, TT and HQ both need 5 stacks to get to 200ms.

All in all, because damage is ramping up exponentially no hero will get very much until almost fully ramped in speed.  So, as an estimate I am going to use 5 seconds as the ramp-up time, and pretend that all heroes get zero damage during ramp-up and full damage (and speed) after it.  PD similarly gets 3 seconds as his ramp-up.)

OK, now we have enough numbers we can compute.  First we compute DPS for PD as follows.  PD and HQ together got 64953661, in 180s.  So, that is 177s of PD damage (at 5HPS), and 175s of HQ damage (at 5.5HPS).  Thus, total hits applied are estimated to be 1847.5.  (Multiply by 35000: this checks out very well with the actual damage applied.)

Testing TT

OK, with HQ's number in hand we proceed to the TT test.  TT gets Scatter 4.  HQ has her talent, scatter 8.   That, along with the pumpkies, should hopefully be just enough.

Boss3 testing HQ+TT.

I did the run and it worked -- no procs.

Here's the thing partway through:

Boss3 HQ+TT test almost done.

The result?  120m damage exactly: killed the boss, just the 3 of them.  (TT does a lot of damage.)  I knew this would happen, and so was carefully watching the time.  There were 53 seconds left when it ended.

53 seconds left out of 180.  So, 127 seconds spent.  But some of that was spent when PD was ramping up, and we need to account for that.  As above, we assume PD ramps in 3 seconds, others 5 seconds.

So now we can compute what TT got.  Over a run of 127s, PD should have gotten 124s of damage, and HQ 122s.  Thus, they should have totaled 21700000 damage and 23485000 damage respectively.  Total: 45185000.  The remaining damage is TT's: that is 74815000 damage.  This was done by TT in 122s (effectively), so her DPS is 613238.  We divide by 35000 to convert this to HPS: 17.5.

Conclusion: at top speed, Trixie Treat (and her pumpkies) average 17.5 HPS.  Trixie herself gets 5.1 HPS.  So the remaining 12.4HPS are coming from pumpkies.

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.

Personal Record in GW

Since I have been cheesing, my GW scores have shot up quite a bit.  I used to snipe.  I would rarely be able to deal with any base above 200000 might, and usually I'd be down in the 170000 range looking through many bases for my 5th.

These days, I look at many fewer bases.  Usually I can't cheese the really high ones, say, 220000+, because their Ghoulem or DD is too strong, and/or they are aware of cheesing and either leave off Ghoul and DD entirely, or they put them in the middle of the 6 heroes in a way that I cannot get at them without pulling at least one other hero.  (If that hero happens to be really weak, then cheesing is still possible.   But usually it's SK, Grim, or some other hero that my team can't handle safely.)

Sometimes I can cheese a base on the first try, but it's much more typical for it to take multiple tries (and sometimes a rather high number) to get my Ghoulem to path successfully.  But I do find that cheesing is faster overall than sniping, because I am looking at fewer bases and I am not subject to the RNG as much later in the run.

Anyway, here's my latest and greatest GW result.  It's a testament to the power of cheese.  In this war I hit bases mostly in the range 220000-230000.

Pity my guild ain't getting it done.  

2682.

Medusa Hits Single Targets Twice

Recently Mr__Perfect posted a handy reference post at reddit showing the amount of hits you can expect from each hero at max speed over 10 seconds, against a single target.  (This is an update of an original post by panpiksel.)

While I was discussing it there, I reinvented my own idea on how to empirically test this.  That is: do a run with PD and one other hero of interest.  Put Scatter 4 on the hero being tested, to stop the boss from proccing.  Put Angi on PD so he doesn't die.  Since my PD is basically maxxed (skill 10, Berserk 8, Revite 4), the only factor changing is the second hero.  So we can compare them.

I've already done exactly this to compare Heartbreaker to Phantom King, trying to figure out how HB works.  But because I did that, now I can extend the comparison to other heroes.  One per day!

Here's the first: Medusa.  Here's her result:

Medusa result.

PD and Medusa score 99,165,922.

From the older post, HB and PK got 94,734,436 and 95,073,376 respectively.   According to what I know, both get the same hits.  They should be the same, and (within 0.5%, experimental error) they are.

Obviously Medusa is getting higher.  But how much?  We need to factor out the effect of PD.  But we can do that.  PD is getting 50 hits per 10 seconds over the period where he is max speed.  HB/PK are getting 100 hits over the same period.  So, of the damage done by HB/PK, exactly 1/3 is PD.  The rest is HB/PK.  Taking the average of HB/PK damage as "the" damage expected for 150 hits/10s, we find an expected value of 31,634,635 for PD.  The rest (63,269,271) is HB/PK.

We expect PD's damage the same regardless of which hero he is with.  Thus, we conclude that Medusa did 67,531,287.  That is roughly 6.7% higher than HB/PK.  This concords well with the 5% higher that we expected.

Conclusion: Medusa is certainly auto-hitting twice against a single target.  She is doing 5% more damage than HB/PK in this situation (one target, max speed, low damage cap).

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.

How to Cheese in Castle Clash

[Update, 4/15: here's a reddit link including a good video on cheesing, by reddit CCer brahvmaga.  This is like a TLDR of this post.  I leave it here anyway for people who like to read.  And here's a second reddit thread from the same guy, with a video covering more advanced cheesing techniques.]

"Cheesing" is an attack strategy in Castle Clash whereby you attempt to avoid engagement with all enemy heroes except one.  That one you construct a deadlocked fight with, a fight that neither side will win before the attack times out.  You use procs from engaged heroes to destroy the other enemy heroes, or the enemy buildings.

Here's a cheese in progress, about to end.  You can see the purple tones of two Ghoulems going at it in the top of the screenshot.  Additionally I have Treantar in there, with Doom Balloon.  In the middle are the enemy heroes, standing on nothing since all their pads have been blown up underneath them.  All the buildings are gone except for that one nearly-dead camp at the bottom.

A classic "X" base goes down to the cheese.

Subgames

Cheesing can be used in any anti-base mode.  Indeed, it could theoretically be used in any mode where the enemy heroes are range-restricted by hero bases, and in which victory is determined by destroying all of the enemy buildings.

I started doing it in Guild Wars (GW) to try to hit higher bases than I could do effectively with snipers.   (Here's my "how to snipe" article.)  GW is still the main place I do it, because that's still true.  My sniping has gotten no more powerful than it was six months ago.  But sniping is getting harder as pets heal and protect more and more, and as more people have one or more of the newer heroes that make sniping more difficult.

I have found cheesing surprisingly useful in expeditions.  Mostly in expeditions I snipe, but sometimes I stupidly take risks and lose my better snipers.  (Aries is particularly painful to lose.)  Then sniping gets much more difficult; some bases you can still snipe, but some you can't.  Rather than using up a pass, or trying brute force, or taking a one or two star win, you can sometimes cheese a base.  Having additional strategies in your toolkit that use a different set of heroes from sniping is quite useful.

Generally, nobody attempts to cheese on normal raids.  With spells to help you it just isn't necessary.  However, you can use normal raids as a good way of testing it out and refining your technique to some extent.  Of course in this case you cannot tweak your lineup, nor your lineup's crests and pets to try to exactly counter a particular base.  But it still can be a good learning experience, and doesn't cost you much when you fail.


Strategy and Variations

Cheesing is pretty simple conceptually.  You drop a "tank" hero with the intent of drawing out the enemy "anchor" for a 1 on 1 fight that you hope is a deadlock.  (See below for these terms.)  Neither hero can kill the other.  Then you optionally add one or more heroes to pile onto the anchor, again watching carefully to make sure it is still a deadlock.

There are two ways to win a cheese, and thus two substrategies.  The first I'll refer to as a "sniper cheese".  Here you use the deadlocked fight to generate sniper damage, that is, damage which targets enemy heroes and not buildings.  If there is enough of this damage (and not enough healing), you can kill all the enemy heroes except the anchor.  Then you can break the deadlock by adding more heroes; your heroes are now free to wipe the base.  (Keep PD in reserve; he will certainly break any deadlock.)

Sniper-cheesing is relatively rare for two reasons.  First, because snipers also hit the anchor, it is relatively hard to get enough sniper damage without risking killing the anchor prematurely.  Second, because via pets there is now defensive healing that you normally face.  An opposing Bubblow and Mini Angi can heal a lot, requiring several snipers to overcome.  Usually an anchor can only handle one or two snipers.

The more common strategy is usually just called a "cheese" ("normal cheese" if it must be distinguished).  Between your tank and its support heroes, you clear the base by killing all the buildings using proc and/or pet damage.  Usually in this case you win the fight with 3 stars without killing a single enemy hero; this is why it is named "cheesing" since it's rather a cheesy to win this way.

Hero Roles: Enemy

On the enemy side, things are simple.  You want to pick a single hero to isolate and beat on for your cheese.  I call this enemy hero the "anchor".  In theory you could choose any hero for the anchor; if it has enough healing and/or damage protection it can work.  In practice, there are only two heroes that will do: Ghoulem and DD.  Both of them have procs that make them uniquely tanky.  (I call these two heroes, as well as SK, "supertanks".)

Practically, I doubt that SK can be used as an anchor.  The problem is his offense is huge compared to his defense, so he'll kill your tank.  Theoretically he could be debuffed enough to be anchored on, but this is rather hard to do at best.

I have successfully cheesed anchoring off of both DD and Ghoulem.  DD is preferable, because it allows you to use either your own DD or Ghoulem as a tank.  Because Ghoulem is ranged, if you are going to use an enemy Ghoulem as anchor you can only tank with your own Ghoulem; DD will close to melee range with it, which will almost certainly get him attacked by multiple other enemies.

The enemy's heroes other than the tank don't matter much except insofar as they force you to engage the anchor outside of their range.  Heroes with autoproc can make cheesing harder, particularly if you are attacking with DD as one of your heroes.  Other than that, though, they make little difference.

The enemy's pets matter.  For sniper cheesing, if they have good healing and defensive pets, doing a sniper cheese is likely to be risky or just not possible.  On the other hand, those same pets make it easier to do a normal cheese, since they do a lot to sustain the anchor.


Hero Roles: Friendly

There are two main roles for offensive heroes in a cheese.  The first is your tank hero, the one that gets the cheese going by pulling the enemy anchor, and tanks most of the damage.  Some tanks can cheese a base solo, but I find that's rare.  Usually you'll also want other "support" heroes, whose job is (a) to keep the tank alive, and/or (b) to smash the base or enemy heroes.  I'll discuss both roles.

The tank is the key to a cheese.  He is must be a formidable tank; he needs to be able to withstand the damage dished out by the anchor.  Currently I feel only two heroes can do it: Ghoulem and DD.  No surprise that it's the supertanks again, except SK, and for the same reason.  Normal 1 on 1 hero fights don't deadlock.  It is only when both heroes have a substantial defensive boost from procs that it happens.

For support heroes, you generally want heroes that (a) don't cause problems offensively, and (b) add something to the attack, either survivability for friendly heroes, or damage to enemy heroes or buildings.

For your tank in particular, you want at least an evolved hero and better, double evoed.  This is less important for support heroes (but still a good idea).  Evolution (devo) increases hitpoints by about double (triple) that of non-evo; however it increases attack by only a factor of 1.5 (2).  Thus, the ratio of attack to defense goes down for evos and devoes.  This helps you cheese by giving you the hitpoint pool to survive, while not giving you such high offense that you kill the anchor.

Tactics

Getting a cheese set up is often fussy.  The first problem is "pulling" the anchor.  In general you want the anchor and only the anchor to come from all the other heroes and engage your tank, which means only a few locations where you can possibly approach the base successfully.  In a typical 2x3 rectangle of hero pads, look for supertanks on the corners.  If there is, that's a potential anchor.  See if you can drop one of your supertanks in on that side, just close enough to pull the anchor out but not close enough to pull any other enemy.

Usually you cannot drop anywhere that would immediately pull out an anchor.  You have to drop further out, then let the tank work its way in through a few buildings, to the point where the anchor will be triggered.  You want your tank to be paused on a building at this point.

Often a setup won't allow you to use HtH tanks; most "X" bases are like this.  If you can, though, experiment with it.  Generally, it is preferable to use DD as your tank if you can, because with Ghoulem supporting him up he can withstand almost any enemy hero one on one, and his bombs make killing even a pretty high level base go much faster.  (In the pre-pet era, cheesing was the specialty of DD alone, since he is by far the most damaging hero in the game to buildings.)

People sometimes use bait troops to lure with; I have not done this and so cannot say a lot about it.   I would think you'd want the tankier troops to withstand arrow/magic fire for a while, and probably a variety of troops with different ranges.  It should be possible, using bait troops, to lure out an anchor and then engage it with your tank even when there are no buildings at all in the proper place.

If you do pull 2+  heroes it is usually best to quit immediately and retry.  In GW, though, you can let it go and see if your hero(es) can kill the non-anchor(s).  If you die, you don't lose anything; try again.

Generally, if an approach to a pull seems at all likely it usually is possible -- with enough tries.  If one drop location fails a few times, try slightly different positions.  There is a lot of randomness.  I've tried 50 times on a GW base when I had the time to do that.  Don't try to do cheesing if you have limited time.

Once you have a successful pull and the fight begins, watch it attentively for as long as you can without going to close to 50%.  (And also, in expeditions, be careful of dying.)  You want to make sure that it's a solid deadlock.  That is, that (a) your hero(es) are not dying and not even getting close, and (b) the anchor isn't either.  If either side is in danger of dying, cheesing is a very risky strategy.  This risk doesn't matter much in expeditions (especially if it is the enemy dying; you can quit out if that happens with 1 or 2 stars and lose honor badges), but in GW it matters more.

If your tank can't tank it but is fairly close, then consider adding support heroes to help him out.  Ghoulem is the most obvious support hero (if not serving as the tank).  However there are other heroes that make good support; see the section below.

If attempting a normal cheese, do not put Doom Balloon on your heroes while testing the pull and the deadlock.  Leave one hero without any pet.  Once you've established that a pull is possible and the deadlock is stable using a particular tank and helpers, then you quit, add Doom Balloon to your chosen hero and retry.  Doom Balloon is your attempt at 3-star.

You will need to experiment with which heroes you use to tank with and support, which pets they have, and perhaps even their crests.  For ideas on this, read on.


Support and Pet-holding Heroes

There are two kinds of support you can bring by using additional heroes.  One is a hero whose proc adds something to the attack, or to the collective team defense.  The other is a hero -- any hero -- used as a placeholder for a pet.

Here are some support heroes I've tried, and the idea behind using them.

• Aries: used against DD only, the idea is to stop the proccing at least part of the time.  Also used for damage in a snipe-cheese.
• DD: as building damage in a normal cheese, supporting Ghoulem. 
• Ghoulem: for healing and defensive shielding.
• Grizzly Reaper, for dealing uniform damage to most or all enemy heroes in a snipe-cheese.
• Treantar: Tre's proc shields his allies for 5 seconds out of ~10.5, or as low as 6 if you use Valentina to boost his energy, which is very helpful in staying alive.  Also he can maybe revive members of your team if you skate over the edge of "too little defense".  (Of course if they die once, they will often die twice.)  And also, Tre has piss-poor offense relative to his defense.  His proc doesn't affect enemies and his hit speed is just 1500.  He's a great place to put Doom Balloon.
• Valentina adds energy to your team without amping them up offensively like Cupid.  This can be useful in getting slow-hitting heroes to proc more often.

And some I have not tried, because don't have or too expensive.  But seems like they could work too:

• Minotaur Lord: hits lots of buildings.  Most people use him to do "mino-smash": single or double-shot a whole base, after carefully deploying Cupid, Druid and/or PD to get him amped.  If there are no places to deploy the support heroes for mino-smash, though, then maybe a cheese could work.
• Spirit Mage: targets everything, lots of missiles.  Similar to DD except about double the damage and no stun.  Downside is no defensive advantages and weak hitpoints, so you'll have to be careful about making sure he can survive.

Placeholder heroes should only be used if you can't get enough pets in the battle on the support heroes you're using.  You want these placeholders to have low damage, high hitpoints, and no nasty proc effects that would screw up the attack.

• Atlanticore is a decent placeholder.  I have an evo'ed AC (evolved because I was using him way back when in LBF) that I have used from time to time.  He adds very little damage against the anchor while providing pretty good hitpoints, including a fraction of the time invulnerable.
• Although I have not tried it, Paladin would also make a pretty great placeholder.  He's almost all defense, perfect for those high-level GW attacks.  But you'd have to evo him.  Kind of expensive.  Still, his evo'ed appearance is pretty cool.

Pets

Proper pet selection can really help a cheese succeed.  Pets can heal your heroes (Bubblow, Angi), protect them (Angi, Yule), debuff the anchor (Auroria, Lil Havoc).   But as previously mentioned, Doom Balloon almost by himself can win the battle for you.

If you are serious about cheesing, skill up your Doom Balloon to the max.  (Yes, it costs a lot of shards.  Worth it.)  The minimum cheese attempt is a solo tank with Doom Balloon.  Doom Balloon is necessary for almost all normal cheese attempts, unless you happen to have nearly maxxed out Dread Drake.  My DD is 199ee, but lacks any offensive talent/crest; he cannot kill a high level base on his own.

The second most important pet is, in my opinion, Angi.  Your tank needs to withstand the beating from the anchor as well as towers and possibly autoproccers.  Angi helps with this a lot, both in protecting your tank and healing him.

Auroria is particularly useful against an enemy DD; she will keep it stunned about a third of the time.  This reduces damage against your team quite a bit.  Auroria is riskier used against other anchors because they don't autoproc, and therefore may be stunned just when their proc protection has dropped, leading to them getting killed.

Finix is a good pet to add for a normal cheese, but be careful.  He does not hit only buildings (like Doomie), so he will hit the enemy heroes from time to time, which may result in them proccing if they autoproc.  You need to be able to easily tank that, or don't use him.

Crests and Talents

I hate switching crests, and rarely do except for significant payoff.  However, if you're willing to do it, there are probably some optimizations you can make to increase the odds of a cheese attempt working.

Generally, you want your heroes to have less offense and more defense.  So, defensive crests and talents are of more value than offensive ones when cheesing.  

Definitely avoid the talents that do extra damage only to the target of auto attacks: these are slowdown, heavy blow, and deadly strike.  These talents risk killing the anchor while adding nothing to the cheese damage.  

Similarly, avoid scatter.  The anchor needs its procs to survive; don't take those from it.

Some offensive talents may be good on certain heroes but not others.  In particular, increasing Dread Drake's offense (with bulwark and/or war god) will increase his proc damage, which is good.  Be aware that this also increases his auto attack damage, thus possibly destabilizing the deadlock.

For most heroes, defensive talents/crests are best.  Revive is probably the best, since they have a huge hitpoint bonus relative to their offense bonus.  Also, you should be collecting them anyway for other uses, and the revive offers some insurance against low-odds deaths.  However, other defensive talents can also help.  Lifedrain, for example, tends to stabilize any hero.

Artifacts

As with crests, you want defensive artifacts for your cheese team, and you want to avoid the offensive ones.  The best defensive artifacts are the Victor's Emblem and the Goblet of Life.  Also Lightning Rock is mildly defensive, and even Garuda (it will slow down the anchor's proc).

Artifacts all have RNG-based effects in them, and this is something that you generally want to avoid when cheesing.  So, the artifact I like the most for cheesing is Victor's.  Its damage reduction is not RNG based, and it helps the entire cheese team by debuffing the anchor.  By contrast, the Goblet is very powerful when it works, but if you get a bad run of RNGs you can die before it activates.  And it does not help the team, other than the hero it's on.

Generally, avoid the Axe of Strife and the Blitz Scroll.

[Updated: added para on possible support heroes I have not tried.]
[Updated: removed discussion of SK as likely anchor or tank.]
[Updated: added section on artifacts.]