Saturday, January 28, 2017

January Progress

Not that much news this month, but since it's almost over it's time for a report.  (Here's the last report).   Last month I got a new Grimfiend and a new Trixie, so I had a lot of bringing up to do.

This month I rolled about 10000 gems without getting any new heroes.  Makes up for my good luck last month.  Best hero I got was an Orksbane dupe.  Whoopie.  I also got this, which is at least funny:
Better than most rolls.
I finished Grimfiend about a week ago; he's now 200e.  He had Enlightenment 2 when I was training him, and then in quick succession he had Blade Shell 1 (booyah), Scorch 2, and now Flame Guard 2.  Obviously this won't last very long.  It's kind of nice having a place to put crappy talents when I roll them.
Grimfiend with decidedly weak talent.
Now I am training Trixie Treat.  She is currently at level 197, non evo.  Like Grim, I plan to bring her up to 200e and then stop.  Unlike Grim, she has Enlightenment 5, so I may leave that on her for a while.  We'll see what talents I get.
Trixie, about to evolve.
After Trixie finishes, my current plan is to double-evo my DD.  He's currently at 199e, but he's a brawler and double-evoing is very important for brawlers, since their hitpoints are key.  I have 1 dupe for him, so the double-evo will be expensive.  Still, he's an A grade hero and it is worth it.

My pets are coming along.  With the bonus from Yulephant, my egg stockpile is slowly decreasing.  When he was released I had about 50 green eggs stored up and a bunch of blues and a few purples.  (I saved blue/purple for a week or two before Yule was released so I could have chances to get him ASAP.)  Now I am down to 15 green eggs.

My non-rare pets are starting to hit level 16.  This gets this nice bonus:
Pets 16 -> better boni.
Finally, I beat HBM T.  I got the idea maybe I am ready when I accidentally triggered T using my normal base and heroes.  (I meant to sweep S).  I got almost through wave4:
Better than expected.
Then today I read on reddit that one can deal with the wave 5 bosses without scatter, using silence (from Aries, Aviar, and Garuda).  So I tried it.  First I had to re-make my corner base for the Nth time.   Then I carefully plotted my team, it's crests/pets/artifacts, and set it up.  It worked!
HBM AA unlocked.
I tried AA and got wiped.  Maybe I'll wait on that for my DD to be double evoed.

Now I can sweep T.  Being on AA is actually a bit annoying because it's another click each time to sweep. Still, what matters is I'll get more experience, or at least I can if lucky.  I assume that means the average is higher.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Corrode 5

Got a talent re-roll on a quest today...
Grimfiend and a Corrode 5 talent
Corrode 5! Yow!  But who to give it to?  Here's reddit's stickied article on this topic to read and think about: Guide, Where to Put Yalents.

First choice would be a Skull Knight if I had one.  I don't.  Second choice would be Death Knight.  I have one, but I already have a Stone Skin 5 on him, and that's pretty good especially considering that I use him only in Lost Battlefield.  Next is Dread Drake.  Mine already has Lifedrain 4, which is pretty good.  But I can crest that, so, not a bad place for it.  Also in the running, my new Grimfiend, currently sporting Enlightenment 2.  I have him up to 155e, and I'd really like to keep the Enlightenment through 200e.  But we take these things when they happen.

All things considered, since Grim lacks any damage reduction I think he'll just get killed fast in spite of Corrode if I try to wade into a group with him.  So, I'll put it on my DD.  Unless I can roll a SK soon.

Today happens to be the second and final day of the latest "Spend Gems and Win", and I am planning to roll enough gems to get to 8000 total.  So, there's a slight chance I'll roll a Skull Knight, and make the decision an easy one.  I am waiting for that.  Also I have one more quest today, and there is always a chance that I'll get a hero roll there, or another talent roll.  But for now, I am putting off the decision until I am forced into it, or I have completed by last quest and rolled my gems.

Later on...

Gems rolled.  Nuthin'.  (Well -- one Cupid.  Mine is evo2 and I had 2 dupes.)  And the LHC got me a Thunder God dupe.   I guess DD will get it, but I'll hold off until my next talent reroll hoping for a super-lucky SK first.

Monday, January 9, 2017

Three Flamed Insane 2-1

I haven't pushed dungeons in a while.  But today I happened to see on reddit some dude boasting about doing Insane 2-1 with "non evo" heroes.  Some of his were zero evo; others were evo1.  But mine are much stronger: I have all evos of the relevant heroes, and some of them are double evo.  And I have better crests and better talents.

So I decided to run it.  If he can do it, I can do it with stronger heroes.  But it is going to take time to set up.  (Which is the main reason I have not done it yet.)  OK, check crests.  Check pets.  Check artifacts.  Twiddle twiddle.

Go time.
This is going down.
Looking good...
Insane 2-1 three star.
First try.  Didn't lose anyone.

Here's the Goblet.  For some reason I had thought that it only had one slot, like the Blitz Scroll or Garuda.  But no, it has three.  That is very convenient.  Just enough for my latest evos.  (If I had known that, I would have tried for it two months ago.)
Goblet of Life
I have lots of merits piling up since I do Boss 5 and don't buy LHCs any more.  (The odds of getting a hero I need are negligible.  Even getting a dupe I need has very low odds.)  So now the Goblet is level 5.

I need to figure out who to put on it.  Probably snipers since they need healing.
Bonus!
Oh look.  300 gems for unlocking 6 artifacts.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Soulstone Pumpkin Duke

Soulstones have existed for a while now, and even for a FtP like me it's possible to get heroes that way.  I hear rumors of people getting Demogorgon soulstones.  But I've never seen anything like that.  In fact almost all of the soulstones I have gotten are Pumpkin Duke soulstones (200 of them).  I've also gotten 50 Santa Boom soulstones.  And that's it.

Getting another PD is no big deal to me.  My PD is already evo2, and I have 3 dupes.  Still, since the UI makes a point of showing it to you, it's rather annoying to leave your soulstones banked.  Since I have dupes already, it takes no warehouse space.  And since I have this blog anyway, I figured I'd take some pictures of the process.

You trade in soulstones via the Hero Compendium, which is the listing of legendary heroes that opens up from the bottom menu.  Here is how the bottom menu looks when you have enough soulstones to do a trade-in:
Bottom menu nagging me.
When you open the Hero Compendium, your heroes with 200+ soulstones are moved to the front of the line, so you'll see them immediately.  PD is normally way down on the right end of the scrolling list of heroes.  Here he is first in line:
PD jumps the queue.
Here's me exchanging my PD soulstones:
Do you really want another PD dupe?
You get the new hero card in your warehouse.  Now I have four PD dupes.  Woohoo.  Now, getting a Santa dupe would almost be worth something.  

Friday, January 6, 2017

Pet Strategy January 2017

Pets were introduced in the fall of 2016.  At the time, I wrote a strategy guide to pets in CC which is still by far the most popular thing I have posted here.  By now there have been some important changes to the game, and I'd like to revisit what I wrote then and add some additional discussion.  First I'll lay out the changes to pets, then I'll look at some of the ramifications for a few aspects of CC play.

Changes Since Introduction

There have been several changes to the situation since pets were introduced.  Let's review.

The first thing is the addition of Yulephant, which happened in the December update.
Yulephant
Yulephant has a purely defensive talent: it shields two heroes against stun and fear, and gives them +30% dodge.   Yulephant is ideal for a hand-to-hand based attack, which often has to deal with stuns coming from magic towers.  For sniping attacks, he's less important, though still 30% dodge is nothing to sneeze at.  Give him to your third sniper if you snipe, or any hero in a HtH team.

The second change worth discussing is that we've had several months to get eggs and open them, so everyone should be getting the pets to medium levels.

My pets are now level 14 (one is level 15), with the rares being level 8 and 9, except Yulephant (the new one in the Christmas update) being level 4.  Unless you've slacked on opening eggs, or started the game after pets came in, you should have about the same.  You might have higher levels if you've been spending gems to open eggs.  Though I would not recommend that for most players.

(If you do plan to pay substantial gems to open eggs, there's an event which drastically reduces the price when you spend at least 24000 gems opening eggs.  It is called "Egg Hatch-A-Thon"; one is going on as I post this.  If it's over by the time you read this, I'd suggest waiting for it to come around again; there have been three so far.  Accumulate your eggs and wait for it.)
Egg Hatch-A-Thon rewards
With increasing pet levels come increasing pet skill maximums.    My average pets have max skill level of 6, while rares have 5.

The final big change to pets was a boost to their attack based on a fraction of the attack of the hero they are assigned to.  This attack boost happened in the December update.  Note that the hero's attack is his "base" attack stat, which is shown on the "Attributes" page for him when you look at him in the heroes altar.  This is determined by his level, his inscriptions and the attack boost of his crests.  War God and Bulwark do not affect it as a talent; as a crest you get each crest's attack bonus but not the bonus for a set.

It's a pretty big increase.  Just looking at my pets, most of them have gotten at least a 50% boost to their attack, and it is nearly 100% for my Aviar (assigned to my 199ee PD).  Does it matter?  We'll consider that...

Pet Offense Still No Big Deal

First off, let's discuss pet attacks as damage producers.  Even with the attack increase they get from their assisted hero, this is still a fairly minor effect.  My Little Havoc, for example, gets 2754 attack on his own, adding 1994 from my Druid (16% of the 8044+4421 shown on his Attributes).  He does 350% of this when he attacks.  So his total attack is 16618, and it has a cooldown of 4.6s.  Since he attacks only with his hero, and it goes 60% of the time, it will usually take him a couple tries to proc.  So, he might average one attack every 6 seconds or so.  Total DPS: ~2800.

By comparison, my Druid (181ee and inscription 90, berserk 5 talent) does 12465 every 0.8 seconds, so total DPS is 15581.  The pet is at least in the ballpark, and it will continue to increase whereas Druid has only a small amount of improvement possible.  But still, at least for now, the pet damage is a fraction of hero damage.  And note that pet damage does not get amplified by Cupid/PD/Druid effects.  Thus, compared to the effects of the pet skills, pet damage is still not worth worrying about much.  So, as in 2016, I am going to continue to ignore pet damage to heroes.

I do predict that as pet levels improve further, eventually I will want to revisit pet damage.

Pet Healing Is Getting Important

Now let's discuss pet healing.  Previously I felt it only really mattered for snipers.  But now I am beginning to notice its effects in several places.

Pets -- Angi and Bubblow -- are starting to make sniping attacks harder.

Bubblow in particular is starting to degrade my sniping attacks, particularly in guild wars.  A modern Bubblow should have around 2500 attack on its own; you can probably assign it to at least an evo1 hero for another 1500 or so.  At skill 6, it restores 390% hitpoints of the three allied heroes with lowest HP every 4.5s.  The total heal can be up to 45000 hitpoints; the total HPS (heal per second) can get up to 10000.  That's... a lot.

10000 HPS is not going to be enough to drastically change a hand-to-hand fight involving many high level heroes on both sides.  My Druid has 15500 DPS of melee damage.  A team of six heroes, many of them with offensive procs, will do many times that.  (Never mind adding a PD/Druid/Cupid boost.)

However, in combat involving only a few heroes, 10000 HPS is a lot.  It will matter when sniping in many modes.  It will also appear in limited contexts such as Torch Battle guards.

As an example, I often snipe with the combo of Warlock and Aries.  Both of mine are level 195e; both of their attacks are right around 11200, although Warlock gets another 25% from his War God crests.  When sniping, Aries procs about every 9 seconds; this does 33600 to five heroes.  So his DPS is 18666.  Warlock procs every 8.4 seconds, doing ~64400 to three heroes.  So his DPS is 23000.  Total DPS for the two of them is around 40000.  So, you can see that even a lone Bubblow is going to make sniping considerably harder: you need 25% more buildings.   Give Bubblow to an evo2 hero, especially one with high level offensive crests (War God, Berserk).  That will make any base very hard to snipe, at least for me.  Even a base with an "easy" sniping layout.

Snipers need to up their damage rate, which did not matter much before.  (See my sniping guide for the reasoning.)  So, evolve your snipers if you have not already.  If you have evo1 snipers, think about how you can go to evo2.  Also consider offensive crests and talents.  Before it did not matter if you had Tenacity or Wargod on your sniper; increasingly it does.

You can also counter defensive healing to some degree by adding more snipers, so as to increase their net remote DPS.  For example, I might add my Griz into a sniping attack.  He is evo2 199, and War God 6, for total offense of 23100 DPS; added to the 40000 DPS of Warlock and Aries he makes it harder for Bubblow and Angi to keep up.

One more place where pet healing is starting to be effective is in many-vs-one fights, aka boss battles.  I discovered this accidentally.  I have my Team Dungeons team set up for Lava3, using a team with no healer in it.  But I missed some Lavas for various reasons, and needed to use up my tries in Mesa4.  I used my unmodified team without thinking.  The Mesa started and I realized what happened, but then I was amazed to see that all the damage I was taking was being healed.  It was all the Bubblows and Angis.  I have used it several times hence, mostly in pickup Mesa4, and I have never lost a hero.

It is tempting to try Wretched Gorge 3 without my Druid.  There are DPS heroes I could put in instead... but I have not tried this yet.

I have also noticed some fails in Wretched Gorge 3 that I suspect are related to pet healing.  The final demon does a fair amount of damage, but I think with an Angi or two heal/guarding a hero and several Bubblows healing it, many heroes can take the damage.  Eventually we are going to have to reconsider what sort of teams to have and where heroes go.

Pet Skills

Finally, let's discuss spending on pet skills.  Last year I advised everyone to max all the skills! they're cheap!  That was true enough.  But now, at level 5->6, skills cost 75000 skill experience, which means 3750 shards.  That's still not a huge amount, but it's significant.  So, while I generally stand by the advice I gave last year, there are a few pets who you might be able to scrimp on.
Finix with skill 5
First is Finix.  His attack slows the enemy.  Generally it is never going to make or break any slowdown team to have this.  So you can leave it low to save shards.

Second, Doom Balloon.  DB only affects buildings, so unless killing buildings is important to you, you can leave his skill low.  If you are doing the "DD cheese" attack for GW/raiding, then you can use Doom Balloon effectively and may want to max his skill.  Otherwise, it is not important and you can leave it at a low level.  (Mine has level 3.)  You might want to put a little into it if you are pushing dungeons.

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

New Year Progress

As an addendum of sorts to yesterday's report...

Today I got a roll a hero quest, and rolled this guy:
Grimfield!
Huzzah!  During the same quest, got a talent reroll and rolled this:
Grim enlightened.
Perfect.  Now I have him at level 140, where he is waiting on honor badges to move up.

Yesterday was the end of the latest "Spend Gems and Win".  Since I had a big pile of gems, I decided to roll up to the 8000 level to get the LHC.  I'd spent just over 1000 gems over the two days that it ran, so I needed to roll 7000 gems.  That meant 47 hero rolls.  I got a Paladin, a Warlock, four Legendary Slimes... and not much else.  Boo.  I guess that makes up for the luck of rolling Grim.

But don't forget the LHC!  I collected my winnings, then rolled the card.

Druid.  Ugh.

Still.  Good day, overall.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Year End Progress

Christmas has come and gone.  I only started paying attention to the various FtP specials about six months ago.  But clashers were excited about Christmas, saying that's when the best specials are.  Well, there were indeed a lot of pretty nice looking gem buying specials.  But there were no gem-spending specials beyond the normal ones.   So I really did not spend anything.

Now we have a "Spend Gems and Win", and I have over 19000 gems saved.  Almost 20000.  I could roll up to the 20000 level for SG&W, but the rewards there are pretty meager.  I plan to just roll to 8000.  You get a legendary hero card.  It's not great -- will probably get another ninja.  But still, there are dupes I could get that I want, and who knows whether I might be able to roll a new hero.  Can you get Ghoulem from a LHC?  Dunno.  But that rolling will happen tonight, after my last quest for the day is done.  I am hopeful.

All of that is way of saying, not too much progress in terms of new heroes.  And in particular, not the one I want most: Ghoulem.  Right now I can run one lava3 team out of four in my guild's lava3 setup: I could run three of four with Ghoulem.  (Need SK for the fourth.)  Ghoulem would also be nice in other game modes too.

But back to the progress I have made since the last report.

First, I finished up leveling my Grizzly Reaper.  He's at 199ee.
Grizzly Reaper getting beefy.
Not all the way to 200 because I raid with him, so he gets experience, and I dislike wasted experience.  His talent is still at 8, but I will take it to 9 soon I think.  This will make him hit 6 heroes per proc, up from 5 at level 8.  It will help modestly in raiding and also modestly in lava3.

After Griz was done, I started in on my Death Knight.  I had a dupe, so evolving him was "free" beyond the rune and of course the many honor badges needed.  I don't use him much; currently I use him only in WG3.  But I figure he could be useful if I ever do start hand-to-hand raiding, and I didn't have anyone else obvious to dump experience on.

So now he's level 175e.
Death Knight getting beefy.
I didn't complete him to 180e, though I probably will in the not too distant future.  Instead I changed course.  I realized that I need to improve my sniping much more than my WG3 (which is already nearly perfect, at least in my quadrant.  Some of my guildmates less so, but I can't easily improve that).  Now, I don't really want to be using sniping so heavily (pets are starting to make it harder), but I still perforce have to do it.  I just don't have the hand-to-hand heroes that you really need.  While I do have DD (and I'm thinking about paying shards for the double evo), I don't have SK, Vlad, or Ghoulem.  I probably will continue to snipe almost indefinitely.  Certainly sniping (if at all possible) is the best way to deal with expeditions in particular, and those matter since they are the main source of HB.  And sniping is still how I deal with Guild Wars fights, and since these yield fame they are important to optimize for.

Of the snipers, I already have TG at 200ee and now Griz at 199ee.  They can't improve levelwise.  My Warlock and Aries are both at 195e: they could improve a little bit with experience, but I don't have the dupes to double evo them.

The main way in which I could improve my sniping was leveling my Pixie, who was at level 163 (no evo).  Even though I had no dupe for her, I finally decided to pull the trigger and spend the 20000 shards for her evo.  I did that Saturday.
Pixie getting beefy.
Now she's 165e and climbing.  I'll stop at 180e due to HB.

Last Thursday I was doing a quest and got a hero roll, and got a new hero:
Rolled Trixie Treat.
I took her to level 120 with books, and inscribed her to 80.  This just added might, but it does prepare her for serious leveling and use fairly rapidly if I wanted.  I don't see a huge need for her yet.  She seems good for damaging bosses, and in various hand-to-hand situations (lost battlefield), but beyond that, not particularly wonderful.

Then, last Sunday, on a talent reroll for a quest, I got this:
Rolled Englightenment 5.
Well.  Trixie got it, obviously.   Now I have a great reason to level her, irrespective of her own inherent value.
Trix gets enlightened.
She's heading for 180e, eventually, unless I roll a dupe or two pretty soon, in which I case I might go for 180ee.

Now I have Trix at level 160 capped, but after two evolves and one new hero in less than a week, I am really crunched for HB in a way I have not been in a very long time.  So, I have resumed giving experience to Pixie while I accumulate HB.  It's actually going to be a while before I can fully exploit this enlightenment.

One other funny thing.  I evolved Pixie on Saturday.  Then on Sunday, I got this in a quest gem roll:
RNG taunts me.
Thanks RNG!  Seriously, it's almost as good now as it would have been before I evolved her, since I'll need at least on more to make it worthwhile to double evo.  Still, I really wish it could have come a day earlier...