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  Vlad seems nice but rather outdated.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.)

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.

Ghoulem!

I got two blue slimes in one gem roll!  Mwahaha!

And that guy in the middle.

Here he is now:

Not a Jedi yet.

Obviously not ready for primetime.  He was born with a 5/8 talent! ... deadly strike.  Actually negative for some uses...  Oh well, replaced it with Berserk 1 (how often is that an improvement?), and will be hoping for that Bulwark 5...

Got a Hero from Trials!

I've been playing this game nonstop for two years now.  In all that time I have rarely lost any hero trials to a maxxed queue.  So I have probably run around 2800 of them by now.  The first year or so was spent in Challenge I.  The second in Challenge II; I've been doing HT16 for the last six months or so.

I've never gotten a hero card as a reward.  Never... until yesterday!

Pixie card!

It comes in the mailbox and you must claim it:

More work.  Cannot just gimme?

My Pixie is already evo1 199.  This is my second dupe for her, so it brings me that much closer to evo2ing.

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.