Team: Two Tanks and a Wasp

[contributor]

I'm on Discord as @contributor. I also have Heroes on Steam, but I tend to play on my Android phone.

[dagger]

I was just wondering if you were one of the high scores on the Steam leaderboards...

[contributor]

Alright, I just dropped off a load of flowers to the Storm Brothers and am off for the CoD. Everything else in E3 is done. We're at level 35. So far E3 has been very easy and safe, except for the scaled up E2 mobs in certain places. We'll have to see how we fair against the bones. If I recall they can be pretty challenging as they top out their leveling curves and except for Phalanx shield I can't increase defense much more. Early CoD is the furthest I've ever gotten on Ironman.

Vraes is at Juggernaut 6 right now. 7 will get him to the next reward tier. Other than that, he's Stone Skin 10, Burst of Speed 3 and Natural Mastery 5. I'm planning on pushing Juggernaut and Mastery up to 10 each. I guess Mastery does help his melee defense somewhat as well. I haven't decided how I'll balance those.

Tamilin has Torrent of Steel 8, Blacknight 8, Deadly Intuition 5 and Ranged Onslaught 1. I've resisted the temptation to give her some more utility skills like more Farsight. It's handy, but she needs to remain the destroying angel that she is, so she'll focus on Deadly Intuition till it's done.

Fyona has Cortias 10, Fervor 10, Strickening 2 and Reckoning 1. Right now she is just going to bring Strickening up to 10 before doing anything else.

Kj has Ash 10, Pureflame 10, Warding Words 1 and Immolation 4. I'm planning on maxing Immolation before starting Burning Blades.

[matrim]

It does get tough towards the end of CoD. The toughest parts imo are the skeletal obelisks, the side quest with Ratkin, and the necromancers that look the same but do wildly different damage. Make sure to check every necromancer for their damage, they are NOT all equal!

dagger I am the betterlookingtwin score on Steam. That team is at the end of current content (with some battles missing because I got caught up in something else when that patch came out). The team is pretty old though, with the multitude of updates on quality of life and exp you should be able to top the score. I am not looking forward to that however as my competitive nature will kick in and I will have to start a NEW team to see if I can top your new high score!

[contributor]

matrim, if I can beat your score, don't worry, I'll transfer it over to my computer and record it on Steam just to make you get back in the action. I'm currently at 1,175,000,000. So I've still got a long ways to go. I need some motivation to take it slow though. I think sometimes I die out of boredom and lack of focus.

[dagger]

matrim Ha! I was wondering who that was. I thought maybe the Trese Brothers were twins and that was one of them. Good to know. If I do manage to beat that score, you'll have plenty of time to see it coming. I've got a window cleaning business and we're in prime season right now for at least the next couple months. Between that and my golf habit (at least 3 rounds a week) I don't have a ton of time to dedicate to playing games. Plus, believe it or not, I actually have a wife and kids. :-) If I manage to even get past my current posted score you'll watch my number climb by a million here, ten million there. Gonna take a while to reach the end. Plus, I've never actually played through to the end so if there are any nasty surprises, I could very easily get toasted.

Pre-crafting, I did take a Hard level team to level 45 I think. I got the achievement for it anyway. I don't think I went much further than that. But, I also had 28 deaths so....I've got my work cut out for me on Nightmare.

Right now, I'm clearing the Orcin Caverns. Not sweating that too much. I'm lvl 22 and I'm only getting maybe one screen done per session so, like I said, it's going to be a while. I'm going to post another status report when I'm ready to enter the Underforge. In the meantime, I'm collecting Bloodstones to craft that Ep3 gear that's on the horizon. I'm a little nervous about the Long Trail fight. That thing gave me some trouble last time through...we'll see.

@contributor My team is definitely similar to yours but has some pretty significant differences as well. I've got Stoneskin and Phalanx Shield for Vraes at 7 each (or will next level up). Burst of Speed is still 1 as is Natural Mastery. I've also added 1 Berserk Rage. I'm going to max Stoneskin and Phalanx before doing anything else I think.

KJ has 3 Burning Blades because I'm running Tam with the knives and Vraes and Fyona with 2AP weapons. I just couldn't resist getting the extra kick from the fire damage. It really helps my playability by allowing me to get quite a bit more back on my SP drain gear. Ash will be 10 shortly and Immo is 3 now. I'll be hitting Pureflame after I finish Ash. Won't be as high as I'd like when I get to the Underforge but with both Phalanx and Stoneskin, Vraes shouldn't be in too much danger. He's got 1300+ HP already now....

Tam I have 1 Silent Stalker which I never knew could be so handy. Just the -armor curse helps quite a bit. Even at one it's pretty noticeable. The -accuracy I'm sure helps as well but that's not quite as obvious. I've got Torrent at 9 and Blacknight at 5 and climbing. No Deadly Intuition yet, which I'm sad about but.....there are only so many points to go around so that's the odd-talent-out at this point. It's coming though...

Fyona has Shield of Cortias 10, Righteous Fervor 1 (and climbing), and I gave her a Battlefield Devotion and 2 pts in Consecrated Defense. 1 Reckoning at this point for the -AP curse and AoE when necessary. She's a little too squishy for my tastes yet but with a couple more RF I think she'll be okay. Vraes can pretty much hold the line on his own right now so she doesn't taken too much concentrated fire. Once I get the next shield I'll feel better. That should put her well over 1000HPs....

[matrim]

dagger That should be a great team. I put a similar one through and died at Gholla. The boars there are very accurate and very hard hitting. I underestimated them as usually Kincaid can just eat up their attacks. I need more practice with Vraes and his less consistent tanking, I think my mistake was putting points into BR, need to save those for episode 4 I think, even though the crits are so much fun! Also to @ contributor you need to @ lurker, his old name. Good luck!

[contributor]

dagger thanks for the update. Yeah, this game is sooo long. I'm playing it too much right now myself, just to try and get somewhere. Which, by the way, I did copy my saves over to my computer, so whenever Steam does it's magic I should show up on the leaderboard right under matrim.

In team news, Vraes went back to the poky stick and board combo. He was taking too much damage in the CoD and it would be really stupid right now to lose this team because I was too stubborn to ditch the 2h spear. Unfortunately I just don't see any way to make 2H weapons as good as 1H and Shield, especially now that we have the super crafting buffs on things. Even in terms of damage I don't think he's given up much, except on crits, because his two-hander has 110% crit damage.

[crimsonking]

May 16, 2018 7:53:26 GMT -5 contributor said:

Unfortunately I just don't see any way to make 2H weapons as good as 1H and Shield

That's a general issue, since any damage buffs are added per attack, which makes more attacks stronger than bigger attacks if buffed sufficiently even with armor and resistance taken into account.

[dagger]

Well, really the only way to even out the 2-hander vs 1-hander is to be able to do so much damage so quickly that the added protection from the shield is basically moot. Unfortunately, unless you can somehow skip from like level 22 to lvl 40 I don't see how that's possible. gundamgoth is trying to run a 2-handed hammer Juggernaut build. He's on version 3 however so we'll see if that's viable. I would think it would be later in the game but, again, the problem is surviving long enough to get there. Realistically, I think you'd almost need to respec into the 2-hander. That would probably be the safest way to do it. Most of us don't like doing that, however. Feels a little like cheating to me. Which is why I keep having to start over at the beginning rather than boosting in....

[dagger]

matrim Yeah, I think that's my biggest problem with this game (and I don't really consider it a problem, just an unfortunate challenge): where to draw the line between playability, fun, and survival. My current team is definitely built for survival but I'm wearing a ton of SP drain gear right now to make them more playable. Tam's stealth is at 22 on level 22 and I feel like I'm playing with fire a little bit with that. But, if I stealth her out, I'm running back to camp after every battle. Vraes is a little better because he doesn't have much in the way of SP attacks but he's got so many expensive buffs on him before each battle he, too, can't go more than a couple before he needs to recharge. Thus, they're all decked out in drain gear so I can actually have a little fun while I'm playing rather than running back and forth constantly. Hopefully, as damage continues to improve I can start getting them more in the safety first mode without losing some of the fun.

[contributor]

Made it through the hidden level where you get locked in a room with some Necros up on the sides. I've had trouble with that fight before, but none of them were the bad high damage Necros and they behaved pretty well, coming into range without making me get too stretched out. At one point an archer camped out on one of the stairs blocking everyone behind him. I kept Tamilin within his range so he wouldn't move and he only hit like once out of 6-10 turns. Once we killed off the other side we let him release everyone else on that side. So it was more extended but pretty safe. We had to dip into our pots a bit, but at this point I have a good stash. I'm at 1.5b now for score. Which makes me think I should be around 1.8 at the end of CoD, if I can survive one more tower, the Ratkin fight and the final.

I'm playing quite cautiously and slowly now, which is a big change from my last group that had max Strickening, Energy Storm and tons of AoE damage. They were so much fun and so fast, but they died like 12 times.

[contributor]

Oh my goodness this is getting hard. I've capped out the enemies in the CoD at level 46 and they're terrible. I've already had a few turns where I could have lost it if Tamilin hadn't managed to dodge a few hits. One more would have killed her and she dodged at least 2 in that state. I'm clearing Heart of Ember now and have done everything else but the hidden storerooms. I'm hoping to level up to 41 first since every level I gain now isn't going to push them up. I changed plans and leveled up Farsight twice to get a little extra range. It was the right move, as I really can't afford any surprises. I think I'm going to give Vraes 1 level of Phalanx next. It's one point for 18 autoblock. He's really disappointing damage wise right now. I'm really thinking that I would have been better off doing something other than Juggernaut for him. It's so expensive and if he misses it's kind of worthless. He also has the thing where when he goes for the kill he will always just miss the damage he needs and leave them with "less than 10 hp". The next hit is almost always a critical though. I'm also going through pots like crazy in big fights. Hopefully I'll have enough to get me through the Storerooms and the Final.

I'll probably copy my save before tackling those last two, so that I can post my highest score on Steam.

I've also noticed that the rate I gained score changed drastically after I hit 1.5 billion. I was gaining it much faster before, but now I'll be lucky to break 1.6 before finishing E3.

[dagger]

Nice! I'm still crawling my way through Ep2. Just finished clearing the Orcin Stronghold and I'm about to head for the Underforge. What I really need are some Bloodstones. I'm completely out and I need to upgrade four weapons as soon as possible. I made a stupid mistake crafting the Plainsman Hammer for Fyona. I didn't realize there were two results that had holy damage so I thought I could just use any holy tuner and get the +MP result. Nope. It's not the end of the world but I really wanted the MP hammer. For one thing it gives higher holy damage and more crit%, not to mention the MP obviously. It may actually have been a small blessing in disguise however as I just cleared the Krete on the river near Riven Field and the +10 All-resists probably came in pretty handy there. It's always hard to quantify things when they don't actually happen (i.e. the elemental damage I didn't take) but I got tagged pretty good by the archers a few times and the damage didn't seem as bad as it could have. Pureflame is only 2 right now so that didn't help much.... Who knows. It is what it is right now. I've got to slog my way through the Deepmoss and then the grind of the UF is next. Gonna be June before I get out of that place..... KJ just hit level 24 and the other three will hit in the next battle or two. No talents for this level but I'll post my stats in the first post of this thread when I hit the Underforge....

@contributor Sounds like you're having fun, even if it is a little scary. It certainly wouldn't be fun if it was easy, right? :-) Are you finding many bloodstones? Just curious if I need to be trying to save some of them....

[contributor]

Woot! We're through E3 with no deaths! That feels good. I did the Ratkin fight and the Final back-to-back. They actually both went pretty smoothly. Knowing the drill helps a lot. For the Ratkin fight I was able to circle behind the Undead and use that hallway to force the Ratkin to come to me. They trickled across the map and were pretty manageable. Slow but safe. The final also wasn't too bad either. After killing off the initial fight I pulled right and worked around the first SL and killed off all his minions. The second SL stayed put until I sent KJ his direction and then just as he arrived and KJ debuffed him, we killed the first SL. So then it was just a matter of working the second down. Fyona is at 2000 hp and Vraes is at 2300. With liberal pot usage they were able to tank pretty well. There were a few dodgy turns while we maneuvered to get to archers in the back, but ultimately positioning first, healing and then attacking proved the right idea. I think Vraes went down to 600 something once, which was the worst. That's only 2-4 more hits for him, but I don't even think there were enough mobs to deliver anymore so it was all good.

Bloodstones haven't been much of an issue. I got E3 gear early and so I spent a lot of time without needing to upgrade everything and got a little stockpile. I did a little more crafting going into and during the CoD, but I think I've still got about 10 left. I got some bad results on the Knight Shields early, so I had to craft 4 of those total to get what I wanted, but otherwise, most everything came out right the first time. Actually I did craft the +mp Plainsman for Fyona when I rebalanced her gear over for Accuracy. Late CoD swordsmen were terrible to hit.