My Favorite Character/build: Sir Lancelot

[jmotivator]

As I play through the middle late game I have stumbled on one of the most hilarious builds with Sir Lancelot. First let me explain the gear:

2H: Symbol on Mannan - +2 AP on first kill, Damage that brings enemy to 10% health kills them, +2 movement per kill

Armor: (doesn't add to the effect)

Jewelry: (Use Effect) +4 Damage per kill

Relic: Wreath of Bebd - Teleport to enemy within 4 spaces on enemy kill, +2 Damage per kill


From that I spec the following skills for Lancelot:

Assault - Travel attack as opener
Lone Wolf (Maximized) - For extra Damage
Strength - Extra Damage
Juggernaut - For Extra Damage
Damage Focus - For Extra Damage (with bonus damage and overwatch buff)
Ice Aura - For the LOLs (bonus damage)

This build works best for lat battle clean up and hilarious horde cleanup.

How it Works:
1) When fighting a horde, Lancelot will go straight to overwatch in turn 1, this activates the massive damage buff of Damage Focus
2) On turn two activate Lancelot's Ice Aura
3) Pick the furthest enemy that Lancelot can get to with movement+Assault charge that he can 1 Shot (Damage Focus Buff should give you a large list of potential targets you can one shot) and execute the attack... and watch as hilarity ensues.

What happens:
Lancelot assaults Target 1 , target is hit by Ice Aura and takes 60% weapon Damage then is hit by Assault for 165% damage --> Enemy Dies granting Lancelot +6 bonus Damage and +4 AP --> Lancelot teleports to the next nearest enemy dealing 60% Weapon Damage with Ice Aura with +6 damage bonus --> If Enemy dies Lancelot's bonus damage goes to +12, he teleports to the next nearest enemy within range, does 60% Weapon damage+12 --> If enemy dies.. and on and on and on.. +18, plus 24, plus 30.....

You can instantaneous erase an enemies entire back line in 1 turn with this build, and really, as the damage bonuses stack up you start 1-shotting tankier enemies too.

In the event that the chain of kills breaks because you fail to kill an enemy outright on teleport, you have an instance amount of AP to finish off the target and the cycle resumes.

It's hilarious and fun.

[sandman25dcsss]

Sounds fun, thanks for the detailed description!

[Mr.Gray]

Oh man, it was ridiculous prepatch 2.0 with AP+damage stacking.

I think best character for that was White knight (he had +1 AP for every kill on his weapon buff and Rage +1 for kill. Throw in relic +2AP for kill, teleport to the enemy after kill and premanent bottle buff +1 AP for kill. Add bonus damage for 1 turn for every kill.
Add a sage for some initial AP buff and damage (to throw some fuel to fire lol)

Most of fights ware finished turn 1 with damage 800+ from basic attack. It was really fun and do no work well with high HP enemies (you just have no ground to get this tank rolling), but oh boy those picts saw some suffering. And telleport range was 8 instead of 4.

That is why AP stacking was nerfed i guess. Your build have some "if's" at least

[jmotivator]

Originally posted by Mr.Gray:

Oh man, it was ridiculous prepatch 2.0 with AP+damage stacking.

I think best character for that was White knight (he had +1 AP for every kill on his weapon buff and Rage +1 for kill. Throw in relic +2AP for kill, teleport to the enemy after kill and premanent bottle buff +1 AP for kill. Add bonus damage for 1 turn for every kill.
Add a sage for some initial AP buff and damage (to throw some fuel to fire lol)

Most of fights was finished turn 1 with damage 800+ from basic attack. It was really fun and do no work well with high HP enemies (you just have no ground to get this tank rolling), but oh boy those picts saw some suffering. And telleport range was 8 instead of 4.

That is why AP stacking was nerfed i guess. Your build have some "if's" at least

I got a second wreath of Bebd relic and I'm working on the White Knight now.

The major difference between the White Knight and Lancelot is that the Ice Aura does all of the killing late in the chain for Lancelot so the kills and teleports are all automatic, no AP stacking necessary. He can kill all the enemies in the chain while using AP only on the first attack.

You click attack on the first enemy and suddenly Lancelot is across the map and a whole pack enemies are dead.

This build synergizes well with Mordred's Chain Lightning and any Sage with Bless. With those three you would first soften the first 4 enemies with chain lightning, bless Lancelot for +30% damage, and then you can usually start the Lancelot murder chain on turn 1.

It would also help to give Lancelot immunity to freeze otherwise the frost Seelie enemies are a pain. but I haven't come across anything that grants freeze immunity, unfortunately.

[jmotivator]

Also, if I haven't sold it enough, the mechanism that causes the Lancelot Teleport mayhem can trigger ON THE ENEMY'S TURN.

I just had a fight with the Seelie where Lancelot had just wiped half the enemy map before running out of targets in range, so I reserved AP for the boost in damage next turn.

On the enemy turn a satyr ran up to Lancelot and took 93 damage from his active Ice Aura which killed the Satyr and Lancelot then teleported his way through all of the remaining enemies DURING THEIR TURN and killed them all. HAHA!

[jmotivator]

Also: Please devs, don't nerf the fun!

[jmotivator]

Finally, here is a quick video I just made of Lancelot making short work of a soft pack of Seelie. My only real mistake is not moving Lancelot up on turn 1 before I went in to over-watch. This allowed the Satyrs to get to melee with the rest of the squad so they ended up taking friendly fire from the Ice Aura.

Enjoy! (Devs PLEASE DON'T NERF!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKZ1dZEHzmU

[Fendelphi]

Interesting interaction with the Ice Aura and teleport combined with scaling damage on kill.
Does not seem like the "enemies below 10% health are auto-killed" works with the Ice Aura damage.

A potential issue is if the high scaling Ice Aura+teleport ends up next to one of your own knights, potentially killing them/causing them injuries.
Potentially worse in situations where weak NPCs needs to be protected(though they can be saved through other means, and you do not "have" to use Ice Aura all the time).

But yeah, definitely a fun interaction.

[jmotivator]

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Interesting interaction with the Ice Aura and teleport combined with scaling damage on kill.
Does not seem like the "enemies below 10% health are auto-killed" works with the Ice Aura damage.

A potential issue is if the high scaling Ice Aura+teleport ends up next to one of your own knights, potentially killing them/causing them injuries.
Potentially worse in situations where weak NPCs needs to be protected(though they can be saved through other means, and you do not "have" to use Ice Aura all the time).

But yeah, definitely a fun interaction.

Correct, when you fire it off you have to make sure that the closest units are all enemies otherwise there can be friendly fire. In fact there is some friendly fire in my demo video above.

This is where Assault and the +MOV on kill is important since you you can make sure Lancelot is always far from your team.

[Mr.Gray]

Yeah, i see. This even more broken then AP stacking.

[jmotivator]

Originally posted by Mr.Gray:

Yeah, i see. This even more broken then AP stacking.

Correction: More FUN than AP stacking!

[Mr.Gray]

well, it will get boring really fast i must say. i've disassambled my ap stackung build after like 3-4 missions. It provided no challenge at all.

[sandman25dcsss]

The video is hilarious, I am afraid it will be nerfed.

[jmotivator]

It probably will, but the enemies have a lot of mitigation, such as:

- The Lost doesn't count as a kill on first down so few instant kills other than the summons
- Freezing Enemies CAN freeze you if the next target doesn't teleport you out of the range.
- High Health enemies in general

I'm pretty sure the enemies will level beyond the effectiveness soon since health seems to scale faster than your damage output, especially the on-kill bonuses.

[Fang]

What difficulty was that video on?
It seemed like a fun mechanic so I tried to pull it off on hard in act3, but mobs had too much hp.

[jmotivator]

Originally posted by Fang:

What difficulty was that video on?
It seemed like a fun mechanic so I tried to pull it off on hard in act3, but mobs had too much hp.

I don't really remember, it was low level where the archers and rogue types tended to have less than 150 health. There is a point where the gear bonuses surpass enemy health scaling to make this chain reaction easy, but that eventually gets overtaken again by enemy leveling.

In later missions it is more of a close-out build, doing most of his mayhem on softened targets. This Lancelot build feeds on units that have up to about 150 health, at least in the beginning. Build him to 1-shot those enemies and have as much movement as possible. Lone Wolf is pretty essential since ideally he will always be off on his own blowing up the backfield

If the enemy is archer-heavy I've gotten his Ice Aura up to 500+ damage. Wave encounters are where he shines.

Granted, that is when he gets VERY dangerous as well. I was playing a mission the other day where I forgot the last enemy was in melee with my other 3 teammates and Lancelot teleported through the remaining back end units and then teleported to the rest of my team and killed everyone.

All of that said, there are some encounters where he struggles because the encounter is all heavies, and many units have special skills that make it hard to ramp. Enemies that can dodge, or who freeze on death, or who leave a corpse are problems since he doesn't get his damage boost until he destroys the corpse.

So Lancelot's favorite enemy is humans and any undead that don't leave a corpse (which also happen to be the lower health units)

The one nice thing, though, about those freeze-on-death units is that the death animation is long enough that if the next enemy is more than 2 squares away he will teleport away before the freeze nova kicks off.

So, in closing, Some thoughts on how to maximize the build performance:

1) Group build should be Lancelot and then the rest of the team geared towards ranged damage. Archers and skills like Chain Lightning are great for softening Lancelot's initial targets.
2) My typical opening when there are a lot of archers and rogue types on the other team is to
A) move Lancelot at least 1 square away from all friendly units and Overwatch Lancelot for the massive turn 2 damage bonus and bonus moves.
B) Use Mordred's Chain Lightning and other ranged attacks to lower Lancelot's initial targets to 1-Shot range by Lancelot
C) On turn 2, pop Lancelot's Ice Aura and use Assault to close on and kill his first target, if possible make his first attack end between two units so that he will also get his bonus killing spree attack off on the other unit... this can often bring the second until into 1-Hit range or kill it if it is another low health unit, if not then don't bother hitting that unit again, take the hit from opportunity strike to move to the next killable target.

And so on.

But yeah, as I said further up, this build has plenty of counters so you have to be careful how you deploy it. Even in fights that aren't suited to this mechanic, though, this Lancelot build holds his own, especially if you make sure to feed him killing blows.