Madness 16- question: Do you also get "impossible" enemy compositions?

[Thakos]

Hi @ all,
I noticed that on Madness 16 I run into enemy teams that counter my team build so hard, that it is either impossible to beat them or I win with 1-2 dead people which ends my run later on.

For example: I build a burn team which focuses on fire stacks and run into the following enemy comp: Siren (gives the WHOLE team (!)) 7 buffer, insulate, mitigate AND silences my team. Oh and the siren is resisant to burn and mark of course...

If that wasn`t enough I also encounter a fire-blob-conjurer that is immune to burn stacks.

So I take a lot of damage which I can`t heal because my priest is silenced. I totally rely on drawing Dispel. Chance = 1/15. Oh and I do nearly zero damage.

My team consisted of Andrin (supposed to get fire-transform axe from act II), Cornelius, Reginald and Bree.

In another case I used a frost- team with a lot of wet and what I got was two monsters that stack wet on me and then use harpoons with which wet gets tranformed into poison.

I get 40-60 poison stacks and need to draw detoxify or Dispel. Well, again a matter of luck...

I don`t know how often I died from hard counters. I know I can easily change my team comp and put Nezglekt with two Dispels into it or use Ottis with his shield stacks to stall out the above fire team.

But that is not the point: It seems that the game recognizes what compositions I play and just doesn`t want me to play them by throwing hard counters at me.

Maybe I overlook something. But as far as I can see I can only play 5-10% of possible team comps on M16 because of this terrible game desgin.

What are your strategies to deal with that?

[el Darkness]

Madness 16 is the most difficult setting, and if you are no pro player, it is brutal. Siren you are writing about is considered one of the run ending champions if she is fought by certain team compositions, for others, she is not so tough.

I think the best strat is to kill your enemies on 1st or 2nd turn, enemies won't kill you if they are dead. That is of course easier said than done. My best game was Madness 14 so I am not one to give you answers, but I can recommend youtube videos made by good players. I loved DeckerTech, but he is not doing vids since Yogger I'm afraid. Scrage is also great player, his vids tends to be whole runs rather than guides, but that can help too. While DeckerTech was doing mostly 1st turn kills, Scrage tends to make compositions that take longer to finish enemies but they also can survive long enough to kill them in the end.

I doubt that the game is designed to throw hard counters on you, it is more likely that there is enough hard countering champions (mostly champions I would be afraid of) that you are likely to run into them. Also usually your team will want to go through biomes that will ironically be toughest for them in order to get best items.

[Dr. Doofenshmirtz]

el Darkness a écrit :

What el Darkness said

In Short: Yes there are certain combinations that can completely ruin your run.
I counter this by out speeding and basically cycling the entire deck on my main Dps to get their desired cards.
(Also this can happen in non M16 Runs with combats being "impossible" to do)

There are combats I've had where an enemy has had 100 mind, 6 Vulnerable, and has still had 90% mind/dark resistances due to zeal and courage, its just like that sometimes.

You CAN help this by spamming trace on your scout, as "random hero" cards will play differently, (which can sometimes help).




In Long: Basically, i used to play Madness 16 a lot solo if no one joined in my multiplayer lobbies, I never really understand how you really "keep a run going" if you don't have speed control or something like that, so a lot of my "Team combination ideas" never worked out well.

In Addition to this, my team of Ottis spam shields, Gustav (Dps with dark and mind), Andrin, Yogger, could always get to Act 3/4 if i didn't pick any modifiers that screw me over or pick bad combats. But i could NEVER kill Archon, he basically adds so much sanctify from converting mind to sanctify, adding it to my squad, then converting it to dark, that it was quite literally impossible to kill him before he does it, furthest i got by manipulating the game to the highest degree was about 4k health left. That was the *CLOSEST* M16 run I've got to completing it with that team.

After doing enough Madness 16 runs/random combat runs, you figure out what teams you can and can't fight. And you additionally figure out what NAMED ENEMIES have XYZ Resistances/Attacks etc.

Thakos a écrit :

What are your strategies to deal with that?

Noting here that my Yogger is 1 speed faster than Gustav or the same speed actually, so that he goes before Gustav in order. (For buffing purposes)

Usually instant kill that enemy before they get their go with Gustav (Assuming they don't have like 90% Mind and Dark Resistance (Looking at you Dark/Light Bishop guy i forgot the name of).

I usually get dual strike (Does slash and pierce) early game for Gustav's sharpness scaling, as mind has no scaling till level 3 off sharpness, and give him the dark scaling off sharpness perk, so hes effectively thuls with mind/dark at level 3, Whispering lies are really good for this scaling too, this is just incase an enemy has dark &OR mind resistances, so you can just deal normal damage instead.




For the combats that you usually deal no damage in.

Thakos a écrit :

My team consisted of Andrin (supposed to get fire-transform axe from act II), Cornelius, Reginald and Bree. For example: I build a burn team which focuses on fire stacks

I don't particularly recommend debuff/curse builds aside from spamming vulnerable and slows because. Well obviously there's combats in those areas that make the enemies super annoying to fight, and that I don't think they're too good in M16, unless you're building the entire team around that one specific thing in which even then you'd have to be thinking about Archon and Handshek in advance.

Basically you want to get items that are relative to your team synergy like you want to build your ENTIRE team around that synergy. Your team just looks like a default team that has Cornelius through burn dmg? and Andrin for speed or damage?

Andrin having fire axe confuses me but I'm going to assume it's just for damage?

The point of having Andrin on your team is NOT to deal damage with him, its to MAINLY out speed the enemy combatants, and to apply lots of fast/traces to your allies with the addition of applying lots of of mark, and vulnerable on the enemies.

If Andrin is attacking enemies and they aren't on 50 mark stacks (the cap of mark stacks) then you should be applying mark instead. He is useful for dps, but you'd preferably want to give him dual strikes and then they'd get double damage off the mark.

Mark is also only really useful with builds that have multiple damage types on attacking, since they benefit from the mark twice EG: Dual Strike, fan of blades, holy strike etc. So it's entirely pointless running him for that with your team.

Is Cornelius doing burn stacks based on his self stacks? or just in general burn debuffs? Since you'd preferably want Laia/Heiner or someone that can additionally buff Cornelius's damage instead of Bree, then Andrin could be used for more vulnerable spamming on the enemies too or something like this.



What i do in combats.

For me this can be done by Using Song of celerity innate on Andrin & Spamming slows/vunerables on yogger, so incase anyone DOES have high resistances, then they get -50%, and then using Chant of initiative (had to google the card i forgot its name) on Yogger/Gustav & Any traces on Gustav, so Yogger can either buff Gustav by giving sharpness/health etc (assuming this is second act and not third) and then Gustav hopefully has been given enough draw/discards through trace to draw the talent "Power slave" and "Heavy metal" along with any sharpness song cards to add to that, then you just target that enemy with Whispering Lies/Dual Strike and it gets hit by around 200 Combined Slash/Pierce, or from Mind/Dark Damage.

el Darkness a écrit :

That is of course easier said than done. My best game was Madness 14 so I am not one to give you answers

This isn't to insult anyone or anything, but Madness 14 is pretty easy in relative to M16, as you can effectively remove 2 Modifiers, which can be anything really, I'd have to wager the two best to remove are random combats and Restricted power, or random combats and Despair, since you can basically be able to just know EXACTLY what comabts you're doing, and you're able to AFK/Defend till you get like 2000 sharpness or whatever to One shot everything.

Hopefully this helps!

[el Darkness]

Dr. Doofenshmirtz a écrit :

el Darkness a écrit :

That is of course easier said than done. My best game was Madness 14 so I am not one to give you answers

This isn't to insult anyone or anything, but Madness 14 is pretty easy in relative to M16, as you can effectively remove 2 Modifiers, which can be anything really, I'd have to wager the two best to remove are random combats and Restricted power, or random combats and Despair, since you can basically be able to just know EXACTLY what comabts you're doing, and you're able to AFK/Defend till you get like 2000 sharpness or whatever to One shot everything.

I was doing Madness 6 + all modifiers since this was for card back (I still do not have Madness 8 unlocked XD), I was also playing with my friends (we all wanted that card back). :)
I know I am not a pro player, that is why I recommended videos of better players since M14 (6+8) was my best shot (and it was not easy). I personally dislike playing without Restricted Power, it does not feel right and playing without it would definitely hinder me in preparing for highest difficulty, maybe one day I will conquer M16.
I also always play with Random Encounters cause they are fun. :)

But I would like to ask, is these 2 (random encounters and restricted power) best modifiers to remove? I was wondering for a long time, if it is easier to do Madness 6+8, 7+7 or 8+6? What is best to remove? Base difficulty? Overcharged Monsters? Or Despair?

[Thakos]

@All thanks for the answers.

You confirm my assumption that on M 16 you only play two sorts of teams:

Such who kill on turns 1-2 aka "DeckerTech-forged".

Or you go the Scrage-way and play more balanced and slower.

But with both ways the number of team-comps is very limited. In a round 1-2 killing team I will almost always see Nezglekt or Andrin (insert someone who can scry and inspire).

All because I have to filter the hero pool hard due to the twins in Act 4, Hanshek, Ylmer and the killer comps aka Siren and the like. So its just the game design.

Dr. Doofenshmirtz a écrit :

Basically you want to get items that are relative to your team synergy like you want to build your ENTIRE team around that synergy. Your team just looks like a default team that has Cornelius through burn dmg? and Andrin for speed or damage?

Andrin having fire axe confuses me but I'm going to assume it's just for damage?

Is Cornelius doing burn stacks based on his self stacks? or just in general burn debuffs? Since you'd preferably want Laia/Heiner or someone that can additionally buff Cornelius's damage instead of Bree, then Andrin could be used for more vulnerable spamming on the enemies too or something like this

I know about Andrin as a mark/speed-slave and the people who don`t recommend him as a damage-dealer. That is the reason WHY I want him to be one! I like outsider builds. Scrage himself made Amelia a fire-mage. Totally awsome!

So I wanted Andrin to get the fire-transform item, pick that double-strike card because of the double.mark bonus. Cornelius should stack burn like crazy and also get the Hellbalde which makes him apply mark every time he hits an enemy.

Because there is no perk that also gives you +damage for fire, like wet does for frost, you have to rely on mark. Vulnerable alone isn`t strong enough and putting bless on Andrin takes much longer than throwing mark. In addition to that I gave Andrin a couple of stealth cards on top of the mark.

That should make him almost strong enough. Because you only get a "buff" of 0.3% more fire damage per burn charge, I needed to amplify it more. Because of that I picked the perk which made burn deal double damage if the enemy has only two curses.

And those were burn and mark.

So theoretically it should be enough. Practically Siren killed me before I even got to the fire-transform item. And Andrins untransformed damage aka pierce wasn`t strong enough to win the battle.

I analyzed most of Scrage`s teams and my conclusion is: Never pair a fire hero like Corni with a melee mate. You can see that Scrage always went with fire-cold builds if a fire guy was present.

Also dont play two melee-chars.

At least that goes for teamcomps who dont follow the turn 1-kill strategy.

To summarize it: In most team comps you will need a mage, simply because of that insulate-card or you will get burned by Hanshek. If you want to play a warrior or a scout, you end up with picking Evelyn 98% of the time becaue of her transform-skill. Act two is about getting the permanent transform weapon for your melee-guy. No transform, no chances of winning.

However I have seen an only-warriors run which took about 20 trys to win on M16. Those guys made it but only because Yogger could "heal" the team with his Vitality-meat. I don`t think you will stand a chance with the warriors of the base game.

So yeah, the game on M16 is really hostile towards melee-chars. If I had one wish, I would demand a rework that made scouts and warriors more playable.

[Dr. Doofenshmirtz]

el Darkness a écrit :

But I would like to ask, is these 2 (random encounters and restricted power) best modifiers to remove? I was wondering for a long time, if it is easier to do Madness 6+8, 7+7 or 8+6? What is best to remove? Base difficulty? Overcharged Monsters? Or Despair?

Base Difficulty Madness 8 is pretty easy. You always want to do the higher base difficulty and removing modifiers, since removing modifiers helps a LOT.

The only place I'd say to do Lower base madness than removing modifiers doing that is with seeded runs, people "supposedly" used to do M14 Carries in the Discord (I'm not in it so i wouldn't actually know) that used these seeded runs to carry people or do M14 Runs back in the day. I don't know if any of this was true, but i think seeded run builds are defo possible.

Back to what you were asking, Yeah, Restricted power is like the worst modifier to have, you can easily do M15 without restricted power, the comparison after realising is light and day, I've had many many runs where all my characters would've basically easily been able to beat the game, Ottis would use the minotaurs horn (before it got nerfed to be a certain amount of uses per turn) to apply regen to the team, in addition to yogger applying stacks +20%, regen and vitality, Andrin applying 50+ mark and gustav getting 50+ sharp etc.

It basically means you go from having to try to 1-2 Turn enemies every combat, to just basically stalling OR rushing till you get loads of buff stacks on hero's and DPS'S to just insta one shot everything.


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Thakos a écrit :

@All thanks for the answers.

You can play M16, any way you really want, it just depends on the overall team synergy of your squad. A Majority of the stuff you said wasn't entirely correct i think, like being forced to pick evelyn 98% of the time, or making "outsider builds".

These "Outsider builds" are basically down to what you build the characters for and if you get good RNG on items and combats, they probably have restarted many runs to get the build finally working, like lightning magnus was done in a run, but it isn't always consistent.

Thakos a écrit :

Because there is no perk that also gives you +damage for fire, like wet does for frost, you have to rely on mark. Vulnerable alone isn`t strong enough.

I never really understood building Andrin with Cornelius & Bree, as either Cornelius is doing raw fire damage, or burn damage as the main DPS, you're better off using Heiner to stack fortify onto either Andrin or Cornelius (by getting the fortify stacking perk increases raw fire damage since there IS perk for +fire damage), Or with using Laia instead of someone, so she can deal damage with burn stacks with holy strikes, and then adding zeal to herself and cornelius (if hes self burn).

Thakos a écrit :

To summarize it: In most team comps you will need a mage, simply because of that insulate-card or you will get burned by Hanshek.

My team that i typically use doesn't even have a mage, it has two scouts and you basically can just tank the burn from handshek if you're team is correct. The main problem i have with Handshek is the Resistances, and Archon is just another entirely seperate problem.


For instance, i knew a guy who was TOP 10 In Obelisk mode, but he would just essentially restart obelisk mode 24/7 until he had the right rng for nodes and bosses.
He could easily do M16 by just spamming Grukli with Fury and basically using him as the dps. This is because Fury has a stack cap of 100 with restricted power, instead of 50 which most "Aura's"/Buffs have with restricted power on. So he basically just ran a build where Grukli would kill everything and gain as much fury as possible.

There's also the factor of Yogger applying vitality dispelling bleed, which you can get as a vitality perk on grukli with the other perk that makes fury go from 3% per stack, to 5% per stack. So he can effectively gain 500% damage, along with any sharpness and other buffs, if he had 50 sharpness, he'd be basically doing 250x his regular damage.



The main problem i have in M16, is the speed control in general, Heiner is extremely slow, and other characters are too, so specific comps are in my opinion "harder to pull off" due to this, i just wish there was more speed perks, or that everyone started at the same base speed value, so you could better diversify team builds. There's also the problem of you want everyone to be fast, but not the healer, as they're supposed to heal the damage the enemies do. In addition to this, going slower than the enemies is sometimes the better option, In my Archon fight, i always intentionally went After his second go as he'd always convert the damage types and one shot me otherwise.

[Thakos]

Dr. Doofenshmirtz a écrit :

A Majority of the stuff you said wasn't entirely correct i think, like being forced to pick evelyn 98% of the time, or making "outsider builds".

Imho you are only forced to pick Evelyn 98% of the time, when you want to have a melee-carry in your group; else you can easily replace her with other heroes.

But you mentioned a good example:

Dr. Doofenshmirtz a écrit :

These "Outsider builds" are basically down to what you build the characters for and if you get good RNG on items and combats, they probably have restarted many runs to get the build finally working, like lightning magnus was done in a run, but it isn't always consistent.

Magnus with lightning - he first gets it in the swamp Act (Trident). Imagine him playing vs Ylmer. WITHOUT Evelyn. Your Tank and Healer don`t contribute much to the total damage - so it boils down to dual carries or carry+support (if you don`t follow the first round-k.o.-strategy).

In this context, try Magnus-carrry in a comp with another carry or support - and NOT picking Evelyn. You will struggle against Ylmer.

The only - consistant - way I see is perking blunt and crack for Magnus and the tank, as well as for the dual carry like Bree. I cleared M14 this way. Navalea is also top notch.

But my problem is: I want Magnus to only go for Slash and Bleed, because I like cards like Whirlwind. How to amplify Slashing? I got Sharpen - only 1 copy I can buy per Warrior in Act 1. Not consistent, even with Scry tactics.

Rogues can apply sharp, too, but again, only one copy of a card, that has sharp in Act 1.
Then there is Mark and Bless. The latter can be spammed in later Acts, but not in Ylmer`s (No Paladin-gauntlets yet...).

In the end I can almost only rely on Mark... So Magnus and Andrin + Tank and Healer?
I don`t know...

Dr. Doofenshmirtz a écrit :

I never really understood building Andrin with Cornelius & Bree, as either Cornelius is doing raw fire damage, or burn damage as the main DPS, you're better off using Heiner to stack fortify onto either Andrin or Cornelius (by getting the fortify stacking perk increases raw fire damage since there IS perk for +fire damage), Or with using Laia instead of someone, so she can deal damage with burn stacks with holy strikes, and then adding zeal to herself and cornelius (if hes self burn).

You are right, Fortify can increase fire dmg, but you can`t apply it as consistantly as wet for example.
At most it helps a little.

Dr. Doofenshmirtz a écrit :

My team that i typically use doesn't even have a mage, it has two scouts and you basically can just tank the burn from handshek if you're team is correct. The main problem i have with Handshek is the Resistances, and Archon is just another entirely seperate problem.

It would be interesting to hear your dual-Scout-strategy. I tried a copule of different dual-scouts myself, but as you were saying: Resistances are the problem. That is why I think you need to transform your damage to ice/fire/lightning.

I already thought about getting the ice axe AND the Trident for the two scouts. Both ice and lightning profit from wet-charges.

So put a couple of poison rains into your deck, + healing / blood-rain and you are fine.

Then you throw lots of marks and a couple of vulnerables should do the job.

But the hardest part - again - is Ylmer. Since you first get said weapons in later acts and you rely on damage, that Ylmer is resistant to. Thuls and a lot of Poison could help...

Dr. Doofenshmirtz a écrit :

The main problem i have in M16, is the speed control in general, Heiner is extremely slow, and other characters are too, so specific comps are in my opinion "harder to pull off" due to this, i just wish there was more speed perks, or that everyone started at the same base speed value, so you could better diversify team builds. There's also the problem of you want everyone to be fast, but not the healer, as they're supposed to heal the damage the enemies do. In addition to this, going slower than the enemies is sometimes the better option, In my Archon fight, i always intentionally went After his second go as he'd always convert the damage types and one shot me otherwise.

Speed is a huge problem. I had a frost run couple of weeks ago: Amelia tank, Evelyn, Laia (with frost axe and those holy strikes, that dealt double damage because of the tranformation) and Ottis. I got 4-5 shatter, several energy-cards like tome of knowledge. It was a perfect run until ... the twins in Act 4. They killed Amelia in round one before she could act and I was finished.

So if you play someone as a Tank who can`t survive without block in round 1 of the twin-fight - you are screwed. Said hero needs to act before the twins and this is only possible, if you play a scout. Because he can speed up the tank.

But if you want to guarantee a scout drawing a speed-up card, you need to play a scry deck, that almost only revolves around that strategy. That means, you miss out on damage output with the scout.

Everything I wrote is not the absolute truth: If you want to restart the game 24/7 until you get the right conditions, you surely will find other ways to beat the game. But I`m only looking for consistant strategies. The alternative is too time-consuming ; )

[Dr. Doofenshmirtz]

Thakos a écrit :

In this context, try Magnus-carrry in a comp with another carry or support - and NOT picking Evelyn. You will struggle against Ylmer.

VERY FIRSTLY (Edited)
You always want to perk into the most shards/gold possible, while still having a build on the character, My ottis i think is just shards, gold and then resistances, and not much of anything else. This helps you craft useful cards in town 1 and buy pets and items (such as wolfy for yogger) that you'd need earlygame.

You want to get a lot of Helping hands on Warriors, it is a useful card you should ALWAYS get, since they give inspire, which is extremely useful for dps's, healers etc. it's as Imporants as doing mark is on andrin, plus they're extremely cheap.



Firstly, Ylmer is incredibly easy to kill depending on if you've died beforehand in the run or not, granted this Isn't with Magnus specifically, but I don't see much of a problem with him, since his fortify perk essentially counters ylmer. I usually take the hatch route to yogger for wolfy, so applying vulnerable is no problem. Additionally, Magnus is actually quite a good character in general, i used to think he was bad, but he isn't.

You typically want to use magnus as a slowing/vulnerable debuffer in Act 1/2 with slowing and vulnerable stacks since he doens't stack that much damage really unless you're using Heavy Strikes, which need a decent amount of energy etc.

Thakos a écrit :

But my problem is: I want Magnus to only go for Slash and Bleed, because I like cards like Whirlwind. How to amplify Slashing? I got Sharpen - only 1 copy I can buy per Warrior in Act 1. Not consistent, even with Scry tactics.

If you're trying to do bleed, you CAN do bleed without using slash, you can go bludgeon if you want, you just want to get cards that have repeat on them, since they'll proc more bleed each hit, then bleed immune-pass through perk (so +4 stacks at most i think?), and then get Yoggers cleaver, that usually works or should be enough for damage, you could take a blood leech or whatever its called to heal yourself relative to the bleed stacks too.

Thakos a écrit :

The only - consistant - way I see is perking blunt and crack for Magnus and the tank, as well as for the dual carry like Bree. I cleared M14 this way. Navalea is also top notch.

You take heavy strike, which you can make a 2 Cost, and then it gives you one fatigue or -1 energy on the next turn, this card is extremely useful since it does like 40 ish base damage, which is pretty nutty earlygame.

Thakos a écrit :

You are right, Fortify can increase fire dmg, but you can`t apply it as consistantly as wet for example. At most it helps a little.

As for this, you just basically trace Heiner till he gets steel forge, then even if you "do bad" in combat wise, on round 2 (assuming he has been sped buff too) he'll just basically endlessly stack fortify up to 50 for your team additionally adding block too. I always figured Ottis + Heiner would be a good combo, along with Cornelius, since they all benefit from the bonuses, just speed as usual is the problem for this build.

Thakos a écrit :

It would be interesting to hear your dual-Scout-strategy. I tried a copule of different dual-scouts myself, but as you were saying: Resistances are the problem. That is why I think you need to transform your damage to ice/fire/lightning.

I already thought about getting the ice axe AND the Trident for the two scouts. Both ice and lightning profit from wet-charges.

So put a couple of poison rains into your deck, + healing / blood-rain and you are fine.

Then you throw lots of marks and a couple of vulnerables should do the job.

But the hardest part - again - is Ylmer. Since you first get said weapons in later acts and you rely on damage, that Ylmer is resistant to. Thuls and a lot of Poison could help...

I've had runs, with the exact same team composition, where Ylmer has died in literally 1 or 2 turns, because of the rng with getting the sharpness songs on Gustav and heavy metal. Assuming you have a full hand (since gustav would also be using setup along with having 2 inspire from yogger etc) You'd basically draw heavy metal, (which Does do mind but its still like 10 per hit and is still nice damage) use that, spam any powerslave or sharpness song cards you have, And then at the end spam whispering lies (the more you have the better). The sharpness would be around 30+ish from doing so, meaning your whispering lies do about 80 per hit? And adding onto the vulnerable from yogger and mark from andrin, this basically gets 4x dmg, to about 200/300 per hit, which will just kill Ylmer. Obviously depends on andrins turn with mark and yogger etc, but Ylmer is no problem at all.

Thakos a écrit :

Everything I wrote is not the absolute truth: If you want to restart the game 24/7 until you get the right conditions, you surely will find other ways to beat the game. But I`m only looking for consistant strategies. The alternative is too time-consuming ; )

The most consistent run's I've had are with doing Ottis, Gustav, Andrin and Yogger, mainly due to the fact Yogger and Andrin just give you tons of shards and gold from perks, and are incredibly easy to build, so you throw everything else into ottis and Gustav. Ottis can be interchanged with Reginald/Nez and so fourth, but thats what i usually use.

[Thakos]

Thanks for your thoughts!