Help me make a new strat

[forcecomdr]

Ok... it seems like every time i play, i get sucked into making a poison / bleed comp. I start out not wanting to, but i don't see anything that can compare to it for tank and scout.

I know it may not be the fastest, but it's very reliable. It's not that hard to end up stacking a couple hundred bleed and poison per round.

Thing is, i know it works, and works well, but i'm getting tired of running it.

Any suggestions?

[Fendelphi]

Poison bleed is indeed fairly easy and reliable. But there are other, fairly easy and reliable builds as well. For instance...

Take Malukah, Wilbur and either Magnus or Grukli(Grukli is best). The 4th character can be whatever you want to, but I prefer Andrin, to really control the flow of battle, and to utilize act 1(and the following acts) the most. More about that later.

Malukah goes for Vitality stacking through "healing" spells(due to her "healing brew" trait), debuff removal, and very few damage spells. Wilbur can either go damage dealer or card/energy engine(personally, I prefer card draw+energy, with a few select damage spells that you use over and over).
The Warrior focus on Bleeds and cheap cards that you can draw a lot, but also on Titan Fall(when/if it becomes available).

Vitality stacking with Malukah is a very efficent way of healing, as it both creates a buffer for absorbing damage, and "heals" the amount you increase HP with. The spell "Vitalize" also provides regen for a bit of passive healing, but I focus on the Blue upgrade(more vitality stacks provides more immediate effects).
By the begining of act 3, you should aim to have Heart of Thorns(every Vitality stack you apply, also add 2 Thorns) and Life Essence(+2 Vitality Charges).
If you are lucky, you can give her the Holy Grail as a weapon(when you heal a Hero, apply 1 Vitality), which further enhances the amount of stacks of Vitality and Thorns you can apply on the party.

In act 1, for the "best" run, you need the purple fishing event, and take the option that leads to the great treasure hunt(I assume you know how it works). You can choose to "savescum" for this event(start a run, if the event is there, go on, if not, restart before you even begin). If you dont want to savescum, the build can still work, it just wont be broken OP. More about that later.
In act 2, go for green portal and go the northern route. Malukah makes it easy to get there.
Once you get to act 4 with the key, you go to the center and use Wilbur to easily get to the treasure room. You use the key to unlock the special chest. Here, you will find the "Straw Hat" armor(every turn, gives all heroes 2 card draw, 2 Vitality, 2 Powerful).
Congrats, you are now stacking a bunch of Vitality every turn, on all heroes, while applying a bunch of thorns as well.
I have had the final last boss deal 1000 damage in 1 turn, to itself, because of this set up.

And with Vitality stacking, if you also get 1-2 Titan Fall on your Warrior, you can end up dealing 1000+ damage in 1 hit(high health+Fury+powerful + Vulnerability on enemy).
Because of this, you could choose a second warrior instead of Andrin(more chances for 1 of them to get Titan Fall as a reward).


If you dont want to savescum act 1, but just "go with the flow", if the fishing event is not there, you might have a chance to get the "grain for the Harpy"(not their actual names, but they give a sack of grain) events. I believe there are a few of such possible events on the middle and north path. Take 1 of them.
As your second act, you go to the Red portal and take the Harpy Queen route. This allows you to get Tempest, a very strong Bow for Andrin, which allows him to stack an insane amount of Sharp when he plays ranged attacks. Even more so once he gets his level 5 trait.
This also means you might get the Charged Trident for Wilbur in the green portal, as you do not need to take the northern route, but can go through the middle instead.
So while this setup does not get the Straw Hat or Bloodseeker from the Treasure Hunt event, you still end up with some strong options.

[forcecomdr]

So if i understand this correctly, this is basically stack vit to stay alive, while also stacking thorns to kill stuff, build?

The idea of letting mobs kill themselves attacking me does sound fun, but seems like it would be slow to get going.
Also, if i read this right, the build requires an item from act 3 and from act 4 to be complete. Seems kinda late for it to get rolling.

Off hand, doesn't the last boss punish "stacking builds"?
(though he doesn't seem to mind 1k stacks of bleed and poison lulz)

[Psycohitman]

Take all 4 healers and go for an EYE build on all of them its crazy fun

[forcecomdr]

I'm afraid you'll have to go into a bit more detail. Eye build... you mean sight?

[Psycohitman]

yep

[forcecomdr]

ok... that wasn't more detail but at least i know what you're talking about lol

Sight doesn't do damage in and of itself though.
It helps whatshisname heal, and there are some cards that do damage based on it, but prob not enough for constant high dps.

Care to elaborate?

[Psycohitman]

Sightstacks can do damage per triggercards and items that say something like "for every sight u apply bleed" etc.

[Polyurethane]

My favorite build right now is Assassin Thuls. You stack stealth abilities and get the "Assassin's Tools" (they give you 1 sharp per stealth) and you use cards like ambush and sneaky strike to build it very quickly. The killing blow is Fan of Knives. The blue upgrade is re-usable. The yellow upgrade is explosive. I usually have one of each in the deck.

Take all the talents on the right side.

[Twogs]

Andrin -> Full on Mark with Asmody (trained) and Hellblade

You don't need much more as an Andrin like this can put 100-150 Mark stacks per round on a single enemy. So everyone else will deal crazy damage

Literally killed the boss (not the Archon, the guy before him) with just Andrin and Magnus. The other two chars didn't even had a chance to act in this fight.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by forcecomdr:

So if i understand this correctly, this is basically stack vit to stay alive, while also stacking thorns to kill stuff, build?

The idea of letting mobs kill themselves attacking me does sound fun, but seems like it would be slow to get going.
Also, if i read this right, the build requires an item from act 3 and from act 4 to be complete. Seems kinda late for it to get rolling.

Off hand, doesn't the last boss punish "stacking builds"?
(though he doesn't seem to mind 1k stacks of bleed and poison lulz)

This is Malukah playing as a full healer, after all. The other 3 can still do good damage and can basically ignore defensive cards due to how effective she is.
It is a way to ensuring a strong defense, while still providing damage, from a single character.

It is only really slow in the early game. Once you get it going, you can easily stack 10-15 Vitality on multiple characters each turn. So 20-30 Thorns in 1 turn.
If she gets the right cards and items, she can provide the entire party with 50+ stacks of Vitality in 3 turns, which means 100 thorns on every character.
And as bosses often have several AoE abilities, it means they deal several hundred damage to themselves, which was how I made it kill itself for the remaining 1000 damage.

If you follow the treasure hunt event, you get Bloodseeker in the 2nd act, which is a major powerspike for your Bleed-based warrior. The path also provides you with Malukah's Hut event, providing other nice items.

I havent had an issue dealing with the last boss so far with this combo.

[forcecomdr]

Doing a run with wolf and gru running crack decks, Squidward and mal doing sight/ insanity. seems fun, though mal isn't doing much other then group dispells.


*update*

Just finished the run. My thoughts...

Duel crack can be fun. Hits really hard... sometimes. Not so good on mobs with high resists, takes time to lower resists. Builds stacks slower than bleed/poison.

Squid boy does decent damage, but his main role is to heal via stacks of sight and insane. Can facilitate the dmg =X sight cards.

Mal... well, she healed a good amount and the group dispel / heal is great, but she did almost no damage. Felt like dead weight that could have been replaced by some mass dispel cards.

Overall, it was fun to play something dif, but is it better that bleed/poison....ehhh.

Any other ideas?

[TnJ]

Originally posted by forcecomdr:

Doing a run with wolf and gru running crack decks, Squidward and mal doing sight/ insanity. seems fun, though mal isn't doing much other then group dispells.


*update*

Just finished the run. My thoughts...

Duel crack can be fun. Hits really hard... sometimes. Not so good on mobs with high resists, takes time to lower resists. Builds stacks slower than bleed/poison.

Squid boy does decent damage, but his main role is to heal via stacks of sight and insane. Can facilitate the dmg =X sight cards.

Mal... well, she healed a good amount and the group dispel / heal is great, but she did almost no damage. Felt like dead weight that could have been replaced by some mass dispel cards.

Overall, it was fun to play something dif, but is it better that bleed/poison....ehhh.

Any other ideas?

Why wouldn't you just do 4x Crack?

[forcecomdr]

didn't see a lot of crack options for mage and healer.

[TnJ]

Originally posted by forcecomdr:

didn't see a lot of crack options for mage and healer.

You can run a Nezglekt with only passive healing and then hand him Destroyer Gauntlets. Set him up for max eye stacks and then you get these giant crack assisted hits from that card which does 3x eye stacks in damage.

[forcecomdr]

Hmm, i gave those to wolfy, but now that i think of it, yeah they wouldn't be bad on him, though you reduce the amount of sights/insane you can stack.