Heiner is too slow to make him viable

[Condore]

he needs a speed buff, having him be a tank and not having him do tank things until last defeats the purpose and almost gets your entire team killed before the fight starts.

[KeohZ]

Magnus is the only direct comparison since Grukli is not a tank.

Fortify is key to a tank, since without it you are basically counting on every single draw to draw a good number of block cards. Heiner starts off with 3 fortify cards in his deck, plus a All Hero fortify at level 2, plus he starts each fight fortified. Magnus starts with 0 fortify options, and likely won't get any notable Fortify until he spends 500 shards on an upgraded Entrench.

Heiner starts each fight with +13 to each character (at 36 perk points), that's a free Barricade that you are guaranteed to get off round 1, where as Magnus might start with a very unlucky draw and you go through round 1 with only a single intercept.

Magnus relies too much on high speed, which makes him vulnerable to Slow/Binding. Most Slow/Bind targets fastest Hero, so Magnus is almost always the target. And then you'd go through one round with zero block and zero carried over to next round. If Overcharged Enemy corrupter is ON, and Magnus gets Bind for 2 rounds, someone on your team dies. With Heiner, your Scout is likely the target of Slow/Bind (which is irritating, but not fatal), and since Heiner has more Taunt/Fortify options, even if he did get slowed, he still does his job.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by KeohZ:

Magnus is the only direct comparison since Grukli is not a tank.

Fortify is key to a tank, since without it you are basically counting on every single draw to draw a good number of block cards. Heiner starts off with 3 fortify cards in his deck, plus a All Hero fortify at level 2, plus he starts each fight fortified. Magnus starts with 0 fortify options, and likely won't get any notable Fortify until he spends 500 shards on an upgraded Entrench.

Heiner starts each fight with +13 to each character (at 36 perk points), that's a free Barricade that you are guaranteed to get off round 1, where as Magnus might start with a very unlucky draw and you go through round 1 with only a single intercept.

Magnus relies too much on high speed, which makes him vulnerable to Slow/Binding. Most Slow/Bind targets fastest Hero, so Magnus is almost always the target. And then you'd go through one round with zero block and zero carried over to next round. If Overcharged Enemy corrupter is ON, and Magnus gets Bind for 2 rounds, someone on your team dies. With Heiner, your Scout is likely the target of Slow/Bind (which is irritating, but not fatal), and since Heiner has more Taunt/Fortify options, even if he did get slowed, he still does his job.

Yes, exactly, Heiner is the quintessential defensive character of the game. Grukli is the most offensive oriented tank though Magnus kind of does both alright too, he's in the middle. That being said, Grukli's class card can do wonders for tanking if you can pull it off well, though iirc it got a nerf.

It doesn't matter that Heiner plays last because his block is relevant for the full next turn, no matter how fast the enemy is, whereas with Magnus, you only will block enemies that go after you if you don't go out of your way to get fortify.

[Condore]

Him going last with fort cards doesn't make a difference when in the first town i can spend a few hundred crystals and remove cards from magnus and he is a better tank with fort and taunt and 20+ speed in most cases, and regarding the slow the fort counters that but i also build in purges on him and on the healer so he is almost never actually slowed.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by Big Don:

Him going last with fort cards doesn't make a difference when in the first town i can spend a few hundred crystals and remove cards from magnus and he is a better tank with fort and taunt and 20+ speed in most cases, and regarding the slow the fort counters that but i also build in purges on him and on the healer so he is almost never actually slowed.

But Heiner comes with +2 Fortify on turn start(or +3, if you have maxed perks), meaning that you do not have to rely on card draw to get Fortify for the first 2 turns or so.

Similarly, if you have both of Heiner's defensive Talent cards, you can stack so much armor and Fortify on your team, that you are set for 90% of all your engagements. Again with minimal effort.

Magnus is great, but he is more supportive in his defenses than a true tank. He provides additional card draw and can actively increase the defenses of another party member with Wolfguard.

Also, what does Heiner's speed matter, when your enemies are still going to be either slower than your entire team, or faster than your entire team, past turn 1(depending on various cards being used)?
Give your Rogue a Song of Celerity(B) and let your Mage use some Slow or Chill spells. Suddenly Heiner is way faster than the majority of enemies.

[TnJ]

Heiner is awesome with some Destroyer Gauntlets and the left side laser cards

[KeohZ]

You can spend hundreds of Crystals to deck out your Magnus with 3 Guards, and still have fewer Fortify than Heiner (mind you, Guard is 126 crystal each), but are you then gonna also get Shake it off (126), or upgraded Helping Hand (132) to avoid Bind (which happens in Act 1)? What about Repair Armor, Piercing Howl, Intimidate (to trim out your deck)? You only have 2100-3000 Crystals (depending on madness level) in starting town for 4 characters. And if you used Last Game Reward, just deck out your Scout to wipe out half the enemy team on Round 1, and forget Tanking...

Meanwhile Heiner's speed problem can easily be solved by Song of Celerity (72 crystal) on Scout (which they should get, since AOE speed on round 1 is too good), and Scroll of Speed on Mages, (42 crystal each, and are easy Vanish cards that you'd almost always take to trim mage decks). Heiner himself can get all the fancy cards he want and he'd still have crystal left to get a "Piercing Howl", further solving his own speed problem.

As you get on higher madness levels, it's not about what happens "In most cases", it's about what happens "In worst cases" and how likely you encounter or avoid it. Sure Magnus can get his blocks off and block all damages in most cases, but In worst cases, Harpies with AOE speed buff or Naga/Seahorse combo just slaughters your team on round 2 because you drew 2 Intimidate and 1 Helping Hand on first hand.

[Crim]

Heiner doesn't need to be fast

He gives the entire team shields at battle start which is enough to reach his turn. After that he uses Fortifies to keep his tank rolling.


Here's the thing tho, if you... again YOU! feel that this is unacceptable, that is also fine.

Use Magnus as your tank, hell I've seen people even use Andrin as their Tank.

This is all fine.