Champions - whom do you like / whom do you hate?

[Event Horizon]

Please share your thoughts on the champions and the best combat party.

(as a side question - please let us know why you let Rakhem die so much... he is such a good lad)

[Thyriel]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย KaneDrakkonis:

I honestly think Rakhem suffers from lack of mobility. Unless you build him 1 dimensional HammerSpammer*tm he crawls around the battlefield while range dps and lightning-dash Kane are already finishing the enemies years ahead of when he can get there.

How to fix? Simple.

Adjust his fire walk/boot...thingie.. .skil to work like dash, same range same charge but different effects - ie the fire wall or the explosion at the end. Slow dwarf no mo, he can smush with the best of em.

Cheers!

This ^^
He is great if you have lots of enemies that are easily cluttered together so you can make big use of his AoE skills, but most times it just feels like he's more walking around then doing anything usefull.

[Ze]

Yeah Rekham with path of flames solves a lot of issues. Great way to aggro a lot of untouched enemies too.

He also doesn't have Kane's limitation of short range aggroing. He can aggro with hammers from range. Great for not over extending.

As to why he dies so much? In my case, I forget to use hammers sometimes, too busy spamming my elemental Barrage button =D

[Ashtarte]

Kaela is my favorite character so far but Whisper remains my most stupidly overpowered one. The level of damage difference she pulls even on single target boss fights is just hilarious. (I stacked the living hell out of Mastery on her)

[Event Horizon]

Finally - someone showed some love for Kaela.
Her circumstances are so special...

We will start the balancing round now - we gathered so much feedback here in forums on our Discord and via email.

Big thanks for that.

[akarias888]

Alright tried all heroes at level 10. My thoughts to this point-

Kane- really strong tank. Does no damage but max mastery and heal keep your party really tanky. Really good in minion setups (Kaela+aeric). Super mobile too which is great.

Maeve- probably weakest. Doesn’t really have a way to get through armor. Dual sunflower crossbows are fun...but still pretty weak compared to the real damage dealers. Plus she has limited utility outside of hunters mark. Her last ability is pretty awesome...just doesn’t help vs bosses. Maybe with rekhams huge -armor she can do something with arrowstorm...may test that out.

Aeric- just good at everything. His treant does massive! damage if you can keep it alive but is squishy as paper- need Kane or res totem to keep it alive. Revive is amazing...you could suicide Maeve for instance then instateleport her out and have a huge attackspeed buff for 40s. Totem is just a lifesaver. Earth curse is super niche but can do some cool things with sunflower builds.

Rekham - I actually use rek over Kane...both are strong but rekham is a beastly debuffer. Acid spray + hammers is like -56 armor...he is fairly tanky too though can get overwhelmed by ranged. He doesn’t have instawall or endless mobility like Kane to get out of those situations, so he needs a little more support. However he rewards you by buffing your damage. Max mastery per usual. Even if you build elemental parties, his blind is a strong -res too. He is mobile enough with path of flames, obviously not as much as Kane but that’s ok. Haven’t tried firestorm yet but that sure looks fun.

Boron - ok only one that glaringly stands out from the rest, due to a couple interesting interactions...So if you build your weapons right you can get lik 85% cleave on your weapon and 70% from his first ability (at Lvl10 it goes higher). That’s a flat 55% more damage right there...on top of crits and what not that’s all aoe and doesn’t need -armor since 2h do so much dmg. But what really breaks the game is bleed....bleed can crit (!) and more or less doubles your total damage output. Oh yeah and whenever you want you can blinding rage for some nice damage and big attack speed and huge armor/res. Your other party members will be glad to do half his damage...usually they’re like 1/3. Oh yeah and pull is just amazing on such a low cd...I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten through act 4 with all those mages and immobilize lancers without him.
You can build Kane dual wield phys or ele dual wield too....those synergize well with all his +damage, and are strong but do about half as much damage as a bleed build lol. He does come with big weaknesses- the only melee medium armor who has to attack to build ‘mana’, so he’s either really squishy or if you blinding rage then just dumb lol. Definitely fun to play around.

Whisper - Probably second strongest after boron, though the gap between her and others is not that big. Electric field is sick, her towers are lifesavers, and both meteor and blizzard are incredibly strong. Plus she’s got utility with tank towers and tons of -res. Mana is tight but if you build her right isn’t too bad. Her real weakness is that when her skills are on cd she doesn’t do that much unless you build sunflower. In the later stages they throw mobs from all directions and they can rip through your towers so you have to be kind of judicious with your spells. Meteor is tiny so you probably should combo her with Kaela or boron.

Kaela - love Kaela! Her boss summon is a BEAST. Kind of low resistances is its only weakness, but it unloads damage and has some really cool spells. Since I use boron I don’t use blackhole but her stun tower is excellent and those explosive robots are great. I tried building around her pistols, but for the same investment she just doesn’t do that much damage physically (elemental probably could work), so I’d max mastery and go for summons. Electric field is great lockdown for melee enemies too.

[Cactot]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย akarias888:

Maeve- probably weakest. Doesn’t really have a way to get through armor. Dual sunflower crossbows are fun...but still pretty weak compared to the real damage dealers. Plus she has limited utility outside of hunters mark. Her last ability is pretty awesome...just doesn’t help vs bosses. Maybe with rekhams huge -armor she can do something with arrowstorm...may test that out.

Maeve has a ton of damage potential with some investment into a specific build:

Get a pair of fast 1h crossbows with void damage as the secondary damage type (non-physical primary damage type or health on hit are nice too, if the RNG is kind to you). Look for one with as many forging slots as possible. Apply all the forging bonuses to the secondary void damage type. Apply the Sunpower enchant, which causes the crossbows to shoot three arrows with 300% damage on secondary damage at the expense of skill power.

Itemize for magic penetration, critical hit and speed. All stats into speed.

Skill for utility, since you will be doing basically zero damage with your skills. For example:
Critical strike focused fire arrows, hunters mark, blind focused smoke screen.

End result:
Each of your crossbows shoots three projectiles with more void damage than the base damage it would otherwise have. This gives Maeve the equivalent of equipping 6 1h crossbows.

Most enemies in the game have no void resistance, so every % into magic penetration immediately translates into bonus damage. So that is 6 crossbows that almost entirely bypass resistance and get bonus damage.

Just for sake of comparison at t3:
The 1h unique Dragnipur does 49-52 physical with 0.38 attacks per second (which is a fairly high damage 1h you can find at that tier).

A vampiric obsidian repeater of the void with 4 forging slots (all into bonus void damage) does the following damage 3 times per shot: 42-60 void damage, 21-23 physical at 0.38 attacks per second. Total of 126-180 void damage, 63-69 physical damage (which will be reduced to 1 against most enemies since you have very little armor pen) 0.38 times per second per weapon.

As far as I have been able to tell, this appears to be the highest single target weapon damage of any weapon type in the game. It makes her damage spells worthless, but it is a kinda fun build if you feel like messing around, though it does require investment of quite a few purple crystals to get up and running.

[kirill-busidow]

Can someone write how they play Boron on Epic. My tank is melted in like 4-5 seconds in the open. Interestingly, 5-6 usual mobs hit harder than bosses (bosses are tankable, usual mobs - not so much). How Boron survives ranged fire he gets from multiple archers and all those stuns/dazes from melee?

[akarias888]

Not sure if this will work on epic, I play hard only. max might and speed second. I run rage generation cleave skills, rage generation stun shout, pull chains and tanker blind rage. I park him behind the dwarf, who slams fire hammers to draw Aggro from range, then just spam chains to pull people into him and Maeve. Maeve snipers ranged with headshot (for instance orc snipers have 1300 health on hard and she does like 2600 damage headshot). If the mobs are doing a lot of damage, I give him aerics heal totem with resistances. If it’s a really hard hitting group of physical mobs I activate blind rage. Run a two handed axe with crit, enchant with bleed and get a crit helmet, and the stun immunity ring to avoid stun. He really shouldn’t be targeted by ranged enemies...either you pull them in (once you get going you never run out of rage with this setup), but actually now Maeve just headshot kills most ranged mobs. If the enemies hit really hard and the heal totem is down, then just smack them once and run. Each bleed does something like 3800 damage so...they’ll probably be dead anyways.

Steamrolled the game so far, only really tough fights are the crazed daeva and the goblin war leader (♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hits hard). Borons only real weakness is unlike maeve he can’t drop Aggro. But he compensates with obscene damage so....need to compensate with lots of taunt minions or heal totems. He regularly does around 58,0000 total damage while others do like 7000. Even mastery Maeve does like 28,0000 against mobs with 0 armor (dwarf is awesome). This is at lvl 12.

[akarias888]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Cactot:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย akarias888:

Maeve- probably weakest. Doesn’t really have a way to get through armor. Dual sunflower crossbows are fun...but still pretty weak compared to the real damage dealers. Plus she has limited utility outside of hunters mark. Her last ability is pretty awesome...just doesn’t help vs bosses. Maybe with rekhams huge -armor she can do something with arrowstorm...may test that out.

Maeve has a ton of damage potential with some investment into a specific build:

Get a pair of fast 1h crossbows with void damage as the secondary damage type (non-physical primary damage type or health on hit are nice too, if the RNG is kind to you). Look for one with as many forging slots as possible. Apply all the forging bonuses to the secondary void damage type. Apply the Sunpower enchant, which causes the crossbows to shoot three arrows with 300% damage on secondary damage at the expense of skill power.

Itemize for magic penetration, critical hit and speed. All stats into speed.

Skill for utility, since you will be doing basically zero damage with your skills. For example:
Critical strike focused fire arrows, hunters mark, blind focused smoke screen.

End result:
Each of your crossbows shoots three projectiles with more void damage than the base damage it would otherwise have. This gives Maeve the equivalent of equipping 6 1h crossbows.

Most enemies in the game have no void resistance, so every % into magic penetration immediately translates into bonus damage. So that is 6 crossbows that almost entirely bypass resistance and get bonus damage.

Just for sake of comparison at t3:
The 1h unique Dragnipur does 49-52 physical with 0.38 attacks per second (which is a fairly high damage 1h you can find at that tier).

A vampiric obsidian repeater of the void with 4 forging slots (all into bonus void damage) does the following damage 3 times per shot: 42-60 void damage, 21-23 physical at 0.38 attacks per second. Total of 126-180 void damage, 63-69 physical damage (which will be reduced to 1 against most enemies since you have very little armor pen) 0.38 times per second per weapon.

As far as I have been able to tell, this appears to be the highest single target weapon damage of any weapon type in the game. It makes her damage spells worthless, but it is a kinda fun build if you feel like messing around, though it does require investment of quite a few purple crystals to get up and running.

Yeah that build is really strong dps and pretty fun. Doesn’t really touch borons dps (its lucky to hit 200 dps, boron easily does like 450-500 against the dummy, and that’s factoring all the time it takes boron to walk up to the doll and build rage), but Maeve has good range and can remove Aggro. Also kaela might be better for that since she gets void damage on her attacks, and has tons of utility.

I actually use Maeve now, but max mastery, with the skill power enchants for body and legs. She’s easily one shots the mages and rangers with headshot, which is super useful since they’re the biggest threats by far. Then for bosses arrowstorm....holy hell it does like 14k damage it’s nuts. Only really works with the dwarf though...he’s the only guy that can shred 80 armor instantly.

[Jackdaw Mask]

I like all of them(both mechanically and personality wise), but yeah here is my comments on them ffrom my normal difficulty playthrough:

Kane: Bit boring, but really useful. By end game I used stone wall, party heal, blades of justice and invulnaribility. He was decent at tanking too, but I found it more useful to use him to keep everyone else alive and blades of justice to finish off enemies(I avoided on purpose using Aeric so he was main healer as result as well :p)

Maeven: Really fricking good, loved to use bear traps as area control and late game I used her to assasinate annoying enemies.

Aeric: I mostly avoided to use him because his early game personality before character development was annoying me so I had him try out each of the random effect scrolls to fiure out their effects... Which resulted in lot of debuffs to him due to my awful luck. I was planing on using him more, but I got for two floors in row only bad effects from scrolls so I figured out I might as well have him test every fountain I assumed had bad effects as well :'D I guessed them correctly so he always got shafted in terms of scrolls and fountains, he was only character who ever go debuffs from scrolls(since I only allowed other charactes to use scrolls when I knew the effect). That said, everytime I used him, he was great since he is good healer and good area control with the summons, the earth curse and rock thing was useful at defeating lazy wisp too.

Rakhem: He is great at debuffing and I used her a lot with Maeven with trapping area control early on. Late game I didn't use him much but its mostly because of latter companions.

Boron: Uber cool, Initially used him a lot, but late game he was unable to stay alive long before he got downed so I stopped using him after that. Still, before late game he was really useful at killing stuff and he is another character that can break armor.

Whisper: So I kind of love hate her because she is really squishy and soon after she joins enemies have ability to reflect magic damage causes her to get ko'd unless I avoid on purpose nuking those large group of enemies I want to get rid of, but later when those enemies stopped appearing and especially after I got Kaela she got even better.

Kaela: The best companion, just because of Summon Titan. But coolness aside, gravity pull and electric fence abilities are best area control abilities in game(summon mech is good at distracting and destroying enemies too before late game when they don't do much damage to enemies anymore and get annihilated fast), with gravity pull I can just force large group of enemies stay in one easy to nuke with Whisper spot and with electric fence I can delay large bosses pretty much indefinitely.

Sooo yeah, Kaela is my favourite companion and ironically enough Boron(while second or third coolest party member) became my least favourite to use just because late game I was unable to keep Boron alive logn enough to get much use out of him. I didn't use Rakhem(I think I did use Aeric more than Rakhem because there were few battles late game were he was really useful to bring along even with all permanent debuffs he had) much though because I found comfortable combo with Kane Maeven Whisper Kaela I enjoyed to use, but I always did like Rakhem while I did use him while with Boron while I loved to use him early on, I was unable to keep him alive in battle in after floor 7 or 8 iirc.

[Event Horizon]

We are really happy that there are so many different opinions. There are some recurring favorites but party composition-wise you are trying so many combinations - which was our main goal.

We read everything very carefully and gather the feedback - so we understand how you play (which champions and which skills) - and can make some adjustments in the future for the least played skills/champions.

One question concerning Whisper's Mind Control - it didn't appear too often in the comments - do you find this skill lacking?

Have you tried to mind control some of the more interesting enemies with strong CC or abilities (like Doctors on floors 8-9?)

[Beldr]

Beat the game on hard. I used Kane Kaela Aeric Boron for all of the second half.

Main way of killing was walk to corner of the map, use kane wall to block off all but 1 entrance, then AoE burst at that entrance with grav pull + earth curse + earth fury + boron cleave.

Sometimes enemies could slip through and force me to fight normally while my combo was on cooldown. But it was always just a small fraction and I had plenty of tools to outfight it.
For damage, Kaela and Boron autoattacking with most points in speed + might.
For control, Kane dash taunt, boron weakening axes and jump stun, kaela weakening cage.
For insurance, Aeric totem and revive.

Most important thing is to keep Aeric in cover whenever he's not casting earth fury, so he never gets targeted by ranged attacks or jumped on by a berserker.

I was very lazy with crafting and skipped most of the challenges.

I'll try this setup on epic and see how it is.

[slamfu]

Craziest DPS I've seen is giving massive Crit to a warrior with a 2H weapon that cleaves and has Obsidian Edge 3 on it. I found a 2H Sword with 32% on it, was able to get Kane's crit up to 73%, and the numbers he puts out was 3x Boron, my previous melee damage leader, smokes even Whisper and Maeve, by like 2x, not even close. I got Boron a similiar weapon, but couldn't get his crit over 62%, but he closed most of the gap with Kane. Bleed bypasses armor and can do triple damage on a crit and I guess that's where they are coming from.

[eBurn]

In my opinion, stats are not well balanced for gameplay on epic difficulty. Any heroes (except Maeve and Kaela) that you want to play on epic are viable only with the mastery maxed so they can survive during fights, all other stats can stay as low as on 1st level. Unique items are also not suitable for epic - most of them do less than any blue item.
Big difference between melee and ranged heroes - ranged heroes can have permenat daze locks with their weapons (two 1-hand crossbows with 16% daze effect and sunpower enchant will give you 6 projectiles having 16% daze effect- ~100% daze), when melee only can do cleave damage and very low chance of stun-daze effect. But that what you need on Epic -reduce any incoming damage.
Another thing with items -2hand crossbows (bows) are very weak weapons being very slow and without any damage boost as you would expect from using 2-hand weapons, do not use them

Kane was ok for the beginning of game and did enough dps and survived long enough during first 4 levels. But after that, his armor and resistance does not mean much and you have to kite enemies to not get oneshoted. He had more than 200 armor and all resistance maxed by level 7 and still can get easily killed by any melee from level 7. So only one thing you can do it max the Mastery skills, heal and kite enemies on epic. All other stats do nothing as you get killed easily without healing.

Rakhem is another tank which can easily heal himself as long as you have mana making him ideal frontline fighter.

I do not understand why people saying Maeve is a weak hero. See the video and screenshot below with final fight, if you can beat her dps - good luck! Perfect hero that can easily drop aggro and move around so fast with 5 sec blink. What you need is just two one hand crossbows with daze effect (13-16 %chance) and sunpower enchant. So you end up with 6 shots which have 16% daze effect (add splash effect from fire arrows)-permanent daze lock in any fight. I had fights on epic just blinking around with Maeve and everyone dazelocked.
Definitely MVP this game!
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/931560939715408134/A3519E18B62F891B79FA2C0EC2786B2FB5B49AD2/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1382106819

Aeric just good support with extra saves and damage booster. You need one of them.

BORON- the weakest hero on epic. I tried few fights on normal and hard - yes he can easily survive there, but not on epic. Having no heals ( even with lifesteal enchants), he dies in one or two ranged shots. And you have almost all fights with a lot of ranged enemies. So this hero definitely should be rebalanced to become viable on epic. Having huge cleave doesn't help as when new wave has spawn and they want to target BORON - he is deadman, seriously.

Whisper -good dps, but again only with skills and mastery maxed, you do not need any other stats for him (her?) again. It has very nice mind control which helped me a lot with orc healers, but what would you do at the end of day, just spam elemental barrage to do good dps.

Kaela - another well balanced hero and probably overpowered for any other difficulties. Can easily pull all enemies together in one spot and daze lock them with two 1-hand crossbows. One problem during boss fights - there is no skills to drop aggro (maeve has blink), so in any boss fights my tanks (Kane and Rakhem) could not hold aggro enough. That probably needs to be rebalanced as well.

P.S. Sitll very like the game and challenging fights, which reminds me a bit of WoW tactics

[Xani]

My favorite is Kane. Because he is a beast. I'm not a hardcore player, some bosses are really hard for me even on normal difficulty. Kane is probably the strongest hero in my team for now (I'm on floor 3). I've built Kane into full life and self-sustain. I made armor to heal him and restore mana over time and also reflect physical damage.

He can survive among the enormous enemy swarms, he has a very good mobility, almost nonkillable, takes all aggro. Pain in the ass for enemies. He stays longer in combat, so Kane is usually my top dps in battle statistics.

The least favorite is Rakhem. I just don't know how to make him viable. He is really slow in battle, and his abilities is not that good. I'll replace him as soon as I can :(