Thellora in a new campaign

[Barbe-bleue]

I'm afraid I already know the answer.

I have this Daily Quest: Complete a new 'Witchlight' adventure or variant.
I haven't had any adventures in this campaign yet. So I have 0 favor.
If I include Thellora with 83 Rush Stacks in my formation, what will happen?

[Easy Target]

you cant push further than you have favor. So they will get burned for nothing

[Barbe-bleue]

My fears were justified. Thanks Easy Target.

[LostSoul]

Originally posted by Easy Target:

you cant push further than you have favor. So they will get burned for nothing

Which is really silly if you stop and think about it. No matter how many rush stacks you get on Thellora, she's never going to have more than 20% of your hard wall anyway. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I start out a new adventure (like a Timegate), 20% of my hard wall is *EASY* to achieve in the first pass. Hell, I can generally get to within 5-10 areas of my hard wall on the first pass. And she's not going to let you overshoot your hard wall either -- she's not a DPS champion, and her speed effect only triggers when she kills an enemy, as such her ability to trigger her rush effect already has a hard limit that's definitely sooner than 20% of a player's hard wall.

I keep asking myself, "What the hell were they so afraid her rush effect might cause that they made it so useless??"

[kab_reg]

Is it possible to trigger her rush by using her ultimate attack?

Originally posted by LostSoul:

I keep asking myself, "What the hell were they so afraid her rush effect might cause that they made it so useless?"

Rushing from z2000 to z2400? Or cheezing out the end section of some variants?

Favor cap is probably to disable such abuses as "Run her 10 times to z1000 with Talin, then rush to z2000".

[Derpykat5]

She's intended to speed up runs by skipping the first 10 or 20% of zones provided you have enough favor. Granted the favor limit is very low since with the feat you can get her to maximum effective rush stacks before you stop killing things with click damage.

It's not the greatest speed effect, but it's not bad.

[LostSoul]

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

She's intended to speed up runs by skipping the first 10 or 20% of zones provided you have enough favor. Granted the favor limit is very low since with the feat you can get her to maximum effective rush stacks before you stop killing things with click damage.

It's not the greatest speed effect, but it's not bad.

No. It's an awful speed effect. Unlike every other speed effect, it actually diminishes in value the further you push past her rush cap. I hit that cap by area 300-350, which is less than a third of the way to my wall. And the cap would be fine if it was a powerful speed effect, but it's not. It's a measly 20%, putting her near last place as a speed champion. Which for me, puts her 'effective' speed value at a whopping 7% increase for most campaigns, and even less for events and timegates. That makes her the single least effective speed champion in the game.

Originally posted by kab_reg:

Is it possible to trigger her rush by using her ultimate attack?

Originally posted by LostSoul:

I keep asking myself, "What the hell were they so afraid her rush effect might cause that they made it so useless?"

Rushing from z2000 to z2400? Or cheezing out the end section of some variants?

Favor cap is probably to disable such abuses as "Run her 10 times to z1000 with Talin, then rush to z2000".

Except you can't. She has to land a killing blow to trigger her rush effect, and she's not a DPS champion. She's not killing ANYTHING at any point remotely relevant to your wall.

And as far as trying to save her stacks between runs, if you're waiting until she can't kill things anymore, there goes ~75% of the run and all that time spent getting that high. And she's neutral. Talin's antagonist spec doesn't work on her. Probably for that exact reason. But more over, if they were worried about this sort of thing, the game keeps track of the highest area cleared for every campaign, event, and timegate. That's a *FAR* more reasonable metric to use to keep players from gaming her rush effect. For example, they could have capped it at 50% of the highest area cleared for the campaign. Even if you gamed that, it would only be good as to Shandie's haste effect. And when you're not gaming it? It'd be a pretty consistent 20%.

Or heck, they could have used the 'favor cap' not as a maximum area to which the party can rush, but the maximum area allowed where Thellora's rush effect can still trigger.

[kab_reg]

Originally posted by LostSoul:

She has to land a killing blow to trigger her rush effect, and she's not a DPS champion.

That's why I asked whether her ultimate attack also counts or not. I don't see any problems killing enemies even at z2000 if it works.

Originally posted by LostSoul:

And she's neutral. Talin's antagonist spec doesn't work on her.

Ah, yes, I forgot she is not good. I benched her the day I recruited her, and have not used her ever since except for her variants.

[WhatZit]

Originally posted by LostSoul:

I keep asking myself, "What the hell were they so afraid her rush effect might cause that they made it so useless??"

What makes you believe that CNE put ANY thought into her design at all?

I'm truly convinced that they don't even understand half of their own game mechanics. As evidence, I present *@^ % 6%!h kk..

{ERROR: Unable to display evidence. MEMORY OVERFLOW - too much data, please restrict unpacked array to 32GB or less.}

[taniwhat]

I still use her, she's useful in some areas. Catch is also you have to charge her up, which means running her somewhere to area 400 or so beforehand.

Which means her rush effect is a LOT less useful than it would otherwise because unless she's used every time instead of gaining 35 or so areas, you lost 400 charging her up :).

And others covered that, with a few exceptions there are generally better choices.

[Kriogar]

Heard that earlier she used to crash the game if you tried it. I understand she is fixed now.
Didnt try it myself yet.

[Derpykat5]

Originally posted by LostSoul:

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

She's intended to speed up runs by skipping the first 10 or 20% of zones provided you have enough favor. Granted the favor limit is very low since with the feat you can get her to maximum effective rush stacks before you stop killing things with click damage.

It's not the greatest speed effect, but it's not bad.

No. It's an awful speed effect. Unlike every other speed effect, it actually diminishes in value the further you push past her rush cap. I hit that cap by area 300-350, which is less than a third of the way to my wall. And the cap would be fine if it was a powerful speed effect, but it's not. It's a measly 20%, putting her near last place as a speed champion. Which for me, puts her 'effective' speed value at a whopping 7% increase for most campaigns, and even less for events and timegates. That makes her the single least effective speed champion in the game.

You mean the single least effective speed champion anyone actually cares about, because Minsc and Vi are improvements in the less than 5% range, Lae'zel is utter garbage in a formation with other speed champs, Havilar is non-functional in 80% of adventures and 80% of the zones within those adventures, Virgil is just an inferior Hew Mann, Deekin is redundant with Widdle, Nahara is redundant with BBEG, and Melf is both random and redundant with pretty much everyone else.

The feat is overkill for gem farming, but even without it she's a very good speed effect, making your runs 10% faster without interfering with the speed effects of other champs. She seems more designed for tight loops like gem farming and event chest farming than she is for speeding up variants.

[Hecate]

About the limit equal to favor exponent, remember also she probably works like Briv about her stack build (because of how recalls work) and so she could potentially be recharged during a run using her in another party. Given how the effect works, it has to have a root (a rush "to" rather than a rush "by") to avoid exploits.

[LostSoul]

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

Originally posted by LostSoul:

No. It's an awful speed effect. Unlike every other speed effect, it actually diminishes in value the further you push past her rush cap. I hit that cap by area 300-350, which is less than a third of the way to my wall. And the cap would be fine if it was a powerful speed effect, but it's not. It's a measly 20%, putting her near last place as a speed champion. Which for me, puts her 'effective' speed value at a whopping 7% increase for most campaigns, and even less for events and timegates. That makes her the single least effective speed champion in the game.

You mean the single least effective speed champion anyone actually cares about, because Minsc and Vi are improvements in the less than 5% range, Lae'zel is utter garbage in a formation with other speed champs, Havilar is non-functional in 80% of adventures and 80% of the zones within those adventures, Virgil is just an inferior Hew Mann, Deekin is redundant with Widdle, Nahara is redundant with BBEG, and Melf is both random and redundant with pretty much everyone else.

Most of this is just flat-out wrong.

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

The feat is overkill for gem farming, but even without it she's a very good speed effect, making your runs 10% faster without interfering with the speed effects of other champs. She seems more designed for tight loops like gem farming and event chest farming than she is for speeding up variants.

Except, you know, not really. Longer runs means you've got time to use longer-duration speed potions, which will offer at least a 20% boost in run speed. Which makes using her in 'tight loop' farms a wash at best.

[Derpykat5]

Originally posted by LostSoul:

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

You mean the single least effective speed champion anyone actually cares about, because Minsc and Vi are improvements in the less than 5% range, Lae'zel is utter garbage in a formation with other speed champs, Havilar is non-functional in 80% of adventures and 80% of the zones within those adventures, Virgil is just an inferior Hew Mann, Deekin is redundant with Widdle, Nahara is redundant with BBEG, and Melf is both random and redundant with pretty much everyone else.

Most of this is just flat-out wrong.

Care to explain any of it?

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

The feat is overkill for gem farming, but even without it she's a very good speed effect, making your runs 10% faster without interfering with the speed effects of other champs. She seems more designed for tight loops like gem farming and event chest farming than she is for speeding up variants.

Except, you know, not really. Longer runs means you've got time to use longer-duration speed potions, which will offer at least a 20% boost in run speed. Which makes using her in 'tight loop' farms a wash at best.

You do know you can use speed potions and Thellora at the same time, right? Other than that, I don't understand what you're getting at here. You seem to be saying that longer runs are more conducive to potions but that then means that she isn't useful in tight loops? Which are almost always short runs? You do understand how gem farming works, right?

[taniwhat]

Lets say you have a 100 area gem farming loop. Throw Thellora in and she won't rush in background. You COULD charge her up in background (maybe) but having her in the gem farming loop will AFAIK achieve nothing.

Even if it did, 100 areas of chargeup comes down to (I think) 10 areas max rush, So it's possibly a small gain IF she would rush in background, but it's not going to increase your average gems/day significantly.

I can't run a loop much more than 100 (too few familiars) without slowing drastically because it takes longer to click down bosses as the levels go up. So even if I could charge her up fully in background, it's still a lose because for me at max. she'll rush ~34 levels and it's faster to do 4x100. I gain more speed doing that than by using Thellora's rush.

I'm not actually complaining about that, but that's essentially why (for me) she's essentially useless except for some adventures where having a female or someone in slot 1 with her stats either makes someone available from that slot or gives other bonuses that are worthwhile on their own. I'm relatively low level so she's an O.K. tank and still worth using in some cases - just not for her speed bonus.