Help me make an Artemis formation

[tdb]

There's been some new powerful support champions recently, as well as old ones being reworked. I've had some difficulty fitting them in an Asharra formation due to all the different races. With Artemis featured in the new season, I figured it's time for a new formation. I'm currently on a Waterdeep adventure and after some tinkering put together this formation: https://ic.byteglow.com/formation/3_13311572363e14197976_113212122231

I count 26 observes. Is that good? Non-dps champions in the formation are Nova, Miria, Turiel, Barrowin and Regis, but they all have fairly powerful buffs, many of them targeting a large number of champions. I'm running out of decent dps/support champions with positional buffs in seats which don't have powerful supports. Zorbu could possibly work, although Miria is highly valuable for tanking and I just like her. Orisha is no match for Nova. Dhadius is on an otherwise unused seat but his buff is on the weak side so it's hard to make up through observes. Have I forgotten someone?

I wanted to use Antrius because his buff can be really powerful, but the extra observances from Kent turned out to be more useful. No Blooshi because she doesn't work great with other tanks and especially not Miria. Regis is probably better after his S4 rework anyway.

As it is, I can get a BUD of e340-ish once everything has stacked up. My artemis still has fairly low gear levels, with the flute at only 120, and most of the champions in this formation lack legendaries. I expect taking care of those should get me at least another e50 damage. Fast core isn't optimal either, but magic core isn't that much better and my unaffiliated core is still being leveled up. Still, my Asharra formation can only reach e360-ish, so it'll already be better by about 100 areas.

Any comments or suggestions before I fully commit to gearing up this formation?

[kab_reg]

For reference, what is your formation for Asharra?

[Hecate]

Valentine works great with Artemis for what I recall, but you need more observe for sure (and so more support/dps, so your list + Val is a bit too high). 26 is good but I remember to have read numbers around 50. The more you focus on Artemis, the less supports will be better than dps/support.

[tdb]

Asharra formation for Waterdeep: https://ic.byteglow.com/formation/3_3c3d693e4172064e2c73_113412131211

I seem to recall Valentine not being that good for Artemis because her ability copying/boosting happens after Artemis's observance, so Artemis can't observe the copied abilities.

[kab_reg]

Originally posted by tdb:

Asharra formation for Waterdeep: https://ic.byteglow.com/formation/3_3c3d693e4172064e2c73_113412131211

Is Nova really a better buffer than Avren?
Depending on how far you can go, Blooshi tends to be MUCH better buffer than Krydle. In addition to that, she can provide overkill up to e40.

For reference, my own party for Asharra: https://i.postimg.cc/Kc7959s1/20230615174814-1.jpg

[Hecate]

Originally posted by tdb:

I seem to recall Valentine not being that good for Artemis because her ability copying/boosting happens after Artemis's observance, so Artemis can't observe the copied abilities.

That was the theory, but as usual CNE screwed up in coding and Valentine's ability is still extremely powerful with Artemis.
Same goes with Antrius who seems to be part of new Artemis Meta.

You can see there - she is more efficient with Artemis.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/627690/discussions/0/3818531444663308451/

Also current Artemis "Meta" for trials, from Discord pinned messages (user Emerald1219):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jLA6XZubkvS0cAtj_BM9sLT7Lg30oz2BKyGvCJfuDVM/edit#gid=2103748333

[tdb]

Originally posted by kab_reg:

Is Nova really a better buffer than Avren?

With my gear levels they're about the same. I think Avren is a tiny bit better, but he's annoying to use when swapping between debuff and push formations because it takes him a minute to get the mirror images up. Nova's buff is just instantly at full power.

Originally posted by kab_reg:

Depending on how far you can go, Blooshi tends to be MUCH better buffer than Krydle.

Blooshi's buff is indeed very powerful, but requires her being "dead" and getting hit, which can be annoying to arrange.

Originally posted by kab_reg:

In addition to that, she can provide overkill up to e40.

So I've heard, but isn't that based on her ultimate hitting highly debuffed enemies? And ultimates don't set BUD (otherwise they'd snowball to infinity), so it doesn't work with fire breath. Plus it'd be annoyingly slow to progress if the only way I could kill enemies was an ultimate with a 50 second cooldown, not to mention the difficulty of tanking enemies at high areas while waiting for the ultimate.

Originally posted by Hecate:

That was the theory, but as usual CNE screwed up in coding and Valentine's ability is still extremely powerful with Artemis.

Interesting. I'll have to try her again.

Originally posted by Hecate:

Same goes with Antrius who seems to be part of new Artemis Meta.

Oh? I know Antrius has a pre-multiplicative buff and can target the entire formation with the right champions, but on the other hand he's not a dps so doesn't provide observances for buffs targeting him.

Originally posted by Hecate:

You can see there - she is more efficient with Artemis.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/627690/discussions/0/3818531444663308451/

I can see someone claiming her to be more efficient with Artemis, but no explanation why. I'll see if I can reproduce the effect, but I don't work off hearsay and superstition.

Originally posted by Hecate:

Also current Artemis "Meta" for trials, from Discord pinned messages (user Emerald1219):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jLA6XZubkvS0cAtj_BM9sLT7Lg30oz2BKyGvCJfuDVM/edit#gid=2103748333

Another spreadsheet full of numbers and zero explanations. But I guess I can use it as a hint of what champions are commonly used and try to puzzle out the why myself.

[kab_reg]

Originally posted by tdb:

Blooshi's buff is indeed very powerful, but requires her being "dead" and getting hit, which can be annoying to arrange.
So I've heard, but isn't that based on her ultimate hitting highly debuffed enemies? And ultimates don't set BUD (otherwise they'd snowball to infinity), so it doesn't work with fire breath. Plus it'd be annoyingly slow to progress if the only way I could kill enemies was an ultimate with a 50 second cooldown, not to mention the difficulty of tanking enemies at high areas while waiting for the ultimate.

Note the number of crowd control champions in my party. In the last time gate I got to z1890, where even Briv cannot tank that much. However, crowd control allows to avoid being hit completely or almost completely.

Overkill can get you much farther than fire breath potions. The latter are ineffective against enemies, whose health is higher than BUD, while overkill still remains effective - that's why it is called overkill.

Using Briv for boss runs reduces the amount of necessary tanking even further.

Apparently, post-Season Birdsong has boss-specific overkill, but I have not tested it yet in much detail.

If you want to abuse overkill, but don't like waiting, you can have up to three overkill-capable champions in the same party: Blooshi, Jaheira/Birdsong, and Penelope/Dob. Mind though that Dob's overkill is almost unusable due to very narrow AoE. For this reason, I use him almost exclusively for direct buffing and crowd control.

[tdb]

I tried this formation: https://ic.byteglow.com/formation/3_00006700367900007219_0030230012

Miria is buffing Valentine only, with Artemis, Catti-Brie and Kent in the formation. Valentine grants Miria's buff to all the dps champions, including Artemis, but Artemis doesn't observe it from the other dps so only gains a single copy. If I move Miria so she buffs Artemis directly but not Valentine, Artemis's attack damage stays the same, despite the other dps losing Miria's buff. So I conclude that Valentine is not useful with Artemis.

I also tried Blooshi's claimed overkill. I went against a boss with e397 regular health and debuffed him with Warden, Aila, Freely, Grimm and Orkira. Then I hit him with Blooshi's ultimate doing e391 listed damage. No effect. If the ultimate had done even a fraction of the claimed e40 overkill, it should have destroyed the boss.

Originally posted by kab_reg:

Note the number of crowd control champions in my party. In the last time gate I got to z1890, where even Briv cannot tank that much. However, crowd control allows to avoid being hit completely or almost completely.

How do you farm stacks for Blooshi? Getting them from killed enemies takes forever and if you can't tank you can't get them from her being hit. I suppose going back to a lower area where tanking is actually possible could work, since she only loses 20% of stacks and they stack linearly, but going back hundreds of areas is a royal pain since you have to click the arrow once for every five areas.

Originally posted by kab_reg:

Overkill can get you much farther than fire breath potions. The latter are ineffective against enemies, whose health is higher than BUD, while overkill still remains effective - that's why it is called overkill.

So you keep saying. But (a) I can't get it to work and (b) it sounds tedious to the point which would give me a burnout and make me stop playing the game again. My first burnout was when I was relying on too many different random and timed effects to get a high BUD, with the result that I could spend 10 minutes swapping champions just to get one good hit, and I'd have to repeat that multiple times per adventure. So now I'm trying to build hassle-free formations which just work.

[kab_reg]

What are ilvl values in your team? Overkill does not start at e40, at low ilvl values it is e15-e20.

I'm currently running a time gate for Artemis. Once I get to the wall, I'll post BUD and enemy health values there.

In the previous time gate (for Havilar), where the above screenshot was taken, I charged Blooshi's stacks at z1750 using magic attacks from the boss. It took about 50 minutes from the first conversion of Blooshi into her spirit form till the end of the run at z1890.

[tdb]

Originally posted by kab_reg:

What are ilvl values in your team? Overkill does not start at e40, at low ilvl values it is e15-e20.

800-ish for evergreen champions including Blooshi, 200-ish for the event champions in my Asharra team which I used for the test. The difference between the ultimate's listed damage and and the boss's health was only e6. Even if the overkill was just e5 I should have seen the boss's health move at least.

Originally posted by Hecate:

Also current Artemis "Meta" for trials, from Discord pinned messages (user Emerald1219):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jLA6XZubkvS0cAtj_BM9sLT7Lg30oz2BKyGvCJfuDVM/edit#gid=2103748333

I checked the formations for the permanent campaigns and some of the more recent ones for events. They seem to all use the same champions. Artemis, Catti-Brie, Birdsong and Nova I have already determined to be good.

Blooshi: Regis has a better buff with the S4 changes, but B's targets more champions. Hmm.
Antrius: It's a bit of a toss-up between him and Kent. A's pre-multiplicative buff vs. extra observances granted by K.
Zorbu: Another toss-up case. Miria's buff is better but Z gives observances.
NERDS: Is a stupid product tie-in champion and I'm not going to get them, two positionals or no.
Valentine: as per my experiment, she does not work with Artemis as claimed.
Torogar: I don't get why you'd use him instead of Barrowin. While T is a dps for observance, his buff is pretty weak compared to other recently introduced or changed champions and it's not positional. B can grant her positional buff to basically all champions (except her own column), which can easily lead to more observances.

My observance currently only grants a 5x bonus, but I could reasonably get it up to 20x and maybe 40-50x if I blow almost all of my blacksmithing contracts on Artemis. Higher observance buff will shift the balance of the uncertain cases towards the champions granting more observances, but in Antrius's case his buff may scale faster.

[Hecate]

"Thanks" could have been another answer. It would have been welcomed.

"Someone" are Artemis theorycrafters, I guess they know better their business about Artemis than you and I. But I agree some explications would have been welcomed too: I just wish you would be able to take 5 minutes to make the same researchs I made to answer you genuinely.

Guide about Artemis Meta:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v7OWgbri8bba7W3zIfdvNbTvO4Eswyyzy_4I-l58Igc/edit

[Fork]

Thanks, I found this interesting especially the links. I don't use discord. I didn't know Antrius was a thing, will take a look at him. I still use Krydle over blooshi cos i find his tanking to be effective in higher levels due to evade mechanic. I Mostly use Krydle,Briv,Birdsong,Kent,Fen,Catti,Nova,Zorbu,Torgar. Sometimes use Valentine, Orisha and Walnut in trials depending on restrictions. Walnut is probably weird or terrible, but seems to work for me when others are not available even over Tatyana in same slot.

[tdb]

Originally posted by Hecate:

"Someone" are Artemis theorycrafters, I guess they know better their business about Artemis than you and I. But I agree some explications would have been welcomed too: I just wish you would be able to take 5 minutes to make the same researchs I made to answer you genuinely.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be ungrateful. But I had tried Valentine with Artemis in the past and their abilities didn't work together. I tired them again in the context of this thread and they still didn't work. So I hope you'll understand why I don't take "you should use Valentine with Artemis" at face value without further explanation, no matter how much of an expert the person stating that is.

I found a reddit thread explaining that while Valentine doesn't grant extra observances to Artemis, the latter would observe the buffs on other dps which have been boosted by V's Socialite when both V and the dps receive the buff directly. This did not seem to work at first either, but after some tinkering I finally found an interaction. It seems to depend on the order in which the champions are placed.

If either V or the other dps being buffed is placed last, it doesn't work. It only works if the champion doing the buffing is placed last. Also if V is moved away from her position, A continues to observe the boosted buff even though the other dps no longer has the boost. My theory is that when a champion is moved, the game updates only that champion's buffs, but this logic is flawed and doesn't handle this sort of chaining correctly.

It seems to be reliable when loading a saved formation, but on the other hand I usually try to avoid clearly unintended glitches (which this one seems to be as per the description of Valentine's ability), so I'm not sure if I'll use this.

Originally posted by Hecate:

Guide about Artemis Meta:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v7OWgbri8bba7W3zIfdvNbTvO4Eswyyzy_4I-l58Igc/edit

Thanks, while this still doesn't explain the subtle nature of the glitched interaction between Valentine and Artemis, it at least has an analysis of Artemis's specs, which seems useful.

These guides tend to be written with very high item levels in mind (like the reddit thread I found says that valentine can provide e50 buff at 10k ilvls) and rarely offer any math for calculating breakpoints between different champions at different item levels, so my hope was that by having a conversation with people I could get advice better applicable to my situation. Admittedly I neglected to mention my item levels in the initial post, and the BUD values may be too weak of an indication.

Briv: 834
Evergreens: 800-ish
Hew Maan: 552
Asharra supports: 200-ish
Artemis: 109
Others: mostly 20-100
Valentine: 26

[tdb]

Originally posted by Fork:

I still use Krydle over blooshi cos i find his tanking to be effective in higher levels due to evade mechanic.

Krydle has some interesting niche uses thanks to having both an evade mechanic and a BUD-based attack (the BUD-based hit is delayed by 3 seconds so it may not be immediately obvious). I've used it a couple times in the current event to get through the annoying dragon boss in high areas. Krydle will stay alive by evading the attacks regardless of how much damage the dragon does, and his attacks will kill the dragon one armored segment at a time, while firebreath potion takes care of the constantly spawning adds. It does require a high enough BUD to be set beforehand, because if it decays too much Krydle will no longer be able to damage the dragon.

[Hecate]

The very low level of your Valentine may be a beginning of an answer of why you see so few difference, you should invest some contract in her, even if you rarely use her because she's gearing extremely well (and have a quite good availability). If you find a last Potpourri, she's also far better than Qillek in seat 5 with some gear (even with some Aeoris synergy).

Thanks, while this still doesn't explain the subtle nature of the glitched interaction between Valentine and Artemis

You said it, it's glitched.
The same goes on with Nova giving 2 time her crew bonus if you use Valentine. It's a glitch, but a long lasting one.
That'll probably be fixed in 2 or 3 years, like how old Krydle was finally fixed 2 years later.
But currently it's how it works (erratically).
I made the same test than you.
Building a formation, with Valentine, Nova's The Crew gives to Artemis a 8e39% buff, switching to Dhadius (+1 Observance), the buff falls to 6e31%, switching back to Valentine and the buff was 5e31% after that... CNE's coders at their best, I guess.