Anti water elemental thugs

[Big Dog]

Anyone figure out some thug items that are good v water elementals? Moonblades?

[nosy]

In general water elementals are an effective counter to thugs because they have 4 x 20ap damage attacks and can be easily spammed out en masse by any water nation.Anything that isn't very tanky is just going to straight up die. 1v1 you can potentially get away with not being so tanky by having high stats and getting lots of damage away before taking a hit, but that's a bit unreliable. Notably body ethereal is very good at increasing your chances to survive, especially so the more you invest into your survivability. Also should be mentioned that skelly spammers don't usually have much trouble 1v1, mostly because it's not actually 1v1

I've seen an Ancient Kraken take on an UW amy spamming water elementals and win repeatedly, but that was a fully kitted SC. It had >300 hp with a regen ring, scripted for body ethereal, iron skin, temper flesh and summon earth power, and it had a fluffer casting quickness on it. All of that allowed it to tank the elementals for days, the other stuff it was kitted with was less important beyond adding resistances (for spells like frozen heart)

I was chatting to someone else about it on discord recently too, they had some success with a Titan that had considerably less hp (80-ish) but making up for it by using the combination of mistform, liquid body, breath of winter (water elementals have no cold resist and can fatigue out) and being able to stack prot via iron skin + armour. Again that option is a bit more than what I'd call a thug

It would help to know more about your specific needs in answering the question too. Are you fighting under water? trying to keep commanders alive vs vengeful waters/water bottle assassins? Also would be good to know what kind of magic & items you have available

[Big Dog]

yea I was looking into both breath of winter and the ice mist scimitar.

Underwater a skele spammer loses to water eles unfortunately.

[wilson.max]

My standard thug kit usually includes high Prot (28ish, Ironskin + armor), ethereality, and Vine Shield, all of which work against water elementals. I suppose it's possible that dozens of water elementals could kill my thugs anyway, but whenever I see small numbers (2-5) of water elementals, they just die immediately, and I've always thought of water elementals as weak. Air elementals give me far, far more trouble than water elementals.

So anyway, try some combination of high Prot, ethereality, and Vine Shields, plus some source of HP regen or life drain.

P.S. As always, remember that quantity has a quality of its own. Using multiple thugs placed in the same square or next to each other is synergistically more powerful than using them alone, because the enemy can't surround them, so they take only 1/2 or 1/3 as many attacks as usual. In MP scenarios, which I don't usually play, I have found that I don't have to change the way I build thugs, but I do need to use them in pairs instead of alone, because humans tend to use high-end, hard-hitting troops with magical weapons and blessings more than the AI does. Sometimes two thugs together can beat unlimited numbers of a troop type (e.g. devils) that would kill one thug alone easily. So try just doubling your number of thugs against water elementals--you'll have twice the HP and twice the damage = four times the combat power.

[Tzyder]

freeze the prov. water eles become ice eles in cold climate. ice eles suck.

[Silence]

If you plan to use them mixed up with an army, then Moonblades are a good idea. A thug able to survive an elemental on a 1 v 1 would quickly wreck him with the moonblade, so a nice addition to your army (and the more the better). (and talking from UW experience)

[lord_khaine]

Its just unfortunately pretty hard to do so if its under water.
Unless you took cold scales.