Best Epic (and lower-rarity) Troops

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Like with the legendary list, the question is what this list does. For newer players this list serves a very different purpose than for those who can slap down Greed/Cedric/Egg thief/Skeleton key and farm with Sunbird with fire bomb (or Elspeth/Rowanne)

My advice for earlier players is quite different than for midgame (when you really are able to reliably farm with high speed). Rowanne is actually nice as she works both on early game teams (which is when Templar is a very good Rowanne booster) as later on in a more limited traitstone farming role.

While I want to highlight some replacement troops here, I mainly want to focus on substitutes for Mythics (especially for scaling content), not so much for those in troop-restricted events. The list would get kinda crazy if we included all those.

Yep understood. It’s why I fully understand you only select a few converters.

On Raksha I’m a bit on the fence though. as in some ways he actually works better than egg thief (cleans board from the get-go due to explode, no color overlap with Greed and he has some damage output). Actually biggest problem with Raksha compared to egg thief is that the damage output is a smitten to high during farming runs which makes filling the gold meter harder.

But in a scenario where you need to build up gold fast to activate your charged skeleton key Raksha is actually better. I think he deserves a spot on the list, but I still generally prefer egg-thief for pure gold farming.

Do you find Templar teams outperforming more standard Rowanne builds?

After the early game Rowanne is pretty much a farming troop which makes Elspeth setups superior. But early on Rowanne is also one of the highest damage troops (some luck needed to draw her, but she’s an epic).

Templar works very well early on when you can’t ones-hot whole teams. He has a double function: Boost armor (damage output) and supply gems. So in that sense Templar is a very good match with Rowanne. So Templar is a cut above the average single gem converter due to his armor boost and his complementary gem conversion.

Long story short: for beginners Templar is a strong troop, but come mid game he falls away. Worthy of leveling: IMHO yes. But his place on the list depends on who you write this for.

Not really a fan of Acolyte tbh. :smiley:

That said considering Valkyrie is a single gem converter I only use her in soul farming teams., can’t imagine she has much of another spot? Dark troll, agreed, his ability to paint a board purple makes him more than a soul farmer.

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82

The beauty of Thrall is he is one match from going all the time, and when paired with Sunspear he can get an extra turn with the 13 red gems very regularly. So working him in explore where there’s generally less freeze is extremely viable. Also Thrall and Bogstrider scale with the Nysha medals, as pointed out.

Bogstrider also scales with Dervish with both the Dervish third trait for Monsters and the 100 Dervish talent for +1 magic to all Elementals. In this regard with his low rarity, he can be easily maxed elite, he has random entangle and entangle on skull hits, plus barksin. He therefore is an excellent front troop. More importantly he is monocoloured, which helps with less blocking mana (same with Thrall).

Another two troops that need a mention are Corpse Mare and Vlad the Unsated. Apologies if already mentioned!

Corpse Mare is pretty reasonable in second slot behind a solid skull converter and is easily filled with water link. The fact that it also can generate full mana from destroy a row and it steals life makes it on every single bounty team I use with Tigraki Warrior of course. I haven’t tried it in an Undead (think TGK) team and scaling magic or in a beast team with Qilin, or even with Shahbanu, but it’s got potential. Also easy to gold elite.

Vlad can be evil as it grows. if you can heal it, it’s even nastier. Also it has overlap of colour with Shahbanu, and therefore is viable in blue or purple based Shahbanu teams with magic link and undying.

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83

Works great with dawnbringer, such as:

Ishbaala, Valkyrie, infernus, dawnbringer. Dragon banner

It’s a stupid looking team but usually one red match to fill valk, then fill DB right away, ish and inf do their things too. This team can work with any class though half-mana starts preferred. You’ll be surprised how much it doesn’t matter that infernus is color blocked

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Ahh truth is I never bothered to farm Dawnbringer :wink:

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Maybe something to think about, but clearly team building tho may be difficult at times, are based on troops that are available ect?

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It’s a thought. You make good points, but Raksha Free-Blood’s main problem is that it’s a poor fit with Cedric and Skeleton Key, the most important gold troops, compared to Egg Thief. Thief’s summoning is important, and being partially blocked by Cedric and blocking Key are much bigger problems than partially blocking Greed. I think for most applications, RFB is definitively worse than Egg Thief, but there is a chance that an irregular gold team exists that can use RFB. I’m erring on the side of leaving him off for now, but let me know if there’s a team where he outperforms Egg Thief.

While jdk answered the question for Valkyrie, this ties into something I’ve been wondering lately - are endgamers still using what I call the single-color converter troops? As a group, I’m not so sure. I see Apothecary, Crysturtle, and Green Seer still being mentioned every now and then (and now Valkyrie), but that’s really it. If anyone could confirm that they are still using some of these, I’d appreciate it.

They had not been mentioned, thanks! What would you say is the key to these two troops that makes them viable to you? The fact that they only single-target is a pretty significant hurdle in my book, not sure if they have enough by themselves to overcome that (though you were hinting that teaming with Grey King or Shahbanu might get them there). I do like the fact that they have link traits to one of their own colors (and I also use Corpse Mare a lot in Bounty, though I’m not factoring event usage in this ranking).

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Clearly they are not as good as say Leprechaun or empowered converters, but Corpse Mare for it’s rarity can be gold elite for almost no effort. It is also undead/beast, which means you can scale it twice/three times even with Gray King and Qilin and Willow. You can half start it with Forest Guardian and it is extremely easily filled.

So here is a screenshot vs an opponent that’s quite optimal. I did beat a ZG team with it, but didn’t save the ending screen!

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I killed Child of Summer with skulls from matching loooooots of gems.

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And two of the others with it. It has doubled the life of Finesse and Hero, despite them getting 56 health from 4/5 gem matches. Finesse got an attack buff and Shabanu got a magic buff on the casts.

So that beauty is doing 116 true damage steal, plus bonus x2 from skulls, it has gained 279 life (23 was from a Shahbanu cast that raised life, so 256 damage caused) in 2 casts including skulls.

Same with Vlad, only better as higher magic, plus boosted by his life, so when he is at this level of health, he is stealing a lot.

It does 36 base life steal without bonus from skulls, higher when in kingdom/troop type based teams. In a team with Gray King for example, that can grow and I wouldn’t be surprised for it to do 50 life steal per cast very early in a game. That is effectively, half of a troop’s health at the start of a game. Life steal takes away, and gives, so you build up Corpse Mare.

So it’s actually a very low cost option. It refills very swiftly, and fills others, so it’s a sort of pseudo Willow, in the right team. So it has far more value than most rare troops.

It works on the first troop only. That’s not a problem, helps take the first troop down.

Now granted, I wouldn’t use this team vs Frostmage often, as they all use yellow and a freeze on Shahbanu means they are all effectively frozen, but this troop is pretty decent.

Yes, I could put say other troops in there, but Corpse gains twice, unlike say Mist Stalker who only gains magic.

edit and oh, opponent never took a move after filling hero. Think it filled on a 3 match from Summer.

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88

Yes, definitely. Not all — some are definitely more useful than others — but those you mention and Alchemist, too, are all useful, as I’m sure some others are.

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89

Cheap (low mana) single converters are nice troops.

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Re: other single color converters, add Diviner to the list as one more who can fill Irongut in delves. Anyone who makes yellow/blue/brown is valuable in the end game delve niche if nothing else

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Thanks for the detailed breakdown, as usual! From what you wrote, the keys to these two troops are the facts that they have Shahbanu-friendly mana colors and do boosted true damage (meaning when their magic stats are increased, they get more bang for the buck than troops that do normal damage or unboosted true damage).

I took a quick look at the other options that did this as well, and none of them brought the mix of abilities of Vlad and Corpse Mare. Sanguina does boosted life-stealing, but doesn’t have magic/water/air link and scales worse than Vlad. Ancient Golem is unfreezable, but targets randomly, which sucks. I was surprised to see a couple Legendaries (Shadow Dragon and Psion) who have link traits, but they aren’t as good either because of the way they do damage (though Psion’s mana draining might complement Shahbanu, who can be a bit slow to get started). Good finds!

Re: single-color converters, thanks for the pointers guys. Between what you said, here are what appear to possibly be the odd ones out:

Erinyes (y/p, to purple) - 14 mana cost
Giant Spider (g/bl, to purple) - 13 mana cost
Spirit Dancer (bl/p, to green) - 13 mana cost

These summoners are on the slower side of this bunch. Giant Spider will always be relevant because of Orbweaver. Do the other two have enough redeeming aspects to merit use?

Hellcat (y/p, to red)
Lord Ember (p/br, to red)

The red converters are kinda in-between options. Both have 12-mana costs, and access to 50% starts in the right builds, but I don’t know any endgame teams that use them. Are they still good enough?

Stormsinger (y/p, to blue)

Stormsinger is very fast at 10 mana to cast, but half-overlaps with Valkyrie, and the chaos storm aspect of his spell could potentially cause as much harm to your team as it could help. Are there any endgame teams that use him?

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Yes to Hellcat. Because he’s a good buddy beast to have on a variety of teams, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Any troop where you can choose the color can be useful. The ones that get overshadowed are the ones that have empowered troops that are the same colors and convert to the same—but those are locked to whatever they convert, usually, and if you can get a 50% start on a low-mana troop that isn’t bound in the same way, well… :wink:

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This is a great point, but I would think synergy with the 50% start troop would have a major impact on usefulness of the single-color converter. For instance, Stormsinger (elemental) is a great fit for The Maraji Queen, cranking out blue to fill its mana while not blocking it in any way. Similarly , Giant Spider (beast) fits well with Forest Guardian, by generating purple to feed FGs conversion to skulls.

Hellcat, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to fit well with Forest Guardian at all, generating a color FG can’t use and being half-blocked on yellow mana. Likewise, Lord Ember is half blocked by Sir Quentin Hadley (who also has no use for red mana). With only four slots on a team, what kind of strategies would benefit from using Hellcat on a beast team (particularly since Forest Guardian would likely be used to give half-mana start to a different heavy-hitter, like Qilin)?

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Hellcat will always have a place with alchemist and goblin rocket(s) if nothing else

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That’s still a good beginner team, but I’m trying to keep this list endgame-centric.

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Gotta keep the loop going somehow :wink:

It’s more important than 6 mana at the start. And I can verify Hellcat is being used at endgame in The Unforgiven during Guild Wars, for better or worse. But hey—we lost 1st place this go-around, so maybe we shouldn’t? :joy:

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I gave this some more thought, and could see how having a pseudo-empowered single-color converter could have some useful applications.

Accordingly, I’ll leave the entire group on (unless someone feels strongly that Erinyes and Spirit Fox, the odd ones out, should be removed).

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You could add Moira Cragheart to the epic list.
Doomskull converter and bosskiller. I find her quite usefull in GW/ranked pvp, especialy if enemy has Zuul defending.

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She’s actually on the most-recently posted list, but your post reminds me that I haven’t kept the old-format list up-to-date. I have a fair amount of updating to do to a lot of lists on this site :dizzy_face:

Thanks though, for keeping me honest!

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