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Deepdive into Doomed "Doomskull" Weapons

Feature Requests and Game feedback
#3

I thought this was really nice!

I have to mildly (but respectfully, I hope!!) disagree with a couple of minor thoughts on upgrades.

These bits of damage happen after the main spell effect, which includes damage to all enemy troops. As such, any Barriers will have already been expended against this bigger hit, unless the Troops were Submerged (in which case only Rending has a chance to have an effect).

The main exception to this would be triggering an enemy’s Savior talent by killing an enemy Troop with the initial ‘damage all’ – this seems pretty niche, though. The upgrades can also be detrimental against an Orbweaver hero or Orcs.

On the whole, therefore, I generally find the damage to be either meaningless, unreliable, or occasionally/situationally/rarely useful against Troops with ~1-3 Health left – so not really that nice or good (my opinion/take).

I totally agree, and realistically think this reasoning applies to a lot of the other upgrades as well, making them less useful.

But yeah, I guess Leeching can be useful if you gain 2 mana, Vampiric is fine because you gain 3 Life and could kill an enemy with ≤3 Health, allowing you to use the Skull hits on the next enemy (also an argument somewhat in favour of Striking), and so on.

I do agree with your thoughts on Glaive’s Tangling, but also sometimes kind of wish it Entangled the second enemy (either instead or as well), though :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:.

I’ve typically/historically always agreed with this – after all, if making Doomskulls, why not have more? :stuck_out_tongue:

Lately, though, I’ve considered a couple of situations where it’s actually detrimental (:scream:):

  • When it joins two disparate skull groups, to subsequently deal less damage

  • If you were to cast it when there would be no available Skull matches afterwards, and considered ‘safe’, but creating a Doomskull opens up a Skull match for the enemy.

At the end of the day, I think ‘Create a Gem’ upgrades simply don’t belong on Weapons that Convert Gems, since Converting Gems is all about predictability, consistency, precision, etc.

Loving your breakdowns of various game elements, tbh!!! :relaxed:

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#4

While I do not disagree with any specific point … the priorities for picking a doomskull weapon for a team are going to be the colors:
How the color of the weapon interacts with the other three troops’ colors.
And - if applicable - how the color transform from the weapon interacts with the transforms, storms, etc, from the other three troops.

So while Glaive is amazing because it has Entangle, Glaive is also amazing specifically to pair with Obsidius because it generates a green storm on cast, fills itself a bit as things go to hell, Obsidius then generates a brown storm once you kill something and fills the board with brown for Glaive to transform again.

Between that synergy, really wanting Obsidius’ stun trait, their mana colors not interfering, etc - I don’t really care anymore than Glaive has Entangle, I care that its got the right color combination.

Similarly, if I have a set of three troops that has no brown on it, I’m gonna probably be adding the Doomed Club to that team regardless of anything else simply because of the colors.

Going in-depth about the rest of the forge upgrades (and “upgrades”), where I can chip in another couple points of damage on the AOE or the color/class combination, all that? Very low priority by comparison.

You aren’t wrong in your analysis, its just not as important unfortunately. The bits I wanted to see are touched on later, of course.

The other bit that I feel was missed … is the fact that Blade and Club have that irritating capacity to undo your extra turns. You already ranked them last but there’s no mention of that part.
I stand corrected, carry on.

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#5

It is kind of amazing that Blade and Club have lasted this long with bad affixes. Virtually anything that did not modify the board would be an improvement, and the time to fix this is, generously, 10 minutes to talk to whoever is currently lead dev of GoW about the replacement and a further 10 to find/modify the spots in the code.

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#6

While your entire post is very insightful, I find “best” in terms of what other troops currently can do.

Doomed Blade is a Blue weapon that turns Red into Doomskulls. If you look at your other blue options, you have Bastite Princess for a non-efficient Yellow to Skull converter. If you look at to Doomskull, you have Moira Cragheart (Bl/Br) and The Maraji Queen (Bl/R) convert Green to Doomskull. Doomed Blade has a unique effect in its color so far.

Doomed Glaive is a Green weapon that turns Brown to Doomskulls. Other green to skull converters includes Nimue/Alderfather/Xerodar- Yellow to Skull, Forest Guardian- Purple to Skull. Doomed Glaive has a unique effect in its color so far.

Doomed Blade (without the create a gem affix) and Doomed Glaive are my two top choices.

Doomed Axe turns Purple to Doomskulls. Forest Guardian is also a yellow troop that can turn Purple to Skulls.

Doomed Scythe turns Yellow to Doomskulls. Alderfather, Nimue, Xerodar, Fist of Zorn are all purple troops that can turn Yellow to Skulls.

Doomed Axe and Doomed Scythe can be replaced by other things, but still have some purpose if you need Doomskulls over regular Skulls. Future Hero Class spoilers: The Sin of Maraj hero class weapon will be Purple and turn Yellow to Doomskulls. 100% overlap with Doomed Scythe. It’ll only do half magic aoe though and won’t have the skull storm, which might be a positive. At that point, DS may get moved down to Doomed Club and Doomed Crossbow territory.

P.S. I hate the Skull storm that Doomed Scythe leaves behind. Makes it harder to refill DS over the other 5 weapons, and more likely to work against you if you have to give up your turn.

Doomed Club turns Green to Doomskulls. Moira Cragheart is also a brown troop that can turn Green into Doomskulls.

Doomed Crossbow turns Blue to Doomskulls. King Bloodhammer is also a red troop that can turn Blue into Doomskulls. Sekhma can turns Blue into Skulls.

Doomed Crossbow and Doomed Club have replacement troops that can do the exact same thing. Never once have I said, wow I really like Doomed Club. I like Doomed Crossbow, but I’ve always wished it did something else.

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#7

This has two main counterarguments :

  • replacements use another color too, so they can mana block other troops if put above
  • you need hero in the team for class exp. so if you choose a replacement troop, there may be not another optimal weapon to choose AND you need to swap your replacement to another troop.

While i’m not a fan of doomed weapon, they have their spot in team building.

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#8

I mentioned that multiple times actually: “The Watery is the worst part. You absolutely don’t want to have a 5 match of Doomskulls get nullified because the middle one turns into a Blue gem.”

Sometimes I’m not smart! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: You are absolutely correct. I guess I was thinking of only doomskulls and scatter damage and not the other damage too!

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#9

So you did. I forgot the names of all the damn things lol. Probably repressed in this case!

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#10

Great post and the effort put in. :grinning:

I wish we had more weapons like this. They are worth every gem spent in ToD, unlike the others…

Couple of things I’d comment on if I may.

Doomed Blade’s lack of storm regeneration and watery can be problematic, without running something like Skadi and a freeze team. If you do, generally Winter’s Orb is better. I’m not sure if it is an oversight, but maybe watery could be overwritten with Icestorm? It’s the only doomed without a storm as an affix.

Glaycion is exceptional with Xbow, better than Blade, although Blade appears to make more sense. So long as you fill the red first, then use Glaycion, it almost always makes an alignment for the Xbow if it can cast and resume. Whereas the other way round, it does not work quite as well by Glaycion taking your reds.

The create a doomskull is also extremely handy here with using a top slot with Glaycion because of his durability and the possible chance that you will keep the turn with the Xbow. It gives you greater chance than all other except the Axe to do that. I think you are right to mention this and it’s a nod in the direction of the Xbow. We already have a chance to keep the turn with a lucky doomskull explosion, this gives a slight increase to that possibility. Axe does this too.

A team that is really good is Stonehammer, Glaycion, Xbow and then up to you, Gimlet/Tai Pan, either yellow empowered converter/Lep or usually Grave Seer for loading Glaycion for Stoney. On offence it is slow, but if you want to win, without having ZG, its cool. I don’t use it vs L&D because L&D, but an easy Xbow team vs that is Willow, Xbow, Qilin, FG. Very easy, just use the excess purple for Qilin to load Xbow.

With the Anu medals now and a class with exploding gems, (Lightning Strike, Tidecaller 3rd trait etc), it’s easier to fill one of those top two troops. You will need 2 x Cedrics, but it can loop between Glaycion, Xbow and Stonehammer. You can also if you want use the likes of Sunspear or Hierophant, Dragonguard etc as the burn will come from Stonehammer (plus the stun that also helps). However the exploding traits/talents are probably too good to ignore to help generate mana in a team that needs more mana than most. I have however ran a Fireblade combo with Grave Seer, cast that, Hero self enchants then if cast early. Usually Dragonguard so your first 3 troops have 80%, 65% and 40% skull reduction.

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#11

I did not fully upgrade the Scythe for this reason. Only two troops benefit enough from bonestorm for it to be worth the downside risk: Wrath and The Possessed King (and Wrath converts away the yellow gems that the Scythe needs). I could not see any upside large enough to get this upgrade to outweigh the negative effects Idle mentioned.

#12

Plenty of good converters to compliment it
Forest guardian, king bloodhammer, etc
Certain classes like slayer or Titan, that add enrage, or archer etc with hunters mark make it even better

#13

Does that mean you didn’t upgrade the Blade to include Watery? Or just that you are warning future players not to?

Also, has anybody used the non-Doomskull Doom weapons? I seem to recall someone in global chat loving Doomed Statue, but I’ve never used it.

I’m just thinking about my guildmembers, and on which weapons I should recommend they use their forge scrolls. My guess would be Doomskull versions, but those are expensive to craft (some weren’t playing when the weapons were introduced). Much obliged.

#14

The statue has a self cleanse, a silence and a self enchant, plus a drain, which isn’t too bad, but
they are borderline useless on offence, mainly because damage wins and the mana cost is 18. The yellow one I suppose in theory can counter web for example and recast and exert a little control over first slot and yellow enemies, but you can do that with the doomskull variants to almost the same degree, whilst setting up more damage.

If they had a cleanse all, they’d be okay, but things like Staff of St Astra has a cleanse all, gives 3 mana to yellow with Radiant and Angelic. It also silences and is less mana cost. And there’s not much place for that Staff either for similar reasons, imo.

I mean I suppose you could run it in a team with a lot of damage and get by, but then your overall mana cost is going to be high.

A general rule of thumb I would suggest. Complete the TOD to 25, get all the relevant forge scrolls and use them only on the likes of the Doomskull Weapons first. See what happens after. The next set of Doomeds look better than the last two sets for example, and they will also most likely be used more than those.

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#15

What do you mean, “classes with Fireblade,” “lightning as well to Rending”? I use Bard class; should I change to one of those that has the War talent tree? The thing I like about Bard is that the Axe starts with 50% mana.

Thanks for your help & great advice.

#16

Both, actually.

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#17

Good choice! :relaxed:

‘Fireblade’ is the final Talent on the ‘Fire’ talent tree, unlocked at Champion level 100, and exclusive to the Warlord, Dragonguard, Sunspear, Hierophant and Slayer classes (did I miss any?). It lets your Hero deal triple skull damage to enemies that are Burning :slightly_smiling_face:.

‘Lightning’ and ‘Rending’ are both weapon upgrades for various weapons and their effects are described above. igniteice is saying that he(?) prefers the Lightning upgrade to the Rending upgrade; he thinks Lightning is better.

The War talent tree has that Axes of Doom talent that gives +3 Magic when using an Axe, but I generally wouldn’t think it was worth switching to a different (potentially suboptimal) class just for that. Moreover, the Bard class gets +5 Magic for using a Yellow weapon (and the D. Axe uses Yellow), so you’re already ahead.

The 50% Mana start is definitely good and useful. Bard’s 3rd Trait will also give you +1 Magic (and all other stats) each turn, so you’ll do more damage – but that really only helps in longer (turn count) battles, and they don’t tend to happen as much in end game.

I don’t know what stage you’re up to in the game; for me, the classes I choose often depend on the storms available in their Talents/traits, the presence or availability of a ‘Lightning Strike’ Talent (or trait in the case of Tidecaller), and then other useful traits/talents/type synergies/magic bonuses. It really all depends on your team composition and the enemy you’re facing, I think.

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#18

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Doomed Runestones (brown) is the only one I don’t have.

Doomed Statue (yellow) is my favorite because of the cleanse, enchant, and silence. The 18 mana cost is effectively lowered by 2 every turn, so it’s only ever 18 at the beginning, and if you use a 50% mana start, it goes even faster.

Next would be Doomed Helm (red) because you get an Enrage, a Barrier, and you steal 2 mana. The mana steal of course is like a one turn enchant, but if the first enemy is red, you’re draining 4 mana from them.

The Doomed Mask (blue) is interesting because you get the cleanse, a freeze on the first enemy, but also Glacial (give all blue Allies 2 mana), which means you’re giving 7 mana to all blue allies (or 5 to non-blue), including yourself.

Doomed Potions (green) does a pretty good job of royally messing up the first enemy: steal 2 mana, then disease/poison/web them. Brutal.

The most useless of them is Doomed Cauldron, purple, by far. You get just awful upgrades: gain 4 life, create a purple gem, 10% chance to summon a Quasit, and disease first enemy.

I don’t know what the brown one’s upgrades are, but they’ve got to be better than the purple’s…

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#19

Phenomenal, thanks for the breakdown. :slight_smile:

And @TheIdleOne, I don’t think it’s fair that you can look at a weapon trait and think “Yeah, I can see that backfiring”, and opting out of the upgrade; while Orcs like me just blindly upgrade whateva wenneva. Just not fair. Stoopid game, axing me to read and stuff.

Thanks all.

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#20

the shiny blue mana for the weapon cost is a trap for you Orcs :gem_doomskull::gem_blue: :gem_doomskull: :gem_doomskull:

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#21

Thanks for your response. Sorry i’ve been late in responding. (The older I get, the more busy I seem to be; retirement wasn’t supposed to be like this, LOL.) Anyway, I’ve been playing for quite a while but I don’t really study the game–lack of time. I’m approaching level 100. So you use different classes for different challenges–not sure how to work that out. I wish there was a simple place where I could learn about all the elements of the games. The places I’ve tried all assume more knowledge of terms than I have. Oh well, nice to know Axe of Doom is good weapon. I do really like it.

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#22

The guide here may help

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