Bump re: Beastly Bow in forge this week. I crafted it and it’s pretty fun with willow/FG/Qilin. Those 3 make a great team on their own though, the
Bow is definitely not essential. But I had extra diamonds laying around so what the heck.
Obviously the much stronger choice would be rope dart this week for anyone missing both
Thanks for the update. Any thoughts re: using beastly bow vs a doomed weapon (probably the more common build) on the beast team?
Only advantage I can think of is Bow gives a source of Targeted damage, instead of just AOE & skulls (and willow still provides AOE dmg if you want). Not a big deal, but if you occasionally run into a hero that gets submerged and has dodge?
I think Bow ultimately takes skulls off the board with 4 beasts, bc everyone uses green/yellow but not to convert those colors into skulls. It makes for casting the boosted spell damage more often instead, where the Bow gets up to 70+ single target dmg easily and willow gets boosted quite high also. Skulls are more occasional than the doom weapon brute force skull walls. But with hunters mark and boosted willow still a lot of one-hit kills.
Adding a non-beast converter who can still feed off the Bow colors (Nimue, IK, etc) could help but would make Bow casts more risky with just 3 beasts. [EDIT Wrath could be interesting to try bc would also feed back into filling up Bow]
Warden hero class has Banishment, which would shore up the submerged part.
What’s the order for something like Tidecaller class, which submerges on damage? If submerged, Doom weapon would AOE, miss, create doom skulls, match 4 (trigger banishment), then deal skull damage? So hero would still end up submerged?
or dead. Doomskulls kinda hurt. It should work the way you stated it, though I haven’t tested it.
Admittedly, I would likely go with a Forest Guardian cast first to create an opportunity to dispel from a follow up 4/5 match after the initial FG cast before inflicting AoE damage with the doom weapon. Or, I probably would forget they had Tidecaller since that scenario seems like a really rare occurence lol.
Been thinking on this topic of late, and here is my list of all the most valuable weapons. These are all the weapons I would think about using when creating a team, with the kingdom they are affiliated with in parenthesis.
(caveat: I held event weapons to a higher standard, because they are dramatically more costly to a new player who wouldn’t have them)
Doomed
Axe (Drifting Sands)
Blade (Dhrak-Zum)
Club (Broken Spire)
Crossbow (Sin of Maraj)
Gavel (Broken Spire)
Glaive (Maugrim Woods)
Scythe (Ghulvania)
Mythic
Dancing Daggers (Drifting Sands)
Dawnbringer (Soulforge)
Essence of Evil (Darkstone)
Fiend Fire (Blighted Lands)
Orb of Winter (Glacial Peaks)
Orc King’s Club (Grosh-Nak)
Reflection of Good (Silverglade)
Shield of Urskaya (Urskaya)
Skeleton Key (Zaejin)
Spiked Manriki (Shentang)
Three Sisters (Merlantis)
Thunderbird (Suncrest)
Legendary
Event
Earth’s Fury (Grosh-Nak)
Flammifer (Broken Spire)
Fleshripper (Zaejin)
Hope’s Crescent (Maugrim Woods)
Jack-o-Lantern (Sin of Maraj)
Norbert’s Turnip (goblins, Zaejin)
Ragereaver (tauros, Wild Plains)
Rope Dart (Pridelands)
Sky Hero (Shentang)
Trickster’s Shot (Bright Forest)
Yasmine’s Pride (Pan’s Vale)
Mastery
Bronzelock Pistol
Emerald Tear
Mang
Mountain Crusher
Faction
Frostfire Jewel (Frostfire Keep)
Guardian Crown (Hall of Guardians)
Jar of Eyes (All-Seeing Eye)
Life and Death (Silver Necropolis)
Secrets of the Crypt (Crypt Keepers)
Stoneflight (Stonesong Eyrie)
Tome of Spores (Amanithrax)
Wild Hunter (Wild Court)
Writhing Staff (Sea of Sorrow)
Any input people have on omissions/ones that should be included would be welcome. There is a loong list of weapons I held out as questionable for inclusion, that could be added to the list.
Anu’s Sceptre: 9 mana to destroy all gems of a color (blue included!), self-enchant, cleanse, gives all allies 1 mana
Emerald Tear: Gain 32 Life. Create 5 Green Gems, boosted by Enchanted Allies. (x3). Creates a Green Gem (on top of its original spell), Self-Enchant, and Gives all Green Allies 2 Mana. Works very nicely with Tuliao.
There’s a new mythic coming soon that enchants all allies on 4/5 match.
Thanks for the pointers. Emerald Tear was a bubble one for me; I use it on certain teams where I’m sure to get enchants (e.g. with Divine Ishbaala). Added.
Anu’s Sceptre is nice on paper, but whenever I’ve tried it I’ve found a weapon that works better with the team I was using. Any particular teams where it’s better than other options?
Particular teams? not really. I’ve used it in a few class events (most recently: Zhul’Kari/Orbweaver). I have it on one of my D12 Explore teams. Its a destroy all option that’s pretty self-reliant (due to self-enchant) after the first cast. Part of the benefit is actually being loosely reliable for its function without having to be the cornerstone of a team.
No weapons have any value only gems you pay
you might be playing the wrong game…
Being self-reliant is for sure a good thing, I’m just concerned it doesn’t bring as much to a team as the other listed weapons.
Maybe I’m just using it incorrectly? My strategy with the Sceptre is, basically:
I’ll keep trying it in different situations, but it may just be a jack of all trades, master of none-type weapon. With how good many of these other weapons are, that probably isn’t enough to get it on the list (at least not for now).
Great suggestions all. For me, it’s kind of a question about the weapons you know you can rely on to get the job done and which I use the most. It’s a short list for me, in no specific order…
MC
Yasmine Pride
Mang
Doomed (Blade is my fav)
Skeleton Key
Mang stands top of the list for new players. No other weapon is gonna give you a fighting chance against high stat opposition like mang does (although hopes crescent is a cracking early game weapon also). Y Pride is essential in any mode where you are vastly outstatted. Doom and factions are no match for pride and again it’s a weapon that really can help out new players. Key is the ‘go to’ explore gold farm weapon, MC is just about the perfect mana generator esp with rock solid classes as the ultimate P1 mana tank. Doomed weapons I just have a thing about. I can almost forgive the ludicrous ‘create a gem’ affixes (that I didn’t bother checking for when upgrading when dooming was new) because in the right teams they can do catastrophic team wrecking damage. My watery blade is my favourite of the attacking options. The life givers I rarely use. If I had to pick one it would be mang. It’s a killer in every mode and situation the game can throw at you.
Since talking about storms is all the rage now (
), does anyone think the Dust affix is worth it on Dancing Daggers? It might be good if you’re using a class with Rock Solid, but I’m thinking since the weapon itself doesn’t take brown, that it ultimately does more harm than good.
depends on the team composition
I’ll take that as a no then. If it works against me 50% of the time, I’d rather keep the versatility of the weapon (a la Jar of Eyes).
There are a bunch of weapons I left off the list I posted last month, as I wanted to err on the side of caution. I’d like to hear what the community think about some of these, as on paper they seem as though they may have some use, somewhere.
Starting with the Hero class weapons:
Fire Ruby Staff: I left this one off, and am thinking I made a mistake. Its scatter damage is a bit low unless you include a troop that boosts teammate stats. But it does give magic to teammates on each cast, and enchants and enrages itself on every cast.
Plunder and Peril: I don’t really play gold teams, not sure if there are cases where it outperforms Skeleton Key.
Dancing Daggers: I actually did include this one, but I go back and forth as to if it’s really worth using. It does some decent all-enemy damage, and controlling the opponent team order is one way to counter the popular stealth-dependent defense teams. But I haven’t found a team where Dancing Daggers outperforms other options, curious if anybody has.
Any thoughts on these three would be appreciated.
Plunder’s random targeting is its double edged sword. It can accidentally hit something stealthy, is a potentially good advantage, but Cedric can also rearrange stealthy troops to first/last for the skeleton key. Used to be the extra turn on the Key was the game changer, but one shot kills are harder to get now with so many more stat bonuses. I’d still pick the key, since enemy gold is usually nonexistent for the extra Plunder boost. Maybe Plunder is better vs another gold team?
Fire ruby could be good in the old explore mode is all I remember of it. The daggers I have honestly never used. I’m sure there’s decent teams out there though, it seems good on paper.
What about the spiked manriki?
Edit: Iron Wave makes a pretty mean team with Azura and 2 deep Kings. It’s been my pvp defense since it came out
I’m thinking the biggest edge P&P would have is speed on offense, when used with Corsair class. That edge is kinda moot though, since now you can just use Monk class to passively fill Skeleton key with 4-matches. Key is accordingly probably still the one-stop shop for gold teams.
Added Spiked Manriki, it seems really good.
Fire Ruby and Dancing Daggers I’m going to continue to experiment with, but I’m taking them off the list until I can find a niche for them.
The Iron Wave team sounds interesting, I was playing with Merfolk teams not too long ago. I’m assuming you’re using it with Tidecaller class, do the barrier+bless on cast make up for how squishy the hero is as a front troop on this team? In the faction team thread, I discussed using Hammerclaw as the front troop to take advantage of Deep King’s third trait to solve this problem. If Iron Wave can make the Hero fit the role, that could be a better team (though mana gen could be tricky without a storm for Azura).