The first paid DLC for Alliance gets off to an okay start with this map. There's certainly no ambiguity about the build plan here - with no magic-resistant enemies, lots of high armor enemies, and a few flyers, it's painfully obvious you have to go hard on magic towers. I'd have loved ideally to go with a mixed artillery/magic build, since there are certainly lots of chances for AoE, but the map is just a bit too poor for that.
With the build pretty straightforward this is much more of an exercise in good micro to survive the really tough parts - i.e., the Darksteel Guardians and the Brute Welders. One key I found was to use reinforcements away from my barracks to block these mobs. Both have a powerful AoE attack, so if you stack reinforcements on top of barracks it just means they both get killed at the same time. Every second of stalling on the Guardians is precious here, so you really have to maximize your micro. This also means placing reinforcements slightly behind Guardians so that it stalls them for an extra half second or so while the reinforcements walk into blocking position.
There are two distinct make-or-break points on this map. The first is the first Darksteel Guardian. You have to have killed him or at least mostly killed him by the time the next wave starts. The following wave hits the left choke point pretty hard and you really have to devote your resources to it once it begins, which means the Guardian better be almost dead on the right side. This is definitely a map to be grateful that the teleporting crystals at the exits do work on mini-bosses.
Impressions
Let's just rip the bandaid off on this one - I did something on this map I've never done before. When I started working on this one I was convinced I could do it with solo heroes. I knew it was going to be really hard for the bottom end heroes, but as you know if you've been following along, I always prefer a solo solution for this challenge when I can get it.
I started with the high-end heroes so that I would have plenty of practice with the map by the time I got to the struggle bus. A lot of the low end heroes were hard to get the win with, and there were a decent number of retries, but ultimately I got it to work for all of them.
Except Raelyn.
Raelyn just doesn't have the DPS to do this map solo. It doesn't matter that she can tank the Guardians for a decent amount of time, it just doesn't make up for the lack of damage. A lot of the waves are basically on a timer - you have to have mostly killed all the mobs before the next wave begins or you risk getting overwhelmed. I gave the example of the first Guardian above, but the Sentries are another good example. With any Sentry wave, you need to have finished off all the mobs from the previous wave first so that when it starts you can play your hero and reinforcements forward to block the ground mobs. By screening the ground mobs this way you give your towers time to DPS the Sentries down before they get to the exits.
This was Raelyn's downfall. She could actually get through the first Guardian (with difficulty), but it was the first Sentry wave she just couldn't handle. With her low DPS she was always behind the 8 ball, desperately trying to catch up with the previous wave's mobs. When the first Sentry wave hit she was always still fighting mobs back at the choke point, which meant the Arcane Wizards couldn't target the Sentries until they were already too close to the exit.
So I had to break down and make an exception for her, which was to bring in Nyru. The additional DPS made it quite easy to finish the map, although I didn't use Nyru's hero spell to keep things from being too easy. Still, she gets a 'D' for having to bring in an additional hero.
As for the other heroes, by the time I dealt with Raelyn I had finished all the rest, and I simply had no desire to go back and re-record them all using a second hero, so we're left with a playlist where only one hero uses a second hero. I don't know if I'll do this again in the future or not. Technically the top end heroes could do just about every map solo, but I don't know if I want to get into this bifurcated situation again or not.
As for the rest of the grades, there aren't too many surprises. The 'C' group had lots of friends to keep each other company. Onagro earns a rare 'C-', but it's not terribly surprising - this is a map where slow speed and physical DPS are pretty severe handicaps. Grimson earned a slightly shocking 'B+'. I was worried his frailty and low physical DPS would be huge handicaps, but his high mobility and true damage AoE hero spell offset his liabilities quite nicely.
Final Grades
- Vesper - C-
- Raelyn - D
- Nyru - B
- Torres - C
- Anya - B-
- Grimson - B+
- Broden - A+
- Therien - A-
- Onagro - C-
- Warhead - C
- Lumenir - A
- Kosmyr - A+
- Stregi - C
- Bonehart - A+
- Sylvara - A+
