This was a heck of a challenge and a great heroic mode to be our last one. Every wave feels like you're just hanging on until Thunderbolt comes off cooldown, and no matter how much you upgrade the next wave is still going to push your build to it's limits. The intensity keeps growing until the end, where you'll end up facing three Twilight Golems and four Twilight Heretics at once. And by then you've only gotten enough gold for three fully upgraded towers. It sounds like an impossible challenge at first, especially for our bottom-tier heroes, but that's what this challenge series has been all about, and once again we prevail with all 16 heroes.
Impressions
This map was rather hard to grade. Even for our best heroes things tend to start falling apart at the very end as the Golems and Heretics are taking out blockers left and right. You end up stalling by any means necessary until Thunderbolt comes off cooldown one last time. Whether you can hold the line or not is very RNG-dependent, such as how many Perfect Parry and Blessing of Elynie procs you get on your Bladesingers. The result is that you get some surprising outcomes, such as Bruce of all heroes ending the map with everything perfectly in control and standing there like "I got this boss, no problem." But that's been the nature of this whole challenge series - it's more like grading essays than math homework. There are no right answers and there's a lot of subjectivity.
That being said, our 'C' team of Eridan, Arivan, and Prince Denas shouldn't surprise anyone. Catha managed to get a 'B' largely due to her ability to stall, which as mentioned above is a key to surviving the very last wave. Razz gets a 'B' as well, also due to the stalling capabilities of his abilities like Raggified, Hammer Time, and Changeling. Changeling is largely only useful to stall enemies long enough to group them up well for a Thunderbolt, but he earns his 'B' due to a strange interaction with it we noted a long time ago - if all remaining enemies are polymorphed into ragdolls, the map will end in a victory. This is the only way he survives at the end, as Thunderbolt still had about 20 seconds to go on its cooldown and there was no way he was going to stall the remaining enemies until then. This behavior may be a programming oversight, but it's not like Razz doesn't need all the breaks he can get.
Final Grades
- Eridan - C
- Arivan - C
- Catha - B
- Reg'son - A
- Prince Denas - C
- Razz and Rags - C
- Bravebark - A
- Vez'nan - A
- Xin - B
- Phoenix - A
- Durax - A
- Lynn - A
- Bruce - B
- Lilith - A
- Wilbur - A
- Faustus - A
Best Choice
Reg'son and Vez'nan tie for Best Choice here. This is the first time neither Wilbur nor Phoenix has at least shared Best Choice since Reg'son took the award solo on Shrine of Elynie heroic. Reg'son shouldn't be surprising - the ability to instantly erase Twilight Golems eases up so much of the challenge.
As for Vez'nan, it does require very careful management of the cooldown, but if you make sure Soul Burn is always used on the most optimal target it reduces the challenge of the map by a huge amount. I Soul Burned so many Avengers and Heretics it was ridiculous. He can't Soul Burn Golems of course, but that's what Dark Pact is for :).
This is it - we move on to the very last map! I hope you'll join me as we make our last entry, look at our final report card, and reflect on this monumental undertaking.
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