I'm returning from my holiday hiatus recharged and ready to finish up this Frontiers challenge. We pick back up on the last map of the first elite campaign - The Sunken Citadel - where we have to take on the Leviathan. While the level is quite challenging, the Leviathan is one of the easiest bosses in the whole franchise. He can't attack your units at all, merely temporarily disable some of your towers. But there are Blacksurges on this stage, so we already have to have a defense ready to handle that kind of thing. In addition he moves very slowly towards the exit, taking long pauses along the way so your towers can hit him. So the real challenge is not the boss, but just surviving the level itself.
This one did take me a while to find a build I felt comfortable with, although in the end I will still freely admit that this build is somewhat RNG-dependent. We go all-in with Assassins for this one, relying on them to get insta-kills to take down the Bluegales and Bloodshells. We cover every lane the enemy comes down with two fully upgraded Assassins (minus the pickpocket upgrade of course), so that's six units with a 5% chance for an insta-kill on every attack. That may not sound like much on paper, but ultimately we are stacking things in our favor. With a 1 second attack speed, it works out to a 26.5% chance of an insta-kill every second, which is pretty good. However, on the flip side we're relying on them for pretty much all our DPS for most of the map, so there's plenty of opportunity to get a bad run of RNG where things go south. I will admit it did happen a few of times as I was making these recordings, and there were some restarts, but ultimately I feel comfortable in recommending this as a build for what's one of the most challenging maps in this game.
Impressions
It's always hard to grade a map where the build has an element of RNG. Since it does, we have to lean a lot harder on our heroes here than we have in other maps, relying on them to pick up the slack when that run of bad RNG does happen and the Assassins just can't get an insta-kill.
I ended up giving out several 'C's for this map - and 'C's have been very rare in this challenge so far. My normal definition of a 'C' is "you can win with this hero, but it's going to be a real struggle". I have a little trouble applying that definition here, but I really felt the need to differentiate the heroes into at least three tiers for their performances - especially since we've had so few grades in this challenge so far. Since the build is RNG-dependent, it's really about how much your hero can shoulder when you get those bad RNG runs and the insta-kills just aren't proccing.
Most of the 'C' team shouldn't be too surprising - Mirage, Nivus, and Dierdre have all established themselves as bottom-tier heroes already. Captain Blackthorne surprisingly joins them. While his gold generation ability usually makes him a top-tier hero, for this map getting ahead in the build plan doesn't do nearly as much for you as in other maps, as it doesn't increase the chances of insta-kills, which is what we're relying on. What we need from heroes on this map is either good DPS to help take down mobs or good stalling ability, and Blackthorne just doesn't have either.
As for Kahz, well, Kahz is Kahz. While his charges aren't too much of a problem here being confined to the small island at the bottom (and actually can be pretty helpful), his teleporting antics are most unwelcome. When you're already playing the odds, banking on Assassins to get insta-kills on Bloodshells and Bluegales within so many seconds before more mobs appear, having him move enemies around to unexpected positions really can throw things off.
The 'A' and 'B' teams shouldn't be too surprising. While I decided early on not to do a Best Choice award for this series, since it would almost always be Bonehart, this is one of those rare maps where Sha'tra would actually take the top spot. Abduction's 25 second cooldown and ability to take out one large enemy or multiple lesser enemies makes it the perfect tool for this level. Of course there are too many Bloodshells and Bluegales for him to use it on all of them, but the ones he does get lowers the odds of bad RNG ruining things by so much. In addition, it can take out two or three Greenfins or Deviltides at once, which is huge on those waves where they try to overwhelm you with numbers.
Final Grades
- Alric - A
- Mirage - C
- Captain Blackthorne - C
- Cronan - B
- Bruxa - A
- Nivus - C
- Dierdre - C
- Grawl - B
- Sha'tra - A
- Ashbite - A
- Karkinos - B
- Kutsao - B
- Dante - A
- Bonehart - A
- Kahz - C
- Saitam - B
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