This map is the culmination of everything we've faced in the previous Shadowmoon maps. Not only does hero micro get cranked up yet another notch, now we have the added complication of having to manage Lucrezia.
Frontiers has a real problem with enemies that are just plain unfair and not fun to face. Blacksurges definitely fall in that category, and here we have another in the Vampiresas. There are two main problems with them. First is the pitiful bounty you get for killing them - 15 gold is a joke for an enemy this powerful. Second is the fact that you largely have to rely on Lucrezia in order to kill them.
I'm sure these two things are related. If they gave a decent bounty (which should be at least 30 gold, if not 50), it would probably be too easy to crank out Mechas to deal with them (which is the only reliable non-Lucrezia way to manage them). But for whatever reason, Ironhide decided that a secondary hero should be absolutely vital to the strategy on this stage.
While there are several challenging waves of Vampiresas, wave 8 is by far the worst. Earlier waves have smaller, more manageable numbers, and by later waves you have enough Mechas to help handle them, but wave 8 is the make-or-break. You have to develop a rhythm of holding back Lucrezia to make sure her Slayer attack is on cooldown, group up the Vampiresas with other blockers, bring her in to drop Slayer and kill them all, then move to the other lane to rinse and repeat. But the micro has to be pretty precise - if you waste even a single Slayer attack that doesn't kill at least the majority of Vampiresas on a single lane, things can go downhill very fast.
Unfortunately the need to manage Lucrezia in no way diminishes the need to micro your main hero as well. Yet again, mobility is a huge hero metric for heroes on this map. They'll need to lane dance quite a bit, at least for the first half of the map.
The other main subtlety to the build here is the blocking solution. The large number of Vampiresas - as well as Phantom Warriors - are what make Necromancers virtually required on this stage, as skeletons are immune to the both the Vampiresas' and Phantom Warriors' life draining attacks. We do use a couple of level 1 barracks on each lane just to help towards the beginning with Zombies and Ghouls, but our Necromancers are the real workhorses for this map.
Impressions
Grades here follow the pattern they largely have for the rest of this elite campaign. Due to the mobility requirements of the map, Grawl takes yet another 'B', while Dierdre earns another 'A' despite this being one of the toughest maps in the game. As with Desecrated Grove, Ashbite earns another 'B' as his inability to block is yet again a real hindrance.
The rest of the heroes fall into a fairly unsurprising 'A' / 'B' mix. But once again, Kahz earns the dunce cap with a 'C'. Even more than Desecrated Grove, this map shows how unreliable his Bull Rush ability makes him. And when you're desperately trying to hold back half a dozen Vampiresas while waiting for Lucrezia's Slayer to come off cooldown, you'll swear it seems like it's going off every three seconds. Daedalus' Maze is annoying as well, as he seems to have a penchant for pulling Phantom Warriors from the Archmage-heavy right side over to the Mecha-focused left side.
Final Grades
- Alric - A
- Mirage - B
- Captain Blackthorne - A
- Cronan - B
- Bruxa - A
- Nivus - B
- Dierdre - A
- Grawl - B
- Sha'tra - B
- Ashbite - B
- Karkinos - B
- Kutsao - B
- Dante - A
- Bonehart - A
- Kahz - C
- Saitam - B
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