I've finally finished updating my Impossible Hero Challenge with Isfet, so it's a good time to review him as well as the updated GPAs after the Hammerhold DLC. It's also a good time to look back on Vengeance as a whole again as we look forward to Alliance this summer.
When I first started trying out Isfet, I immediately pegged him as being about the same power level as our last new hero, Grosh - really his complement, being a magical ranged damage dealer as opposed to a physical melee damage dealer. That would certainly be the appropriate thing for Ironhide to do. The first new hero, Dianyun, joined the pantheon of dragons as another OP hero, so we really didn't need any more heroes of that caliber.
I promise I didn't fudge the grades to make it work out this way, but my instinct was spot on - Isfet finished with a 3.76 grade average, the exact same as Grosh. Now that's including the new grades from the Hammerhold DLC, which we should talk about for a moment.
Ironhide sold Hammerhold (literally) as having a "high difficulty level", and I would say they largely achieved that - at least in relative Vengeance terms. There aren't any maps here I would say belong in the realm of hardest in the Kingdom Rush franchise with the possible exception of Hammerhold Streets iron, but that's really only due to the crappy tower choice you're given.
Still, with the exception of the heroic and iron modes for Wizard's Landing and The Lost Empire iron, all maps deserved grades, and the average GPA for them definitely indicated a lot of struggle. Hammerhold Streets takes the prize for hardest map with an average GPA across all three modes of only 2.98. Now iron mode contributes a lot to that, but campaign and heroic mode had very low GPAs as well.
Let's look then at the truly final, once and for all definitive hero rankings after this DLC:
| Rank |
Hero |
Old GPA |
New GPA |
Rank Change |
| 1 |
Eiskalt |
4.00 |
4.00 |
- |
| 1 |
Murglun |
4.00 |
4.00 |
- |
| 3 |
Dianyun |
3.97 |
3.98 |
- |
| 3 |
Doom Tank SG-11 |
3.97 |
3.98 |
- |
| 5 |
Beresad |
3.97 |
3.94 |
-2 |
| 6 |
Jack O'Lantern |
3.81 |
3.86 |
+1 |
| 7 |
Grosh |
3.86 |
3.76 |
-1 |
| 7 |
Isfet |
- |
3.76 |
- |
| 9 |
Jun'pai |
3.41 |
3.43 |
+2 |
| 9 |
Tramin |
3.54 |
3.43 |
-1 |
| 11 |
Jigou |
3.41 |
3.31 |
-1 |
| 12 |
Margosa |
3.42 |
3.22 |
-3 |
| 13 |
Mortemis |
3.05 |
3.06 |
-1 |
| 14 |
Asra |
3.00 |
2.98 |
-1 |
| 15 |
Veruk |
2.78 |
2.71 |
-1 |
| 16 |
Oloch |
2.38 |
2.41 |
-1 |
As we can see, there were some significant GPA changes but not a lot of rank movement. Eiskalt and Murglun continued to earn straight 'A's, ending their Vengeance careers with perfect 4.00 averages and taking the top spot. Both Dianyun and Doom Tank did the same, bringing their averages up slightly and maintaining their tie for third. Unfortunately Beresad fell out of the three-way tie for third he previously shared with them. He had straight 'A's on all other maps, but the 'C' he earned on Hammerhold Streets iron (due to his physical damage) really hurt him, dropping him to 5th.
Jack O'Lantern and Grosh swapped places with each other. Jack earned straight 'A's himself and improved his GPA, but Grosh earned a few 'B's and a dreadful 'D' on Hammerhold Streets iron that tanked his GPA. As mentioned, Isfet comes in to join Grosh in a tie for 7th place.
The -1s in the bottom half are just due to everyone getting bumped by the addition of Isfet above them. The only real change was Margosa plummeting three spots, with Jun'pai rising two spots to join Tramin in a tie for 9th place. This DLC was brutal on Margosa, introducing enemies that she simply had no tools to deal with like Nomads and Djinnis. In addition, the December balance patch "fixed" her so that Beast Form could end even while she was engaged with an enemy, nerfing her quite a bit. Jun'pai, on the other hand, managed to raise his GPA slightly even though he took a 'D' on Hammerhold Streets iron.
These are my rankings and I will defend them to the death, even against those who believe Oloch is some kind of mid-tier hero. But now that we have Isfet ranked he deserves a bit more commentary.
At first blush he seems quite similar to Mortemis - a slow moving, magical ranged damage dealer who can raise blocking units, but he just performs so much better than Mortemis. Going over his abilities in order of increasing value, Black Swarm sadly doesn't last long enough and deals too little damage to be much use. Rain of Ice and Fire does great damage, but it only triggers when two or more units are in melee range of him - either a bug or something left out of the description. Either way it limits its effectiveness, and coupled with an absurdly long cooldown it's an underwhelming ability. Frog Curse is fantastic as an insta-kill with a reasonable cooldown. It doesn't work on enemies with more than 2,000 hit points, but that only includes Prehistoric Dwarves, Snow Golems, High Sorcerers, and Golem Houses on Impossible. Blood Torment is where things start to get really good, as Isfet causes enemies to take up to 75% more damage with a short cooldown. It combos perfectly with his hero spell, Dark Tempest, which does a whopping 400 true damage to enemies beneath it. While the DPS on his basic attack is lackluster, all in all his kit adds up to a solid 7th place hero.
Finally, what can we say in retrospect about Vengeance as we look forward to Alliance? Well, for one we know that Ironhide is ditching the Vengeance engine for the original engine they used in the first three games, and that's a big plus. The gameplay in Vengeance's engine just never felt as snappy and responsive as previous games, and I won't miss it.
We also know that Alliance will retain the tower selection mechanic Vengeance introduced. I've seen a fair amount of bellyaching about this on Reddit, but honestly I don't understand it. I can count on one hand the number of times I've used more than five different towers on a single level in the first three games, and honestly I can't say that I ever truly needed to, so it really has zero impact on gameplay. In exchange we go from the eight tower types in the first three games to a whopping 21 in Vengeance. Yes, it becomes something Ironhide can monetize, but it gives us so much more variety to try out interesting combos.
I can also argue that it makes for better gameplay. In the first three games there can be a certain amount of incongruity going from a level 3 to a level 4 tower, where the level 4 tower might function completely differently than the first three levels. Barracks in Origins are a good example of this. Level 2 and 3 barracks had three figures and gained a ranged attack. However, when upgrading to Bladesingers the ranged attack is lost, and when upgrading to Forest Keepers one unit is lost. That's not a trivial change to your choke point composition and has to be accounted for in some cases. But with the Vengeance system the towers operate consistently across all levels, simply gaining more power as you upgrade them.
I'm hoping the return to the original engine will bring with it a return to the original map design. Tower ranges became absurdly stingy in Vengeance, and as a result choke points became much harder to create. In Vengeance you count yourself lucky if there are three full build points near an exit that you can turn into a choke point. This is part of why DPS towers that can field blockers are so powerful, as it frees up a build point from having to be devoted to a melee tower, all of which are significantly lacking in the oomph melee towers had in previous games. This sort of thing was rarely an issue in previous games, where build points and tower ranges were generous, and the games felt better for it.
All we can say is that time will tell, but I'm optimistic that Ironhide has processed the feedback on Vengeance well, and I'm looking for Alliance to be a return to form for them. For now, here is the playlist for all of Isfet's videos:
