Things continue to be on the upswing, as we again have an interesting and challenging iron mode. We're given no blocking towers except a couple of pre-existing barracks. However, the lower barracks cannot cover both the bottom exit and the lower right exit at the same time, and there is no blocking for enemies coming from the upper right entrance at all. Using the Village People secret on this level is pretty much a must, as they can then cover the upper right. However, this is a unique level where having Linerean heroes really gives a huge advantage. The Village People do not regenerate health at all, but they can still be healed by Blessing of Vitality. When I started the map I started with Torres and Nyru. Then when I got through them I tried Raelyn and suddenly wondered why the Village People weren't holding down the fort like they had for the first two heroes. It took me a minute to realize the facts above, that they don't regenerate but that Blessing of Vitality was healing them, keeping them going. For Dark Army heroes you then have to use reinforcements on the earlier enemies coming from the upper right in order to save the People for the end of the map, at a time when they're sorely needed elsewhere.
Impressions
Raelyn leads the way in the Linerean / Dark Army dichotomy on this map with a 'C-'. Her slow movement and low DPS really make her struggle here. Similarly Ongaro earns a very rare 'C'. His slow movement does him no favors, but more importantly his inability to block coupled with physical damage means he is very non-optimal for dealing with the Crystal Golems.
The siblings Grimson and Therien make it out with decent grades in the 'B' tier. Grimson's high mobility and AoE hero spell give him better agency in dealing with the hordes, even if he's not great at tanking the Crystal Golems. As for Therien...well, something weird happened on this map. She was doing fine until the end when two Crystal Golems spawn, then things were starting to break down. In desperation I had to have her tank the Golem on the lower right path for a moment to try to buy some time, but then she...just didn't take damage. He wasn't even attacking her. It was like her melee attack was stun-locking him or something. I tried googling to see if anyone else had noticed this behavior, but came up empty. I'm assuming it's a bug, but I also wasn't going to retry the whole map because of it.
Warhead and Kosmyr have the tools to end in the 'A' tier, and as for the Linerean heroes, you can see they did pretty well all things considered. In my Alliance review I talked about what a game changer Blessing of Vitality was, and this map so far is the best demonstration of that. Healing and respawning all units is borderline overpowered on a map like this where keeping enough warm bodies at each choke point to block is the primary challenge.
Final Grades
- Vesper - B
- Raelyn - C-
- Nyru - B
- Torres - B-
- Anya - B+
- Grimson - B
- Broden - A+
- Therien - B+
- Onagro - C
- Warhead - A-
- Lumenir - A
- Kosmyr - A
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