This is what I get for smack-talking this campaign so far. Heroic mode roars back with a serious challenge, one that requires us to go back to two heroes again to get it done. Again we only use free heroes for our second heroes, and our choices here are Raelyn and Nyru. Raelyn provides some much needed tanking, while Nyru provides Dark Army heroes with ranged support helpful in taking down both Dust Cryptids and high armor enemies like Deathwoods and Animated Armors.
As with previous maps in this campaign, it's really the Dust Cryptids that provide the main challenge. Take them out and the whole thing becomes much, much simpler. If not for them you could simply turtle up at the exits with some Paladins and Eldritch Channelers. You probably could even ignore the rightmost Elven Mercenaries hut and just let it get infected and produce Animated Armors, just relying on your choke point and hero to DPS them down.
As many others have, I've had mixed feelings about the role of flying enemies in this game. I really like the design of flying enemies like the Cryptids, but I feel the game perhaps relies on them a little too much for its difficulty.
Impressions
Hero grades take a serious tumble here compared to previous maps, with several heroes ending up in the 'C' tier. It should be noted that I ended up docking Raelyn, Grimson, and Warhead a bit in their grades. As mentioned above, I used Nyru as the second hero for Dark Army heroes, but in doing so she carries these heroes a fair amount by being able to help take down the Cryptids, easing up how much gold is needed to invest in Archer towers. The other three Dark Army heroes have ranged attacks though and showed they would have been able to deal with the Cryptids adequately on their own if needed.
Speaking of Nyru, you may notice that Raelyn and Nyru have different grades. That may seem surprising, considering that I effectively did the map with both of them twice - once with Nyru as the primary hero and Raelyn as the secondary, and a second time vice versa. So why would their grades be different? Well, for one, like I just mentioned I docked Raelyn a bit when she was the primary hero for relying on Nyru's help to take down the Cryptids. But also, I was able to do this map without relying on the second hero's hero spell. Nyru's hero spell is just superior to Raelyn's - in general, and especially on this map - so she scores better accordingly.
Anya and Lumenir both receive well below average grades for this map, despite the fact that both of them have ranged attacks that can help with the Cryptids. However, both of them suffer from having a rather slow ranged attack, which makes getting them to help with the Cryptids a lot more difficult than you might think. Too many shots got wasted while one Cryptid was covered by the dust of a previously killed one, or else they were not able to make the clutch save on a Cryptid that was about to make it to the exit, and their grades reflect that.
As for everyone else, they generally score lower just because this was such a difficult map. Even Broden didn't score his usual 'A+', although Therien managed to join both him and Kosmyr as the sole 'A' tier heroes. Despite their lack of blocking power, teaming up Therien with Nyru creates a devastating barrage of magical firepower that mowed down the Deathwoods and Animated Armors here.
Final Grades
- Vesper - C+
- Raelyn - C-
- Nyru - B-
- Torres - C+
- Anya - C+
- Grimson - B-
- Broden - A
- Therien - A
- Onagro - B-
- Warhead - C
- Lumenir - B
- Kosmyr - A
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