Banxi's Tips Ahoy!

Assorted tips for advanced players
Just my 2 cents on assorted topics

NOTE: Due to recent changes on gameplay mechanics many of the tips on this guide are outdated. As soon as things are stable again I will update all info.

GEAR
This is way to complex to make it short so... Plan you gear in terms of late game scaling. Completely ignore classes armor type, etc.

3 examples:
 * ponder using cloth on a tank. They give willpower/cooldown and magic defense. Thus solving some of your tanks main weaknesses. He will also be scaling on a balanced physical and magical defense build (he actually needs more magical defense then physical since tank skill 5 nerfs physical damage and his physical damage resistance can be buffed via dust)
 * on leather classes, try using cloth chest and boots. For magical defense and extra cooldown. All leather classes need max cooldown because they're either support or damage dealers.
 * World dungeon gear isn't always the best solution. If you have a damage dealer like a mage or an archer, consider using regular cloth / leather gloves. They might not give you as much HP, but they give critical rate. And for a damage dealer critical rate is way more important.

Remember that PvP and PvE needs differ. For instance a tank can be built in two different ways:


 * PvE - A PvE Tank rarely gets the chance to use its skills. So you don't care if hes stunned or not. His attack speed, damage and willpower aren't the most relevant stats. He's a raw meatshield delaying the enemy in order for your mid/backline to maw down the opponent. Therefore you should use plate head, legs and either chest or gloves with 2 slots of cloth (gloves, legs or chest) to balance his magic resistance and cooldown


 * PvP - On PvP you want your tank to add utility to the team, since most times he survives long enough to use his stuns and survival skills. But in order to do that he needs willpower or he'll be constantly stunlocked on the frontline. In this case its better to use 1 plate slot with toughness, 2 chain pieces with willpower and 2 cloth pieces with both cooldown and magical resistance. This combo allows you to balance magical and physical resistance, cooldown, willpower, ensures max toughness on a proper runeset and gives you a margin on rings to build up some attack speed.

Keep in mind that trinkets scale alot less on magical and physical defense then armor. And they are very hard to push past lvl 30 because they share the same materials as runes. Take that into account when planning a balanced magical/physical defense build.

STAGES
Stage info


 * Necro/warlock/darkmage blind skill can also nerf monster toughness but only has time to be cast if you build up momentum;
 * At high stages monster willpower reduces the efficiency of stuns considerably, so use stunners to get there but prepare to replace some of them later for extra DPS and a healer;
 * Unless you want to reduce cast speed, don't go past ~0.4s attack speed, it won't increase your auto-attacks;

Current Stage Meta

Base build is:
 * 1 Tank (endurance)
 * 1 Archer (burst and AoE hybrid damage - stage push)
 * 1 Necro (anti dragon and stun - all purpose)
 * 1 Buffer (buff, stun and penetration damage - all purpose)
 * 1 Mage (AoE magic damage, burst magic damage, stun and speed debuff - anti dungeon bosses)

From this base you should either reinforce with extra DPS (faster comebacks), extra necro/buffer (additional crowd control during pushes) or an healer with high shields (additional survivability during pushes)

The Slow Tank

Unlike all other classes your main tank should not have attack speed on stages. You want him as slow as possible so that he doesn't go to the enemy, but rather the enemy amasses on him, creating an nice AoE and penetration shots pocket. By the way, aoe and penetration shots are mostly magical damage, and the melee classes amassing on your tank tend to be vulnerable to it.

The downside might be that you have to deactivate his offensive abilities so that his stun and protection skills are cast fast enough and don't stay forever on the ready to cast area due to the high global cooldown.

This tactic will only work while your frontline has a single character that is overgeared compared to the other two. But your goal is to have 3 of those to buy as much time as possible for your mid/back line to fire skills. At this point (3 well geared heroes on the front) you can start working on their attack speed.

Archers ready

The single best stage pusher is an Archer. Period. The sooner you accept this, the better. He’s also the fastest backline killer ingame. He does, however, have less survivability then a Knight.

While on pvp you want to protect your damage penetration classes (archer, buffer, knight) usually by ensuring they are not in your oponents line of fire (using tank on front top and buffer or archer on back bottom), on stages the exact opposite happens:


 * Put your main meatshield front top;
 * Put your archer back top;
 * Check what happens each time he fires skill 1.

By lining up like this you just made your skill 1 way more effective. Because enemy melee amassing on your tank are all hit by the penetration shot and, as you see it going away, it hits the enemy mid and backliners due to its point of origin.

When you get more tanks the archer best position is still either top or bottom. Even though arrow rain (skill 5) isn't as effective as used in a middle position, your magic arrow (skill 1) is still you main source of burst damage and it's penetration factor ensures it's a endgame skill no matter your opponents mitigation. As for multishot (skill 2) it doesn't really matter where you put your archer, especially when you get all 9 targets.

Also when you have more then one well equiped hero on the frontline be sure to check who usually dies last on the backrow - if the top or the bottom slot. Adapt your placement on the field to take advantage of this playing around with back and frontrow alignment. Battles become ultrafast, so you really need to have the archer on the last man standing spot (a simple top/bottom swap at later levels can mean the difference between going back 200/500 levels or 2000/3000 levels after a wipe).

The same overall strategy applies to a buffer - but be warned, on late game stages buffer wont even have time to use it's penetration skill.

Mind control – building momentum

Buffer Mind control is the single best ability to have on stage pushes. Get it as high as you can.

Le Warlock parade

Second best skill? Necro Blind. Best anti-dragon weapon ingame. Better then toughness, magic resist or stun altogether. His DPS gets nerfed badly (and now, most importantly, its toughness).

And since the game rebalance patch, USE NECRO. They might still be subpar at dps, but they are cheap to build (give them cooldown), have an amazing debuff for PVE & PVP (blind AKA frontline killer), and have a stun with a 2 meter range (black hole)... If you cast a 2 meter skill on a frontline target, even the backline target on his row gets stunned. Better then Nespresso. What else?

Perma buff

Mind control, necro debuff, archer speed, etc… sweetspot is once they become permanent. Buffs don’t go away in between stages so you need max colldown and have enough buff levels ensure they are always up.

How to push - Deep dives

Due to recent patches it no longer makes sense to attempt to make lasting pushes on silver leveled heroes. Its now more effective to consistently use buff and wins momentum to get to your max stage level and attempt to push, rebirthing after a wipe. This way you consistently gain gold, rebirth points and gems.

In order to do this effectively you need to hit a few key milestones:

- ARCHER: High level WD bow + high crit chance + high level skills 1 and 2;

- TANK: 1 High level physical defense gear with toughness + 1 high level magical defense gear with cooldown + max thoughness + high level Giant Growth

- BUFFER: High level mind control - archer critical rate should be 170% and hit rate 160% when Mind Control is up;

- NECRO: nothing special, only has to have at least Blind and Black Hole on autocast;

- ARTIFACTS: 70%+ healing artifacts; High level speedy shoes (the higher the level the more push attempts you do and the more rebirth points you farm);

- RUNES: Level 30 or higher runes. 2x Crit Rate / Attack Speed / Cooldown + 4x Hit Rate / Toughness;

Force pushing

If you have multiple sources of stun and at least 1 necro, one effective tactic to keep pushing is to ensure you fallback to a Dragon to regain momentum. In short, you spread your troops around, get your necro on the top or bottom backrow spot, and hope the dragon aims his first shot at the frontrow. That gives you enough time for your stuns to cooldown and your necro to debuff dragons attack and toughness with Blind (skill 2).

During your current push your max stage stayed at:

03, 07, 11, 15, 19, 23, 27, 31, 35, 39, 43, 47, 51, 55, 59, 63, 67, 71, 75, 79, 83, 87, 91, 95, 99 - do nothing, you'll automaticaly fallback to dragon levels

02, 06, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26, 30, 34, 38, 42, 46, 50, 54, 58, 62, 66, 70, 74, 78, 82, 86, 90, 94, 98 - rebirth, this is the only series of 4 where you can't fallback to a dragon

01, 05, 09, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29, 33, 37, 41, 45, 49, 53, 57, 61, 65, 69, 73, 77, 81, 85, 89, 93, 97 - use 1 pvp, dungeon, guild battle or infinity dungeon and you'll fallback to a dragon.

00, 04, 08, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 68, 72, 76, 80, 84, 88, 92, 96 - From 200-500 or 700-1000 open team management and submit, even if you change nothing. Pre 200 or 700, relog. At max stage 200 or 700 you land instantly on a dragon when you check ok on the team management.

Numbers in bold are the max stage you get when you wipe on elite mobs

Managing Speedy Shoes

After a certain point (around lvl 20 shoes) it's usually a bad call to upgrade your speedy shoes the second you get the resources to do it. You'll have to start managing the upgrades.

Odd me up: keep speedy shoes at an odd level - the number of stages skipped by speedy shoes = it's level + 1. So by keeping them at an odd upgrade level, you are able to skip all elite mob fights until you reach your max stage. I.E.: Speedy shoes lvl 9 skips 10 stages. you start the game on stage 1 so it's 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, 51, 61, 71, 81, 91, 101,...

Multiples of 4: if you are using the force push tactic to progress faster the ideal speedy shoes level is 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, 27, 31, 35, 39,... Simply put, sometimes you are able to beat a Dragon but very little of your team remains and you end up wiping on the next level. By keeping speedy shoes at the suggested levels, even if that happens you fallback to a dragon again.

Carefull after level 48: After speedy shoes level 48 (49 level skipped) you loose the ability to skip the elite mob prior to your max stage. pushing can become harder...

Transitional runes

Cooltime/crit damage/hit rate rune is very important for stage pushes. They are not final runes so shouldn’t be pushed past 30. But 1 or 2 of them brigde the gap between a starting and a final runeset. Your goal is to ease out of them as you build up all 9 characters gear. But that takes huge amounts of time and investment. And these runes ensure you have solid skill cooldown and that it hits the opponent. They also allow you to focus on final gear on mid and backliner instead of depending on cooldown rings (that make your mid-back heroes lacking attack speed and overly exposed to archers multishot due to lack of physical defense).

Secondary stats

- Toughness is very important but on stages hit rate is even more important – missing a stun or a high cooldown damage skill... sucks.

- Maximum cooldown with some attack speed is a must – having max cooldown on a crowd control team is great, but utterly inefficient if you haven’t built up attack speed and your skills get accumulated on the ready to cast area. As it stands attack speed not only increases your auto-attack but, most importantly, it reduces the global cooldown on your casts until they eventually become instant. My advice… use rings for it on mid and backliners.

- Be dependent on high hit rate crowd control and steady damage. Be independent of critical hits (at least until very late game). Multiple sources of crowd control add randomness to fights. And that’s usually a good thing when your headbutting your top stage over and over again. Eventually you land that 0.01% chance combo that makes you pass that stage.

- Do not push to many hit/though runes and especially do not spread develop them (focus on 30 to 50 on each). Unlike other secondary stats, Hit Rate is for stages and stages alone. And on stages you can get up to 50% permanent buff to Hit Rate from a buffer. So your actual Hit Rate goal is around 140% and not 160% (can be 110% but if you wipe you'll loose mind control and you will be facing 170% evasion mobs with a 110% Hit Rate)

Revive book > Ancient Scroll

On stages revive book is more important than ancient scroll. Simply put you want dead characters to come back to life with maximum hp possible so you don’t loose the buff momentum on back and mid lane. While you transition stages cooldown timers keep going, so your buffer and healer heals/shields should cover for whatever is missing on your alive characters. But they rarely are enough to bring dead characters to full HP.

Oh and as far as ancient artifacts go… they do work and they are a must.

Assorted cookies

- Do weekly pushes with silver lvl 1500 heroes. Ideally during weekly pvp end day so you are buffed for that reward as well.

And take advantage of those pushes, using the extra gems it generates for big investments such as pushing a weapon or a rune to 50.

- Convince your guildmates to focus on shared research #1 and #2. Its very effective at frontline endurance.

- Why rush stages? For 1, the free gold gets a huge boost. For 2, the gem influx gets better and better the more you push. Those dragon kills land you 100 more gems per kill. Might not seem much at first but at stage 56k the dragon lands you 11,6k gems… and that number keeps increasing. For 3, when you get distracted and forget to rebirth at the right level (it's bound to happen, you know it) at least you get alot more rebirth points from it.

DISABLING SKILLS
Take regular looks at your damage report under different circumstances (reset counter when stage pushing, reset after a wipe, on a pvp battle, on a specific dungeon).

That damage report is a good indicator on what role different classes play on your build. If your necro or tank aren't doing that much damage, disable they're offensive skills. It should speed the casting time of their usefull skills because there is less of a traffic jam on their "ready to cast" area.

A good rule of thumb for skills on critical classes like the tank (survival skills), buffer (mind control) and Necro (stun + blind) is:

- Attack speed 3 sec to 1,5 sec: use only two skills on autocast;

- Attack speed 1,5 sec or lower: use 3 skills on autocast;

- Attack speed near 0.15 sec cap: Add a 4th autocast if it doesn't delay your critical skills performance.

DUPLICATE CLASSES
When you have duplicate classes on your team make sure they aren’t overriding. If you have 2 healers or 2 buffers, there is absolutely no point in having the exact same gear on both. The skills will be synced in battle and that’s a waste. So use gear level or dust to make sure they desync buffs, stuns, debuffs, etc. Dual necro stun desynced is one of the most powerful weapons ingame… #Stunlock #FoundMyKnightCryingOnTheOtherRoom

Long fights naturally desync skills. The main problem is on a pvp match, on a dungeon, or on a stage wipe the skill cooldowns reset and start from scratch, and that makes skills stuns/debuffs etc overlap, making one of them go to waste. That also creates a window of opportunity for the opponent to evade stunlocks.

UP TO 50 PRIORITIES
1st – Get a weapon to 50.

While doing this, focus on converting materials to increase a single piece of armor to 50 on two characters. For cloth/leather do either a cooldown or a critical rate piece. For chain/plate start with a toughness or a critical rate piece (do critical rate only if your teams main dps is a warrior/knight). Do not spread develop armor. Focus on each piece up to 50 because, unlike secondary stat runes, armor behaves like weapons: the closer you are to 50 the higher the scaling.

2nd – If your first weapon wasn’t a bow, get a bow to 50. You'll need it for both pvp and stage pushes;

3rd – Get 3 runes to 50.

If you prefer, you can spread develop secondary stat runes because the growth is flat, not scaled - aim for lvl 40 on all 6. It's a matter of personal choice. Just make sure those are actually your final runes if you're spread developing.

4th – Get your archer gear up to critical rate/attackspeed/cooldown cap and give him 140% hit rate.

5th – Buff your tank with 1 lvl 50 plate and 1 level 50 cloth piece;

6th – Get a second DPS weapon to 50 (if you haven't already done so) and get him to the same caps as your main DPS

7th – Finish remaining runes to 50.

8th – Start working on a second tank, a third DPS and the rest of your team.

DUNGEONS
- Your most solid damage dealer on a dungeon is a mage – especially on dungeon 3. Nothing beats the sheer burst speed of mage skill 2 on single target ingame pve (and at killing world dungeon tanks)

- PVP focused teams tend to have more success on dungeon 2 because it’s the dungeon where a pvp runeset works better.

- The hit rate and critical rate requirements of dungeons are considerably smaller compared to stages. The same goes for world bosses. Take that into account when choosing what runes to use on dungeons.

- Swap gears, swap hero places, swap gems. Play around because placement matters and can land you 70 to 100 more levels. Try a backline knight if that’s your main dps source. Do crazy stuff. The simple fact that a buffer is on center backrow position (dies faster) or top/bottom backrow position (usually lasts 1 more attack) can give you 20 more levels of progress on dungeon 1 because he lands a stun in-between that extra attack.

Dungeon 1 – Use sheer speed and dps runeset. Glass cannon is the best way to push it. Archer is decent. Mage is ideal. Frontline Knight doesn’t survive long enough to be meaningful due to poison.

Dungeon 2 – Use PvP build. Knight is decent. Mage and archer are very close and ideal.

Dungeon 3 – Use your PvP runeset with 1 rune swaped out for extra cooldown, attack speed and crit damage. Mage is godlike DPS here, able to push you way past lvl 400 alone.

Haven’t tested warrior so can’t comment on that.

- tier 1 materials cap at 50% drop rate on Dungeon level 333

THE DAILY ROUTINE
If you are going to stay away from the game leaving it running for a long period of time (i.e.: sleep):

- Take your boots off;

- Rebirth with a needle and piggy bank on;

- Enjoy the gold gain next morning;

- Do 24 hours auto-extract if your main farm time is above stage 5K;

- Do 2 or 3 Major Gems cubes;

- Put a single level on each miner;

- Pump your heroes up with the overnight silver income... and only then do infinity dungeon.

Avoid using more then 2 minor pots on it (i occasionally use power & blow). It's still a gem for gold trade, so it's a bad deal.

PVP
Rank Matters!

You can be put in vs anyone within a 30 point range from you (up or down) but that’s not the only factor on the matchmaker. See that little medal on the current standings? You have a much higher chance to be paired VS other players with the same medal.

How to measure performance on pvp

With the exception of the top 3 players on the server, all others can know if they are performing right if they have a high win ratio on the attack log and a very low win % on the defense log. It indicates you know when to stop hitting but aren’t underplaying you PVP position.

Ticket cap

Ticket slots can be buffed from 7 to 9 via guildmaster research.

HERO DISTRIBUTION
PVP distributions to minimize penetration damage

X = Empty Slot

H = Hero Slot

H = Hero Protected from Penetration Shots

2 slots

X   X   H

H   X   X

X   X   X

3 slots (credit to Argonne on midlane option)

X   X   H

H   X   X

X   H   X

4 slots (1 frontline)

X   X   H

H   X   X

H   H   X

4 slots (2 frontline damage share)

X   X   H

H   H   X

X   X   H

4 slots (Tank (T) / Knight or Warrior (M))

X   M   T

X   X   X

H   H   X

(haven't tested this in a while but armor/class type = a taunt. With the exception of frontrow placement, if you have a plate/chain class on midrow and a cloth/leather class on the same row, the enemy will prioritize the chain/plate armor. If this hasn't changed, use it to your advantage to avoid penetration shots)

5 slots

X   X   H

H   H   X

H   H   X

8 slots

H    H   H

H   H   X

H   H   H

ps.: From 5 slots onward there are way to many scenarios to consider.


 * 1) HaveFun #WayToLazyToFormatThisIntoPretty