Monday, January 30, 2012

The WOH Report: Getting Perky

Wrath of Heroes has tweaked a few things with their newest patch this past weekend. I'd summarize the actual patch notes but they made them longer than #@&!ing War and Peace. I'll try to give a brief overview:
  • The store is now open to buy heroes and skins. Players must purchase any heroes they wish to permanently unlock, re-skin and spend skill points on. (The gold and mastery points can be earned just by playing the game. Free heroes will be available to play every week, with a rotating roster).
  • All the heroes now have a very basic skill tree branch thing with a couple unlockable tactics, alternate abilities and the new Perk skills available. Each hero has 3 open slots to work with when choosing which of these unlocks to use in combat.
  • The Perks are abilities that become usable after reaching a certain # kills, assists or healing without dying...
I'll try to list the Perks here, hopefully I'm getting this right from my scribbled idiot notes.







Terrible Transformation
(Unlocked by: Ikkrik the Skaven)
Requires 13 Assist Streak - Turns you into a Rat Ogre that has a big pull, a knockdown and a moderate damage melee attack.

A really fun one - slot this on the Shaman and you can use this a couple times in an Arena. It's usually good for a very brief rampage, around ~10 seconds, maybe.



Power Unbound
(Unlocked by: Volrik the Marauder)
Requires 20 Assist Streak - Turns you into a huge raven lord that has an area-effect knockdown and a spammable lifetap dealing moderate damage.

I love using this, but it's not very effective, it's brief and the conditions required make it a bitch to pull off. It's also disorienting to fill up the screen like that - hard to see anything but giant bird ass when used inside the Temple.


Massive Smash
(Unlocked by: Nethys the Vampire, Korith the Shadow Warrior)
Requires 5 Assist Streak - Plops a big crystal on your target's head, followed by dealing 224 area-effect damage with an knockback to nearby enemies.

The easiest perk to use, especially with support heroes like the Shaman and Mummy. It's a sloppy and obnoxious ability, but it can save your life.



L'il Helper
(Unlocked by: any Dwarf - Gromki, Durrig, Thagison)
Requires 10 Kill Streak - Summons a Slave Giant that repeatedly deals 77 area-effect ranged damage for 20 seconds.

Love this one. Best slotted on the really easy-to-play damage-dealing heroes (Nethys, Korelei, Bax, Ikkrik, etc). I pulled him out the other day in front of blue team's spawn and just sat back and laughed as he threw boulders at terrified archers.

Glory 
(Unlocked by: Glowgob the Shaman)
Requires 3k Healing Streak - Summons Denzel Washington and Matthew Broderick to attack your enemies. No, I lie. It gives 100% Crit Chance to your group for 10 seconds.

A fairly easy to achieve and useful Perk, but obviously you'd want to be playing Senor Glowgob.

Divine Shielding
(Unlocked by: Amenadresh the Tomb King)
Requires 5k Healing Streak - provides 10 seconds of 1200 damage absorption with a 192 HP/second heal to your group.

So, your group becomes really fucking hard to kill. Not an easy Perk to achieve, but again, a Shaman healing a premade in the Arena could use this twice a fight, maybe.

Verdant Apotheosis
(Unlocked by: Conrad the Warrior Priest)
Requires 9k Healing Streak - you group gains 10 seconds of immunity to damage and deals 3x damage.

A little bit of overkill here, as you'd probably only be able to use this later in an Arena match where your team is already easily cruising to a win.

Unnatural Agility
(Unlocked by: Aessa the White Lion, Zathis the Assassin)
Requires 10 Kill Streak - grants you and any nearby allies an additional 100% Dodge chance for ten seconds.

Another one that's not too hard to get on a hero like Nethys or Bax. Useful, just not as sexy as some of the other Perks.

Unholy Ward
(Unlocked by: Bax the Black Orc, Korelei the Witch Elf)
Requires 10 Kill Streak - a ground-target AOE that snares and repeatedly deals 115 damage for 10 seconds.

I like the idea of a snare-trap as utility, especially as self-defense, but if you're already on a run of 10 straight kills you probably don't need this that much, no?

Magma Storm
(Unlocked by: Felicia the Wizardess, Ilyana the Sorceress)
Requires 25 Kill Streak - repeatedly deals 1308 damage to a large area for 10 seconds.

Sounds neat, but I haven't seen anyone use it. 25 straight kills is a lot to ask for, even for a premade team farming in the Arena.

~

And one other little twist - there's racial passives that each character has that can make things more interesting when building (or combating) a team.


The bonuses:

Health - Bax and Aessa both have a bonus to their HP for each member of their own race present in their group.

This is useful to Bax, as a group of Orcs and Shamans could be pretty scary. On the other hand, a team of White Lions and Shadow Warriors sounds pretty f'ing awkward.

Healing - Glowgob, Conrad and Amenadresh have a bonus to their healing for each member of their own race present in their group.

Again, really useful for a Greenskin Team.  An Empire squad of Warrior Priests and Bright Wizards would be sloppy and weird. (The Knight they're working on is also Empire). The mummy's bonus is useless - there are no other Tomb Kings in-game and stacking mummys makes no sense.

Armor - Gromki the Runezapper has a bonus to his armor for each Dwarf in his party.

Would be funny if hanging out with a group of Slayers and Engineers turned him into a little midget brick wall, but I doubt it. Also, Gromki is quite lame.

Damage - Durrig, Ilyana, Ikkrik and Nethys have a bonus to their damage for each member of their own race present in their group.

Nice for Ilyana & Durrig, they both have 2 of their kin in-game they can team with. Ikkrik and Nethys have no other same-race heroes in-game, so they have to stack themselves... which happens a lot, actually.

Hate Crimes - certain heroes deal more damage to their rival race.
Thagison hits Greenskins harder. (Useful, especially considering how he terrorizes poor Glowgob).
Felicia hits Chaos harder. (Useless. The whole of Chaos right now is a single mediocre hero).
Korith hits Dark Elves harder. (Works vs. the Sorc and 'Sin. The Witch Elf dodges his attacks.)
Korelei, Zathis hit High Elves harder. (These 2 quickly melt the Shadow Warrior already. Also gives them a boost against a pretty bad target, Aessa the White Lion).


Ability Durations - Volrik the Marauder has a bonus to the length of his skills' durations for each minion of Chaos in his party.

A weird one, but it makes sense since his role is primarily to be a debuffer and table-setter ...presumably this would effect his heal-blocking, heal-mirroring, snaring and his one DoT... if there were other Chaos heroes it made sense to team with...






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