I think we are spoiled. I know I am. For a free player this is fantastic. For us spenders, itās terrible. But Iāll use it for soul exchange and letās not forget how important it is that I get this hero for my collection. I think neema was a great hotm. Unfortunately I only got 3. I recently created a 100% free account and itās level 19. I cannot tell you how frustrated i am not having a single 5* yet but itās also so satisfying. Iād love to pull a hotm. Iām just rambling. I am grateful i can spend on my main account. Good luck on your pulls everyone 
3 Likes
Can the Dot make by minions and fiends can awakening the slept? If so, the majority of the skills are not effective, together with the 25% healing.
eyetwitch
Iām sorry, but Iām getting a little tired of HotMs almost reflexively called āuselessā ā the problem isnāt so much that HotM are bad as that super premium pay-everything heroes are getting increasingly ridiculous.
For players who are spendy and/or lucky enough to land Ghealach, Frond, Changāe, Christine, Gestalt, etc., Iām not sure why thereās an interest in coming to HotM threads and pointing out how they lack compared to the superpowered alternatives. For those kinds of players. HotM will almost be never be leveled anyway!
Letās look at Anoushka overall:
-
25% heal Yeah, okay, itās easy to dump on this as āterrible healing at Average,ā and that might be true if healing were Anoushkaās main schtick, But this is a hybrid hero, that does several things: for reference, Darkfeather does a 25% heal and I donāt think anyone seriously thinks āDarkfeather sucks.ā
-
Steal and redistribute buffs Yeah, Ithar does it at Very Fast, plus a bit of a mana steal ā but Ithar doesnāt heal or set up a debuff for a big followup smack either. (Guardian Chameleon wipes, but doesnāt steal, the whole opposing team, but you pretty much have to 2LB GCham just to get it up to Anoushkaās base stats!)
-
Sleep Yeah, I know people like to dump on Balbar, but sleep is pretty much his whole thing. Anoushka does that at the same speed, with better stats, and other stuff too. Sleep is a specialty move, but setting someone up for an immediate smack, or quieting a wing hero, or buying turns with a last/last-2 heroes can potentially be useful.
-
Misc Blind-proof, free heal on ailment, and element link that boosts Special damage are all decent.
The point here is that Anoushka, obviously, isnāt a specialist, but a jack-of-all-trades. For folks who have powerful specialists for all tricks and a deep roster already, of course a jack of all trades might not appeal.
But for the kind of folks who HotMs are most for ā F2P and at least some C2P ā a hero that fills several roles, with modern stats and decent āmiscellanyā seemsā¦ reasonable,
Iāll be curious to see how, say, someone like @OldCynic rates Anoushka, though hero rating is getting harder to do these days, both because of the ridiculous pace of exponential power rush (what does a rating from a year? two years? ago even mean today) but also the sheer number of heroes released.
9 Likes
Clearly a garbage hero with only one target. The ailment āsleepā is very bad because after just one hit he will wake upā¦ Useless
1 Like
When is Soul Exchange? Maybe I can accidentally pull 10 of Anoushka and trade her in for a way better hero.
None of us are ābuyingā Darkfeather for his heal though. Even that heal isnāt noticeable. His main thing is the damage inflicted after a special skill has been fired.
Iāll admit, the stealing buffs is keeping her afloat. But not enough to convince me that she is worthwhile.
Too difficult to set a team around Anoushka.
1 can use sniper
2 canāt use barbarian and usage of wizard is limited against certain teams
3 canāt use heroes with family bonus and passive that deal direct damage or dot to the enemies.
4 canāt use reflect heroes
5 can use pure minions and fiends summoner without dealing damage or dot, not sure giant minions attack could wake up the slept.
I think Anoushka is really a niche hero that only good for the deep roster players who can form a team against the pure Toons team, just like Ithar, good for top player, not effective for normal player.
Hmmm, on offence it could be worth thinking ā¦
-
we can target either left or right wing , and ensure not to make tile damage to the slept guy, so basically remove that guy from the battle (5 vs. 4)
-
Since sleep is not affect by minion (still the damage increase by 40% from minions), it would be useful to cast non-damage EDD + strong minions (with no DoT), e.g. Sergei and CFreya , to slowly damage that guy in sleep
It needs a lot of synergy, but she could be interesting to F2P and C2P
2 Likes
This is after all, kind of my point: Iām not arguing that Anoushka is as good as Darkfeather, obviously, but that one has to look at everything together. Anoushkaās job isnāt to be a full healer any more than Darkfeatherās is.
āAnd Iād argue that ānot noticeableā is pushing a point a bit far: a 25% heal is a bit more than half many standard heals. Half-a-heal can be worth having, especially together with other hybrid-type heroes.
My counterpoint is that Anoushka might seem pretty good for many not deep rosters who have few reflects or actively-damaging āpassivesā or āfamily bonusesā or who are even simply content to pair Anoushka with another (say, purple) damage-dealing hero who can fire just after Anoushka does, using Sleep as an effective one-time damage buff rather than a time-gainer.
Heck, Iād go so far as to say that Anoushka being a jack-of-all-trades means that if two out the three abilities prove useful in any given instance, then there is tactically shifting utility. Sure, it would be ideal to fire Anoushka right when you need a moderate heal and to grab an important buff and to sleep the targeted hero away for several turns and/or set them up for the coup-de-graceā¦
ā¦but waiting for all the stars to align may mean not actually firing Anoushka, which is hardly optimal. In most raids, I canāt necessarily fire heroes only when its optimal, especially as rocket-tag as many matches can get!
Anoushka will suffer against Toonsā silly near-immunity-to-nigh-everything, but thatās true of most heroes who do anything offense beyond pure damage and fiends.
2 Likes
Pretty underwhelming. I badly need a 5 star purple and a HoTM gives me a decent shot at the hero but I canāt justify spending precious Alpha Aethers on this one. If I want to keep the target sleeping I canāt use hit everyone heroes, I canāt have tiles hit the target? Those are big restrictions.
Then fire at the same time as those hitters
Was hoping for something that looks more like Onatel, notā¦ whatever the heck this is:
2 Likes
You get a grandma. 
2 Likes
According to the ads on a certain website I frequentā¦ there are grannies in my area who are in desperate need of affection. Maybe SG is trying to reach out to those people.
3 Likes
I donāt mind that sheās older. I do mind that her pose appears to defy the laws of physics, to say nothing of its ergonomics!
1 Like
Wanna talk about Vela?
1 Like
Thatās fair. And my foot hurts every time I look at her balancing barefoot on a giant blade!
Lets see how she comes out on Friday, if they make her a target + nearby she would catapult up in the relative strength ratings and probably draw some attention without being ridiculous/OP.
As @BobTheSnark said, she is a jack of all trades, clearly sub-par vs the latest monsters but does useful things that could come in handy for a large number of players (not necessarily those posting most frequently on the forum).
We all wish for a chance to score an HotM that is as powerful vs the current meta heroes as say Hel or GM were when they were released (both WERE the meta hero for a while). Reality is that we will not. Ever again.
1 Like
Possibly the closest weāve gotten in relatively recent times is Roughian ā not that she was dominant on the landscape, but someone that even bigger-roster folks might use sometimes.
A fair number of HotM have been pretty good, Iād say, and the HotM stat increases over the last year have been eye-opening for those of us with ālesserā rosters, but they definitely canāt compare (by design!) to the ConstructElfGoblinOperaOwl sets of monsters.
1 Like
Another dookie hero of the month. Back to back terrible hotm from dec jan feb was mid and undewelming. They steady releasing op and broken hero but keep the hotm trash as usual. On the scale from 1 to 10. The new premiere hero is 10 and these hotm is terrible 2 or 3 not even a 4 or 5. I have not use any hotm beside Roughian and I dont even use her anymore because her stat is dated also. They need to make some hotm useful again for the cheap to play and ftp player. The whale will chase and get the newest and broken new hero anyway and would just feed the hotm to the SE anyway. They use to make strong hotm but now all the good heroes is behind a huge paywall. Sad
1 Like