I get the mechanics of him — pulled him last go round… he’s still 1/1 
I keep wanting to max him, despite what I read here — stupid bird is trying to seduce me with his unique mechanism … I’d love to see if I could get him to Death Blossom levels of output
If you could pile on anything available — How ‘fast’ can he get starting out at ‘very slow’?
Can you get him up to ludicrous mode (on par with Liliana’s damage)?
I will say only this. I met him only one time in my career. Great opponent with Owl on the wing. I managed eventually to kill his heroes. 4 of them. My team was still complete. And Owl finally fired. I just had a shock when my entire team was wiped out. Next time I will know what I have to do with that very slow bird 
With a level 1 mana troop, you get him down to 13 tiles (6.5 ghosted) to fully charge. A level 23 mana troop brings him down to 12 tiles (6 ghosted), which is the same as a slow hero without mana troop.
Reference: Optimal Mana Bonus Numbers for Every Mana Speed
EDIT:
Also here’s my damage reference chart of how much damage 5* heroes that hit everyone deals. As you can see, Owl has the most damage output potential, but that requires having all his allies KO’d and only him alive. So not exactly a reliable set up:
| Hero | Damage before modifiers |
|---|---|
| Saint Nick | 927 |
| Ursena (HP<50%, non-yellow) | 950.3 |
| Red Hood | 954.99 |
| Yunan | 994.98 |
| Zeline (non-blue) | 1092.52 |
| Atomos (enemy with zero mana) | 1099.5 |
| Zimkitha | 1106.7 |
| Kadilen | 1322.4 |
| Ursena (HP<50%, yellow) | 1330.42 |
| G. Owl (all allies alive) | 1412.35 |
| Justice | 1461.6 |
| Anzogh | 1500.7 |
| Zeline (blue) | 1529.528 |
| Horghall | 1543.95 |
| Azlar | 1625.65 |
| Elena | 1634.18 |
| G. Kong | 1729.2 |
| Mok-Arr (blue, red, green) | 1852.5 |
| Isarnia | 1872.95 |
| Ursena (HP>50%, non-yellow) | 1976 |
| Rumpelstiltskin (skull card) | 1979.1 |
| Atomos (enemies with full mana) | 1979.1 |
| Quintus | 2016.9 |
| Mok-Arr (yellow) | 2593.5 |
| Ursena (HP>50%, yellow) | 2766.4 |
| G. Owl (all allies KO’d) | 2854.75 |
I assume it’s a linear 711 damage added per ally KO’d - is that right?
Also, as a druid, he has an extra 4% mana regen unlocked at the 20th node. I’m not sure if that’s worth anything, but if you’re really going to go the whole way…
360.6 linear damage increase (60%) to each enemy, per ally KO’d. x4 allies KO’d = 1442.4 // 1442.4 + base damage = 2854.75 total
That’s all before troops, status effects, enemy defense stats, etc. are taken into account.
Of course it is. I forgot to subtract the 1412.35 before dividing by 4…
Keep in mind that calculating the damage factor as
Damage_factor = Special% * Attack_stat
is a good metric of relative strength (e.g. “Thorne hits harder than Richard”) but not accurate for comparative strength (“Thorne hits 30% harder than Richard”). The Damage_factor calculated above goes into a non-linear formula to compute the damage done:
Expected_damage = 100*(Damage_factor/Hero_defense)^1.35
So even though the damage_factor scales linearly as Owl’s allies die, his effective damage is growing exponentially.
Guardian Owl in a wing devastates teams. People look at his very slow mana and his defensive stats and say… oh he’s a tank and kinda janky one at that. But oh no, he is a right wing in war and watch him eat flags. Watch him defend your raid defense. There are hard hitting holy heroes and great utility holy heroes so I don’t think he gets the respect he deserves but if I ever pull him you will see Guardian Owl in my wing. And you will cry.
I’ve seen him at wing a couple times and it’s always easy to kill him there. Like he’s only good on the wing if the opponent doesn’t understand how he works or forgets about him.
His stats and his special scream tank to me. I’ve lost to him at tank. I laugh at him on the wing.
Sometimes, when the board doesn’t help you and Guin +9 or Aegir +9 fired already, is likely you’d cry, not laugh. There are high chances for G.O. to fire.
And at rush attack tournaments, I consider is best wing hero, much better than Alby or MN in that particular case.
If the board is bad and I’m not killing the tank and the tank is going off then I’m probably gonna lose whether the right wing is Joon or Owl. Doesn’t seem like that’s a good argument for Owl. Your argument is basically that if you’re already losing then he’ll ensure you lose.
But if I kill the tank quickly Owl May never fire. So your defense has a better chance to win with a faster hero who may fire while the battle is still in the balance.
I find the Owl discussions interesting. I have Owl and 8 darts. But I’m not convinced he’d make a good wing or flank at all and we use purple tanks atm.
I think him being on wing in field Aid is a totally different case than him being on wing for raid defense or for a different buff. I could see him being good in field Aid on the wing. Far from convinced in any other scenario.
Not necessarily to lose against passive middle anyway, no matter the board. It seems you don’t understand what I’m saying. Actually with Guin, Aegir, Ares, etc, so passive heroes, the battle could take a little longer. I usually don’t lose with these tanks. But if the battle take you long enough and you terminate the centre too late, then GO will do which no other hero does in the game.
Of course, in such a case, you could go first for him, but letting alive too long a center with mentioned tanks, is suicidal.
Besides, between a slow hero and a very slow hero on the wing the difference is insignificant. Why Alby or MN are considered such great heroes and GO not? The yellow bird is more lethal. The greens rarely resurrect more than 1 (or nothing). But GO will hit you hard. I would ascend him, if I were you. At least at rush attacks tournaments, you will have grade A
Oh, and you may shine in AW in the second half also…
I actually think Alberich makes a better flank than wing. MN maybe as well. I understand why people put them on the wing and I’ve definitely lost to them. In alliance wars I think it makes sense to put them on the wing with the way they can negate an entire attack or the majority of it. In raid defense I think they should be flanks.
I see what you mean about passive stalling tanks. I use Ursena at the moment. I have Boss Wolf but he and Owl would compete for emblems.
Yeah, it seems you have a great roster, much better than mine at least. Lucky me, the competition for emblems in my roster is not so intense. I have all the classics and 3 hotm. 2 Drake and Seshat. No event hero, no S2 hero.
LE Oops, I forgot I have GM and Ares too. But these weren’t pulled as hotm; I was lucky after, at Atlantis. Actually I didn’t even know about this game when Ares and GM were hotm.
With a level 1 mana troop (and even without one), Ariel drops G. Owl to 11 tiles.
You would need a level 17 mana troop + Ariel’s 24% mana boost to drop him to 10 tiles (same as average hero with no mana troop or boost).
I don’t really know the specifics of Alberich’s mana recovery, I think it’s 0.8 worth of a tile that it recovers but I could be wrong. So that’s just added on top of whatever mana V. Slow heroes get.
That makes sense to me — thank you
Curiosity question —- If you just stick him out there solo — does it count as 4 dead allies? Or do you need to field 4 renfields + Owl lol
I’ve wondered about that, too, since in the stages of the challenge events, he only has two monsters or one or two other bosses with him. Does that mean his special is capped at +60 or 120% on those levels? And technically, what if you went with Oberon or Tyrum? I mean, they’re already dead, right? 
I feel like I should throw in the obligatory forum response of suggesting that you pair him with four Aifes, but of course, he would die first leaving the Aifes behind, am I right?
Right wing. Defense only.
Especially war and fast tournament.
I can’t confirm but I doubt that they’d leave a loophole with Owl’s skill like that 
so I think you need to have allies that are dead for the boost to apply 
If you have Owl though you can easily test that. In all seriousness the Aife suggestion @Benn made is a good one. Season 1 12-9 sounds like a good stage to test that (good loot, enemies are likely to 1-shot the Aifes so you can test, not strong enough to defeat Owl though).
Just tested a 3/70 Owl on 8-7 and the answer is no.
In the scenario in which Owl was the only hero taken in his special did between 600-700 damage to the mobs.
In the scenario where he was taken in with 4 1* heroes that were first allowed to die before the special was fired for which he did around 1300-1400 damage to the mobs.
Definitely needs to be dead heroes and not absent heroes. That being said I wouldn’t think it would have been game breaking for absent heroes to count as well as trying Owl solo has a significant number of disadvantages, first with tile damage as it is like having all the disadvantages of Mono without the benefits, only one tile colour does damage and without the damage bonus of stacked heroes. Couple that with all enemy slash and special attacks will be aimed at a single hero rather than spread across a team of 5 and the very slow skill and it would still be suicide if absent heroes counted towards the skill…