Hey gang, was no one a bit surprised that the Popeye the Sailor arms quest this month seemed a bit out of the usual Elemental / HoTM order, e.g. (Ice, Fire, Nature, Holy, Dark)? I was totally expecting this month to be a Nature Aether quest.
At any rate, prior to its release, someone in another thread did question on how damages would be applied on Holy/Dark line of quests, using the first two quests for reference, where Ice heroes got a boost in specials in the Ice quest, Fire heroes got boosted in the Fire quest, Holy on Holy and Dark on Dark are considered weakened damage. Guess we have our answers don’t we? Holy heroes brought forth will have Dodge and Mana boost. I suspect the Dark Aether quest line would behave somewhat similar when it shows up.
So that means instead of bringing mostly Holy heroes, I bring my usual Yellow Titan team (Tiburtus, Sabina, Sartana, Rigard-C, and Wu). So for the first two stages I had just let the fact that enemies are immune to status ailments slide and kept Tibs in on the first stage and Proteus on the second, sure their specials didn’t do jack, but these were early stages and at least they helped with Tile Damage.
So starting from third stage is when I took Tibs and Fishface out and inserted Cyprian (who had gone unused for a while) in their place, the enemies hit hard, and I have just the hero in Cyps to take the hits, althought I guess I could have also subbed in Ameonna (also unused for a while), but I still haven’t really gotten her Ghost form timing down, I will try next time though. Kept Sartana in because she snipes, and even though no DOT, the snipe should work fast enough. Sabs and Rigs-C were there to help heal/dispel/attack buff/cleanse. Wu is there being Wu.
The mobs are already starting to hit a little hard on the 3rd level, and without any kind of defense buffer on my side, it can be cause for concern as I worked through them. Fortunately, even if the mobs managed to fire and cast the Purple special reflect, but most of my heroes specials are passive (except Sartana) that damage dealt by tiles were not reflected, and I am aware enough to make sure that when I fire Sartana’s special, it does not go on a mob enemy that has the purple special riposte on.
So I made it a point that I usually don’t really care to go a little liberal on the item usage in these type of quest lines since the game has enough of an “off-time” for me to replenish some of these (and besides, since I always go for completion in Challenge Events, I don’t ever go overboard on item usage then), so I would drop a few Tornadoes, Scrolls of Alteration, or Timestops. So I am not sure how many times they actually got to fire for me to see what their specials do before they get eradicated by Quad-Purple tiles and Wu.
So with Aether acquired there is inevitably on who they should be applied to and this gets asked every month (without fail). My philosophy, and has always been focusing on who you have on your roster and who you use most gets any sort of priority. So trying to “save” the Aethers for a hero that you might or might not get down the line while ignoring the heroes you have now, I choose to look at heroes who I have and who I use frequently as the candidates to receive an upgrade.
Of the 28 5* heroes I currently have, there is only one hero that I would consider saving my Aethers for (Isarnia), aside from her being my favorite heroine in this game, she is still my most frequently used 5*. Most of my other frequently used heroes are 4*. There is essentially no hesitation on who I LB on Fire, which were Boldtusk and Wilbur, and same thing with the Holy Aethers this time, I wasted almost no time to LB Wu Kong and Guardian Jackal. I also already have planned which heroes I am going to break when I get enough of the Nature and Dark Aethers and all of them are 4*.
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