Got Vivica from last costumes event. Would you emblem her focusing on normal path or costume path? 
- Normal Viv
- Custom Viv
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If you plan to max her costume, definitely that one.
You may also find a good compromise, but you won’t ever use her without costume once it will be maxed, too.
Thanks @Olmor!
It will be a long way till max her, but I have the mats and costume. As F2P I will like to get the better hero possible from her, so if costume one is that, I will focus on that way.
To be honest Vivica and her costume I personally found in my earlier class research was the easiest of the current batch to find a compromise path that is good for both original and costume.
Provided you take the same at both "Either"s in the following path (reason for either is that it takes awhile to get to second either so you may want to decide which way the original and costume leans towards before you get to the second either) will give you the following:
Both Original and Costume will pass through:
4 x +Defence Nodes
4 x +Health Nodes
3 x +Attack Nodes
1 x xDefence Node
1 x xHealth Node
1 x Mana Node
Furthermore you’ll also get the Critical node on Costumed Vivica that will help with Titans as with her defence down you will always use her in costume mode on them.
Class Path: Left, Either, Right, Left, Either, Left, Right
NB. The costume’s mana bonus on Vivica allows you in combination with a high mana troop (29+) to shave 2 tiles off her special charging speed making her Average. Whilst Devs previously indicated that we might be able to produce troops in Hero Academy about an eon ago a level 29 Mana troop is likely to remain a pretty steep goal for many F2P so the Mana Nodes in both paths will help significantly to reduce your mana troop target you need to make her average. Once both versions can be average with the right mana troop I’d personally switch between either versions in raids depending on whether I think I need the cleanse or dispel more rather than commit to only one version hence why I’d prefer the more versatile class path myself.
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Thank for your advice @MysterySpin MysteryS
Have you emblemed Viv in that path? will be great to see her numbers.
With your indications, that path suits normal Vivs all defense if choose L,R in “either”, or evade 2 def nodes in both versions if chose R,L, so seems balanced.
Will like to know if people ended using one of the versions over the other. If so, I think that prefer to emblem her in that path. I agree that cleanser and dispell are both good specials and how suits better depends each time.
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Poll aded in first post! 
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Sorry, I edited the main post and votes were lost 
Please vote again, promes I will not touch again 
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Tried her with it in beta but not in my actual account for the following reasons:
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The only costume pulls I’ve done was to get Sonya from the very first costume gate at which point I stopped - wanted her ready for JF and for GM in the meantime - was planning to wait until Vivica is a featured costume for further pulls.
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Currently I have most of my emblems on 4* heroes instead, have previously posted other long winded posts on why elsewhere so won’t repeat it but it does mean I’ve had a lot of experience crafting 4* heroes to survive in raids/wars against emblemed 5* heroes so I’ve accumulated a lot of experience making heroes more sturdy. Even Lancelot that many dismiss as a glass cannon I’ve made into a regular and valued contributor in wars and in raids against green tanks (though they are few and far between in Diamond).
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If I were embleming my 5* heroes my Viv would be just behind my Ariel for the Cleric emblems. The mana flow with Ariel and Alby working in concert make them my #1 picks for their respective emblems…
I’ve seen the infographics that for defensive/utility heroes that Defence stat boosts should always be favoured over Health stat boosts and frankly I think it is a grossly over generalised heuristic that I’ve no time for. It ignores key factors such as:
D.o.T and Defence Down: High D.o.T heroes like GM and JF laugh in the face of defence stats as they totally bypass them with their damage and when you also consider that you often come across defence droppers such as Kunchen ready to give a percentage reduction to whatever your defence stat was. In both circumstances you’re going to be relying on your health stat to stay alive. Under those circumstances your full health boost Vs a bypassed or reduced defence boost is more helpful.
%age based Healing: A number of healers in the game return you a percentage of your max health when they heal as such having more health or your hero means your hero will also recover more health from the heal. So much so that on every hero I’ve analysed going up by one +health node did more benefit for healing than even the healing bonus node did for that hero.
When you drill down for most heroes the benefit from going for the defence stat over the health stat was slight enough that when you bring in the above two factors it was roughly a dead heat (where it does matter more is with heroes with an obvious stat imbalance in either Defence or Health) that considering them roughly equal was often better to do - especially now in light of SGG planning to bring fixed Max Health Reductions in Season 3 with the likes of Alfrike and Fura that will make you want as much health to start with AND crucially as we’re talking about Viv here who is herself one of those %age based healers she will benefit from the additional healing every time she uses her special as opposed to other heroes that will only benefit when brought with other %age based healers.
So anyway if I can start towards a conclusion as part of my analysis into costumes and their classes whilst they were in beta (and I was quite vocal on that subject there) I did analyse the paths I would want to take for all the 4* and 5* heroes for both their base and costume versions and then compared how well or badly those paths translated on to the path of their other versions. Vivica stood out to me as being the hero that benefitted most from her costumes classes as frankly I would be taking the same path for both versions even if they were separate heroes. On the other hand a hero like Sonya gets totally screwed by her trees to the point that if none of the costumes for the remaining Season 1 Paladins or Season 3 4* Paladins don’t impress (if I even bother pulling in Season 3) I might actually consider embleming two different Sonya’s for cleansing and dispelling versions.
As such I personally will abstain from the poll at the beginning as I personally believe the best path is the path that is best for both of them. Whilst if you were facing like 14* Titans then I might be tempted by an additional defence node on costume version that would face the titans and the additional health node on cleanser against GM but even then the difference of one node in each is so marginal that I’d probably still go with the path that equally distributed the health and defence nodes between each versions (especially if you aren’t facing high level titans as the slight imbalance will be unnecessary) as your war and tournaments will benefit more from the versatility from both versions.
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Wow, very detailed explanation, thanks for that.
All have sense to me so probably will follow your advice/path when Viv is ready.
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19!!! Wow! What are her stats at that level? With emblems and a costume bonus it has to be insanely good
And I’m an idiot and just noticed you posted a video with the stats at the end. Ignore me
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lol I figured that question would come up.
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Here you go
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Would have preferred to check these in one of my spreadsheets rather than doing rough calculations on a mobile in passenger seat of vehicle but these are the stat values I calculated for both Viv’s using the route I laid out earlier. Will double check tomorrow and if incorrect edit accordingly. There may be a rounding error for Regular Viv as I’m unclear whether the stat boost to baseline stats is rounded down before the stat multiplier class node bonuses are applied - I assumed it is but if it isn’t one or two stats may be 1 point higher but frankly 1 point is not really going to be the determining factor at end of the day.
Regular Viv:
Attack: 794
Defence: 821
Health: 1647
Mana Bonus: 2% (Makes Viv Average speed with Lv 23 Mana Troop)
Healing Bonus: 4% (Practically useless stat but if you want Costume Viv’s mana bonus for Average speed with Mana Troops you’ll need to go for the node)
Costume Viv:
Attack: 786
Defence: 829
Health: 1663
Mana Bonus: 4% (Average speed Costume Viv with Lv 17 Mana Troop)
Critical Bonus: 2%
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Thanks for the video @KLinMayhem and for the numbers @MysterySpin
Looks well balanced for both versions, probably the way to go if you want to change between them, and probably the way I will go when she is maxed.
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Sounds good, my own experience using her in beta with costume bonuses in both versions was that whilst Costume Version was great with Titans and a few other areas that Regular Version with the stat buffs from the costume was possibly a little more useful raiding than the costume when considering the Dark tanks there are:
Kunchen is immune to defence down from Costume version so cleansing his defence down if it goes off and replacing with defence up seemed a bit more useful.
Ursena if she has gone off blocks Costume version’s dispel and throws the defence down back in your face whereas Regular version is buffing your side only so no need to worry about the reflect.
Boss Wolf you can only dispel his counterattack and not his mana up for him and close allies though defence down helps, question is whether you’d prefer dispelling the counterattack and applying defence down or cleansing his mana gen down on your team more.
And generally speaking the raid meta leans more towards status appliers (Gravemaker, Drake Fong, Kunchen, Kingston etc etc) than it does hero buffers Guin and Aegir being the ones that most prominently come to my mind and in the case of the former it is unlikely you’d bring yellows against Guin in regular raids anyway - maybe wars if you don’t have enough heroes to avoid having to bring weak colours.
As such I honestly believe it is best to strive for the flexibility for both versions of the heroes as you will get the best results being able to adapt to the whatever situation you have in front of you.
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Hi @KLinMayhem,
wow! which version do you use more? with- or without costume? which version do you use when? (offense raid, defense raid, defense war, …?) have you tried her as tank with costume? what are your experiences?
Thanks and Kind regars,
Hermann
I use her costume more. Have her at tank in wars. Am switching btwn her and ursena in raid defense.
She is very effective at tank when paired with a lvl 29 mana troop. She charges in 10 tiles.
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