- Shield Path
- Sword Path
0 voters
I’m thinking of going shield path since I want her to live long enough to be able to perform full mana cut.
always attack for attacking heroes
It depends on whether the main purpose of a hero is dealing damage or doing other things they do. So I wouldn’t say that we should maximize attack for all attacking heroes.
In that case I think that attack path is better, because Ruby is barbarian and barbarian is an offensive class.
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Sword. Kind of a silly question. Play to her strengths… and the strength is offense. If you need shield to keep her alive, your team is already as good as dead anyway.
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I can’t believe how lopsided this poll is. Shield all the way, IMO! Her best skill is the mana cut and ailment, which don’t work real well if she’s dead!
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This is a nonsensical take
I’m with you on the thought process, but the marginal improvement in special skill damage and barbarian bleed damage isn’t worth the increased likelihood of a dead hero that can’t help at all. (In other words, I wouldn’t consider a hero being a barbarian a reason that their main purpose is automatically to deal damage. Ruby’s going to be good enough at that either way, and her mana cut and ailment are much more valuable. Also, consider Miki, for example.)
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Aaah of course. Everyone else in this poll is wrong, and you are right, correct?
Since “playing to a hero’s strengths” as I said is in your words "a “nonsensensical take,” I assume that means you emblem your healers for sword too, right? And you emblem all your hitters for +shield. LOL.
Whatever, I don’t even care. Bye!
- I didn’t say that, at all.
- *But also, yeah, pretty much! =-]
I don’t really disagree with this, but I do disgaree that going sword path is playing to her strength. Her best attribute is the mana cut and ailment. Buffing her atk stat doesn’t help with that, and makes it more likely she’ll die before firing.
This is the bit that made me say your take was nonsense. What does it even mean?
*Yes, this is a ridiculously arrogant thing to say. It’s partly tongue-in-cheek, to be clear! But, I am one of the best war performers in an alliance that wins more wars than it loses (which is a pretty big deal, considering the ladder matching system that’s in place), so I do think it was worthwhile for OP to get my opinion in the face of so many others saying the opposite, and I kind of felt like I had to be a bit hyperbolic given the ratio.
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Using this site (https://www.legendsof.space/tools/talent-simulator/) to get Ruby’s stats, going full def/HP and then full atk gives the following stats:
- 923 atk 900 def 1794 HP
- 998 atk 864 def 1686 HP
Since 1 def = 2 HP, going full def/HP nets her 36 more def and 108 HP, for a grand total of 180 HP equivalent, or one extra slash attack basically.
Now the question is of course whether it’s worth all that extra effort to emblem into def/HP when all it buys you is an extra slash worth of survivability. The answer is a resounding NO for me, especially not at the cost of neutering her already very good atk.
So are there edge case where just that little bit more HP would’ve made a difference? Absolutely. Do these happen often enough for me to consider them? Not at all. In my estimation these edge cases happen less than 1 in 100 raid/war flags, and the other 99 times, I’d much prefer the increased tile and special damage. It’s the same reason why I go full atk on glass cannons like Jackal and Scarlett, because no amount of def/HP will make them less squishy, and I’d rather add to their existing strength than turn them into something they’re not, in which case all you end up with is mediocrity
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It is common in this forum to assume there are only two possible emblem strategies. However, since there are 3 mains stats in the emblem tree, there are actually 6 possible strategies.
For heroes that combine both damage and useful utility I tend to choose:
Def > Atk > HP
Notice, in this context, that the survivability of a hero is only linear to its Health while it is above linear to its Defense.
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My Ruby has always been setup in a balanced format, prioritizing Defense and Attack, instead of one over the other. She hits well and survives well.
Good analysis! (I happen to disagree with your conclusion, obviously.)
The main thing you posted that I take issue with, is the estimation that only 1/100 battles will include the edge case where Ruby lives the extra turn to fire. I’d guess it’s way more often than that, personally.
Can’t really compare to jackal/scarlett, bc they’re best used for events and/or titans, where survival is able to be achieved via battle items instead of having to rely on base stats, like one does in wars/raids (where ruby shines).
Lastly, how much extra special/tile damage do you get from the atk path? I’d argue it’s just as marginal / edge-case-y as the def/hlth path.
ETA: As you might guess by what I’ve said in this thread, I go def/hlth for most of my war/raid attacking heroes, for the same reason. With exceptions for heroes like Kage, Khonshu, Lepus, etc., whose entire value comes from their damage.
Well I do 3-1-1 for all my war hits 95% of the time, and the “win rate” if you want to call it that seems to hover around 80-85%. The times when I do lose, I’d say at least 8/10 times surviving an extra slash attack or two really wouldn’t have made any material difference, as I’ve already lost a key hero or three required to defeat the enemy team. (3 = main attack stack, almost always DD+EDD+strong hit-3 or AoE; 1-1 = 1 healer and 1 support hero like cKad, Hannah, Emilio, Gazelle etc). So we can agree to disagree on the edge case percentages, but that’s fine as it will be different for everyone anyway.
You make a good argument about going full atk being just as marginal, and I say this in return: the defense already has a hidden 20% buff, and they gain mana regardless each turn until you block them with certain specials. Therefore it’s a race against the clock, and if I leave a hero with even 1 HP and they fire back at me, that can sometimes change the outcome substantially (Killhare and Anne come to mind 
though this is more due to their reviving than anything else). So it’s basically kill first or be killed, and every last bit of attack stat counts in that case. Also there have been way too many times I left a hero standing with <50 HP, and I kept thinking “if I just had one extra attack node I probably could’ve finished them off”
That being said, I don’t blindly go all atk on my heroes either. Heroes who are clearly utility oriented such as Hannah and even regular Panther I went full def/HP, because the atk debuff by fiends/EDD+dispel is far more useful than whatever pitiful damage they’ll output.
I think I draw the line somewhere around 300% damage, because that’s when it starts becoming significant. Ruby at x2 charge does 330%, and when paired with EDD+DD, very likely guarantees 3 dead heroes aside from dodge/evasion/revive. And because her base atk is already 10% higher than her def anyway, it seems to me the better thing to do is to make sure she can act as a finisher, and not leave 3 heroes critically wounded with 10 HP remaining.
But again my war style is EDD+DD+strong hitter for 5/6 war teams (green team is damage amp instead of EDD), so naturally I tend to focus on attack more.
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Just impressed with the comprehensive analysis guys. Thanks for the inputs.
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