This is the 2nd xmas event with a chance to summon those minion summoning xmas heroes. We’ll see more of them in the near future.
Puss was introduced and many heroes can summon minions.
There are Inari, Mother North, Santa, Sesh, Red Hood, Lady of the Lake and many more.
Maybe somebody can provide a list of minion summoners (MS).
Also Grimble is the actual HotM to counter all those meaty whittlers.
All I can say is that minions are mighty, since they don’t count as buffs, increase health, deal minor damage and some cause cool effects on their casters or allies or against the enemies.
Will they become an important part of the meta soon or are they already?
Here’s an example of what minions can do and how they work. I did a rainbow raid in diamond with a minionish team.
What do you think of minions? Do you have any MS? Do you use em regularly? Will they become more and more important?
Yea I think minions will quickly be out of control
I still wouldn’t give grimble tabards tho he tough at 3:70, wont hit hard even if he 4/80. Him defense and hp good enough to use at 3/70. I think he’s better than people think. I also think he’s a premonition into the future. SG wants to play with minions. They will become very annoying very quickly.
Maybe for the top P2W players. As for now, there is not one single minion summoning hero / minion destroying hero that doesn’t have to be summoned (apart from druids who create them randomly). So, most F2P and C2P will have no or few heroes besides maybe Gobbler, Rudolph and–with some luck–Buddy.
So, the vast majority of players currently has too few minion heroes to really play a role. Maybe S3, costume and–eventually–hero academy will change that so that F2P/C2P have more minion heroes that actually matter (and Gobbler might become useful more often) and P2W have minion heroes in all kinds of colours and with different minion abilities to choose from. Then minions might really be a big thing.
Currently, I mostly have to deal with Seshat regularly and the occasional Delilah tank + Buddy and Rudolph in 4*/3* raid tournaments. Other minion summoners are quite rare, minion destroyers are hardly ever seen in defense lineups. And I do not have one single minion summoner myself despite having played the game for 2 years and 2 months now (although I will probably summon Rudolph or Buddy in early January)
Eh only minion hero i use that isn’t a druid is seshat and i bring her for her dispel and snipe, i don’t pay any attention to the minions
Thing is she is the only 1 of 2 fast mana non druid minion producing heroes
Rest are slow or average and easily worked around even without grimble
Only 2 i consider to be any kind of a real annoyance are delilah and mother north. Santa could be if he played tank more often and same with LotL. Put slow mana in flank and they’re just not a major concern.
I think march hotm could be a green delilah but better so could see her being a good flank but by then jean f will be out and we already have gravemakers galore so i have my doubts she’ll be a competitive flank or tank in top 50 wars
I have stated this before, but I’ll reiterate it here: I believe SGG is attempting to slow the game down and that emblems, costumes, and minions are all partly attempts to do that.
Regardless of if you agree with that or not, minions are becoming more prominent in the game (even if you think they’re not becoming a more impactful part of the game).
Minion Summoning Heroes
Buddy
Delilah
Inari
Lady of the Lake
Mother North
Puss in Boots
Queen of Hearts
Red Hood
Rudolph
Santa Claus
Seshat
Telluria
Thoth-Amun
And every Druid
Anti-Minion Heroes
Captain of Diamonds
Gobbler
Grimble
Kvasir
Meta
Noting how new most of the anti-minion heroes are, SGG’s intent and direction seems clear to me.
Puss in Boots can create SEVEN minions when they fire their special skill.
As Olmor said, minions don’t count as hit points. Two highly relevant examples: when calculating damage from arrow barrage or Ursena’s special.
We already know more Season 3 heroes are coming, as well as new seasonal heroes. We should expect those and future HOTM’s to occasionally have a minion-relevant skill and quite likely new effects. For example, Telluria’s ability to resist minion removal. Or Kvasir’s anti-minion creation mechanic. I have already speculated that SGG is testing that in a relatively safe, minion-scarce environment before releasing something like that on a 4 or 5 star (we know they do this - they stated they did that with Wilbur, for example).
Possible future effects: someone will steal one or more minion(s). Someone will hit everyone with a minion, but better than Captain of Diamonds (more like Finley). Someone will heal minions. Someone will revive minions. Someone will guard their neighbors or the whole team from minion effects. etc.
For all these reasons, I stated in the main Grimble thread that I think he’s a worthy investment (to 3.70). I stand by that.
Druids are also limited to 1 minion per turn AND need to take damage to spawn minions ( but that is true of many hero talents).
Luckily (?) most Druids are green, and minions are awesome for farming, so druid Melendor 4*+15 is great for 1.8-7 farming if you do not have druid Kadilen at 5*+1, or a higher druid Kadilen.
If you are not getting daily titan loot tier 9+, triple bosses are a huge source of non farmables ( Class quests, Seasonal quests, Challenge events for tier completion, Masquerade quests, etc. ). And still significant for other players.
Slow heroes can be charged the mob wave before the triple Bosses, and while all heroes are at 100% health, minions help a lot.
It is easier to stack strong color versus bosses and get the double damage from minions colored attacks.
Regardless of how prominent minion heroes are, the facts that war defenses with delilah instead of guin or Puss instead of gm or sesh instead of kage are typically the first choice targets in war vs their alternatives, just screams pretty loudly that even feeders alone dumped in grimble are a waste
Pretty positive that even Lady of the Lake teams are 1st choice targets over teams with kingston or zeline
So far what seem to be the “best minion heroes per color in my opinion” are:
Yellow= delilah
Purple= seshat
Red= Puss N Boots
Green= Mother North
And out of the 4 there is only 1 that doesnt have a competitor for target avoidance.
Idk any player that would rather face guin than delilah, ursena instead of seshat, gravemaker instead of puss n boots
So sure maybe new(ish) players or f2p/c2p may see some value in the minion removers but I’m pretty certain they have other heroes that deal with minions just fine and investing in the removers is wasting their mats & feeders
Will they become the new meta? Imo, no. They’re too passive and too niche. None of the minions to date really cause any problems. LotL can be annoying with the mana cut and seshat with the replication however both have limitations too. LOTL is slow and only nearby. Seshat, while fast, is only herself.
So imo, even if they do become the new meta, am I concerned? NO.
Do I have grimble? NO
Do I think I’ll need him? NO
Minions aren’t all that great. In offence they’re a nice shield BUT I’d rather take a healer if I’m wanting a shield. In defence they’re passive. The generation of minions is either too localised to impact me OR too slow to make a difference.
So yeah, that’s just me. Not worried by them and actually seek out the minion heavy defences like the ones with Delilah, LotL etc…
Telluria probably won’t change the war metagame single-handedly to choose green tanks, but if that ever happens in the future, I’d choose to attack either Heimdall (S3 future green paladin) or Yunan before her
That’s how I personally feel about Telluria and her bulkyass minions (if they remain unchanged from Beta). But then again, I have no Gravemaker, which I can see him making her significantly easier to handle (though I still think the mana delay will hurt him regardless)
I do have some thoughts that she could be decent in defense just hard to say how decent until she’s amongst population and i suspect we’ll see her more in raids than upper wars due to MN still being one of(if not the) best green hero for causing failed 1 shots & cleanups
No blue minion hero? Also I agree with everything except lotl I hate ladies minions. Anything that takes away mana is a pain to me and so annoying! Lol. So I would rather face kingston and zeline.
According to rumors from Beta, one suggestion to make Grimble better was Grimble destroys ALL minions ( enemy and ally ) like Snow white does with dispellable status effects. Then Grimble + Santa would generate mana for the attacking team.
I keep thinking turning Captain of Diamonds into a 4* Finley that targets minions instead of buffs, or Gobbler into a 4* Snow white that that targets minions instead of buffs, would be improvements.
In the meantime I have a grimble…just in case… I also have puss in boots…just in case… they are sitting at 1.if I feel the need to I will. Once I get minion summoning heroes I will make a minion team for the fun of it lol.
When we look at other “niche” use heroes(at least 5* heroes) the ones that come to mind first are margaret and inari which is true they don’t come in handy in every situation but their attack stats still make them nice for stacking
Grimble has niche use + low damage + low attack stat working against him, guess they made him a dwarf after they cut him off at the knees?
AND need to take damage to spawn minions ( but that is true of many hero talents).