Think about your favorite hero. Do you have one that you can attack other players with solo? Unlikely, right. Heroes — even the great ones — need a team backing them up. Not just any team either. The team matters!
Special thanks to KeyserSoze for sharing this strategy with me in such detail. While I have created this lesson in an online format that is easier to read than our GroupMe server, this strategy belongs to him.
Valandur, JLBP-O
For our first team, we are going to include the following 4 heroes in this order, set up with runes as follows:
- Agnon – Defensive with 3 Enablers, Taunt, Tank (Needs Epic!)
- Lorelei – Defensive with 2 Healers, Guardian, Evasion, Foresight
- Alrakis – Attack with 4 Tainted, Evasion
- Niveous – Defensive with 2 Warrior, Guardian, Evasion, Healer
Let’s take a look at each hero separately:
Agnon
Agnon will take a dual role: Firstly, he will have a taunt, forcing the enemy team heroes to target him for their first round attack. Secondly, and more importantly, he will use the enablers with his epic to turn enemies into statues, preventing them from taking actions and turning himself back into a statue so that he can mitigate damage.
Strategy: You will use Agnon’s basic attack each round. Ignore his specials.
Runes: The enablers are very important. The taunt is important to help keep pressure off of Niveous, who needs to survive as long as possible, and to keep DPS off of Alrakis who is a glass cannon. Generally, enemies use specials that attack your entire team, but the taunt and tank ensure that Agnon gets the worst of it. Don’t have a Tank rune? Try 2 Taunts! Can’t do that? Make sure he is all defensive!
Lorelei
Lorelei also has two main jobs: Her most important work is healing! Her second job is to survive so that she can heal more. Pretty simple, really.
Strategy: Use her S1 “Gift of Flight” as an opening attack to buff your party with flight and protect their buffs. This will also do a bit of damage to the enemy team. It is critical to keep Niveous alive. If he is at risk of dying, use S2 “Magic Prism” to shield him. If you need heals, use S3 “Tricksy Fae” — but she will do a nice end of round heal for your team!
Runes: Superior Guardian runes are player made. They are the only player made rune in the DB endgame. They are only made in LIGHT versions. No Elite level is currently available. Even though this rune is Superior, it is better than any Elite rune you could slot for defense! Use your best defensive setup.
Alrakis
Alrakis has one job. Kill the enemy team. Rune him well, keep Niveous alive and Alrakis will devaste your enemies. Even dead, Alrakis still puts out his end of round chaos damage to the enemy team!
Strategy: Kill, kill, kill. Every weapon at his disposal will kill enemies. Because Alrakis does a massive chaos attack to all enemies at the end of every round — and that is even more powerful if the enemies have the Doom debuff, use S3 “Draconic Anger” in round 1. S3 can kill enemies outright — even an entire team if they’re weak! Niveous does frequent “follow up” attacks to add even more damage. S1 “Order from Chaos” is worth mentioning because it heals a teammate and then hits a random enemy pretty hard. You can use it to keep Niveous or Lorelei alive if it looks like they may not survive the round, but really Alrakis is all about the damage.
Runes: Loading Alrakis up with Tainted will make him do a ton of chaos damage. If you have an evasion rune, give one a try. Personally, I used 5 tainted. He may die more often, but Alrakis continues to pulse end of round chaos damage. Also, you’re about to learn that death is not the end of the line while Niveous is around…
Niveous
Niveous has three jobs: Firstly, revive Alrakis when he dies. Secondly, survive long enough to revive Alrakis if needed to do so. Thirdly, do some damage if Alrakis isn’t dead. He will also automatically follow-up attack if Alrakis or one of his own summons attacks. As you can guess from the rune setup, that third job less critical!
Strategy: If Alrakis is alive, save S1 “Cold Summons.” If you waste it while Alrakis is alive just to do a bit of damage, you’re really going to be kicking yourself when Alrakis drops and you can’t revive immediately. That’s exactly what the defensive AI will do … waste S1! If you don’t need to revive, just use Niv’s basic attack, which is better than S2 or S3 if you have the warrior runes, which give him extra hits. They don’t call him “machine gun dragon” for nothing!
Runes: Defensive all around. Guardian rune is critical! Healer rune is important to give him some health back. Warrior runes are important to add more attacks, significantly increasing his DPS despite being a defensive hero — so prioritize those if you don’t have them!
Plan B
This team performs very well MOST of the time — even against an enemy with the exact same heroes (since you will make better decisions than the AI playing for the defense).
However, no team wins everything. If you see yourself facing an enemy like the following, do not use this team! Instead, use Team 2 that we’ll discuss next!
- Serenity with Niveous and Alrakis
- Sybil with Niveous and Alrakis
Continue to PVP Attack | Team 2