Wartune combat strategy

You know, my favorite articles are analysis of what to get for chest, or if a recharge / spender event worth doing or not. Lately, I'm not recommending recharge / spender events, for 2 simple reasons. Every such gift pack is bigger and bigger, so the more you wait, the more you will get. Also, the sad fact is, there are many negative processes in the game lately. More and more uncorrected bugs, more and more nerfs and bad changes. Like the developers don't care about the players anymore. The same events repeat over and over since many months. So right now, I'm a bit unhappy about how the developers and the publisher disregards us players. There is really one way to make them listen, by not paying. 

But of course you didn't come here to hear about my complaining. You came here to read something useful. Today I try to focus on the main aspect of the game, combat.

Many player says that in combat, whoever has higher BR wins, so it is actually irrelevant what skills you use in what order. Of course, BR is important. You can't beat someone with twice as much BR as you have. But if there is a lesser margin, you can turn the tides.

Combat has some main components: what runes and skills you use, when you use them, when you sylph, and what resists you have.

1.) Resists. Previously, you could reduce damage through resist by up to 90%, this way it was possible to kill even 100K USD whales by mere mortals. It was a fun age, but it is over. Also, you could get as much as +20% damage with resist reduction. These caps have been shifted, the max., damage resist converges to 60% (although with extremely high resist you can push this to 61%, 62%...) and the max extra damage can go much higher as well, converging to 60% (but can go to 61%, 62%... if you have lot of resist reduce via adv. and extended dimensions). This gives back the edge to the whales, but still. If you have +60% dmg vs your opponent, and he have -60%, you have a big advantage. Please note that resist works differently in sylph and non-sylph form. If the attack is non-sylph, the resist used does not check against the opponent's sylph, it check based on your resists (average? highest?  I never tested). In general, I would recommend dark, light and electro resist for pvp, since these 3 are the most popular sylphs. But in Battleground, after a few tests battles, you might switch light and/or electro for fire and /or wind if you see several strong opponents with these.

2.) Runes. Since eudaemons, chaos rune became even more powerful. It is as good as a 3-round stun which you can use repeatedly, and you can even use to counter the opponent's heal spell. There is one simple way to protect yourself fully against chaos rune: do not use eudaemon. People overvalue eudaemons because their huge false BR. The truth is, in combat, most damage is dealt in sylph form. Before that, not much is happening if both players are strong. But, your eudaemon can never sylph, so he wont help you as much as his BR would suggest. All he will do is make you kill yourself with chaos runes. I do not even use the chaos rune anymore. If my opponent use the same strategy as me, or if the combat lasts longer and the eudaemon dies, its not so great. And if I have go 1 vs 8 in arena, one chaosed opponent wont make as much difference as a heal or guard rune.
Yes I use these two, they always serve well. In arena, if I have 2 or more opponent, I start with guard rune, and begin aoeing the opponents, killing their eudaemons while I take almost no damage. If all goes well, I can use it again after sylph.
Amnesia worth mentioning here. Amnesia is bugged, if you use it after your opponent used a skill, and that skill is banned, then your opponent will be helpless for 2 turns. This makes it very strong. Also, knights has no guard rune, so for them, I would recommend amnesia to replace guard rune. If you lucky, you can disable your opponent early on as much as with chaos, and if you disable delphic skill after awaken, you are in good position. But it's very hard to time it well, and not useful vs multiple opponents.

3.) Skills. Each class has it's preferences, and I'm good only with mage skills. Lately, I do not use suntoria, it's too slow, and it's too much subject to chaos. I rather focus on damage and use runes for protection, because they can't be chaosed. After guard, I used to open with delphic hell thunder. Besides dealing insane damage, it can stun opponents. Rain of fire next to finish off eudaemons, then frost bolt to try stun one opponent. Maybe restoration to keep myself at max life vs a strong opponent. Having high influence is very important, stunning your opponent can win you the match in many case. Especially, if you time it well. Best to stun the opponent after he sylph, or, if you know he have chaos rune, and you need to heal yourself, stun him first so you can safely heal yourself.

4.) Sylph choice. Although Hecate is the strongest sylph, you should avoid using it - because everyone have dark resist - unless it is twice stronger than your other sylphs. Any other sylph can be good, in my experience people stack random resists besides dark. Maybe water resist is the only one which no one uses. But I advise against Poseidon, unless you are in a party. The game is about dealing damage, not healing. Playing with and vs Poseidon is boooring and disgusting. (Btw, Nightbloom of ToK nightmare, please, stop logging out with Poseidon! You make tok much longer...) Also, when you are alone, chaos rune can hurt you only when you heal. My favorite is Medusa, because its PATK as well, so I can remove equipment from Hecate and borrow it to him while I do pvp.

5.) Sylph use. Some people like to stall sylph awaken, thinking if they can survive the opponent's sylph phase, they will easily destroy him during the 50% dmg increase when they reverted. This can be a good strategy, but it's very hard to survive the opponent's sylph phase with awaken, if he is as strong as you. So I suggest to sylph relatively soon. Before the 50% dmg increase, even sylphs don't do enough damage to kill the opponent. So you should time your awaken sou can can cast delphic the exact moment when the timer switches to 60 seconds. Delphics have a cooldown, so best sequence is waken, use a sylph skill, then guard rune, then delphic. Fight outcome often depends on who can counter the delphic with guard rune, and who can't. So you have to be ready to adapt, if your opponent cast guard rune when you are about to delphic, you better wait until it wears off. If you see you can't kill your opponent while in sylph form (neither he can kill you), you should revert back to normal form sooner, so you sylph first during the next round.

6.) Teamplay. Most of what I wrote refers to 1 vs X combat. When you are teamed up with friends, you need to consider additional things. In this case, there is no point leaving eudaemons home, so you have to prepare for chaos. Best to have a mage with a purify, and a knight/archer with a purify rune, if the mage gets chaosed. Put the mage in the bottom line so if he gets chaosed you can see it, and wait with the purify rune a bit. Using chaos rune yourself is great too, if you chaos multiple opponents, you usually win. So I use chaos+guard rune. You will need one player with a poseidon, so you can heal even in sylph form. In team, things are usually very laggy, you can use less skills than usual. I can just use a chaos, a purify and a group heal before sylph. Group heal is important so your team goes into sylph phase at full health. The archers death star, to stun the opponents and keep up the pressure. Buffs and debuffs also make big difference in team play (incendiary shot, apollo) if your eudaemons can do it for you, that's the best. When your team faces a big whale, you can give yourself a chance if you can amnesia him, so have 1-2 player pack that. Marriage resurrection is an insane advantage in team play, try to "marry" someone with whom you regularly play with. Eternal hearts are now easy to get.

Combat is often a "dance", watching your opponent's actions, and reacting to them. You see he is going to rage steal, don't do delphic hell thunder then, because it will fizzle and you just lose a round. Try to guess when he wants to delphic and use guard rune before that. Time both awaken and cancel awaken well. Etc etc. PVP is the most enjoyable part of the game, despite low rewards, I still enjoy doing BG and arena. When in arena, if I meet 4 people, with 4 eudaemons, with all 4 player having 2-4 star orange sylphs, it feels a real achievement when I beat them using only a 1-star orange Medusa (and this happens quite often). Of course, I never have chance vs real whales, but the other day I killed a guy who had a 5-moon sylph, that felt cool.

** will add pics soon so this does not look just a boring wall of text ***

Which is the best sylph?

Imho the best games are where you have to make decisions, and your decision has a weight. In my other favorite game, Doomlord, you have to make many decisions, about skills, ability and AA build. And if you make any bad decision, you still have the option to change, but at a cost.

When I started playing Wartune, my only problem was with the game that it was a "tube-game". You could do nothing just go forward in a "tube". There were only 2 mistakes you could do: start a mage or knight instead of an archer, and spend your resources instead of hoarding them. 

Sylphs brought a real change: they cost a lot to develop, both in time and money, so if you make a mistake there, there is only one way to correct it: by spending a ridiculous amount of money. Instead of going into deep mathematical analysis, this time I just tell you my story of sylphs, and you tell me where I made mistakes, and you try not to do the same ones.

When the first Apollo sale came out, it was obvious that it is much better than Pan and Iris. This was the first time I ever entered Wartune's chest-gamble. I bought 200 chests. Together with all the free ones I could get, I had enough shard to exchange for one Apollo. I had no luck opening one from a chest, though. Some opened 3, and dominated the sylph arena for the next months, earning an extra 1000 sepulcrum for free.

I kept developing my Apollo, and only him, until the new generation of sylphs came out. I remember I spent a horrible amount of time farming Gaia's until I got a blue one - just to save 150 mahra. 

Meanwhile, the Hades chest event started. I know that Hades was the best for mage CW. But the forums were full of people who bought 600 box and didn't get a Hades. So I said, thanks, but I don't need it for 400 USD. I spent the 1k sepu and the mahra I saved up on Gaia to make him 4-star blue and even bought her skills. And yes she was nice damage at world boss.

I was top10 in sylph arena, but wanted to be in top3. I like to play differently than others, so I thought the only way to beat those triple Apollo teams is if I keep healing my sylph. So I started developing an Iris. 

There came the second Hades box-gamble. Every mage had a Hades, so I said, I give it a go. Bought 200 chest, but got nothing, so I gave up. My Apollo was decent,  over the months, I got stronger and stronger, and was ranked 4 in sylph arena with the healer strategy. Then came a merge, we got 3 monster sylph teams, which I can't beat ever. So sylph arena (along with having an Iris) lost it's importance.

In CW, I decided to use Apollo. My logic was that no one has light resist, so Apollo will work good. The next 2 CW, I went 9-6 in the finals with Apollo, and I already spent a total of 4k sepulcrum on him, so I decided I don't need a Hades at all.

And then came sylph evolution. This was the third (and hopefully last) chest-gamble I entered in Wartune's history. I knew that again, getting the 500 divinity shard cost too much, but I hoped to win Apollo/Hades. I bought 400 chests (this was the limit I set to myself). And found one Hades. I had a dilemma there: exchange it for divshards and evolve my Apollo, or get a Hades. What would you have done?

Finally, I choose to keep the Hades. It would have been more logical to make my already strong Apollo even stronger by evolving it. But Hades is a real rarity still, and I told myself, I can always get more divinity shards later, it's just +10% strength to my Apollo.

I started developing Hades, and dumped Gaia from my sylph team. I also wanted to evolve something badly: so I made a Triton from my Iris. I was thinking for long if I made some bad mistakes. My friend has only one big super-strong Hercules, it's great in WB, Sky Trials and everywhere else. But when I make a decision, I like to stick to it.

Since that, I use Hades in CW, he is as good as Apollo was (but no better yet). Hades is my favorite now in PVE, his heal is awesome in passing Necropolis, Sky trial and God's descent levels. Strangely enough, in PVP it did not shine as great as I expected. 

On guild battles, I use Triton since I'm the healer of the team. Last guild battle, in the chaos I meet alone 4 strong characters several times, and I could defeat them, and the key was Triton. We were talking about how this is possible. Triton's healing capacity, it's AE stun and mini-delphic are better than you would think, also no one has water resist so my damage has 20% bonus granted. Since that, I tried Triton in battleground as well, and was as good as Hades...

Summary:

Apollo. Although I spent a lot of effort on developing Apollo, I don't use it anywhere outside sylph arena. In every event, there is a sylph which is better for that task. His heal is weaker than Hades and Triton's, his damage is weaker than Hercules and Hades. If I wouldn't be team healer in guild battle and arena, I would use Apollo there, but now I use Triton.

Hades. I think Hades was overvalued for a long time. It's heal-reduction is not so great, by the time you use it, usually not much healing happens. His damage is pretty weak compared to Hercules or Amazon. It has one big strength, its heal, and that you can use it twice in a quick succession. The real turning point was when they corrected a bug with last patch. Previously, in PVE, your highest resist was counted, so Hercules was superior everywhere. Now they use the correct resist, so Hades is good vs dark opponents. Also the best sylph in mage CW.

Triton. Triton is undervalued. If it would have 3 good attack skills, it would be a great sylph. But it has only 2, with long cooldown. It's good for team situations, but due to its low damage capacity, weak in single PVE. In single PVP, it's better than you would think.

Gaia/Hercules. 98% of the Wartune community thinks this is the best sylph, and I think they are right. Best damage capacity, the mdef debuff, ability to slow. It's a one-man army with everything but heal and good aoe. I still use my lame Gaia for world boss. You would think it's not so good in sylph arena since it does not have aoe, but the +50% dmg buff and the mdef debuff makes up for that. If I could convert all the sepu and mahra in my Apollo into my Gaia, I would do it without hesitation. An archer or knight don't need anything else.

Amazon: I don't have it, it's a good sylph, it replaces both Hades and Gaia for a mage. But it is slightly worse than each. I remember when I gave up on Hades, I tried to farm a blue amazon. Spent weeks, but had no luck so I gave up on this. 

Pan: Don't have it either, some people say it's good after evolve, and yes, no one has wind resist :) Not gonna try it unless some day they add the option I wish for (convert one sylph to another).

Conclusion: Of my current sylph team (Apollo, Hades, Triton) I always have doubt if regret taking Hades or Triton. But now I only regret having Apollo, happy with the other two :)

What would you choose?

I tried recently some of R2Games other wartune clones games. They look nice but you just keep clicking, claim reward etc. Not really much strategy, there are no hard choices to make. That's what I like in Wartune and Doomlord as well: you have to make choices. Some of them are long term, and if you make a bad decision, well... Let's see a few such choices.

Which class to choose?

My first - and very bad - decision was to make a mage. In Wartune, classes are well balanced in PVP, but not at all in PVE. All PVE events are a damage race, where the first, the faster gets more reward. And to make it worse, bosses (Necropolis, Sky trial, GD, everywhere...) go enrage after a given number of actions of that boss, making slow (ie. deep freeze) essential. So in PVE, an archer is about 2.5 times better than a mage or a knight. Also they don't have to worry about 2 sets of astral, and building a different sylph for CW. So yes, if you could change my toon into an archer at the cost of 10k balens, I would do it instantly :)

Chaos rune or amnesia rune?

This question is especially for class wars. Both runes take a lifetime to develop, so this is an especially long-term decision.

About chaos in general: if it lasts for 2 rounds, it really does little in CW. You get chaosed, you do 2x ligthning, then still kill your opponent's troop with RoF, can bleed, heal and start sylph at max hp. If it's 3 rounds, well, then things start getting ugly, that's too much delay. Fortunately, few people have lvl 10 chaos rune yet.

About amnesia: the real power is when you use it after your opponent sylphs, and he watches hopeless while you kill him. At least, that's the plan. Under the effect of a round 2 amnesia, the attack you choose first is resolved anyway, so you lose only one turn (and still do an auto-attack). Still worse than being turned off for 2-3 rounds by chaos. If your opponent has a lvl 10 amnesia (which is pretty rare) then it can be a real winner. But don't forget: in a future patch, ability to use runes in sylph form will be added. This will decrease the value of amnesia, since it might not turn off all sylph skills.

So chaos looks better, even when it's not working well for me. I also prefer my opponent having amnesia instead of chaos.

Soul crystal exchange to mount whip or runestones?

After you maxed out your SC, you can choose them to choose either into whips or runestones. In overall, I would say runestones is a better deal. Getting a truckload of whip which increases your atk by 1% is not such a big differences - on the other hand, chaos/amensia your opponent for 2 or 3 round is a big difference. There are 2 reasons why I still choose mount whips.

1.) The whip I get now, can use next event to get more soul crystals, which I can exchange to more whips, which when I use gives me more soul crystals... So it's value is increasing by time. The runestones, I get them, use them, and that's it.

1.) When you improve chaos/amnesia, you will see real difference only when you pump them up to lvl 10. So when I can finish lvl 10 instantly with an exchange, I will do it, but until then, I just keep recycling sc/whip, and take advantage of the free runestones from jewel hunt / tok chests / tank.

Enhanced deflection or regeneration?

Enchanted regeneration's cap was raised from 5000 to 50.000, making it a more useful astral. Question is, is it good enough now? I would definitely use it in sky trial, which you have to re-try multiple times, and one lucky streak is enough to win. In CW, I would still choose deflection, and it is simple math. Deflection will be useful in any round, regardless when it triggers: dealing 50K damage is always good. On the other hand, healing 50K is good only if you are already seriously wounded. Especially in mage CW, where people usually full hp at awakening, this astral is useful only in 2 rounds, opposed to deflection.

When you have to choose between 2 astrals, always make the math. Enhanced regeneration is 50.000 hp at 10% chance, so on average, it is 5000 hp per round. Even if you are wounded each round and the battle last as long as 10 rounds, it is no better than a holy brilliance which gives 5K hp as well (but more reliably).

Enhanced deflection has another big advantage in CW: if your opponent kills you and you kill him with deflection, you will win. If it wasn't this way, I'm not sure I would use even deflection.

Which sylph to use?

This is a very important question. And if you pump mahra/sepu for months into the wrong sylph, that will take you at big disadvantage.

For archer/knight, gaia->hercules is pretty obvious choice: atk type MATK (advantage in CW), increased atk bonus (everything is about damage blah blah), gives bigger damage reduction in PVE than other sylphs (since it's highest resist is 200, while apollo and hades only 100 - and in PVE, only your highest resist matters, element not), and very big damage skills. Also gaia is a free sylph, and you don't have to spend balen on evolve either.

For mage, hades for cw, and a gaia for pve content for the above reasons. But hades cost a lot of money (still 400 USD!) so if you can't afford it, you have to go with something cheaper (gaia, amazon, pan) and when you finally get a hades somehow you will cry seeing all the mahra/sepu rotting in a useless sylph...  

The truth about sepulcrum

About a month ago, I did some testings about sepulcrum, and I found that feeding sepulcrum to my sylph did not improve my combat damage in awakened form. Since that, we did a lot more accurate testings, and were able to reverse-engineer the precise combat formulae, many thanks to Tihh! And it seems I was wrong: a sylph's atk IS added to your attack in awakened form, so relax, sepulcrum is good stuff, get as much as you can :)



So sepulcrum does 4 things:

1. as the sylph's hp increases, so does yours.
2. it increases the damage of the sylph when in passive form.
3. it's atk is added to yours in awakened form.
4. it helps you collect more sepulcrum in the sylph arena (if you can make it to the top 3).

Sepulcrum is one of the rare resources where the more you spend, the more you gain. For example, the formulae for your sylph's attack is STR/INT apt * Strength/Intelligence * 0.0018. So the higher it's basic stats, the more you gain from a sepulcrum.

Mahra does really nothing besides increasing the maximum amount of sepulcrum you can feed to your sylph. So unless you are a really heavy casher, you shouldn't advance you sylph past purple 1-star. After you evolved your sylph, you can spend sepulcrum for years until you hit the limit :)


And the conclusion?
1.) Sylph refinement. When you evolve your sylph, it's base stats improve a bit. Don't expect too much from it, unless you already pumped the maximum amount of sepulcrum into it and ready to feed it a lot more.The more sepulcrum you spent earlier, the more that +200 atk apt will increase your attack.
2.) Mahra vs sepulcrum. When you have the option between sepulcrum or mahra, get the mahra if you don't have a single purple sylph yet, otherwise get the sepulcrum. Unless if your sylph is maxed already, then choose these mahra of course.

See more details about sylphs in my sylph spoiler article.

Class Wars strategy

Tomorrow is Class Wars, so I would like to share some thoughts on Class Wars - from a mage's view, of course, but maybe some advices work for other classes as well.

Testing. It is very important that you decide in advance what skills, astrals, sylph you will use, and make some testings. Find someone of your class with similar BR who is willing to do some practice with you. Go to altar of enoblement, you can duel there unlimited time without losing HP potions. Try out different strategies, see what works best for you. But make sure you do not go in the direction of just trying to beat the specific setup your friend is using! This practice is good for something else too. CW is some stress (at least for me), and any mistake can be fatal. So you must have a good routine at knowing what to do, what skill to use. You hands should not shake :)

Preparation. This is a good time to use all the sepulcrum you saved up (waiting for a sepu spender event), upgrading your astral, refining/identifying your last cloth. Make sure you have all the lvl 5 potions (do not buy it for balens! Just roll guild wheel each day 30 times, you will have enough), and scrolls (you can get them from guild wheel too, or buy them for crypt tokens). 5 minutes before CW, double-check skills, astrals, sylph, your PVP medallion, then drink the potions, and use the scrolls (2 of each since scroll last only for 30 minutes).

The swiss system. People complain about pairing all the time, even though it works fine. Each round, you get paired with someone with the same number of wins. BR has nothing to do here. Earlier, this system was exploitable, since the first rounds were less points than the later ones, so it was a good strat to lose the first 4 match. Not anymore. Just try your best. If you lose, no worries, your next opponent will be weaker probably.

Astrals. Some astrals work better than others. If I were you, I wouldn't use Illusion, for example. Guardian angel is great, on the other hand. It's a reason why I don't recommend a mage use crit setup: even if you like it for emotional reasons, guardian angel will ruin it during cw.
Deflection is a funny gamble astral. It's main strength is, if it triggers when your opponent would kill you and you kill him as well, you will win. If it wins you one match you would otherwise lose, it served its purpose.
If you think between HP and block, I would go for HP.

Slyph. A slyph does 3 things during cw: it determines the elemental form of your attacks, it deals some damage based on its stats in passive state, and it deals massive damage in awakened form, based on your atk and the mahra and sepulcrum you spent on the sylph.
If you have a sylph where the quality/sepu is much, much more than your other sylphs, use that - it will deal more damage, regardless of other considerations. If you have several similarly powerful sylphs, consider what others use in your category, and what works best against that (I mean here the resist / elemental type).
My personal opinion is that for mages, Hades is the best choice, for others, Gaia. Unfortunately, not everyone had 400 bucks (me included) to have a Hades.



The duel itself. Chaos rune is widely used now, so you have to be prepared for that. For a mage, it does not make much difference - troops die in 2 rounds anyway, and then you start sylph phase at max hp, but for other classes where it is a damage race, it can be lethal. It's best to wait a little at the beginning to see what your opponent is going to do, before eating/using a chaos. Besides chaos, my other favorite is still bleed rune.

The duel is decided by awakened sylphs. Before that, we just toy around: kill troops, heal up, purify each other's bleed - but the sylph delphic is usually a finisher, whoever can cast it first AFTER the 50% damage increase wins. Therefore, you must time your awaken well. If you awaken too early, eat a bleed and use sylph skills before 50%, your opp heals up and then finish you off. If you fumble too long with purify and healing, the Hades big nuke kills you. BR, ATK is not as important as timing. Practice it with someone a lot in advance.

Good luck all!

Everything about sylphs

I finished my page, where I collected all the secrets about sylphs. You won't find there listings of sylphs skills, resistances. There are many pages which do that. I wrote here about tricks which many players don't know. If you like it, please share the page and the link of my blog :)

Warning: the info which follows below is for only hardcore competitive players.

Click here to read the full article only at your own risk!