Hi, this guide’s topic is the warrior Pikemen line-ups.
Warrior Pikemen Heroes/Lineup Guide
By kaity
Heroes Review
I will review each hero in some detail before I talk about the line-ups
Darius The Great
Darius is not that great at combat, he is used for gathering.
When it comes to his signature skill, Signature skills that don’t do damage (or healing) and instead buff the hero usually mean the hero needs other skills to function (Commander skill and customizable skills).
This means Darius needs investment, but also he is a selfish hero, his commander, and customizable skills are generally pure damage with almost no buffs for the team, but the problem is the other Pikemen heroes do damage as well while being better than him anyway, this puts him in a usable state compared to them.
Next, Imma talk about the signature skills of the 4 next heroes at the same time, because they work similarly.
Joan of Arc, Leonidas, Boudica, and Richard are known as the counter-attack heroes
The signature skills of these heroes are of a passive type, this means they need to meet a condition to be triggered.
The condition is the troops need to be tit by “normal attacks”, normal attacks were explained in this guide before.
That guide, although it’s not stated in a straight way, hinted that an army doesn’t need to target the enemy to perform a “normal attack”, when two armies are engaged in a battle they both perform “normal attacks” if an army is swarmed it performs “normal attacks” to all the armies swarming it, in other worlds the counter-attack heroes don’t need to be “targetted” to trigger their skills.
Some special cases are when the counter-attack heroes fight double-attack heroes (Attila, Rani, Lubu, Belluve), since the double-attack heroes perform an additional number of normal attacks they have a higher chance to trigger these counter-attack skills but notice that the skill can only be triggered once per turn, and for Richard he only can get a maximum of two stacks per turn
One of the big advantages of this team is that they don’t seem to have a “functional counter” or in other words, someone who can stop triggering these skills, in theory, to not trigger these skills the enemy that is fighting the counter-attack heroes need to be “disarmed” and we don’t have any hero that “disarm” themselves, in the other hand Bushra (who disarms enemies) maybe grieve her allies who use the Pikemen heroes by disarming the enemy (Bushra worst hero confirmed)??
Another advantage is how these heroes can perform pretty well in the early game, their skills can trigger at any turn unlike the other skills which usually have a chance to trigger every 3 turns.
Joan Of Arc
She is the weakest hero out of the counter-attack heroes, if you notice her signature skill does less damage than Boudica’s, and does the same damage as Leonidas, but Leonidas provides slightly other stuff add to this she has the lowest stats of them all, so she is going to do less damage than Leonidas.
Leonidas
Leonidas gets a buff where he does 5% more damage (can be amplified by might) when he is below 50% hp, this buff is not significant enough, but it becomes more apparent at 5 stars where the buff goes to 15% and triggers at 75% hp.
Boudica
High stats hero with a high multiplier on her signature skill, in addition, she buffs the hero with the highest might by increasing their might, typically you want this to buff Richard.
Richard
His signature skill does not have the same wording as the other skills, instead, Richard gains marks every time he is attacked, and after accumulating enough marks he does damage, the tricky part about Richard is that these marks increase his commander skill, making Richard damage a little random. Finally, he has increased might for every 1% hp he loses.
There is not much to say about the commander’s skills since they- are straightforward, well except for Richard’s.
Joan of Arc is not what you want to run as a commander.
Leonidas and Boudica’s skills are both good and they are close ones.
Richard is typically who you want to run as commander, though the problem with Richard is how he gets bonus damage from the marks that his signature skill, and these marks are consumed by the signature skill itself and not the commander skill, but anyway we will hope that Richard casts the skill with the right amount of marks.
Frederick Barbarosa
Frederick breaks the chain a little bit here, with all the other Pikemen heroes providing almost nothing but pure damage Frederick comes to provide nothing but pure Tankiness, at first it sounds interesting but Frederick suffers from what follows:
- His supportive commander skill does not do much for himself, and it competes with the other Pikemen heroes who do have great commander skills as well
- His Signature skill is not that great since most of is triggered when the troops are at 50% hp when he is not 5 stars, although part of this gets fixed at 5 stars because the skill will trigger at 75% hp instead
- His are not high enough to compete against the other heroes, his skill scales off armor but his armor (at 0 stars) is worse than Boudica and Richard’s, and his other stats are low
Please remember the heroes are obtainable as the following:
- Darius and Joan of Arc are from the tavern.
- Boudica and Richard are wheels (in beta Richard came first, Boudica may come late).
- Leonidas pay-walled hero, obtained after first purchase then with bundles to get more of him.
- Frederick pay-walled hero, through battle pass and daily bundles.
The Pikemen heroes in general are usable at zero stars.
But since this team consists of multiple DPS you can see the huge increase in their value in the images above, which is generally can be considered a good thing since the Pikemen team which already performs very well early in the game, seems to be welcoming to more investment.
But there is a tricky part here, remember Boudica might bonus? Boudica gives might to the hero with highest highest might.
Who we want him to be Richard, Fortunately, Richard has the highest might, but the problem is when you invest in the stars of heroes like Leonidas or Boudica they may end up as the hero with the highest might.
This becomes more apparent since Leo can be maxed with more bundles, and buying these bundles can be cheaper and faster than upgrading a wheel hero, or even for Boudica since people want to invest in her since she seems the least replaceable hero in this line-up, and with Richard whose 5th star seems to be the most interesting.
All these factors force you to invest in Richard first, or be forced to change the commander of the line-up which also probably means a change in the customizable skills used! so be careful!
The Line-Up
- Darius is not that good to be anywhere because he is a selfish hero who is outperformed by the other Pikemen heroes anyway he is only good at gathering, see this guide for more information.
- Richard and Boudica are the must-have characters especially since they have the highest base value please look at this guide.
- For F2P players they will have no choice but to use Joan of Arc, she is worse than the paid opinion, but she gets the job done.
- I lean towards using Leonidas over Frederick.
Typically your team should be Richard Boudica and Leonidas or Joan of Arc
Small exceptions can happen if we compare a 5-star Joan of Arc to 0 0-star Leonidas, Joan of Arc probably performs better
Frederick medals can be obtained through daily bundles and battle passes, which are decent bundles to buy, for people who buying these and don’t mind picking Frederick instead of buying Leonida packs. A high star Frederick probably outperforms Leonidas (I’m assuming a situation, this is not what you typically want to do)
Customizable Skills
Richard and Boudica should take both Whirlwind Sweep & Forceful Retaliation:
Richard for obvious reasons, is the main Damage dealer in the team and would benefit from both skills buffing his damaging skills, especially his commander skill.
Whirlwind Sweep is a good skill anyway so of course Boudica takes it, King’s Blade is “good” on Boudica but since she does more damage than Leonidas and Joan of Arc, it’s better to use this buffing skill on them instead of Boudica, leaving Whirlwind Sweep for her to pick up.
Both Leonidas and Joan of Arc will pick the king’s blade, the second skill for both Leonidas and Joan of Arc is tricky, this is because of Messenger of Destruction ring, though I think Whirlwind Sweep is good for Leonidas, and Righteous Judgement for Joan of Arc, I will give more details about the matter when we talk about the rings.
For Frederick, I don’t recommend King’s and I don’t recommend Righteous Judgment, that’s because his might is too low to do damage, this leaves Peaceful Haven and Tenacity as the only usable legendary skills, the purple skill war Drums a good budget skill for sure.
Summary
Richard and Boudica will always be used and their skills should be Whirlwind Sweep & Forceful Retaliation:
- Leonidas uses King’s blade & Whirlwind Sweep
- Joan of Arc king’s blade & Righteous Judgement
- Frederick Peaceful Haven & Tenacity
Rings
My recommendation for rings in general for any line-up is to pick Damage reduction, and this is even better for the warrior Pikemen line-up, since this line-up does lots of damage Damage reduction is good to balance things, it does not matter which hero equips what ring since all the rings that work for this line-up buff everyone.
Please notice that usually the higher the rarity the better the ring is, but the materials used to upgrade each rarity are different and the legendary rings are hard to upgrade, so please take into consideration low rarity rings at first then replace them in late game.
- Ring of Clover is a decent blue ring as a budget investment
- Ring of Boar I’m not too fond of it, the buffs when the troops are low are not strange for this line-up but I would not go out of my way to pick a ring with that buff, another problem is how 60% hp does not align with the rest of the thresholds that the heroes had
- Ring of Deer is a decent ring, although everyone hates RNG, this lineup usually consists of 3 heroes who can do damage, and imagine if you run into another Pikemen line-up? this ring gives a hand to have the upper hand in a neutral battle (but it’s not neutral if someone has the ring of credit card)
- Tranquil water reduces the damage by a significant amount it’s advisable to aim for this as the first legendary ring in general
- Lofty Mountain is another ring that has damage reduction followed by damage increase. It is a decent ring as well
- Scorching flame I don’t like that much, although buffing the might of all heroes can be useful, but the uptime is bad, and trying to cast Richard’s commander skill may ruin the marks count during the ult not to mention that without this Ring Richard will have 5 stacks of Whirlwind Sweep
- Messenger of Destruction, it’s obvious that this ring is made for this line-up, but I don’t recommend it immediately because how damage reduction sounds more important in my opinion and this team does not lack the damage
Note: Messenger of Destruction, since it buffs passive skills, gives Fearless Retribution more value compared to Whilewind Sweep on Leonidas and Righteous Judgement for Joan of Arc.
For more details, Leonidas seems to get more value from Whirlwind Sweep at two stacks (aka after 9 seconds of the battle) compared to Fearless Retribution without the Messenger of Destruction ring, but with a max Messenger of Destruction this changes to be three stacks ( aka after 15 seconds of the battle), that’s simply put the tricky part.
I think you should go Whirlwind Sweep anyway and have fun.
To conclude this guide let’s talk about the pros and cons of this line-up.
The pros
- Good early game line-up that functions without much investment.
- Has the potential to stay strong even in the mid and late-game.
- Versatility, good against all marches except swordsmen being its counter.
- Hard to punish, doesn’t have a functional counter, and has buffs that trigger at low HP rewarding the player for playing bad.
The cons
- Richard is a little bit reliable on his ult but it takes a long time to cast and can be random.
- Richard being reliable on Ult also makes him less interesting in rallies.
- It’s bothersome to make sure Boudica is giving the buff to the right person.
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