Battleheart strategy, tips, & tricks

[Howlix]

Instead of wading through the battleheart announcement thread for tips and tricks I decided to create a new thread dedicated to it. I'm going to start it with my understanding of the different classes and a few tips and a question or two.

Tanks:
The main tanks are obviously the knights, Shepherd and The Black Knight. So far (I'm not to 30 yet) their only difference is aesthetic. Their skill trees are identical so it's just a matter of personal preference on the look of your character. I've found that the knight's skill tree is based mainly on pulling mobs attention away from other characters and increasing his own armor, however armor can be sacraficed for higher attack power. He also has passive skills for decreasing an enemies armor or attack power. I did not find his special attacks up to level 20 to be that devastating, but they definitely keep him in the fight longer.

A good secondary tank is the monk, Feung. The monk has better DPS than the knight, at least the way I have him equipped, and his skill tree is much different. His main auto attack seems to push enemies backward and he has a lot of skills which will knock them to the ground or evade attacks altogether. He also has some pretty damaging special attacks.

DPS:

The rogue and the Barbarian are the main DPS classes in the game. I have much more experience with the rogue class, but the Barbarian seems to be very adept at dealing out high damage quickly at the expense of armor. Most of his skills will focus on this as well. For instance Death Wish is a passive skill which increases the positive and negative effects of your enrage skill (IE. increasing your damage at the expense of your armor).

Personally I prefer the rogue. While he does not attack as fast as the barbarian (you can increase this with trinkets to the point at which it is almost not a noticable difference), he has skills focused on weakening defenses, damage over time, and increasing his critical hit %. He also has two skills which I have found are great for pulling baddies off of your more squishier classes quickly, shadowstep and poisoned knife, both of which also deal high amounts of damage while pulling the aggro off of your healer, bard, wizard, or witch. With creative use of trinkets and his skill tree you can create a fast hitting character with a very high critical hit chance.

Ranged Classes:

So far the ranged classes are magic based wizards and a witch. Their basic attacks seem to have high damage per hit than any other character in the game, however they are slower to cast them so their DPS is not as high. Both classes have a fantastic skill tree. The wizard is more AOE damage based with knockdowns and slowdowns with some damage over time mixed in. The witch has a more target focused skill tree which seems to be all over the place. She has a damage over time AOE spell, a spell which will damage an enemy and transfer the damage as health to your most injured party member as well as a passive ability which will heal her for 20% of every hit she makes on auto attack or increase her own damage per hit. She can do crowd control via a mass horror spell or turn a difficult mob into a frog.

Healers:

The primary healer in the game is the cleric. Her main auto ability will heal your targeted party member and most of her skills are focused on healing, or protecting a targeted party member. She has a group heal spell, a shield spell, passive abilities which will either increase the healed party member's power or heal them over time and even a bubble which you can put up around her to simultaneously push enemies away from her and anyone around her but damage them as well.

I think a lot of people may be confused about the bard's part in the party. At first I thought his main ability would heal, but it does not. It increases your targeted party member's defense and attack power by putting his own stats on top of the targeted member's. He has a powerful healing spell (it has a 20 second cool down), and a group heal over time spell. His other skills are focused on buffing your targeted party member or the party as a whole.

I've found that survivability with both healing classes is equal, however the bard requires a little more micromanagement. Make sure you watch your party's health bars closely, target your party member receiving the most damage, and remember that your most damaged party member might not be the one on whom the enemies have their crosshairs set at the time.

Some battle strategy:

Keep your squishy classes together. I haven't run into many mobs with AOE abilities that can take multiple characters out quickly at the same time. If mobs jump on the screen and start attacking your squishies and you have them on different sides of the screen you are going to have to send your DPS and/or Tank to opposite sides of the screen as well. This takes more time. If your squishies are together you can quickly pull ALL of the aggro off of both of them with one DPS or Tank class while still focusing on damaging the other incoming mobs with your free party member. This is especially important with boss fights. I normally focus my DPS and Tank on the incoming mobs. Once baddies start flooding in from both sides to attack my squishier characters I have my rogue shadowstep and throw a poisoned blade to attract attention off of them. This usually requires a shift in healing to the rogue as well. Properly equipped your knight should be able to hold a boss' attention without constant healing and survive until your DPS class can get back to chopping away.

Power leveling:

There are some trinkets which pop up occasionally in the shop for increased % of xp on the equiped character. I don't know if these stack. XP seems to be distributed to each character individually based on their involvement in the battle and their level. I could be wrong about that as I have not let one character do all of the work yet. I will do some experimenting and post my results on this part later.

Making Gold:

Sell, sell, sell! Trinkets for increased gold % and sell everything you aren't using (did I say that already?). It is good to keep one low level staff around if you have a rare one for your witch or wizard so that you can switch them out when using only one or the other.


Now for questions:

Does anyone know if trinket effects stack? IE. If I equip every one of my party members with 2 bandit's satchels will I increase the amount of gold per battle by 160%? I will do some experimenting in this department as well and post my results. If anyone has an answer though, it would save me some time.

[ArtNJ]

Satchels do stack.

I could be wrong, but I think the best gold farm may be the very first boss (boar) loaded with satchels. Its very quick with high level characters. Remember to reset your skills to enhance DPS.

[Howlix]

You beat me to it, the satchels do stack which would lead me to believe other trinkets stack as well. My experiment was done quickly on the first level with and without multiple satchels. There was a noted increase in gold.

Also an update on EXP distribution. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with your particular party member's involvement in the battle. It would seem it has to do with character level, and level difficulty.

Moderately good EXP while farming the first boss as well.

[Seishu]

Would someone mind listing out all of the available stat boosting items? Never mind, I found a satchel.

Also I've been experimenting with using different classes, and would like to post some of the pros and cons with different setups. The following three setups are the ones I use most frequently.

1. Tanking with Berserks
This is one of my personal favorites. Basically I have Lucille as my healer, and constantly have her healing my tank, Shepherd (Ring of Swift Recovery helps here). Then I have two berserkers, Garrick and Baelrosh who both have a ring of regen and blood-soaked sash (healing and life drain). Then the strategy is to have the tank attract most of the attention while the two DPS fighters either team up on monster, or attack a group. With skills like whirlwind and cleave you can effectively attack groups of enemies around your characters. If the two DPS fighters get low on health you can use the priests healing skills to heal everyone.

2. Buffers n Knights
Basically have both knights equipped with good defensive skills, and tank all of the enemies. Then the priest and bard can each target a knight to buff or heal, and they both have heal all abilities when needed. Like the OP said, it helps to keep the bard and priest together to draw aggro easier. Also if you see some mobs going for your buffers, move them both to the opposite side of the screen as the knights intercept.

3. Variety is the Spice
The standard setup with a healer, tank, caster, and DPS.


Oh and I also wanted to share a simple gold farming method that is relatively quick. Simply have your lowest level and unequipped unit go into the arena alone and die. You will always get some sort of item which can be sold for around 25 gold on average.

[Ghostpants]

Any tips for the golem boss? Tends to wipe my team out pretty quickly.

[Epox]

Use wizard and cleric. Give your cleric the best change cooldown items you have and let him use his level 30 ability which is pwnage. Than while he has invincibility make him heal your wizard, while your wizard quick moves and attacks characters. I won golem boss that way

[Howlix]

Something I've been doing while leveling my lower level party members on the goblin and spider boss in the first area is upgrading my equipment. I equip my party with as many satchels as I can get ahold of and upgrade weapons and armor as I get the gold to do so. Since I've not seen upgrading explained anywhere else, and it is costly to do, many people may not have used it. Basically when you upgrade your equipment it gives you the next piece of equipment up from whatever you upgraded until you get the best piece. The only items you can upgrade are weapons and armor. You have to get the trinkets the hard way via arenas and the merchant.

I'm not sure if there are any rare items outside of the main upgrade chain. Anyone know anything about that? I really should have written down the items and stats of all the upgradeable weapons as I maxed them. *slaps forehead*

[Cilo]

Originally Posted by Ghostpants

Any tips for the golem boss? Tends to wipe my team out pretty quickly.

It's not possible until your party is level 15+, if I remember correctly. You can't mitigate damage and heal fast enough to recover against his enrage, until you unlock tier 3 of the cleric.

Once you do that:

Tank stack defensive trinkets/talents
Keep range to top of screen Cleric at bottom
Tank him in the middle, when he drops aggro hit Warcry
When he enrages Shield Wall with Tank and Cleric Shield and heal through it, your party should only be taking damage from random boulders and you can live through that with party heal. Rinse repeat. If you are careless during his enrage its game over. Always keep your heals focused on your Tank.

[terencefish]

I am stuck in the level 5 with a pig in which. Just can't beat it.

[BrushMyNoseOff]

Originally Posted by terencefish

I am stuck in the level 5 with a pig in which. Just can't beat it.

Read couple of the posts above yours - they are all about the same level. All you have to do is replay the earlier levels a few times to level up your characters up a bit [acquire new skills, upgrade a few weapons], and you should be good to go. Remember to bring along the Cleric and heal your tank - the character that will be your primary attacker. Also, make sure you run away from the bombs. Rinse and repeat.