Eji1700
Spearloc
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Posts: 285
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« on: August 22, 2008, 04:59:10 AM » |
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Guide to Minion Killing: Or how i learned to stop leaving and kill the camper.
Intro:
Minions. One of the most important parts of the game and something that isn't touched upon by many other guides. When a titan gets a minion can easily define a game and the players in it. Just as a noob titan thinks its over if he doesn't grab a mini in the first WW, a noob builder thinks its over if that moron sat pokes the titan 6 seconds in. I see way to many players give up the moment the first minion pops out, regardless of gold. Vast amounts of builders hiding in corners until the penalty hoping not to be found, while a lone lvl2 minion is lightly harassed by a goblin hunter. This is not how it should be, and hopefully this guide will change that.
Note:
This is an immensely comprehensive subject. I plan to hopefully cover options and strategies for every builder and situation assuming varying skills levels as a titan. Also I am probably a decent player who is aware of quite a lot of strategy that is above my level, however I am only one person. Because of this, I would be more than happy to have others help write sections for this guide(my fairy is weak and I rarely screw with sat that much). Also be aware that i have not played any version of 2.8.6 so for the moment this will be written for .5c until .6 is the official version. I plan on updating with various releases. Finally my summer ends and i go back to college on monday so my time will be limited. Due to this do not expect many pictures or too many updates at first because this will take time. Things like fancy font sizes and color will appear later as well. If some mod or admin wants to edit it to make it look fancier that's fine by me as well.
Version this guide is written for:2.8.5c
The builders: This section will deal with all the various builders, and what they have at their disposal to deal with minions. note that all builders have acess to merchant summons at 45 gold(or someone elses 45 gold) and so that will be dealt with in another section.
Basic
Murloc:
Tools:
Panic, TP, Melee hunter, Bash
How can you help?:
Honestly one of the best ways any basic baser race can help, is by providing a decent base for builders to hide in and plan their attacks. You will be grabbing a merch at gold which will help all the races with their minion killing needs. Aside from this, if there is ever an attempt made to kill a minion you should always volunteer your hunter if you have him. The only time you shouldn't is if the titan is actively attacking your base and it is required for its defense. For more active hunting murloc is better than i suspected and good at some of the most basic stuff. Walling off choke points, trapping the titan, and just screwing them up in general are all things murloc can pull off thanks to them having 2 of the best escape skills in the game which can both be used offensively and defensively. Also the hunter upgrade is probably the first thing you should grab after your arc is up if you have any bones at all, which means just netting 45 gold and waiting for penalty. Speaking of, bones work well for your hunter because you can help lock down a target and the added stats keep you alive longer.
Makura:
Tools:
Along with everything that murloc has you've also got a great hunter for tanking and the oh so wonderful seweed aura. Orc style building with mildly stronger walls for early game mean that while you may not be netting the kills you can actively support a minion assassination. If everything goes wrong you've got teleport to fall back on as a safe out.
How can you help?:
Besides building a base for others to hide in you have one of the best slows for keeping minions in range of angry builder mobs. It takes some fancy tricks, but if you can keep a minion under the effect of seeweed aura you can drastically lower his chances of escape. As it stands seweed is one of the best things in the game to lock the minion down with as it totally destroys their ms. Orc walling and the extra 50 hp mean you can also be one of the better minion trappers for an early game situation. As with murloc you should also always help with your hunter, but this will be harder due to its horribly slow speed however, again seweed aura heps with this greatly. Post penalty if you don't have the gold for a super tower after your arc the adv on the hunter is quite nice. More MS makes him a serious threat and the armor helps deal with the crazy DPS titans and minions put out later. In short you round out as quite a nice builder to have along on a minion hunt, but probably not someone who can go it alone until later. Turtle can be a great choice for bones. Serves as a good base wall and if you plan on getting the adv. research he becomes very deadly. When the turtle gets Avatar its scary.
Gnoll:
Tools:
Ward early game makes you essential for early kills against better titans. Your hunter is really a mediocre tank and is better for putting out damage. Gnoll really doesn't bring much actually ,but ward makes them so essential that they're worth it.
How can you help?:
Again. Wards. You may not wall too well and you may not have the best hunter, but gnoll is one of the very few races that can reveal a WWing minion pre gold penalty. Seeing as how this is one of the most important ways for a titan to get his minion out of trouble you can see why a gnoll is essential. Have one sitting safely near by and ready to pop down a ward when the minion WW's. On the upside you can teleport out once you provide your simply but important service. If possible, leave the bones to better hunters. Being ranged means you shouldn't be taking most of the damage.
Troll:
Tools:
Ranged hunter, nice comfy bases with lots of room, and ensnare.
How can you help?:
Honestly theres not much a troll can do that others cant. The hunter, as always, should help when possible, and if you wind up with more than 90 gold and grab the adv. research ensnare can be a big help, but due to a weak escape your builder is one of the few who should stay far far away from the action. Lumber issues don't help since walling is costly to your future, but if the titan lacks a decent sentry skill and has yet to get a pearl you can help. However his hunter can be great at chasing and is dangerous with avatar. Not really a bad choice for bones but again there are better.
Radio:
Tools:
Summon walls, Fast upgrade, Fast 1x1 ranged hunter, invincibility, immolation, and early basing.
How can you help?:
Basing and hunter DPS as usual but radio is easily the worst tanking hunter in the game, but he can be great at putting out dps due to his small size and speed and allows for a method of travel and escape. Early on you're one of the best minion trappers. You can slap on your invincibility to throw up walls to trap him and with your nearly endless lumber supply won't be hurt by upgrading them instantly. If your gutsy immolation damage is actually quite high and just standing next to a mini while he pounds on something else can really eat their hp. I wouldn't suggest this unless you have your escape ready though. Also remember this since a low hp minion will die if you use your builder with escape active to trap them. Later on most of your gold will probably be going to your base but the hunter can become a pretty decent killing machine with training. Lastly i think radio hunter is one of the few that gains no hp from bones and is therefore one of the worst to grab them.
Morph:
Tools:
Warrior form upgrades, beast form, decent lumbering
How can you help?:
First race on the list that can actually kill the minion with its builder(easily). Builder form should never ever ever ever be used near a minion unless to dodge a fatal nuke while running. Warrior form gets very powerful with upgrades and can greatly assist a kill attempt. Slam is great to stop them from getting away, and poking with a maxed warrior can bash and crit for some nice damage while shockwave is great for the minion who's just out of range. The huge amounts of fort armor and evasion also means you can really tank hits, but nukes are still a threat so be careful. You can deal with an early minion with no gold at all with just basic walling and poking, but it does take skill on your part, and a lack of skill on the titans. As for beast form this baby was designed to eat minions. Fully maxed you've got lifesteal to tank them, slow poison to hold them down, a long range slow to catch them, and howl for a full out escape or a great initiating spell that goblin hunters love. I highly suggest you do not skip morphology or mana vial since you will need to pop into warrior form to heal since beast offers no other way of healing itself besides lifesteal. With a maxed beast and some merch summons, lone minions are food.
Ogre:
Tools:
Fart, hunter, catapults.
How can you help?:
More to come.
Adv:
Tauren:
Tools:
Just about everything you can research.
How can you help?:
If there's a minion you better be helping to deal with it because it's practically your purpose in life. First off with 100 mined gold you gain a level which means more hp, and it should be noted that killing minions can level you up as well. For 15 gold you can nab enfeeble and pulverize. Enfeeble can be punished off but it's not bad for slowing down targets or knocking down their attackspeed. Pulverize just ups your dps and helps you take down mini's faster. Also to note is your innate maul which is a passive bash, and charge, while an escape skill, also boosts you attack by 50% and should be used in safe combat(ex: the minion is probably going to die and all possible help is on the other side of the map, or if you have ancestral form to fall back on). 20 gold and up leads you to more pulverize like abilities and eventually your ancestral form. Think of it as an offense polar wrath with your own extra batch of merchant summons and a warstomp. Since minion hunting with tauren could be a guide in and of itself i'll just shorten it to always always help dish out some DPS. Charge and maul alone is dangerous and if you grab your ancestral form minions become lunch.
Fairy:
Tools:
Ranged caster hunter, spells, ranged builder, other stuff
How can you help?:
My fairy is weak but you can at least help harass from a distance since 125 damage is nothing to be laughed at. Hunter is a galss cannon. Never ever let him go 1v1 and abuse his absurd range and spell casting ability. So far all murs here, i plan on playing more as farie this weekend to help flesh this out.
Nature:
Tools:
WW, Orc building, Panic, hunter, armies, fruit traps
How can you help?:
Alright nature. The omni helper. There's so much that nature can do its silly. For starters one of the things that really helps is nature has shelter free lumbering, allowing a decent nature player to always have a good lumber flow. This means that it should be you, not the poor lumber starved troll, who's walling the minion in with upgraded walls. To help with this nature is the only builder with orc building and WW. What this means is that you can hit WW, walk behind the titan, and pop out walls without breaking WW. This is huge and will catch many titans off guard. Panic as always is a great skill for getting into position or getting the hell away. Also of note is the fact that if you panic, and then WW you will get an even bigger speed boost while remaining invisible. Don't over use this though because usually just one or the other will be enough to get your poor tree to safety. Next up we have the nature hunter. Easily one of the best melee hunters, he was one of the few who could solo a lvl 2 minion away from the mound(can he still?). He's got a good MS, damage, and nice amour and until you get a base up he should be involved in every base siege and mini attack. A great candidate for bones. Also his adv research leads to entangle, which is a wonderful skill for stopping a minion or titan escape.
Next up we've got the nature ability to use armies. This is not my specialty but they are great for killing and trapping minions and titans alike. Stone throwers i believe are currently outclassed by spears, but i could be wrong. Either way both stones and spears are ranged attacking units, with spears having longer range and higher damage, while the stone's have blink. The 3rd unit is the infamous venos. These guys are tankier than their brethren and also come with blink charges. The reason for their added HP is the fact that they are melee and have slow poison. Naturally you probably want to grab a few venos regardless of what you decide to use since they can ensure your target won't outrun you. However better players can use blink and decent micro skills to actually surround and trap the titan, using the hunter and mass veno's. If the target lacks a WW or TP they are gone.
Finally the most difficult and costly trick for nature comes from the fact that their builders can pop up fruit trees. This leads to fruit trapping. As anyone who's watched one of the amazing kyleep replays knows, the idea is to use multiple builders and have them pop up a forest of fruit trees around a minion. One of the easy ways to do this is when a minion is trying to break into a lumber base and is currently attacking 2 or 3 upgraded walls. You have the nature hunter blink in behind and start beating on him while your builders pop up a forest of fruit trees around him. This adds DPS to the attack since fruit tree damage can build up, and if the Minion WW's he cannot go through the fruit trees which means his only means of escape is a TP. Combine this with the other nature advantages and you can almost always net a kill, but be careful. If you screw up you've just fed the titan and make sure to have your hunter, or someone, or something deny the copious fruit trees that you just threw up.
Goblin:
Tools:
Fast upgrade walls, stun trap, panic, flying ranged hunter,factories.
How can you help?:
Where to begin. Like nature thanks to goblins usually copious lumber amounts and fast upgrade on walls, they should usually do the walling in of a minion. However be careful because goblin walls give some of the largest exp amounts in the entire game. Generally if you're a goblin player you should always rush your hunter out and grab siphon mana. This thing flys(very slowly) so you can put it over trees or armies to ensure that it takes no damage while it pounds a minion. Again your hunter should always try to be involved in the battle. The adv research is mines, and these are not the greatest thing. Most just pile them up in front of bases but a smart titan will pearl and kill the mines. If you put them in unexpected spots however it can do some nice damage. Also NEVER get thsi against breezious. he's considered a hovering unit and therefore will NOT set off mines making them totally useless.
Your escape skills can also help. Panic is panic and remains the same. Use it to get away, or get in position, but be careful because its your only reliable escape. Your stun mine is more interesting. You can use it to prevent escapes, TP's(with luck and planning. TP staff TPing only. Not punishment center.), and just in general screw people up. However be warned that the stun CAN be punished off and the mine can be destroyed before it goes off. Either by pearling or by noticing and attacking the mine before it activates, but after it shows itself.
Of course if you mention goblin you have to mention the factory base. Goblin has a research for about 1000 lumber(might be more) that increases the range of goblin factories attack to 1000 range. Combined with a large amount of walls and your flying hunter, and you can actually hold off and kills minions or low level titans. The factories high range is also useful when trying to trap a poorly micro'd minion by the mound. Get its a attention with a builder, and then when it gets near the walls, if you have a factory farther back, it can open fire on the minion and keep him there, rather than him giving up and walking back to the mound. This works with any fruit tree like structure, but is easiest with gob, however don't expect it to work against even remotely decent titans.
Demon:
Tools:
summon building, insta upgraded walls,summons, shades, nukes, balth.
How can you help?:
more to come
Mag:
Tools:
Damn near everything he has.
How can you help?:
more to come
Satyr:
Tools:
again. damn near everything.
How can you help?:
more to come(waiting for 2.8.6)
The Merchant:
Minions:
Minion general knowledge:
Minion Level: to quote Darox "Minions level on death is determined by a integer which starts at 2 and increases every ?5? minutes by one, up to a maximum of 7."
Minion Skills
General:
WW:
When its gotten:
Nuke:
When its gotten:
Summons:
When its gotten:
Heal:
When its gotten:
Avatar:
When its gotten:
Specific:
Molt:
Slyph:
Luci:
Demon:
Grant:
Glac:
Bub:
Breeze:
Titan Strats to be aware of:
General:
Specific:
Molt:
Slyph:
Luci:
Demon:
Grant:
Glac:
Bub:
Breeze:
Builder general strats:
I plan on making this pretty later but for now i'll be quoting murs since he covers everything i was going to touch on and more:
"when attacking a minion near middle, NEVER attack him with the hunter, builder, or whatever the fuck you are killing him with.
ALWAYS get in his aggro range and pull, at the very least to a spot that is outside the mines regeneration. i don't believe this sets off the "our allies are under seige" message either.
while pulling, attempt to pull to a spot that is very easily trappable.
ie like some spot that is near a wall, a small path, a shop.
this is to make it easier to trap be it with harvesters, merchant summons, or hunters.
a minion becomes 10 times easier to kill without invis, and forcing him to invis early is crucial.
to effectively hunt and depose a minion from a pro titan early-mid game, it is crucial you do it during a seige, and that the entire mid is walled off. once this is secure, pull minion and force windwalk, then concentrate and kill it.
tp a lot to choke obvious points minions will go to during a chase.
while being chased...99% of players are very very very easy to predict.
use these predictions to your advantage, blocking, choking, and trapping effectively based on your predictions.
many experienced titans carry their minions around with them during seige.
while a seige, pay attention to spell animations and mana, and after they cast pearl, move in with a teammate to choke off points, and attack the minion during or shortly after the seige.
using harvesters, merch summons, hunters to block the path of the minion while running to get extra hits in is an advanced, but very effective strategy.
another advanced, but effective strategy is using 400 hp harvesters to form worker walls around minions and kill them that way.
you only need 4 workers to make this happen if you are very good.
also.
when hunting minions, items are VERY important.
such items as EYE, SCROLL, and TP STICK.
i can't stress how important these items are, the usage should be fairly obvious." Yay for murs.
Final note: i'm posting this now so that others can help by posting up strats and knowledge. When the guide is mostly done i'll throw it in a word editor and fix it up and then repost it in one clean, easy to access place.
Credits:
Murs: For a very helpful message detailing quite a lot of info. Basically everything on murloc, more on makura, suggestions on faire, and quite a few general strats. Some i already knew, but done better, and some i would never have mentioned otherwise.
Darox: Lots of info and strats in general over time. Map editing. Stuff on minion levels and farie.
Stuff to do:
Finish vast amount of info.
Make it less wordy.
Make it more pretty.
Have a better framework in by the weekend.
Demon and Mag next. Still could use some faire stuff.
Changelog:
Added changelog
updated murloc with murs info.
Fleshed out titan and minion section.
Added more for a few other builders.
Gob and Nat up
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