Luther, and In Team Hero Positions

I got a lot of questions a few days ago regarding team composition, and especially Luther.  This article will be about a less often talked about aspect of team composition, how it can affect your specific team, and hopefully, how to use Luther more effectively for those of you who chose to capitalize on his event recently.

So first things first, if you have not read the first article about team composition, you should consider doing so.  Though not required, it will be very helpful for this discussion.  You can find it here.

Each hero has a position in the team.  For Tanks, it is position one and two.  Support is usually 3 and 4 in the middle of the team, and healers often occupy position 5.  There are some notable exceptions:  Maya is a healer, but she will occupy positions 2 or 3 depending on who you have in your team.  Celeste will also do the same.  These two are not dedicated healers, they are actually support and will do quite a bit of damage, and heal also.  Sort of a two for one.  Some mages will occupy the fifth position on the back line. Orion, Helios and, Cornelius are notable examples.  

All of this has an effect on your team dynamic.  Certain heroes will be more effective in certain positions. Nebula works best in the middle of the team.  In position 3, she can give all of your heroes support.  If she is in position 4, she will mostly effect positions 3 and 6.  Since most of your damage dealers like to occupy positions 2 and 4, having her in position three has obvious advantages.

There is another position that is less talked about, and that is the position of "Off-Tank", or position two.  This is a position that, depending on overall team makeup, is occupied by the following heroes:  Galahad, Qing Mao, Ishmael, Maya, and Markus.  There are others, but these are the most important.  

You will notice throughout the course of battles you fight that once your Tank goes down, the line usually falls fairly quickly.  The same happens with a team's healers.  But what happens if your tank doesn't die, but instead leaves position one when they activate their first skill?  That, gentle reader, can be very bad; which brings us to the point of this article.

It will be helpful to examine this issue with a sample team.  For our purposes, I have decided to use heroes that most already have.  They were also part of the original discussion on this topic, so hopefully, will allow those of you who use them to take away some effective battle applications as well.

Our hypothetical team will be:  Luther+Qing Mao+Kiera+Nebula+Martha/Dorian/Celeste/Thea.  There are many other options for the last hero, I will not go into all of them here, there is an amount work you will have to do tuning your teams.  Martha would be good with this team, but Martha is good with every team.

Moving on...

So, let's examine this team in a little more detail, paying attention to the team member positions.

So our team line up is going to read from right to left here.  In Position one, We'll have Luther.  Position two Qing Mao, and so on down the line.  

So, in this team Luther will act as the tank.  He is classified as a tank officially, but functions in a crowd control capacity.  This can spell trouble.  Luther's first skill will cause him to jump into the middle of the enemy team.  At this point, he becomes a potential liability.  

Looking at the still pictured above, we see that Luther has left the team formation.  In doing so, he has cleared a direct path to the back of the line where Martha is.  This will make scoring damage on her much easier.  Krista in this team is occupying position two.  She will not put up much of a fight here.  This spells real trouble for the Luther team here.  

So how do we work around this?  If you're going to use a Hero like Luther or Ziri as a Tank, you will need to fill the second position with a very strong hero that has a good amount of armor and a strong attack.  This is commonly referred to as an off tank.  There are many heroes that can function as an off tank.  Galahad, Astaroth, Qing Mao, Luther, Ishmael, Aurora, Andvari, and possibly Elmir.

For our purposes, we are going to use Qing Mao.  She will work well in this team as she is paired with Kiera.  There is another reason for using this duo here.  Kiera and Qing Mao will work together to boost the team's damage output.  This is absolutely needed here.  If we are going to run with a softer Off Tank, and Luther is going to jump into the other team, we'll want to end this fight as quickly as possible.  This means the more damage, the better.

So we have Luther Jumping into the middle of the enemy team.  When he does this, he's going to attack the hero occupying the fifth position in the enemy team.  Often times this will be their healer.  If the healer is killed, the team will not be able to recover. This is where Kiera and Qing Mao come in.

Qing Mao isn't really set up to be a tank, but she has a lot of abilities that will allow her to perform the job with a little support.  Her first skill will damage the front line of the enemy team and push them back, this will give her a little breathing room.  Her green skill will deal damage and blind the enemy hit by it.  This means that the enemy's attacks will miss for the duration of the blindness.  Her Blue skill damages the enemy based on the level of their current health.  Qing Mao does not have armor.  This is a disadvantage, but she does have dodge.  If sufficiently leveled, dodge will allow her to avoid being hit by attacks.  Dodge success is determined in the same way that Critical Hit chance is.  If you have questions, you should take a look at the article on Critical Damage Here:  Critical Hit Chance and Dodge.

Okay, the last thing that we need to consider in the Qing Mao Kiera team is how they work together.  Kiera is a damage dealer plain and simple.  To do this efficiently, she needs to be able to get around the enemy's armor.  Armor penetration is needed here.  Kiera has a glyph that can be leveled to increase her armor penetration, as well as her Winter Skin.  Her second artifact will also increase her armor penetration, her first will increase Physical Attack.  

We can further boost her Armor Penetration abilities by teaming her with Qing Mao.  Once Qing Mao has been promoted to Violet, her fourth skill becomes available.  Every attack reduces the target's armor.  This effect will last the entirety of the battle, even if she dies.  The net effect of this armor reduction is the same as armor penetration.  Her main artifact also increases armor penetration.  This allows more of the damage from Kiera's attack to get through and um, damage the enemy targets.  Kiera has a very large AoE.  These two together are a potent combination.  

We follow up with Nebula.  I am not going to go into full details on her, if you'd like a more in-depth look at Nebula, let me know.  I will create an article specifically about her.  In this team, we need Nebula because she will do quite a bit of physical damage on her own, as well as boost Kiera's physical attack, and keep both Kiera and Thea/Martha alive longer.  She will also remove debuffs placed by the enemy team, such as Celeste's Cursed Flames, or Lian's charm.

This brings us to the healer, and our final considerations on hero placement.  It is important in this team to use a back line healer.  The reason for this is Nebula.  If we use a position 2/3 healer in this team (Maya or Celeste) Nebula will be the last hero in the line.  This means her healing effects will only effect the hero directly in front of her.  This reduces her efficiency.  This is bad for obvious reasons.

In closing, there is not tried and true formula that I am aware of to come up with the best placement.  You will have to look at your hero's stats, and decide for yourself in many cases.  Fight practice battles, and see what works, and what doesn't.  In other words, go forth brave hero, and be destructive.