Taking down SCs
 

What is the best way to tackle an SC?

In a current duel game, I am facing Hinnom with Ermor. My opponent has a melqart kitted out with a fire brand, shield of gleaming gold, ring of regen, and a luck pendant. How do you fend these guys off?

If I was Caelum I could nuke the guy with lightning. If it was later in the game (or if I had better luck with randoms) I could paralyze spam the guy or use stellar cascades to get his fatigue up. But my question still stands, what is the best way to stop these guys?

Re: Taking down SCs
 

If he doesn't have reinvig to give him 0 enc then skelly spam from 4+ mages will kill him easily. If he does, then you can also spam vengeance of the dead. There are a lot of ways to kill SCs, those are just 2 fairly easy ones.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Soul Slay, Frozen Heart, Petrify and Paralyze are just a few options that work well against SCs. choose according to what he has. Ring of Regeneration and Pendant of Luck means no Amulet of Anti Magic, which means MR negating spells such as Soul Slay and Petrify would be more useful. if he brings Amulet of Anti Magic or by any chance has an Astral bless, but not cold immunity than Frozen Heart. there are more options, such as the skelli spamming Trumanator mentioned, and a lot more, so use according to what you have available at the area and what your opponent isn't immune to.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Banes with Duckdaggers?

Edit: Duskdaggers have been known to work better.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Unit with fire/frost aura works well, unless he's immune

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Another thing you could try is using small communions with one or more air random augur elder masters spamming precision-boosted lightning bolts. You only have to land a few to guarantee his fatigue goes up above safe levels.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

No assassins or seducers? Maybe black heart someone?

I see lots of "SC's too strong" and "assassins/seducers suck" on this forum but to me they offer a balance. An assassin or seducer gaurantees a one-on-one conflict. Then use something majorly damaging for one-on-one instead of the area effect equipment people like to make. Maybe the crossbow that does 999 damage, or the rod that disintegrates.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

That's terrible advice. The SCs are going to be on their own pretty much anyway.

He has a shield of gleaming gold, so good luck with projectile weapons. He also has high mr so with your 999 damage crossbow you're talking 1 shot before the SC walks over and kills him, which has to beat the insane parry on the shield, then the good mr on the SC. And you have to get the SC to stay still for a turn to assassinate him in the first place. On top of this black heart is a high level blood item and he's talking early midgame by the looks of it.

Remind me, what level is the rod that disintegrates someone? How much does it cost? How many shots is the assassin going to get off before he dies? Does it check mr?

If you want to push how people should be using one of your favourite tactics (assassins) more, this isn't the right thread for it.


To OP: What nation are you?

Re: Taking down SCs
 

OP is ermor.

Probably one of the best assassin kits you could use on a melqart would be something like vine whip+dusk dagger, boots of quickness, and a bottle of living water. I'm not sure this would even work, and that's a lot of gems to spend on a random assassin. Anyway trying to assassinate a melqart doesn't sound like the best idea with something human-sized that's liable to be killed in one hit if anything goes wrong at all.

IIRC there is no such thing as a disintegration rod. Perhaps you meant a phoenix rod, which lets you cast incinerate? Those can be nice but melqarts have inbuilt 50% fire resistance, and with a fire brand he gets to 100. So it won't work there.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Good points.
Of course if SCs are a big concern from the beginning of the game Id tend toward something bigger than human. Anything with stealth can be given a black heart. Titan gods work well if you expect to be pushed back to your castle by SCs or Tartarians

@Sombre: I have often seen suggestions of including flak armies with SCs altho I understand that a solo SC might be YOUR favorite tactic. And the OP mentioned he was facing Hinnom with Ermor if that helps.