Best combo for high level Challenge

Burmeliinis

I had trouble finding information about the best combo for beating the high level challenge, especially when your enemies are + 5 levels above yours (ASL +5). In these cases, you have a 100% chance of body shot and obviously the enemies are also high in health and deal massive damage - 100% of their hits are critical. So in order to win against these enemies, I made a priority list of what you should strive for. I am sure there is something I've overlooked or misunderstood, so please comment!

EDIT: This post has been updated with the very valuable input of @Putchuco, @Troublemaker, @WellyLuga , @JackBauer , @jimmorrison369 and @Cronus.

Firstly, you should try to minimise the amount of body shots you make. This can be done with the weapon trait Piercing, which unfortunately only can be found on ranged weapons. It should be of gold level. Additionally, all charge attacks you make are always non-bodyshots (also always critical on hunter, shooter & scout).

So secondly, you should try to maximize your amount of charge attacks. This is best helped by Sasha, whose trait is that body shots can give you charge points. So make sure Sasha is max level and boosted by good badges. Morgan's trait is similar (get charge points from being damaged), but as he is a bruiser he is of little use in high level missions. Finally, some weapons have the charging trait, where a kill gives a chance of an extra charge point.

Third, when you do get a charge attack, make sure its damage is maximized. Ruthless, destructive and charge damage badges come in well here. Incendiary rifles will be vital to deal additional damage.

Fourth, you will take damage, so do your best to minimize the impact. Iron skin, hazard suit, dodge and health / damage reduction badges will all help you stay alive. Also defensive stance can be good, but in many cases you will not be in overwatch so this one depends on your play style. Stun protect is also very good as tanks will often get in some blows before being taken down. When Sasha is in the hospital you can try to use Jerry, who with the bodyguard trait sometimes will reduce damage you take with 50%. See my post below for detailed calculations

Fifth, the amount of damage you do will still have a big effect. So marksman / strong is good, as well as bonus attacks in the form of revenge/punish/retaliate will all be beneficial. Many players like to use Abraham, as his trait is that all ranged attacks deal extra damage (as well as some extra health to ranged survivors). Other possible hero options are Merle (all survivors deal extra damage) and Dwight (extra damage against non-regular walkers).

Obviously you need to down-priotitize someting, too. So here my opinion on that:
- Critical chance badges and accruate weapon trait are of marginal value, as most regular attacks result in body shots and charge attacks are critical automatically on hunters, shooters and scouts. It might be of some value to assaults and warriors. The same goes for Sure Shot / Power Strike. Obviously a better critical chance is beneficial, but not as much as the above mentioned traits, so this one gets scrapped to make room for more valuable traits.
- Bruisers are of little value, as their main trait (stunning) does not work against high level enemies. Also their low amount of attacks and damage mean they benefit little of Sasha's traits.
- Vigilant trait is very low value, bullet dodge is almost worthless as challenge seldom has freemen
- Of the armor traits, training gear, wrestler and sniper harness are of very little value.
- Lucky. This is a diffucult one, and many swear by it. My reasoning for down-prioritizing it is due to the fact that it does not have any effect on piercing and also none if charge attacks are automatic. However, it does have an indirect on piercing, as if it kicks in (its chance is unaffacted by luck), luck will then help to score a critical hit instead of a regular hit. Also I assume it does not improve the hazard suit's effects. BUT, Luck still has quite a lot of uses, it improves your critical chance, dodge, charging, swift strike, incendiary and other important traits. Luck also helps to get a charge point from Sasha's leader trait.
- Interruptor. This trait doesn't work if your attack results in a body shots so is too unreliable to use.


So based on this, here is my proposal for the best combo of options for each class.
Hunter. Sasha. Weapon: piercing / destructive / incendiary / large caliber. Armor: Stun resist / Iron Skin / Ruthless, perhaps Dodge. Survivor traits: Ruthless, Revenge, Iron Skin, Dodge, Marksman. Optional: Defensive Stance.

Assault. Have at least one in your team, even two depending on map. Weapon: Gold wide spread & piercing, silver Lethal. Armor: Stun resist / Iron Skin / Ruthless, perhaps Dodge. Survivor traits: Marksman, Dodge, Ruthless, Revenge, Iron Skin. Optional: Defensive Stance / Lucky (due to not automatic critical on charge attacks).

Shooter. Can be fairly good as they charge easily and deal high damage, but the big downside is the limited number of targets. Weapon: Piercing, Charging, Destructive. Armor: Stun resist / Iron Skin / Ruthless, perhaps Dodge. Survivor traits: Ruthless, Revenge, Iron Skin, Marksman, Dodge. Optional: Defensive Stance.

Warrior. Jerry. All melee survivors are at a disadvantage, as there is no piercing trait on melee. Still, good warriors can deal out a lot of damage. Weapon: Gold Arc & Destructive, silver Lethal. Armor: Stun Protect / Iron Skin / Hazard Suit / Ruthless, perhaps Health / Dodge. Survivor traits: Ruthless, Retaliate, Dodge, Def Stance, Iron Skin, Strong, Lucky.

Scout. With a Pitch Fork can be a lethal combination. Main idea is to use the scout special weapons trait, treath reduction. Weapon: Threath reduction, Destructive, Swift Strike. Armor: Stun Protect / Iron Skin / Hazard Suit / Ruthless, perhaps Health / Dodge. Survivor traits: Ruthless, Retaliate, Dodge, Def Stance, Iron Skin, Strong. If you have unlocked Michonne, a melee combo can also work, with her trait and Swift Strike giving a lot of extra attacks.

Bruiser. Some players report success with bruisers also in difficult missions. As the bruiser special attach (stun) doesn't work on high level enemies, bruiser is clearly still the one class that many players will dismiss in high level missions. Main traits to look for are the combos of Retaliate AND Punish, and damage reduction & health improving traits. Also the special wide range weapons (Morgan's staff etc) are quite useful.

KaLi

You share many great and useful points here! Thank You and I'm sure it will help many out there.


The Reason why you don't find many great combo of strategy shared here is because it will probably end up getting nerf just like it has in the past


Others may try to share here their input but It's better to join a guild with a separate chatting app to further discuss those great high level challenge strategies

Elkador

@Burmeliinis
I am not that professional, because I am playing "only" till ~1700 stars but I think there is one point to discuss.

If you use Sasha as leader you want to charge fast with bodyshots. If you use weapons with piercing, the bodyshot calculation will decrease the chance of bodyshots and the chance to charge your attacks will decrease either, so you should use weapons without piercing, if you want use Sasha efficiently.
The noncharged attacks will do less damage but you will be charged faster.

Putchuco

Awesome share @Burmeliinis !

One point I would like to add, don’t dismiss Luck so easily.
It helps on the Dodge trait (as you described), it helps on charging and it helps on traits like Swift Strike on the very least.

Burmeliinis

@Elkador That is true and a thing I thought about, but I ended up prioritizing traits that are useful even when Sasha is in the hospital. Building your team only around Sasha's trait can quickly become a gold drain as you need to heal her everytime she gets damaged. Also, Sasha's trait only triggers around 25%, so it's still only every fourth piercing hit you get where you instead would have gotten a charge point. So even with Sasha in a mission I don't think piercing is a bad thing at all.

@KaLi - I hope you are wrong - also I mentioned some things which could be improved. For example Bruiser, Wrestler and Interruptor seem to be quite useless on high levels at the moment.

Burmeliinis

By the way, I am also by no means a professional myself either. Just trying to learn from you guys

EDIT: Here are the calculations about damage reduction, as the max lenght of the OP forced me to take out this part.

The hazard suit armor often gets overlooked, but actually seems better than iron skin and dodge. A gold hazard suit turns 20% of attacks into body shots, which actually reduces damage by 75% (as the attack otherwise automatically would be critical - and walker critical attacks deal double damage), so in average 15% damage reduction (75% * 20%). This is the same as gold iron skin's 15%, and additionally you get fire protection, which will come in handy as your hunters will be sporting incendiary weapons. But what about Dodge . On ASL +5, all walker attacks will automatically be critical attacks (damage around +100%), and dodge will turn those into regular attacks, so 50% damage reduction. A gold dodge will turn 15% into regular attacks, so damage reduction is on average actually only 8% (50% * 15%). As you can see, hazard suit appears to be better than dodge against very high level enemies. Obviously hazard suit is not available on all classes and not as a survivor trait, so dodge still has a place, but I would not prioritize it as high as many seem to do. A maxed out dodge will trigger around (15+15 dodge = 30 % + luck 20+20 = 30% * 1,4 = 42% --> 42% * 50% = 21 % average damage reduction), which is slightly better than a gold iron skin, but using up 4 slots that could be used for something more beneficial. Obviously these traits are not excluding each other, so a combination of Hazard suit, Dodge and Iron Skin can do a lot to decrease damage. Dodge and Luck in this way go hand in hand, so if you dismiss one, you might as well dismiss the other, too.

Burmeliinis

@Putchuco , yeah Luck is a difficult one as it influences so many things. You're right that I come off as dismissing it completely, but it has its uses so can be good, especially on assault and warrior, where charge attacks are not automatically critical.

EDIT. I also hadn't considered that luck helps with Sasha's trait. So luck seems to be more useful than I first considered.

Troublemaker

I love Sasha and Michonne.

I love Lucky.

WellyLuga

I understand your logic behind sure shot but I also think you dismiss it a bit too quickly, with gold piercing I've seen my shooter take down level 33 walkers with one normal attack because piercing kicked in and I managed to score a crit. With sure shot if I manage to get a normal attack in chances are it's also going to do huge damage.

To add to lucky, it also helps with Sasha's leader trait so I think it's vital. I have a hunter rifle which has silver bore, gold pierce and gold lucky which serves me well. With sure shot and Sasha's leader trait I have a 30% chance of a normal attack and about 60% chance that it will turn into a crit. If I get a body shot instead then lucky will help with Sasha's leader trait to get me a vital charge point

Edit to add: Awesome post @Burmeliinis

Elkador

@Burmeliinis
Funny fact: I don't have any ranged wepaons without piercing, so I only play with it, but I heard that many players change their weapons to maximise the body shot count.

JackBauer

While I agree with many things I disagree with the statement that bruisers "are of no value".
When it comes to JSS there are excellent strategies out there with bruisers. Especially now with Morgan.
Also last challenge I didn't use Sasha once. All maps Michonne and 2 Scouts. (until ASL+5 when challenge timer ran out).

Burmeliinis

Yeah I haven't unlocked Michonne so my post is a bit lacking in that respect.

I will probably update the OP after your comments, as there were many good points raised.

jimmorrison369

Don't know exactly where it was found, but I remember walkers have a critical hit damage of >200%.
So actually, dodge reduces over 50% in damage. (in 40% of the cases if you use luck and have it on survivor and armor)
Hazard suit maybe has a damage reduction of 75%, but only works in 20% of all cases. Therefore in the end, dodge still trumps it on that account.

I think combining dodge and hazard-suit is even better than just picking one of both.

Like @WellyLuga says. Critical chance is very helpful on ranged survivors. If you got 90% critical hit chance. Every 4 hits will have a critical, on average.

Lastly.
Luck. Now we know luck is added to your critical chance(not multiplied like all other traits.), if you have sure-shot plus luck on your survivor and weapon. You'll be already close to 90% critical chance! That's a 27% REAL critical chance if you use pierce.

That's all I have to add.

That is a great list @Burmeliinis . I won't agree 100% about the subjective usefulness of certain traits and/or survivor types. But it is pretty darn close.

Cronus

I think after awhile you figure out there is no one best answer to all of this. For me my best Bruiser gets used more frequently than my top Warrior and in tougher situations. My Michonne is pink and she's really useful. Lucky is probably more useful than you're giving it credit for. Threat reduction, swift strike and incendiary are all traits, when used, that you want to maximize their rate of occurrence. Nothing worse than firing at a Fattie and watching a spark with no ignition. I certainly want luck on my survivor and on the weapon (if at all possible) for incendiary. What you've cataloged above is a good framework for better understanding important points of the game and I'll say as you try different combinations you'll start to see where they are or are not useful.

jimmorrison369

Elkador said:

@Burmeliinis
I am not that professional, because I am playing "only" till ~1700 stars but I think there is one point to discuss.

If you use Sasha as leader you want to charge fast with bodyshots. If you use weapons with piercing, the bodyshot calculation will decrease the chance of bodyshots and the chance to charge your attacks will decrease either, so you should use weapons without piercing, if you want use Sasha efficiently.
The noncharged attacks will do less damage but you will be charged faster.

While this is true to a degree,
If you have pierce and have high critical, then that non-body-shot will be a critical (In that way being a "free charged attack" (no ruthless I know). If you weigh this out, it might be better to have pierce when you try to deal damage. So for assaults maybe no, but a high damage shooter/hunter might in the end be better with pierce.

CBgaming1969

Hi @jimmorrison369 and @Burmeliinis am hearing you correctly that the hazard suit works on other things other than fire?

I have yet to upgrade a hazard suit yet, opting so far to make enough optimize armor farming with training gear and sniper as well as tougher armor with stun resistance etc. for tougher challenges and haven't yet played with hazard suits which after my last workshop finishes in a couple of hours and I start upgrading lvl 23 that was further down my list as I use range teams for challenges normally.

I would love you opinion on hazard suits and optimal armor triats...

ShadowaceAz

All attacks are now getting a percent chance added for body shot

CBgaming1969

Also, I have always been under the impression that iron skin and like traits such as hazard suit reducing bodyshots was only valuable against raiders and not walkers.

I'm I wrong about that?

ShadowaceAz

CBgaming1969 said:

Also, I have always been under the impression that iron skin and like traits such as hazard suit reducing bodyshots was only valuable against raiders and not walkers.



I'm I wrong about that?

Correct.
I mean wrong..

Wait.. You is correct you is wrong! Or were you wrong about being correct?
Ah man! Look what ya done did! Ya melted my brain.

Dodge = all attacks except bullets.
Bullet dodge, Only bullets = Freemen/Outpost
Iron Skin = every attack, even ant bites!
Hazard Suit = Every attack, except maybe Ant bites. (Those suckers can burrow under any armor.)

CBgaming1969

Awesomeness iron skin and hazard every attack!!!

Thanks

CBgaming1969

I knew the dodge and bullet dodge one's

Burmeliinis

I edited my OP to include your input. Obviously there are many opinions, and shows that the game is quite well balanced, when there is no objectively "best" way to build your team.

David_H79

One thing to add, iron skin doesn't work on fire damage.
The only trait that reduces fire damage is hazard suit.

ShadowaceAz

David_H79 said:

One thing to add, iron skin doesn't work on fire damage.
The only trait that reduces fire damage is hazard suit.

And for those that have not figured it out, burning is 10% of your max health per round.
So easy math, give me a break cause I ain’t the @DLicch.
1000 health is your perfect lovable cuddly survivor. You already got hit for 200.
Now your burning. Damage is still 10% of your 1000, so another 100 poof burns up at turn end.
You get hit for another 150.. Didn’t put out fire !! (dumbass)
Turn ends, you still take 10% of 1000, not your current health of 550 (and rare)

Next turn you lose another 10% of 1000 and you are also now ( Medium Rare]
Rinse repeat until green line or heal/put out fire.

CBgaming1969

> @David_H79 said:
> One thing to add, iron skin doesn't work on fire damage.
> The only trait that reduces fire damage is hazard suit.

I figured as much...I really try and stay away from them fiery little devils and interested in maximizing my armor, weapons, hero/survivor for three types of missions I do.

Swapping out of 1 and into the best for mission type!!

Burmeliinis

One thing I noticed today, is that hazard suit gets checked before dodge. I have one survivor with both gold hazard suit and dodge. So the walker attack first triggered the hazard suit into body shot, then that was attack was dodged. Now, this happened against a walker with the same level as my survivor, but I don't see any reason how this wouldn't work against a walker +5 levels above yours. This way you could completely dodge a +5 lvl walker attack!

ShadowaceAz

Burmeliinis said:

This way you could completely dodge a +5 lvl walker attack!

SHHHHH, don’t tell them!

Drunken

@Burmeliinis

And everyone else. Charge points are crucial above skill yet on maps that have spawn count down you can get guaranteed points with a little fello named Rufus. Believe it or not his leader trait can be a life saver.

ShadowaceAz

He also brews some mean moonshine!!

Gomose_W

> @ShadowaceAz said:
> All attacks are now getting a percent chance added for body shot

The Armor trait bullet proof might be stronger than hazard suit---30%body shot rate!!

CBgaming1969

> @Drunken said:
> @Burmeliinis
>
> And everyone else. Charge points are crucial above skill yet on maps that have spawn count down you can get guaranteed points with a little fello named Rufus. Believe it or not his leader trait can be a life saver.

Now, for Rufus trait to activate, all walkers have to be gone before the next spawn? Or is it something else like as long as they aren't close enough to be a treat?

I have only played with Rufus, but not in leader position. I will Sat when I use my 24hr gas.

But knowledge is power so any would be great