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Build for a scarab

Posted: May 30th, 2008, 10:17 am
by Konnar
Okay, this scarab is HOT. Not gay-hot, but still hot. He's a scarab, he's like, all religious and stuff like a paladin but he's not a simple healing sissy flailing some plastic hammer around. Much better ! Ehh... anyways. The tips I'm going to give you, I've tried and, well, made people (inexperienced and experienced) cry. The new 1.12 patch introduces his talent Overwhelming Radiance which is the focus of my build.

So, how can you play him ?

Optimizing him is a simple matter in my opinion. You're going to have lots of mana and tanking capability at start, and while slowly building up your gold and experience you'll be kicking ass around level 20 thanks to your good tanking, your great spawn control and your awesome nuking.


Prerequesites to being completely imbalanced :

-take an orb of mana, an intelligence robe and a helmet. Upgrade them equally as you get gold.
-build a generator and using it to get some crystal, which is vital for this build
-get your first point on Nightmare, and max out life wave always. When you can, take a point in tough carapace and the rest of the points go to smite.
-Later levels (around 25), sell your equipment and max out an orb of skill and an intelligence robe - the rest of the gold spent on consumables, and if you have a LOT in excess, buy the Storm Hammer.


The actual getting imbalanced :
-Use life wave often.
-Use nightmare, trying to get as many enemies as possible
-Spam smite. Like, as long as it's not under cooldown, use it.
-Apotheosis is best saved in emergency situations, especially in the lower levels. Around lv 35+, you can start using it to kill bases.

Why is it imbalanced :
-Life Wave means your spawns will get loads of hp. Nightmare means your spawns will be hurt less. These two spells combined allow you to reverse spawn waves very easily and make money.
-Spamming smite pressures your enemies. The fact that it's low level is fine because you're using it's 30% damage property and its low mana cost to make it a very cost efficient spell - use it to soften targets quickly.
-Life Wave heroes and spawns for pressure, spawn crushing and gold. By the time Life Wave is recharged most of the time, you can position yourself so that you don't heal your troops but hurt the enemy. Smite and Life Wave make for some VERY easy hero kills when you get around +50 intelligence.
-Apotheosis saves yourself from a bad situation.
-Your innate Celestial restoration coupled with your damage reducing carapace skill means you have a LOT of durability on the battlefield
-Life Wave allows you to heal your allies to keep them from being killed.

The synergy of all this makes him a very powerful... everything. He is just very powerful in every situation.

Now go own !

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 3rd, 2008, 10:33 am
by Furion
not a very detailed guide and without additional stuff like pics or replays,

just a minor issue, smite can actually use alot of mana, because the mana cost is based on the damage done

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 3rd, 2008, 10:53 am
by Reaper
build demolished by me btw

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 3rd, 2008, 11:59 pm
by Perhaps
I find that Divine Manifestation is much better than Apotheosis.

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 10th, 2008, 5:55 am
by Konnar
Furion wrote:not a very detailed guide and without additional stuff like pics or replays,

just a minor issue, smite can actually use alot of mana, because the mana cost is based on the damage done
You don't get it. It has a fixed mana cost, and destroys the target's mana a percentage of the damage smite deals.

Also, I didn't feel like adding pretty pictures for nothing, I think the explanations are detailed enough
Reaper wrote:build demolished by me btw
Yeah pretty badly :shock: :shock: :shock:

But that doesn't change the validity of this build.
Perhaps wrote:I find that Divine Manifestation is much better than Apotheosis.
DM was teh base destroyer of doom. Apotheosis serves differently, as you can use it to save yourself as well as buff troops a bit (the dps though is negligible)

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 10th, 2008, 6:42 am
by Dekar
Actually its true that the scarab loses additional mana for every point of damage it deals.

scarab

Even the wiki says so!

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 10th, 2008, 2:29 pm
by Konnar
Oh ma gaw ! I was utterly wrong :mrgreen:

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 10th, 2008, 9:04 pm
by Perhaps
Divine Manifestation gave life regen, preemptively saving your life. So you don't have to wait for your army to be near dead at the towers to make use of that aspect.

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 18th, 2008, 3:41 am
by Furion
Smite is a tricky thing, i tried once to keep it on lvl1 because it claims to take away 1/3 of the enemy hp.

Well it does do alot of damage at the first cast, but it uses huge amounts of mana because of the many extra dmaage points beyound the fix damage value.

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 18th, 2008, 1:16 pm
by Raxxor
In my opinion scarab is a little too strong now ...
Played stormwail today,Creeps vs Grim Brigade (was the Martyr) and when I Ion Surged the enemy Aborial Crusader enough to consider him almost dead(50hp at max) I got totally whiped out by an appearing Scarab using heal wave on the Crusader, healing him almost to max,and killing me with that one(had 30% life). Seriously what the heck?
A push of Aborial +Scarab both heal based is quite hard to stop...Creeps hardly ever die,heros get pushed back or smited,and when you are close to kill one of them BOOM healed at 100% again ...Not funny

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 18th, 2008, 3:59 pm
by Gilles
Anyone else notice the Scarabs heal is bugged? It heals for like 600 at level one, if you only hit one unit.

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 18th, 2008, 11:16 pm
by Dekar
[Bugfix] Life Wave could heal the target unit twice

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: June 27th, 2008, 10:45 pm
by Reaper
Scarab is at best balanced now, not overpowered.

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 11:56 pm
by DarkNemesis
First off, I don't mean to criticize, but your build ideals Konnor are somewhat erroneous. Allow me to explain:

and max out life wave always--Konnor

Max out Life Wave? why? its heals like a truck at lvl 3, no need to heal for 3,000 when most of the heroes have around 1500 hp, just a thought.

Your much better off putting your points into Nightmare, or even Carapace, for those hard-hitting agility heroes imo. Hope this helped.

Edit: Ignore this post, Konnor is 100% right, ALWAYS max Lifewave. :D

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: November 11th, 2008, 4:38 am
by Dekar
Maxed out Lifewave with 10% unused heal turned into AoE damage reaches over 800 damage, so its not the worst idea.

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: November 11th, 2008, 9:22 am
by DarkNemesis
Hmm, true, I guess.

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: November 11th, 2008, 11:52 am
by Storamin
in retrospect, this guide is even shittier than when i originally saw it.

Re: Build for a scarab

Posted: November 11th, 2008, 2:01 pm
by DarkNemesis
Ok, so I got curious and decided to do a single game and try out Scarabs Lifewave+Overwhelming radiance. Previously, I had always thought the talent helped a little and never really considered it further, however, after having Dekar correct me, I have discovered the talent is insane. Lifewave now, imo, makes smite obsolete. I shall always max out lifewave in further games, thank you Konnor and Dekar for correcting me!!

Scarab is a mother &$^$$%^ beast!! can't wait to do a LAN party with my friends and play him.