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    Your Elvenar Team

Mist Walkers vs. Dryads, dependable or not?

Gkyr

Chef
There is a lot of discussion about using a Dryad as cannon fodder because they often invite an attack from Mist Walkers.
To be fair, I informed a senior member of my FS about this and a little while later they messaged back, very effusive about what good advice that was.

Because of that I baited a Dryad in my starting lineup in the next 6 battles where there were one or two MW among the opposing forces. I had done this previously once without success. To be clear, I placed my Dryad within striking distance of at least one (or the only) MW. I fight manually so I can follow the progress of each round of battle. I am sorry to say that out of seven times the MW ignored the Dryad and attacked another squad six times, homing in on the Dryad only once. I know I have left the question, which troop type did the MW attack and I am sorry that I did not keep a record of that because I was not going to post this. But it turned out that I keep hearing about the high rate of Dryad-bait so I wanted to share this and, if I have a chance, I will document closer next times.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Dependable. I would say it’s prob 85% or higher. This is my study from Feb with lots of examples and I have been baiting with Dryads ever since, so lots and lots of data points to draw from. I have 2 cities averaging 9k in tourney weekly to collect data from.

Make sure you are baiting a Mist Walker and not a Dryad (Dryads can be enemies in Map Provinces). I also only throw out bait to protect my mages or Archers/Rangers to make sure they aren’t damaged so they can kill shot mages on their turn with full strength. Otherwise I’m sticking Orc Strategists on her if the situation allows.
 

StarLoad

Well-Known Member
Dependable. I would say it’s prob 85% or higher. This is my study from Feb with lots of examples and I have been baiting with Dryads ever since, so lots and lots of data points to draw from. I have 2 cities averaging 9k in tourney weekly to collect data from.

Make sure you are baiting a Mist Walker and not a Dryad (Dryads can be enemies in Map Provinces). I also only throw out bait to protect my mages or Archers/Rangers to make sure they aren’t damaged so they can kill shot mages on their turn with full strength. Otherwise I’m sticking Orc Strategists on her if the situation allows.
I agree the Orc Strats are perfect against the MW. I was up against the MW today in my tourney battles and without exception first strike was at the Dryad

Ed
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
If you (or anyone) are doing a closer study on Misty with documentation, see if you can catch her cheating on hitpoints too. I think there is a bug in the calculations on how much damage Mist Walker is taking, but I haven’t stopped to do the math to show hard evidence. On paper, a 3* Mist Walker is supposed to be as strong as a 3* Dryad. From my observation, my Dryad can’t take nearly as many hits, and that’s even with a lvl 30 Monastery, a UUU, and accounting for my stacks are smaller than theirs. The smaller stack size variable can be leveled if comparing a lower province encounter where the stack numbers are more even though and it will still hold true that the Dryad can’t take as many hits. This problem is more obvious if we just as well flip it around and say we give the enemy a fed lvl 10 Fire Phoenix, an ELR, and a level 30+ Needles. Do we think our Dryad will survive to see a 3rd shot, let alone a 4th shot with this much buffing on the other side? So Misty is either wearing Kevlar or there is something wrong with our Dryads. Misty behaves like Buddy going up against HR where Buddy is almost invincible and can absorb hit after hit. If I try to play my Dryads that way, they would just be dead. I know the devs are working on the bug of her shrugging off debuffs early, but I strongly suspect there is another bug at play.
 

Myne

Oh Wise One
IMHO, dryads are dependable but expendable. I save them for situations where I need the might, but I know they are fragile and I will lose them.
 

Gkyr

Chef
KK, right off the bat - first MW encounter I get in Tourney after posting this:
Zencounter1.jpg

Zencounter2.jpg

First move of round one is MW and she hits the Ranger, as indicated by the debuff flag. Notice that the Dryad is within her range. In the pictures below the same encounter is rerun (I surrendered out of it) with lower-initiative Archers, with the same result.
Zencounter3.jpg

Zencounter4.jpg

I am not trying to be oppositional and there is no mistake. This makes 7 out of eight fails and, as I now recall, the other 7 trials were during a previous Tourney and not in the World Map.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
That's really interesting. I've done 35x5 and 30x4 in tourney already in 2 cities and lost 2 stacks of mages to Mist Walkers (they hurt enough for you to remember). That's 2 out of 295 encounters. Both were an obstacle issue. So that's <1% of my encounters. I have sent similar lineups as the one you've shown and was able to protect my Rangers with Dryad baits. Curious what other people are experiencing.
mist walker tourney.jpg
 

Gkyr

Chef
I had one mage in my lineup. I will try using one Dryad with 4 mages but usually I jut avoid all mages when MW is in the lineup because she strikes back and that is no good for mages either. That is why Orc Strats are a better strategy than sacrificing Dryads. Have to wait until next Tourney. I am in late provinces in this one and they are too expensive to fool around with.
 

Raccon

Well-Known Member
Agreed, I wouldn't neither. However, the idea of; Daryad as a bait to protect mages, is for occasions when the enemy lineup makes the use of mages inevitable, therefore we need to protect those mages by distracting Mist Walkers.
 

StarLoad

Well-Known Member
I think that was the issue, it took 6 Provinces fully 6 rounds before I got a single MW

The pics say it all


test1.jpg

test2.jpg

test3.jpg



Once it only saw 2 troop types it went after the Dryad

Ed
 

Gkyr

Chef
I think that was the issue, it took 6 Provinces fully 6 rounds before I got a single MW

The pics say it all

Once it only saw 2 troop types it went after the Dryad

Ed
That might be it in a nutshell.
Interesting happenstance. May be useful for many styles of play, especially auto-fight where the types of troops are kept to 1 or 2, ideally, but limited usefulness for my battle style.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Or if there are no LR needed but you want to use mages in your lineup. Like if the enemy is all HR and one Mist Walker. That would def be a bait scenario.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
First round of Gems Tourney, x30 provinces. Here are all my Mist Walker encounters. 5.5 out of 6 times, Misty went for Dryad. The last one counts as a .5 score because the first Misty did hit my Dryad, but the second one went for my Banshee. However, the second one would not have reached my Dryad due to obstacles. I also threw some archers in there. It's definitely not always 100%, but if we're asking if it's reliable enough, I would still say yes. Gems tourney is a great tourney for mages and I am comfortable deploying mages en masse without fear of Misty taking them all out if I throw in a Dryad.

gem tourney.jpg

gem tourney2.jpg

gem tourney3.jpg

gem tourney4.jpg

gem tourney5.jpg

gem tourney6.jpg
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Here are my Mist Walker encounters for Round 2, but for my other city, x40 provinces (forgot to log round 1). There were 3 more encounters not shown. She was sandwiched by her team in 2 of them and obstacle blocked in another. I guess technically that makes them all obstacle blocks. She didn't shoot anyone in the last example either so I stopped taking screenshots to save time. Most of these examples are Dryad as the only LR though, and then it goes to mages for intiative. I tried to throw an Archer in there if the situation allowed it for testing purposes, but I'm also trying to survive as she is 2x my stack in some encounters. o_O

Did you do more experimenting this tourney, @Gkyr? It's definitely one where you need to protect them mages.

gem tourney6.jpg

gem tourney7.jpg

gem tourney8.jpg

gem tourney9.jpg

gem tourney10.jpg
 
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