Earth Cleo-Bathony (updated for patch 2.3 meta)

This guide is part of my article series on earth builds. If this build is not to your likeing, have a look at the rest of my builds on the earth build page. I have multiple builds for any taste available, IB, PvE, arena/ToS builds and F2P/cheap builds.

This is one of my all time favorite builds, but it is not for everyone. This build does not perform as well in P V E as for instance Zeno pure earth, as you do not have added healing to raid gnomes with. And if you are looking to have two or three top tier end-game marches, then you want to look towards wind-earth hybrid instead. Because of the passive synergies between setups. However, if you are an earth player and you do not spend enough to have an immensely powerful second and third march, but instead want to have ONE max power build for PVP, then this is the build for you.

There are not many other builds that can beat this setup in a one-on-one fight. The only real threats are holy. That makes this an absolute top-tier build and one any earth-main player should be familiar with.

To run this build, you want to max a Genghis Khan for your secondary or third march and swap him in when you attack a holy-main whale

This setup is for spenders. You will need charles and alex maxed and preferably unique artifact on alex. You also need Elizabeth Bathory maxed and a khan in the back pocket.

If you are a mid spender, this is the build for you!

How does it work?

The key Immortal to this setup is Elizabeth Bathory. We are running Bathory in this team, simply because she deals insane damage – especially after the big buff to counter-damage back in May 2022.

You are most likely wondering why the heck I have Cleopatra in here as a support and not Zenobia? And you would be right to question that decision. There are a couple of different reasons:

First, this build is made to fight all types of enemy setups. That means being against a lot of magic damage from Dido-Merlin setups, Wu-Baldwin Fires and from Hammurabi Lightning teams. Cleopatra offer us a very strong defensive magic debuff for just this occasion.

In addition to reducing incoming magic damage, she does a decent amount of damage and cannot be hard countered by “wounds” from Emperor Qin and Genghis Khan! Cleo will always deal solid off-dps even with assist active, providing us the offense we want for this setup. We want to quickly burst down the enemy troop count and get ahead.

If we ran Zeno instead, we would in some fights get around the same amount of healing as Cleo deals damage, but in other fights, we would get 0 output from her, because she was being hard-countered by Qins or Khans. Cleo does not have that weakness.

We can rely on Cleo to always have an impact and put pressure on our enemies. Therefore, she is better in this fast-paced offensive earth setup. Because we do not rely on Zeno, this build performs much better than other earth builds when fighting lightning. Despite the elemental disadvantage, we have a chance to win because Khan’s wounds effect has no Zeno to counter.

Besides Cleopatra and Bathory in the back, we have a great frontline! Get it? Great…

We run Alexander and Charles in the front like most all Earth setups. We enjoy the same advantages as usual from this duo. Charles provides the strongest sustain of all Immortals in Infinity Kingdom, keeping us safe from AOE damage. At the same time, Alex uses his absolutely ridiculous single target damage to nuke one of your enemy front-liners into the ground in the first 10-20 seconds of the fight.

Setup

This setup is very different to anything else earth-related. The concept here is simple tho: Keep Elizabeth Bathony maxed on troops and unhindered for as long as possible. She will wreck anything in her way as long as she remain on high troop count.

So, how do we want to configure the passives setup for this build?

We want to strike a balance between defense and offense with this build. This build is all about maxing the effect of troop count on Bathory. By keeping her on high troop count the entire fight, we ensure she will kill the entire enemy team almost by herself.

Moreover, we add a lot of control synergizing well with both Earth Dragon’s stun and Bathory’s stun effect. Having many small control effects is extremely strong because you interrupt enemy skill casts entirely with a bit of luck. Many small control effects are much much stronger than a few with longer duration.

Build Summary

You want to run this passive loadout:

Bathony: Anger + Fighting Master + Death Breath

Cleopatra: Annihilation + Coercion + Assist

Alex: Fighting Will + Weakness + Cleave

Charles: Oaken Guard + Malice + Adrenaline Rush

Build Details and Strategy

For Bathory you want to equip: Anger and Death Breath for pure raw damage power. Moreover, you want to have Fighting Master on her, because we cannot afford for her to be interrupted by a lucky stun or freeze. Also, the damage reduction effect works nicely towards maintaining troop count.

For Cleopatra, we are running Annihilation for solid off-damage. Besides Annihilation, we run her as support with Coercion to bolster the damage of Bathory and Alexander as well as ensure consistency on Charles’s adrenaline rush attacks. Lastly, you want “assist” on Cleo to defend that all-important troop count of Bathory.

On the Great-Duo, we want Fighting Will for control and damage, Weakness to boost our ability to nuke with critical hits, and Cleave on Alex to further improve the team’s AOE capacity.

Furthermore, you want to have Oaken Guard on Charles to boost Physical Defences of our team, and Malice to ensure we incur as few critical hits as possible. Protecting from Chase builds and providing a smoother stream of incoming damage works nicely in our favour since we rely on shield-sustain.

The last spot on Charles is really the only thing that you want to change around depending on personal preference and the meta of your battlegroup. You have two options here:

(1) You can run an offense version with Life-Link. This turns Charles into a secondary damage dealer and works very well against enemy single-target nukers, such as other Alexanders.

(2) You can also choose a more defensive version of this build, where you protect your backline better from AOE damage by running Adrenaline Rush.

I personally favour the latter with Adrenaline Rush, but ultimately the choice depends on the meta builds in your battlegroup.

That was all for this Earth-Bathory Build. I hope you enjoyed this guide. Please let me know in the comments what kind of content you want to have next!

Published: 18-10-2022