Water with Bathony & double DPS backline

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

This article is on a spender water main march relying on Bathony to dish out rediculess damage while running Merlin as the best damage dealing mage-support in the game!

Setup

This setup is pretty standard meta and emulates what the earth marches have been doing for years now – protecting their backlines, ensuring that our heavy dps’ stays on as high troop count as possible and thus deals out insane amounts of damage to anything.

While water does not have a Charles to protect, we have a healing dragon. Moreover, our Merlin is a much stronger mage-support than Cleo! Merlin deals insane magical damage and even with assist on Herald and Attila will deal a good chunck of damage too.

On top, we rely on Herald and Attila (with unique artifact) to add debuff the enemy boosting the physical damage and magic damage dealt to the enemy by 35%. In addition, Herald will add another 35% damage dealt (physical and magical with unique). Combined 70% more damage!

If you have Ragnar unlocked, you should use him instead of Herald. We need unique on Herald to boost the damage of Merlin, but since that might not be feasible for you to get the unique artifact for Herald (not even out yet) you should be using Ragnar if possible untill you can get Herald’s artifact.

We use Attila for what he is best at, dishing out damage while controling the battlefield like no one else can.

The only drawback of using this as your main, is that you are unable to apply wounds, making fights versus holy very difficult.

You want to run this passive loadout:

Bathony: Fighting Master + Death Breath + Anger

Merlin: Concentration + Annihilation + Energy Burst

Herald: Life Link/Oaken/Rsist + Assist + Malice

Attila: Adrenaline Rush + Weakness + Fighting Will

Countering enemies

There are small changes that needs to be made to the above default ToK setup depending on what you are fighting. Like if for example you are up against a lightning march with Khan Ysg, throw away Link and put in energy suppresion.

Changes you might want to consider are:

1. You want to play around with Coercion, shelter and misleading here on Merlin instead of Energy Burst depending on your enemy.
2. If you are fighting other waters (Merlin’s) you need resist instead of Life link. Fighting Khan’s you wanna do energy suppresion over resist/life link. Fighting neither magic nor Khan, you want Oaken or life link. If your enemy is a sustain enemy or a burst ultimate dependent setup, link/supp. best. If you are against heavy phys team, oaken or link.
3. You want to test and find a balance between offense and defense on Attila. If you are meeting heavy nuke, link or Absolute Defense/oaken/resist/Supp. might be preferable to Adrenaline Rush.

Published: 28-06-2022