Fire – W. Khan (Best build from pre-league season 1 and season 2)

This guide is part of my article series on Prime League Illusion Builds. If this build is not to your likeing, have a look at the rest of my builds on the main Prime League page.

This build showed the best overall results from in both season 1 and season 2 during the first stage (pre-league) of the Prime League. Once we hit playoffs, this setup is surpassed by many others. In addition it should be noted that this build performed particularly well because many people used wind, earth and water which this build hard counters. It performs well against fire too, but there is one fire build that beat it back in and season 2. More on that later.

This build focuses on magic damage and on reducing the enemies energy regen. The idea is simple, that with everything being low level and without tech, VIP and other buffs, no passive is going to be dealing insane damage at this point. Hence, we are reliant on the Ultimate Abilities to cause the majority of the damage dealt in these early rounds (until violet count catches up atleast). This means Hippolyta is a lot stronger here than in normal play. Reducing the energy regen of your enemies significantly while your own Empress Wu wreck havoc on the enemy troop count along side your dragon.

Setup

The setup is all about getting a crits and surviving long enough to make them count! There are a few general things you should be aware of in IB Prime League. With every round we have only 50 Violets more to spend. The below is based on being in round one. The next skills to upgrade are continuations on Wu damage as well as more rage blessing regen and higher levels on malice and energy suppression. We are can’t max very many passives and must choose very carefully.

Empress Wu: Death Breath (2) + Concentration (4) + Annihilation (3)
All around just solid damage passives. We boost our magic damage and then pump as hard as we can with the added bonus of a

Khan: Assist (1) + Malice (1) + Energy Suppression (1)
We need Empress Wu at as high troop count as possible, therefore we run Assist on Khan. Moreover, Khan will deal great damage with his first hit which is all we need, from there we only need wounds from him and damage from Wu. Thus, we run him support with Malice and energy suppression. Malice is a must vs other fire setups and energy suppresion works nicely in our favour since we are focusing on energy regen control.

Khan is a must have because his wounds hard-counters the only natural enemy of this setup: Earth. Furthermore, he is the reason why this build is the only build to reliably beat my earth-wind-hybrid setup.

William: Weakness (4) + Oaken Guard (1) + Resist (1)
William is our Buff machine. We need Crit buffs from him which he supplies in plenty since we also run weakness here. In addition we want to take advantage of the very very high base % of Oaken Guard and Resist. Beginning at 15% defence for either type of damage is very very powerful and placed them amongst the absolute best level 1 passives in the game.

Hippolyta: Adrenaline Rush (4) + Defense Blessing (1) + Rage Blessing (1)
We are playing the energy-game. Thus, Adrenaline rush on our Hippo allow us to both deal more damage and put a further hamper on enemy energy regen. We want to maximize the number of hits from Hippo reducing the enemy ultimate-count massively!

Furthermore, we want to enjoy both the nice level 1 boosts of Blessing buffs as well as the dragon damage buff that these activate for our Wu.

Strengths and weaknesses

This setup is built around nuking the enemy hard with magic damage. As such, it enjoys the advantage of being a killer of utility setups like Qin Wind or Khan lightning. This build is particularly strong at dealing with healing since we are relying on wounds from Genghis Khan. This will make for an easy counter to anyone running Earth, Wind or Water!

Problem is if you are fighting an enemy that simply does not die. If you end up having to chew through someone who has build a defensive earth march, you might get in trouble! I am not sure there is enough burst to get through Charles in time… time will tell!

This setup was the only setup I have seen during season 1 and season 2 Prime League to be able to kill the old season 1 fire king build (see guide here).

In conclusion, a bursty and risky march that I look forward to playing!

Published: 25-05-2023