Fighting Will – How does it work?

Hello and welcome to a special guide on the Passive Tower of Knowledge ability “Fighting Will”. In this guide we will dive into what this passive is. How does it work and what does it do? Is it any good? or more appropriately, WHEN is it good?

There has been a bit of confusion about how this skill procs, as such I have asked employees for the true answer to how this Passive procs! In this guide I shall explain both how to proc Fighting Will and what it does.

I have been recommending Fighting Will for some builds for a long time, but it is very important to understand when and how to use it succesfully. In this guide we will look at how it works. Furthermore, we will look at how to use this Passive. What NOT to do and how to set up this Passive for major impact!

How does it work?

This skill is pretty simple to understand at first glance. But we are going to make sure we understand it before we dive any deeper.

The skill reads that every 20% drop in number of soldiers will deal Physical damage to ALL enemies and have a chance to Root them for 6 seconds.

As such, we have a few things we need to understand, we need to understand (1) Procing this skill (2) Targeting (3) Damage Type and (4) Root control effect.

(1) Procing Fighting Will

So there has been some confusion around how to proc this skill. There are bascially two sides arguing, one claiming that this skill procs once your march hits a 20% incremental threshold (see image below).

The other side of the argument say: No no, Fighting Will procs once the specific Immortal you have equipped with the skill hits a 20% incremental threshold. Regardless of the health/troop count of your other Immortals. Like on the image below, we are around 50% HP and as such the skill would have proc’ed on 80% and again on 60% at this stage of the fight.

Who is right then? I asked Infinity Kingdom employees to take this past the development team, to confirm. The truth is that the SECOND explanation is true. As such, you want to equip this skill to an Immortal that takes damage! We don’t care about other Immortal’s troop count for this passive, only that of the Immortal with FW equipped.

This drives me to speculate that you may actually want to use this as a mainly control mechanic combining it with Life Link and Assist on a frontliner. I will have to test a lot more, but atleast that is what I am going to be looking into. The question that needs answering there is: Is it more value to get more output from one immortal by retaining troop count for a longer time OR more value to get control effects out very quickly while the rest of our immortals are at very high troop counts to nuke? I don’t know the answer, but something that you dear reader may also find interesting to test out 🙂

(2) Targeting

This is a quick point, but an important one. You want to take note that this is one of the very very few control skill that targets and hits ALL enemies at the same time. As such, this is a unique ToK skill that can offer your march incredible control to sustain an offensive playstyle.

(3) Damage type

This is a PHYSICAL damage skill. It also deal quite nice damage, for a control skill the DPS is very very good.

As such I usually run it on an Immortal with solid physical attack attributes for a very nice damage output in addition to the control.

(4) Root control effect

Okay, the most important bit. What the heck is Root??? So Root is a “control” effect that afflicts the enemy with a negative effect or debuff called “confine”. What Confine does is it prevents the target from attacking.

This means that the enemy is only prevented from completing Normal Attacks. This does prevent a lot of damage and is annoying for your enemy, but I want to stress that this is a bit weaker than silences or stuns. Why?

Because in a confined state, your enemy can still regain energy and can still cast ultimate skills if they have enough energy. They are only prevented from performing normal attacks. A silence on the other hand disables energy regen and ability to cast a skill. However the target can attack (kind of the opposite of a root/confine). While this makes the confine very powerful against something like a control-vulnerable Alexander or Hannibal, it is not very powerful against the many Immortals that rely on Ultimate abilities for their damage output – since that is most Immortals, I argue that confine is a fair bit weaker than stuns and silences which do prevent casts.

How to run it “right”

Alright then. We fully understand what this passive does and how all the aspects of it works. How do we run it right then? Is it any good?

You want to run Fighting Will on a setup which (1) has an Immortal with high physical attack attributes and (2) in a setup where you are building for offensive damage pump and NOT for prolonged defense OR in setups where you stack control effects.

It is particularly strong against unprotected Alexanders (no unique effect) and even more so against wind marches that rely largely on auto attacks. However, it is an excellent skill to have for most setups. I personally prefer using this in combination with other controls in a squishy offensive setup like a Fire or Lightning. Relying on control for defense while getting a solid damage output pair very very well with a setup where you focus on maxing damage output over defense.

Noteworthy synergies

You should take note, that the value of Fighting Will goes through the roof if you pair it with the “new” Tower of Knowledge skill “Stormeye”. This is because Stormeye deals a whopping 50% more damage if your target is rooted / confined.

This works out well for us since we usually want to run magical damage in big pumper setup builds. As such, you may even be running a dual mage build with water, lightning or fire. Running Dual Mage setups you can stack both Stormeye, Root and all the other BiS mage passives on your backline and also get Fighting Will from your Attila, Louis or William.

Do not underestimate Root. It is an incredibly powerful skill that outshines many of even the epic skills.

Published: 24-02-2023