chrislehrich wrote:
Okay, fair enough, you do need to be flexible. I'm just saying that there's a big temptation to burn burn burn right from the start. If you do this, you're useless in the last third of the scenario, when your colleagues need you and your AOE attacks most. I was trying to give a simple guide to learning this crucial class for someone who's having a tough time with getting started.
Yes, playing a loss card on each of your first three turns will hurt. But that doesn't mean that you have to play zero loss cards the first time through either.
chrislehrich wrote:
I suppose a better way of putting it is that burn and slow are both essential modes. You have to determine when to do each. The thing is, burn mode runs the clock. A beginning SW has little movement, and your two good move cards are (a) a burner and (b) the Most Important Card. So it's a question of thinking about a scenario as having two main crux points, and being ready to blast when you are in them. Ending the first crux with a devastating position, where recovery gets every card back, is sort of the ultimate SW move. The rest of it is about how to preserve cards for the next crux.
Point is, if the SW is cautious, everyone has time, and if she's not, everyone is screwed.
I did a bunch of scenarios that ended with my SW exhausted before I realized that the slo-mo is actually useful too.
Point is, if the SW is cautious, everyone has time, and if she's not, everyone is screwed.
I did a bunch of scenarios that ended with my SW exhausted before I realized that the slo-mo is actually useful too.
Burn and slow are not the only two options. It's not 'use all your loss abilities' or 'use no loss abilities at all.'
If the Spellweaver is cautious, the party is screwed. If the Spellweaver plays her loss abilities at the appropriate time, the party is in good shape. Until the Spellweaver gets Cold Fire at level 3, the Spellweaver is dependent on loss abilities to do enough damage to keep up with the other classes. If the Spellweaver chooses not to use any loss abilities in the first room, the enemies will take too long to be killed, and this will waste too much time of the party sitting in the first room attacking enemies that could have been killed much faster had the Spellweaver used Impaling Eruption, Fire Orbs, or the Aid from the Ether summon. Additionally, the party will also take much more damage than they should have if the enemies stay alive for much longer than they should have.
The beginning Spellweaver doesn't have any movement issues either. She has a non-loss move 4 jump that won't get used for its top loss ability until halfway through the scenario, and non-loss Move 4 and move 3 on the bottom of her two best multi target attacks. She also has two more non-loss move 3s at level 1, and gets a non-loss move 4 at level 2 that is paired with a non-loss top attack (and many people choose yet another non-loss move 4 at level 4). And as a ranged attacker, she doesn't need as much movement as the melee attackers.
Lastly, it's fine to end the scenario exhausted. It's more important for the Spellweaver to make sure that she ends the scenario having used Impaling Eruption and Fire Orbs twice each at the appropriate times rather than trying to end the scenario not exhausted (unless the scenario win conditions require that no one be exhausted). You only need one character to not be exhausted.
And normally, the Spellweaver is the best option for a character to be exhausted. They are one of the worst at soloing at the end of a scenario when their teammates are exhausted because of their small health pool, focus on multi-target attacks, and lack of crowd control (or invisibility). And most importantly, they need to use loss abilities to be useful (aside from Cold Fire).
The Spellweaver and Tinkerer are dependent on using loss abilities to be useful. The difference in damage output for a Spellweaver not using any loss abilities, and a Spellweaver using loss abilities is huge.
One of the biggest problems people face in Gloomhaven is not killing the enemies fast enough. Crippling your Spellweaver by refusing to use loss abilities is horrible advice to be giving someone.