12/13 Playtest Hero Guides Part 2: Hydros
Trfel
Member
Hydros, Tidal Knight
For hero info, see the alt-tab guide: https://guardiansofatlas.xyz/forums/discussion/34/the-atlas-alt-tab-guide
Overview
Early Game 2/5
Mid Game 5/5
Late Game 5/5Gold Priority: low-medium
Strengths: Hydros units are extremely tanky and have a ton of healing. Hydros is extremely powerful in a straight-up engagement. Very strong area damage.
Weaknesses: Effective kiting and slows can be effective against Hydros. Squads with fewer, stronger units are difficult to kill.
Best Paired With: Squads with high DPS and lower unit health (Eris, Vela, Vex)
Units and Abilities
Hero: Hydros
Hydros has a relatively low range, but has a large amount of health. Hydros fits much of the same role as the Scuttleguards in battles.
Healing Waters
Hydros' healing ability is extremely useful to heal damaged units throughout the game. Early game, healing 120 damage on a Scuttleguard can have a large influence in a fight. In addition, the ability makes it much more difficult for the opponent to snipe your units, and is great when used in combination with the Aquadillo.
Turn the Tide
It works exactly as the name says XD The ability can completely swing the battle in your favor. One of the stronger ultimate abilities.
Scuttleguard
Scuttleguards have a lot of health and reasonable damage, but are melee. They become extremely effective when they can close the distance to the enemy and have a lot of surface area to attack, but are weak in chokes and when they can't attack (well, duh). Their abilities give them a huge boost in combat.
Retracting Roll
This ability causes the Scuttleguard to roll, dealing area of effect damage and slowing enemies (attack rate and movement speed) that it comes into contact with (which ends the roll). This allows Scuttleguards to get into melee combat against enemies, and to deal with swarms. Flanks can make it much easier to connect with this ability. This ability can be more effective when activated on a few Scuttleguards at a time, as the slow ability allows the other Scuttleguards to catch up and the remaining charges can be saved for later in the engagement. Consider using all of the Scuttleguards at once against large swarms of weak enemies like Wisps.
Plated Shell
Allows Scuttleguards to absorb eight extra attacks, letting them take even more damage. Use this on individual Scuttleguards as they are being attacked by the enemy.
Quadrapus
The Quadrapus doesn't have a lot of health or damage, but has strong abilities to compensate.
Brine Barrier
This dramatically reduces the magical damage to a unit for a short period of time. This is useful against ability-heavy squads, notably Vela's Deadeye and Peaceful Resolution.
Paragon
This ability passively heals nearby friendly units (including allies) every 1.5 seconds. This makes your units much harder to kill, and allows you to skip healing wards. The Quadrapus can also be used to target strong enemy units and reduce their damage.
Aquadillo
What an amazing unit! Huge amount of health, splash damage attacks, and jumps into battle to stun enemies. Greatly increases your power in an engagement. What more could you ask for?
Cannonball
This ability is great for jumping into the middle of a swarm of enemies, trapping them to allow the Scuttleguards to catch up, and destroying them with splash damage. Healing the Aquadillo after using Cannonball can greatly increase the Aquadillo's survivability.
Vindication
Helps the Aquadillo survive while attacking large numbers of enemies.
General Strategy
Hydros is very strong in straight-up fights, but is weaker when the enemies can abuse the low unit range and DPS. Hydros is especially strong when attacking from a different direction as an ally, allowing a much larger surface area and making it more difficult for the enemies to retreat.
The power of your army greatly increases when you get an Aquadillo out. Use this time to push the enemy back to their towers. If you weren't able to keep up in gems earlier in the game, this timing is a great way to catch up.
Hydros is one of the best squads at dealing with swarms of enemy units. The healing is also a great benefit to allies, and makes destroying camps to take extra expansions much easier.
Hydros can afford to back out of poor engagements (at the start) and use healing to avoid losses. Make sure to take an acceptable engagement, and with the extremely powerful temporary abilities (Turn the Tide, Retracting Roll, Plated Shell, Cannonball), you should be able to win the fight convincingly.
Build
I've written a separate article on two possible Hydros builds, focused on getting an earlier Aquadillo to avoid having more Scuttleguards than can be simultaneously used in an early-game engagement. You can find it here:
https://guardiansofatlas.xyz/forums/discussion/266/hydros-strategy-fast-aquadilloLate-game, you want an army of at least 7 Scuttleguards, 2 Quadrapi (whatever the plural of Quadrapus is), and 2 Aquadillos. The best unit-specific upgrades are Combat Paragon and Huge Hammers, and Repel Hex can be purchased versus enemies who focus on stuns. For general upgrades, prioritize resistance upgrades over attack upgrades.
Upon discussion, I downgraded the Early Game to 2/5. Don't be discouraged, the power of the early and mid game more than makes up for it!
Comments
This is so cool! I didn't pull out any Hydros in PvP last weekend, as the few bot games I played with him were a tad underwhelming (he relies a bit too much on teammates to be tons of fun in a bot stomp), but this makes me very hopeful for trying him out tomorrow! And also lets me know to take advantage of you in the early game if we end up queued against each other
Sick guide. Been thinking about / playing around with Hydros a bit more. I think I agree with the premise you have for him; get to tier 2/3 asap and stay lower on the Scuttleguard count. I think I'd add too that the Hammer upgrade (can't remember exactly what it's called, +1 radius to Aquadillo attacks) is hugely important for Aquadillo damage and survivability, and attack speed upgrades are superior to damage upgrades at the armory (especially after you get the Quadrapus upgrade that grants it an extra heal on each attack) because it also increases the effectiveness of Aquadillo's vindication.
Hilariously enough, it's called "Huge Hammers".
I haven't been able to figure out exactly what I think of Huge Hammers. I don't know that I'd say it's important for survivability, per se, as you're still limited to 5 applications of Plated Shell per attack from Vindication, right? Normally, you Cannonball into a group of units to both slow them (letting your allies continue to blast away) and get into the meat of the fight to make his splash damage optimal. In that case, I'm always hitting at least 5 targets anyway.
What I've noticed is that his attack speed is a much bigger limiter to his survival (and you're right that it completely outshines damage upgrades, and perhaps even armor upgrades?). A 3.5 second base attack cooldown feels HUGE in the heat of battle - Aqua's survival is very spiky due to the nature of Vindication. There have been times when, in the heat of battle, it looks like an Aqua is just standing around in the middle of a bunch of enemies, and you're begging him to swing because his Plated stacks are all gone and he's taking damage. Then he swings and he's good again! You breathe a sigh of relief! Attack speed seems critical to averaging out these spikes of no-damage-vs-damage.
Because Hydros' heal has such a big cooldown, I find I only really get to cast it once per engagement before people either break off or have died. That makes applications of Plate very important for an Aqua's survivability. I think Huge Hammers is a no-brainer, but only after some attack speed upgrades and getting 2 Quads out to help with the healing.