Hydros Strategy: Fast Aquadillo
Trfel
Member
Hi,
This is a guide to a Hydros strategy designed to get a relatively fast Aquadillo. Since I'm not the best player, this is more of a discussion than a guide. Two build options are available.
Option 1: Fast Tier 2
- Get Tier 2 right at the start of the game
- Build 3 Scuttleguards
- Move your Hero to the second tower at the start of the game, collect 2 gem nodes (4 gems) on the way back to the free expansion
- When Tier 2 finishes, buy a Quadrapus
- Take the free expansion (you should get there a few seconds after you get 10 gems)
- Build two more Scuttleguards as resources allow
- Once you get to 10 gems, take the easy camp
- Save your gold, and spend your next 8 gems to research Tier 3
- Buy an Aquadillo as soon as possible
Option 2: 5 Scuttleguard Opener
This opening is for people who prefer to play a more conventional opener. This build gives you a powerful start, comparable to a standard build, but then still gets an Aquadillo early in the game.
- Build 5 Scuttleguards
- Expand as soon as possible
- Save gold, but otherwise play as normal, try to take the easy camp in the gap wave (3-4 minutes)
- After taking the easy camp, spend your next 4 gems on the Tier 2 upgrade
- Once the Tier 2 upgrade finishes, buy a Quadrapus and buy the Tier 3 upgrade
- Once the Tier 3 upgrade finishes, buy an Aquadillo
Detalied Explanation of First Build
Since you missed a few gems during the first gem wave and spent four gems on the Tier 2 upgrade, your goal is to use your army to take more gems and regain this advantage. The Hydros squad at this point in the game gives you some great tools to do this. The Tier 1 unit, Scuttleguard, is melee, meaning that enemies need to stay far away from you (thus, if you're on top of a gem, they can't deny you from getting it). Second, your units have a lot of hit points, so you can afford to trade some of your units' health to get a few extra gems. You probably don't want to take a straight-up engagement at this phase in the game, especially if you are near their towers. If they don't move and allow you to close, you should crush them in the engagement, but if they pull back you won't be able to do much, so you generally push forward when they get close to force them to retreat, and then pull back and heal. The Quadrapus is extremely good for this, as the healing every 1.5 seconds heals a LOT of health with this style of constant pokes but not really committing.
Of course, if your opponent gives you a good engagement, go ahead and take it with confidence. The Scuttleguard's two abilities are extremely powerful, and if your opponent does not retreat while you have them active, they will almost certainly lose the fight. But in general your goal is to force the opponent back and get more gems than they do, which I haven't found to be too difficult.
You want to take your third base as quickly as possible. Ideally you have the gems to take it at the same time that your teammate does, but you might not quite have 10 gems when your teammate does.
The goal is to get your third base up, and have 5-6 Scuttleguards, and 1 Quadrapus.
Detailed Explanation of the Second Build
This is a mostly "standard" opening until you save your gold for your first Quadrapus. This build allows you to contest all of the gem waves, and gives you explosive potential in the early game. If you can get a good flank with your Scuttleguards, the game should snowball in your favor. However, you'll be saving up to 225 gold to buy a Quadrapus when your enemies will likely keep buying Tier 1 units, which makes you a bit more vulnerable in this time period, so be very careful when committing to engagements. Until you get the Quadrapus to heal, you need to be a bit more careful with your health, so using the healing towers is really good. Unfortunately, because of the gem-based Tier 3 upgrade followup, you can't really afford to spend gems on a Healing Totem.
Aquadillo Phase
The Aquadillo is an extremely powerful unit, and has great synergy with the rest of the Hydros squad (the Quadrapus' Brine Barrier ability can help protect the Aquadillo and your hero from magical damage, and you can use your hero to heal the Aquadillo after jumping into the middle of the enemy army). With the Aquadillo, you should easily be able to push the enemy back to their towers. The Aquadillo is especially good because in addition to its high health, it deals splash damage with its ability and its normal attack, and splash damage seems to be very strong versus most squads. You should be able to get an Aquadillo into the fight at about 7:30.
Followup
I'm not really sure how to follow this up. I've been mostly saving my gold to get a second Aquadillo, because they're so strong. You can also go for a +1 armor upgrade (for Hydros, I think that armor upgrades are much better than attack upgrades). Getting unit-specific upgrades might also be a good followup, because you have Tier 3 unlocked relatively early on, but I haven't experimented with this yet. Either way, with three bases and Tier 3 unlocked, you can probably follow up with most anything.
Analysis
I compared the first two build orders vs the bots. The second build order had a faster expansion, which provides about 25 more gold than the first build order. The first build order also doesn't allow your hero to collect gems for most of the first gem wave, which causes you to miss out on four gems (two nodes) vs the AI (I'm not sure how the difference would be vs a human opponent). Using the first build, if you can't get your expansion down in the gap wave and everyone else can, this could set you behind up to 80 gold, which is significant.
Both builds have times where they are vulnerable. The first build can potentially be punished by gem denial, where the opponent gets enough gems to take the expansion significantly earlier than you can. The second build doesn't have any ranged units early on, and is possibly vulnerable while saving up for a Quadrapus. Because the first build buys the Quadrapus at a time where you generally aren't fighting for map control, it avoids these problems.
I think that the biggest determining factor for which build is better is how well you can work with your ally/allies. If you have good communication with your ally and they're willing to take the far gems and coordinate which gems you can take, and they are willing to work to help make sure you can both expand during the first gem wave, then I think that the first build is superior. The Quadrapus' healing also helps your ally, and the power that you get when your Aquadillo finishes makes up for the early setbacks. Without good teamwork, the second build is probably better to increase the likelihood that you can take your expansion during the gem wave, and to increase the stand-alone power of your army at the earliest phases of the game.
I also think that these builds are better than the "standard build" (maxing out on Tier 1 units and expanding to 3-4 bases until doing anything else) for the Hydros squad, specifically. First, because the Hydros squad with a Tier 2 unit works well with the zoning and and tanking damage, which this strategy relies on. Second, because the Hydros Tier 1 unit, the Scuttleguard, is melee. In general, having a bunch of Scuttleguards doesn't feel good to me, because they can't all attack at once and it gives the enemy more opportunities for kiting. And third, because the Aquadillo is a ton of fun, and is extremely strong.
Conclusion
I think that both of these builds are viable. I'm trying to get better at this game, so any comments/criticisms are more than welcome!
Comments
This is really cool
Hydros!
So this is super cool. Yesterday I played a bunch of games as Hydros and actually ended up doing a similar Quadrapus opener, though mine went like this:
That's the same thing that I was doing except I didn't get a second Quadrapus. I guess I felt that a second Quadrapus would weaken my overall army strength too much, I felt like I needed to have ~5 Scuttleguards to be comfortable with my army, healing is better when you have units to heal. How many Scuttleguards were you getting, and did the second Quadrapus delay your Aquadillo at all? (I'd be really hesitant to delay the Aquadillo...)
Really glad to see that someone else is thinking similarly
This is so lovely. Like... you wrote a guide for our game!!! Oh man!!! Trfel, Lord of Tides! :D
I was getting the second Quadrapus 'cause I wanted to double down on the healing waves, especially after researching Combat Paragon. I'm not sure at all if it's the right thing to do lolol. I felt like I probably delayed the Aquadillo quite a bit in favor of more Scuttleguards - I'm afraid I can't actually tell you my unit count. I think it was the follow up of many Scuttleguards that slowed my Aquadillo, and I think that going for the Aquadillo as your guide outlines is definitely better. Next week I'm going to try that out because it seems really very solid.
For reference, I'm able to get an Aquadillo into the fight at about 7:30 versus the AI, which I think is really good. This timing might be delayed vs human opponents, but I actually don't think so, as the way I'm doing it right now the limiting factor is gold, not gems (I'm at about 225 gold when I finish Tier 3).
I never really tried getting upgrades, but that actually sounds really strong, I'll definitely try getting an earlier second Quadrapus, if you can get 4 Scuttleguards and 2 Quadrapus and still get a reasonably timed Aquadillo then that could be really good!
How have experiences been going up against the Z mash player who spends all 500 coin on their T1 unit? When I spend all my early coin on units it feels like I can deny deny deny my opponent to no end and catch up for lost tech later on. Thoughts?
Talked about this with Trfel quite a bit last night and it really changed my perspective on a lot of things. I'm still pretty skeptical about how effective early tier 2 is in general since it feels like you're giving up control in the middle of the map, but I do think this is one of the coolest tier 2 rush builds and might actually be viable. The clencher for me is that the early Octo is able to heal your ally's units as well as your own, so if your ally has an army of low hp high dps ranged units (Celesta, Vex, Vela, potentially Ryme and Eris as well) you might actually be in a good spot. Definitely worth testing out in the next PvP!
I want to try out a maxed out attack speed Combat Paragon Quadrapus build for sure. I think it will be terrible.
The support that the Quadrapus offers is pretty awesome for the 2v2 players. It seems to me that in bot lane, a 5 scuttle opener is better.
With this build, you don't actually fall behind in the army coin value. By the end of the first gem wave, you'll have 525 coin in army out, and they'll have 500, maybe 550. Either way, it's about the same. At the start of the second gem wave, you'll have 3 Scuttleguards and 1 Quadrapus where you'd have 5 Scuttleguards with a normal build, and while neither of these armies feel great, I think I'd rather have the 3 Scuttleguards and 1 Quadrapus (play positionally and try to zone them out to get gems, instead of trying to win an engagement).
However, there might be different plays that you can do with Scuttleguards to have the extra Scuttleguards make a big difference, like flank attacks to use the slow ability. I've tried these a bit with little success, but it's something I hope to work with a bit more.
In the absolute worst case, I think this build ends up costing you about 100 coins (due to later expansions), which is pretty lousy, but I think that in most games you can do a lot better than that, and once you get an Aquadillo your army is very powerful.
I was actually trying something similar (though not nearly as well-thought-out as you've presented here) for a few reasons. The first is that over 5 scuttleguards has not worked out well for me - like you mentioned, they rarely all get a chance to attack at once. They also won't make good surface contact when you roll into a group - only a portion of them connect for the stun anyway. There are some tier 3 units that are "eh" to me, but Aquadillo is one of my absolute favorites.
As you alluded, this seems like it would do best with either specific squad allies (which, hey, is one of the aspects of this game that I feel has great potential) or if they go heavier on the tier 1 units themselves. I've played games of all heroes but one and Hydros still fits best with my playstyle, so I'll be eager to see how this viability evolves. I'll try some of what you've posted here @Trfel and hopefully contribute back to the discussion.
For the record, I'll echo your sentiment that armor upgrades feel best for this squad. I don't have any #'s to back it up, but I've tried both ways and armor gives me the longevity to be the annoying harasser/supporter that Hydros seems to want to be.
Yeah, I think that having more than five Scuttleguards is useful later in the game, but only because they can all absorb a lot of damage. Early on, it doesn't feel good at all. Meanwhile, the Aquadillo can leap over all of your Scuttleguards and trap the enemies, and greatly increase your surface area to attack
I think that the new art map is great for the Quadrapus first opener, as you're usually nearby two allies (harder to get overrun, much more healing value).
Let me know what you think, particularly which of these builds are better in which circumstances. And also, are there any Hydros builds you've been using successfully other than these? I was wondering if a build could work that focuses on Scuttleguards, Quadrapi (what is the plural of Quadrapus, anyway??), and the specific upgrades for both of them, but it seems simpler to just get an Aquadillo, so I'm not sure.
I've been playing closer to your 5 scuttleguard opener mostly because my mid-week games have been with bots who aren't great at coordinating movement and composition, heh. So, I haven't really been doing anything drastically different. The other thing that leaves me from (now) wanting to jump right to an Aquadillo is that the worthwhile upgrades for Scuttles & Quads require t2/t3 anyway, so why wouldn't I just get an awesome giant tanky dude leaping onto my enemies to stun them?
Some rambling thoughts after a few more games yesterday:
-I experimented with a variation of your fast tier 2 strat, except instead of getting 2 more scuttleguards at T2, I got 1 more quad. The extra healing seemed to work better in a coop game where we were better able to coordinate movement together. I would have just a few scuttles on the front line to slow/intercept enemy units, but they weren't really tanking. I'd have to pull them back after Plated Shell was eaten away and I burned one of my heals on the lowest one, but this window was pretty small before an Aquadillo showed up. When Aqua was around, he seemed to benefit a lot more from the double healing.
-Two Quads also seemed to help with the harassing/zoning function. Since I had fewer Scuttles to manage (meaning it was easier to pull them back without fear of bad collisions), I could micro the Quads a bit - specifically, I would change their target repeatedly so that the 50% damage reduction output affected more than 2 units. Do note that this only seemed reasonable when there were some heavy-hitters on the field (e.g. a purifier), otherwise the APM it takes to do this to, say, a swarm of just wisps isn't worth it.
-I'm torn on, after getting a 2nd Aquadillo, whether to sink gold into a third Quadrapus vs getting Combat Paragon. It is roughly a 65% boost to my Quad's healing output in combat (they attack every 2.3s, whereas the passive pulse is every 1.5s), whereas getting a third Quad is roughly only a 50% boost to my overall healing output in combat. I realize that Combat Paragon is a 0% boost to healing out of combat, but that's a less critical time. I think this is the right time to get Combat Paragon, but maybe I'm putting too many of my eggs into a single basket. This may be dependent on the enemy composition - MORE TESTING REQUIRED.
Random side point - The Armordillo upgrade doesn't seem that impressive. Is it me? Given the long cooldown, and the fact that Aquadillo gets Plate stacks for hitting units anyway, how effective is this? Maybe the purpose is to use it right before Cannonball to go in with a full stack, lose some stacks on the landing, and then regenerate Plated while attacking?
Alternate thought process: instead of getting a 2nd Quad like I do, or the 2 Scuttles like you do, why not push for an Aqua right away? I tried that in this game and got one out around the 5:15 mark (with a Quad out around 1:45):
https://play.artillery.com/?options={"manifest":"https://gameserver.artillery.com/?manifest=a59f1659ee90dcf98ccea8c3b0f156de&replayGameId=Gf6641e335dcf40c38d9e51195a6a1bda"}#
Now, ignoring some of my terrible misplays and lost units along the way (mostly due to sloppiness from units being unable to move), the Aquadillo had significant impact on swarms of T1 units. I also closely watched my resources and my Total value never dipped below the other bots - now, I don't know if comparing with the bots holds much value! But it feels easier to sustain my forces once the Aquadillo hits the field - some of this may change in the future if pathing is different, maybe the Scuttles will feel more nimble.
This may be a very greedy play, but I want to try several options after this super-early Aqua:
I tried both of the builds you mentioned versus bots.
The second Quadrapus instead of two more Scuttleguards actually seems quite interesting. I thought that it would be awful, as it would reduce your DPS too much, but it feels like the second Quadrapus makes a big difference once you can increase the size of your army a bit more. The second Quadrapus doesn't help out right away (unless your ally could use lots of healing), I think, but once you get the Aquadillo it's a big deal.
I tried the second build as well. Unfortunately, it requires you to delay your third base, which is a pretty big deal. Gem-based builds like that also would be harder to execute versus a human opponent. At the 10 minute mark, my army was noticeably weaker than it was in games where I'd gone for a standard third base timing. The build might be okay for some specific matchups/rushes, or if you fall behind and can't take your third during the 3-4 minute gap period (this would require more testing), but if you can get your third base at an acceptable timing, I think that's just better than going straight for Tier 3.
Side note, I think that the Aquadillo splash range upgrade is probably strong. I'd get that over the Plated Shell upgrade all the time.
It's funny you mention that, I was talking about a fast Aqua build with Treisk (abandoning ANY tier 1 units, going right for T2/T3 and using the cash you have for 2 Aquas ~3 min mark) and he brought up the Huge Hammers upgrade. Apparently he went for that right away, and we discussed the benefits of then immediately going for an attack speed upgrade to keep those Plated Shell stacks on.
Hilariously enough, it makes the Armordillo upgrade seem even worse when you can otherwise improve how the Aqua applies his own Plated Shell stacks. I can only imagine it's meant to be used when closing space between yourself and the enemy, but that's what Cannonball is for?
I tested the Aqua rush strat this morning with bot allies and you certainly feel gimped for the first 2-3 minutes of combat. Yeah, you can heal your ally's hero but it restores such a relatively small chunk of HP vs the cooldown. You feel AMAZING after the three minute mark though as you can demolish a squad of tinier creatures, but here's my inherent conflict with this build: in order to take advantage of the unit superiority you've acquired, you need to keep pressure on your opponents. Doing so requires your hero to spot heal the Aquadillos - which means it's a bit harder to pull away to plop down expansions so that you don't get dangerously behind.
Per Day9's response in the AMA, they're considering ways to make the hero less of a "DO EVERYTHING" character, and if that happens, this concept may get stronger. Right now I feel like the Aqua rush is a guilty pleasure with a unit I really enjoy, but getting Quads first might be better for the team at large and your income pacing.
I'll see if I can test it a bit more before tomorrow's PvP, heh.