Well it very much depends on what profession your buddy is. First off this song should always be playing through your mind when you worship Hep:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j2xEwEHbrEI am not sure that Hep is ever "optimal" for extended but here are my observations for early and mid-game by buddy profession.
BattleMage:
1) I have found that battlemage is a lot of damage. I regularly get !! hits from him and with his lajatang you can get !!! hits even on Depths 5 monsters.
-Therefore the battlemage is basically comparable to finesse up until the point you reliably hit !!! as a melee guy (so once you really start cruising on the better two-handers)
-I am not entirely sure how fast your buddy will attack when he is hasted.
2) you need to be comfortable tanking for your buddy. If you can take most of the attention he is a serious damage upgrade. He is not delicate per se but will die a lot if you constantly have him fight stuff.
-don't be afraid to send your buddy to go kill some single yaktaur who is shooting you after lvl 20 or so. He will get there fast and will kill it fast.
Knight:
1) the knight is respectable damage but considerably tougher. However its still not really a tank. It can tank but it can die pretty fast as well.
-I have used the Knight as a tank type thing for an OpCj it works ok. Certainly helps but he also gets in the way a lot. The Knight + fulminant prism is a viable tactic that can work but it requires the correct terrain and sometime he just plain dies and you wind up kiting like you would have anyway
-knight is less fuss than the other guys
Hexer:
1) the hexer is actually tougher than you think because his hexes are actually an active defense. He may be as tough as the knight really, but when his stuff fails he can die fast.
2) Hexer damage is probably the worst (unless you are leveraging stabs off his hexes) simply because he casts non-damage spells.
3) Hexer is probably the best defensive option for you, because he drains/AMs and will take pressure off you with dibilatating stuff
General:
1) transference is extremely useful for any meleedude and can be moderately useful for casters.
2) An Idealized battlemage is nasty, this doubles their AC and spellpower.
3) In general any sort of buddy will help you defensively as they sometimes just takes hits no matter what, I would say the Knight is actually the medium option in this regard. He can tank more than others but is less worthwhile defensively than Hexer but does more damage. Battlemage is the least useful in this regard but he also kills alot faster and a good offense is a defense. A lvl19+ BM can solo tank many types of enemies (certainly a fire dragon). An Idealized lvl 27 BM will demolish a fire dragon.
In Conclusion:
1) BM is directly comparable to Finesse upto roughly 20/20 fighting/weaponskill + high end weapon for melee (not for ranged combat). Your other buddies are not that far behind (you should see !! hits from them).
2) for certain species (like octopodes and felids) they are possibly one of the best starting Gods for melee types. They basically double your damage, can tank in a pinch, help you run by blocking and let you pull creatures without moving LOS forward.
3) I am not convinced they are actually all that great for any specific strategy. Its nice to use hexer for stabbing but they can draw attention themselves and the hexer hexes are not reliable, they happen a decent amount and its an ok syngery but is it really the same as going Usk(aoe paralyze + shared stab damage) or Dith(shadow step + shadow mimic hex) with a stabber? Not really. And if somethinger REALLY needs to be confused you are gonna do it yourself. Similarly you can use the knight as a meat shield but is it really better than going summoner or Yred and having a meat wall? Not really no. However they are both a nice addition if you have this strategy. For example if you go IE as a start Summon Ice Beast is probably your strongest tool, when you combine a battlemage with 3 Ice beast summons they can really clean house; none of those 4 guys is good at tanking, a komodo dragon can one shot any of them, but they all are capable of !! hits and there are 4 of them. One thing to note, I found with a Ds with Nightstalke things would sometimes shoot my buddy from outside LOS which seems not great. This can happen without nightstalker to but just highlights how folding these guys into gimmick strategies is not always great.
-All in all most of the "gimmick" strategies can be done better some other way. Like portal projectile + knight, its really just better to be Usk and have fast move, the knight is too unwieldy, he adds little damage since he needs to close space while you are shooting etc. They are actually a great augment to most builds, but there are very few builds if any that you would center around them. Which is the reverse of what some people might think. In reality one of their biggest strengths is tactical versatility not specialization. Often times having them in reserve or in addition is one of the better strategies. Generally if you send them out alone this is more of a "sacrifice pawn" move. For the most part they would get rekt by a good or better player ghost. Against really nasty meleedude player ghosts my BM has done like nothing, granted I think the last one I killed I did like nothing in 4/5 attacks, fortunately the ones that did hit smacked it hard so I came out fine.
4) For late game Hep's wrath appears to be wasteful but extremely safe, you get no xp for 2 levels and extended has tons of XP if you are setup to take on one extended rune you can basically abandon safely. I have not done it yet but plan to try it soon if my OpFi transmuter survives. I have not fully decided but I will probably try to swap to Makhleb or Zin from Hep. All in all I think choosing Hep Battlemage rather than Okawaru was the right choice for my OpFi (and I have been forgetting to use transference right). I have had multiple times where I hit for !!! and then my buddy hit for !!! and we one shotted something. But now that I hit !!!!! occasionaly in dragon form he is objectively worse damage than finesse would be even if I somehow optimally positioned him so he could fight in front of me. There are two things that I would lose when I switch; transference for pulling something to me and ninja assassinating something quickly and using my buddy as a blocker for malmutate. All in all, like many gods, in the extended game things like Zin/TSO/Makh either provide uniquely extremely desireable things or you become so badass your buddy falls behind in damage and the straight up raw benefit of something like large heal per kill takes over. Also as you expand your repertoire in extended you may use tactics like massive AOE that make your buddy not that great. It is probably the case on pure melee sees a close running of Hepl to other gods in extended and really TSO is still considerably better for melee
5) Ranged vs Melee is hard to evaluate. With the proper Ranged setup your buddy can be an extremely useful blocker. But he will not contribute anywhere near the damage a meleedude/stabber will get from their buddy. Unfortunately the BM is not like a spellforged servitor, while he casts his spells often he will probably do something like 1/3 cast spells 2/3 attempt melee (which means he will move forward twice then shoot then move forward twice from long range) whereas a spellforged servitor is a frigging mobile artilery platform and wrecks stuff. In reality, as a mage, once you get spellforged servitor online its just plain superior damage purely because he will immediately start shooting from range. Of course why not have both? No reason not to, but I basically came to the conclusion that for "pure" mages Hep is fine up to mid-game maybe even very good and then loses a lot of shine after that. Sending a combo of SFS and BM at something is still very good and can probably kill some pretty darn hair monsters (probably can kill an OOF) without you doing anything. But if you want to clear tombs with Lich+firestorm your buddy is almost useless, in fact he will probably kill himself in your firestorm.
For a 3 rune game: Probably as good as anything else for like 90% of builds. While its annoying for mage AOE its rather nice against hard targets like OOF (either as intereference/damage or hexer with AM quickblade to prevent spells etc)
For a 5 rune game: Probably still feeling pretty good for a meleedude, Finesse from Oka will look real tempting but Hep versatility and transference make it a hard choice. Probably starting to feel like switching for a full caster.
For 15 rune: Still good for meleedude but the typical Highest tier gods are still the high tier. Almost certainly gonna switch for a caster unless you have some really particular strat you like your buddy for (like blocking dispel undead or something) and just don't feel a need for other gods.
You could easily keep your Hexer around solely because he gets a AntiMagic quickblade and as a meleedude or even caster he can help shutdown dangerous things like Fiends and OOF. If you plan on killing cerebov with LCS then that can be very helpful, if you were going to spam Glaicate you will just kill the hexer and its all pointless and Sif or Veh would help much more.
To give you a concrete example Trolls can be very dangerous in the later early game. None of the buddy types will be able to stand toe to toe with one for long. The knight will probably last twice as long, but you gotta be able to kill that troll either by having you+BM do enough damage or by having the knight take a hit or two while you do a lot of damage to the troll. So if you are a stabber with a dagger and you have a knight buddy, you really are not gonna send the knight forward and it will be close and then you can clean up. The knight can still get killed really fast from the trolls multiple attacks. But you can use the knight to maybe give you two extra casting of confuse if you have a low-ish chance and need that. Similarly as a meleedude a troll might be very dangerous because you both burn each other down fast and its a 50/50 chance you live or die, you can have the knight do this first and then pick up what's left or have a BM do extra damage while you tank and hopefully the troll dies faster it its more like 75/25 in your favor. But none of the buddies really can just "take" the troll when you couldn't nor would they really change your tactics they mostly give you a bit more of an edge some in a particular area, more damage, another health bar, more pressure(disabling). I mean a pack of Death Yaks will literally murderlize any type of buddy.
Tuesday, 15th November 2016, 21:50