Why The Lunginator is one of the best weapons in the game

I was thinking about creating this thread for a long time, since there was a serious misunderstanding between people who know how good is The Lunginator and those who refuse to admit it. I will try to briefly explain why the latter people are unable to evaluate it properly.

From the first sight, The Lunginator is just a good weapon. There are weapons with better damage, and there are weapons with better tech. There are three Lunging Bashes, two Unnerving Strike and one Mighty Hack. Nothing to write home about, right? We have all six attacks with just 41 damage total. That's quite good for , but, again, nothing spectacular here. What makes this weapon Tier 1? Two things.

1. The Lunginator provides right the tech your warrior needs. This is hard to notice from the first sight, but that's true. Lunging Bashes provide extra movement when you need it and they bash your opponent away, which allows you to stay at range 2 if you wish, or grab the victory area, or just push the opposing char on his own Volcano. Unnerving Strike is a great anti-block card that allows you to avoid wasting the low-damage attacks on luring out the possible blocks. So we have a bunch of really good attacks with the really good tech here, and the cost allows you to equip all three Lunginators to get an extremely stable, versatile and powerful warrior.
2. The Lunginator is the best weapon for Crusher. Almost all attacks are crushing here (except for the Mighty Hack that deals enough damage without Crusher), so you are getting +2 damage on virtually all your attacks for 3 turns. Mass Frenzy provides the same +2 damage to all your chars, but only for 2 turns, you have to spend a turn casting it, and it isn't replaced immediately like Crusher. Nobody prevents you from running both pumps, getting +4 damage without any negative effects, and you can add Blind Rage to the mix.

God of Lungination (Dwarf Warrior)
The Lunginator
The Lunginator
The Lunginator
Focused Crushing
Raging Battler
Captain Cedric's Helm
Xander's Mail
Hexagon Shield
+ add your favorite boots to taste. There are many great options, including Leomunk's Kickin' Boots, Quellic's Boots and many others. If you like more movement, add the movement boots here.

This character is the ultimate killing machine. He deals much more damage on average than any warrior you've encountered at high ELO rating level, and he has enough tech to chase his target and avoid its blocks. Moreover, he has a lot of bashing/pushing away cards to defeat the range 1 warriors. Add your usual Mass Frenzy priest, and you're ready to win.

Can The Lunginator be replaced? Yes, but the alternatives are worse and generally cost more tokens. So if you ever encounter this wonderful weapon at your Randimar's, buy it immediately. If you skip it, you're going to regret about that later.

 

Bejeweled, Bejeweled, Strongarm is pretty popular by the way. Almost everyone who's played the game has encountered it, and at 35 bonus damage it's almost a full Lunginator ahead of you. Just a fact so you can correct your guide which I'm sure otherwise is sound

 

Sure, this guy is formidable, but this is an aristocratic build -- the only non-legendary here is the shield (and potentially, the boots).

How many of us can build this guy, outside of the test server?

I mean, I have 90 or 91%, and I'm pretty sure I have 1x of the primary weapon, but I know I don't have 3x.

(I'm also missing Raging Battler. Boy, when that shows up in the Daily Deal. . .)

 

Bejeweled Shortsword needs some nerf IMHO, but I am not going to discuss it here As for your setup: NO, it isn't better than three Lunginators, since you lack tech. Your setup has only 4 step attacks, mine has 9. My warrior will just bash yours away and grab the victory area.

 

Surely it's aristocratic. I don't have any Lunginators myself, though I have all the rest. But please tell me, isn't skipping The Lunginator when you can buy it utterly stupid? Some people really skipped it!

 

Dude I wasn't talking to you about strategy. You said this guy had higher average damage than anyone's ever seen, and it's patently false. That's all. Cheers.

 

Well OK, I was incorrect here. It's possible to have more damage, and it's possible to have more/better tech, but it's impossible to get better combo of damage and tech. I just didn't think that somebody is actually playing the pure damage Added "at high ELO rating level" clause to fix the phrase.

 

I don't know if you've heard the word but double BS has been and likely will always be a viable high ELO strategy.

 

Are you going to argue for that Elven warrior? You must be joking.

 

C'mon guys, don't just gang up on Ector. He's posted a pretty legit build, no need to nitpick on a tangential point he brought up. Ofc, there are lots and lots of alternative ways you can build warrior(s) for a team which is viable at high ELO, some being more reliant on legendaries than others, no big revelation there. I value that as a merit to Blue Manchu's design philosophy, rather than Ector's fault.

As for the build itself:



Interestingly, I had the 3x Lunginators sitting in my inventory since forever. I didn't actually purchase any of those (always considered it more of a laughable weapon). Actually, I think the only item I actually bought off randi's out of those might be Xander's Mail (and a second Captain Cedric's Helm, not pictured above).

I might as well give this build a go as soon as I have the time and report back my feelings about it. (I'll likely have to spend some time getting into it, since I've been playing 3x Doubleedged Elf War for a long time now).

 

True, though his addition:

actually makes the statement more false than before from my experience.

I am curious to see what you can do with his build.

 

I've had a few matches already: I think I lost 3 out of 4. The one game I won, I did so majesticly (had Blind Rage/Crusher going on all the time since round 1 + got good draws overall). The others were still pretty close, save for the one vs. Ungr1mm (who uses a pretty scary build himself).

Keep in mind though:

1) I'm not used to this style at all
2) I'm using the God of the Lunginator in the context of my usual 1-1-1 build, which might be sub-optimal.

Anyway, 4 games are too small a sample, plus I'm likely going to make adjustments to the other 2 guys accordingly to my guts feeling over the next bunch of games.

 

Absolutely. I'd be interested to see what you come up with. OTTOMH, I'd pair this guy with a buffing priest and . . . a stabbing warrior?

 

Yeah, I've been thinking about that. My priest is pretty much on the buffy-buffy side already (not super focused, but very close to it).

It's just I'd rather first get the hang of the new dynamics going on with the new warrior build. Also, I'm afraid switching to a whole different build altogether would be too much of a new slate for me to get the right feeling for how this Lunginator God works.

That's pretty much my mantra, when it comes to fine tuning builds. Only change a few things at a time.

Will report back with my next piece of feedback as I can get some more games down before changing the build further.

 

I'd love to add this to my aristocat build, but I don't have any Lunginators nor either legendary martial skill. And I only earn a couple hundred gold per week, and there's always other stuff for sale that I want more.

 

To be honest, as a newbie I have a hard time while trying to recognize greatness of The Lunginator, mainly because of Lunging Bash. It is not easy to use it as a prelude to other attacks, because the enemy will be moved away and you don't have a 2-range attacks to take advantage of that fact. What is worse, the enemy may have them (I see many cards like Impaling Stab/Potent Stab/ Fiery Stab in 1500+) or just use step-attacks. Some popular warrior archetypes actually sometimes want to be exactly 2 tiles from enemy (for example: elves with stabs or with cautious mobility & step-attacks), so using cards with small damage and slide back against them is more beneficial to them than to you. So you may be forced to use your precious move cards in order to get within range of Mighty Hack or Unnerving Strike, which is costly because your enemy have a free turn to react.

I think that the posted build would be much better if one of the Lunginators was replaced by Crazy Sal's Halberd. Having Polearm Slash and more reliable chance for Blind Rage would greatly increase the usability of Lunging Bash.

 

Almost everybody considers it a very good card IMHO.

If you need just to move, you may cancel the attack.

This build is vulnerable to stabs as any other range 1 warrior. But, again, you can use Lunging Bash just to move 1 square, no need to "use my precious move cards" for that.

No, it wouldn't be better. The very idea of this build is Crusher. It currently has 15 crushing attacks (may be more if you get boots with Lunging Bash). If you replace one Lunginator, you will have just 10 crushing attacks. That's loo little to justify Focused Crushing; you'd probably want to use Novice Bruising instead. This may be a good build, but not as stable.

 

@Merdis: I kind of share some of your concerns, although I have to admit this never turned into a very real problem, at least in the limited number of games I've put under my belt.

To be completely honest though, you can sort of work around the discrepancy between bashes and melee attacks. This is sort of very dependable on positioning and map-design, but you can very often go in with the lunging bash, hitting the enemy w/o actually pushing them away (say, if the traget is next to impassable terrain or another character, for example). Worst case scenario, you can wait before committing to an all-in attack, use the lunging-bash (and not hit the enemy) to use the move effect of the card only.

More often than not, though, the enemy has been more than willing to come close enough by himself, at least in the vast majority of the games I played. This is probably b/c they were confident in the parry/defender's block they were carrying. Now that's where the Unnerving Strike really pays off the most.

But I do see how facing a serious bashy-bashy opponent might get real harsh real soon. Will report on this scenario specifically, as soon as I have to deal with it.

Anyway, here's the report after 4 more games. 4 wins out of four games.

First game, high rating, very good player using 1-1-1. I feel like the draws favored me somewhat (managed to snatch his buffy priest real quick, which made the whole affair much simpler). The Lunginator worked flawlessly here (unnerving strike voided 2 enemy blocks + lunging strike gave me the tad of mobility needed to get right where I wanted to be).

2 other games vs two very different 3xwiz teams: The first one (3 human control) I won but was extremely lucky: I could easily count this as a lost game, because the RNG determined it (especially in the very hand: the poor guy killed one of his dudes with whorl + epically whiffed a parry).
Second one, much easier game, vs a offensive-oriented team of wizards. The damage output alone was not enough to kill the slogging beast before it was too late (also thx to my priest carrying some limited but very much needed amount of healing).

Last of the four game vs a low elo player (1300-something), nothing worth mentioning.

I guess this isn't much in the way of meaningful feedback, after all. Hower, I do feel like the Lunginator God needs some more mobility more than anything else. Am using Diamond Mocassins atm (+ some other movement in the form of team moves from the other guys), but still I feel like it takes far too long for him to get where he needs to be. This is likely the the next area I'll likely tweak (but not before a set of 4 more games)

 

Lunging Bash may be a good card on its own, I am just wondering whether the synergy between it and Mighty Hack / Unnerving Strike is simply good enough. If you want to move into tile next to enemy and you are canceling attack in order to do so, you are effectively playing Shuffle and giving away one turn which may be used by your enemy. Most of range-1-warriors which I have seen in MP have some step-attacks (I think that "pure" range-1 warrior who doesn't have stabs nor "proper" step-attacks (or at least some cantrip moves) is extremely rare in MP), which can be used to move in next to enemy and attack in the same turn (without bashing enemy away), so they are slightly less vulnerable to stabs than this build. Of course, as Bandreus noted, this weakness of combining Lunging Bash with non-step-range-1 attacks can be sometimes mitigated to a certain extent by clever positioning.

Maybe, maybe not (less bonus from Crusher, but a lot more from reliable Blind Rage + smaller deck). I wish I could try it myself.

Anyway, I think that your build is quite unique and interesting, so I can say "good job".

@Bandreus
I am looking forward to reading about your next matches played using "God of lungination" build in MP.

 

One more set, won 3 games out of 4.

Utterly lost the first one vs a player in the 1500s using 2xwar 1 priest (blind rage dwarf + heavy attacks and stabby elf). Definitely not what you might think though, the elf died real soon to my wiz burn/magma. 2 failed Unnerving Strikes on my side (1 vs Parry, the other vs a Defender's in quick succession) + not very good draws cost me the game in 2 turns and change.

Second game, aggressive/control 3xdwarf wiz hybrid. Was a hell of a match, which I managed to win (barely). The God wasn't able to do much of anything (I think it managed to land a 6dmg lunging bash, and that's his whole contribution to the match, aside from positioning to menace various zones of the map). Overall, the game was won by my wizard's Resistant Hide + some luck more than anything else.

Third game vs 1 wiz 2 priests (all dwarves). Defender Block's + Vamp attacks + Bursts. Combo of movement from surging shield block + unnerving strike from behind to get rid of a defender's. Good stuff.

Fourth game, vs. good (although a bit reckless) player using 2war 1 priest. Lots of NS and other stuff, including some defender's and unholy wellspringing. Enemy Dwarf warrior smashed by the God's rage and some magma, despite his Barbed always rolling. Elf warrior slow roasting thanks to the usual fire wiz goodness + finishing blows curtesy of the God himself. Happy about how the God can withstand quite some damage if he has the time to draw some armor, while still packing more than a punch as soon as a buff or two are going on.

Got more positive feelings from this last set of games (I'm def getting the hang out of this). I'm way more concerned about 3x control wiz matchups than I am stabby-stabby warriors, although I still need to face an opponent really focused on that. Still feel the God can really help more mobility.