Protector ship Rock

[Jie Ming Ben]

Anyone have experience with him? He any good? More life than s5 commanders and shields equal to many s6 hp stats, combined, he's got more shield and hp than just about any commander, decent defense stats, but a little weak, but its shored up by his 2 rounds of skill activation, paired with Hailey, could be a nice thing... Considering him from world cup event...

Good replacement for Raksha? Poor man Aldebarron? Does GL remove the buff from other ships or only when hitting Rock?

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

[Nopo]

Rock is not available since the one time event. Dark Rock will be available for redeem for world cup

[Jie Ming Ben]

I know, that's why I'm asking... Maybe some old players have him regular SS, can comment about him

[Nopo]

Up till now, not many players have dark rock and from the Galaxy League I have yet to experience players with Dark Rock. Sorry can't help here.

Presumably, you are evaluating and thinking of redeeming Dark Rock from the World Cup 2018 event ....

[Jie Ming Ben]

Yea, I'm considering it... As I said in my original post, comparable skill to our newest commander... Just not sure it's worth it, as I'd have to throw Hailey in, but she'd support Scott... So not entirely bad... Just depends on iron wolf I guess.. I'll have 3 choices of DNA or ships for first and second... Gonna take Rick because I need a striker because of my number of chips, already have Richard, and currently using raksha... Other than that, got 2 ships I could change.... Keeping Scott and Richard in formation, probably adding Nicholas at the end of the anniversary event... So leaves me with one other choice... Or switch raksha for dark rock and add Hailey in my free slot...

Only 1 person on my server in top 10 using sona... I think she's not that hard to beat or helpful, but that's because my speed is 3rd on our server, 30 points from 2nd, which I'll get Monday when world cup event allows exchange... Maybe sona would be more useful, as in top 3 battle for arena I'm in, there is galaxy lord destroying my protector... Considering going offensive or using sona as her shield would not be affected by galaxy lord...

Any advice or suggestions appreciated.

One other question.... Better to augment commanders up equally or pull a few to Gold level +12/13, which ever it is.

[Nopo]

From experience, Raksha is still a better protector than Sona, because one Raksha puts the rest of the fleet invisible, the rest of the fleet are protected from weaken curse, deaccumulation, locked/frozen. This does mean that your Raksha, has to be built up to be able to withstand attacks, even after being weaken.

Shooting first helps. and on your server only 2 other players shoot faster than you, so at least against the other players, you are safe for now.

Not facing Galaxy Lord also helps. Right now for me, Galaxy Lord, is the one commander due to his debuff special with enough damage potential to really one shot kill or weaken the protectors I used (Raksha and now Aldebaran) sufficiently to beat my fleet.

[Nopo]

One other question.... Better to augment commanders up equally or pull a few to Gold level +12/13, which ever it is.

There are different school of thoughts, some think that having a overpowered commander as a sniper to help win battles more - this was the tactic i used with Caroline, who was my first +13 augment, while the others had to settle with +8 or so. Often now, Rick (with or without Herbert) serves as the sniper to be augmented higher than the others. Others put their protector augmented higher than the rest to survive better.

Later on, while I switched to augmented my commanders to the same level, or rather all other commanders, except Caroline (which was the highest), to the same augmentation level, all +9, +10 etc, to get the Augmentation Master bonus (seen from the formation screen, top left, right under your flagship's avatar). This is the other school of thought, with the idea that having other commanders also present and alive help to win the battle because it's a team based approach.

Both tactics have their merits, and which you choose may depends on who your main opponents are, as well which other commanders are in your fleet.

For example, if you have a only one (or two) commanders that can win the battle for you, while the other can't, than going with augment up to those strong commanders up higher to deal the death blow / one hit knock out may be a better way, as augmenting up, say Dingo, at the expense of augmenting up Richard, is not worth it.

On the other hand, this does put all your eggs in one basket.

If you have two or three commanders that can win the battle for you, than a augmenting up equally may be better, because if one of your commander is disabled, the other 2 or 3 commanders can still carry on the battle to win it for you.

[Nachteule]

I'm in vacation mode so only rarely time to support forum but this topic is really interesting and I have some free time now.

With tap4fun seemingly out of real innovation ideas regarding commanders they started to put more and more strong skills into single commanders. That trend started long ago but at the current point of development competitive commanders have most likely:

• cross attack
• one or more debuffs (confuse, weaken, lock, freeze, buff-removal, plunder, unhide, lt. Knous)
• resilience buffs (add plundered defense, natural S-ATK resistance, Stardust Shields, lt. Herbert)
• Accu refill

The combination of Accu refill and lock, freeze, weaken of Queen Reindeer, Richard, Nicholas, Murometz each one possibly combined with Knous is the most dangerous threat for a fleet imho. And those threats are everywhere. There is nearly no fleet in my Arena and Galaxy League without Richard or at least one of the other mentioned commanders. If a fleet is exposed to Richard for instance after first shot of Richard 2-3 commanders are typically "removed from the battle".

Protectors on the other hand have a difficult life due to Kit which is the most used lieutenant on the commander shooting first. So a protector probably gets only one activation of its special until Kit locks it down. The refill of the Accu is not the most prominent problem here imho therefore I don't consider Hayley a real option here.

Putting both things together the hard life of protectors and the highly threatening metagame I think only protectors whose first (and very likely single) activation of the special can give a real advantage on winning the battle. Only Raksha and Aldebaran have this quality imho. If Aldebaran would not have this uncovering special I think Raksha would be still the best protector.

My experience with (Dark) Rock is that he sometimes prolongates the battle but not turns battles.

[Jie Ming Ben]

Thanks for your opinions, much appreciated food for thought.

[Nopo]

Agree with Nachteule. I still loose to fleets with Raksha because of the invisibility