Post by MeAmCryzor on Oct 31, 2011 19:12:15 GMT
Bio:
When ordinary witches fail to beat enemies with powerful attacks, bring on the Shield Witch! She'll repel enemy attacks with her SUPER BARRIER SPELL!
Overview:
I totally expected to be writing about how much she sucks. I really, really did. And do you know what? She really isn’t that bad. I mean sure, it’ll be a miracle if you can kill anything with her, but she certainly is worth using once in a while, even if it is just to catch your enemy off guard.
Moves:
B attack – Stick of S.Guard; Ground: 17 (one hit) – 31 (full combo – 2 hits), Air: 8
No. You shouldn’t be using this. It’s slow and hits for very very low damage, although, once you’ve got the first hit in, you almost definitely will get the other in, so yeah. Another thing, you should never be near enough an enemy to use this, unless they’re charging at you. Also, under no circumstances should someone use it in the air. 8 damage? 8? God help us all.
B shot – Magic Shot; 17 (1 shot) – 170 (full clip – 10 shots)
This is your main attacking move. Shield Witch fires a little slow moving orb which has actually got a fair bit of bite to it. Although the orb does move slowly, there are two major pluses. One is the fact that when dashing, it just leaves her body toward the enemy rather than her stopping or turning to fire it. The other is that you can’t fire multiple in quick succession. Now that may sound like a fault, but the speed at which you can fire them makes them hit opponents with just enough space in between to never make them flinch. Why is this so useful? Well it means that you can hit fortresses and other big borgs without ever worrying of giving them the advantage of invincibility. One other thing that must be said however is that they have a really slow reload time. All in all, the flaws balance out the pros making this an okay-ish move.
X – Super Barrier Spell; 0
No damage? Madness! But seriously, this is an awesome move. It creates a shield around an opponent whom this shot hit, which floats in front of them in the direction of their targeted enemy, absorbing any shots fired by the enemy, but not you. I.e. if G Red was hit with it, and then they targeted Panther Vehicle, the shield would float between G Red and Panther Vehicle, and absorb any of G-Red’s shots, but let panther vehicle’s shots through. It works pretty well, I only know of a few different shots that can surpass it; physical shots like Drill Robots drills and all of the Fortress’ B moves since they curve around the shield. It lasts a few seconds, but they don’t stack, so if you want to re-enforce the shield, wait until the first one is just about to disappear. There is one problem though; it is fairly inaccurate, but not enough to warrant not using her. This move is the only reason to use Shield Witch.
Thoughts:
1v1 versus;
I so expected to be writing not to use her. I mean, even in my notes it says, and I quote; “1v1? NO” But I was wrong. The shield she creates is awesome, absorbing any shots fired by the enemy. Also, the fact that she has air jump lv.3 means she can dart about the stage endlessly, with just enough speed to avoid the majority of shots. Her B shot also means that she can fire without stopping at all, meaning that you can actually take down quite a lot of enemies. Avoid fast physical attackers mind, they’ll screw you over rather bad since the shield doesn’t do anything to them. You might be able to get a few hits in though, since they may walk into your B shots.
2v2 versus;
2v2 is a little bit different, since there are two enemies, you have to rely on your team-mate getting the heat of the enemies and your dodging skill. Your ally should be thankful though, if you create a shield around an enemy they’re having trouble with, that’ll help keep them alive for much longer. You’ll probably last for quite a bit, she seems to take a fair few hits, so yeah. She can be annoying so you should mainly use her as an annoyer or to help out an ally whom has low health. A final point, is that she is incredibly cheap, meaning she can be used as a filler if you have a competent friend.
Story;
As said, she’s decent in 2v2 and 1v1 and has a low cost, so you’d expect her to be great for story mode. She.. she isn’t really. If you’re going to use her, don’t do so in a crowded fight with lots of strong enemies since she won’t last a second. Unfortunately, the computer allies aren’t really optimised to help you out, so yeah. She can be good, but it really depends on how hard the fight is,
Member-submitted;
Death Eye: You know, I was just thinking the other day about how Shield Witch (and, by extension, Guard Witch, but I'll be ignoring that for the sake of convenient grammar) seemed to be pretty much the only Wizard Borgs (Yeah, you know how I said I'd be ignoring Guard Witch for the sake of grammar? I lied, apparently.) that could hold their own in a 1v1 fight. Now that I'm typing this I realize the majority of them are detrimental to the opponents, so that's irrelevant, but whatever.
Basically, using Shield Witch 1v1 didn't work as well as I had hoped.
The problem with Shield Witch in 1v1 is that Shield Witch in 1v1 has too many problems. Too slow. Can't shoot on a steep enough downward angle to make an aerial attack effective, apparently. Terrible melee.
Basically the only way to do damage in 1v1 that I could manage was to hit the target with a barrier, get a fair distance away, and spam the shots until the target got close enough to melee, then sidestep (if I could, what with the lag after the shots) and inadvertently melee to send him flying.
And that was against Kakeru. In the first training mission.
Against Proto Mars? Right, good luck with that.
Against a Normal Knight, even? Or a Wing Soldier? Yeah, you're screwed.
Basically, don't do it.
2v2, on the other hand, is what Shield Witch was made for.
(Seemingly?) Little-known fact: Shield Witch's barrier blocks shots based on what side fired them, not who got hit with the shield. Therefore, you can shoot your partner with the barrier and it will still block the opponents' shots, with its position determined by who your partner is targeting (the same way as it is when you hit the opponents with it).
But aside from that detail, it's the same strategy in 2v2 as it is with other similar detrimental supporters; dodge around shooting the opponents with your Borg's detrimental attack of choice. Except in this case you don't need to worry about making sure you don't hit your partner with it (a problem I had with my Bug Witch I had later in my force I used for testing), as it'll help anyway.
Oh, and NO MATTER WHAT, RESIST THE URGE TO STEP IN AND DO ACTUAL DAMAGE! YOUR BORG IS SEVERELY OUTCLASSED BY PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING IN AN OFFENSIVE ROLE!
Team-mates:
Anything that can take heat or use blasts to push enemies away from shield witch so that she can get close enough to use her shields. Other than that, borgs that are decent at taking out physical attackers so that they won’t give Shield Witch any trouble. She can be used with a borg that sucks against shooters in order to give it protection, but you sort of need to protect her so she can protect you, if that makes any sense.
In story, any partner apart from Mana or maybe Met. You don’t want a 2v2 team made up of two support borgs. Especially weak ones.
Counters:
Strong physical attackers, Drill Robot, anything fast and able to dodge. In 1v1 you may struggle a teeny bit, but in 2v2 she shouldn’t be too hard to take down. Just keep attacking.
Overall:
Pros;
+ Air Jump Level 3
+ Low Cost
+ Shield move
Cons;
- Poor attacks
- Hideous Design
- Inaccurate
Tier:
Middle Tier. She isn’t quite good enough for higher tiers, but her dodging ability and that X move make her much better than lower tiers.
