I have to admit that last time, i used to feel that vigilator is very situational.
Even with the powerful double strike skill, a max lv4 vigilator only have 2 range attack, The only chances where we likely to put vigilator is when the rule match allow him to use his melee attack as well such as opportunities or sneak. So instead of just 2x2 range damage, suddenly its dps burst with 4 attacks per turn of a total (2+3)x2 = 10 damage per turn!!
Its poison can be powerful because the double strike significantly increase the chance of the opponent creature getting the poison. It can be a very strong choice too for melee matches where vigilator can keep attacking from the back with constantly inflicting poison. However, sadly to say the hp is quite low and zero armor for such a high mana. So you still have to plan very well to prevent it from being taken out within the 1st 2 round.
However, thanks to the new additional rule of "going the Distance" where only monsters with ranged attack are allowed. This suddenly make vigilator become extremely powerful. In modern matches, there are actually very limited monsters with dual attack.
This new rule shown above really make vigilator to be one of the top choice. Let us have a look at how impactful vigilator can be.
Battle 1 URL:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_5abcc98b15508620871e86529963c574&ref=namelessnameless
For matches with "Going the distance" rule, especially you can choose dragon, Quix is like the best summoner in modern cause it gives the opponent whole team -1 range attack and even reduce the speed. It even gives you more variety of choices of dragon monsters. It is even better when the match is shieldless which make quix trump over Keyla or Lux.
From the above matches, by combo quix with Queen of Crows, it gives -2 range to the opponent team. So the opponent mostly only deal 1 damage. Meanwhile, even though my vigilator is only level 2 and dont have poison, it still can deal an impressive of 6 damage for its double strike 3 melee attack each.
As you can see above, despite wave blood start off with higher hp, by round 2, wave blood is already dead and our 9 only hp vigilator can comfortable survived the whole opponent team attack.
Let us look at another match.
Battle 2 URL:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_a736edb4966e719a6c6e93dcfd7471b7&ref=namelessnameless
This match force you to use range monster and yet all the monsters have return fire. For this match, you can see I also try to use the double attack florre since it is very powerful with immortalis as shown in my previous blog.
I also choose the team members for their speed or poison skills.
As you can see above, despite quix -1 to the opponent team, they still have a few 2-3 range monsters.
After one round, my vigilator actually survive despite with only 8hp. One of the key factor is that it has a good speed of 5! So it able to avoid 2 attacks. What surprised me how useless my lv2 florre, its range deal 3 damage but it suffer 2 reflect damage. Its magic has reduce to 1 due to silence from angelic, and the 1 magic damage hardly make any significant advantage. So basically, i spent like 13 mana just to deal like 1-2 net damage.
And Surprise SUPRISE!!! At round 3, our vigilator is still surviving!!! One key reason is that once again thanks to vigilator of speed 5, it can take down 1-2 monsters before the opponent can attack. And it does not need to face any reflection damage. Vigilator actually pair very well with seedsmith. Having around the same speed, either seedsmith will attack first to remove the armor and then vigilator goes in to deal massive 6 melee damage, or vigilator attack first to remove the armor and deal another strike to reduce the hp, and seedsmith adding the final death blow with its 4 range damage. So those with 7 hp or less will have at least 1 being eliminated every round.
So you can just see how powerful vigilator can be even at just level 2. At level 3 onwards with additional of poison skill, it will just be even more powerful. So far, i yet to meet another one using vigilator in range only matches.