Splinterlands has a lot of hidden mechanics that you can only know with trial and error. I made an article about some of these before that you can find here: https://peakd.com/hive-140217/@konaqua/splinterlands-tips-and-tricks-for
This time, we'll talk about a new type of ability that was released a few months ago. Abilities that are supposed to hurt you and your lineup and not to help you. Well, that was what where 'supposed' to happen until I found out about some things.
Debilitations in Splinterlands is something I was mentioned before in one of my comments on their post. I don't know if they got the idea from that or it's their own but I am happy for this idea. It's always fun to have an ability that would affect you negatively in exchange of something else.
If I have to make a comparison, this would be like using Yugioh's Acid Golem. It is an xyz monster that has 3000 attack which is very high for that game, then after 2 turns, not only it cannot attack but also you take damage per turn. Debilitations is like this. It's a double edged sword.
Mastering these nuances requires careful planning and a willingness to experiment. The good thing is that I found out some good tricks that you will only know by playing and paying attention to the game. Debilitations is very harmful to your team, yes, but what if I told you we can use these negative effects to our advantage?
Debilitations and Back to Basics.
Debilitations are abilities that give your monster and team a negative effect. To compromise, these monsters have usually higher stats than normal. Back to Basics rule of combat disables the effect of all abilities during that battle including Debilitations. With these interactions, you will be left with strong monsters without any debilitation for debuff.
Without Debilitations in play, you can now use strong monsters without care about their negative effects on your team. Use this to your advantage and unlock those monsters with Debilitations as much as you can to your advantage.
Electrified and Enrage.
Monsters like Lemell Refugee, Diemonshark, Naga Warrior, The Kraken and other monsters with the Enrage ability complements those monsters with Electrified Debilitation very much. Monster with Electrified Debilitation will damage all of your monsters each round. Since Enrage ability works when the monster is on damaged state, this would activate the effects of Enrage without waiting for your opponent to damage them you.
This synergy provides an unexpected power boost to monsters with Enrage ability like , increasing the monster's attack and speed without needing to wait for the opponent to strike.
This strategy is particularly useful in matches with What Doesn't Kill You Rules of Combat where all monsters have Enrage ability. Just take note that Enrage will only increase the melee damage and not range or magic damage and Speed of a monster. Keep that in mind if you want to abuse this synergy.
Weary and Thorns.
Weary makes your monster skip their turn. Monster that skipped their turn does not attack. If it does not attack, it would not hit an opponent with Thorns. Thorns only activates when it is hit with a melee damage giving your monsters with Weary a defensive way to deal with Thorns.
While this interaction is not intended as a defensive strategy, you can use this idea to create more passive monsters or monsters that doesn't attack to create walls for your main carries. This is extremely useful in rules of combat such as Briar Patch.
Electrified and True Damage.
True damage is my own term for damage that cannot be reduced by abilities or rules of combat. An example of an ability that does True Damage is Poison.
Since Electrified does True Damage, your monsters with Shield or Void abilities will still get damaged despite having those abilities.
This means, you can still do the Electrified - Enrage combo even if your monster has Shield ability. To give you a good example, a combination of Prophet Rosa as the summoner giving Shield to Diemonshark, while having Shock Trooper at the back create this interaction. Your Diemonshark will have both Shield and Enrage ability, gets damaged by Electrified Debilitation giving him stats increase due to Enrage ability.
Incendiary and Martyr.
Since the burning debuff that deals damage from Incendiary Debilitation spreads, if you add a monster with low health and abilities that activate upon death like Martyr or Redemption beside the monster with Incendiary Debilitation, you may activate their abilities earlier without relying on opponent's attacks. At the same time, it stops the spread of burning for a round.
Since Incendiary also deals damage to your team, it can also be used to trigger Enrage ability but is harder to do and is more dangerous since you take 2 damage for Burning debuff instead of 1 for Electrified. The spread is also by chance instead of a recurring per round thing unlike Electrified making it inconsistent for activating Enrage ability.
Debilitations, though designed as negative effects, can unlock hidden advantages when paired with the right strategies. Rules of combat like Back to Basics disable these abilities entirely giving you huge stat monsters without negative effects. Additionally, synergies like Electrified with Enrage or Incendiary with Martyr showcase how debilitations can be leveraged for your advantage.
By exploring these interactions, players can improve the quality of their battles where debilitations are usually a problem. Instead of merely enduring the negative effects of these debilitations, they can use them to their advantage to enhance their performance and surprise opponents.
Lastly, I also suggest playing other games if you want to improve faster on Splinterlands. Like I mentioned with Yugioh's Acid Golem, I got the ideas from other games like Yugioh. The Back to Basics combo was derived from Yugioh's use of Skill Drain with Qliphort cards removing the card's disadvantages giving them huge stat monsters to do their bidding.
- This post is an entry for Splinterlands Social Media Contest.
- Animated Banners and Dividers are edited in Canva Pro.
- Other sources that I do not own are cited under their respective photos.
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