Let's discuss one of the underated ability in Splinterlands, the RECHARGE ability.
RECHARGE is one of the newest ability that was introduced with the release of Chaos Legion card edition. Most players did not like this ability since it makes the monster to skip one turn to recharge their attack then deals a huge damage on the next turn. As the name says, they recharge before attacking. Let's start first with the decription of the ability to fully understand it.
Ability Description
RECHARGE - This Monster attacks every other round but does 3x damage|
Pros and Cons
Disadvantage
Let's first discuss the drawback of this ability.
1. Armor is your worst nightmare
Even if your damage is high because of the Recharge effect, it can still be absorb even by 1 armor. This is true for all physical damage like melee damage or ranged damage. So let's say you have an initial damage of 4 then multiplied by 3 to get a total damage of 12, when the target monster has 1 armor, you will only destroy their armor and will not be able to deal a direct damage to their health. It's like you are taking two turns just to destroy the armor only. It should be okay if we are talking about 8 armors destroyed in two turns, but what about 1 armor and yet it takes 2 turns to destroy? This is very disappointing if this will happen to you, right?
2. Repair is another thing to fear
Imagine taking 2 turns just to destroy the enemy's armor, then in just a snap of the enemy monster with Repair ability, you are back to square one. Basically, the armor of your enemy monster plus the armor Repair ability will surely be your greatest obstacle.
3. Armor for magic
Melee and Ranged attacks are the ones that can be block by armors. So if you are a Magic type monster with Recharge, armor is something you should not be worry unless they have Void Armor ability. Very few monster have this ability as of now but the problem is that we now have a Summoner that gives Void Armor to all friendly monsters. And yes we are talking about the Life Splinter's legendary summoner from Chaos Legion, Grandmaster Rathe. So with Void Armor, 1. Armor is your worst nightmare and 2. Repair is another thing to fear will be applied.
4. You can't afford to miss
First turn, you did not attack since you want to conserve your energy for the big attack you are planning in your next turn. And then the time comes for you to unleash your greatest attack then suddenly your opponent dodge it miraculously (a big disappointment). Since you skipping turns to recharge your attack, the least thing you don't want to happen is for your target to dodge your attack. This will also apply to magic attack type if your target monster has Phase ability (Phase allows the monster to evade magic attacks using the similar computation for melee and ranged attack).
5. Divine Protection
Divine Shield ability ignores the first damage taken by the monster. This means for monster with Recharge, the first 2 turns will be use to remove the effect of the Divine Shield and the next 2 turns will be to deal damage to enemy. If they have armor, then another 2 turns. It is not really a big deal since you probably will have other monsters on the field that will destroy the divine shield effect, so your next attack will somehow (hopefully) be directed to your enemy's health. Take note that Holy Protection ruleset can give all monsters in the field a Divine Shield ability. Also we have the Summoner Lorna Shine from Life Splinter as well that provides Divine Shield to monsters.
6. Blast from the past
Another ruleset that may not work in favor for monsters with Recharge ability is the Explosive Weaponry. This ruleset grants all monsters the Blast ability. (Blast ability allows monster attack to deal additional damage to monsters adjacent to the target monster). With this ruleset, you normally would take monsters with high speed so they can attack first. Getting cleave damage from multiple attacks can be deadly for those monsters at the backline who usually does not have high HP or armors. So for monsters with Recharge, there's a high probability that they might not be able to survive the next round or atleast most of your monsters will be eliminated given that you have one monster who will not attack on the first turn. Although we can see a "comeback scenario" as well if in case you survive the first round. In the second round, you will now be dealing times 3 damage coupled with the blast effect.
Overcome your Weakness
Now that we know the weakness of the Recharge ability, we can now plan some workarounds or counteract for it.
1. Stripping enemy armors
Rust ability and Shatter ability can reduce the armor of the enemy monsters. Attacks with Shatter effect can destroy the armor of the target monster. Armors that was destroyed by Shatter ability can still be regenerated or repaired using Repair ability. While Shatter can destroy all the armors when hit, Rust can only reduce the armor of all monster by 2. But the good thing is it can effectively cancel out the armor of the monster. This means that if a monster with 2 armor, Rust effect can reduce the 2 armor to zero. Repair ability cannot regenerate or repair the armor that was cancelled by Rust effect.
One ruleset that will be beneficial to monster with Recharge is Unprotected. This ruleset will remove all the armors from the monsters and summoner effects. With this, your problem against armor will be solve already.
2. Target Lock!!!
Since missing hit will be a big no-no, securing your attack will be the best thing to do. Getting True Strike ability from Summoner like Byzantine Kitty or from battle ruleset AIM TRUE is something you may need to consider. And if you cannot have access to this, then reducing your enemy's speed or removing their Flying ability with Snare ability from other monsters will be cool too.
Advantage
It is time to discuss the benefits or the strengths of having a Recharge ability.
1. Low But Never Zero
Damage from normal monster's attack can be reduced upto zero. Shield and Void ability reduced the damage by half and can even negate the damage from attacks with 1 damage. I will be sharing a table to compute the reduce damage from Shield and Void ability.
As you can see in the table, if your monster has 1 damage, either base damage or due to the reduce damage effect of abilities like Demoralize (melee), Silence (magic), or Headwind (range), attacking a monster with Shield or Void ability will still deal 2 damage compare to zero for normal attacks. With 1 damage, you won't scratch the monsters with Shield (for melee and range) or Void (for magic) even if you take 100 rounds. But with Recharge, you get to deal atleast 2 damage every two turns which I think is very helpful
The table clearly shown that the total damage for every two rounds is always greater for monster with Recharge ability.
2. Dual Edge Sword
We'll now discuss the returned damage inflicted by Thorns (melee), Return Fire (range) and Reflect (magic).
Thorns has a constant return of 2 melee damage regardless of the attacker's melee damage. This means that for Thorns, Recharge will be great since you will only be damage once every round while dealing a huge damage to enemy. Specially if you have 1 damage, for normal attack it will cost you 2 HP just to deal 1 damage. With Recharge, you can deal 3 damage while receiving 2 damage back.
For Return Fire and Reflect, this will be a bit different from Thorns since you have a constant return damage. For magic reflect and return fire, the return damage is proportional to the dealt damage. And as we saw in the previous table, you deal a higher damage per 2 rounds with Recharge. This means you will also received a higher return damage per 2 rounds.
3. Less Retaliation
Similar to Thorns, Retaliate is triggered when a melee monster hit a monster with Retaliate ability. Retaliate has a 50% chance to be triggered. Since monsters with Recharge attacks every 2 rounds, then the chances of being hit back by retaliation will be also low.
4. One-time Big-time
One-time big-time means you are attacking less often but deals a huge damage per attack. Dealing burst damage to enemy monster will remove their chances of recovery using healing abilities. Monster with healing abilities can survive from weaker attacks dealt per round compare to a burst damage from a single attack.
An example will be dealing 2 damage per round to a monster with 6 HP. The healing ability will only regenerate the damage we dealt per round reducing our chance to kill the enemy monster. With Recharge, the 2 damage will become 6 damage killing the monster instantly.
5. Neutralize Forcefield
FORCEFIELD ability allows the monster to take only 1 damage from attacks with power greater than or equal to 5. This means that the damage from a monster with 6 attack power will be reduced to 1 when receive by the targeted monster with Forcefield ability. But when a monster with Recharge ability and has 2 base damage, it will still deal a 6 damage to targeted monster with Forcefield ability.
The Forcefield ability based its effect from the attack power of the monster and not to the actual damage it can give.
Now if a monster with Recharge ability and has 5 attack power, will the damage reduce to one? The answer will be NO since even though the 5 attack power is reduced to one, the damage will still be multiplied by 3 as the effect of Recharge.
Basically this will be the flow:
- Attack Reduction (Forcefield) >> Damage Multiplier (Recharge/Deathblow) >> Return Damage (Reflect/Return Fire) >> Damage Reduction (Shield/Void)
Monsters with Recharge
Now let's go into the monsters having this ability. There are only a few monsters granted with these abilities. Most of them are Legendary and Epic monsters from the Chaos Legion. We are not sure if the Splinterlands developers will add new monsters from the next card edition but as of now, we only have 5 of them.
Uriel the Purifier is a legendary monster from Life Splinter with Flying, Recharge, Heal and Redemption abilties. In all the monsters with Recharge, for me this is the one mostly used, not because of the Recharge but because of the Flying, Heal and it has a high health which are a nice combination for a solid tank.
Ifrit Rising is a legendary monster from Fire Splinter with Recharge and Forcefield abilities. It's a magic type monster which means without the Void Armor ability from enemy, the recharge damage from Ifrit Rising will surely dealt a heavy blow.
Zyvax Vuul is a legendary monster from the Dragon Splinter with Flying, Recharge, Close Range and Deathblow. With Deathblow and Recharge both in effect, its damage multiplier can reach upto 6 times. Deathblow can multiply the damage by two while Recharge can multiply the damage by three. So a 3 damage multiplied by 2 and by 3 will get us around 18 total damage. Well it's a bit overboard since so far the only way to get your health to reach 18 is through Life Leech ability. Scavenger can also increase your max health but is has limits. Last Stand coupled with the monster with high health might also be possible although Deathblow is the direct counter to Last Stand. We can say that it can one-hit all monsters. The only downside of course is the damage can be absorb by enemy armor.
Temporal Master is another monster from Life Splinter same with Uriel. This monster has a low mana cap which you can probably use in most low mana battles depending on the battle ruleset. Even with the Back to Basic ruleset, this monster still has a good stats for a 3 mana. Aside from the Recharge, it also has the Stun ability. Although the Stun ability is really not good to partner with Recharge. First, with Stun ability you have a 50% chance to stun the target monster making them to skip their next turn. As much as possible, you want monsters with Stun to attack every round. But with Recharge, it's like your also skipping turns. The only difference is that on the next turn, your damage is tripled while for them it's the same. So if you attack every other round, then 50% chance to stun somehow becomes 25% only if you compute for 2 rounds.
Insidious Warlock is an Epic monster from Death Splinter with both Recharge and Blind abilities. Compare with the Stun ability, the Blind ability effect will be there always unless it was remove thru Cleanse. The Blind effect allows it to survive potential damage since it gives the enemy a 15% chance to miss their attacks. Combine the Blind effect with Dodge, Flying, or even just the speed difference, then it will be hard for attacking opponent to hit your monsters. Since this is also a magic type, then the damage will directly hit the health of the monsters assuming they don't have Void Armor and armor.
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