Hello!



I have a easy question. I adore Broken Lords, so around the half of my 50 runs were with her aboard. But I am kinda sad that Joleri is one of the worst hero of the game, almost any other hero would do the job even better. Only Opbot is doing below her. At the other hand, even the worst heroes in DotE are good enough too play (and this is great!), but I can't understand how to put her so she will do the best of she could. Shortage of the Dust is terrifying, I'm trying to fix it via some operator on Shop, but it looks like overkill for me. Should be Joleri upped in patch (or with addon)? Is there any great strategy to utilizing her (like finding item to make her operator)? What do you think?



Thanks in advance!

Lady Joleri is not the worst hero; that's a spot reserved for Sara Numas, and TBH Sara is just situational rather than bad. All DotE heroes are strong in the right team.



You can get good performance out of Joleri if you pair her with someone like Golgy or Hikensha, who are able to 1) counteract her dust draining, and 2) fight alongside her. Joleri's stats are excellent: compare her to anyone that you please, and she will come out favorably. I like picking her first rather than finding her, since you can coast on the strength of her powerful level 1 stats for a while before having to upgrade (who else has 800 health and 25 defense at level one? Even Gork is jealous of that kind of durability) and take the dust hit later.



Definitely finding an item for her to Operate is good, since she has decent Wit, but she can be your door-kicker all game long if you prefer. She starts with Scamper, has really good move speed, and can burst more speed easily with War Rider if she needs to cover a lot of distance quickly. You might scoff at the -30% Dust in-room on Hold the Line, but it's on an Active skill, and that room-wide +150 defense might just save your bacon in a pinch.



Joleri is one of the best heroes in the game, honestly.

Interceptor402 wrote:
Lady Joleri is not the worst hero; that's a spot reserved for Sara Numas, and TBH Sara is just situational rather than bad. All DotE heroes are strong in the right team.



You can get good performance out of Joleri if you pair her with someone like Golgy or Hikensha, who are able to 1) counteract her dust draining, and 2) fight alongside her. Joleri's stats are excellent: compare her to anyone that you please, and she will come out favorably. I like picking her first rather than finding her, since you can coast on the strength of her powerful level 1 stats for a while before having to upgrade (who else has 800 health and 25 defense at level one? Even Gork is jealous of that kind of durability) and take the dust hit later.



Definitely finding an item for her to Operate is good, since she has decent Wit, but she can be your door-kicker all game long if you prefer. She starts with Scamper, has really good move speed, and can burst more speed easily with War Rider if she needs to cover a lot of distance quickly. You might scoff at the -30% Dust in-room on Hold the Line, but it's on an Active skill, and that room-wide +150 defense might just save your bacon in a pinch.



Joleri is one of the best heroes in the game, honestly.

First of all, thank you!



I liked her at first too, had a lot of good runs with her at my crew. But in my MP run with Ken, she showed herself below the average (which is very bad in terms of great characters of DotE). Ken killed everyone, while Joleri didn't deal that much damage (and DPS even in fight were not even close to single runs, losing completely to Ken). Also she didn't quite tank anything. I just slacked off entire 5 initial levels. Do you know, do Joleri need to last hit enemy to have her passive stack? Because Ken could steal all of them, so I had no chance to release snowball damage.



Also, I think she is not best nor at opening doors - she have no real AOE to deal with tons of monster, nor at defending solo - there were situations, when she focus some fat special monster and wasted yoo much time on them, while other monsters just made their way through the room. Neurostun was my guardian angel, but I was ashamed -- I was so hyped about Joleri and talked about her so much after my solo runs and she was bad in MP run. Maybe we had bad set up, I can't quite say.

This is what I mean by "on the right team". Ken is a hero that needs to be by himself to be successful, so pairing him with anyone (even Joleri) is a huge mistake, because you dilute the power of his active and passive abilities. Joleri either wants to be by herself, or with another fighter that synergizes with what she brings (like Hikensha or Golgy, or a squishy ranged attacker).



But you can still make a comparison to Ken, in a void. Joleri starts with 800 health and 25 armor; Ken has to be level 9 (!!!) before he reaches that level of durability, with 775 health and 26 armor. This is a ton of food resources that could be spent elsewhere. Granted, Ken has much better offense, but he cannot survive focus fire at all, and has no way to boost his defenses in a pinch. Joleri can be used at base level for half of the game and replaced with another hero, which is something you'd never be able to get away with on Ken.



You don't pick Joleri as a glass cannon attacker; she is OK at dealing damage, but it's not her specialty. She is good at being mobile and tanky, and that's how she ought to be used in a run, in order to maximize her contributions.



And I simply disagree that she is not good at opening doors. She has high base speed, Scamper, a catch-up active, and enough durability to fight monsters by herself. She's amongst the best at the job, lacking only something like Pilfer to feed your Dust stores. Heroes aren't for AOE: that's the job of modules.

Interceptor402 wrote:
This is what I mean by "on the right team". Ken is a hero that needs to be by himself to be successful, so pairing him with anyone (even Joleri) is a huge mistake, because you dilute the power of his active and passive abilities. Joleri either wants to be by herself, or with another fighter that synergizes with what she brings (like Hikensha or Golgy, or a squishy ranged attacker).



But you can still make a comparison to Ken, in a void. Joleri starts with 800 health and 25 armor; Ken has to be level 9 (!!!) before he reaches that level of durability, with 775 health and 26 armor. This is a ton of food resources that could be spent elsewhere. Granted, Ken has much better offense, but he cannot survive focus fire at all, and has no way to boost his defenses in a pinch. Joleri can be used at base level for half of the game and replaced with another hero, which is something you'd never be able to get away with on Ken.



You don't pick Joleri as a glass cannon attacker; she is OK at dealing damage, but it's not her specialty. She is good at being mobile and tanky, and that's how she ought to be used in a run, in order to maximize her contributions.



And I simply disagree that she is not good at opening doors. She has high base speed, Scamper, a catch-up active, and enough durability to fight monsters by herself. She's amongst the best at the job, lacking only something like Pilfer to feed your Dust stores. Heroes aren't for AOE: that's the job of modules.

I know about Ken's solo power - I have about 100 runs But at first rooms you always going together anyway and at holding points there often a too many mobs (especially when there are "runners" who just ignoring you) - I'll might need help. I would say she is not main damage dealer, that's for sure, but sometimes it hurts a lot. At the other hand I looked at my screens and we never found pike in that run. It was the part of our fail that day.



What does it mean to be tanky? Or in other words: why would this help much? She have no aggro like Gork, only if I'll find Hipster's Sharf (which is great item for her!). In many scenarios monsters could don't give a dust about your tankiness if they have crystall/modules/easier targets. And they often do, where should come in play her attack - which is not that impressive without stacks. TBH, I still struggling at "no loss of dust" run because of this rogue monsters... Damn them!



Anyway, Joleri is great with passive, but it didn't work that day - for any reason.



Also, in my opinion, DotE like the most games have some "Only[Mostly] DPS" issue. It means that with skill and enough DPS you can bring any defence down, and this means that good DPS is always better than good defence. I took this lesson in hard way back in my GW2 days, when I was forced to leave tankiness on my warrior and felt this "Only DPS" tactic. If you fail, it's only means that you don't have enough DPS or time to deal it (or skill, obviously).



Also, I might have found our differences in our strategies. In most of my runs most modules were based on heroes - regen, attack, defense etc, while there are only Neurostuns and Pepper sprays as not support turrets. I always prefered heroes over modules, cause of that "antimodule" crystal guys (especially stack of them). It's often too hard to defend modules properly and not enough industry to rebuild them... Khm... Well, alright! Joleri is still my favorite character, I won't drop her anyway.



With whom do you prefer to pair up with? Or, if this list too big, who is bad pair for her? In the duo part mostly - we are choosing our next pair to beat that dungeon. And I'm still devoted to Joleri. My favorite companion was Skroig as runner and Mormish as support. TBH I don't see any specials powers of Mormish making him awesome, but I like his rogue background. Too close to home.

I have been trying with Lady Joleri as the runner and Elise as operator for the Sanitary Pod. I have gotten close the last three times, but each time I am smashed as a Rogue rhino chain opens a lot of doors and Joleri gets distracted by other nearby mobs. I like both characters for their durability, and I like Joleri's cheap cost to upgrade. Hopefully at some run I will happen upon a Hipster Scarf on one of my runs and I can use that to pull those Rhinos off their doors.

GreyZ0mbie wrote:
I know about Ken's solo power - I have about 100 runs But at first rooms you always going together anyway and at holding points there often a too many mobs (especially when there are "runners" who just ignoring you) - I'll might need help. I would say she is not main damage dealer, that's for sure, but sometimes it hurts a lot. At the other hand I looked at my screens and we never found pike in that run. It was the part of our fail that day.



What does it mean to be tanky? Or in other words: why would this help much? She have no aggro like Gork, only if I'll find Hipster's Sharf (which is great item for her!). In many scenarios monsters could don't give a dust about your tankiness if they have crystall/modules/easier targets. And they often do, where should come in play her attack - which is not that impressive without stacks. TBH, I still struggling at "no loss of dust" run because of this rogue monsters... Damn them!



Anyway, Joleri is great with passive, but it didn't work that day - for any reason.



Also, in my opinion, DotE like the most games have some "Only[Mostly] DPS" issue. It means that with skill and enough DPS you can bring any defence down, and this means that good DPS is always better than good defence. I took this lesson in hard way back in my GW2 days, when I was forced to leave tankiness on my warrior and felt this "Only DPS" tactic. If you fail, it's only means that you don't have enough DPS or time to deal it (or skill, obviously).



Also, I might have found our differences in our strategies. In most of my runs most modules were based on heroes - regen, attack, defense etc, while there are only Neurostuns and Pepper sprays as not support turrets. I always prefered heroes over modules, cause of that "antimodule" crystal guys (especially stack of them). It's often too hard to defend modules properly and not enough industry to rebuild them... Khm... Well, alright! Joleri is still my favorite character, I won't drop her anyway.



With whom do you prefer to pair up with? Or, if this list too big, who is bad pair for her? In the duo part mostly - we are choosing our next pair to beat that dungeon. And I'm still devoted to Joleri. My favorite companion was Skroig as runner and Mormish as support. TBH I don't see any specials powers of Mormish making him awesome, but I like his rogue background. Too close to home.

Well if you know what Ken is good for, then you know there's no point trying to draw conclusions from pairing him with Joleri. It would be like using Warden Momish as a door-kicker, and thinking that he was a bad hero because he isn't actually any good at that role. Heroes in DotE need to be put into positions to succeed. Very few of them are like Elise or Hikensha, who can work on basically any team due to being strong all-rounders. Joleri is not an exception to that rule: since she doesn't get Operate, you have to use her as a fighter.



Tankiness is a big deal. Being tanky means that 1) you're less likely to get blicked from focus fire (a constant danger for squishy heroes, and one of the reasons that Sara is so bad), and 2) you can hold out longer without support. It's particularly useful on melee heroes like Joleri, because monsters are generally pretty predictable when it comes to choosing targets: they go for the closest of their priorities. By virtue of the fact that Joleri is right in their faces, she takes a lot of the pressure away from everyone else. And remember: everyone is tanky in a pinch when Joleri is nearby, because of Hold the Line.



I have an Armory Pod run going right now (Floor 12... wish me luck), with Mormish/Nanor/Esseb/Max. You'll note that there are three ranged attackers there. I don't have any scarves, but Nanor is the guy who takes the most attention anyway, due to being melee, and as such I've given him the best of my defensive gear. It's extremely easy to keep the ranged attackers back and alive in this situation, with a little bit of micromanagement (if you are not microing, you are not taking maximum advantage). Keeping Nanor alive... well, that's a challenge, even though he's maxed out level-wise and has the very best of my gear. I definitely miss having a proper tank in this slot, but I need Cooking with Gas to even have a chance on this run, so I deal with it.



I strongly disagree with the idea that "good DPS is always better than good defense". This isn't Guild Wars: the enemies in this game are very predictable. Having a powerful tank to buy time and keep your glass cannons alive is a huge benefit. There are innumerable strategies that you can't even *employ* unless you have someone who can take a hit. Joleri doesn't care a lick if crystal-runners bypass her. Why should she? Those monsters are easy meat for weaker heroes and modules, and if those runners are leaking past to your crystal, then you just have bad defenses set up. Even a room with a simple Neurostunner, Tear Gas, and a DPS hero will completely shred those kinds of enemies. Meanwhile, Joleri is fighting the actual threats, not dying in the process (because she is a house), and stringing out the incoming waves so that your modules don't get overwhelmed.



My strategy is always the one that works best with what I have; I don't try to fit square pegs in round holes. Sometimes that means triple-Operator, sometimes it means a gang of fighters, sometimes a mix of the two. The best skill to have in this game is the ability to adapt.



Regarding anti-module guys, this is what Teslas are for. Put some in a forward position, in a room BEFORE your stunners and AOEs. Also build LAN modules: they help a ton, especially when operated.



Mormish is amazing; he's not a great first pick because of his expense, but he's one of the very best Operators available. Armchair General is absolutely amazing for your forward fighters, and even War Profiteer is situationally great if you pair him with heroes that can generate Dust (like I am doing in my Armory Pod run). I don't understand how you value heroes; some of the ones you are dismissive of, are the best available.

Interceptor402 wrote:
Well if you know what Ken is good for, then you know there's no point trying to draw conclusions from pairing him with Joleri. It would be like using Warden Momish as a door-kicker, and thinking that he was a bad hero because he isn't actually any good at that role. Heroes in DotE need to be put into positions to succeed. Very few of them are like Elise or Hikensha, who can work on basically any team due to being strong all-rounders. Joleri is not an exception to that rule: since she doesn't get Operate, you have to use her as a fighter.



Tankiness is a big deal. Being tanky means that 1) you're less likely to get blicked from focus fire (a constant danger for squishy heroes, and one of the reasons that Sara is so bad), and 2) you can hold out longer without support. It's particularly useful on melee heroes like Joleri, because monsters are generally pretty predictable when it comes to choosing targets: they go for the closest of their priorities. By virtue of the fact that Joleri is right in their faces, she takes a lot of the pressure away from everyone else. And remember: everyone is tanky in a pinch when Joleri is nearby, because of Hold the Line.



I have an Armory Pod run going right now (Floor 12... wish me luck), with Mormish/Nanor/Esseb/Max. You'll note that there are three ranged attackers there. I don't have any scarves, but Nanor is the guy who takes the most attention anyway, due to being melee, and as such I've given him the best of my defensive gear. It's extremely easy to keep the ranged attackers back and alive in this situation, with a little bit of micromanagement (if you are not microing, you are not taking maximum advantage). Keeping Nanor alive... well, that's a challenge, even though he's maxed out level-wise and has the very best of my gear. I definitely miss having a proper tank in this slot, but I need Cooking with Gas to even have a chance on this run, so I deal with it.



I strongly disagree with the idea that "good DPS is always better than good defense". This isn't Guild Wars: the enemies in this game are very predictable. Having a powerful tank to buy time and keep your glass cannons alive is a huge benefit. There are innumerable strategies that you can't even *employ* unless you have someone who can take a hit. Joleri doesn't care a lick if crystal-runners bypass her. Why should she? Those monsters are easy meat for weaker heroes and modules, and if those runners are leaking past to your crystal, then you just have bad defenses set up. Even a room with a simple Neurostunner, Tear Gas, and a DPS hero will completely shred those kinds of enemies. Meanwhile, Joleri is fighting the actual threats, not dying in the process (because she is a house), and stringing out the incoming waves so that your modules don't get overwhelmed.



My strategy is always the one that works best with what I have; I don't try to fit square pegs in round holes. Sometimes that means triple-Operator, sometimes it means a gang of fighters, sometimes a mix of the two. The best skill to have in this game is the ability to adapt.



Regarding anti-module guys, this is what Teslas are for. Put some in a forward position, in a room BEFORE your stunners and AOEs. Also build LAN modules: they help a ton, especially when operated.



Mormish is amazing; he's not a great first pick because of his expense, but he's one of the very best Operators available. Armchair General is absolutely amazing for your forward fighters, and even War Profiteer is situationally great if you pair him with heroes that can generate Dust (like I am doing in my Armory Pod run). I don't understand how you value heroes; some of the ones you are dismissive of, are the best available.

Thanks a lot! I tried to accumulate all of your tips and today I beat ALL pods with Joleri+someone. Only drill pod awaits.



I think I had too many misconceptions and was too afraid to move around units freely, so if I fail once, I cannot retaliate in time. My strategy was at best "solid", but if it fails somewhere, I would lost too much (structures or dust from crystal). From all heroes who made to the end at least once, I don't understand only Mizi.



Also, it's fine to open doors with Mormish - his first active skill helps a lot. Too bad he is useless alone.



Anyway, I'm now quite happy with Joleri and everything works in my hands. Thanks a lot!



(She even was runner on library pod!)