An advice about Handmaiden

I have started to play Kerillian, and my favourite career is handmaiden… she is a versatile character, but I would like to play her like pure tank… so, an advice about weapons, properties and traits?

Thanks!

Spear got largest block angle and best pash attack to clear hordes

. Block cost reduction works really well with her stamina regen passive. Other stuff is the matter of taste i think.

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Advice:
Step 1: change your profile name to Kerillian
Step 2: switch to Foot Knight
Result: you’re playing a Kerillian tank.

On a more serious note, Handmaiden can not be played as a pure tank at all for a set of reasons. Mainly - her HP bar, her Stamina pool and lack of any defensive traits. Yes, she has crazy good stamina regen, but stamina regen isn’t working when u’re blocking. Not only that, but good stamina pool is also needed for pushing. And with 125 HP pool she can’t tank no hits.

Also her active has nothing to do with tanking. Both Foot Knight and Ironbreaker have ults, that help their team survive the mess. Even Unchained can do this with combination of her staff and her ult. Although her ult isn’t great, her staff compensates for it. All that Handmaiden can do in a critical situation, on the other hand, is roll away from the team.

So I am sorry, no, tank-rellian is not viable. The best you can do is stack stamina regen, take a spear and start pushing everything in range. This will not turn you into tank, but you could provide a lot of cc for you team. On the other hand - why would you do that, when you can just kill everything as fast?

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Mmmh, i dont want to be a nay sayer on the full tank thing. I’m sure you can get success with full stam / block cost reduction spear.

But objectively HM’s strength is her mobility, which can be a boon to being at the right place and the ability to almost always get to it.

I think you should find a preference and improve on it.

Spear is a solid choice, getting headshots reliably with the longbow never hurts either.

But for ‘‘tank’’ purposes stat weights like health/block cost reduction/stam/attack speed/cooldown reduction

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No matter if she’s optimal or not it can be done.

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Sure mate. We are all equal and everyone can become whoever they want.

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1 You reallly underestimate block cost reduction.
2 If we are talking about pushing hordes 1 shield is enough to have endless stamina for push.

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Uhm, sorry, with “pure tank” I have made a missunderstanding… cause, IMHO, in this game tanks don’t exsist (with one only exception: IB within active 10 seconds): we all lack of taunt power.

Anyway, I would like to build a crowd control Handmaiden… for example: stamina regen + attack speed + power vs chaos and to play with glaive: light attack > light attack > block > push > light attack light attack > etc etc (obv, heavy attacks to specials). This is my first ideas.

Glaive is more versatile albeit lower stam,lower angle, slightly slower.

With that said you got stronger armor pen and imo easier infantry control

BUT, i think you got the right idea, i’ve goofed around with all weapons on leg with HM, sure some weapons got the edge over others, but if you prefer a certain weapon / playstyle go for it and excel at it. Because in the end it’s not a competetive game as is, it’s about having fun and if you can complete all maps with all loadouts … then why not ?

But a solid combo with the Spear is simply start off block raised -> push attack > (L) thrust > (L) slash > repeat

Glaive: push attack> light > light > repeat

These very simple rotations are a good base to control infantry which you can improvise on given situasions be they shields / specials / armored ( you name it )

As is now stam regen is already build into HM’s kit so going for that stat in her weapons / trinkets seem wasteful, atleast the way i play her where i’d rather have more attack speed / stam / HP %.

Swearing is apparently worse than passive aggressive snark, i apologize for nothing.

Sorry OP but this is a terrible idea.

To be a successful tank in this game you need a ability like footknight charge(very powerful CC) or ironbreaker taunt.

And you need damage reduction or something along the lines of ironbreaker passive that ignores some hits.

Handmaiden only has stamina regen, and a wonky dash with low CC, a single special or elite can easily break her block and screw her over faster than the AI direction can spawn a horde and a black ops team of specials on you.

Sorry, but as far as “main tank” characters go Kerillian has no part of it.

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Then the question can be asked, do we need tanks ? How relevant is current ‘‘meta’’ how optimized is said ‘‘meta’’ currently ?

You can go on, i often meet ‘‘elitist / meta pushers’’ in games and a huge majority use it as a crutch as their individual understanding / skill is lacking.

Just playing same old same old can get boring, and change wont happen. I’m not saying that tried and true or metas are a bad thing, but i mean… com…come on guys

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Yes, I know, there was a misunderstanding… I am playing like aggressive crowd control with glaive + push angle + stamina regen + power vs chaos.

Yeah, also spear combo is very nice… anyway yes, stamina regen just from passive/talent. Then, as props, I love attack speed, push angle and power vs chaos… stamina could be nice, but three shields (one from necklace) are enough with her stamina regen.

Imho, in this game tanks don’t exist. Tank = taunt capacity… and we have just active 10 seconds from IB.
Also bosses have attack that ignore shield.

While, crowd control careers, can be very useful.

‘‘Tank’’ careers could probably be a thing if collision worked a bit more realisticly ( IE you can hunker down without enemies being able to push through you )

Right now it’s way more about utility / CC … or just remove anything in sight with superior firepower : s

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You can probably get somewhere by stacking stamina regen, + stamina and block cost reduction.

Pros:

  • HM is the most mobile class. She can prevent getting flanked or out of position.
  • She is great at wave clearing

Cons:

  • Can’t facetank heavy attacks like IB, FK with their active
  • Can easily lose aggro with active
  • Has less max stamina
  • Can’t afford to take hits

All in all, I don’t think HM is suited for rushing in front of someone and blocking. She neither has the staying power to prevent a mixed horde from advancing nor the strong pushes that shields provide.
She can easily kite anything indefinitely, if that works for you.

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I would like if she get spear/shield combo while relying on dash mobillity and stamina shields/regen only

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Where are these, “stamina regen is incredible” and “HM is awesome at wave clear” arguments coming from? What are people comparing her performance to? While HM is pushing/blocking, every other character and class is killing. They also manage to avoid damage without stamina regen just fine. And pretty much every other class can wave clear either way better or, at the very least, just as well as HM.

Why are people so desperate for this to be a thing? Every other class manages to have a fully functional team-oriented kit, they can block/push as much as required, and they can avoid death w/o needing to run from combat.

HM is the most frustrating class to watch being played, even when the player is good with her.

Well, she’s fun ?

That’d be my argument…

My biggest gripe with her tho is the 15% power / -5% AS talent, the AS reduction feels like way more than 5%.