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This is the experience with many players who don’t “get” the Apostate. And it’s a confusing class to be sure; that high ceiling is only matched by a high learning curve. But follow these simple steps and the Apostate will be rolling through Tainted Grail: Conquest just like everyone says that it can.
Take Defensive Maneuver Cards
Thankfully, there are many barrier cards in the Apostate’s opening deck and that’s perfect. The archery classes are always teetering on the edge of disaster due to the fact that barriers are removed after every turn. So they’ll need to be constantly re-establishing their barriers.
Using the Master-At-Arms allows the player to have a card in their hand and a barrier card is an excellent candidate for those who have the upgrade. Avoid taking multishot maneuver cards as they are unreliable and take up spots that need to be reserved for defense.
Use The Ultimate Ability With An Offensive Hand
So long as protection is guaranteed, players can hold fast and wait until they get a hand with lots of shots in it. At that moment, that’s the best time to use the ultimate ability. Too many new players use the move every time it is charged up, which is not optimal.
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At full charge, the ultimate adds 200% damage and another 100% for each maneuver card in that turn. There’s nothing defensive about the skill, so don’t hold back. This is the sole reason that Apostate is on top of many players’ character class rankings.
Reduce Armor And Buff Up In Between Ultimate Charges
The Apostate naturally excels at a lot, but maneuver cards are sadly lacking in buffs to the character and debuffs to enemies. To fill that void, take arrows that decrease enemy armor, give barriers to the Apostate, or buff their next shot. Anything that can help for the offensive rounds, take it.
The Apostate does not naturally draw a lot of cards, so quivers that contain multiple cards should be given priority over individual arrows. It might not seem important to reduce armor when farming for currencies against smaller mobs, but against the big bosses, it’s a difference-maker.
Level 10 - Ante
Draw an arrow for every two cards flipped by the ultimate ability.
There are many intriguing options here but one clearly stands out. Call adds a maneuver card to the hand after playing a quiver, but often there isn’t enough energy to use it. Raise gives a reduction in energy cost to half of the maneuvers in the hand after using an ultimate, yet maneuvers are more defensive and ultimates should focus on offense.
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Ante draws an arrow for each card flipped with the ultimate ability and that’s too good of a benefit to ignore. It erases the need to wait for more arrows by going into the deck and finding them. The synergy with the extra damage is too perfect to pass up on.
Level 20 - Full House
The ultimate ability at full charges triggers all maneuvers instead of just flipping them.
This choice is a bit more straightforward. Royal Flush flips cards after using a quiver, but that can be a liability when the other side of the card is needed. Straight Flush is worthless because it adds damage to cards that don’t generally do damage.
Full House, by triggering all maneuver cards for free when using the ultimate, is the way to go. Players can focus purely on offense with all their defensive cards now activated. And the level ten mastery is still in effect, so players will be loaded and ready to take down the final boss potentially the first time they get their ultimate ability charged up.
Tainted Grail: Conquest was released on May 27th, 2021, and is available for PC.
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