Torubu's 1.13 Panda-strategy

[Torubu]

Alright, this strategy is a EARLY-EARLYMID STRATEGY ONLY. I will NOT tell you what to build late game, because it's up to your adaption skills to choose the right away in the tech tree, not my strategy. Usually though, if you can push correctly, seldom will you need to move on in the tech tree.

Units Used:
1. Archers
2. Huntresses

Heroes Used:
1. Panderan Brewmaster
2. Hero of Choice*

*Usually I pick the Beastmaster, and not so I can abuse his summons. I play an offensive game, and as a second hero, he is a very low level and easily taken down because of the little time he was given to level. He is most likely going to be targetted by the enemy ranged, JUST so he cannot level and put anymore summons on the ground. Work this to your advantage. I have also, at times, used a Dark Ranger, however she is NOT a good second hero, as I found the hard way. If she does not level along with the opponent's first hero, she is bound to fail.


Panderan Skills
Drunken Haze
Drunken Brawler
Drunken Haze
Drunken Brawler
Drunken Haze
Drunken Brawler*
Storm Earth and Fire*
Breath of Fire
Breath of Fire
Breath of Fire


*Yes, I skipped the Ultimate at level 6. Why? It's not a very micro-friendly ultimate. When the Panda splits into the three forms, his entity is gone for the duration. What does this mean? His three forms are NOT hotkeyed to any grouping, and require too much micro the control when transformed. It's not very different from controlling 5 heroes, which, if you've tried, is not easy.

Build Order:
(THIS IS MY BUILD FOR TAVERN HEROES, SIMILAR, BUT NOT TAKEN FROM SWOOPER, thank you.)
Que 4 Wisps from the Tree of Life.
Send 4 Wisps to the mine, 1 to Lumber.
First Wisp out builds a moonwell.
Second Wisp out builds an Ancient of War.
Que 2 more Wisps.
Third Wisp out goes into the mine.
Fourth Wisp out builds an Altar.
Fifth Wisp goes to lumber, or is used to scout.
Sixth Wisp goes to lumber, or to scout.
Moonwell should have finished around this point in time.
Immediately build a second moonwell.
When the Ancient of War finishes, que 2 Archers, set rally to
nearest tavern. To que 2 archers, you MAY have to wait a bit.
Obtain Panderan Brewmaster at this point, and rendezvous with
your archers. Do not stop production.
HARASS, keep focus on your Panda, and use Drunken Haze as
much as your mana allows.
Be sure, while harassing, to be constructing a second Ancient of
War, and a Hunter's Hall. Preferably the AOW first.
Do not let up on harassment, unless you are encountering a
situation where it is impossible to break their defense without
sacrificing most of your units.
Tech sparingly. If you can win with tier 1 units, then do so, but do
it fast. They will counter eventually.

______

Now, Panderan Brewmaster sounds like a VERY unlikely hero to have success with, however he was expected to replace the Beastmaster by various high level NEs because of a decrease in mana cost for Breath of Fire and Drunken Haze. You might wonder now, why I don't use Breath of Fire, so here it is.

I'd MUCH rather have a meat shield that is rarely getting hit because of the % chance to miss from both Drunken Haze and Drunken Brawler. This is vital, as you can tell early on with the Panderan Brewmaster. As he levels, he becomes MUCH harder to kill.

 

[None293823]

Well well i suppose i have to ask for neutral heroes in the Human forums,because,ok here's my opinion on DR and PB(panderen brewmaster) with NE:
-The idea of Swooper with DR is good because she's an archer you start with archers huntress are ranged too and adding skeletons(melee) is a perfect combinaation with ranged.And adding the number if skellies which is like necros,and something i do in the winter maps:charm a nerubian ... with auto cast skellies(check it on the other DR thread-replay) and this is perfect.
-About Panderen i dont find anything special to combine exactly with NE, a good combination is breathe of fire and Drunken haze because it says:
'when combined with breathe of fire additional ... dmg'
so i think breathe should be like that:

Breathe of fire
Drunken Haze
Breathe of fire
Drunken Haze
Breathe of fire
Storm Earth and fire
Drunken Haze
..

..

The drunken brawelr is not bad but the combination is haze+breathe

 

[Torubu]

What combines well with NE is Drunken Haze's miss %. It allows the huntresses to live longer because when used on the piercing damage units, they hit the huntresses alot less (at level 3, 80% chance to miss.)

Breath of Fire IS a good spell, yes, but since Panda is needed for hazing the units. This is also the reason why it's better NOT to pick Breath of Fire. It's better to save his mana for the Hazing.

 

[None293823]

No the mana shouldnt stop you from making this good combination drunken haze it's true what you say and so is breathe so you can buy mana enough to prevent not enough mana

 

[Torubu]

You're entitled to your opinion, but Breath of Fire has no place in my strategy. I'd rather have a Panda being hit like 2% of the time than having his AOE damage. Matrix Panda!

 

[None293823]

Ok and what about Earth,storm and fire?Doesnt it help?If your hero has few hp wont it be good to use the spell ,you know from 100 hit points you can seperate to 3 units in max

 

[Torubu]

I stated why I didn't like to use Storm Earth and Fire. It's simply because it requires more micro than I can give it. From my organized hotkeying comes 3 hero-like units not belonging to any certain group and no keyboard shortcut to select. I'm not sure if F1 will select all 3, however it's HIGHLY unlikely.

Not to mention by the time they get my Panda to 100 health at level 6, their army is usually more than half gone. You can't necessarily focus fire a level 6 Panda and expect to win. Remember, a Hazed unit attacking the Panda misses 80% of the time. If an attack gets past that 20% chance to hit Panda, he then has a 14% chance to dodge that attack (21% dodge if I pick Brawler over SEF.) Matrix Panda lives for a long time. I pretty much ask for his to be focus fired.

 

[Soju]

F1 does select all three, as does clicking on the Panda icon, and if I'm not mistaken, the Storm Elemental is the highlighted subgroup.

IMO SEF is one of the most useful ultimates in the game. The Fire elemental is basically a lv~5 DH with lv1 immolation on (DPS is almost the same as a lv5 DH), the Storm elemental has a lot of useful spells (*cough* cyclone) and the Earth elemental is ridiculously hard to kill, magic immune, has pulverize which it uses every other attack, etc.

I have a replay of Kp_reign using the Panda as a solo hero, going Haze, BoF, BoF, Haze, BoF, SEF. Lv 25+ NE winning vs Lv 20-something Human. Unfortunately it is from patch 1.12 or something.

 

[Sniper GTX]

Well i find myself agreeing Torubu as the PBM is great tank with DB and Haze stacking hes almost impossilbe to kill with regular units and if you like BoF then why not get warden and get FoK whitch is better as she can blink around doing that and SEF is only decent ultimate even in the hands of an expert so keep to his other skills