Bougie's Ultimate LHC Guide: Updated Strategies, Optimal Compositions, and More for 2024

In daddy Jae we trust!

 

prefacing this by saying that I am by no means an expert of LHC nor an expert on the entire roster of classes but...

Why is NL above Corsair for Melee parties?

Positives of Corsair:

• fine with only SI, so any iteration of Melee party comps that do not include SE (presumably most?), a Corsair should be better?
  
• no minimum range requirement with any Battleship skill or Flamethrower/Ice Spitter (non-Battleship mobbing skills)

Negatives of Corsair:

• has to move around the map a lot, with optimized Battleship positioning seemingly being an unknown (movement having already been pointed out in the main body of the thread)
• vast difference in DPS/movement between pro sairs and noob sairs

I have mostly run with Ranged parties, but the few times I have run with a Melee party, it seemed to go fine (once again my experience is likely very limited compared to the real pros of the server). I would love to do testing with some people who know how to optimize LHC and possibly formulate a better opinion on the strength/weakness of Corsair.

 

Hey baba, I appreciate the curiosity! I also really enjoy sair, and it pains me to have to categorize them lower than NL. The biggest reason they were placed low tier, is just due to the damage and added disruptiveness of golems. If you're positioned in a spot where you wont be launched into orbit by a golem, you're in turn taking roughly 6k damage every time you're able to be hit. In addition, the golems are boss tagged, so the added effects of flame and ice spitter can't even apply. So when the sair's ship is inevitably smashed into popsicle sticks by the golems, it's doing by far the least damage of all of the classes. Battleship torpedo and air strike are nice aoe abilities, but with optimal dps uptime hindered, I believe an NL spamming avenger the whole time, on average -is going to do more. +NL's give people too lazy to scroll pets, haste!

 

Haste is something I never really considered before, so that's a good point. Although, Shads can fill that space as well.

Couple of additional things to consider:

What sort of party comp are you running that would include NL? You are typically not going to be including a SE in a Melee party (not including muling outside of the party). I am not sure that I believe a NL without SE does more damage than a Sair with SI, even without Battleship. EB30 goes a long way with helping off-boat DPS.

Is there any difference in positioning requirements between NL and Sair for Melee parties? NL has the obvious advantage on movement, but have the limitation of minimum range.


I think being hit by a golem is something like half of max range for a Sair, so they can position fairly close and be fine, due to being able to knockback with Torpedo. I may do some testing on this today to see distance/knockback effectiveness, because I do not want to spread lies, as well as for my own knowledge. I am having a hard time trying to put my ideas into words without pictures/diagrams, so I am going to stop here for now.

 

I wonder if they figured a sair would be in a range party, like NLs and SE would be. So the thought of sair with si in a melee is not something that is considered. Well, not something i'd want in any of the melee parties I attend at least (unless perhaps its a homie) So in a range party, the NL + SE is a more optimal combo thus making them above a sair in ranking? Just my guess in this discussion you two are having, Im most likely way wrong lol

 

Yea, it is pretty much a moot point either way, as a Melee party is likely way better without either of them.

I am only getting about a 50% knockback rate with an apple and consider myself to be "average" in terms of damage/range. A lot of my thinking is around some optimized setup so that a Sair can shine, for example, rushing them all to the stairs and Sair getting to sit and Torpedo. Even then, not sure if they can outperform a standard Melee setup.

 

I dunno about golems, but at least at bearwolves it seems fine to me to take an SE in a melee party and break that golden rule of "no mixed parties". In fact, it might even be kinda optimal depending on what the rest of the party looks like. Consider this chart I yoinked from some other thread:


A party of 4 drks and 1 bucc would get a total ~55% dps increase overall from having SE (I think it might even be more since the chart only gives demo for the bucc and I'm guessing ds+snatches benefits even more since it's more hits in same time window). Obviously SEs aren't the best mobbers, but they would have to be worse than half the power of a warrior for it to be better just to take another warrior instead.

Obviously 4 drks is an extreme example, but with a mix of different warriors it's probably still a ~30% increase. That's still gotta be better than taking a second bucc or something, right? So maybe this isn't S tier territory but the way the chart is currently written puts it in F tier and calls it a clown comp and will probably discourage anyone from ever considering taking an SE in a melee party. I think that is a great injustice to my people

Maybe I'm missing something or I'm biased as an SE main, but would like to hear what others think.

ps: I'm also sus about the bm > mm debate but I'm not really sure because I don't have a bm and don't have a feel for how good they are at lhc

 

I think the reasoning for BM>NL is because in a standard NL party itll just be 5 nl 1 se and no SI

In a mixed party with SI I believe MM smokes BM. But with no proper grouping and SI BM probably is better

 

It's not a 55% DPS increase, you can't just add like that (unless you say that a party of 6 by default does 600% DPS I guess, but that's kind of weird to say). Average them instead, and you'd get ~11% DPS increase from SE.

That being said, 5->6 attackers is a 20% DPS increase, so as long as your SE deals half the damage of a drk or more, then I think it'd be a DPS increase.

Math:
5->6 attackers = 20% DPS, so adding another DRK is ~20% dps increase (exact stats vary based off gear and class comp but for rough math it's okay)
Adding an SE gives 11% DPS increase, so to equal the 20% increase from another DRK you need 9-10% more DPS increase. Or around half of what a DRK would be hitting. Note that's not per-line or anything, that's overall dmg needed including multitarget/attack speed.

 

50% of a drk seems totally doable especially for bears
J> lhc bears 19x MM btw since it seems pretty good on paper!

But even getting to 50% of a drk might be challenging at golems right?
Would the best position for bm/mm at golems in a melee part be the same as shad/bucc and use arrow rain since it can hit 2 platforms for max 6 mobs?
If they can consistent dps there, they might be pretty decent, but no stance could mean they’re gonna get yeeted every 5 seconds, losing a lot of dps…
They could try to stay on the bottom platform instead and use hurricane/inferno/straif/pierce, but I think they’ll still lose a lot of dps because unlike in a ranged PT, they won’t be against a wall :\
They’d have to reposition too every time mobs spawn, and might aggro the golems, making it difficult for the rusher to mob them to the stairs

 

Thanks for checking my math. I am not good with numbers so I knew I was probably getting it wrong (or at least articulating it in a weird way) But it sounds like the conclusion you came to still roughly matches mine somehow!

That's what I think too. When there's 6 bears, a MM could probably even be whiting some of them. Given that this tier list is for both bears and golems, I'm worried it's not painting the full picture for SEs and party leads might blindly follow it and decide to turn away perfectly good SEs at bears when in reality they would be a solid add to the party.

Now golems is a different story, I agree. And it varies even more between BM and MM I think. Personally I always avoided golems on my MM because bears are more fun, but I think there's some things you can do to make it work. I don't think we'd want to use arrow eruption on the stairs unless there's smoke since it would be almost constant knockback. What I do is just piercing arrow from the other sides. You can jump while charging piercing arrow, or weave in and out, in order to avoid the knockback attack. If no one else is attacking the same golems you are, you can even just puppet them all and relax. If the grouping is bad and no pusher is coming to help, you can also puppet to slowly lure them over. Like I said, it's not really fun though, it feels more tiring than bears, and it feels like there's less chances for those big juicy 6 target mobs that MMs love

 

On the same note, FP should probably be S tier over BS for bears.
Thoughts on labeling this guide as LHC Golems since the meta for bears is actually quite different?

*Edit* just seen this
*Note: This guide will be mainly melee-centric, focusing on LHC golems.*

So I think it all makes a lot of sense now.