Buddy Rush: Botherella's Skill Guide (1.8.0)

Botherella is a spell-caster with decent area-effect damage skills and the ability to Curse Oblins into ineptitude. Note that Botherella's regular attacks are area effect with zero area. This means that she will hit targets that overlap.

Summon

With Summon, Botherella will call Wolfgang, a big scary dog. Wolfgang used to be sooo cute in the past. Guess he grew up. Anyway, Wolfgang follows Botherella around and attacks her enemies. He usually gets beaten unconscious after a Mission ends. Unlike other buddies, Wolfgang does not teleport to Botherella if he is too far away.

Wolfgang has a special attack where he bites and hangs on to the target Oblin, interrupting the Oblin's attack. If Botherella is the main character, an icon of jaws appears at the top-left of the screen to show the CoolTime of Wolfgang's special attack. Note that there are baddies who are immune to interrupt.

Casting time for Summon has been improved and as such, Botherella is in lesser danger of being vulnerable while she is calling Wolfgang.

Interestingly, if Botherella is the main character in the Kanbucay Mission 'Gather the yummy coconuts', her Wolfgang can gather the yummy coconuts.

Curse

Curse is Botherella's specialty where she may reduce the Att and Def of Oblins over a large area. Lowering an Oblin's Def makes it easier to defeat that Oblin while lowering Att reduces damage from that Oblin.

This skill is very useful against Raid Bosses with very high Def (Genzir the Storm and SD-91). Curse also helps the buddies stay alive. The Curse symbols on bosses disappear sooner compared to the Curse symbols on regular Oblins. Despite that, the effect of Curse seems to continue on bosses for a short while even after the symbol is gone.

Curse is one of The Almighty Skills, able to reduce damage received drastically and also make targets with high Def vulnerable.

Thorn Bush

Thorn Bush does damage over an area for a short amount of time. In addition, Thorn Bush also poisons. The poison damage depends on Att and is unaffected by SkillPow.

One trick is to cast Thorn Bush on an Oblin then lure other Oblins into the area of effect of the skill. This is a good skill to start off an Arena fight - just cast it on the ground the opponents are rushing to.

Some opponents may be resistant to poison damage. In the past, these opponents would take one tick of poison damage then immediately recover. I have been unable to confirm this lately since those same opponents die instantly on contact with a Diamond Level 5 Botherella's Level 7 Thorn Bush with an extreme amount of SkillPow bonus.

Ghost Storm

Botherella's Ultimate Skill, Ghost Storm, creates a ring of skulls and bones around Botherella, doing damage to any Oblins who get near.

The special features of Ghost Storm is that it does fairly consistent damage and it follows Botherella. These makes it very useful for completing low-level Missions. Simply cast the spell and take a walk to the Mission exit. Oblins will die left and right when they come into contact with the storm.

Charity

Donating skill points to Charity is a must to improve Curse. As an added bonus, it also increases the effectiveness of Thorn Bush.

Elastic Skull

Elastic Skull allows Botherella's regular attack to jump to an additional target. This is useful for any Botherella builds that focuses on regular attacks. Combined with Botherella's zero area of effect, this allows her to deal a lot of damage to Oblins clustered close together.

Elastic Skull also allegedly allows Botherella to Curse with her regular attacks. However, I have only seen the skull symbol appear on targets affected by this passive Curse. I have not noticed any increase in damage done to those targets or any decrease in damage received from them.

Pain Sharing

Pain Sharing describes the relationship between Botherella and Wolfgang, a one-sided relationship, that is.

Sharing HP means that some of the damage Botherella receives is transferred to Wolfgang. It does not apply the other way around. Effectively, Pain Sharing gives Botherella a certain percentage of reduction to any damage she suffers while Wolfgang is around. This is very useful since Botherella has low health.

As an added bonus, Wolfgang gets a boost to his Max HP so he can endure more damage. This skill is good for Botherella builds that focus on Wolfgang.

An eye for an eye

'An eye for an eye' is an aura that gives Botherella and fellow buddies a chance to return damage received. This applies to any damage, including damage from a range attack and even poison damage.

At low-level, this skill is quite useless with the low chance of activating and low effect. At high level, its use is debatable. It is useful for buddies who have high Max HP but low Def. However, it should not be relied upon to deal damage.

It is best to bring along a healer if one wants to make use of this aura.

Update 25 April 2013:
'An eye for an eye' is potentially deadly in the Arena. When the opposing team has Botherella, I sometimes lose huge chunks of HP when using powerful Skills.

***

In hindsight, I probably should not have invested so many skill points into 'An eye for an eye' since the Botherella in the screenshot above is built around the Curse skill, which reduces damage.

To further increase the effectiveness of the Curse skill, I had included a lot of items with Skill CoolTime bonus so Botherella could use the skill more often. The duration of Curse is still shorter than the CoolTime so there is a time when the target(s) is not affected.

I also invested a lot in Pain Sharing to keep Botherella alive. I did not put many skill points into Ghost Storm since I did not plan to use it often. In hindsight, I probably should have (instead of investing in 'An eye for an eye').

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