We continue our new TFEW Guides section of the Website and the Building A War Team series of articles. Today we will continue to look at Team Composition as James “Emrakul Tat” Hogan of Alpha Cartel guides us through the main areas of focus that you need to take a look at when building your war team in Transformers: Earth Wars. We continue to discuss what every good war team needs in TFEW, and today we continue to look at what we want on our team and the sacrifices we will have to make elsewhere to get what we want on that team.
Prime Cores & C.O.M.B.A.T. Bots
Prime Cores and C.O.M.B.A.T. Bots are sure to be equipped on effective War team bots, so let’s take a look at how to best utilize these bot enhancements to strengthen the effectiveness of your war team in TFEW.
Prime Cores
Prime Cores, a topic we have covered quite thoroughly here on Gaming-fans,com, can add a tremendous benefit to your war team. There are 12 of these and you only have 8 bots on a team so again, choices need to be made here!
Prima – The Prima Prime Core makes your bot’s auto attack apply an effect that makes the building take a percentage amount more from ALL sources. Now that Flak is in the game there is no reason why you wouldn’t use this core if you have it unlocked. The damage amplification is significant even at lower levels and with Flak you’ll be applying it to multiple buildings at once. This core is huge!
Liege Maximo – The Liege Maximo Prime Core is a core that is mildly useful, but has become outdated. When using this core, if the bot is in range it will hack the outpost bots for a set amount of time causing them to fight for you. The main issue with this core is the outposts will use their abilities first which really hurts this core’s usefulness. On top of that, this core was made before the combiner outpost was added to TFEW. Before that, many players would avoid using their combiner because of the high cost. Back then Ore-13 took longer to get, you couldn’t hold as much, and there weren’t as many combiners. Liege Maximo was a good way to avoid bringing a combiner to the fight and to save it for when you really needed it. Now Ore-13 is far more plentiful, there are more combiners to choose from and they cost less to activate (it used to be 10 Ore-13 with a 24 hour recharge unless you pay 25, now its only 12 hours). This core is still good on a bot that is going to trigger outposts like Hot Spot/Tantrum, Optimus Primal/Beast Wars Megatron and other similarly used bots, but it is by no means mandatory.
Amalgamous – The Amalgamous Prime Core increases special ability damage and adds a health restoring ability while the special is activated. This core is not mandatory from a war team perspective, but it can turn a few choice bots that are great, into bots that are basically gods. Sentius, Impactor and Cheetor are three examples of bots who become nearly immortal with this core when their ability is activated. Ideally you want a bot that has a special that lasts a long time since it only works while it is active. If you run a bot like that and also use them as a solo bot on weekends or to help other bots level, this core may just be the most powerful core in the game.
Megatronus – The Megatronus Prime Core adds a fiery AoE around the equipped bot that deals damage based on a percentage of the bot’s DPS. This core only works effectively on bots that use melee attacks since the AoE is very small. Megatronus is not a core that is going to be mandatory for a war team, but if you use either Elita-1/Lugnut or Star Saber/Deathsaurus, this core is a must have for these bots.
Nexus – This core boosts your combiner’s damage while lowering the damage caused by your enemy’s combiner. You are going to use a combiner, and you are going to fight combiners. The Nexus Prime Core absolutely should be put on a war team member. I would suggest putting it on a tank like Sludge/Straxus, an outpost popper like Arcee/Nightbird or Blaster/Soundwave, or a bot that doesn’t have an obvious core choice like Tracks, Sky Lynx, or a medic. You might have to be creative to get this one to work but it is certainly worth it!
Quintus – The Quintus Prime Core will create a sharkticon based on a fraction of your bot’s health and DPS for several seconds for each building destroyed, including walls. These little sharks are more useful than you would think initially. The sharkticons are going to draw enemy fire away from your team and, for whatever reason, it would appear that they are a target priority for most defensive buildings which works in our favor as the attacker. They also add a ton of health to the field. Every 7-10ish building killed (depending on what level the core is) you are creating a bot’s worth of health that also deals damage. If you have a focus on AoE damage I would really consider this core due to its offensive and defensive capabilities. This core is great on bots that have a moderate or higher health pool where their core choice may not be obvious such as Jumpstream, Hot Spot, Arcee, Gnaw (of course!), etc.
Micronus – This creates a large AoE every 5 seconds that heals for a small fraction of each bot’s maximum health that is in the radius of the AoE. The Micronus Core is one that I can only recommend on Optimus Prime & Megatron, but I know others like the Micronus Prime Core on Blaster/Soundwave and our best bots for the Micronus Prime Core article also suggests Springer/Astrotrain. The key is to have this core on a bot with a large health pool so that you get a bigger bang for your buck every 5 seconds, and you want to have other bots, even minions, within the range of the AoE to maximize the effectiveness.
The reason I like Optimus Prime and Megatron here is because they group bots together so you have a better chance of hitting more bots with the AoE heal. Anyone else and I would say it is less than optimal, and here is why. A typically fight will last about 2 minutes and 30 seconds to 3 minutes and 30 seconds, which can trigger the AoE heal 30-42 times. At level 10, which is an achievable number for any player to level a core to, it heals 1.4% of the health for the bots in range. A 4-star Optimus Prime at level 54 has 18,700 which equates to 261.8 health every 5 seconds, or about 52 health a second. That over the length of an average fight is around 8k health on just Optimus Prime alone, and that number only goes up per bot in its area of effect.
Putting the Micronus Core on another high health bot means there is no way to keep it with the team. In fact, most high health bots have an ability that takes them AWAY from the team. Putting it on a medic doesn’t make much sense either because their health pools are too small. At about 5k health, they are only adding 14 health a second – a Ray Booster or G1 core would net you much more health.
Vector – The Vector Prime Core will revive the bot it is equipped to should it fall in battle. It will then send them back in time x amount of seconds in the past to their previous position and level of health. This core is a core I would not consider for my war team. I have tested it on Drift, Star Saber, Cheetor, Windblade, Elita-1, Sunstreaker, Strafe and more, and no matter what there is always a better core choice. The problem is if your bot died, chances are they died from being out of position. It takes a few seconds to kill a bot that is out of position and this core only works for a few seconds. Almost always this core will just put your bot back right where it died with little health just for it to die again. This adds very little benefit to a war team so I would pass this one up. Note that Rae of Primes Gone Wild, author of the spreadsheet graphic that is commonly seen on Discord and Line, gives the Vector Prime Core a “C” grade, the second lowest grade for all 12 Prime Cores.
Solus – This core spawns a little turret around the vicinity of your bot in a somewhat random location that has a percentage of that bot’s health and damage every 15 seconds. The Solus Prime Core is a core I would certainly not overlook for a war team. Just like Quintus, I would place this on a bot with a moderate or higher health pool where a core may not be obvious. At level 10 (again, because this level is achievable for most players), it has 24% of the base health and damage of its equipped bot and lasts for 12 seconds. It takes 15 seconds for it to spawn in, and after that every 15 seconds it will pop up whether it died or lived the full 12 second life span. So, using two and a half minute benchmark for the average battle and accounting for the 15 second lead time, you are going to get this turret top appear around 9 times. If you equip this on a bot with 15k health, every time it spawns you are adding 3,600 health to the field for defenses to target. Multiply that by 9, that’s a whopping 32,400. A bot at that level of health will probably have 250 dps. That means for the full 12 seconds that’s 720 damage, or 6,480 over the course of a two and a half minute battle. The health pool alone is worth this core, the damage is just a pleasant 6,000 damage cherry.
Alpha Trion – The Alpha Trion Prime Core generates an ability point every x amount of seconds. At level 10, our favorite number for comparisons, that’s every 13.5 seconds. Over two and a half minutes, that’s 11 ability points you wouldn’t have had otherwise. This is a core that if you have it, you need to use it. I find it works best on medics since typically they stay out of harm’s way. It also fits on bots who do not have an obvious Power Core choice in TFEW, as stated in our best bots for the Alpha Trion Prime Core article.
Alchemist – The Alchemist Prime Core is a core that grants whatever bot it’s equipped to a percent heal based on all damage done by that bot. This is something I would consider for a war team. Ideally, you want this on a bot that does large AOE damage instead of single target to get the most out of the core. Right now I have this core on a high level Sandstorm (lvl 58 AB 8 4 Star). When he rushes out away from my team to apply his AOE damage/heal combo, between this core and his heal ability he is effectively untouchable for 5 seconds. This allows me to rush him into battle early into a fight into a large group of defenses, pop his combo once or twice depending on how much health the structures have, and not have to worry about my medic chasing him because he is at full health the whole time. For that reason, I would say sandstorm is the best case scenario for this core from personal observation. I have also used it with Cheetor and impactor with favorable results and can see this core being useful on Blades, rust dust, Sky Lynx, and Gold fire.
Onyx – This core will boost the damage of a bot’s regular attacks and reduce the damage taken by defenses when the bot falls below 40% health. This is a great core that I would certainly recommend if you can make room for it. Ideally, if you have a bot in your outpost that is also on your war team, this core would be very beneficial because this is the best outpost prime core of the 12. However, due to the huge increase in damage and damage mitigation (27% at level 10) this core is great on all bots that attract defenses such as Springer, Impactor, and Jumpstream.
C.O.M.B.A.T. Bots
The new C.O.M.B.A.T. bots are a huge benefit to your war team and are literally a game changer (looking at you Flak). If you have them, use them! Here are some brief tips to adding these bots to the team. Note that this was written before the addition of Lionizer, who we will add in time.
Flak/Cratermaker – This C.O.M.B.A.T. bot is the biggest shake up to the game. Flak makes gunners a sub-optimal choice across the board. When equipped, Flak turns a non-gunner into a gunner with a spread shot nearly identical to Skyburst. Gunners as a class have the worst HP in the game and don’t have the best DPS in the game. Their abilities are also outclassed by other bots as well for the most part. Aerials have more health, more DPS, can all equip Flak/Cratermaker and have more versatile abilities with longer range. If you have Flak as a 2-star and a 3-star (or higher), I would recommend not having a gunner class bot in your war team if you can avoid it. Because of this shakeup, the only gunners that still make sense, in my opinion, are Warpath and Skullsmasher due to their ability of punishing bases of a certain layout, Smokescreen and Brake-Neck for their outpost sniping, and 5-star gunners because they are still very powerful. Other than that, I do not see a reason to use a gunner thanks to the addition of Flak.
Firedrive/Blowpipe – If you carry an aerial bot who isn’t using Flak and in a gunner role, Firedrive is the perfect choice. It adds a significant boost to DPS, gives an AoE auto attack and can chew through walls shockingly well. Be aware that the bot will target walls with this C.O.M.B.A.T. bot so it might not be the best choice on every team.
Pteraxadon/Terror-Daxtyl – The bots adds an earthquake attack with a small amount of life gain. There are no downsides to equipping this C.O.M.B.A.T. bot so if you have a bot on your squad that can hold it there is no reason not to add this to the roster.
Nightstalker/Ravage – This C.O.M.B.A.T. bot can be equipped to every bot in the game and adds a little minion that adds a pool of health, some damage and can pop outposts. Every star level you have of Nightstalker/Ravage should be equipped on your war team since there’s no downside to having it.
Lionizer/Catgut – TBD
