Awakening Zola and Barbastroff

[Khazan]

I have both of them ready to awaken but as their range/atk speed change when awakened I'm not entirely sure if I should do it especially Barbastroff since there are more alternatives to him. So I'm searching from advice of someone who has them awoken. Thank you.

[Sincronic]

I don't have any of those, but i think everyone else will tell you to awaken Zola and sell Barbastroff for RC unless you don't have any better mage
Every 2nd player i see uses AW Zola, but never have i seen anyone using Barba

[Eab1990]

IIRC, Zola's range still increases with AW, just not as much as other cannoneers. I think it's normally +40 range for all cannoneers, but Zola takes a -20 range penalty, so she only gains 20 range instead to make up for her increased attack speed benefit.

[AgentFakku]

I don't have Zola. Just barely got Barbastroff from last Gold Rush event which was my first time and it was fun

Seeing Zola is like a Percis only in class since I assume Zola is more improve version due to stats and abilities if you want an artillery officer - I never used Percis or her class that much except for the Total Domination event which I still to max lv Percis as she kept dying on me LOL

I don't think I use artillery officers over mages since artillery officers are more niche in usage

[ZeroZet]

AW Barbie-jii have attack "speed" of 212 frames* compared to mages' standard 192, and base range of 280 (normally 240).
AW Zola have attack "speed" of 164 frames compared to artillery's standard 194, and base range of 290.

*60 frames per second


Zola is the best non-black mage we have. Unless you need magic damage constantly, of course. ;)

[Nero010]

Yep, Zola is great and a good chunck better then old barbie (id say, i dont own Barbie but i would never use him anyways as i have mehlis and garania too).
Even though i keep using zola less as I grew in unit diversity and due to my garania boosting mages and zola not benefiting, but i still use her time to time and she fills a niche none other can and does so well while not needing that much investment.

btw. Zola is nothing like Percis... no idea where you got that image from @hungryhunter

[Khazan]

Thank you. I will awaken Zola then and leave Barbastoff 50CC60 for male only maps as I have him -2CR.

[Ramazan]

Leave barbastroff at cc60
Aw zola to aw80
like i did to both cyrus and zola, both are doing their job well at where they are. Zola is better than even plat mages on skill duration especially after aw thx to her passive. Also, zola can be used very conveniently more than other cannoneers thx to damage type change on skill.

Edit: Sorry, write this stuff before reading your last post :p guess point is taken.

[kayfabe]

As someone who owns Zola, Garania and Barbie as well as their various silver counterparts I wouldn't declare Zola the hands down best unit due to the Artillery class's inferior splash radius. Lemme put it this way: the fact that Artillery Officers have single target dps comparable to or better than a mage one full rarity tier higher sounds great until one remembers that single target mage dps is actually pretty crappy and that they rely on their special attack properties to pull their weight. So, yes, Zola is a good unit and pretty handy if you need physical AOE like in Crystal Keeper G or if you can create a small killzone via blockers. However, she doesn't really knock widely dispersed gargoyle flocks out of the sky or burninate goblin hordes with the same panache that a Mage can, especially if said mage is rocking an Increase Splash skill. Hence why I tend to think of Garania, Barbie and Valerie more as utility units than true dps--they swiftly clean out the trash so that my heavier hitters can lay down the heavy firepower without any of it getting diverted to small fry. In a very real sense, it almost doesn't matter how much damage they do as long as it's enough to clean the map of potential leakers in 2 or 3 shots. By contrast Zola lives in this weird gray area where she's better on paper than my mages but often wouldn't hit quite enough targets to get deployed instead of my archers or vampire hunters. So yes, by all means, Awaken Zola and stand pat with Barbie. He doesn't need more damage to fill his niche but Zola strongly benefits from being able to chew through chokepoints faster.

[ZeroZet]

An then SAW hits Zola with dat 2x splash radius in addition to her attack multiplier :p

[Anonymous]

AW Barblestronk's range makes Golden Armor G (Monday Daily) a hell of a lot easier because there are stationary armors he can target for a while due to his range

[kayfabe]

An then SAW hits Zola with dat 2x splash radius in addition to her attack multiplier :p

Yeah, it's pretty sweet.

The other big thing in favor of Awakening her over Barbie is that Artillery officers go up in splash radius with every class tier. They never quite catch up with mages, but it's waaaay more competitive post Awakening. And let's be very clear here: she's definitely better than Barbie overall. It's just when you've got her up against the plat mages that it becomes debatable since they don't need to keep a skill up to beat armor. That's impressive for a gold unit, but as I've said before it's not like I have a particularly high opinion of mages in general, so there's only so impressed I can get with her. Granted, I've got a lot more magic damage up my sleeve than most free players and Sophie handles my physical sweeping needs versus ground units (Thank you Based Goddess!), so maybe I'm just biased.

[MalusCorvus]

Well, I'd been wondering weather to Awaken Zola for some time now, as I'd maxed her otherwise and I was sitting on a mountain of artillery officer Awakening orbs and no one else to use them on. Only reason I didn't was that I valued her range, and in Awakening she actually loses 10 range (down from 300, admittedly), since she has an Awaken ability which increases fire rate but cancels out the range increase from being Awakened.

But it seems she's popular enough - and this Domination event is starting to make me appreciate her a little more. I mean, I'd CC'd her and maxed her out, so I certainly wanted her to be useful, but I'd never used her much.

[kayfabe]

You'll hardly feel the range penalty since the aforementioned splash radius increase means that Awakening her is typically a sidegrade or net improvement in time-on-target given that splash can work like a pseudo-range increase when you're targeting the leading edge of a cluster.

[IvanLedah21]

10 range is minimal, in exchange for slight AS increase, more stats and access to the eventual Skill AW.

Zola is generally going to be used against clustered enemies anyways, so like Kayfabe said, the AOE sort of re-extends her range.

Zola vs. Mages
+ Lower cost
+ Has both physical and magical attack capability
- Magic attack requires skill, if unavailable then inferior against armored
- Smaller splash radius, no way to increase it (making the Increase Splash mages better against large mobs)

For the most part, she's a great alternative to mages, especially on Crystal Keeper since the eyes have MR. Being cheaper is nice too (mages can be VERY expensive to deploy)

[kayfabe]

You must be thinking of somebody else on the durability front. Zola has gold mage tier health and defense but without the benefit of 15 mr. The gold mages can all face tank a tengu rod post Awakening while Garania and Estelle can both do it after class evolution. Odette's obviously geared towards lightning rod duties as well but she gets held back a tiny bit by getting defense instead of health from her affection bonus.

[IvanLedah21]

You must be thinking of somebody else on the durability front. Zola has gold mage tier health and defense but without the benefit of 15 mr. The gold mages can all face tank a tengu rod post Awakening while Garania and Estelle can both do it after class evolution. Odette's obviously geared towards lightning rod duties as well but she gets held back a tiny bit by getting defense instead of health from her affection bonus.

Hm... odd. You're right. I wonder why she seemed like being more durable than the gold mages when they're close physically and obviously superior magically.

[kayfabe]

Eh, brain farts happen, especially when it's on a subject as niche as ranged unit defenses. I can count on one hand the number of ranged units burly enough to stand out as potential lightning rods and arrow catchers. There's a reason that poor Echidna is always stuck in gimmick tier--nobody wants to pay 25-29 up for a tanky healer unless they can really make use of her SAW dragon buffs. At least she'll always have sideboob on her side.