[Guide] How to Beat Earth March with Water

Yo da yo! Press officer Ayame here. I hope your week has been well.

Does these reports look familiar to you? Do you lose to earth march as a water main regularly, without even denting 30% of their health? Look no further! In this article I will teach you everything you need to know to beat all kinds of earth marches.

Table of content:

1. Earth March Introduction
2. Water March Introduction
3. Counterplay Breakdown
4. Pitting Water March against Earth March

The most common type of earth marches would be:

Alexander the Great, Charles the Great, Zenobia, with the last immortal as Elizabeth Bathory / Genghis Khan / Gilgamesh / Cleopatra.

"Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle." - Sun Tzu

Let’s first try to learn about the mechanics of an earth march. In a typical earth march setting, Alex and Lizbeth / Khan will be the main dps and an example of a meta skill set is:

Alex: anger, cleave, malice

Charles: fighting master, adrenaline rush, misleading

Zenobia: berserk, oaken guard, resist

Elizabeth Bathory: death breath, duel master, coercion

Here is a run down of the stats of these immortals at a close to maximum level capacity:

Looking at their stats, the main points we can gather are:

1. Main DPS Alexander the Great and Elizabeth Bathory have high Physical Attack. (3.9k and 3.6k)
2. Both backline has low Physical Defense (1.3k and 1.1k)
3. Charles and Elizabeth Bathory has low Magical Defense (1k and 1.7k)

Now that we know our enemy, we can start planning the counterplay. I would go as far as to say that, with the right setup, water march can be the bane of earth main’s existence. The 4 key immortals I am going to focus on will be Ramesses II, Attila, Merlin and Dido. Now let's have a rundown of this water march.

Ramesses II:

Ramesses II is an attack type spearman immortal. He specializes in debuffing an opponent's main carry by reducing their damage dealt. Ramesses II skill Divine Judgment deals 330% physical damage to the enemy directly ahead and lower their damage dealt by 25% for 6s. (35% if you have his special artifact). 

Dido:

Dido is a support bowmen immortal. Her skill increases Physical Defense (2000% of target’s level) to all allies and has a 35% chance of applying chill (lower the attack speed of attacker by 20% for 6s when receiving normal attack). Merlin will deal 780% magical damage instead of 520% magical damage on targets that is chilled.

Attila the Hun:

Attila the Hun is an attack type Calvary immortal. He has high Physical Attack and also the only attack type immortal that can hit both the backline unit. His skill Wild Corrosion deals 230% physical damage to 3 enemies and has a 35% chance of reducing their physical defense by 15% and silencing them for 4s. 

Merlin:

Merlin is a magic type bowmen immortal. With high Magical Attack and ridiculous scaling of 520%/780%(chilled) magical damage to all enemies, he is one of the hardest hitting immortals in Infinity Kingdom. 

I’ll explain the role of each immortal in this water march:

Ramesses II will be assigned the duty to lower 35% damage of Alex and the bowmen directly behind, which is usually the carry (Elizabeth Bathory, etc) as players normally place both carry in the same column. With that in mind, the skills I would give my Ramesses II will be Malice, Energy Suppression(ES), and the most important of all, PHYSICAL SHIELD. Malice reduces the crit rate of all enemy units, prolonging the battle as ur march takes lesser crit = lesser dmg. ES is a must have for the main march, especially in water. Here is the list of benefits for running ES.

1. Delay the burst of lightning and fire march
2. With the recent addition of immortal boost +24 and academy research that increases energy regeneration speed, many immortals are able to cast their skill before the second dragon skill activates. ES will prevent that from happening.
3. Level the playing field of water turtle speed energy regeneration

Physical Shield reduces the physical damage received by Ramesses II. It is a really underrated skill but so powerful. The power of physical shield can be seen below:

The ratio of Normal Attack to Cleave here is 0.58:1, whereas usually it would be 2:1. Physical Shield could effectively reduce the damage of Alexander the Great by 50% as most of his damage comes from his normal attack. 

Dido will be the supporter in this team composition, and the skills I run on her are Oaken Guard, Assist and Sacrifice. Oaken Guard will provide physical defense to 3 random allies, helping the team survive the initial 18second of the battle where the earth dragon will be stunning our immortals. Assist equipped on backline immortal will guarantee that the immortal you protect is the other backline immortal, which is merlin. In Infinity Kingdom, your damage is directly correlated to the HP of your immortal, where the higher hp you are the more damage you deal. Having Assist on Dido will ensure Merlin deals the maximum amount of damage possible. Sacrifice (Aura) will grant 2 random allies damage buff but reduce Dido damage as well. There is also a chance of increasing initial energy by 100. Best case scenario would be for the damage buff to go on Attila and Merlin.

Attila the Hun will be responsible for dealing the majority of the damage to their backline immortal. As we recall earth march’s backline has low physical defense while Attila has HIGH physical attack and is able to damage both backline immortal with his skill. The tok skills I use on Attila the Hun are Fighting master, Death Breath and Misleading. As he is the main physical damage dealer in this team composition, Fighting Master will grant attila immunity to control which lets him cast his skill and Death Breath (physical damage and magical damage to all enemy every 6s) consistently. As his skill has a chance of lowering 3 target’s physical defense, this combo of fighting master and death breath is best used on Attila the Hun. Misleading reduces the accuracy of all enemy units and helps your team survive longer if opponent’s main carry is physical damage only, for e.g. Alexander the Great, Elizabeth Bathory, Genghis Khan, Gilgamesh. 

Merlin will be the main carry here with Dido as a supporter. His skill would be Concentration, Annihilation and Weakness. The reason for running Concentration is simple; his skill could deal 520~780% depending on chill status, and concentration would boost that damage dealt by 30%, capping around 1000%+ magical damage. Yea big boi damage. As for the question on why Annihilation rather than Fire/Toxic Nova? Against Earth you want instant damage rather than Damage over Time (DOT), as Charles’s Terra Shield would mitigate all your damage if you fail to bring it down fast enough. Every 6s, Annihilation has a 45% chance of dealing 300% damage to all enemies compared to Nova’s 50% chance to deal 175% magical damage to 3 random enemies + inflict DOT for 6s, dealing 75% magical damage every 3s. Comparing their total damage dealt, Annihilation deals 1200% vs Nova 975%. One is instant damage and the other is DOT, which is why I chose Annihilation. Weakness aura reduces Resilience rate, the attribute that determines your resistance to receiving critical hits. This aura further boosts the instant damage Attila and Merlin can deal to Earth March.

Let's put what we have learnt to practice. First scout the earth player you want to fight, for me i'll pick this to showcase the power of Ramesses II.

We can tell that he runs both his carry Alex and Elizabeth on the bottom column. What we will do in this case is put our supporters Ramesses II and Dido on bottom column as well, so Alex’s usual tok skill Cleave does not touch Merlin, and his normal attack will suffer in the hand of Ramesses II 35% damage debuff and 30% physical damage reduction. The lineup should look like this:

I’ve finished setting up now, the only thing left is to battle and check the result.

Tadah!! And that is how you use water march to beat earth march with proper counterplay. It even dealt 50% damage to the 264k lightning march in Wave 2.

Thanks for reading and I hope this helps you in winning those earths that traumatize you. For those who wants to learn more about immortal attributes and the likes, please refer to this guide posted by Press Officer Tea.

https://forum.gtarcade.com/topic/53901#.YlAImhlHZPo.link

I will be posting a part 2 about the role artifacts play in water marches and what kind of basic attributes and special attributes you should aim for. Remember to like and comment on what other guides you wish to see from me.

~ Ayame百鬼, edited by Moratia & J姐

Download link: https://infinitykingdom.gtarcade.com/

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