Zocc – Hero of the month August 2020
Attack: 739
Defense: 725
HP: 1351
Class: Rogue
Innate Ability: Resist Water Damage – This Hero has an innate resistance against Water damage.
Element: Nature/Green
Mana Speed: Average (10 tiles)
Special Skill: Keyknife Typhoon
- Deals 300% damage to the target.
- Increases the mana of the target by 50%
- The target automatically casts Mindless Attack on a random ally when mana is full during 3 turns.
- Element Link gives all Nature allies +30% defense against Special Skills for 4 turns. This effect can’t be dispelled.
Mindless attack
- When a hero is afflicted with “Mindless attack”, when that hero’s mana is full,
- A “slash” attack (100% damage) to any allied hero
- That hero’s mana is reduced to 0.
- Activation of Mindless attack when on attacking team occurs right before activation of your special skills and matching of tiles.
- Activation of Mindless attack on defending team occurs before activation of their specials and regular attacks.
- This means that there is no way to dispel the status ailment before mindless attack triggers.
Zocc Hero Review
If you have already played Empires and Puzzles for quite some time, you will understand the power of mana control. Effects that prevent enemy heroes from activating their special skill is a life saver.
This effect in heroes like Hel, Proteus, Hansel & Gretel, Merlin make them solid choices for offensive raids, with top players showing that you can win highly unfavored raids using these heroes. Example here.
Compared to Merlin, Hansel or Gretel, Zocc is definitely more reliable.
Firstly, when utilizing Merlin, Hansel, Gretel on offense, you MUST estimate whether your target will be able to activate their special skill in the next turn or two.
Secondly, you should err on the side of activating these mana control earlier, rather than later. The reason for this is because you never know if the next match you make will cascade into a multi-combo, allowing your target to activate their specials.
These often create awkward situations whereby you know your next match will cause a cascade of tiles – but you are not sure if those tiles will result in the enemy special being activated.
Should you choose to wait, you could end up allowing the special to be triggered, or even worse, end up dead. Should you activate your own special early, the cascade might be less than expected, resulting in a non-effective mana control.
And this is where Zocc shines.
Zocc gives the target 50% mana – which removes the reliability issue of your mana control, reducing the skill level required to play Zocc to his full potential.
With some decent planning, you will always be able to zero your target’s mana upon activation of Zocc’s special.
When you consider such an outcome, Zocc’s special at Average speed seems quite well balanced.
Zocc in Offensive raids
As mentioned previously, mana control heroes are always in high demand.
Activation of Zocc’s special should almost always mean that you are able to neutralize a single hero reliably for at least the next 3 turns.
However when you put that into perspective, isn’t simply killing your target much more effective, as compared to simply stopping their special from activating? That said, such an ideal scenario is not always available, and being able to delay activation of your target’s special for you to buy enough turns to activate your own specials to kill them would be the next best strategy.
Therefore, Zocc is really a support hero – not really enough damage to take out the opponent, but great at preventing the opponent team from killing your guys.
Ultimately – Zocc is a very skill based hero. Which target do you want to stop the activation of their special? Stopping the healer helps you kill them faster, but if you don’t stop Azlar (example) your whole team could end up dead. But if you stop Azlar, Vivica will will dispel the status ailment, and heal that enemy that is about to die. Ah. Dilemma.
Therefore the rating for Zocc will be very very different from player to player.
Personally, I rate Zocc an A for offense.
Read more about setting up your teams for offensive raids here.
Zocc in Defense
Zocc is slightly worse off in defense due to the poor AI targetting system. However that is partially offset by the 50% mana given to the target.
That 50% mana greatly increases the efficiency of Zocc in a defense team – but just barely making Zocc viable in defense.
Read more about setting up your teams for raid defense here.
Zocc against Titans
Zocc is quite decent against titans – preventing titans from activating their special skill is always a good thing.
Zocc has moderate tile damage and skill damage and lacks buff/debuff that can increase your titan score.
Zocc is good if you want to save items in titan fights, but not the best choice of hero if you are aiming for the high score.
Zocc Hero Grade/Rating
Titan – A-
Offence – A
Defence Tank – C
Defence Flank – A
Defence Wing – B
Defense Overall – B
Tournaments Rush Attack – A
Tournaments Buff Booster – C
Tournaments Bloody Attack – A
Overall A
How can this be an A but you give Alfrike a B? Alfrike casts mindless attack sometimes to all 5 enemies, while this one casts it to one only AND once removed, the target even hits Zocc back with 170% damage (!), which you don’t mention in you review at all? 170% damage can be a lot of damage and it can even be the end for Zocc, depending on the progress of the battle.
IF Zocc was fast, it would be different but average mana, relatively low damage, enemy hits Zocc back and only one gets mindless attack is more like a B, maybe B+ to me.
A fast mana hero like Hansel is a lot more useful if the only purpose is mana control.
Isn’t the caster of Mindless Attack Zocc’s target?
Hey Pat,
I understand your concern… that negative effect is removed from zocc.. Right now it’s still beta and still up fro changes – i will revise the review when the final version is out.
In Mindless attack. “That hero’s mana is reduced to 0.”. Are You sure?
I had tested with merlin and alfrike..
I thought mindless attack was added to the target’s special – so zocc does not “prevent” it just makes it happen. what I mean (ask?) is that if zocc hits a halt charged e.g. alesie she mindlessly attacks an allie but still, she attacks me back with her special right away, doesn’t she? I wouldn’t call it prevention actually
Nope…
Alasie’s special becomes “mindless attack” for the period of the debuff.
This means that alasie will use all her mana on casting “mindless attack”, and then be done with her turn.
Just to be clear, when we say “attack” does the target use their special on an ally, or just a normal attack?
it’s a normal attack of 100% damage..
So they dont use their special, they just use normal attacks on allies for a few turns then still have their special after mindless ends
Yes, they use a normal attack.
No they will not have their special after mindless ends. The mana is used to cast a “mindless attack” on an ally (Mindless attack is a special that deals the same damage as a normal attack).
There are certain times that the amount of mana added fluctuates. I have not done enough tests to fully reverse engineer the situation yet but here are some observations
1. If i multi fire another hero, then zocc, then tiles, so really they’re all hitting at once, the bar is visibly below 50%,where it should be clearly above. In all of my tests so far it was almur, which I’m noting in case somehow the green d down has something to do with a bug.
2. Sometimes I feel like even when firing zocc alone what it’s actually doing is adding 50%of what they’ve gathered so far (eg, 50 to 75) but this is inconsistent (sometimes it fills). Again it could have something to do with firing tiles basically simultaneously that confuses the system?
3.when i fire zocc alone, it seems to always add half a bar from where it’s at, or fill if above 50, including from the zero position. The above problems though seem to be much more common when starting from the zero position. This could be a bit of an optical illusion but it does generally appear to be the case
Since there are no numbers shown as with hp, it is also *possible* that the bar itself is just poorly programed and does not visually represent the percentage well, but behind the scenes doing the math fine. This would likely be a zocc specific bug also as no one has noticed it with merlin, etc. , but is consequential in that his timing is of necessity precise, so not knowing where you’re at can be a critical factor.