Fourlancer Strategy, Part 1. With the new 1v1 mode (“Fourlancer”) coming out this Thursday, it’s time to think about team comps.
Proactive Lancers
These guys have area effects that work well when you can set up a way to knock someone into them. There may be a few others.
Celeste, Gremo, Grey, Juno, Oz, Zuki, Rask, Helio and Aurora.
Alley-Oop Lancers
These guys do the knocking or rooting, setting up your proactive guy’s move to dunk ’em.
Best are knockbacks: Gremo, Juno, PuP, Brynn (x2!), Rampart, Rask, Helio (proactive in and of itself), Aurora (adjacent only), Elle (ult), Finn (ult).
Roots: Asana, Nev:3 (mod), Garrison (mod), Rampart (mod on wall), Grey (ult), Tol-Ren (ult), Phaedra (ult, kind of), Titus (ult), Khita (ult).
Defensive Lancers
These guys have defensive tools that really shine in a coordinated team.
Rampart, Aurora, Dr. Finn, Meridian, Orion, Quark, Su-Ren.
Vision Lancers
These guys have strong (or at least reasonably strong) vision tools to help you find and track your opponent. Vision advantage matters a lot in this mode because of the increased coordination.
Grey, Kaigin, PuP, Titus, Dr. Finn, Meridian, Elle (mod), Asana (mod).
Good Lancers
These guys are just plain good. They don’t get a ton of mention above, but they’re just extremely good overall.
Blackburn, Celeste, Lockwood, Phaedra, Quark
Overall:
I would recommend choosing a balanced composition to start out. For example, pick one vision lancer, one defensive lancer, one alley-oop lancer, and one proactive lancer. Bonus if one lancer can do multiple things! So, great choices would be Grey, Gremo, Aurora, PuP, Rampart, Meridian, Juno, and (ugh) Quark.
The comps I will be playing (yes, the secret’s out, boys!) will be:
Phaedra – Grey/Celeste/Blackburn – Dr. Finn/Su-Ren — solid overall comp, lots of healing and vision. Su-Ren and Grey is a nice combo, too.
Asana – Celeste – Khita – Aurora — also solid overall comp with healing and vision.
Kaigin/PuP/Rask – Lockwood – Gremo – Helio — my take on a wombo combo.
PuP – Juno – Meridian – Orion — very defensive and stable composition.
Rampart – Gremo/Lockwood/Nix/Oz?/Zuki – Aurora — very much an alley-oop style with Rampart’s pull, but can also protect the squishy backline with his wall while Aurora tosses heals.
Quark + anything lol — do insane healing and win the game. We’ll see what the Quark changes are — apparently he’s being tweaked a bit with the coming patch! I wouldn’t be surprised to see my suggestion adopted (moving a few points of healing from his defensive tether to shield instead).
Note that I try pretty hard in the above compositions not to reuse lancers. I think it’s cool to have a lot of lancers baked into comps! Can anyone come up with a good Oz comp? I have some thoughts (possibly the Rufflebucket comp — I’ve seen Rize Gaming do this), but I don’t play Oz very well. Paging RhodeXLX or Bhodi.
Next week, I’ll post some updates on how the game mode is going so far, and discuss overall strategy, vision and openers.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this game mode and what you’re excited to try!