Orcs Must Die! Unchained – FAQ/Walkthrough

Heroes

Bloodspike

Overview

My Personal Rating: 7/10

Bloodspike is a melee Hero that has a couple of unique things that only a couple of other Heroes get: Bloodspike gets a specific item drop, called Delicious Meals, that heal Bloodspike and reduce the cooldowns of his abilities. His damage output is also fairly dependent on the buff granted by Bloodbath (his Secondary attack), which increases his damage.

Abilities:

Bloodbath (L2) - Bloodspike uses his axes in a sweeping motion. If a minion is hit, Bloodspike will get 1 stack of a buff (each minion hit increases the stack by 1), which increases his damage by 8% for each stack.

• Mana cost: 8
• Cooldown: 3 seconds.

Stunning Execution (Triangle) - This ability will instantly kill any minion that is hit by it, although it does not work on boss minions or Mercenaries. If the execution is successful, surrounding minions will be stunned.

• Mana cost: 50
• Cooldown: 24 seconds.

Maiming Blow (Square) - Bloodspike throws his axes in a straight line in front of him, dealing damage to any minion caught in his axe's path.

• Mana cost: 40
• Cooldown: 11 seconds.

Homicidal Frenzy (L3) - Bloodspike gets a buff that lasts 6 seconds, which increases his attack speed and movement speed by 50%.

• Mana cost: 30
• Cooldown: 33 seconds.

Passive: Bloodhungry - Bloodspike's passive just grants the ability for Delicious Meals to drop from any minion. Their appearance frequency is decent (you should see one probably every 15 seconds or so), which really helps in keeping Bloodspike alive. The cooldown reduction can be fairly useful as well, as each Meal will reduce current ability cooldowns by 1 second.

Pros

Personally, I think Bloodspike is most suited to dealing damage to large groups of enemies. Maiming Blow deals a significant amount of damage, and it does have a fairly high maximum target limit; you'll see you can hit many minions with it, if you can line the minions up appropriately.

Stunning Execution is fairly unique, because it instantly kills any minion (but not boss minions or Mercenaries). This is actually a fantastic ability for some single targets (particularly Armored Ogres, who have physical damage resistance), but it's particularly useful for Shield minions, because it will still instantly kill the minion, even if you attack the shield directly. This means you don't need to sweep behind the Shield minion in order to instantly kill it, which is extremely useful.

Bloodspike's survivability is fairly high as well, due to the healing factor of the Delicious Meals. The healing of Delicious Meals isn't immediate; its healing happens over a few seconds. What is awesome about this is that the healing is considered a buff, and it can stack up to 3 times. So this means that if you pick up 3 Delicious Meals in quick succession, you'll see a massive amount of healing.

Cons

Bloodspike has one massive problem - His damage against boss minions, Mercenaries, and Unstable Rifts is pretty terrible.

This is mostly due to a design problem. Bloodspike's damage is highly dependent on the buff that Bloodbath gives; his initial damage is actually a bit lower than the average melee Hero, because of how much of a damage increase the buff gives (it gives 8% more damage per stack). The Bloodbath buff is given for each minion hit (1 minion hit = 1 application of the buff), but the duration of the buff is fairly short, so you have to continually use Bloodbath in order to keep at least 1 stack up.

So how is this a problem with boss minions and the like? Well, it's mostly due to their high HP; everything around the boss/Mercenary will die first, which means as soon as they do, you lose your source for the Bloodbath buff. At that point, Bloodspike is dealing subpar Primary damage to a minion with really high HP, which is a big problem when that minion needs to die (like Orfum). This is also a problem for Unstable Rifts, because they normally spawn in a separate area than the minions.

Stunning Execution also has a couple of problems. First, you have to be very careful about aiming it; since minions have a tendency to overlap each other, it's very easy to hit the wrong minion with it, which more or less can waste it (trying to target a large minion in a group of smaller minions can be quite hard). Second, Stunning Execution has absolutely no use against bosses, Mercenaries, and Unstable Rifts. If you try to use it against one of these enemies, it will literally do nothing. Also realize, that you'll run into situations where you get both of those problems occurring at the same time; a Mercenary is amidst a bunch of other minions, you accidentally hit the Mercenary with Stunning Execution, and it's quite frustrating.

Homicidal Frenzy is a bit questionable as well, as the cooldown doesn't really make sense with how long it lasts. It has a cooldown of about 33 seconds, but the buff only lasts about 6 seconds. For me, this makes it a gigantic waste of Mana, so I don't end up using it very much.

Lastly, although it's not too significant, Bloodspike can suffer from Mana issues on occasion. This is mostly due to how Bloodbath has a Mana cost; despite its low cost, you'll be using Bloodbath continuously. Then factor in the reduced cooldowns gained from Delicious Meals, and you may see that you're using Maiming Blow and Stunning Execution fairly frequently as well. It's not too bad most of the time (but you should keep an eye out for Mana Orbs), but I would compare it to playing as Blackpaw, and using Call To The Beyond every time it's up.

Upgrades

Upgrades I use:

• Buzz Kill (Level 2)
• Sea of Blood (Level 4)
• Extreme Execution (Level 7)
• Shock Value (Level 10)

Upgrades Analysis:

• Level 2:
  
  • Buzz Kill: This is the upgrade I normally choose, as I think Maiming Blow is Bloodspike's single best ability. Increasing the range of Maiming Blow just allows it to potentially hit more targets, and given its higher damage, there's a good chance it'll equate to more things dying.
  • Finer Dining: If you want to try to get Bloodspike's respective trophy out of the way as fast as possible, you may want to consider this upgrade. I would argue that it's not really useful for any other reason though, because Delicious Meals have a decent drop-rate as is.
  • Blood In Their Eyes: Increasing the stun of Stunning Execution is kind of useless in my opinion. The stun isn't very long to begin with, which means that a 40% increase isn't going to amount to much; if it's a 2 second stun, the increase will be slightly less than a second. Also keep in mind that the stun only happens to those that are surrounding the executed target; if nothing is in that range, no stun will happen.
• Level 4:
  • Sea of Blood: I do think that this is the best upgrade for this level, but it is slightly open for debate. My reasoning for this upgrade is that the Bloodbath buff is so pivotal to Bloodspike's damage, so keeping the buff up as long as possible is extremely beneficial. However, it's not that black-and-white, because the buff disappears in a very odd way; if you pay attention to the buff (which is above your HP bar) as you gain more stacks, you lose stacks in a semi-random way. Sometimes the buff will decrease by multiple stacks (like I've seen up to 6 disappear at once). Not only that, but the duration of the buff is a little difficult to understand as well, and you can see the "timer" decrease at different speeds. It's really difficult to describe what really happens, so I would recommend to anyone to look at it yourself to try to get an idea of what I mean. For these reasons, one could argue that this upgrade may not be that useful.
  • Fortified Meals: A very odd upgrade, as each Delicious Meal will increase Bloodspike's maximum HP by 0.7%. The issue is, it's not really necessary, as Bloodspike's survivability is decent as it is (thanks to the Delicious Meals healing him). He also has a decent amount of HP to work with, so trying to push it further is kind of pointless.
  • Sustained Frenzy: It's not a bad upgrade, but a 50% increased duration to Homicidal Frenzy isn't as helpful as I want it to be. This increases the duration from 6 seconds to 9, which means that you're still going to be waiting about 20+ seconds for it to be back up. For me, that's not worth it.
• Level 7:
  • Cheap Shot: The Mana cost reduction is pretty good, and I would recommend this upgrade if you want to take the "Devastating Assault" upgrade at level 10. This is where you need to make the decision to either upgrade into Maiming Blow, or Stunning Execution. I personally always choose to upgrade into Stunning Execution (as it is not all that great normally), so I never take this upgrade.
  • Energy Snack: I don't think this is a very good upgrade, because you have to remember that Delicious Meals are dropped upon minion kills. So whenever you're in an area with minions, that usually means you're not going to need to move around very much. Thus, the movement speed increase is kind of pointless.
  • Extreme Execution: I personally take this upgrade for Stunning Execution, as level 10 offers the "Shock Value" upgrade, which I think is Bloodspike's best upgrade. With Shock Value, Stunning Execution becomes much more attractive to use, so having a lower cooldown is very useful.
• Level 10:
  • Shock Value: As I said above, I think this is Bloodspike's best upgrade, as you get a damage component to Stunning Execution, which makes Stunning Execution an extremely useful ability. With this upgrade, this means that Stunning Execution will instantly kill a minion, stun the surrounding minions, and deal Lightning damage to minions. If anything is killed by the Lightning effect, they will then deal damage in a small radius around them (which is what all Lightning damage does). Also keep in mind that since the damage is a Lightning effect, it should also help with the Combo Meter. That's is a ton of different effects for a single ability, which is fantastic.
  • Serrated Edges: Unfortunately this upgrade really isn't that attractive (in my opinion) because the bleed effect only works while under the duration of Homicidal Frenzy. This means you only have a window of 8 seconds (12 if you took Sustained Frenzy at level 4) to get the effect, and then you have to wait another 20 seconds to get the effect again.
  • Devastating Assault: This is actually kind of an amusing upgrade, as if you get a group with multiple large minions in it, you can just spam Maiming Blow like crazy. This really needs to be taken in conjunction with "Cheap Shot" at level 7 though, because if you don't, in the best case scenario (when you're constantly killing large minions), your Mana is going to deplete within seconds. Regardless of the Mana cost, it still is kind of questionable though, because it's conditional upon two different things - a large minion, and killing it. So if you don't kill the minion (or there isn't any to kill) this upgrade then has zero use.

Synopsis

Oh Bloodspike, I just don't know how to feel about you. I personally really like Bloodspike, but I can understand if someone else thinks he sucks.

I would say that Bloodspike is probably one of the very few Heroes that takes more effort to play. You have to be really active and aggressive with him to see him perform his best, because otherwise he has a tendency to deal subpar damage.

The reason why he takes so much effort is because you have to constantly be using Bloodbath in order to keep the damage-increase buff up as much as possible. If you can do that, you can really see some great damage with Bloodspike. However, this can be a bit awkward to manage, because Bloodbath has a 3 second cooldown, so you have to get used to it in order to ensure that you're hitting with it every time it's available.

The way that the buff works is also kind of awkward as well; as I noted in my comments about the "Sea of Blood" upgrade, the duration and the stacks diminish in a really strange way. Sometimes you'll lose a significant amount of stacks at once, and sometimes you'll only lose a couple. For the duration, it seems to decrease the slowest on your first initial stack, but once that first stack is lost, the duration of it decreases (it's really odd to explain).

All this really means is that the buff can be extremely difficult to get to its maximum (I'm not even sure if it's possible in Survival). Although it is important to point out this kind of makes sense; the maximum of 50 stacks would equate to a 400% damage increase, which is crazy. The reality is that, chances are, you'll probably be around 8-15 stacks at any given point in Survival, which really isn't much of a damage increase (although, I'll personally take anything).

Further, also realize that Bloodspike is built to be a tank; since the Bloodbath buff gives a stack for each minion hit, he does his best when you jump right into the middle of groups and just start hacking away. He does have a decent HP pool (it's slightly lower than Bionka's) and if you're on the lookout for Delicious Meals, you shouldn't really be struggling to survive much (although the Enjoys Pain Trait does help quite a bit).

You'll probably realize that Bloodspikes main fault is with targets with a lot of HP, such as boss minions, Mercenaries, and Unstable Rifts. Their larger HP means that they'll more than likely outlast everything around them (thus you can't keep gaining your buff from Bloodbath) and that they'll more than likely outlast the duration of any current Bloodbath stack (it'll fade before the target is dead).

One thing you can try to do, is keep Homicidal Frenzy up specifically for these targets. Since this grants increased attack speed, it can at least help slightly when trying to kill these tougher minions as quickly as possible.

As a final, personal note - I really enjoy Bloodspike's lines. I think he has some of the funniest lines in the game ("You're suffering, will be unimaginable!...but strangely, I can imagine it."), but not only that, I think his voice actor did a perfect job capturing Bloodspike's unique version of crazy.