Orcs Must Die! Unchained – FAQ/Walkthrough

Heroes

Hogarth

Overview

My Personal Rating: 5/10

Hogarth is one of the only two Heroes that uses Frost damage. In addition to being able to deal more damage to Fire-themed minions, each Frost hit applies the "Chilled" debuff. After 2 or 3 (it's difficult to tell) applications of the Chilled debuff, the minion will become Frozen, stunning them for a short duration.

Abilities:

Catch! (L2) - Hogarth throws his axe directly in front of him, which will do Frost damage to the first minion it hits. Damage is increased when it is thrown from a further distance.

• Mana cost: 30 Mana
• Cooldown: 7 seconds

Shield! (Triangle) - Hogarth puts up his shield, reducing the damage he takes, and slowing any minions nearby.

• Mana cost: 30 Mana
• Cooldown: 24 seconds
• Duration: 5 seconds

Ambush! (Square) - Hogarth jumps forward, dealing Frost damage in a radius once he lands. This also applies an extra stack of the Chilled debuff to any minion hit.

• Mana cost: 30 Mana
• Cooldown: 9 seconds

Passive: Angry! - Whenever Hogarth deals damage, he gains a buff that increases his damage by 1%. This buff lasts 8 seconds, and stacks up to 50.

Pros

Hogarth is kind of built like a "tank" class. He has a large amount of HP (I think it's the highest in the game), and his abilities almost entirely revolve around crowd control.

Due to this, Hogarth has quite a large amount of survivability, and his ability to keep things around him (due to the Frozen effect) also helps control groups of minions to keep them from advancing along their path.

Catch! is kind of an interesting ability, and can hit quite hard. It's initially designed to be for bosses and Mercenaries, but if you take all his upgrades into it, you'll see it's actually pretty useful to use every time it's available.

His Passive is quite easy to stack, which is really helpful, as the extra damage is always good thing. It works similarly to Bloodspike's damage buff, but it's much easier to get to higher stacks with it, due to how it activates on any hit.

Cons

Since Hogarth is kind of built like a tank with crowd control, unfortunately, he is severely lacking in his damage output.

Although his Passive is supposed to assist with this, the buff duration functions exactly like Bloodspike's - The first stack lasts the longest, but as soon as it fades, the subsequent stacks will decrease at a faster pace. Not only that, but just like Bloodspike, the stacks will be lost at a somewhat random amount; sometimes you lose 2 or 3, other times you'll lose more.

Frost is unfortunately probably the worst elemental debuff. Having a constant stun up is nice, but it doesn't really help much if you can't dish out damage at the same time.

Ambush!, although is decent in terms of group damage, is designed in kind of a strange manner. Due to how Hogarth jumps forward as soon as it is activated, I found it felt really awkward to properly aim with it. Since Hogarth jumps forward, if you begin by jumping into the front of the group, you may run out of room to continue to jump forward (say if you're fighting close to a gate). This means that you have to readjust again to use it properly, which I personally don't like the idea of. Not only that, but the jump is more of a "hop" and it can't really be readjusted in mid-air to pick a more optimal spot to land.

Shield! is...mostly useless. Hogarth only really needs the damage reduction if he doesn't use Practices Witchcraft (since Frost damage is considered magical). Even then, the duration of it (it's only about 5 seconds) means you don't have a large window to reduce damage. The slow effect is fairly nice, but again, due to how short the duration is, it's not incredibly effective.

Upgrades

Upgrades I use:

• Snow Now! (Level 2)
• Surprises! or Stay! (Level 4)
• Throw Hard! (Level 7)
• More Axe! or Hims Put On Few Pounds! (Level 10)

Upgrades Analysis:

• Level 2:
  • Snow Now!: Out of the level 2 upgrades, I think this one is the most useful, as the Slow effect from Shield! is something that is almost always beneficial. This can be even more useful for Runners, which are always nice to slow down.
  • Flash Freeze!: Not very useful in my opinion. First, it's a little too conditional because Shield! doesn't last very long, and in that small window when it's active, not every minion is going to be attacking you. Even out of those maybe 3-5 minions that are attacking you, all the upgrade is allowing you to do is apply another Chilled stack, which expedites the minion being Frozen. Since the Frozen effect only stuns the minion for about a second, that seems like a really conditional upgrade for such a meager result.
  • Help Hims!: Out of the level 2 upgrades, it's not too horrible, but it's dependent on how you feel your own survivability is. If you come in with Practices Witchcraft, you may feel like the Shield! damage reduction is fine as is. Also note that it doesn't say that damage reduction of Shield! is increased to 100%, but increased by 100%. This means if the damage reduction is say 20%, it increases to 40%. I haven't tested what the actual damage reduction is, but again, at a certain point, you may not feel it's worth it.
• Level 4:
  • Surprises!: It's not a bad upgrade if you like to use Ambush!. Ambush! is Hogarth's best (and really only) group-damage ability, so having a shorter cooldown certainly helps.
  • Muscles!: It's an interesting upgrade, but I don't think it's useful. Realize it's not a HP restoration upgrade, but it actually increases your total HP. This is kind of an odd way to increase your survivability, but the +2 increase is not much; 50 minions kills equates to 100 HP. I do recall from this upgrade that you have to personally kill the minion (traps won't work), but even then, Hogarth having that much HP is...kind of ridiculous. At Account Level 100, he has over 2,000 HP as is, which should be plenty for most occasions.
  • Stay!: I would say to take this upgrade if you don't like using Ambush! that much. Of course, it is important to point out I don't think it really does much, but it's still a passive effect that will just work regardless of what you're doing. The "crowd control spell duration" I believe is specifically referring to Frozen durations, which means that ~1 second stun duration is only being increased to about ~1.2 seconds, which is negligible. Again though, it is an upgrade that happens automatically.
• Level 7:
  • Throw Hard!: This isn't too bad, particularly when it's taken with the "More Axe!" upgrade at level 10. It does exactly what it says, and I'm pretty sure it will continue through the first enemy, until it hits something (a minion or a wall). In other words, it won't ever disappear mid-air. I'm also pretty sure the damage increase (due to distance) is also still active during the pierce; if the second/third minion hit is further away, it should get increased damage.
  • Hims Not Afraid!: I don't like this upgrade because it's difficult to tell how the threat works exactly. From what I could tell with this upgrade, it doesn't change how many minions can be attacking you at once (it should still be around 5 minions), but rather, I think the minions will draw to you more quickly. Again though, this only during the duration of Shield!, which is only about 5 seconds anyway, so even if I knew exactly how the threat worked, the duration of the ability makes it difficult to justify this upgrade.
  • Good Catch!: Although taking this upgrade and making Catch! have a 4 second cooldown seems nice, personally I don't think it would be really helpful until level 10, and taking "More Axe!" with it. Catch!, without the "Throw Hard!" upgrade (also at level 7) is still just a single-target ability, which means you're not going to be using it that much anyway. Hence, there's not really much of a reason to have it on a shorter cooldown. When used in conjunction with "More Axe!" I personally prefer "Throw Hard!" because that upgrade gives it more group damage. Also consider that with a shorter cooldown, your Mana consumption is going to be higher.
• Level 10:
  • More Axe!: This upgrade gives Catch! two more projectiles, meaning Hogarth will throw 3 axes instead of 1. If "Throw Hard!" was taken at level 7, each of these axes also get the piercing ability, giving the ability to potentially hit 9 targets with Catch!, which is pretty nice. What's even more interesting is that the projectiles will move in a cone shape, meaning that they spread out as they go further. If you use Catch! when a minion is right in front of you, all 3 axes can hit the same target, which effectively can triple its total damage against a single target.
  • Hims Put On Few Pounds!: Kind of a strange description, because Ambush! only does damage when Hogarth lands. Again, if you like using Ambush!, this is a good upgrade, particularly if you took the "Surprises!" upgrade at level 4.
  • Feel Good!: Although 4% HP restoration is pretty significant, it only activates out of combat, which is only really helpful when you're in between waves, or traversing between gates. As with other HP restoration upgrades for other Heroes, the Practices Witchcraft Trait makes this upgrade a bit irrelevant.

Synopsis

Unfortunately, Hogarth is another Hero that doesn't really make a lot of sense in his design.

Unlike Smolder and Bionka, it's not the fact that what he has available doesn't really make sense, it's more of the fact that the foundation of his design simply does not work with the game design. In other words, it makes no sense to have a crowd controlling tank, because the minions have no real threat table to take advantage of.

Heroes do draw threat from minions, that much should be obvious as you play, but the amount of minions that will focus on you has a specific limit; I believe only about 5 minions can be attacking you at once. Although Shield! can be upgraded to increase Hogarth's threat (when the ability is used), it would be much more effective if Hogarth had the ability to simply draw more minions to him naturally, in some other passive form.

In the game's current form, Hogarth's threat would work perfectly fine, if he actually was dealing damage. Being able to kill things quickly would mean that every time a minion attacking him dies, it would get replaced by a new minion, and thus all of his abilities would synchronize rather well.

Catch! and Ambush! are a bit awkward to use, and again, it's partially due to design. Having Catch! deal additional damage based off of larger distances, may indicate to the player that it's supposed to be used at long range, which is not necessarily true. Without it being upgraded at all, its actually somewhat useless, because it will ultimately just affect a single target. Again, if not upgraded, even if you want to try to single-out a larger minion with more HP (such as a boss) and hit it with Catch!, it's very simple for another minion (who you may have threat on) walk right in front of it, and completely waste the ability.

Ambush! is also fairly strange in real practice. Since Hogarth doesn't deal much damage as is, you'll find you'll want to deal damage to things closest to you, not the minions further down the path. So if you're fighting minions at the front of the wave, having Hogarth jump forward, hitting minions further down, means that none of that damage from the ability is going to hit anything where you initially jump. Hence, the ability is not helpful at all for damaging minions that are right next to you (who you are probably currently in combat with). Again, this means that you may not want to utilize it, hurting Hogarth's damage output even further.

Shield! will probably end up being the only ability that you may want to constantly use, as the effect of it is always beneficial, no matter what the situation. Still, if you feel you're not taking much damage, you may feel less inclined to use it. It is really good for Runners (not Earth Elementals though) because of the automatic slowing that it produces. I really just wish the ability lasted a lot longer, particularly with its longer cooldown.

It's not the fact that Hogarth doesn't work at all, he can perform well, but he does feel like he needs to have a lot of effort put in to play effectively. Overall, he seems quite underwhelming in comparison to almost every other Hero. I feel he is in desperate need of a damage increase, but this may be difficult to balance due to his Passive.

I'm guessing the developers understood the issues with Hogarth. I think that they didn't really want to rework Hogarth completely, so instead, they released Tundra. I would argue Tundra is much more of what Hogarth should be, because his Frost damage works in such a more efficient manner.