Orcs Must Die! Unchained – FAQ/Walkthrough

Heroes

Maximilian

Overview

My Personal Rating: 8/10

Max is one of the three Heroes that are available to everyone. Max is a ranged Hero that uses Lighting (magic) damage, and gets a decent variety of abilities. He has access to a stun, a very powerful single-target attack, and even a shield ability that can be used offensively as well as defensively.

Abilities:

Absolutely Stunning Bolt (L2) - Max shoots a bolt straight in front of him, which will explode when it hits a minion or a solid object, such as wall. The explosion will stun nearby minions for a short duration.

• Mana cost: 45
• Cooldown: 10 seconds

Can't Touch This (Triangle) - Max creates a shield made of lightning, which will prevent all damage for a short duration. Any damage that Max takes will be reflected back onto his attacker.

• Mana cost: 40
• Cooldown: 16 seconds
• Duration: 4 seconds

In Your Faces (Square) - Max winds up to fire a large bolt that travels directly in front of him. If the bolt hits an enemy, it will do massive damage, and everything behind the target hit will also be hit with lesser Lightning damage.

• Mana cost: 45
• Cooldown: 12 seconds

Passive: Close Enough - Max gets a 15% cost reduction to all traps.

Pros

Max is probably one of the best balanced Heroes in the game. With every aspect he seems to lack in, he has some other aspect that makes up for it.

His Primary doesn't hit very hard, but the attack speed of it is extremely fast. Since Max deals Lightning damage, anything he personally kills will explode in a small radius, which will hit nearby enemies for a small amount of damage. This means that Max gets a passive ability to deal group damage at all times.

His fast attack speed also makes him great for clearing out Runners. Since Runners don't normally have a lot of HP, Max can still usually kill them in 1 or 2 hits, and he doesn't have to worry nearly as much about missing shots.

Can't Touch This is great for offense as well as defense, because it reflects damage back to the attacker. Using this proactively, by activating it and trying to get minions to hit you, actually is a decent way increase your damage output. Since the ability reflects all damage, this also gives Max some great survivability, particularly against hard hitting minions such as Mages.

In Your Faces is probably the most impressive ability Max has, since eventually you'll be able to get to the point where it can instantly (or mostly) kill bosses and Mercenaries. It's even better that In Your Faces gets an upgrade that increases its damage by 50%, making it even better to take out single minions with high HP.

Max's Passive is also extremely helpful, because the cost reduction can really go a long way with getting an area trapped, particularly getting Barricades down quickly. His Passive also stacks with any of the cost reduction Traits (such as Smashing Deals), which makes it even better for costly traps.

Cons

Max actually doesn't have a whole lot of problems, but there are a couple of things you may not like about him.

First, his accuracy is something to take note of. Since he has such a fast attack speed, you'll notice his aiming reticle expands to a pretty ridiculous size. This means that he really does poorly over longer distances, so he's meant to be played as a "mid-range" Hero, just outside of melee range. This takes a little getting used to, since even though you shouldn't be in melee range, you're still close enough to be at risk of taking a lot of damage.

Second, you'll notice that he starts to struggle when there are a lot of larger minions; he doesn't do nearly as well with gigantic waves of Trolls, Ogres, and similar minions. Since Max only really has access to a single hard hitting attack, In Your Faces, and it has a decently long cooldown, he can get kind of overwhelmed if there numerous large minions clustered together.

Upgrades

Upgrades I use:

• Aim To Please or Endorsements (Level 2)
• Lucky Shot or In The Kisser (Level 4)
• So Beautiful It Hurts or Bad At Self-Reflection (Level 7)
• Persistent (Level 10)

Upgrades Analysis:

• Level 2:
  • Aim To Please: This upgrade makes Max's aiming reticule expand less and reset quicker (it resets once you stop using your Primary). This is actually pretty helpful because Max does have some accuracy issues, which means he doesn't really do well over longer ranges. By taking this upgrade, it doesn't solve the problem completely, but it does help. It's much easier to pinpoint certain minions over longer distances with this upgrade (such as Archers), just as long as you release the Primary attack button on occasion.
  • Endorsement: As it turns out, +3 Coin per second is actually not much. Here's the math: 3 Coins per second is 180 Coins per minute. The longer Survival maps generally last about 15 minutes. That means within a 15 minute period, that's a total of 2700 Coin. It actually turns out to be less than this though, because you have to consider the time it takes to get to level 2 in the first place, and chances are, within the last minute or so of the last wave of a map, you won't bother putting down any traps. Regardless of this, it can be still helpful when you're really dying to get some traps down quickly (I take this upgrade in a few Rift Lord maps in my videos).
  • Star-Struck: I don't think this is useful. The movement Slow is a lot, but personally, I think the duration of Can't Touch This doesn't really justify taking the upgrade.
• Level 4:
  • Greased Lightning: I think this kind of shows how the developers wanted you to use Can't Touch This, because I can see it being useful if you're jumping into the middle of a group of minions once you put your shield up. Once it fades, it would be sort of nice to get the extra movement speed to quickly make an exit, but still, Can't Touch This is probably the last utilized of Max's abilities, and the other upgrades for this level are much more appealing. You could use this as a general movement speed increase as well, for traversing the map, but I don't think it's necessary for Max, as he moves decently fast as it is.
  • Lucky Shot: This can be really good for crowd control purposes, but it may kind of depend on your usage of In Your Faces. Consider taking this upgrade if there aren't a lot of larger minions with more HP; if you don't find yourself really using In Your Faces much on the map, it may be better to take this upgrade instead.
  • In The Kisser: This is normally what I take at this level, because it's a 50% damage increase to In Your Faces, which really helps in killing bosses and Mercenaries in a single use. Do consider your damage relative to the minions you are facing though; if you're already nearly killing bosses and Mercenaries (on the map you're on), the majority of that extra damage from this upgrade will simply be overkill, and not very practical.
• Level 7:
  • Killing It: I've never really taken this upgrade, because I don't think it's really necessary. Max should have a decent amount of survivability on his own; his movement speed is decent, he's not usually directly in melee range, and Can't Touch This is great for emergency uses. The Practices Witchcraft Trait also makes this upgrade kind of moot, and the other upgrades offered at this level seem more useful.
  • So Beautiful It Hurts: I like to take this because it's a very easy way to get some extra damage. You may feel encouraged to use Absolutely Stunning Bolt more often, so you may need to be cautious of your Mana usage.
  • Bad At Self-Reflection: This can be a decent upgrade if you like to use Can't Touch This, or you are looking to complete Max's trophy. I take this a lot during my Rift Lord videos, because I think it gets the best use with the most difficult maps. The harder you get it by minions, obviously the more damage that is going to be reflected.
• Level 10:
  • Persistent: I think this is a great upgrade, and probably Max's best upgrade, because it's an automatic damage increase to his Primary, which really helps his damage output. This actually equates to some decent group-damage, because it kind of works like a mini "chain lightning", and it has a surprisingly good reach. It may be important to note that with this upgrade, always focus on larger minions first (you should do that regardless) because the chaining damage will barely even flinch a larger minion's HP. However, by focusing on the larger minion instead, the chaining damage can easily take out weaker minions (if there are any surrounding it).
  • Overpowered: I don't think the upgrade is really all that useful. If you took the "In The Kisser" upgrade at level 4, this means that chances are you're going to be killing the initial target In Your Faces hits (making this upgrade worthless to that target). So my guess is that this is meant to affect all the targets "behind the target" that ability also hits. The problem is it's a little difficult to determine the range of that secondary effect, and personally I think this upgrade relies a little too heavily on the positioning of the other minions. To me, it's not something that you can control very well, so I think the upgrade gets questionable use, particularly in comparison to "Persistent" which works without thinking about it.
  • Entourage: It's obviously a co-op ability, but I've read that it might work on friendly NPC units, such as Blackpaw's Gnolls and Summoner Traps (not Guardians though). Personally I don't think it's worth it, because it's a little conditional (allies have to be near you), and the reality is you're assuming that your allies are going to get hit a lot in that 4 second duration of Can't Touch This, which may not happen.

Synopsis

Max is one of my favorite Heroes, because he has an extremely good amount of flexibility. You may not feel the same way about him though, because I think Max might take a little bit of practice to understand how he's supposed to be played.

First, it really helps if you're active in combat; Max generally does not have a lot of Mana issues if you sparingly use his abilities. His abilities can be considered a little more situational; it's not absolutely necessary to use them at every given moment, so you have to get used to what are the most optimal times to use them.

Absolutely Stunning Bolt is not necessary to use, pretty much at all, unless you need the crowd control for whatever reason (generally emergency situations). It is however, extremely useful in conjunction with In Your Faces. You really don't want to miss with In Your Faces, because of its long cooldown. Bosses and Mercenaries do have a tendency to either move sporadically or really fast (such as Chaotic Kobold), so keeping them in place so you can get a good shot with In Your Faces is imperative. Not only that, but if you aim Absolutely Stunning Bolt at a tougher minion, who is mixed in with other minions, it means you reduce the risk that another minion is going to walk in front of your target that you're trying to hit.

Can't Touch This seems like a bizarre ability to use at first, because if you're playing correctly, you probably won't find it too necessary to reflect any damage. So instead, as I mentioned above, using it proactively can help your damage output. If you're in front of a large group of minions, I would recommend activating it, then just jumping directly in the middle of all of those minions so they cluster towards you, reflecting all of their attacks back at you. Of course, at that time, you still want to continue to spam your Primary attack, but this allows the Lightning damage effect (the explosion) to have a larger impact, because minions will be clustered better as they try to attack you.

The time to use In Your Faces is probably the most obvious - it's clearly not too optimal to use it on weak minions. It does have a long cooldown, so you should only really use it if you feel like you're not killing larger minions quick enough.

If you watch my videos in my 5 Star Walkthrough, you'll notice I earn the 5 Stars with Max through the vast majority of the maps. Out of all the Heroes, I think he has one of the easiest to 5 Star most maps with, due to his flexibility and his Passive. As I stated, he will struggle on the maps with larger amount of higher HP minions, as well as the Wu Xing maps (since they'll get innate resistance to his Lightning damage), but this can be potentially compensated for by having a higher Account Level and better traps.