1. FIRST IMPRESSION
From a strictly visual perspective, I think this is my favorite hero out of BOTH seasons. I love everything about how the Seraph looks: the armor, the swords, the eyes. And don’t get me started on the color scheme. Deep gold, pale cream with some splashes of jade green, absolutely beautiful! I think she also have some of the best looking dice in S2 and THE best sleeve art.
Some other things that made me eager to play the Seraph was the fact that she has so many status effects. She has Cleanse and BoD (Blessing of Divinity) which belong to some of my favorite S1 heroes, as well as 3 brand new, really interesting status effects.
2. GAMEPLAY EXPERIENCE
Games played as Seraph: 2
Games played against Seraph: 1
Games spectated with Seraph: 1
Seraph was the very first hero I tried when I got S2, and the first match was against the Cursed Pirate. One of the first things that stood out to me during the match was her defensive ability – Angelic Mantel. I thought “What is this? This is by far the weakest defensive ability in the entire game. 1 dice roll? Really??”
After playing her more though, I started viewing it a bit differently. I am still of the opinion that she has the individually weakest defensive ability out of all heroes in both seasons. However, there are much more to a hero’s defenses than the defensive ability and this is never more true than in the case of the Seraph. She has healing AND status effect removal in Purify. She has Blinding Light which makes it much harder for the opponent to land proper hits. She has Flight which is insanely strong defensively if it lands – so make sure it lands! (Use Six It, So Wild, Try, Try Again etc). Oh and she can also escape actual death with Blessing of Divinity, so there’s that.
Things I love:
– Her defensive capabilities in spite of such a weak defensive ability.
– Holy Presence and how it allows the Seraph to play a more controlling, long match where you have consistent damage output even if you are playing defensively.
– Flight. In my opinion one of the most versatile and innovative status effects in the game.
– Purify. Overall a very strong ability thanks to how versatile it is with a new and interesting symbol combination to activate. Would love to see more abilities that can be used both for offense and defense like Purify.
– The symbol distribution on her dice, currently only shared with the Pyromancer!
– That all her abilities do “lots of stuff” and feel vastly different from each other (largely thanks to her wide range of different status effects)
Things I like less:
– The design of Angelic Mantle. Although I agree with the decision to give her a weak defensive ability, I’m not a fan of Angelic Mantle’s design. I’d prefer if she had 2 rolls instead of just 1, but to maintain the power level either decrease the Blade symbol’s damage from 2 down to 1, or remove the effects of the Wings and Cross symbols.
3. FINAL VERDICT & DISCUSSION
One thing I have not mentioned yet though, is her complexity rating. This is actually something I will likely bring up in several of these episodes, because in my opinion the complexity rating in S2 seems a bit off here and there (unlike in S1 where I feel the rating is spot on for every hero).
Seraph shares a complexity of 3 with the Pyromancer. The Pyro is a glass cannon hero that stacks Fire Mastery, deals a lot of burst damage, repeat (which I love), but that’s about it. I feel like the Seraph can do much more different things than that. Also I would be hesitant to say that she is more simple than the Monk, so I feel like a complexity rating of 4 is much more fitting for the Seraph.
I’ll finish this entry by saying this: The Seraph is definitely in the top of my favorite S2 heroes to play currently. I think she is strong, versatile, extremely well designed and very fun to play.
Dice Throne - Thinking Out Loud 