Champion Training Tournament – R. Nergigante Archer

Today marks the beginning of one of the final opportunities to get your hands on the exclusive Monster Hunter Collaboration Legendary, R. Nergigante Archer, one of the most well-rounded Champions to come to RAID in a long time, she just does so many things, and she does them well!

Well, that being said, this would be way more exciting if we hadn’t seen how these events pan out in the past, for those of you who were around – think back to when Hellhades began his quest for Krisk the Ageless in a Champion Training Tournament, and how much time and energy he put into that, well, this may be worse since in a matter of weeks – this Champion will NEVER be available again.

1 in 100 people will be lucky enough to call themselves winners of this Tournament, and for those winners, the reward will either be a full copy of R. Nergigante Archer or those who already have been lucky enough to get her, will instead receive a 6-Star Perfect Soul to awaken her with, which is crazy!

So for those of you who haven’t experienced a Training Tournament like this before, let me start by saying – that they’re truly relentless, While some people can get very lucky and get a quiet tournament bracket where not many people will push, other tournament brackets can see multiple people in the 100,000s of points going head to head, where ultimately, only one person is going to walk away from that tournament with the top-reward.

We’ve seen this all too many times with previous events for Champions like Sir Nicholas, and notably, Krisk, where Hellhades was pitted against another player who was also pushing excessively, in the end, Hellhades was victorious, but it took a huge toll on him for the week where he was nearly non-stop farming, barely sleeping, that it almost took away the excitement of winning, he just wanted it to be over, now that is the perspective of someone who won, imagine all that time and effort, to be beaten out in the last minute by someone else, and walking away with the second place rewards – an epic book, two T2 Soulstones, and some Epic Relentless gear… how exciting!

Now, I don’t say this to put you off, but I do say it to create realistic expectations for players going into these events, they are cruel and vicious, but IF you can win, the rewards are massive, and in this case, very exclusive!

You will need a LOT of resources to complete this event, XP Brews, Chickens, LOTS of Champions available to level, Skill Tomes, Energy, and Gems – and if you aren’t inundated with Mystery shards, well, you may just need to dip into other shards to keep your supply of food up.

Make a clear plan going into this, While you’re spending your time grinding away, try to get an idea of what you are going to rank up so that you don’t get stuck in the process of trying to decide and wasting precious time, but also be mindful that you will want to retain a large number of points for a final burst, in case someone tries to sneak up on you and pull ahead in the closing minutes of the tournament.

If you’d like some insight into how the closing hours of these events go, Hellhades live-streamed his final push for Krisk, where he stayed awake overnight until the event ended, in the video below you will find highlights from that stream, giving a clear representation of what you can expect from a tournament like this.

We’ve recently had a lot of Champion Training-based events, with the Hero’s Paths for Champions like Altraeon Blademaster, and even the last Fusion, Wight Queen Ankora, containing a Hero’s Path for some of the fragments that required Champion Training.

Thankfully, with all of these endless streams of Training Events, Saphyrra has put together some INCREDIBLY useful tools that will help you fully optimise, track and plan your resources to maximise your training point acquisition.

One of the key things to gaining more points, as a summary, is levelling all your Rank 3 and above Champions partially BEFORE you feed them to rank up another Champion, this is because the amount of Points you get for the energy required to do this is incredibly high.

Below you can find links to two incredibly useful spreadsheets that Saphyrra has created to enhance your Champion Training Efficiency, and a detailed video as he breaks down how to be more efficient with your training.

The most important thing to consider when deciding if you should, or should not go for the Training Tournament, is figuring out if you have the resources, and mental fortitude to go through with it, and compete at a very high level if you have somebody up against you in the tournament, as if not, quite frankly you are going to be wasting a LOT of resources outside of picking up the Milestone rewards in the Tournament.

If the answer to the above is yes, well then, it’s time to consider whether this Champion is actually worth all of that investment, and the honest answer, is yes – she is INCREDIBLY good, and most of all, she is exclusive, once the collaboration with Monster Hunter ends, so does anybody’s hopes of acquiring her for their account – you will never be able to get her again.

As a Champion, she truly brings it all, and we have a detailed article from Saphyrra showcasing exactly how game-changing she can be, but as a few key points to what she brings to your account:

1. Hex Debuff – Rapid Shot (A3) sends out a wave of Hex on all enemies for 2 turns but it is extended to 3 turns against bosses. Hex is incredibly powerful against multiple enemies on wave content and in Boss content such as Hydra. The longer the fight, the better Hex performs taking 10% of all single target and applying it to all targets under Hex (2% for Area of Effect skills).
2. AoE Provoke – Rapid Shot (A3) also applies a provoke ability, the first of her control effects. Considering she is a defence-based champion with the ability to also scale her own defence when she is attacked by Hex targets, this makes her an incredibly powerful control tank for wave or boss content. This is especially so in places like Spider or Hydra. The provoke also applies for 2 turns on a booked 3-turn cooldown – making this one of the most reliable provoke abilities in the entire game.
3. Decrease Speed Debuff – Spinning Shot (A2) will apply an AoE decrease speed on bosses which is very powerful in controlling bosses from taking turns. She will also boost turn meter for each enemy she places a decrease speed by 10%. This is per target placement leading to a powerful turn meter boost when there are many boss opponents such as Hydra.
4. AoE Stun – Spinning Shot (A2) will apply her second control debuff, Stun, to all non-boss opponents for 1 turn. Additionally, she drops their turn meter by 20% increasing the time the enemies remain stunned. This is exceptionally good for places where you need enemies not to take a turn such as Agreth Spidering or spiderlings found in the Spider”s Lair
5. Healing – When Nergigante Archer attacks any Hex target, she will produce a 10% heal (Target Health) for each damaging effect. This means warmaster can also apply a heal. When she uses either of her AoE abilities this often leads to your entire team fully healing.