We broke The Forge. 100% hard-lock guaranteed win.

[Misuto]

That's not a click bait title.

 

For 100% win rate you just need 1 Winona, 4 hammer tanks (WX tends to do best with his added damage and potential extra cc via shock - no Woodies sorry), and then optionally 1 Wilson, Willow, or just another Winona; this character will use the fire staff for additional AoE damage. Winona is optimal as it brings yet another hammer for your tanks to use to keep the stun lock up even if one tank somehow dies.

 

It turns out that if you use the heal staff only to put enemies to sleep, and Winona has the full 30% cool down reduction, that the 1.5~ second stun from the hammers actually hard AoE stun lock all enemies and bosses in the forge. You let them sleep the full duration then alternate hammer strikes, one tank picks up Winona's hammer(s) for additional stun lock time, and repeat until you win. If done perfectly, with voice communication, the enemies will never be able to even attack, if done slightly sub-optimally, they may get one attack before falling asleep, which will be full healed in the heal wave. This is 100% a broken guaranteed way to win the forge.

 

Enjoy beating the forge with ease. I hope that they patch this before the full release. It's not fun and takes no skill, just math to discover and a small bit communication to execute. I'd recommend changing Winona to not starting with the hammer, that goes a quite a ways to making this harder to do, but since you only need 3 maybe 4 hammers to do this... it's not enough. It's likely that bosses need some kind of cool down built into their character to prevent them from being slept or CC'd so frequently.

[JohnWatson]

How long does it usually take to end the game with this strategy? I assume around 20 minutes?

[Misuto]

9 minutes ago, JohnWatson said:

How long does it usually take to end the game with this strategy? I assume around 20 minutes?

I can get more accurate times when I test it more on stream. The only game I got pubs to do it we lost our Winona on the final boss wave and I had so many mixed feelings (elated that it was working so perfectly, depressed that we couldn't finish), that I rushed out of the game to post. I imagine it'd be fairly slow, I can't see this being the fastest strategy but maybe I'm underestimating the AoE damage hitting every enemy every time. 

[TheFacelessMane]

Nice find. But honestly nothing needs to be patched. I played such a lineup when me and 5 friends went random and got 5 tanks and 1 winona. For us stumbling upon this lineup was super fun and we might play it maybe 1-2 times more.

There are different lineups and each yield a different type of win. If some want to make winning into dull and repetitive work, then that's their prerogative. You'd think that anyone who wants to have fun would be smart enough to try a more challenging (maxwell) or micromanaging (hybrid wicker) lineup of characters.

Hypothetically, even if this does get patched, there is inevitably going to be another "best 6 for near 100% wins" that will have the same boring effect if played enough times. 

edited for politer tone and word choice

[Seveni]

Anything new is fun, repetive strats will get boring in the end and this is new to me.

[dezgasting]

This reminds me of my team. It was, like, 6 Wilsons, I was the healer, and we almost made it to the last boss, but we hadn't anyone who could tank so we lost on 2 boarillas.