so I've had Annabelle maxed for a while now but just started to use her regularly, and I'm realizing I'm liking her. I mean of course it's part physical attraction (hands down who could resist that grimace) but I'm also finding her much less flighty and really pretty amazing esp with her stun and healing capabilities. i still get the occasional errant flyaway but much less so now that she's maxed. she also rarely gets knocked out which is nice so she becomes an longer lasting LP just costing you to deploy her. anyone else having a similar experience?
I have her at PH8 level (I'm PH8) and I love her. She's my 1st option for attacks- Ching/Caesar defence
She's great when you can control her. With the range and insane length of stun time, it can easily shut off the entire base for longer than it takes to destroy every defense inside. Something neat one of our guildmates did was send annabelle in after thieves, use her to shut off all the defenses, and the thieves finished off the stores and safely killed off all the defenses before they were turned back on. Something similar would work with any other melee troops. Buccs and Skellies would both be perfect for it during a non-farming attack.
welcome to DR skye! i'm visiting dead calm at the moment...look forward to rumbling with you! i've used anna like that with my skellies and initial guns. she really is effective in an organized concentrated attack. i find she starts to flutter when troops are unorganized, running in all directions. you definitely do not want to use her if your clearing outer islands while attacking a ph. she'll start hovering by each troop for a bit, taking her away from the heart of the attack. anna becomes more predictable that way, and not as ditzy as people think, if you understand what's going on. i found that she becomes less flighty the more trained she is, or maybe i just adapted to using her better, but i don't think that's accounts for all of it.
You're probably getting better at using her, although at higher levels that extra range on the ability is massive and makes up a bit from her AI shortcomings. I agree, never use her if you have more than one or two big main groups; stragglers around the island clearing side buildings are like magnets for disappointment when she picks them. The thief idea was actually really genius (thank bar for that!) and might actually make a good attack strategy - get a thief to run in to a store next to the GPs, have annabelle teleport in, and shut everything off. Send in the main force after. He did it while farming, but I may consider practicing that a bit. She works fine with gunners, but I suggested melee troops because they tend to bunch together more effectively and, what may be even more important, they stand closer to defenses. Since she hangs next to the troop she's focused on, having her pick a melee troop over a ranged one means she will walk further into the base, which lets you disable more of the defenses. If she's hanging outside with the gunners, the bubble might not quite reach everything as fast, leaving you to either press it early and only disable some of the defenses, or wait for the gunners to clear a bit extra and walk further into the base before disabling everything, meaning your troops take a bit more damage before things get shut off.
I find her AI very good. Deploy her with the main group, and she NEVER strays (at least for me) Worse is the WD...
