(Disclaimer: This is a stack of opinions and gameplay centered around my relatively casual skill level. Your mileage may vary.)
(Also I should probably apologize for the wall of text I am about to fabricate.)
I’ve been seeing mixed opinions on ISIC (and I will admit I used to share them a few months back). My Thoughts on the matter?
ISIC is terrifying.
Really. Put a single support behind him and he will wreck all things before him. Have him on his own? He turns into an unstoppable combination of Marquis and Benedict.
Lets look at the details here:
–Charge Cannon: Primary attack, hold it to spray piddly little pellets that make the little lane minions look powerful. Until you let go of the button when the charge bar fills. THEN you have a rocket launcher that can be fired without ammo every second, with 2-3x the speed of Benedict’s shots. And very little damage falloff. And near perfect accuracy. This is your standard kill everything tool.
–Aegis: Secondary fire is a forward facing shield good for about a thousand damage. Its not a perfect defense, but it will catch everything but flanking and explosives tossed behind you.
–Wards: 5 shields spin around you catching abuse, good for 200+ damage each. AOEs will hit multiple wards. 15? seond cooldown
–Teleport: Alright for damage, but can be used to climb ledges for ambushes and escapes. Twentyish second cooldown?
–Omega Strike: Potentially terrifying, but mostly really exposed. Both the primary and secondary are near perfect accuracy, though the primary has amazing recoil. You cannot use skills, aegis, or taunts while this is active. Crowd Control will break this skill. Otherwise, it lasts until you turn it off, upon which a minute cooldown starts.
Doesn’t seem too bad, right? Thats before helix mods. Before I go into the helix options, let me go over some basic gameplay stuff that has served me well thus far.
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Always use charge cannon blasts. Always. Practice getting charge shots off as quickly as possible without losing the shot. Dont be afraid to take a bit of time to line up shots if you need to either, you are a tank after all. you can handle a bit of suppressive fire. And more importantly dont be afraid to just spam it into a minion wave. You’ll need all the XP you can get.
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Try to cycle your defenses. in a fifteen second period, you have something like 3000 damage mitigation at level one, plus shields and a health bar. If you have a solid HP support like miko pocket supporting, dont be afraid to burn a bit of health here and there returning fire or clearing minions, you’ll get it back while blocking damage other ways.dont try to use everything at once or you just waste effort.
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Getting sporadic fire and want to return the favor? pop wards and start charge bombing, rather than using aegis to defend. It’s like being Benedict with an extra thousand shields. Trade shots with the snipers and you can usually come out ahead in the early game.
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Don’t be afraid to use teleport to get out if things get too dicey. It’s not just an engage tool.
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Turret mode is situational. It gives you 2-3x your usual firepower, but sacrifices your defensive capabilities to do so. Try to turret in places that are hard to approach from the front, and have solid tall cover to duck behind. The sniper ledges in front of the first sentry on Overgrowth are solid examples.
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Low on health with no healer in sight? Try to duck out of the fight and press B to recall to spawn! (on PC, I think its one of the Dpad buttons for consoles) This refills your shields and health, and more importantly, results in not giving the enemy team xp for killing you, as well as not sitting through a death timer. Plus you collect shards on the way back for gear or buildables xp. You can clear any minion push that occurred while you were away rather easily with charge bombing.
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You are weak to being plinked at, but toe to toe most ranged characters will have a hard time trying to cause youany real harm while you blow their face off with plasma rockets. Dont be afraid to teleport up to a sniper ledge to deal with a lone poker, but be careful of groups. If you arrive and think you might have a rough time just leave and go back to the lane. The act of teleporting up will caution them against poking there for a little while anyway.
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Fun fact: slows reduce the speed the charge cannon will fire, but the charge rate remains the same! So slowing effects will not noticeably reduce your damage output.
Now, we get into helixes. I’m not going to touch on gear though, because its currently broken for me.
Obviously a lot of it is situational and or playstyle centric, but these are my favorites.
-2.5s Shield cooldown from active wards. If you’re ducking in and out of cover while firing off charges and pop wards, you can get some decent shield recovery in while your healer patches up any holes in your shiny gold casing.
Reflective wards. The only thing better than preventing people shooting you is watching them shoot themselves. instead. This effect includes pretty much any non explosive projectile, like Marquis, Mike, and Orendi shots.
Stun on dash/teleport. You cannot go wrong taking a stun. It might save your life. Or, you know, end someone else’s.
Remove slow on charge cannon. This will aid in your ability to navigate the field, duck in and out of cover, and dodge attacks.
+100% Aegis value. while not necessarily as valuable earlier in the match, it becomes very powerful at 10.
+225 health to wards. more ward health means less being shot and more reflecting suffering!
Reduced cooldown for remaining wards. You didn’t want to shoot my wards? Have MORE wards!
Shields Up! This puts your right click shield up in front of your ultimate. Permanantly. It recharges after six seconds. You get to facetank the world while setting it on fire. If you are set up with even a vague semblance of cover or limited approaches, you are basically immortal. Nothing survives, at least not for long. It will most often take three or more players focusing you to drop you.
I focus primarily on the tanky aspects of the helix options because dear lord the charge cannon and ult are already a ridiculous amount of precision firepower. it lets you play aggressive damage dealer, while not punishing you too harshly unless you put yourself in really terrible odds.
Well planned positioning allows you to play artillery from completely unreasonable locations and still completely secure a lane against pushing and snipers.
Your biggest weaknesses are:
-getting caught unaware
-snipers
-area of effect
-dodgey fighters
You have a hitbox the size of a sentry shield, so snipers and mid-long range characters like Oscar Mike or Mellka taking potshots at you basically cant miss. Players getting in behind you can often drop you before you realize they are there. Your Aegis does not block ground effects, or explosions that source from behind you, so people can still shoot the ground past you to deal direct pain. And anyone highly mobile, or who spends a lot of time in the air, will have little trouble avoiding charge blasts. Caldarius is basically untouchable in that regard.
In summary:
-Spam charged shots
-Stack defenses
-Be careful of positioning
-Watch the ‘ISIC OP’ threads roll in.
Have fun, Cackle responsibly.