Doom Gate Raid

[sonic dome]

Introduction

Raiding is an integral part to, and one of the most important elements of Age of Magic. Doom gates are one of the three “event” raids that exist in Age of Magic, which provide additional rewards on top of Raid points. Event raid rewards include both basic and difficult raid tokens (though the rewards are less than for normal raids). Additionally, they also yield shards for event-raid specific chests, which yield rare hero shards. Doom Gates are one of the most useful chests as they give Belladonna shards and is the only place to consistently obtain Belladonna hero shards (she’s one of the best dark healers and an irreplaceable part of the Witches team). Additionally, there’s an increased drop rate for Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie for the Beastmen team, which if you read my Portal to the Unknown guide, you’ll see Beastmen are the easiest high level team to obtain that’s also usable in Nightmare Raids.

DOOM GATES TEAM CONSTRUCTION

The main difference between regular and event raids are that event raids limit the characters usable in each lane. Therefore, it becomes important to construct teams specifically made for certain raid stages. I’ll break down the teams needed in each point of the map based on Lane assignment (which I call “Left” “Middle” and Right” sides) as well as “stages of the raid” - by which I mean early nodes, middle nodes, and late nodes. One premise up front: Of the 3 event raids, Doom Gates are widely considered to be the hardest because of the team requirements. You can expect your clan to do much worse at Doom Gates than Celestial or Fire gates at the same level

The basic premise that applies for regular raids, applies here as well. The requirements of a raiding team will vary substantially from those needed in Arena or Tournament, and are much closer to the needs in Tomb of Horrors. There are a few things you need to focus on for building your raid teams. These include: Survivability, Control, Ressurection effective Healing and Damage (with damage arguably the least important, unlike other areas where it matters heavily). Resurrection is a critical skill even if its rarely used, because teams tend to function best with all its members. Once you lose one, strategy often goes astray. Moreover, Resurrection helps minimize the use of Healing kits, which allows you to progress further and finish more stages without running out of healing.

The different stages and available teams are listed below

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1. Left side: Lanes 1-2 (note Lane 1 is usually shared) – note, left side is the “easiest” side of Doom Gates because Orks are a reasonably strong team capable of handling both early and middle – especially with Rhiannon middle.
   a. Early Stages: Orks, Children of the Forest
   b. Middle Stages: Orks, Abyss Slaves, Keepers of Arrat
   c. Late stages: Witches, Warriors of Light, Retribution Squad
2. Middle Side: Lanes 3-5 (note lanes 4 and or 5 are usually shared)
   a. Early Stages: Dwarves, Group of Villans, Harbingers of Dawn
   b. Middle Stages: Bugs (Ra’Archne) , Forest Shaman, Harbingers of Dawn
   c. Late stages: Witches, Warriors of Light, Retribution Squad
3. Right Side: Lanes 6-7 (note lanes 6 and or 7 are usually shared) – Note the right side of Doom gates is by far the hardest because the middle stages don’t have an obvious strong team.
   a. Early Stages: Dragonkin, Retribution Squad
   b. Middle Stages: Barbarians, Forest Shaman, Mercenaries
   c. Late stages: Witches, Warriors of Light, Retribution Squad

While you do have many options here, I’m going to be addressing the “Best” Option you have in each lane based on team strength and usability

1. Left Side
   a. Early: Orks
   b. Middle: Orks with Rhiannon (my preference), or Keepers of Arrat (Rhiannon lead, Cathbad, Drev, Myrrdin and either Jeanne or Teodor, depending on who you have more developed)
   c. Late: Witches (although if your CW team is much better than witches, you can use Roxy/Ram/Ever and add in 2 random witches). The Best witches team is generally accepted as Lilith, Banshee, Diana, Belladonna, Norah
2. Middle
   a. Early: Group of Villains (ideal squad - Lilith, Banshee, Teona, Flame) + Siegfried tank. This team is arguably better if you use Teona lead, Banshee, Lilith and Flame – but this is only true if you have Teona’s leadership awakened. The Lilith leadership awakening is a must for any Witch team for Nightmare raids, so its more likely that you have Lilith leadership awakened versus Teona’s, but if you have both, use Teona as leader.
   b. Middle: Bugs + Cathbad (Irazzt, Hilia, Akhrasht,Tahit and Cathbad (Mainly because most people have Cathbad more developed than other bugs and because he’s a very effective healer and still benefits from Irazzt’s buffs). Alternatively you can use KHshaat instead here).)
   c. Late: Witches (same caveat as earlier)
3. Right
   a. Early: Retribution Squad (Roxy/Ever/Ram, sufficiently strong, are themselves a better team than Dragonkin in my opinion. For the last two, use whoever your strongest two remaining characters are. Cathbad and drev is a good option since they compliment each other. Plus, two tanks means you can always have one “slow” available to cast.
   b. Middle: mix of Mercenaries and Forest Shaman - the ideal team here is Tristan Lead, Rougarou, Vilaar, Siegfried, Kharrannah. If you don’t have Tristan, use Vilaar lead, and add Zhu Bajie as your 5th.
   c. Late: Witches (same caveat as earlier)

One note on the Orks team, as this is where i have the most experience. The ideal Orks team includes Thane’Ork. However, Thane is a legendary boss and there are far more important legendary characters than Thane, so don’t waste your tokens on him. Excluding him, the ideal team is: Arkhane leader, Daghan, Las’Khary, Kromme and either Mordred or Rog’khan. Common convention is that Mordred is the preferred 5th slot because Orks are an attack-focused team, and his 2nd special goes very well alongside Scorching Terror to reduce accuracy to 0. However, from my experience i disagree with this approach. For starters, Doom Gates have become materially more difficult recently, with the main difference being higher enemy Dodge and Fortitude rates. This means there’s a higher chance Scorching Terror doesn’t land due to Fortitude, which negates Mordred’s advantage. Meanwhile, Rog’Khan is a better defender with more hitpoints, and his specials increase damage resistance which is key to survival. Orks tend to need more help to stay alive because of the increased difficulty.

Using my experience I’ll note the best strategy I find for each ideal team:

1. Orks:
   a. Scorching Terror (Ark’khane’s second special) is the main basis for making Orks work, all of the other abilities have boosts if Scorching terror is active). Make sure you keep one of Ark’kane’s special attacks available at the start of every round because they are critical to survival

b. Be extra careful using Da’ghans resurrection. Unlike others, its not a permanent resurrection, the resurrected character dies in 2 turns unless that debuff is removed (Da’ghan’s healing special does Occasionally remove it but not always. Rhiannon’s 1st special always removes it). Therefore, time it as close as possible to the end of the fight.

c. The ork lanes face a lot of bugs, and Rizer is typically the hardest foe in the ork stages because when he attacks out of hiding he can usually instantly kill one of your heroes. Ark’khane’s 2nd special is a great way to neutralize Rizer while you kill him

d. The biggest challenge with Orks is their propensity for taking a lot of damage and requiring lots of healing to finish their stages. The best way to avoid this is to properly time Da’ghan’s healing. Note that, unlike other teams, Orks actually get much stronger and harder to hit when their health goes down. But, you’re always playing with fire because once they die it becomes much harder.

2. Orks with Rhiannon. You don’t have to worry about Ark’khane’s specials being available due to Rhiannon’s passive ability. Go nuts, you can feel free to use all the Ork’s special abilities because of the reset. Especially useful for Da’ghan’s healing which are healing buffs rather than instant heal so they carry into future turns. Rhiannon as the 5th slot really makes Orks materially more powerful. Because Rhiannon’s first special removes the debuff for Da’ghan resurrection, feel free to resurrect whenever. If your Ork’s aren’t close to dying, feel free to cast this at any time as it increases Ork’s armor as well.

3. Group of Villains
   a. This is a witch team without effective healing because of Teona’s passive ability. Additionally, none of the characters available have Ressurection ability so this is a very attack focused team. This is somewhat ok as Siegfried is a serviceable damage absorber
   b. The saving grace is you fight in early nodes. If your Witches are capable of handling later stage Doom nodes (and Teona and Flame are reasonably developed) then you will not have as much problems here.
   c. The best idea is to keep at least 1-2 area of effect attacks available in every round. Fortunately, Lilith, Banshee, Flame and Teona all have AOE attacks (Lilith and Teona 2 each)
   d. Teona’s 2 AOE attacks are best used in the same round, her 1st special places 3 static charges on targets and her second special triggers all static charges. This attack is enough to finish an entire round.

e. This witch team does NOT have a healing strategy as there are no healers available
4. Witches - refer to the guide written about Witches strategy. Strong witches are more than capable of handling the late stages.
5. Roxy/Ram/Ever - refer to the guide I wrote for the Cloud Wanderers strategy. Having Roxy’s 2nd and Ever’s passive awakened are essential to the team’s effectiveness. Roxy’s 2nd protect from debuffs and Ever’s passive turn them all into healers. Make sure you keep 1-2 flying skills available at all times to ensure you’re always able to heal.
6. Bugs and Mercenaries I don’t have enough experience with to share strategy.

LANE PLANNING

As noted, Doom Gates are the most difficult event raid. There’s some effort involved for Clan Officers in aligning and allocating lane assignments. To maximize success, its best to allocate clan members appropriately to maximize the total number of stages cleared. Doing this means having as many people as possible attacking the harder, “right” side of the raids. An ideal clan level assignment would look like this:

Left Side:

• Lane 2 has less nodes but they are harder. Assign your 3 strongest Orks squads to do lane 2 solo.
• Take your next 6 strongest Orks teams to share lane 1

**Middle Side: **

1. Assign your strongest 3 Bugs teams to take Lane 3 solo, going up Through the 7 knives boss to Sandariel.
2. Taking this approach will give you 6 clan members to fight the more difficult Right side

Right Side:

1. Assign your remaining clan members to this stage.
2. The person starting in Lane 4 who fights Seven Knives boss then goes right after the boss to rejoin the “right side”

There is one alternative approach if this setup is not working for your clan because you’re not able to clear enough nodes on the right side. You can make Lane 2 another Shared lane which will be easier to clear. The last person in Lane 2 then goes to the right side After the 2nd witches node (the node with Archons and Arena Special effect).