Initiative

[late fractal]

The basics

What is initiative?

Initiative is a mechanic that determines the order in which heroes take their turns. Heroes have a yellow bar that indicates how much initiative they have, and the hero currently attacking has the initiative bar completely filled.

How does the initiative bar get filled?

There are two basic ways to fill up the initiative bar:
• Some heroes have skills that can add initiative to themselves, their allies or even enemy heroes. These effects are applied first.
•After the initiative changes have been applied, all heroes on the battlefield increase their initiative proportionally to their speed, until one hero (either yours or an enemy's) fills the initiative bar to 100%. That hero then takes his turn.

How important is initiative?

Initiative is very important. Initiative wins battles. If you move first, you can use your skills to protect yourself, lock enemy heroes, remove their initiative, debuff them... so when they move, their attack will be way less effective. And in some cases, you can even kill enemy heroes before they move, so they will never get a turn.

The details

Heroes with skills that affect initiative

Some heroes can receive initiative from an ally's passive skill at the start of the battle:
• Morrigan's passive skill gives Liongo 100% initiative at the start of the battle
• Teona's leader skill does the same for Gatekeeper.
• Llael's passive skill does the same for Lokhir.
• Cathbad's passive skill increases Dreverad's initiative by 20%

Liongo starting the fight with the initiative bar filled, due to Morrigan passive

Or even better: at the start of the round, so it happens multiple times in multi-round battles, like raids or cradle of chaos:

• Capfei's first passive skill gives Bliss 60% initiative at the start of the round (70% when awakened). But Capfei is particularly tricky... he'll increase his own initiative if there's no allied Bliss, he'll also increase the initiative of a random enemy, and he'll also slow that enemy.

Initiative can also be increased by some skills when some event happens:

• Lilith's leadership increases initiative of allied Witches by 15% when they take any damage.
• Drakonir's leadership does the same for allied Dragonkins, but only by 10%.

Some heroes can get initiative from their own passive:

• Superia's awakened passive gives her 15% initiative for every debuff on her. Warris does the same, but only 10% initiative.
• Astoria's passive gives her 40% initiative when an ally uses a flying skill (60% when awakened)

Astoria's passive skill

Active abilities can also increase the hero's initiative:

• Lilith's second skill, when awakened, increases her initiative by 33%
• Naja's 3rd skill gives her 20% initiative per Dark Elf in the party, so it's a free extra turn on a full Dark Elves team.

Or the ally's initiative:

• Wieland's basic skill increases the initiative of allied Ranged Damagers (typically Irma) by 25%

Initiative can also be decreased, not just increased:

• Mordred's 2nd skill reduces 10% initiative per allied Renegade on all enemies, and transfers it to allied Renegades
• Roxanne's third skill reduces 15% initiative per allied Wanderer, and when awakened, transfers it to living allies
• Denaya's leadership makes Mercenaries (Denaya, Swap Killer, Aratar...) decrease the target's initiative by 24% when they hit an enemy being on rage
• Wieland's basic skill has a 75% chance to reduce 25% the initiative of the target
• Sacrif's basic skill has a 66% chance to reduce the target's initiative by 25%, but on awakening, it's 100% chance to reduce the initiative by 35%
• Maedb's third skill resets target's initiative to 0.
• Tiros' third skill has three strikes, each with a 67% chance to reduce the target's initiative by 28%.
• Devourer's 3rd skill resets initiative of all enemies with Slowdown, Skip turn or DoT (probably all of them, if Voidgunner is in the team)

Mordred was meta for long time, and his second skill was largely responsible.

Although some heroes can protect themselves, or the whole team, against initiative decreased:

• Roxanne leadership prevents allied Wanderers' initiative reduced for 2 turns
• Star'Vald's passive prevents initiative to be reduced when they are in Vanir Fury.
• Sneaky Beaky passive blocks initiative reduction against allies for 1 turn. It doesn't last as much as others, but he covers all allies, not just some faction.
• Tristan's leadership can cover the whole team forever, but limited to his faction: it prevents allied Knights of the Council having their initiative reduced all the fight
• Devourer's passive prevents his own initiative to be reduced.
• Ash's passive turns any attempt of initiative decrease into 30% initiative increase, a nasty surprise for those unaware.

Or the opposite: prevent initiative increased on enemies:

• Naja's 3rd skill prevents target to get bonus initiative for 3 turns

Heroes with skills affecting speed

Some heroes can increase their speed from an ally's passive or leadership skill permanently:

• Artus' leadeship skill gives Archons a permanent 12.5% speed increase (25% when awakened)
• Naja's awakened leadeship skill gives Dark Elves a 20% speed increase.
• Maedb's passive increases the speed of allied Druids by 10%, and also increases her speed by 30% every time an enemy is slowed or miss a turn (no more than 200%).
• Trorin's leadership skill increases the speed of allied Ambror and Gassar by 32%.

Active skills can also increase the speed of allies, but this is a buff and can be removed:

• Cathbad's 2nd skill increases speed of allied Druids and Woodland Guardians by 20% for 3 turns

Speed can also be decreased (which is a debuff and can be removed):

• Dreverad's third skill slows all enemies by 30% for 3 turns, or 60% when Cathbad is on the team (which is a lot!)
• Lokhir's third skill reduces the enemies'speed of all enemies by 25% for 3 turns when all the team is Dark Elves (20% chance per Dark Elf in the party)

Some heroes cannot be debuffed, so they can't have their speed reduced (because this is a debuff):

• StarVald passive prevent Vans to be debuffed when on Vanir Wit
• Thane'Arg's passive prevents himself to be debuffed during the first 2 turns
• Sid's awakened leadership prevents him to be debuffed while other Chaos Spawn are alive

Also some active skills prevent debuffs: Sacrif 2, awakened Roxanne 2...

And some heroes have specific protection against slowdown debuffs: Aked's 2nd passive, Ash's passive...

Try to slow Ash down if you dare.

Frequently used strategies

There are many teams with strategies in which moving first (either with own's initiative/speed increase, or enemy's initiative/speed decrease) is an important part to take advantage. Let's see some of them:

• Cloud Wanderers often rely on Roxanne stealing initiative from enemies and transferring it to allies. Then Ramfort slows down all enemies when they have very low initiative, so Cloud Wanderers can keep hitting and hitting before enemies take a turn. It's still better if the team includes Capfei with awakened 2nd skill: allies are speeded up and Roxanne can increase the damage of the team before hitting to steal initiative.
• Old renegades (Mordred, Morrigan, Liongo) used the increase of Liongo initiative to put the Melee Damager mark, then Morrigan hits and puts special abilities in cooldown. Combined with Mordred stealing initiative, that puts the team on a big initial advantage.
• Light Druids + Maedb use a lot of those effects: Maedb speeds up all with her passive, Cathbad increases Dreverad's initiative with his passive; Dreverad slows all enemies a lot, which speeds up Maedb due to her passive; Maedb reset the initiative of the most dangerous enemy with her 3rd skill, Cathbad speeds up Druids, and then Myrddin freezes all. Notice that Myrddin alone tends to be useless because he's too slow and enemy can usually neutralize him, it takes all this teamwork to make him valuable!
• Dark Elves were for a long time a reliable counter against Archons: Llael gives Lokhir 100% initiative at the start of the battle, and Lokhir slows the enemies. Then Naja 3 adds a lot of debuffs to enemies and also gives Naja 100% initiative, so she attacks again, and her 2nd attack oneshots Sacrif and the fight is decided
• But Archons are harder to beat with Dark Elves currently; Artus leadership is a very popular awakening for Archons, which speeds up all the Archons in the team; this way Tiros takes his turn before Naja, and when Tiros reduces the initiative of all enemies, the Archons will move before: shields, buffs and all, they will win the fight.