Majiya - Wtzky's beginner's guide to SE Heroes v1.5!

**Wtzky** · 05-07-2012, 11:54 AM

Wtzky's beginners guide to Shadow Era heroes

Ah, one of my favourite heroes from when I first started playing. Majiya

has always been quite strong and despite a small hiccup in 1.29 which saw her drop in form slightly, she has made a strong comeback to be one of the top heroes.

Majiya

Faction: Shadow
Class: Mage
Tier: 1
Utilisation: Seen very often in quick match and competitively. She is utilised to her strength.

Pros and Cons (explanations after table):

Pros:	Great board control with the added bonus of extra card draw ¹	Strong card pool²	Great synergy between card pool and ability²	Versatile ²
Cons:	Ability can only target allies³	No heal and low starting health

¹ Majiya

has very strong board control. Her ability is the obvious one – while its not as strong as say Zaladar or Eladwen

, it still does some strong single unit damage and comes with the added bonus of the card draw, and we all know that card advantage can be game winning. Along with that, Majiya

has some nice spells to help her control the board (Lightning Strike, Arcane Burst, Supernova, Fireball, Clinging Web, Freeze), as well as having access to Shadow Energy acceleration (ShadowFont), Evil Ascendant and some strong weapons and armors (Dagger of Unmaking and Snow Sapphire). All up, your control options are quite numerous, and allow Majiya

to exert her dominance over the board while dishing damage out to the enemy.

² The Mage card pool is quite strong over all;

- Crowd Control: already mentioned above. You have great single ally and mass ally control/removal options

- Unilateral Draw: Tome of Knowledge

is an excellent unilateral draw engine, allowing you to gain draw in later rounds quite rapidly if it hangs around

- Good weapons/armours: Dagger of Unmaking

and Snow Sapphire

are probably the two best in this class, but there are plenty of other options available to Mages in this area that work very well.

- Damage over time: Engulfing Flames

and Poison Gas

can really hurt when combined. As well as those two cards, you have an under utilised weapon in Wrath of Summer

that can do damage over time to allies

- Haste: Portal

can allow you to haste in all of your dropped allies, allowing you to take out the board quickly or dish out some serious damage to the enemy hero with those damaging fatties.

The Mage card pool is missing heal and resource acceleration but is fairly strong despite that.

With access to burn and Portal

, Majiya has the potential to dish out damage really fast. Once she has the board, she can start dealing direct burn damage to the hero, using her allies and ability to keep the board locked down.

She also has great synergy with her ability and card pool. Her spells and allies that she has access to make for great “ping” damage to weaken the opposing allies for her ability to kill them off. For example, playing an Evil Ascendant

ensures that her ability will kill off most allies that cost less than 5cc. Lightning strike, Wrath of Summer

, Arcane burst also do the same (Supernova

and Fireball

are generally strong enough to kill most lower cost allies anyway, but can be combined with her ability for the tougher fatties). Even the Shadow weenies greatly assist Majiya with their ping damage – play Death Mage on turn 4 for the 1 ping that Majiya needs to get rid of a Jasmine

for example. Dark Flayer, Firesnake, Brutalis

also all provide great ping to allow her ability to work.

This synergy actually makes for some versatile builds. The most popular and strongest build at the moment centres around Portal

– using Majiya’s ability and spells to control the board and keep the cards flowing from draw to board once portal is down. Dropping a couple of Brutal Minotaurs down through portal is so devastating, given that you deal 12 damage and have a huge threat sitting there for your opponent to deal with while you continue to stockpile burn cards or allies. Majiya can also work very nicely as a rush hero, using weenies for early damage and as a meat shield while she stockpiles burn for some nasty spell combos. Finally, Majiya can work as a solo hero, using spells, delay and damage over time. A versatile hero to play around with.

³ There’s really not that many downsides to Majiya currently, which is one of the reasons she is a top hero. Low starting health, no heal and having her ability target only allies are all cons, but certainly not deal breakers.

**Wtzky** · 05-07-2012, 11:55 AM

Ease of play for beginners - On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is hardest hero pick up and 10 is easiest hero to pick up:

10

Actually quite simple to use really. Find yourself a good portal deck on the forums, tweak it to suit your play and you should be up and running and ready to take on a large proportion of decks. If you want to experiment with different play styles, Majiya

then becomes harder to use.

Good match ups:

Most match ups will be good if you have a good build. Certain match ups are easier than others for Majiya

, including:

- Ter Adun

- Logan

- Moonstalker

- Baduuru
- Zhanna

- Lance

(if you use portal)
- Jericho

- Eladwen

- Boris

Bad match ups:

Not many clearly stand out, but some heroes can really hurt Majiya

, especially the portal version. For example, Zaladar

can be tough to deal as one of your main sources of damage (Brutal Minotaur

) becomes a weapon against you with Mind Control. Gwen can be difficult as she heals so much off you and has access to Spelleaters Bands, and Victor can nullify your Portal

allies with his traps.

- Victor (if you use portal)
- Gwen
- Banebow

- Zaladar

(especially portal builds)

Best suited style of play:

Versatile. Current best build is centred around Portal

Cost of creating a good deck:

Generally quite cheap with the main bulk of your deck easily obtained from starter packs (weenies, spells and some draw). The costly part will come if you decide to use portal and fatties or if you decide you want costly armors or weapons.

Combos:

Here I will include some interesting/fun/good plays or combos.

Evil Ascendant

+ Ability – Good way to kill most 3 cost allies in one shot

Ability + Firesnake/Brutalis

– Ping damage to help your ability get the kill

Ability + Dark Flayer

– Dark Flayer

can do the damage needed for your ability before he dies using his defender ability

Ability + Lightning Strike

/Arcane Burst

/Wrath of Summer/Violet Thunderstorm

– as above

Ability + Carniboar

- Use this in the opposite manner; ability to knock down the health of an ally so that Carniboar

can finish it and gain the +1/+1

Majiya in the future:

Good card pool, which is only going to get better with time. Strong ability cards which will work well with any future fatties. Sexy card art. Basically, Majiya

will only get better. What remains to be seen is where she settles in the pecking order, but you can safely assume she will always be better than, or at the very least, Tier 2, and so is a good hero choice now as she will retain her value.

Good decks to check out on the forum:

There are so many decks posted in the Mage forums that it really isn’t hard to find a deck to start tweaking for your own. A couple of more worthy builds:

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....ISS-Majiya-1-5 – good analysis and discussion

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....-Majiya-portal – the advice given here is worth reading

Overall Recommendation:

A good control style hero, with a strong card pool that will retain its strength in future versions to come. Definitely recommended for all players, not just beginners.

se_015.jpg

**Reshiram99** · 05-08-2012, 08:30 AM

Nice job. On a side note, I don't run BM in my Majiya

Portal

. Too expensive, doesn't have the versatility of PB / Molten and pings your unhealable health for 2 when your opponent kills it. Sure, dropping one through a Portal

can be devastating, but a lighter array of creatures, IMO, keeps the deck flowing much faster.

**Preybird** · 05-17-2012, 03:42 AM

Originally Posted by Wtzky

Majiya in the future:

Good card pool, which is only going to get better with time. Strong ability cards which will work well with any future fatties. Sexy card art. Basically, Majiya

will only get better. What remains to be seen is where she settles in the pecking order, but you can safely assume she will always be better than, or at the very least, Tier 2, and so is a good hero choice now as she will retain her value.

Read this a few times, but only just noticed that

Completely agree.