Alice Margarine Margatroid, the rainbow-colored puppeteer INTRODUCTION!This is an Alice guide, one of me personal favorite heroes that I cannot stand yet love to play. Most people don't really want Alice for the same reason people don't main Alice in the fighting games. It's a lot more effort compared to the other girls, distance is involved, she herself is vulnerable, and doesn't have much in the way of melee, but with her are some unique strengths which will be shown in this guide. Let's start with
STATS!Strength: 21 (+1.8 )
Agility: 15 (+1.6)
Intelligence: 24 (+2.6)
Ranged: 450
Movement Speed: 275
Armor: 0
So you can see her stats are overall mediocre. They all aren't stellar, but her strength is that her stats aren't bad. Her strength is good for an agility type and her agility is a little down there, but still good for her role. She can use every stat effectively, much moreso than other characters. Unfortunately her armor is 0 so she is pretty weak against attacks. Caution is advised! With that said, we'll go straight onto...
SKILLS!Alice has three skills that have four sub-skills each that level up with their respective skills. Quite staggering, but I'll give my opinion and experience with each one. The first skill?
Shanghai Doll, Melee Type Hotkey F
Summons Shanghai doll to assist Alice in combat. Each point of Intelligence increases 5HP, every 2 points of Agility increases 1 Attack. Shanghai will disappear if it leaves too far away from Alice.
Cast Range: 600
Spirit Cost: 80/80/100/120MP
Cooldown: 6/4/2/0s
Level 1: Maximum number of Shanghai Dolls is 3.
Level 2: Maximum number of Shanghai Dolls is 4.
Level 3: Maximum number of Shanghai Dolls is 5.
Level 4: Maximum number of Shanghai Dolls is 6.
Shanghai is the tanker type of the dolls. She has high defense with heavy armor(takes reduced from piercing) compared to the other dolls, higher base hp, blah blah blah. Most people prefer to level Shanghai second or last , depending on their own style.
SHANGHAI DOLL SKILLS!Doll Defense (D) (toggle)
Level 1 skill. Puts Shanghai in defensive mode, -20% atk speed, -40% movement speed, Receive 33% less magic damage, 50% chance to block 30 damage. Gains 4 armor.
Shanghai's level 1 skill is quite evil early game. She gets a bra with a higher chance that also blocks magic damage, but makes her slow as molasses. This skill really shines when Shanghai tanks creeps(and enemy girls) quite well, and towers. Seriously, a squad of three or four shanghai will make the tower fall in a single push minutes into early game against a single target hero(Yukari) and give a tough time against an AoE hero(Letty, Utsuho) because of that reduced magic damage. That's how good Shanghai dolls are at pushing with this.
Sword Sign "Lancer Storm" (F)
Level 2 skill. Deals damage to opponents all around Shanghai. Deals 135 damage per second. Lasts 5 seconds.
Area of Effect: 135
Spirit Cost: 100MP
Cooldown: 12 seconds.
Shanghai's damage skill. The AoE on this is tiny, but check out that damage! One shanghai can kill an entire creep wave by herself, even late into the game with this skill, and appropriately only one Shanghai's spin will count. If you spin them all on a trapped target, you're wasted precious attack damage. It'll look a lot more intimidating though. One Shanghai can also take out creep camps, provided you hit them all with that tiny AoE, and they'll probably never stop due to their giant mana regen.
Doll Assault (R)
Level 3 skill. Movement Speed +100%, Attack Speed +50%. Shanghai receives 66% more damage. Lasts 12 seconds.
Disables Doll Defense when activated
Spirit Cost: 150MP
Shanghai's support skill. This skill makes Shanghai into a little rocket, easily catching up to people and surrounding them(which takes a lot more finesse than you'd imagine) It's underplayed due to the fact you receive a lot more damage as a result of course, but you can just defend after you trap someone to mitigate it. Best used on towers with no enemy girls nearby, but sometimes it's funny to do that anyways.
War Command "Sonic Rush" (W)
Level 4 skill. Lines up Shanghai dolls in a train to charge at high speed. Lead Shanghai can command other Shanghais to follow the army?s direction of charge. The target receives 40 damage and 0.9 second stun for every Shanghai Doll that collided with it. Only one Sonic Rush can be used at a time.
Spirit Cost (Alice): 600MP
Cooldown: 54 seconds. Requires minimum 6 Shanghai dolls
Choo-choo! This is what people see when they see Shanghai, a giant train that is clearly bigger than the dolls for some reason. A very strong skill with a huge cost, best used for defending against a crowd. At level 16, this can potentially do 480 damage and stun for about three seconds on each target it hits, and it lasts a long time to boot. You can probably hit someone three times if you know what you're doing. The problem is that most people don't know how to control it! This is shown how in the Tips & Tricks section.
With Shanghai out of the way, we move onto the second skill...
New England Doll, ranged type Hotkey F
Summons a flying New England Doll to assist in battle. Each point of Intelligence increases 4HP, every 2 points of Agility increases 1 Attack. New England will disappear if it leaves too far away from Alice.
Spirit Cost: 80/90/100/100MP
Cooldown: 6/4/2/0s
Level 1: Maximum number of New England Dolls is 3.
Level 2: Maximum number of New England Dolls is 4.
Level 3: Maximum number of New England Dolls is 5.
Level 4: Maximum number of New England Dolls is 6.
This is what most people get first. New England is the damage dealing doll, with beefy damage and skills that support said beefy damage. They are fragile and since they clump up together, have a harder time against AoEs compared to the beefy Shanghai, but the killing ability they do is a good tradeoff.
NEW ENGLAND DOLL SKILLS!Magic Sign "Artful Sacrifice" (E)
Level 1 skill. Immediately detonates itself, dealing 85/110/135/160 flame damage to all nearby enemies.
Area of Effect: 135
This skill is a joke. It's only use is if you get some New England Dolls right away and you get ganked, and even then it's dubious to use this skill since New England will probably do more damage attacking then exploding and wasting the mana to re-summon them.
Doll Ground Battalion (F) (toggle)
Level 2 skill. New England Doll switches to battalion mode using a rifle. Armor +2 Range: 520, Attack Speed: 80%. Use the skill again to revert to aerial mode.
This turns New England into an adorable little squadron, with guns going pew pew all over the place. Unfortunately they gain collision when they trot around, so they'll get mixed up with Shanghai dolls and yourself REAL fast with AI pathing and make a big mess if you don't know what you're doing. Additionally, when they land they get a bonus 50 health! Huzzah! This skill works in conjunction with...
Head Shot (passive in Battalion mode)
Level 2 skill. Has a 15% chance to deal 2.5/3/3.5/4 times the damage on enemies when attacking.
This skill is New England's bread. Even with a mere 2.5 critical, it makes a lot of hurting happen. This makes the squadron of 12 do some massive damage once they lock on someone. Really powerful stuff.
Anti-Fortress Gunpowder (passive in Aerial mode)
Level 2 skill. Deals 1.5x more damage to structures.
This is New England's butter. When no girls are around, it's better to use this to mess up towers really fast. It practically nullifies the armor of the tower!
Magic Sign "Straw Doll Kamikaze" (W)
New England Doll turns itself into a rocket and detonates on an enemy target. While flying, as long as the target enemy is within 60 degrees of New England Doll?s Sight Range, impact is guaranteed! When New England Doll detonates, it deals 30 damage to all nearby enemies and the target enemy receives 60 more damage. 800 Lock-On Range, 3 seconds maximum Flying Time and 750 Average Projectile Speed.
This is a more.. Situational skill really. Best used against weaker targets that refuse to heal for a bit of extra exp and gold, because you are way over there and you don't really have a method to get to them.. Except you have this skill. This skill really only does about 70 damage because of a girl's magic resist, but en masse at level 7 or so should do about 500 damage, which is enough if the enemy is weakened. Very situational, but handy.
And lastly, we have...
Hourai Doll, assist type Hotkey R
Summons a Hourai Doll to assist Alice. Hourai cannot move or attack. Each point of Intelligence increases 4HP. Hourai will disappear if it leaves too far away from Alice.
Spirit Cost: 80/80/120/150MP
Cooldown: 6/4/2/0s
Level 1: Maximum number of Hourai Dolls is 3.
Level 2: Maximum number of Hourai Dolls is 4.
Level 3: Maximum number of Hourai Dolls is 5.
Level 4: Maximum number of Hourai Dolls is 6.
Hourai helps other dolls and people out, hence the term assist. As one can imagine, Hourai doll doesn't look so good immediately, but her support skills are very handy dandy to have and shine when used right.
HOURAI DOLL SKILLS!Spy Sign "Seeker Dolls" (T)
Level 1 skill. Cuts connection with Alice, becomes a invisible scout. Disappears after 180 seconds.
This gets rid of the Hourai doll, and leaves it invisible where 95% of the girls can't see it. It's still quite hittable with ground-targeted AoE spells though, so beware. This skills usefulness is setting up for ganks. An invisible doll can tell you when you are about to be ganked or when a character is going for a rune, all sorts of stuff for the early laning phase. Alice is weak to being ganked early on, so this is nice to have.. Just in case.
Anti-Invisibility Detector (F)
Level 2 skill. Reveals any invisible enemy units within 500 Radius, lasts 24 seconds.
Spirit Cost: 200MP
Cooldown: 30s
This can be best described as an anti-wriggle skill. This skill lasts a long time, shows a large area, and the doll itself can take a bit of a beating before disappearing, not to mention that Wriggle's bugs hit random things and doesn't heal until after the skill is done, a competent Alice will easily destroy a competent wriggle in the early phase with this badboy. This skill is also best used in case of subdollers in front of your defending area. Crazy useful situational skill that isn't done often.
Doll Medic (R)
Heals all nearby allies within range by 50HP. Every ally unit healed requires 20MP, can heal at a maximum of 6 units at a time. Can be toggled to auto-cast.
This is what people see Hourai dolls as, for good reason. It's a heal that heals many units for a small cost, and a bunch of these will make almost no harm happen in the early phase. The AoE on the heal is small though, and they are the least durable of all the dolls, and cannot move. Very weak to AoEs as a result since they are typically clumped together.
Focus Power "Tripwire" (W)
Fires at the selected target. Does 48 damage.
Cast Range: 850 (maximum)
Spirit Cost: 100MP
Cooldown: 0s
Hourai's only damaging skill and probably the least used skill, for good reason. It takes focus away from Alice(who is probably getting hurt) and takes away the precious healing. But in a defensive position, behind a tower, gate or whatever? This skill becomes very evil. At level 11, this skill will do 480 damage a shot. This spell moves quite fast and pierces as well, so whatever it behind it takes a lot of damage as well. If you cast this six times quickly, that's 2600 damage right there! At level 11, not a lot of girls, even some str girls don't have 2,000 hp. This can be a sudden surprise for a lot of pushers and they'll wonder what they died to. I stopped a farmed Remilia with just this skill and she was at full hp. It really does quite a lot of damage, but almost needs to be done behind a tower. Also good if you aren't worried about Alice and all the other dolls are doing their thing, follow it up with some of this danmaku.
ULTIMATE!War Command "Dolls of War" (passive)
Greatly increases the combat capabilities of Alice?s Dolls.
Level 1: All Dolls? population limit is increased by 2, certain skills from some dolls is upgraded to Level 2.
Level 2: All Dolls? population limit is increased by 4, certain skills from some dolls is upgraded to Level 3.
Level 3: All Dolls? population limit is increased by 6, certain skills from some dolls is upgraded to Level 4.
What it means by 'certain skills' is not the general skills you get from leveling up. It means skills like the bonus damage in headshot and... Well, that's it really. Just makes headshot stronger and increases amount of dolls, which is quite crucial later on.
And the skill you always have
Returning Doll (C)
Unsummons the target doll. Recovers MP equal to half of the summoning cost.
This skill is far more useful than you'd think. Use this on a doll near dead and summon it up again for half price! Really cuts down on mp cost, but isn't useful for burst damage skills.
With all the skills out of the way, we start with items!... Or I would, if Alice weren't so versatile. You can go with any skill set up, item set up, and if you are fairly competent you'll do well, regardless of what you do. I'll merely list two(maybe three) of the more common builds for her. We'll be starting with...
BEEFY ALICE! Now that I'm done making you go 'wwwhhhyyy!' This Alice build is designed against Alice not dying, which is a pretty good idea. If you are the weakest part, then beefing yourself up will make you a far more difficult customer to deal with. But what's more interesting is that this Alice depends on gold a lot more than she cares about experience, so Beefy Alice works best as a pure jungler. This'll also help your allies as they get more solo experience, so they can at least defend against a possible dual-lane. In this I'll be listing a set of steps for the crucial early game, and then a much more laid back mid and late-game.
First things first, summon up a Shanghai doll and buy your items. What are you buying?
Yep, just a ticket, s'all you really need really. Buy your ticket, summon up the two other Shanghai's and we'll begin the jungling!
This is the map you'll use as Hakurei. Where you go is dictated by the numbers, but it isn't quite that simple! There is quite a bit of strategy to it.
1=This is where you start off! Set all your Shanghai to defend(it's only a -20% decrease) when they are just about next to the enemy creep and let them attack. NEVER LET ALICE ATTACK FIRST! She'll get attacked otherwise and you got no healing items! It'll be a little slow, but you should take down the first camp with one mid to badly damaged Shanghai. Undefend them all, switch out the weak one and..!
2=We head off to 2! Once again defend all the Shanghai and do a part 2 of what you did earlier, but midway through this fight you'll reach level 2! Hooray! Get a New England squad up as your Shanghais tear apart the enemy. At the end of the fight you'll have another weakened Shanghai, so switch her out for a fresh one again. After this fight, you'll have 3 Shanghai, 2 New England Dolls. That's when..
3= We head to 3! On the way you can summon your 3rd New England Doll, and you shouldn't have a lot of mana at this point, but it's okay. Set your Shangais up to defense once again, and if Alice and the New England dolls are in 600 range, they'll attack automatically so you can be a little lazier. At this point you'll reach level 3, level up Shanghai once again. If Shanghai has less than 33% hp, switch her out, otherwise keep her in and don't summon another yet, for we go to...
4=The ancient creep camp! Yes, we're tackling these at level 3. Set up but one defending Shanghai who goes in first, and get the other two next to the creeps and get them spinning. If it's a swarm of monsters the two spinning will take care of most of them, if it's the one warlock-y dude? Well he'll probably zap the first one into oblivion, so set up another defender and constantly spin with different dolls. Never stop spinning! At this point you're pretty much out of mana or at least almost out of mana, so teleport back to base and buy...
The ticket is for when you go home again much later on, and Zun's hat is for your first item and even gives a bonus to hp. Summon up as many New England dolls as you can in the meantime and summon up only two Shanghai dolls. By the time you leave the base, camps 1 and 2 will be open again for killing. If you were fast, camp 3 may be open too. This time though, we're going to be a little lazier. Shanghais defend, new england lay on some hurt. This continues through to camp 5 and 6 as well. When we reach...
7=Here, make sure you have 3 Shanghai dolls once again and you should be level 5 by now, if not level 6. Do the same thing you did in 4, have dolls spinning and the New England Dolls support. After this you should be level 6! Hooray! Un-summon the Shanghai and max summon your New England. By the time you are done camp 7, camps 1-5 should be open for business again, so keep going back and forth. When you move, set your dolls to flying so they are faster, fly over everything, and not hamper your movement. Next to a creep camp, set 'em down and let them start blasting. One doll becomes weak, switch 'em out, but most creeps will die before they are seriously hurt. If a lane near you is getting pushed hard at this point, help out a bit, give him enough time to go back to base and come back refreshed, or shoo away the creeps. By the time you've done a round and a half, you can go back to base and get...
This item is awesome on Alice. It gives her dolls and everyone around her(including herself) +4 armor and +18 damage. Later on when you have 12 dollies going pew pew, that's +216 damage! Woah! It's an overall great item for Alice. After that, continue jungling and helping allies when necessary. Be very strict with jungling though and jungle as often as possible, and buy...
That's right, TWO of them. These items are cheap and give a large boost to both hp AND mana, very needed for Alice. One round of creep waves will give one part of these items each run, so after about 14 minutes, you should have both of them. I will remind you that by the time you have these, it should be nearing the 25 minute mark, and you'll have about 2,500hp. You ain't dying to much and your dolls will tear apart anyone that wants to fight you. Even Yuugi. Keep with the jungling as often as you can, support allies, and you'll get...
Sometimes, things just get too hairy, you might get ambushed, Yuugi decides to Omae you, all sorts of things. This is an 'oh dear!' button.. Just in case. By this point you are either winning or losing. If you are losing, jungling is now more of a side thing. Your role now is to start pushing back. With your giant hp, you ain't dying anything soon, your dolls will tear apart most things faster than they can kill you. If you're winning, pushing is more of a side thing, but you should still do it. At this point only your own competence will help you, but a rough item layout should be...
And either
or
In order of importance...
1. Parasol
2. HJ Bug
3. Adamantine
4. Sukima Generator
5. Zun Glasses(magic heavy team)/Myon Balloon(physical heavy team)
6. Frozen Frog
This is the Moriya map. Same general rule applies, but when you finish your first run, skip #2 and 3.
Of course there are some other characters that can jungle. They are your...
Enemies!Sometimes Momiji likes to jungle or send her wolves out to jungle. If this appears, it's pretty likely it'll start attacking you. What'll you do?!... Well actually, you'll just get your shanghai doll to spin next to them. Level 1 and 2 wolves will die instantly, and level 3 and 4 wolves will die to a spin+dolls firing away. You'll take some damage and give away your location, so I suggest you get outta dodge to another creep camp or back to base. Time they spend looking for you is time they spend not getting exp.
Flan jungles. She does that better than most characters, and you are likely to find her. But this is early game, and Flan has no hp. Set your Shanghai dolls around you and make them spin. The clones should vanish almost immediately and Flan will wonder why she's so dang hurt all of a sudden. Later on she'll probably try to Kyuu you and stuff, but hopefully you'll have adamantine at that point. Try to have at least two Shanghai for Flan though, one spin won't kill her, and your mission in case of Flan is kill her before she kills you.
I'd say run, but Rumia doesn't jungle and start trolling until level 6 and she'll get you anyways. If you are facing a Rumia, forget level 3 and 4 of New England and get Hourai and set up some dolls around the creep locations. If she bumbles upon you, turn on the invisible detector and lay it into her. You'll probably kill her before she kills you. Alternatively, you could trap her with your dolls. She isn't invisible to collisions with darkness you know.
Another girl you forego level 3 and 4 New England. Her beetles will be doing her farming and a quick spin will solve that problem, and once again set up hourai dolls at every creep camp. Unlike Rumia who is quite obvious, Wriggle is always invisible, so turn on the invisible detector when you start killing creeps. You can never know when she's following you.. And you'll get those pesky burrowed beetles too.
GO AWAY CHEN YOU BOTHER ME!
GENERAL NOTES ON BEEFY ALICE!-After you get an HJ, get Hourai level 2 and set her up in random forest places, but not next to creep camps. By now the enemy has noticed your jungling and will probably try to gank you.
-Even if you have ginormous hp, try to stay in the back. Your mana is enormous enough to summon two full armies before you need to start being careful with mana, and Hourai won't heal your wounds so fast(and what if there are AoEs for said Hourai?!)
-Spinning dolls cannot defend, and leave spinning in not-defend mode. Additionally, spinning is affected by armor, so don't wonder why it won't kill certain creeps.
Now for the other, more deadly Alice..
ATTACK ALICE This Alice is.. Well, deadly! She will demolish anything in her path in a flash, unless they have incredible hp and defense. She needs gold too, but not as badly as her beefy counterpart. She'll also be a lot squishier than her counterpart as well, but way way more damage as well.
Well first things first. What do you get?! Well that's simple.
You are going to get some pies later, the lover card is just in case, and ticket is obvious. Now let's start with the early lane!
You'll want to level up New England Doll right away, and summon up 3 of her in base while you are buying items. After that, try to head either bottom or top... Preferrably top. After that, you'll want to play conservatively, but at the same time you'll never want 100% mana, and you'll always want creeps to stay in the general area, so don't attack wildly. Level 2 you get Hourai. If you are top Moriya, start putting them either right behind or right in front of the tower, if you are at bottom Moriya, try to keep the Hourai a bit before where the creeps FIRST met and started brawling. Also, make sure the creeps are never too pushed so that Hourai is out of range as a result. Last hit and deny is what you'll be doing mostly. Once again, creeps must be in the same area. At level 5 if all went well, you should still have a fair amount of mp, 4 gun girls toting it up, and just gotten level 3 hourai. What that means is that it is time to hunker down and set up shop. You ain't moving from there for anything unless a 4 man gank occurs. If you are Hakurei, just reverse the Moriya areas.
This is where the fun begins. Even if you have no creeps, tank the creeps with New England Dolls or otherwise(the enemy girl will take this as a 'Ah-ha! He wants to die!' thing, pump her full of lead for her trouble), and retreat to only in FRONT of the hourai dolls to heal up. Those hourai dolls will heal you up almost instantly, the wave they had is dead, and yours is coming now! If you are bot Moriya, that means the enemy tower is constantly being hit, and if you are top Moriya, your tower will never get hit. You are bunkering down and all you care about is getting that sweet creep kill exp and gold.. Even if you do get a bit beat up for your trouble. After a while, or against certain enemies, you'll probably be forced to retreat or die. It WILL eventually happen, it's cool, no worries. However, by the time you get back to base or revive, you should have enough for these.
Yeah, you can imagine where this is going. If you can't afford these items? You did something wrong or you got to face Reimu. If you do face someone like Reimu, go to another lane IMMEDIATELY. Tell that other person to get over there because Alice is 100% useless against characters like that. Even if you have to waste mana to re-summon the initial New England dolls. Better than getting your early game gimped.
Well it's back to the spot you were at and bunker down again. You won't be teleporting because new england dolls are expensive! Just summon them while you are buying and mosey back on to your area. If you were top Moriya(bot Hakurei) push to near the enemy tower and bunker there so that the enemy tower starts taking a beating, and set up an Hourai doll behind or near you.. Just in case. If you are bot Moriya/top Hakurei, you get back to in front of their place and keep doing whatever it was you were doing. During this time, your skill order should be...
ENGLAND
HOURAI
ENGLAND
HOURAI
HOURAI
DOLLS WAR
ENGLAND
ENGLAND
HOURAI(probably here if you dual-laned)
SHANGHAI
DOLLS WAR(probably here if solo)
As you can see, Shanghai doesn't really have a place right now, and you'll be given a choice. Own the tower probably decrease gold consumption, or not smash the tower and increase overall gold production. The choice is yours, but as soon as you make 1950, you might want to consider heading back so you can get your bread and butter item.
If you can, get one of these as well, whichever you can.
Summon up your New Englands in base again and now? Now you can probably start wandering a bit. Visit another lane and kill them there or start jungling a little. Although if you CAN, you can just go back to your area and wreck that tower now. Your New Englands should already be causing some SERIOUS hurt already. It probably has +40 attack, which means crits of almost 200. At mid-game, this is seriously deadly, but 10 of these firing at you? Chances are at least one doll will hit you with 200, the rest will hit you with 70 damage. That's enough to turn just about anything into dead in four shots. An update on your skills, you only need one level of Shanghai really. You ain't gonna find a use for her in a while, and you have more important things to level up at 12+. Like your stat gains.
As a result, each level each doll will recieve +16hp and +2 attack. You might not think the attack doesn't matter, but at level 18 or so they'll gain an extra +15 attack from the levels and stat ups alone. The little things really matter.
By level 20 you should have an item build a little something like this...
This is a worser case scenario by the way, in case you couldn't farm as much. You'll have more cash otherwise.
You'll also notice your inventory is almost full. When you get your next item, it should look something like this.
Yeah, it's a frozen frog. You got enough agi+ items, time to stack on the all stat+ items for more survivability, doll survivability, and damage increase. Should it get to that point, eat your pies rather selling them. You get more use out of eating it. This is a general final item build.
Well.. Not really. Always room for smoking dude. A general item list is...
1. Blood-Soaked Parasol
2. Kitsune Exalt
3. Green Llama Doll
4. Brother Sharp
5. Hakurei Shrine Amulet
6. Frozen Frog.
7, Sell Llama Doll, get Gap Generator
Now once again, with Damage Alice comes natural enemies, such as...
HER ULT WILL WRECK YOU! In case of Suika, ditch your dolls, turn on Kitsune, and get outta dodge. With kitsune and Llama, you should be about as fast as her, even if she is level 16. She'll either spend her time chasing you, wrecking your dolls, or go punch someone else. If your dolls aren't wrecked by the time she's done, sure go nuts.
As mentioned above, Reimu will end your early game bunkering fast and instantly, not to mention she has that physical shield. You'll either have to gank her, or just stay away from her.
In a battle of attrition early game, she's going to win. You won't kill her, but she'll always get away with only a bit of hp to spare.. Then she'll come back and do it again. Later game though? Not too bad.
If she has a PAD, you aren't doing a lot of damage to her unless it's late game. At that time though, you'll at least cause some damage before all your dolls explode from ice.
Those are the two builds I'd most recommend for Alice. They are both very strong in their respective areas, but there are a lot more builds out there that have new strengths and enemies. Of course, there are some enemies you'll always do crap against, such as...
If she gets next to you, all your dolls are gone and she will be back to full health faster than you can imagine.
Her Abyss Nova early game will wreck any dolls you have out.
Her ult says that if your dolls are dead. Only way to counter this is to spread them out(Very hard to do) or pump them full of hp
She's just going to troll you and teleport you somewhere outside of doll range, automatically making them vanish.
+8 armor, +500 hp, AND a radiance? Makes killing this user way harder than it should be.
Finally, there is the
TIPS & TRICKS-To control dolls and Alice with hotkeys, click or make a group of the unit you want to hotkey, then click ctrl+a number. For example, click on Alice, ctrl+1 Alice. Now whenever I press 1, I'll automatically take control of Alice. Group up 5 Shanghai, ctrl+2, whenever I press 2, I'll get those 5 Shanghai. This has to be redone every time you summon new dolls, which is a pain.
-To control your Shanghai train, you have to take control of the head Shanghai doll and click where you want her to go. It's better to do it a bit behind the enemy or predict where she will go since it'll take Shanghai train a moment to get there. This is easier if you make a control group of the Shanghais and take control of them as you start the train.
-It seems that at some point, head shot got simplified with Alice's ultimate to 2/3/4x crit, and her anti-fortress gunpowder goes 1/2/3x damage. Think about that with the Damage Alice build.
-Shanghai dolls are troll against Kaguya, she can't run away and her nuke can't kill them. You'd be surprised at how many heroes are weak to a Shanghai surrounding.
-Try to avoid sub-doll on Alice. Her dolls give away her location and the stats on it aren't very good for Alice. If you need sub-doll on Alice, you ain't playing her right.
-Alice is one of the few people that benefits from +all stat items just as much as +str, +agi, or +int items.
-It only takes 5 Shanghai to trap someone from moving. That means at level 5, you can potentially kill someone.. Who can't blink anyways.
CLOSING WORD!I really like Alice, as I've always had a penchant for versatility, but she takes so much work to play, but it gives off a very satisfying feeling when you win as Alice. I hope this guide gives people who read this that Alice can be one of the more overpowered girls while oddly being held back by the weaker ones. Curious!
I honestly have a LOT of ideas floating around in my head as Alice, since she can basically work around whoever she is laning against, even the most OP heroes have a hard time with a competent Alice around, as I made a few references to Wriggle up there. She reminds me of the lethal joke character in RPGs and fighters, hard to master and doesn't seem like much, but once you really delve into it, she is crazy. Oh well, hope you enjoyed reading!