Tara Argentia - October 14, 2018

Name: Tara Argentia

DOB: January 10, 1884 (story takes place in 1919)

Element: Earth

Weapon: Axes (with some hammer types)

Playstyle: Power Attack/Instant Death

Maximum Stats (through Soul Triad only, no weapons)

Learnable Active Abilities:

Body

Pushback (initally unlocked) - Inflicts Stagger at close range. Can be customized so that a successful Pushback provides Tara with a 3 second buff to damage (+50%) and Combat Movement (+50%).

Knockdown (initially unlocked) - Inflicts Knockdown at close range.

Heart Attack - Deals Attack x 1.5 damage at close range. Can be customized to increase damage and to gain an incredibly short cooldown (5 seconds).

Kill Chop - A powerful attack that deals Attack x 5 damage. Can have its damage boosted and its damage doubled during the Body Field Effect. [EDIT: As of 2019/08/06, is now Attack x 3]

Hatchetwirl - Deals Attack x 3 damage and Stun to a large area around the user. Can have its damage boosted, its cooldown reduced and its Stun time increased.

Mind

Backhand (initially unlocked) - Inflicts Attack x 1.5 damage and Stun. Can have its cooldown reduced.

Cleatqueen (initially unlocked) - Grants Combat Movement + 100% for 8 seconds. Can have it add +200% to Combat Movement and can have it so running while Cleatqueen is active boosts Tara's next basic melee attack, Body attack or Mind attack up to double damage (High Velocity).

Decapitate - Inflicts Instant Death at a 10% threshold with only a 5 second cooldown. Can have its threshold boosted, and with the Mind Field Effect active, can be boosted even higher (to a total of 40% while both of these scenarios are active).

Willpower - The user's next basic attack, Body ability or Mind ability deals double damage. Can have this ability provide an 8x boost under the Mind Field Effect (which with the Mind Field Effect's damage drop, is basically a 4x boost).

Skill Strike - Deals Attack x 1 damage and gain Defense + 25% for 5 seconds. Can have its cooldown reduced and have the buff enhanced to Defense + 50%.

Earth Siphon

Reaper Shield (initially unlocked) - For 3 seconds, all party members (Tara included) within range of Tara will not suffer damage or die if an attack would bring their HP to 0. Can have its duration boosted, and if the Earth Siphon Field Effect is active, its duration doubled, as well.

Mindcloud (initially unlocked) - Adds 3 seconds to active cooldowns for all enemies in combat. Can be enhanced, so that if the Earth Siphon Field Effect is active, Mindcloud also deals Attack x 2 damage and inflicts Stun.

Chasm - Creates a chasm in the ground that lasts for 5 seconds and deals Attack x 2 damage. Can have its damage boosted, its cooldown reduced, its area of effect doubled if Tara's Earthquake is active, and if the Earth Siphon Field is active, gives all Chasms an Instant Death Threshold of 30% (Bottomless Pit).

Earthquake - Cause an earthquake that damages all enemies over time at a rate of Attack x 0.5 per second for 5 seconds. Can have its damage boosted, its cooldown reduced, and if the Earth Siphon Field Effect is active, Earthquake adds 6 additional Chasms to the battlefield.

Path to Hell - Inflicts Instant Death at a 10% threshold to a large area around Tara. Can have its threshold raised to 15%, its area of effect boosted much larger, and if the Earth Siphon Field Effect is active, can power up any Bottomless Pit Chasms to 60% threshold and the current Path to Hell itself gains 3% more threshold per pit it has powered up.

Weapons

Silver Axe (default weapon) - Boosts Attack stat by 5% per weapon level (allowing Tara's max Attack stat to reach 60). Like all default weapons, good for practically any style of play.

Executioner Axe - Heart Attack, Kill Chop and Hatchetwirl all inflict Knockdown. While this overrides the Stun on Tara's Hatchetwirl, this is very useful with Heart Attack and its low cooldown meaning more frequent Knockdown. Very useful for Body-heavy builds, as Tara can use Heart Attack to knock down an enemy, and follow it up with the stronger Hatchetwirl and Kill Chop.

Golem Axe - Boosts the damage of Earth Siphon abilities by 10% per level. In this case, this applies to Chasm and Earthquake, making it useful as a damage booster for Tara's Earth Siphon build, especially due to the attack-all properties of Earthquake and how numerous and spread out Chasms can get prior to being setup for the Instant Death portion of Tara's Earth Siphon build.

Warhammer - Raises Tara's Combat Movement by 10% per level. Very useful for positioning (such as quickly covering an ally with Reaper Shield) or for building up Cleatqueen's damage buff quicker with High Velocity.

Volcano Hatchet - Makes Tara Fire elemental as well as Earth elemental, and basic melee attacks add to the Fire Siphon Field Effect. Not so much useful for Tara, but for assisting Cook and/or Jimmy with their Fire Siphon builds (while protecting Tara from the Fire Siphon Field Effect's damage-over-time flames).

Restrict Axe - Backhand and Skill Strike add to enemy's active cooldowns at the same power Mindcloud would do so, while adding up to an additional 2.5 seconds at max weapon level. Very useful if running or investing in a Cooldown Add/"Silence" build for Tara.

Ceres Cleaver - Boosts the Instant Death thresholds of Decapitate, Path to Hell and Bottomless Pit Chasms by up to 10% each at max weapon level. Invaluable for any instant death build, whether it be focused more towards Decapitate or Earth Siphon builds.

Morrison Maul - Gives Tara the Intelligence ability, which boosts Tara's basic attacks up to 4x damage at max weapon level while the Mind Field Effect is active. Invaluable for Mind-heavy builds, as even taking the Mind Field Effect's half damage for all into account, this is essentially a flat 2x damage output over having no Field Effect, all the while Tara takes less damage herself due to the Mind Field Effect. Combining this with Willpower (with Will Overpower as a passive) allows Tara to deal Attack x 16 damage with one basic attack during the Mind Field Effect.

Pros

Tara has a lot of strong points going for her, specifically her very strong stats (high HP and Attack, plus Skill Strike to boost Defense temporarily, and Cleatqueen and the Warhammer weapon to boost Combat Movement), high damage output across basic attacks, Body builds and Mind builds, her decent range of Stun abilities (Hatchetwirl, Backhand and during the Earth Siphon Field Effect with her Earth Siphon build, Mindcloud) her ability to prevent enemies from re-using abilities by adding time to their cooldowns, and her Instant Death abilities have very high Instant Death Thresholds, which make Tara capable of ending battles (even boss battles) much earlier. No matter what build she is given, she will cripple and destroy the enemy on the battlefield with relative ease and can take a good deal of punishment while doing so.

Tara has two main builds: her Body/Mind build and her Earth Siphon build. For her Body/Mind builds, Tara's Kill Chop, especially during the Body Field Effect, does massive damage, with Hatchetwirl doing large damage and Stun to an area. Though Heart Attack is weaker than the other Body abilities, it has a very low cooldown, making it great for forcing the Body Field Effect. As far as picking Mind abilities, Cleatqueen's High Velocity and Willpower are great for heavily buffing Tara's next attack (great with Kill Chop) and Decapitate can bring an Instant Death Threshold of 40% with the Mind Field Effect active (50% with max level Ceres Cleaver), which is great for shortening fights, and Decapitate's low cooldown can help force the Mind Field Effect. Skill Strike's high Defense boost is great for fighting in the Body Field Effect, and though it is an Earth Siphon ability, Reaper Shield is always available, giving greater team survivability during the Body Field Effect.

Tara's Earth Siphon build receives great enhancements with the Earth Siphon Field Effect. Reaper Shield can double its duration, Mindcloud can inflict damage and Stun to all enemies on the battlefield, Chasm gains Instant Death capabilities (Bottomless Pit), Earthquake (which, like Mindcloud, also attacks all enemies on the field) can add multiple Chasms onto the battlefield and Path to Hell powers up the Instant Death capabilities of Bottomless Pit Chasms. The purpose of Tara' Earth Siphon does include higher durations for Reaper Shield and making use of 2 attack-all abilities (of which Tara is the only party member to have any entire-battlefield damaging attacks), but the belle of the ball here is the Bottomless Pit Chasm, which after the Earth Siphon Field Effect is active and Path to Hell with Styxpath is used over it, gains a massive Instant Death Threshold of 60% (70% with the Ceres Cleaver), allowing Tara to end boss battles very, very early.

Regardless of build, make sure Tara uses Mindcloud and Reaper Shield frequently. Though they are both Earth Siphon abilities, any Body/Mind builds can have Tara use the low cooldowns of Heart Attack and Decapitate to shift the Field Effect back towards Body and Mind respectively.

Cons

Despite Tara having a lot of strong points going for her, her big flaw is that she is forced to specialize when it comes to creating builds, and cannot mix and match as smoothly as the other characters. Even with her Body/Mind builds, which have more leeway than her Earth Siphon build, Tara has little room for spontaneous customization, as her Body and Mind abilities rely too much on their synergy with one another. Kill Chop is almost always a requirement, due to its higher damage output with Willpower and the Body Field Effect. Since Heart Attack calls on the Body Field Effect more easily, it is needed, too. If the Body Field Effect is in play, the high damage/Stun Hatchetwirl should take advantage of the Body Field Effect, and Skill Strike helps greatly to keep Tara alive during the Body Field Effect. However, if Tara focuses too much on the Body Field Effect, Decapitate, which needs the Mind Field Effect, loses effectiveness.

Trying to include all 6 unlockable Body/Mind abilities means less potency in some of them. While having such strong synergy between her Body and Mind abilities is for all intents a good thing, she will need to be customized carefully to be at her most effective.

Tara's Earth Siphon build, despite the incredible Instant Death Threshold of 60%/70% (without or with Ceres Cleaver respectively), is very restrictive and forces the party to need to work under the Earth Siphon Field Effect. Looking at the list of Tara's Earth Siphon abilities on this dev blog page, every single one of them requires the Earth Siphon Field Effect to be enhanced, and it does not help that all of her Earth Siphon abilities have high cooldowns (Path to Hell has 15 seconds, but the others are in the 20-30 second range), so forcing the Field Effect through using these abilities over and over is quite difficult due to the infrequent ability to re-use them, especially if enemies use their own abilities to shift away from Earth Siphon. Having Pound and Brooks with Earth Siphon builds can make this easier for Tara, as well as Knight with the Stone Sickle weapon or Cook with the Boulder weapon.

Trivia

-Tara's playstyle has changed little, as in the original The Demon Rush had her unaltered stats lean towards HP, Attack and Speed, with her skillset leaning towards high melee physical damage, instant death and Backhand for above average damage and Stun. She struggled a bit with Magic, though for The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt, she still struggles with trying to pull off her Earth Siphon build, but to make up for it, it has the greatest Instant Death power in all of Legends Corrupt by a large margin.

-Outside of the Gachduine reference weapon, Tara's new weapons are the Volcano Hatchet and the Warhammer (though the Warhammer was in the Skylight Freerange games, too; Tara's focuses more on movement speed than action speed, though).

-Ignoring Pushback and Knockdown (which every character gets), Tara's only new ability not originating from the original The Demon Rush is Chasm.