Pound Falsch - October 14, 2018

Name: Pound Falsch

DOB: August 27, 1898 (story takes place in 1919)

Element: Earth

Weapon: Dual claymores and broadswords

Playstyle: Wide-Area/Esoteric

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 reduces the cooldowns of all of Pound's abilities by 2 seconds.

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

Viper Flight - Charge forward at high speed and deal Attack x 2 damage in a straight line. Can increase damage dealt, speed of flight and can have Knockdown inflicted.

Claymore Crash - 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]

Stone Gauntlet - A ground smash that deals Attack x 0.5 damage to a large area around Pound. Can have its damage boosted, its cooldown lowered and can have Knockdown inflicted.

Mind

Aura (initially unlocked) - Fires a long-lasting, slow moving projectile that can pass through multiple opponents and deal Attack x 1.5 damage. Can have its cooldown reduced, its duration increased, its movement speed increased and if the Earth Siphon Field Effect is active, has it add to the Earth Siphon Field Effect instead of Mind.

Viper King (initially unlocked) - Fires an aimable battlefield-length beam that lasts for 3 seconds. Can have its damage and duration boosted.

Explosion - Pound creates a massive explosion around himself that brings himself down to 0 HP and deals Attack x 12 damage to a large area around himself. Has no cooldown. Can have its damage boosted, can have it inflict Knockdown and can shorten his auto-revive timer significantly if he dies through using Explosion.

Barrier - Creates a barrier that nullifies any melee attacks, projectiles, area effects and beams from enemies that come into contact with the barrier (does not remove attack-all effects like earthquakes). Can have its area of effect and duration boosted.

Vampire - All of Pound's abilities are forced to go on double cooldown in order to provide either himself or an ally with large Attack and Defense boosts that last for 15 seconds. Can double the Attack/Defense buff's potency, can drop the cooldown debuff to standard cooldown length rather than double cooldown, can make it so Viper King does not go on cooldown when Vampire is used and can triple the power of Viper King for 10 seconds after Pound suffers from the effects of Vampire.

Earth Siphon

Mindspike (initially unlocked) - Creates a earthen spike that deals Attack x 1.5 damage in front of Pound, or if an Aura projectile is present, at the position of any Aura(s). Can have its damage boosted and if the Earth Siphon Field Effect is active, can reduce cooldown to 1 second if an Aura projectile is present.

Dark Arts (initially unlocked) - Buffs a party member's Attack for 5 seconds. Can have its potency boosted, its cooldown reduced and can have it so, on use, all Mindspikes, Germinated Mindspikes and Death Forest trees (including their explosions from Magic Blast) become infected by the Dark Arts, doubling their damage output and boosting their duration by 3 seconds.

Germinate - Call a vine out of the ground that deals Attack x 1.5 damage. Can have its damage boosted, its cooldown reduced to the low value of 5 seconds, and can have it so, on use, all Mindspikes becomes Germinated Mindspikes, causing these Mindspikes to now deal Attack x 3 damage instead of Attack x 1.5, and they gain 3 seconds of duration on the battlefield.

Planet's Power - Call 8 vines out of the ground that deal Attack x 1.5 damage. Can have its damage boosted, its cooldown reduced and can have it so that all Germinated Mindspikes become Death Forest Trees, causing these Germinated Mindspikes to now deal Attack x 5 damage instead of Attack x 3, and they gain 3 seconds of duration.

Magic Blast - Deal Attack x 2 damage to a large area around Pound while causing all Mindspikes, Germinate Mindspikes and Death Forest trees to explode over a massive area (for Attack x 3, Attack x 5 and Attack x 8 damage respectively, without the Dark Arts buff applied). Can have its cooldown reduced.

Weapons

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

Militia Blades - Increases Pound's dodge range by up to 3x at max weapon level. Can be handy for many scenarios, including closing in quickly to perform a wide-area Stone Gauntlet knockdown, or if working alongside a Jimmy with Beyond Eternity, to quickly reach a new location to spread out a second row of Death Forest trees in a wider range more quickly.

Dryad Blades - Boosts the damage of Earth Siphon abilities by 10% per level. In this case, this applies to Mindspike, Germinate, Planet's Power, Magic Blast and all stages of the Death Forest (including their explosions), making it invaluable for Pound's Death Forest build.

Zweihanders - Boosts the power of Viper King by up to 3x damage at max weapon level. Very useful for high damage Vampire/Viper King builds, since alongside his Viper Kind Damage and Long Live The King/Vampire Ancient passives (which protect Viper King from Vampire's cooldown debuff and power up Viper King after using Vampire respectively), this basically means a 12x damage boost to Viper King.

Permafrosts - Makes Pound Water elemental as well as Earth elemental, and basic melee attacks add to the Water Siphon Field Effect. Not so much useful for Pound, but for assisting Knight and/or Claire with their Water Siphon builds (while protecting Pound from the Water Siphon Field Effect's knockdown), though a Knockdown-focused Pound can make team up with Claire to force very large amounts of Knockdown to large areas of the battlefield.

Lifeless Blades - Boosts the power of Dark Arts. Useful if Pound is being set up more as Dark Arts/Vampire Attack stat buffer.

Swords of Infinity - Boosts the duration of Aura projectiles. Very useful for Death Forest builds, as during the Earth Siphon Field Effect, this can allow more trees to be built with a single Aura.

Blue Blades - Gives Pound the Calling of Earth ability, which boosts the damage of fully grown Death Forest trees (both standard damage and tree explosions from Magic Blast) by up to 3x damage at max weapon level. Though this is very similar to the Dryad Blades' Death Forest power boosts, the Blue Blades provide no damage boost for the early weaker stages of Death Forest, but much stronger boosts than the Dryad Blades for the stronger, later stages of Death Forest. The choice between the two is more up to player preference if they want a consistently strong Death Forest growth throughout, or a more powerful one at the end only.

Pros

Pound is the most advanced character to play as in The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt, and his abilities, despite some of them having some rather esoteric uses and setups, are very potent, with a majority of them being able to cover wide areas, especially his high-powered, massive-area Death Forest build. Aside from this, he also has access to powerful offensive buffs that can be applied to any party member, a wide array of abilities that can inflict Knockdown and, like Jimmy, can place Barriers on the battlefield that can nullify just about any attack, melee, projectile, wide-area effect or beam. Pound also benefits very highly from having Jimmy with Beyond Eternity as a teammate, as this means he can not only fully ignore the ill effects of Vampire's cooldown debuffs, but also use many more of his potent wide-area abilities sooner, especially when it comes to setting up another Death Forest.

Pound's Body abilities are fairly good damage-wise, but they are primarily best for wide-area and long-range Knockdown, especially since Viper Flight has a below average cooldown. Pushback with Pushback Energize is also great for decreasing cooldown times further, especially since Pushback itself has a low cooldown.

Pound's Mind abilities start moving into the esoteric range of battlefield applications. Aura is needed to start off effective Death Forest builds. Explosion (despite it killing Pound) does fantastic damage and can end smaller fights very quickly or deal large damage in boss fights if Cherry and Alberto revive him repeatedly (as Explosion has no cooldown). Barrier is a solid defensive tool with just about any build. Vampire provides massive Attack and Defense boosts to any party member at the cost of Pound's cooldowns for ALL of his abilities (though Viper King can be excluded). However, Jimmy's Beyond Eternity can remove Pound's cooldown problems (at the cost of his own), and Pound casting Dark Arts and Vampire in himself to boost his attack, followed by a Vampire Ancient powered Viper King (Vampire Ancient is a passive that powers up Viper King after Pound uses Vampire), making his Vampire/Viper King build high damage and low effort (though on the restrictive side for versatility).

Pound's Earth Siphon build, better described as his Death Forest build, requires Pound to fully invest in customizing his entire Earth Siphon ability sets, similar to Tara. However, unlike Tara, Pound only requires the Earth Siphon Field Effect for the very start, when he needs his Aura projectile to reduce Mindspike cooldown. The Mindspike cooldown is a very important aspect for setting up a Death Forest, as it allows Pound to repeatedly place a row of Mindspikes. With the right passives, Pound can use Germinate to turn all Mindspikes in play into Germinated Mindspikes and Planet's Power to turn all Germinated Mindspikes into Death Forest trees. Dark Arts, with the right passive (Nature Amplify), can power up all Mindspikes, Germinated Mindspikes and Death Forest trees. Magic Blast can be used to explode all of the Death Forest, regardless of each flora's stage, dealing massive damage.

Basically, ignoring any damage from Magic Blast itself, a single Death Forest tree, if it hits an enemy in every stage and each tree, is powered by Dark Arts, makes use of Pound's Mindspike Damage + 100% early and explodes, can do up to a whopping Attack x 73 damage PER TREE ignoring all other methods to boost damage, which is why the Death Forest build is an important set to look at. Pound's Knockdown abilities, particularly Viper Flight and Stone Gauntlet, can be useful for adding more damage (as knocked down enemies suffer 50% more damage) and Pound casting Dark Arts on himself will power up his damage output further. Even riskier setups are for Pound to Vampire himself and Jimmy use Beyond Eternity so he can trigger the Death Forest while making use of the massive Attack buffs.

Cons

As said before, Pound is the most advanced character to play as, making it so it can be difficult to use him effectively. Despite his high Attack stat, his basic attack damage is quite low, due to having the slowest basic melee attack time, requiring Pound to rely more on his abilities than standard attacks. For his Body abilities, he is great at inflicting Knockdown, but Claire can do it better overall and take better advantage of knocked down opponents, so using Pound exclusively for Knockdown is less optimal. Pound's Explosion and Vampire is very powerful and useful abilities, but without the proper team support and timing, these abilities can go to waste, or worse, hinder Pound and his party. He could be used as an Attack buffer and Barrier builder, but Jimmy can also build Barriers (and faster, though smaller and lasting shorter periods of time) while providing other methods of team support, so using Pound as solely a support can also be lacking if he is not set up properly.

Pound's Death Forest build is pretty well the most powerful build in The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt for damage and area bar none. However, the problem is that it not only requires very specific customization, but requires Pound to take great risk and have great timing when setting up and using his abilities, as he has to build up his Death Forest slowly with little leeway as to ability order. If the player messes up the order or timing, or if Pound dies, is afflicted with Stun or Knockdown, the enemy moves out of range due to the lengthy setup time or the Death Forest is not set up in an optimal location, it can be a wasted series of attacks, especially since Pound will need at least 30 seconds to begin setting up a new forest as the player waits for all of his Earth Siphon abilities and Aura to cooldown to begin anew.

Trivia

-Pound's playstyle in the original The Demon Rush was that of a typical mage - low HP, Attack, Defense and Speed, but very high Magic and MP. His basic attacks were strong regardless, as his Broadswords weapon type had very high Attack for their weapon type. However, most of how his abilities functioned in the original The Demon Rush had to be altered to fit Legends Corrupt, as they had more subtle and esoteric uses there, as well. Vampire used to drain all of a character's MP, making it useful for some (like Pound himself) to use his Extreme more frequently. Barrier used to just nullify magic damage to Pound; in Legends Corrupt it nullifies all attacks to an area. Aura did melee magic damage and different effects based on Pound's equipped accessory; now it functions more like Dragooned, as a slow moving projectile that allows for more Mindspikes. Dark Arts became an Attack buff due to the Zombie status effect not moving to Legends Corrupt (too situational to use effectively).

-Outside of the Gachduine reference weapon, Pound's new weapons are the Zweihanders and the Permafrosts. The Zweihanders (at least the singular version) was in Gachduine, as well, as a rare Cult Blade, and his Militia Blades were one of the Sword type weapons from the removal of Sword/Knuckles/Gun type weapons to Legends Corrupt.

-Pound's Lifeless Blades were not intended to be what the Lifeless monster in the Skylight Freerange games was named after. It had been forgotten that the Lifeless Blades were one of Pound's weapons during development of Skylight Freerange where the Lifeless first appeared. However, since they have been found again from the original The Demon Rush to be used in Legends Corrupt, the Lifeless Blades' colouring was done up to match the Lifeless monster. The original The Demon Rush also had the Lifeless Blades inflict Zombie status with melee attacks, similar to how the original's Dark Arts inflicted Zombie status. Just as well, the new Lifeless Blades in Legends Corrupt power up Pound's Dark Arts ability.

-Ignoring Pushback and Knockdown (which every character gets), Pound's new abilities not originating from the original The Demon Rush are Viper Flight, Claymore Crash, Stone Gauntlet and Germinate (mainly due to his complete lack of physical attack skills, and Body abilities consist almost entirely of physical attack skills).

-Pound's synergy between his Aura and Mindspike abilities did not come from the original The Demon Rush, but was something carried over from his Dragooned playstyle.