"Predecessor" - The Sanctuary Sells Quiz

Answer: Horned Plate

The Horned Plate is a Tier 2 item which reduces the self-heal of any enemies which physically attack the buyer by 30%. It is the prelude to the Tainted Guard item, a Tier 3 item which increases the heal debuff to 45% and then further applies a Bleed effectively turning any healing into damage instead.

Horned Plate is incredibly effective for tanks, such as Steel or Rampage, playing against an enemy with a lot of healing. Loch Shawl is also a T2 devoting itself to anti-heal, but it only defends the user against Magical sources of healing, whereas Grux can only do Physical damage. As such, Loch Shawl will not help against him.

Answer: Sky Splitter

All four items mentioned can, in their own way, provide the buyer with significant healing and/or life steal. Fist of Razuul is a Tank class item, Rapture belongs to the Fighter category while Syonic Echo is listed as an Assassin item. Meanwhile, Sky Splitter is a very straightforward choice for Carry characters looking to add some life steal to their build.

It also offers some very useful anti-Tank properties as well.

Answer: 950

In return for 950 gold, the buyer receives a nifty bonus to their Physical Armor and Power. No other T2 item in the game provides both in one slot, so returning to base to purchase a Stone of Strength can be situationally worthwhile, if the player was planning to then use it to quickly build Luxforge Lantern or Aegis of Agawar.

Answer: 2050

Loch Shawl costs 850, then Brimstone is another 1200. After purchasing these two T2 items, the best play to make is to combine Loch Shawl with other components needed to finish the Tainted Bastion item, then immediately take Brimstone and upgrade it into the Fire Blossom item right after.

Tainted Bastion is a must-have early for tanky characters playing against Morigesh or Countess. This is because these two are Magical heroes who also heal off of their targets massively. Tainted Bastion provides armor to endure hits from them, and it significantly hinders the healing they get off of hitting the buyer with attacks. Then, Fire Blossom is among the best damage dealing items a tank can have, a perfect complement to a character like Steel who struggles to deal damage with his direct attacks.

Answer: No

For the most part, these heroes use Dynamo the exact same way. However, there is a major discrepancy in how they take advantage of Dynamo's passive known as 'Adaptive Aggression'. Adaptive Aggression gives the buyer a boost to either their Magical or Physical power, whichever is greater. Dekker is a Magical hero, while Adele is a Physical hero, so they will receive different stats from Adaptive Aggression entirely.

Answer: Flux Matrix

Flux Matrix creates an aura around the buyer, and any enemy who steps in the aura takes extra Magic damage and has reduced Tenacity. Grim.exe deals exclusively Magic damage, so if they have an allied Riktor purchase Flux Matrix, Grim.exe can do more damage by simply existing inside of Riktor's aura and waiting for him to Riplash and pull an enemy into the aura.

Citadel can help allies do more damage, but it does so by reducing the Physical armor of heroes in an aura, essentially the Physical counterpart to Flux Matrix. But, because Grim.exe cannot do Physical damage, Citadel is of no use in this situation.

Answer: Galaxy Greaves

Galaxy Greaves is a Support item offering the buyer armors and helpful Mana Regen. It also offers two passives, one giving the buyer added movement speed outside of combat, the other giving them an enhanced jump after taking one hundred total steps or more.

Answer: Noxia

Noxia offers brutal Anti-Tank properties to a buyer who strings together two damaging Abilities on the same target. If done, the follow up Ability landing second, which triggers Noxia, will deal an added burst of damage which is based on the target's max HP. Thus, when Noxia activates, it is completely impossible from stopping it from chunking the target pretty hard, if not outright killing them completely.

Noxia does boast Magical stats, so it is intended for Magical heroes. Basically any Midlaner can make use of this, and Countess can take it to the Offlane or Jungle for devastating effect too.

Answer: Overlord

Overlord is a Tank class item which gives the user 1 maximum HP for every 1 Creep Score they attain after buying it. This scales infinitely, so the more CS, the more Max HP.

Resolution is a Carry item giving the user added Max Mana for every CS they attain. It does, however, hard cap at four hundred. At the hard cap though, the buyer gains a burst of Physical Power.

Azure Core is basically the Mage version of Resolution, giving Mana for every CS earned. It even offers the same burst of Magical Power when reaching the four hundredth stack.

Luxforge Lantern is a Support item, giving the buyer two stacks with each kill or assist on an enemy player, or with each enemy Ward that the buyer destroys. Each singular stack gives 1 Physical Power. It hard caps at thirty stacks, so any combination of kills, assists and Wards destroyed that equals fifteen will cap out Luxforge Lantern.

Answer: Frostguard

Frostguard is a Tank item offering both Armors, some Max HP, but most pertinent to this question, a passive which continually reduces an enemy's Attack Speed the more they hit the buyer.

Eden's Basic Attack uniquely comes out as a continuously streaming laser, so she would very rapidly build up negative stacks of Frostguard against herself. Moreover though, Eden's entire damage output is predicated around her Attack Speed, as this is the stat she largely scales off of. Reducing Eden's Attack Speed does not actually make her attack more slowly, it instead makes her do much less damage. As such, Frostguard is the go-to if an enemy Eden is dealing problematic amounts of damage- and they usually will be.

Answer: Ruination

Ruination has a completely unique interaction with Eden that specifically makes it stand out as a premiere answer to her. Ruination normally drains the target's mana, and deals extra damage to them the less mana they have. Eden does not actually have a mana bar, and Ruination specifically states that it simply deals much more damage if its target does not have a mana bar. In fact, Ruination's mana drain and added damage on drain simply gets translated to the target's health bar in such a case.

Statistically, it only takes Eden being reduced to 94% of her health bar for Ruination to overtake every other item in the game for damage output against Eden, and the gap grows to a pretty comical extent the lower Eden's health gets. Logically, even if Ruination got nerfed statistically into oblivion, as long as it keeps its unique interaction with mana-less heroes, it will easily remain the dominant choice for killing Eden as fast as possible.

Answer: Kallari

Kallari's Crippling Daggers can see her throw two daggers at once, meaning she can gain two Alternator stacks immediately if they both land. Zarus, while having a strong and flexible Alternate, cannot make the same claim as he can only throw or thrust the Spear of Nyr once at a time.

Alternator is a pretty weak item, but its evolved form in Alternata certainly isn't. Alternata is obtained by hitting enemy players with an Alternate Ability twenty times over the course of a match. The idea is to evolve Alternator as soon as humanly possible to obtain that highly coveted power spike. For this reason, heroes like Kallari and Yurei who can land an Alternate more than one time at once are best positioned to utilize Alternator and Alternata.

Answer: Movement Speed

Two of the same type of Armor Shred passives will never, ever stack. If two people decide to equip Flux Matrix hoping to really drum up the close distanced Magic damage their allies deal, they would be disappointed to find only one person's Flux Matrix is actually doing something.

Ability Haste caps at 80, while Tenacity caps at 40%. Nothing the player can do will change these figures. Going to 81 Ability Haste, or even to 500 for that matter, would accomplish nothing at all. Same idea with Tenacity's hard cap at 40%.

Movement Speed, however, stacks infinitely and even passives which give Movement Speed do too. For example, a Support who builds Luxforge Lantern and Galaxy Greaves gains a 14% Movement Speed bonus out of combat, not just 7%.

Answer: Using an Ability on the target

Tainted Trident is an Assassin class item, which immediately explains why it sees little to no use. Assassins are extremely bursty characters who, by principal, do not want to pick an even fight with a foe who can see them coming. As such, they have little reason to care if their target can heal themselves a lot, as they would ideally take them by surprise and quickly kill them before it matters. Tainted Trident offering anti-heal is less useful than another Assassin item which simply offers the capability to kill the target as fast as possible.

On top of that, Tainted Blade is a Fighter item which encompasses all attacks, not just Abilities. It also has much better stats for Fighters than Tainted Trident, being an Assassin item, making it vastly preferred on more mundane, melee oriented heroes.

That said, if desiring a Tainted item, Trident has the most chance being chosen by a Wraith player in the Carry role, as he is Ability focused and appreciates the Physical stats Tainted Trident conveys. Wraith in Midlane, however, now needs Magic items, so Tainted Trident will no longer do.

Answer: No

The game restricts players to one Cursed item only, so the player in this case must choose between Cursed Scroll and Cursed Ring.