Vainglory Forums

I've noticed a lot of teams struggling when one player picks ardan. Ardan has a very small damage output, so when fights break out, the team with ardan is always limited. Just lost a match that I could've easily won if my fellow jungler had gone for a character that could deal more damage instead of ardan.

I also know that a lot of upper tier teams have an ardan on them (ringo, ardan, koshka combos seem to be killing it), so I'm a little confused on the situation. Have I just been having bad luck with the ardans I run into, is it a case of nobody knows how to use him at the SA tier, or does he really limit a lot of teams? My guess is that he works well with certain combos (ringo and koshka) but not well with others.

And yes... I know ardan is a tank, and I know his purpose as a support player. The question is whether or not he's worth it compared to other characters, not whether or not I know what his role is.

I've had very positive experiences with Ardans so long the team knows what they are doing. I find that this means:

1. If it's a 2 jungler scenario, the Ardan has an Ironguard Contract on him, the other jungler observes that fact, and the two of them stick together to clear mobs and defend against invasions together.
2. The Ardan realizes that their job is to ensure the ultimate survival of the team. This means foregoing most kinds of damage output for things that buff everyone - Fountain of Renewal, say, two Crucibles, Aegis. Literally be impossible to kill and face check all the bushes. In particularly intense ganks, everyone either comes out almost dead or dead, but if you have a super-tanky Ardan on your team, they can chase after the "almost dead" and clean them out.
3. Correct skill usage. I suppose this is a given, but by this I mean specifically that the Ardan knows to cast Vanguard on a low HP teammate who is leaving the fight, or a Koshka (and so on) who is chasing after a fleeing enemy with pursuit skills on cooldown. In addition, this also means casting Gauntlet both to keep people in, and to keep people out. I've had ******ed Ardans who lock themselves inside a Gauntlet with three other people while we were all in base. Cue one Ardan spread eagle on the Halcyon Fold.

That said, Ardan basically sucks for actually advancing towards any kind of objective. He could technically spend the whole day on a turret and come out of it just fine, but the amount of time that takes is simply too long to be effective. If I ambush an Ardan with a full CP team, I don't care how much HP you have - you're going down. Your observation that the upper tier teams tend to have an Ardan on them is probably due to the fact that the upper tier teams never ever instalock, so if they see an Ardan they know to compensate for his weaknesses with high DPS characters.

So yeah, my take is that having an Ardan on your team is super worth it, subject to the caveat that everyone is aware of what he can/cannot do. Granted he's not an easy character to play :/