Hi folks

Looking at various comments and discussion on here and elsewhere, the general consensus seems to be that Drokkatta is pretty decent.

I'm a fairly experienced campaign player, I understand what heroes are good, who are not so and the reasons why. I can't however, see why Drokkatta is considered powerful. Beyond the ability to create difficult terrain, which is really situational, I don't really get what he's meant to do. He can do a bit of aoe, but other heroes do that better don't they?

Be interested to hear people's opinions, cheers folks!

Her AOE is much harder to avoid that Fenn's, and much easier to use. Between Shrapnel Rounds giving a free Blast 1 and the Repeater Cannon's ability to hit all hostile figures in a 5x5 grid around the target (including the target itself) everything in a room usually ends up taking damage from her attacks. Dispersal Shot combined with Charging Up means she'll usually be able to convert a damage for a surge. Then you can clean up any figures down to 1 HP with Demolish. And Thermal Explosives just makes everything she does significantly better.

Vinto might be a better AOE character just because you have a lot more options. But personally I like Drokkatta over Fenn. Fenn can drop a fresh group of Stormtroopers on one turn pretty easy, but Drok can drop two groups just as fast.

I'll emphasize one thing from the above: Converting damage to a surge by Dispersal Shot is really powerful when she has Repeater Cannon with Shrapnel Rounds. (Even better if someone gives her surge power tokens.) Because Drokkatta gets a damage power token herself, you can consider it a surge power token due to Dispersal Shot.

You can redirect Blast for pinpoint damage, spend 2 surges to make all hostile figures within 2 spaces of the target space suffer damage, which also works when the target doesn't suffer damage from the attack, and it is easy to trigger, because you can use Dispersal Shot to gain a surge even if the attack doesn't have any damage symbols.

If she's not utilized well, though, she suffers quite a bit.

In my Jabba's Realm campaign last year, Drokkatta was often the last hero to activate. By the time she went, my groups were often either killed or seperated pretty well. Add to that Vinto often cleared rooms of swarm groups really quickly.

So by the time Drokkatta went, there were just a lot of spread out units and bigger deployments.

Your heroes need to realize that she shines when you've got fragile Imperial troops grouped together, as would seem obvious. Even though she clearly has what appears to be heavy weapons, she's gonna do a lot worse against stuff like big vehicles or villains.

He is quite useful, and unchecked the thermal detonators he drops can chip damage your units over time. he has taken out several deployments of stormtroopers, in a turn. He has not been dealing well with spaced out death troopers though. I thought Drokatta is a Male. the image, and shape language dictate that he is male.

44 minutes ago, Spidey NZ said:

I  thought Drokatta is a Male. the image              , and shape language dictate that he is male.   

All of the official literature written on the subject seemed to avoid pronouns, but it has been confirmed that the designers refer to Drokkatta as “she.”

Quote

All of the official literature written on the subject seemed to avoid pronouns, but it has been confirmed that the designers refer to Drokkatta as “she.” 

IIRC, one of the first articles that FFG published for HotE referred to Drokkatta as a "she", but they later removed the pronouns from the post.

Ill talk to the artist, and see what she got for the gender on the Illustration brief for Drokatta from FFG

Another aspect of what makes Drokkatta strong is how flexible she can be with distributing damage. Her rubble token is a way to get the one damage you need to finish off a wounded figure without wasting an activation. The flexibility of her attacks (focusing/expanding blast damage, generating more surges) often allows her to do exactly what is necessary to finish off wounded figures, which works well with her class’s broad focus on splash damage that often leaves wounded figures.

Additionally, I think she’s incredibly self-sufficient. Her upgrades mean that she isn’t relying on purchasing optimal weapons from the item pool, or that she depends on good support to help her manage strain/unlock the most of her abilities.

I've found her to be good, but not better than Fenn. Her base sheet abilities are more flexible than Fenn's, and she can be better against smaller or more spread out groups, but Fenn has much stronger xp cards imo and his damage output scales higher than Drokkatta's against larger groups of figures and with abilities that give him extra attacks (like DDC Defender or Gideon). Fenn is able to achieve Blast 3 spending just a single surge with Havoc Shot, Rebel Elite and a Blast 1 weapon/attachment, whereas Drok has to spend 2 surges to achieve the same thing with Shrapnel Rounds. Dispersal Shot is nice for that, but losing the damage and not spending surges on damage abilities often times means not dealing damage to the target and therefore not getting any blast at all, and she loses the ability when she's wounded. TLDR, Drok can spread a lot of damage, but she can't reliably pull off Blast 6 with 2 attacks the way Fenn can (or Blast 9 with DDC Defender).

I've only played her in the app though. Hopefully one of our players chooses her when we start Lothal.

1 hour ago, sionnach19 said:

Another aspect of what makes Drokkatta strong is how flexible she can be with distributing damage. Her rubble token is a way to get the one damage you need to finish off a wounded figure without wasting an activation. The flexibility of her attacks (focusing/expanding blast damage, generating more surges) often allows her to do exactly what is necessary to finish off wounded figures, which works well with her class’s broad focus on splash damage that often leaves wounded figures.

That's a good point. Maybe that's exactly why she fared so poorly in my group when played with Vinto (who can do much of this without even having to spend strain).

They're not directly comparable of course, and Drokatta can do some pretty unique things too, but when it comes to dealing direct damage Vinto is situationally more efficient.

17 hours ago, Uninvited Guest said:

All of the official literature written on the subject seemed to avoid pronouns, but it has been confirmed that the designers refer to Drokkatta as “she.”

I had a chat to the artist, and she said the brief given to her from FFG was for a Male Wookie. but she did say one of the first sculpts and prototype image reference she was given, was of a wookie in what looked like a coconut bra. direct quote below

''So yes, he supposes to be a male wookie, but I like the idea we couldn't know which gender he is, because we don't really care after all ! I think it came from the sculpt (not by me) of the grenade bandolier which strongly looks to me like a coconut bra. LOL ''

I thought she was beyond OP until I actually sat down and looked at her ability cards and realized my player was doing it wrong. I can't remember the exact mistakes, but things can get pretty complicated for any hero later in the game so it is always a good idea to review their steps with them from time to time.

She is still a great hero IMO though, I hate playing against her.

1 hour ago, FrogTrigger said:

I thought she was beyond OP until I actually sat down and looked at her ability cards and realized my player was doing it wrong. I can't remember the exact mistakes, but things can get pretty complicated for any hero later in the game so it is always a good idea to review their steps with them from time to time.

She is still a great hero IMO though, I hate playing against her.

Without remembering the exact mistakes its pretty hard to discuss, but as a general rule I have found her to be an exceptional AoE damage dealer. Look at her performance in this play by forum campaign to see her (and Ko-Tun and Jarrod) doing her thing each and every mission. (Spoilers for Heart of the Empire...)

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1885240/capital-attractions-swia060-finished-20180810

20 hours ago, Spidey NZ said:

I had a chat to the artist, and she said the brief given to her from FFG was for a Male Wookie. but she did say one of the first sculpts and prototype image reference she was given, was of a wookie in what looked like a coconut bra. direct quote below

''So yes, he supposes to be a male wookie, but I like the idea we couldn't know which gender he is, because we don't really care after all ! I think it came from the sculpt (not by me) of the grenade bandolier which strongly looks to me like a coconut bra. LOL ''

And here I am thinking that it has something to do with the fact that it's because FFG subverted the idea that it's silly to speculate on a plastic wookiee's gender in the first place, when in reality it's because it looked like Drokkatta had boobs.

This is why we can't have nice things...

1 hour ago, subtrendy2 said:

And here I am thinking that it has something to do with the fact that it's because FFG subverted the idea that it's silly to speculate on a plastic wookiee's gender in the first place, when in reality it's because it looked like Drokkatta had boobs.

This is why we can't have nice things...

I’m glad someone said it. Good to know I wasn’t alone in all of that.

4 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:

And here I am thinking that it has something to do with the fact that it's because FFG subverted the idea that it's silly to speculate on a plastic wookiee's gender in the first place, when in reality it's because it looked like Drokkatta had boobs.

This is why we can't have nice things...

I was only curious from a design point of view, as im working on the Drokatta illustration for my APP at the moment. and there are design choices and shape language used to determine male and female.

i only realised my alliance ranger sculpts had breasts after i had painted beards on some of them.

7 minutes ago, Spidey NZ said:

i only realised my alliance ranger sculpts had breasts after i had painted beards on some of them.

Hey man... my company is redesigning everything to be gender neutral right now, my Republican Governor pretty much executive ordered that anyone can use what ever bathroom they feel applies to there gender, and the people of my state just passed a proposition question that kept that law in place.

It’s the modern world, dude! Those Rangers are free to be who the wanna be! ?

24 minutes ago, Spidey NZ said:

there are design choices and shape language used to determine male and female.

Why? It has no gameplay purpose, why there has to be any other purpose?

4 hours ago, a1bert said:

Why? It has no gameplay purpose, why there has to be any other purpose?

of course, it will not effect the gameplay. I meant for the design. of the model or character art. the shape language will communicate to the audience the type of character. I was trying to keep my art consistent with the art that has already been designed for imperial assault, which was a male wookie.

there is a reason Jafar is designed differently to Aladdin in the Disney film. the shape language used in the design communicates to the audience that he is the villian.

1 hour ago, Spidey NZ said:

I was trying to keep my art consistent with the art that has already been designed for imperial assault, which was a male wookie.

What does a male wookie look like? Or a female wookie?

FFG does not use gendered pronouns anywhere in the material for Drokkatta (I have looked). While the artist seems to have some (mis)conseption of the gender of the Wookiee, the artist isn't FFG, so isn't an authority. I have insider information about the pony-tailed Drokkatta intended to be gender-ambiguous.

There are old discussions about Drokkatta's gender, so I'll leave it at that.

Maybe Drokkatta doesn't get mad and rip your arms off if you gender-pigeonhole incorrectly, but I would not take a chance with whether Drokkatta cares or not.

Edit: And still I don't think gender has anything to do with the "type of character" each character is. The "type of character" is in their abilities, not in their gender (or sexual preference).

It would be nice if FFG had just gone ahead and used a "they" pronoun for Drokkatta in their campaign book or spoiler articles so that we could all just know that Drok is nonbinary gender and use the they pronoun, but since they didn't and Drokkotta is inherently silent on the matter, I feel like Drokkatta's gender is open to interpretation for each member of the audience that works best for them.

Basically just saying that Drokkotta's gender is a rorschach test, it can be whatever you want it to be, but just like a rorschach test, just because you see a butterfly doesn't mean you can tell me I'm wrong for seeing a deer, and vice versa. I like Drokkatta as a female because it checks a box for me, it fits well with the ponytail aesthetic, there's no evidence that proves one way or the other, and I just find the idea of a female wookiee warrior and female demolitions expert rolled into one character to be novel and refreshing when I've only ever seen males fill either role in other media.

On 11/9/2018 at 4:25 PM, Majushi said:

What does a male wookie look like? Or a female wookie?

the shape language would be different as female and male animals. lions, lioness for example. shape of shoulders, jaw line, neck, pelvis. and the art seems to be designed around a male aesthetic. artists take these things on board when designing characters.

and thats why i wanted to check with artist and the brief they got from FFG, as it looked male to me, based on what i know as an artist and what i look for. like i Said Curiosity, was all. Thanks for the discussion about this all, i Appreciate it.

open to interpretation, is a fine conclusion for the players using the character.

5 minutes ago, Spidey NZ said:

the shape language would be different as female and male animals.

open to interpretation, is a fine conclusion for the players using the character.

Well not always. Being as this is an entirely made up race (albeit with a hardcore set of fans who debate these sort of details to the n-th degree) it doesn’t have to conform to a humans perception of gender stereotypes.

i for one don’t mind having a “burly” female Wookiee.

The last part is where we agree the most. The interpretation should be left entirely to the players using her.