Aquilla Overview
Aquilla is an incredibly useful support hero.
She has the ability to:
- Provide a free mastery point to allies
- "Bond" with an ally and provide it with useful buffs
- "Void tear" strong enemies drastically reducing their attack speeds and increasing their ability cooldowns.
- Call a mothership that defends the CP base and engages strong enemies
- Delay the progression of enemies with her "Blades of Aiur"
For a beginner Hellwalker team, Aquilla is possibly the best hero to have, as she is incredibly defensively designed. Combined with Tassadar's Protective Sensei, the team can proceed cautiously forward and tackle the game with more confidence.
The downside to Aquilla is that she slows down any game by being a hero that is the weakest pusher and damage dealer of all heroes. That is why intermediate to advanced players quickly ditch her when making private lobbies for fast efficient games.
Aquilla's Perks
Since Aquilla is an incredibly defensive minded hero and quite a good base clearer with Mothership, her perks should complement this strength of hers:
- Leadership
- Helldivers
- Air Support
- (Hellwalker) Compartment
Leadership, Helldivers and Air support are no brainers for Aquilla in Oldschool.
For Hellwalker, because she needs to pick Lightweight Equipment mastery anyways, we pick Compartment.
The 5th best perk for Aquilla would be Mercenary (to donate to allies).
Aquilla is a strong starter, and her utility dwindles as the game does by except when it comes to void tearing bosses. Therefore, she should start strong to further boost her strong start with Air Support and Helldivers.
Her only significant utility towards mid to late game is to void tear strong enemies such as bane lords, the elite brutalisks, the general and the Yagdras. However, those enemies are easily dealt with by a team of experienced players. Therefore, and once again, Aquilla is an excellent hero for inexperienced teams to proceed cautiously, but is dropped by the more experienced and confident players in their games.
Last but not least, you do not need Onslaught with Aquilla since it is best for heroes who actually need Onslaught to nuke.
Aquilla's Mastery Order
Once we have a solid understand of what perks to pick for Aquilla, masteries easily fall into place:
- Level 0 = Mothership + Free Lightweight
- Level 10 = Altruism/ Zamara's Guardian
- Level 20 = Zamara's Guardian/ Altruism
- Level 30 = Revenge of the Fallen
- Level 40 = Interwoven Reality/ Weapons Research
- 2K Streak = Weapons Research/ Interwoven Reality
- Level 50 = Purification
After level 40, the 2K kill streak for Aquilla is usually very close. Therefore, picking either Interwoven Reality or Weapon Research is fine. Weapons Research boosts the damage of the Blades of Aiur, which is always a good thing to have by mid-game.