Androxus, the Death-Bringer [OUTDATED]

Overview

An in-depth guide revolving around one of Paladin’s flanker champion, Androxus.

Introduction

Hi there! I’ve been playing Paladins casually and competitively for 100 hours, and I’ve taken an interest in maining Androxus, having a total mastery on him for almost 10 million exp. The builds and tips that I will mention on this guide will reflect my own play-style; as every player have their own, these are NOT the only approach you can take as Androxus, nor the only style you can play him with. The best way to get the most out of him would be through your own trial & error.

Whether you’re just starting out or perhaps you’ve got quite the hang of him, read on to find some extra tips & tricks.

P.S. Guide is OUTDATED for now. Update isn’t likely to happen unless I pick up the game again.

As of Patch 1.4, this guide is UPDATED!

Skills

Androxus is one of the 10 flankers in Paladins. He uses a six-bullet revolver on his right hand and has a total amount of HP at 2000 points. Androxus has a lot of cool kits built into him, thus making him a great carry, and could potentially snowball the enemy team if not taken care of. Here are the skill sets of Androxus :

[LMB] Revolver is Androxus’ weapon. It has 6 ammo that deals 520 damage every .36 seconds. It is a hit-scan weapon, meaning it will hit whatever your crosshair is aiming at, without any delay. It’s damage is counted as Direct, which can be countered with Haven. One important thing to note is that it suffers from damage fall-off, which reduces the damage you deal the further you are from your target.

Confused? Let’s take a look shall we?

Here’s the damage at the 50-unit mark (I’m not sure if it’s called units or meters in-game. Please correct me if I’m wrong).

This one’s at the 100-unit mark. As you can see the damage from his Revolver is already halved.

Finally it reaches the lowest damage of 208 at the 150-unit mark. The damage will not decrease any further starting from this distance.

Landing a headshot will yield a maximum damage of 780 points, 1040 with Heads Will Roll Talent.

Revolver nets you 3% ultimate charge per shot, and 5% on headshots.

[RMB] Defiance is Androxus’ 2nd Skill. It burst fires 3 shots, dealing 300 damage each. However, successfully landing all 3 shots will give the last shot a 500 extra damage, dealing a total of 1400 points. This ability has a twist and that is reduced accuracy, with the first shot at 100% accuracy while the other 2 at 75%. Take note that while this ability doesn’t have any cooldown, it takes 3 ammos from your Revolver.

[RMB] Defiance is now a 700-damage punch with a 0.6s delay in-between punches and can now hit multiple heroes.

Here’s an illustration of the newly upgraded range of Defiance.

[Q] [16s CD] Reversal is Androxus’ 3rd Skill. Androxus will absorb all incoming projectiles from the front for 1.4 seconds, then reflect 75% of the damage back to where your cursor is pointing at. This ability is quite useful in duels, and you can also reflect some ults like Ruckus’, Kinessa’s, enemy Androxus’, or to simply avoid being hit by Bomb King’s Grumpy Bomb.

[F] [10s CD] Nether Step is Androxus’ 4th Skill. It allows you to dash into any direction that you want 3 times, with a certain time-window inbetween dashes, meaning you don’t have to dash 3 times directly. Nether Step is useful to chase enemies, as well as positioning yourself higher before you ult. You can hold space while you’re mid-air, activating Drift, which reduces your fall speed. Drift can be used even if you’re not using Nether Step, as long as you’re mid-air.

[E] Accursed Arm is Androxus’ Ultimate, making an audio cue of “Death awaits you all!” to everyone in the game. Your Revolver becomes mutated, enabling you to fire 4 AoE shots that deal 1000 damage points. You will also fly mid-air for 4 seconds, which by using Nether Step beforehand can lead you into a high altitude, making it easy for you to see what targets to shoot at. Take note however, as doing this can make you vulnerable to enemy champions that can pick you off before you finish.

Talents

Godslayer/Heads Will Roll are the most commonly used Talents for Androxus players depending on each individual’s playstyles.

Some people who are good at utilising their Reversal go for Godslayer. The fixed 800 damage is quite devastating along with a few seconds for you to take a breather.

Meanwhile, I personally find Heads Will Roll to be a safer bet. The 2 additional ammo means 2 things:

• If you are good at landing your shots, this means you get to dish out 1040 (non-headshots) more damage without having to reload as often as you normally would have to.
• If you aren’t, at least you’re given 2 extra shots (pun not-intended) to land those hits onto your opponent. You’d wanna practice and improve your aim doe.

Loadouts

As I mentioned earlier, these are the loadouts that I found fitting my playstyle, which doesn’t mean you have to copy the whole loadout, nor the only good loadouts available for Androxus.

This is one of the popular builds that I’ve seen the top players using. It allows you to sustain both health and ammo in the match using Reversal and Nether Step. Another alternative would be to replace Equivalent Exchange with Power of the Abyss, provided you can land the Reversal‘s blast shot at the target, reducing your Nether Step‘s cooldown by a fixed amount of percentage. The levels of the cards above are free to be set as you see fit.

I rarely use this build, due to me personally needing a bit of reload speed. But buying Deft Hands all the time isn’t really a good thing, especially if I need to counter the enemy team using Cauterize or Wrecker. Which leads me to my 2nd build.

I came into this build after testing and tweaking a lot, and this one seems to fit me the most in almost every match that I play. It has reload speed, ammo regen, heal, and cooldown decreases from hitting enemies with Revolver or Defiance. If you prefer moving in-and-out of fights, you may try replacing Abyss Walker with Through the Warp. However, be aware of your HP bar as Nether Step won’t heal you when dashing to enemies or away from them.

As of Patch 1.4, here’s my favorite loadouts that I use:

Watchful and Through the Warp lets you use your abilities more frequently, as well as having your Nether Step go further. This is essential since you only need to get an elimination in order for Watchful to proc. Sometimes you get caught in a bad situation with your abilities still on CD, this is very handy for either offensive/defensive uses.

Hands down the loadout that I use the most. Elusive lets me chase people from a further distance, and also retreat to strategic positions from distances I couldn’t have covered without the synergy with Through the Warp.

In-Game Items

In-Game Items are what defines your characters in that specific match. Try to not buy the same items in every match, and pay attention to the enemy’s draft so that you can counter them using these items.

300-600-900 Credits
Makes your weapon shots deal more damage to deployables. I rarely buy this as I see Androxus’ shots can kill Barik’s turrets, Grohk’s totem, and Ying’s illusion in a breeze. But, if you consider them to be quite a nuisance, buy this!

300-600-900 Credits
Makes your weapon shots reduce the effect of healing on your target for 2 seconds. This is useful if the enemy has more than 1 support champions, or if you see the enemy team’s quite tough to beat because of them sustaining a lot. Upgrade as necessary.

300-600-900 Credits
Increases your weapon’s damage to shields. I only use this if the enemy has more than 1 front-liners. Upgrade as necessary.

400-800-1200 Credits
Increases your damage a little bit. I rarely use this too, but if i’m quite fed in a match I’ll pick these up. I find this handy when the opponents don’t know how to counter/kill me. Other than those conditions, you should never buy it.Item no longer available.

400-800-1200 Credits
Increases your reload speed. This item is definitely useful, but consider other items first before buying this.

200-400-600 Credits
Increases the range at which you see stealthed targets. I only pick this if I wanna focus on taking out the enemy’s Skye. Although most of the times Haven makes a better choice.

200-400-600 Credits
Reduces the duration of CC and slows. Having a hard time with Pip, Buck, Bomb King, and other CC champs? Buy this!

300-600-900 Credits
Reduces the damage you take from AoE damages. Buy this if you’re having a hard time against Pip, Evie, and Drogoz. Upgrade as necessary.

300-600-900 Credits
Reduces the damage you take from Direct damages. Buy this to counter anything else than the ones mentioned above. Upgrade as necessary.

300-600-900 Credits
Heals you when you get (a/an) kill or elimination. Useful if you prefer getting HP back after getting (a/an) kill/elimination.

200-400-600 Credits
Receive more healing. I’ve never bought this as well because as a flanker i rarely stay nearby my healers to get their heals.

200-400-600 Credits
Heals more outside of battle. Cool item that increases your heal outside of battle, and lets you come back into the fight faster!

300-600-900 Credits
Your shots gain lifesteal. This item enables you to sustain in duels. Pick this up if you seem to be losing out the duels.

300-600-900 Credits
You gain additional movement speed while on your mount. Never picked this before. If you’d like to come back into the battlefield after you respawn faster then maybe it could be useful? I see the other cards to be better than this though.

300-600-900 Credits
Boosts your ultimate’s charging rate. One warning if you decide to buy this: Do not hold back using your ult for too long, or wait for the perfect time to use your ult, as this reduces the efficiency of Morale Boost.

300-600-900 Credits
Boosts your movement speed. Sometimes I buy this rather than Chronos because I just need more movement speed in that match.

400-800-1200 Credits
Reduces your active skills’ cooldowns. I pick this most of the time and upgrade it to level 2 as well. The reason being is that it makes Reversal to have 13s CD and Nether Step into 8s CD which is cool.

Tips & Tricks

Here are a few tips & tricks that I have to make your journey as the Godslayer more enjoyable :
(NOT tl;dr friendly)

1st, is to improve your aim with Androxus. His carry potential benefits from your shots, as well as his cards and items. Perfecting your aim can make a deadly Androxus to fight in the Realms. Don’t forget to engage at a close range.

2nd, supporting to the point above, is to get as many experience using Androxus. Not only this can improve your aim, this will also improve your decision-making in using his skills and ult, as well as get you a good sense of flanking enemies as Androxus.

3rd, use Nether Step to the max. While Nether Step can be used to get a higher vantage point before using Accursed Arm and chase enemies or flee from them, it can also be used to counter AoE champions like Evie in duels. Being airborn decreases the chance that their shots will hit you. Therefore do NOT waste Nether Step.

4th, be aware when to flank, and when to retreat. Even if you are already at a high streak, don’t get too confident. Having a 20 streak doesn’t mean you should fight 3 people at once in the backlines of the enemy. Helping your teammates at the objective doesn’t hurt, and also gives you credit for staying at the point.

5th. Coordinate your ult with other champions. Accursed Arm‘s effectiveness can be boosted by combining it with others such as Pip’s Evil Mojo to make sure the enemies die in 2 hits, Evie’s Ice Storm to disable the enemies to escape, or perhaps Bomb King’s King Bomb for a little time-window that you can use to kill the enemies while they are stunned after taking damage from BK’s ult.

6th, is to learn the map layout and increase your map awareness. This includes, enemy camping/sniping spots, the objective point, and blind spots. Doing this will set you a clear direction of where to flank the enemies, return to where your team might be, and also ulting from unexpected vantage points.

PRO TIP: learn how to do flickshots while doing Nether Step. You might’ve seen a lot of the pros do this as it makes them very hard to catch while dealing out massive damage onto the enemy. It’s not an easy feat to achieve, but using the Skye and Pip bots in the training area, AI matches, and finally going against real people to train this could make you one deadly Androxus.

I’ll update the guide when new tips & tricks arise. Please share any knowledge you might have that hasn’t been listed here in the comments sections to help others.

Conclusion

All in all, Androxus is a very fun champion to play with. He is just capable of dishing out huge damage in a short period of time, while distracting the enemy’s formation and teamwork at the same time. His kits make him a deadly character, and he has a lot of different playstyles you can approach however you like. He’s still subject to changes and balances as Paladins will continue to evolve throughout patches. This guide will be updated following any updates that Androxus receives.

Finally, thanks for reading this guide. Share it if you found this guide useful. Any suggestions/critiques will be accepted. And remember, DEATH AWAITS YOU ALL!

Till next time!

Glossary

• LMB = Left-Mouse Button
• RMB = Right-Mouse Button
• HP = Hit Points
• CC = Crowd-Control effects (Slow,Cripple,Poison,etc)
• AoE = Area-of-Effect