Inferno Khawazu Review – Burn to Ash!

Inferno Khawazu was recently released a few weeks ago as of this writing, and I’ve had a chance to pull him and extensively test him since then. Let me tell you – I love using him. He’s insanely fun to use, and I’ve actually climbed up a few ranks in PVP I’ve never gotten to before pulling him. Now that I’ve had time to scope out his strengths and weaknesses, I figured I’d write something about him, so others know where to use him.

Now, this article is going to be mostly positive, but that doesn’t mean that Khawazu doesn’t have his flaws. Believe me, he doesn’t. However, despite that, I still think he’s a very strong pick for anyone that wants to use him in certain teams. I’ll be referring to him as Khawazu through this article, because right now he’s the only Khawazu worth using. Fire one is garbage, don’t even bother.

With that said, let’s get started!

Introduction

“Due to his inner darkness, Inferno Khawazu lost both his position as great chief and the power of fire to Malicus, but after freeing Inferno Malicus, he took hold of even greater power. He has since seized half of Meldrec and now, claiming he’s the rightful great chief, fights his sister Great Chief Khawana for supremacy.”

Class: Warrior

Element: Fire

In a nutshell, Khawazu’s skillset is:

• S1: Attacks the enemy, with a 75% chance (when skilled up) to Burn the enemy for 1 turn. If he has Vigor on him, he gains an extra 25% burn chance and also puts another Burn on them. (Soul Burn for 20 Souls: Gains an extra turn.)
• Passive: When attacked with an AoE attack (specifically one that targets all allies), he dispels all debuffs on himself, heals himself based off of his Attack, increases his Combat Readiness by 20%, and then gives himself 2-turn Vigor. (2-turn cooldown)
• S3: Attacks an enemy, dispelling all buffs from them, before putting two 2-turn Burns on them, and then detonates all Burn effects on them. If he has Vigor, then he completely ignores Effect Resistance for all of this. (3-turn cooldown when skilled up)

Analysis

Inferno Khawazu

Let me just get this right out in the open – I love using my Khawazu. He pairs up extremely well with Researcher Carrot, who has AoE burns on her s3 and also detonates Burn effects (though on her S1). As such, he works especially well, because right we’re in a meta with a lot of Carrot in it.

His s3 is on a really low cooldown once fully skilled up, and if you play your cards right with his passive, you can pretty much have constant Vigor uptime. I’ve also figured out that you can completely pop Tempest Surin from under her feet, too; especially if she’s paired up with Fallen Cecilia. Khawazu basically punishes anyone who tries to hit an AoE attack on his team – and believe me, there’s a lot of units who do that.

Now, I will admit – he’s not the catch-all end-all meta-dominating unit that singlehandedly overthrows everything we know. He doesn’t do so well against only single-target units, and sometimes you really need to be careful to make sure that you don’t kill the only AoE unit in the team and get stuck in a stalemate against the 200% Effect Resistance Angelic Montmorancy.

I speak from experience.

In short, Inferno Khawazu does great against a certain type of team; that being AoE-heavy teams. However, he tends to suffer when he’s only against single-target teams, not to mention that Champion Zerato and Politis counter him really hard.

Where to Use Inferno Khawazu?

It should be pretty obvious that Khawazu’s a PVP unit. I haven’t really tried using him in PvE, since there aren’t really any Hunts that come to mind where he’d shine in. In PvE (specifically Abyss), Poison is an infinitely more useful Damage over Time debuff to have, and in the Hunts there are already tons of tried-and-true teams that don’t rely on Burns. On top of that, in Wyvern Hunts (the most-farmed hunt), Khawazu is at two disadvantages by being a Dark unit and the Wyvern only having one AoE attack that only activates after a certain amount of turns the boss takes.

Now, that doesn’t mean he’s bad – quite the opposite. When I say he shines in PVP, I mean he shines. Seriously, pair him up with Researcher Carrot and he tends to go kind of bonkers. One of my favorite combos is to land Researcher Carrot’s s3 and then immediately follow it up with Khawazu’s S3. Even if he doesn’t land his burns, he’ll at the very least have two of Carrot’s burns to detonate. (And then again, why wouldn’t he land his burns? You’ll usually want to pop his S3 after he gets Vigor up and running.)

I don’t play a lot of RTA, but he’s actually a really hard unit to build around in RTA, since he only works against a specific type of team – he has to be built around a certain team on your side, and face off against a specific team in the enemy’s side. Plus, the opponent can just ban your Khawazu and be done with it right then and there, rendering your building useless.

With the rise of Khawazu destroying everyone’s Tempest Surin, some people have started to build her on Moonlight Dreamblade, so you’ll have to watch out for that as well.

In short: Khawazu shines his best in Arena and Guild Wars as a late-game PvP unit.

Builds

There’s two ways to build Khawazu that I know of. I’ll go a little in-depth on them in here.

Speed/Immunity: This is generally considered to be the most “accepted” build for Khawazu. I’ve seen people using Attack instead of Speed for him as the 4-set piece, but I wouldn’t really recommend it once you get to significant late-game. Khawazu’s base speed is pretty low, so you need all the speed boosts you can get. ATK%/ATK%/SPD

Counter/Immunity: Counter-Immunity is more of a meme build on him, and it’s harder to get to the optimal stats you want for him, since Counter doesn’t bring any stat boosts to the table. However, it is worth it for that sweet 20% counterattack rate to suddenly start popping off. ATK%/ATK%/SPD

If you’ve noticed that the Necklace main stat is ATK% and not Crit DMG%, you’d be right. Khawazu is actually pretty easy to build, since all you have to do is load up his ATK, HP, DEF, and Speed. (The reason is that Burn debuffs deal damage proportionate to the caster’s Max ATK.) He doesn’t need that much Effectiveness, since most of the time you’ll be triggering his S3 whenever he has Vigor up. The ideal Khawazu stats look to be about:

• 18,000 HP
• 1,500 Defense
• 3,700-4,000 ATK
• ~200 Speed

Artifacts

There are three artifacts that are the best for Khawazu. There are a couple more I’ve seen floating around as a niche recommendation, but apart from that these 3 are generally the most-used on him.

Border Coin: Border Coin is the best artifact to use on Khawazu, hands-down. His passive counts as a “non-attack skill.” This means that when he activates his passive, he also gains a boost to Attack and Speed. He needs all the Attack he can get, and since his base Speed is kind of slow, this can help ease the requirements on him a little. Honestly, it’s like he was made for Border Coin or something.

Uberius Tooth: Uberius Tooth isn’t nearly as good of an artifact for him as Border Coin is, but I’ve been screwed over once or twice when the enemy Khawazu has an Uberius on and finished up the job if someone in my team is hanging on. It’s an artifact that, when maxed out, has a 100% chance to deal additional damage when attacking with a single-target attack. This damage ignores 70% of the enemy’s defense, and is based off of the caster’s Attack. Considering how both of Khawazu’s skills are single-target, and he’s loaded up with Attack…

…You get the point.

Junkyard Dog: [LIMITED ARTIFACT] Okay, I say it’s “one of the best,” but really Junkyard Dog is more of a niche artifact for him. Junkyard Dog isn’t exactly the best artifact in general, due to its low proc chances (only 50% when maxed out), and only activates on someone’s S1. Now, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have units that uses it – Gunther being one of them – but Junkyard Dog is okay on Khawazu. You can technically use it on him, but I’d really just recommend using Uberius or Border Coin.

I’ve heard from some places that War Horn and Oath Key are good on him too, but I haven’t found that much information on either of them on a Khawazu build to say for sure. However, Oath Key does reasonably sound like a good artifact, to bypass Moonlight Dreamblade users.

Should You Build Him?

Yes! You should definitely build him! Inferno Khawazu is an insanely fun unit to use. He’s not the perfect unit; he has his weaknesses, and has to be drafted against specific teams, but when he’s set up properly you can delete a bunch of problematic, high HP units. Khawazu isn’t going to destroy any metas or create the rise of the Khawazu meta, but he does pair nicely with the insanely-OP unit that is Researcher Carrot.

So, if you want a fun single-target nuker to play with in PVP-related content, Khawazu is your guy! I don’t remember the last time I’ve had so much fun with a new unit, to be honest. I hope this article helped you decide whether or not to pull for Inferno Khawazu or build one you have in storage. I’m Sara Ann, and I’ll see you in the next article!