Swole Troll is the latest addition to Warcraft Rumble’s mini roster. It resembles Gargoyle as a beefy tank that goes straight for Towers and Bosses. Swole Troll does not fly, but it compensates for that by having other advantages over Gargoyle.
Swole Troll offers the second-best cost/Health ratio in the game, narrowly behind Harvest Golem, and a unique new Trait in Unstoppable, which means that it cannot be slowed, rooted, frozen, stunned, or polymorphed.
- Cost: 4 gold
- Health: 2900
- Traits: One-Target, Tank, Siege Damage, Siege Specialist, Unstoppable
- Damage: 250 (Siege)
- Attack speed: 2 seconds
- Movement speed: 1.5 (slow)
Swole Troll is a Siege Specialist, so it only attacks buildings and bosses. However, its melee swing also has a 4-radius knockback with a brief stun that throws defenders away from the Tower. The knockback radius is not long enough to affect any ranged unit at max range, but it often hits defenders who were in position when the Troll moved to the Tower. Even a brief stun forces minis to acquire a new target, which can be useful to direct them to attack what you want.
All of Swole Troll’s knockback effects can also allow your team to claim open chests: minis that are in-flight because of a knockback do not count as contesting the chest!
The Unstoppable Trait and Siege Specialist
Unstoppable makes Swoll Troll difficult to stop, but there are counters to it as well. Banshee can still steal a Swole Troll, and Orgrim Doomhammer can challenge it to Mak’gora: as a Siege Specialist, Swole Troll will not even fight back in Mak’gora, providing Doomhammer with an easy victory.
Swole Troll can overcome many Heroic boss effects:
- Charlga cannot root it
- Elder Torntusk’s Green Dragon cannot sleep it
- Kashoch’s ice storms cannot freeze it
- General Colbatann’s global frost cannot slow it
- Jin’do the Hexxer cannot turn Swole Troll into a chicken
Swole Troll also has difficulties against some of the flying bosses. Swole Troll cannot attack Falstad, Brumeran, and bird-form Omnuron. Usually, Swole Troll can attack Gish, but it loses its ability to hit Gish if Troll has the Meatier Elbow talent equipped.
Swole Troll Talents
Troll Train
Dashes to an enemy mini to stun them along his path.
The description of Troll Train does not give you a full picture of what the talent does. It is a charge effect that deals no damage, but it does a knockback and a 3-second stun on the target and the surrounding minis.
Targets are acquired from a 45-degree cone in front of the Swole Troll, so it will never turn back: Troll Train always goes forward. With a 5.6-second cooldown, Swole Troll can even charge twice while making its way through a pack of minis.
Trollnado
Uses a spinning attack to knock nearby enemy minis far away every 7 seconds.
Trollnado was severely bugged upon release, but Blizzard fixed two major bugs on the first week (Swole Troll would fail to start moving after the Trollnado, and it would perform Trollnado too far from the targets - both of these issues are now fixed).
Trollnado has a cooldown of 7 seconds and it performs its knockback and stun effect on a radius of 4. Contrary to what the description may lead you to believe, the knockback range is not particularly long, and offers no major improvement compared to the other Swole Troll knockback effects.
Meatier Elbow
Now targets enemy minis with a large damaging AOE.
Meatier Elbow sounds like a wonderful talent, but it comes with several undocumented features. It does what it says in that Swole Troll with Meatier Elbow will no longer ignore enemy minis and will attack them as usual. It will also deal area-of-effect damage and a brief stun effect with a 180-degree cleave.
If this sounds too good to be true, it is. Meatier Elbow reduces Swole Troll’s damage to 210 (still Siege damage), slows down its attack speed to 3.2 seconds, and reduces the radius of its area effect to 3.5 while also limiting it to the cleave area instead of hitting targets in all directions.
Meatier Elbow is still unique in how it turns the Swole Troll into a very beefy regular tank. The stun effect will also force the enemy minis to retarget, often targeting the Swole Troll instead of your backline.
The Best Swole Troll Talents
- Troll Train. Troll Train gets Swole Troll to its target faster and has a reasonably low cooldown for more knockback effects. This makes it the best Swole Troll talent.
- Meatier Elbow. If you ever want to use Swole Troll as a regular tank, you need Meatier Elbow. Its undocumented features make it weaker than it seems at first sight, but the Troll still packs a punch with it.
- Trollnado. Even with the major bugs fixed, Trollnado’s long cooldown makes it the weakest option.
If you want to see the various Swole Troll talents in action, you can find clips of them here:
