Are you planning to or already running Kusunoki in Rise of Kingdoms in one of your marches and want to see how you should invest the talent points, what equipment works best and what other commanders you should pair with? Well, then you’re in the right place, below you will find answer to each one of those questions and this will help you make your Kusunoki perfrom as strong as possible in all situations.
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Skill Order
Skill 1
Skill 2
Skill 3
Skill 4
ExpertiseLevel 5
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Best Troops
Although Kusunoki is a Archery Commander, only his 3rd skill is about buffing archery units. In reality, you need to use the archer talent tree heavily for open field or rally builds. Only for defense not but I really don’t recommend using Kusunoki as your primary commander for city defense…
Best Commander Pairing for Kusunoki
Yi-Seong Gye (YSG) is probably one of the best pairings with Kusunoki as you can a ton of area damage, espcially in Canyon this is a very nice early pairing (See full build here).
El Cid has a kit that works well with kusunoki with his additional stats and disarm abilities (See full build here).
Hermann has a great rage engine and damage reduction for open field and they have a very similar kit. It#s a cheap and acccessible pairing that you can use early in Rise of Kingdoms and get great results with (See full build here).
Boudica works similar well like Herman but they don’t share as many similarities and you’ll miss that rage engine a little bit (See full build here).
Sun Tzu can also work with his rage engine but you will lack march speed so this is more of a backup pairing to run with Kusunoki if you don’t have any of th above commanders available (See full build here).
Find out more about the most useful commander pairings here.
Best Equipment Forge Order
In terms of equipment, here’s what I recommend to use as the route for Kusunoki. There are different builds for wherever you are right now, from beginner to veteran:
Start
Advanced
Progressed
Final
Starter Build
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Advanced Build
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Progressed Build
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Maximum Possible Build
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Best Talent Tree Builds For Kusunoki
Below you will find the talent tree builds for Kusunoki that make sense when running as the primary commander in any march in Rise of Kingdoms. Please also refer to the description below each talent tree as I explain a general route on how you should spend your talents there + some additional background for each talent build that I very likely will appreciate.
We have here three builds that I want to show you. The first one is for using all archers in your army and can be also great in Sunset Canyon, the second is for using with a mixed army so we focus more on the Skill Tree and, finally, a build that you should use when defending your city with Kusunoki Masashige as your garrison commander.
As already stated in the introduction, this is the build you want to use when you have an army full archers as Kusunoki is all about archers in his skills as well – this talent tree setup here will get you the biggest damage output you can get. So, in the case you haven’t maxed out Kusunoki, yet… here’s the recommended order how you should spend your talent points for this build:
First of all you want to go to the Archery Tree and make your way to Venomous Sting. This will increase the skill damage heavily (also of your secondary commander) and you will also pick up several percentage points of extra march speed on your way.
After that, I would take Razor Sharp because it’s just useful to get extra rage that easily from there.
From here take the fastest route towards Whistling Arrows. Again, you only want to use this build with an army full of archers, otherwise use the talent setup below. Now it’s time to get Rejuvenate to really keep cycling your primary skill faster. This extra rage will not only be granted when Kusunoki uses his primary skill, it also happens when your secondary commander uses the skill so you will get basically 30% faster skills which is huge.
Last points would go into Heraldic Shield, Latent Power, Full Quiver and Tactical Mastery as it appears best to you. I would take Full Quiver first over Tactical Mastery as it will increase all of the damage you deal, not only the skill damage. Also, your 4th passive skill has a damage factor and will also benefit from that as well.
One word of caution here… you can use this build in the open field but be aware that you’re not really fast and you can be caught quickly so be very careful with that. If you use it for Sunset Canyon, well, there’s no march speed involved there.
If you use Kusunoki with a mixed army, many talents in the Archery Tree aren’t that useful anymore so I would rather take the Skill Tree there to make a fast rage build. It will deal less damage than the build above but works better than using the build above without a full-archer army. This is the best order to spend your points in this talent build:
First you will go into the Skill Tree and get Rejuvenate. The reason for getting this is you will lower the time needed to get your skill ready is lowered by 30% as also your secondary commander will give you the additional rage when using the skill. Also, I think getting the extra rage from Burning Blood and the additional skill damage for your secondary commander from All For One is the best thing to get as early as possible with this build.
Now make your way to Clarity to get Feral Nature unlocked. Feral Nature will also generate a lot of additional rage so you will probably use your skill (and your secondary commanders’ skill) twice as often now. In addition, there’s some extra march speed you will pick up on your way there. Skip Latent Power and Naked Rage for now as I think that getting Venemous Sting in the Archery Tree is the better option to get first for Kusunoki. Yes, you will waste some points for march speed that only affects archer units (and you use a mixed army), but Venemous Sting will have a big impact as you’re generating that much additional rage with Rejuvenate, Burning Blood and Feral Nature that this buff is twice as good.
Now you can get Razor Sharp, Latent Power and Naked Rage.
Let’s get to the build where Kusunoki will work best for in the early/mid-game in Rise of Kingdoms and that’s defending your city (I’m talking really early until you have better commanders available for that). You want to start this talent build by getting into the Garrison Tree and Impregnable first. It’s a huge defensive buff for spending that few points compared with what you get for the points in other places. That’s my first pick here. Then also get Nowhere To Turn to get some extra rage that will be useful.
Now it’s best to get into the Skill Tree and get Rejuvenate. I have mentioned it above, Rejuvenate will improve the time until you can use your skill a lot and is really helpful to have now, especially with a primary skill on Kusunoki that deals damage to multiple targets.
From here go the straightest way to Clarity to get Feral Nature. At this point you will generate a lot of extra rage and get your skill cycling a lot faster which will be great against an attacker. The last points should go into the Archery Tree (even though you will have mixed troops in your city) to get Razor Sharp for some more additional rage. Rapid Fire does make most sense for your last points as it will give all kinds of troops a buff and not only archers.
Best Formation + Armaments
Formation and Armaments are supposed to work perfectly with your commanders kit or you will find yourself very quickly in a disadvantage on the battlefield – and with so many variations it can be tough to stay on top. Here is what the works best in today’s meta:
Conclusion
I hope this guide for building Kusunoki helped you investing without wasting much time and resources. If you liked it or you further questions (or maybe also annnotations that you believe should be added here in this guide), please don’t hesitate to post them below in the commen section. Thanks for reading and have a great day and see you out in the kingdoms.
Yupp
Yeah, love him for Sunset if nothing elsw