Crush Them All Game, All You Need to Know PVP Hero Encyclopedia

Water Energy Ball shoots a ball of energy pushing back opponents and dealing x0.25 damage to each enemy hit. It has a width, so it can miss ground units based on the spawn height of Akwa relative to other heroes.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

water 10% Attack Speed – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Valkyrie, Atlantus, Frost Queen, Namida, Pirato, Snowman

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets:Don’t spend many materials until late game

Late Freeze Build Runes Sets: Vitality, Chilling (ideally 11+% freeze chance), and either Swift or Damage. Rune Primaries, Atk Speed. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range – Base of 200, whatever is required to stay behind your front line tanks

Late DPS Build Runes Sets: Vitality, Damage, and one of the following: Swift, Rage, Precise. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range – Base of 200, whatever is required to stay behind your front line tanks

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 200+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries, Primaries), 17.5+% Crit Rate or 12.5+% Freeze Rate (Precise or Chilling), 200+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 50+% Atk Speed (Primaries), 50+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Water Hero Chest

Base Stats: 48 ATK, 48 DPS, 1.0 APS, 360 HP, 20 Def, 200 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Akwa is kind of a niche hero. Her buff is water attack speed, so she’s usually paired up with either Atlantus or a freeze group with heroes such as Frost Queen, Namida, Snowman, and pirato. She has decent enough HP and Def to survive in the front line, as long as she is not the very front. She also does decent damage. Her sp2 has pushback, which can slow down the dps of backline heroes. This sp2 has a width, so it may not hit all ground heroes, it depends on Akwa’s height, and the height of opponent ground heroes. As a brawler, her damage increases with her combo, this includes her sp2. Combine all of this and she is placed in the A Tier for PVP. I generally wouldn’t place her in a team as the sole water hero though.

For runes, there’s two options for Akwa, depending on who is with her on her team. If she’s going pure DPS, she wants Vitality for survival, then two damage rune sets: Swift, Damage, Rage, Precise. If she’s going for a more crowd control path, she will want Vitality, Chilling, and swift. Frost Queen will amplify the freezing capability of this, which is talked about in the Frost Queen section. Either way, Akwa will want some attack range to ensure she is behind the front line tank, as she cannot be the most front tank.

Alda

PVP Tier

S Tier – Great Mid to late game buff buff. Good DPS, great against leaf

Primary Use

PVP: End game dps and buffer. Guild Slay Event: Crit Buffer.

2 Star Skill

Multi Fire Arrows shoots five arrows

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 300% Crit Damage per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

All DPS teams

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets:Don’t spend many materials until late game

Late Burning Runes Sets: Three of: Burning, Ignite, Damage, Swift. Rune Primaries: Atk, Atk Speed, Burn Duration. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 35.2% to get to 750 range

Late DPS Runes Sets: Three of: Damage, Swift, Rage, Precise. Rune Primaries: Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 35.2% to get to 750 range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Burning Option: 20+% Burn Chance (Ignite), 100+% Burn Duration (Burning, Primaries), 200+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 35+% Atk Speed (Primaries), 50+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Crit Option: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 125+% Crit Damage (Rage, Secondaries), 300+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 70+% Atk Speed (Primaries), 50+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Fire Hero Chest, Seraph Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 38 ATK, 38 DPS, 1.0 APS, 240 HP, 6 Def, 555 Attack Range, 150

Alda is one of the Crit Sisters. She and Valkyrie are able to give Crit buffs to everyone and are fondly known as the Crit Sisters. This makes her very good in both the Slay Event and PVP. Alda is now available in Seraph’s Crusher Chests, which makes her easier to obtain than Valkyrie. Once she does get to 6, she can do great damage, especially against two commonly used earth tanks: Gladiator and Leaf Blade.

For runes, I have provided two options. I don’t have a high Alda, so I have not tested these options, one will probably dominate the other, I just don’t know which one will do it. Alda has burn chance in both her sp1 and sp2, so she is one of the few heroes that has the chance to be a good burning hero. The other hero is Spark, and Spark has a 100% chance to burn on her sp2. Alda’s chance is much lower, so it’s not obvious if the burn build will be better than the pure DPS build. It’s important to note that burning damage cannot crit, which is why few heroes use it.

Since I’m not sure how effective burning will be for Alda, I have provided options to that build: Burning, Ignite, Damage, and Swift, with Atk, Atk Speed, and Burning Duration primaries. For the DPS build you’ll want three of: Damage, Swift, Rage, and Precise with Atk, Atk Speed, and Crit Damage primaries. Either way, Alda will need about 35% attack range to keep her out of the front line AOE smasher range.

Angelica

PVP Tier

D Tier – SP2 isn’t great, bad Team buff. Bad DPS

Primary Use

Slay Event: For her Ultimate

2 Star Skill

Revive has a 50% chance to revive a dead hero and provide a percent of their health back. The health returned is based on her . According to Menace 13: Angelica can revive the same hero multiple times, and she can revive two heroes in less than 10 seconds. I think she can’t revive the same hero in less than 10 seconds though, and I think she can’t revive two separate heroes in too short a period of time, but either it’s less than 10 seconds or it’s bugged.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 125% HP – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Slay boss for both survival and dps teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Intelligent – Don’t spend many materials on her

Unlock From

Legendary Chest

Base Stats: 42 ATK, 14 DPS, 0.333 APS, 500 HP, 20 Def, 650

The lackluster Legendary. At 3, Angelica is useful in the Guild Slay Event because her Ultimate doubles the attack of your team. It also applies a shield, which may help too. She has the lowest dps in the game, which basically makes her useless in PVP. She can resurrect fallen heroes, but it’s not enough to add her to your Arena team.

Since her only real use is her ultimate in the Slay Event, give her weapon level 3 with Intelligent, and be done with her.

Arcana

PVP Tier

C Tier – Generally only good to buff light heroes. Mediocre Damage

Primary Use

Blitz: Crit buffer. Guild Slay Event: Crit Buffer.

2 Star Skill

Multi Light Arrows shoots five arrows each dealing x1 damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Light 200% Crit Damage – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Light team in blitz

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Stunning optional – Don’t spend many materials on her

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Light Hero Chest, Seraph Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 30 ATK, 30 DPS, 1.0 APS, 320 HP, 15 Def, 540 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Arcana is a mediocre rare hero. Crit buffers are nice for the Guild Slay Event and blitz, but since she only buffs Light heroes, it doesn’t translate over to Arena unless you are starting with Spike. Light doesn’t have enough dps heroes to justify using a Light only Crit buffer for Arena.

You don’t need to spend any materials on Arcana. If you do, let me suggest Stunning. She has a high attack rate, so she will occasionally stun for you. Swift could be added to help with this, but it seems like more than you’d want to add.

Atlantus

PVP Tier

A Tier – Great Smasher damage, immune to stun. Mediocre buff as it only buffs water

Primary Use

PVP: Late game front line AOE smasher. Guild Slay Event: Crusher – Hitter.

2 Star Skill

Smash Attack jumps and smashes the ground dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 350 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 200% Crit Damage – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Akwa, Rufus

Rune Sets

Crusher – Hitter Runes Sets: Swift, Precise, Frenzy. Rune Primaries: Crit Dmg, Atk Speed. Rune Secondaries: Nothing Specific

Late PVP Runes Sets: Vitality, Damage, then one of: Precise, Swift. Rune Primaries: A total of 70-150% AOE, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Dmg. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range – Base of 220, whatever is required to stay behind your front line tanks

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 300+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 250+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 200+% AOE (Primaries), 40+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Atlantus Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 100 ATK, 40 DPS, 0.4 APS, 430 HP, 12 Def, 220 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

I love front line AOE smashers. They have such high damage potential. Atlantus can do this in the late game. He is immune to stun, which is very useful with all the Monki King’s flying around in Diamond and Legendary. He has his own Crusher Chest, which means you can increase his star fairly easily. Most people don’t because of the other heroes in his chest; only Onyx is good in PVP.

Most people aren’t Hitters, so I’m just going to talk about the Late Game PVP Rune setup. You’ll need Vitality as a front line dps, then two of: Damage, Precise, and Swift. You probably won’t need Rage as Atlantus buffs crit damage. For primaries, getting to 100% AOE is important, then Atk, Atk Speed, and Crit Damage. Generally you don’t need attack range, but if your tank has attack range (based on what runes are available), then Atlantus may need some attack range too.

Bat

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, above average DPS for a common, but Dragon Bot is better in every way. Probably 4th best common, but don’t need to build more than 2 commons

Primary Use

PVP: Early to mid game one on one dpser

2 Star Skill

Rapid Darkness shoots three balls each doing 1.65x damage to one target

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

Beginner team with dark heroes

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Damage, then two of: Swift, Precise, Rage. Rune Primaries: Atk, Crit Dmg, Atk Speed. Rune Secondaries: Nothing Specific

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 52 ATK, 52 DPS, 1.0 APS, 250 HP, 8 Def, 350 Attack Range, 250 Movement Speed

Until recently, Bat was the best common that is not a tank. Dragon Bot has surpassed him. Bat is a very good choice for your 4th common to get to 7 star. Bat has very good dps for a common, but as a 4th hero, he may not make it to your arena team. He will still be very useful in GW and Blitz.

For runes, early on you may not have many Atk buffers, and that makes the Damage set very valuable. Swift, Precise, and Rage all increase your dps, so these are all useful too. Early on use what you have. Later on, look for Atk Speed, Atk, and Crit Dmg primaries. These runes will be useful as long as bat is useful.

Big Eye

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Rapid Charge shoots three balls each doing 1.65x damage to one target

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 25 ATK, 25 DPS, 1.0 APS, 450 HP, 8 Def, 310 Attack Range, 180 Movement Speed

A flying tank. If you can come up with a reason you need a flying tank, let me know! Big Eye is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities.

Black Beard

PVP Tier

C Tier – Bad buff, if you give Vitality and Phalanx, can tank in Blitz

Primary Use

Blitz Tank

2 Star Skill

Multi-Hit attacks three times doing a total of 5x damage to one target

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 400% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Blitz water team

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Vitality, Phalanx, Nimble. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Nothing Specific

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Water Hero Chest

Base Stats: 45 ATK, 45 DPS, 1.0 APS, 360 HP, 12 Def, 150 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Below average HP for a Knight. He’s mostly used as a Tank for Blitz.

Blue Fish

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Bubble Stream attacks three times each doing 1.65x damage to one target

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 32 ATK, 32 DPS, 1.0 APS, 310 HP, 8 Def, 350 Attack Range, 250 Movement Speed

Blue fish is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities. You can give her chilling for freeze, or nothing

Bugonaut Archer

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Fire shoots five arrows each dealing x1 damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero. Chilling is optional.

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 28 ATK, 28 DPS, 1.0 APS, 200 HP, 15 Def, 424 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Bugonaut Archer is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities. You can give him chilling for freeze, or nothing.

Bugonaut Fighter

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad HP for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks seven times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 30 ATK, 30 DPS, 1.0 APS, 240 HP, 15 Def, 120 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Bugonaut Fighter is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities.

Bugonaut Giant

PVP Tier

B Tier – No buff, Starter Hero

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks three times dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 150 dealing a total of 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 70 ATK, 35 DPS, 0.5 APS, 400 HP, 20 Def, 160 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

In February 2021,Bugonaut Giant’s sp2 aoe was upgraded from 150 to 350. This puts her on par with Skeleton Giant, and allows him to be used as a starter hero. While water does not have a really good pool of heroes, if you want to focus into water, he is a reasonable hero to choose for a starter.

Bugonaut Spear

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Piercing Multi-Hit attacks one time (not sure why it’s called multi-hit) attacking all heroes in a line with a fixed aoe radius of XXX (cannot be increased), dealing 5x damage to each enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 56 ATK, 28 DPS, 0.5 APS, 280 HP, 15 Def, 220 Attack Range, 110 Movement Speed

Bugonaut Spear is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities.

Bun-Gun

PVP Tier

B Tier – Mediocre buff limited to light heroes, bad DPS. Decent CC, but not enough AOE to hit backline late game

Primary Use

Blitz and GW: Crowd Control

2 Star Skill

olky Egg throws a big egg that lands behind the target dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 150 dealing 4.15x damage which is reduced by aoe decay. It also has a 100% chance to blind that makes the blinded target miss 70% of the time. This currently does not hit flying heroes, hopefully will change in the future.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Light 400% Atk – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Light teams

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets: Don’t need much for Gold or Platinum, Swift Is nice. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed. Rune Secondaries: Atk Range is nice

Late Runes Sets: Swift, Stunning, Dazed. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, AOE, Stun Duration. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 78.5% to get to 750 range

Unlock From

Easter Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 26.4 ATK, 22 DPS, 0.833 APS, 270 HP, 10 Def, 420 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Bungun has a lot of potential. Her problem is that she is an event hero, and therefore very difficult to get to high star. You can use her at low star with the Late Rune Set as a crowd control hero. She does AOE, so she can crowd control the front line. Her other downfall is that she doesn’t have a whole lot of base attack range, so she can be difficult to keep alive. I feel like there are better crowd control heroes that are easier to use, like Frost Queen and Monki King.For her runes, she needs Swift set, so that she gets to her sp2 quicker, and more chance to stun when you add the Stunning set. Dazed is then used to increase the stun duration. For primaries you’ll want atk speed, AOE, and Stun Duration. She needs a fair amount of attack range ~80% to survive the Late Game Arena.

Chaos

PVP Tier

B Tier – Bad buff, Great DPS. Great front line DPS hero, but easy to CC. Too much range and not enough HP to tank well, but can be used to help carry in Blitz.

Primary Use

PVP: Mid to Late Game Front Line DPS

2 Star Skill

Multi-Hit attacks three times dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 150 doing a total of 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Dark 400% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Dark teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Vitality, Damage and one of the following: Nimble, Precise, Swift, Rage. Rune Primaries: HP, Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage, AOE – Small Amounts. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range – Base of 220, whatever is required to stay behind your front line tanks

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise) or Dodge Rate (Nimble), 250+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 400+% Atk (Damage, Primaries, Secondaries), 50+% APS (Primaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Dark Hero Chest, Furiosa Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 160 ATK, 80 DPS, 0.5 APS, 440 HP, 20 Def, 220 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

Chaos is the front line killer. His sp2 is a small aoe that can be devastating to a front line group. Once people start using fewer front line heroes, his usefulness decreases, as his 1v1 damage isn’t as good. The all dark teams love this guy, as there are not a lot of choices for dark tanks outside of Ornok.

Most people use him as the front line DPS. You’ll need the vitality set for survival on the front line. Then your choice of Damage, Precise, Swift, and Rage. For primaries, use DPS primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Dmg, and possibly small amounts of AOE. Some attack range may be needed to stay behind your front line tank.

For Dark Only teams, Chaos can be used as a pure Tank. He has decent HP and great Def for a Tank. You’ll want Vitality, Nimble, and Guard sets with HP primaries. Look for Def and movement speed secondaries, but avoid attack range. I didn’t put this in the primary use as it is a niche build.

Circe

PVP Tier

B Tier – Bad buff. Possess can be quite annoying, but very RNG based. Very easy to use for newer players

Primary Use

PVP: Crowd Control

2 Star Skill

Possess takes control of an enemy hero for a duration that depends on star of Circe, reduced if the opponent has higher star. She targets the 4 farthest back opponents within twice her attack range, and of those 4, it’s random. Possessed heroes cannot crit

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Dark 100% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 20+% Attack Range (Secondaries) can allow her to possess back line heroes

Unlock From

Halloween Event, Reminiscence Even

Base Stats: 100 ATK, 50 DPS, 0.5 APS, 250 HP, 6 Def, 545 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Circe is a Halloween event hero, who can be very annoying to fight. She possesses opponent heroes to fight for her. These heroes cannot use their sp2 for her, just their sp1, but once she starts possessing your main hero, it can be devastating. There is a lot of RNG (random number generation – aka randomness) on how well she will help a team in any given battle. Early on she’s great to add to any team, but later on she becomes less useful. She doesn’t have great DPS herself. Because she flies and has decent range, she is difficult to kill early on, but both Namida and Thorn can attack her. Thorn is usually not a threat until later on, but Namida can slow Circe down at any time. For some reason, Circe seems to be better at defending than attacking. I don’t really understand why, it seems to be who she possesses is based on the position in the battlefield, not necessarily relative to her position.

Some details about how possess works. She targets the farthest back 4 that are less than double her range. Of those four, the one she chooses is random. So if you increase her range, you can target backline heroes that will wipe out the other backline heroes or the crystal. From friendly battle testing, Nephandi has reported that Circe always possesses someone. Either resist doesn’t work on possess, or Circe will target another hero, if the first gets resisted.

She doesn’t need any runes to be effective. Vitality can be used for survivability, but she doesn’t get attacked much, so it’s not that important. Later on, attack range can help you choose which heroes to possess.

Clawdette

PVP Tier

B Tier – Buff useless except for very specific team compositions. Quite difficult to rune. High DPS potential in the specific team compositions. Niche hero.

Primary Use

PVP: Early to Mid Game blitz front line dps, Late Game Front Line DPS

2 Star Skill

Snarling Claws attacks attacks 6 times dealing a total of 5x damage. Each attack has a 20% chance to deal 1.2 ATK*base_aps for 5 seconds.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

50% DMG from Poison – per star above 3 star- this is applied after %ATK is applied (so it multiplies, not adds with it)

Synergizes With

PumpKing, Thorn, Misty

Rune Sets

Late Runes Sets: Vitality,Damage, Swift. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Crit Dmg, Atk. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range – Base of 160, whatever is required to stay behind your front line tanks

Target End Game Rune Stats: 100+% Attack Range (Secondaries), 20+% Poison Chance (Poisonous), 100+% Poison Duration (Blight, Primaries), 300+% Atk (Damage, Primaries, Secondaries), 10+% Atk Speed (Primaries), 150+% HP (Primaries, Secondaries)

Unlock From

Blitz Chest, Blitz Rewards

Base Stats: 45 ATK, 45 DPS, 1.0 APS, 410 HP, 18 Def, 175 Attack Range, 145 Movement Speed

Clawdette is mostly used for her 20% trophy bonus in blitz. She’s currently ranked in the B tier for PVP, but that takes a lot of commitment. She’s something like the 5th best Blitz hero, which means not many people have made that commitment, and if they have, they are probably using S tier heroes. As a brawler, her damage increases with her combo. This increases both her raw damage and her poison damage. Her poison damage is nice because it bypasses Def, and most End Game tanks have a lot of Def. Her team buff also buffs poison which further helps her poison, but is also great when paired with Thorn, for his poison damage.

For runes, Clawdette requires the Vitality set for survival. Then Damage and Swift sets for more DPS. Poison does not crit, so I’m not recommending using Rage or Precise. Blight or Poisonous may help with the poison, but as her poison chance isn’t that high, I think Damage and Swift will be better. Swift also allows her to get to higher combos quicker. Nimble could be used for survivability, or even Guard, as she has relatively high base Def. She will likely need Attack Range, so that she can stay behind your front tank. She won’t survive in the front.

Dark Hunter

PVP Tier

S Tier – Great Buff that can be useful to any team. Good to Great DPS. Extremely easy to get to 7 star and to rune

Primary Use

PVP: Buffer and DPS

2 Star Skill

Multi Fire shoots five arrows each dealing x1 damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

50% Attack Debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Everyone

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Three of: Damage, Swift, Precise, Rage. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 27.1% to get to 750 range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 300+% Crit Damage (Rage, 3xPrimaries, Secondaries), 300+% Atk (Damage,1xPrimaries, Secondaries), 40+% APS (5xPrimaries), 40+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Dark Hero Chest, Sorrow Crusher Chest, Seraph Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 52 ATK, 52 DPS, 1.0 APS, 200 HP, 6 Def, 590 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Dark Hunter is one of the best PVP heroes in the game and is extremely easy to add to any team. His team buff decreases the opponent’s attack, which is pretty much required to keep your tanks alive. He has the best atk and raw dps of any ranger, and of any back line dps. He has the second highest base Attack Range, which means he is very easy to keep alive. He also has 25% base crit rate, which is one of the highest in the game. The one thing that prevents him from being the perfect hero is that his sp2 does five attacks at 100% instead of 500%. This is worse because def will affect the 100% attacks more. It’s really not that bad.

Dark Hunter is all about the dps, and therefore you should consider the dps runes sets: Damage, Swift, Precise, and Rage. You’ll want dps primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, and Crit Damage. You’ll need some attack range late game, to avoid any of the AOE smashers.

I did some analysis on Dark Hunter with perfect 6 star runes, all aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. For Ornok I used Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx, with HP primaries and Def Secondaries. I used all 7 star buffers. Dark Hunter will do the most damage with Damage, Rage, and Precise sets. Below are the results.

Dark Knight

PVP Tier

B Tier – Mediocre buff, if you give Vitality and Phalanx, can tank in Blitz. Can be used to tank in niche mono dark teams

Primary Use

Blitz: Tank. Arena: All Dark tank

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

50% Def Debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Vitality, Phalanx, Nimble. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed is nice

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Dark Hero Chest, Furiosa Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 70 ATK, 70 DPS, 1.0 APS, 320 HP, 15 Def, 150 Attack Range, 120 Movement Speed

Dark Knight is mostly used as a blitz tank, but has a lot of potential in my opinion. He’s ranked at C tier in PVP, but I think he should be higher. He has the third highest base dps in the game, but most people want their dps in the back line. He debuffs Def, which can be useful. Below is how much his buff increases damage at 7 star :

This is very useful against Ornoks with Guard sets.

In blitz, all you really need is the vitality set. All dark teams can pull him off as a tank with Vitality, Phalanx, and Nimble, with HP primaries. I think there’s potential making him into a front line dps hero with Vitality and dps sets/primaries, with a lot of attack range, but I have not tried this. Against a team with a lot of crowd control, he wouldn’t be able to use much of his dps, but there are many types of teams out there that he could work well against.

Dark Wolf

PVP Tier

C Tier – Mediocre DPS, more used for debuff, which is used in niche speed team

Primary Use

PVP: Buffer

2 Star Skill

Dark Wrath attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

25% Def Movement Speed – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Speed Teams, Hikari, Xak

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Dark Hero Chest, Groovine Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 81 ATK, 45 DPS, 0.556 APS, 400 HP, 10 Def, 535 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

Dark Wolf is a niche PVP hero. He is usually paired with Hikari or another movement speed buffer. Dark Wolf decreases opponent movement speed, and Hikari increases your team’s movement speed. These two heroes combined can keep the opponent’s team near their crystal. This nerfs any attack range buffs. It also allows your aoe to hit their crystal, and possibly defeat them without killing all their heroes. It’s somewhat of a trick tactic that you need to watch out for. I generally don’t use it except in Blitz, where I have to use every hero.

No runes are required, you just use him for his team buff.

Dragon Bot

PVP Tier

B Tier – Best 1v1 DPS of any common. Great debuff early on. Only build if you can get to 7 star early on

Primary Use

PVP: Early to mid game one on one dpser

2 Star Skill

Dragon Breath attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit and debuffs the opponent’s attack by 50% for 5s

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

Sorrow

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Damage, then two of: Swift, Precise, Rage. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed (important because of debuff), Atk, Crit Dmg. Rune Secondaries: Nothing Specific

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 44 ATK, 44 DPS, 1.0 APS, 280 HP, 12 Def, 430 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Dragon Bot is the best common that is not a tank. Dragon Bot is also known as DB. DB is a very good choice for your 2nd or 3rd common to get to 7 star. While Bat has more base dps, DB will usually out damage bat since he is a gunner and therefore ignores 96% of def. DB also lowers the opponent’s front line hero atk, which is very important early game to keep your main tank alive.

Fire Monk

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Cast attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit. Each attack has a 40% chance to deal 1.0 ATK*base_aps for 3 seconds.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Fire 100% HP – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Provided near account creation

Base Stats: 54 ATK, 45 DPS, 0.833 APS, 320 HP, 8 Def, 510 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Fire Monk competes against Oceana as the worst rare heroes in the game. You get him early on, but you should stash him for faster heroes. Then you’ll only use him as a blitz filler. His team buff is HP, and team buffs do not get the 10x multiplier in PvP that base HP and runes get. This makes it useless.

Frost Queen

PVP Tier

A Tier – Teams are built around her special ability, but she generally requires other heroes to make it great. Can’t just add her to a team and expect her to do we

Primary Use

PVP: Early and Late (not mid) Crowd Control

2 Star Skill

Multi Shot attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit. Each attack has a 10% chance to freeze the opponent for 2 seconds.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

100% DMG from Freeze Explode – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Akwa, Manta, Namida, Pirato, Snowman, Valkyrie

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets: Chilling. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, AOE – AOE Still works with the July 2020 Update, don’t worry that it’s struck through. Rune Secondaries: Atk Range is nice

Late Runes Sets: Chilling, Splash, stunning or anything with AOE. Rune Primaries: AOE, Atk Speed – depends on build, some avoid this primary. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 44.2% to get to 750 range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 12.5+% Freeze Rate (Chilling), 50+% Atk Speed (Swift, Primaries, depending on build), 120+% AOE (Primaries), 200+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries) or 12.5+% Stun Rate (Stunning), 60+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Blitz Chest, Blitz Rewards

Base Stats: 28 ATK, 28 DPS, 1.0 APS, 280 HP, 12 Def, 520 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Freeze Explode! Frost Queen has Freeze Explode, and this has huge potential. Once she reaches 4 star, all freezes, whether caused by her or another hero, will explode. Before 4 star, only freezes initiated by Frost Queen will explode. If you give her chilling, all initial freeze explosions can freeze and explode again. They cannot chain further than that. There are some really strong builds that freeze most of the opponents for most of the time. The problem is a team built around freeze explode requires a lot of good runes. It’s worth noting, heroes with stun can also stun with Freeze Explosions caused by them.

Usually heroes like Akwa, Snowman, Namida, Valkyrie, and Pirato are paired with Frost Queen and are provided with chilling runes. This way, lots of freezes will occur. The damage caused by the explosion will be based on the hero that caused the freeze. The freeze explosion cannot crit, except in a unique situation discussed in a paragraph below. The damage done is 2 x Atk x (1+ buff), and it has the normal aoe decay. It seems that it does the same amount of damage if the freeze comes from sp1 or sp2. Crits on the freeze don’t seem to affect the damage of the explode either. There are two radiuses to the explosions, the radius that damages and the radius that freezes. It was previously believed that AOE runes only affected the freeze radius, but testing has been performed that shows both the freeze radius and the damage radius getting increased. This is why AOE is recommended in her sets/primaries. In the October update, Manta does now decrease the damage from freeze explosions, which has also been shown through testing.

For a given hero, there is only 1 freeze timer. If another freeze were to happen, that time refreshes the timer. Since it’s important that the freeze explodes (to freeze and damage other heroes), it’s important not to add the Frozen Rune Set (freeze duration) to any of these heroes. Some people take this further, and don’t give Frost Queen attack speed sets/primaries. That will depend on your build and your opponent, but I think most people will want attack speed on Frost Queen. The more heroes you have, and the higher star your Akwa is, the less attack speed you’ll need on Frost Queen.

Thanks to Friendly Battles, testing has been done on FQ’s freeze explode. Menace13 has reported that the aoe of the hero that causes the explosion can increase the freeze explosion radius with aoe runes, but only if they have an aoe attack (either sp1, sp2, or sp3). It’s weird that your ultimate can come into play. Snowman has no PVP attack with AOE, but his sp3 does have it, and that allows any aoe runes to increase the freeze radius. While Akwa’s sp2 does hit multiple heroes, but does not have an aoe radius, so she cannot increase the radius of the freeze explosion.

Warus has provided video that shows a freeze explosion can in fact crit on flyers if the freeze explosion was caused by a ranger (namely Valkyrie in the video, but Snowman likely has this benefit also). It did not crit on all the flyers, so I’m guessing the ranger’s base crit chance is used. More research is probably needed to completely understand this phenomena.

This is a really fun build, once you see it, you’ll want to build it. The problem is almost all the heroes needed require a lot of attack range, which is difficult to come by.

Furiosa

PVP Tier

B Tier – Decent buff for fire teams, good during female weeks. Mostly a niche hero for fire teams.

Primary Use

PVP: Tank. Guild Slay Event: Crusher – Hitter or survivor.

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Fire Frenzy Chance- per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Speed fire teams and female arena weeks

Rune Sets

Crusher – Hitter Runes Sets: Swift, Precise, Frenzy. Rune Primaries: Crit Dmg, Atk Speed. Rune Secondaries: Nothing Specific

Tank Runes Sets: Vitality, Phalanx, Nimble. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed is nice, avoid atk range

Unlock From

Furiosa Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 60 ATK, 60 DPS, 1.0 APS, 340 HP, 14 Def, 150 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Furiosa is the best hero for slay event. When you use knight shield artifacts, she has the best survivability for almost all but water bosses. Fire Weapon artifacts add fire crit damage, which is extremely important in the slay event, so she can dish out the damage too. She’s immune to freeze which is handy against Frost Queen teams, so she has a place in PvP. She can also be very useful during the female Arena weeks.

For the Guild Slay Event, being a survivor doesn’t require any runes, just artifacts. I recommend focusing more on the PVP build, but if you want to be a strong Slay Event hitter, use Swift, Precise, and Frenzy with attack speed primaries. Crit dmg helps too, but not nearly as much as attack speed. For PVP, she’s mostly used as a tank, so use Vitality, Phalanx, and Nimble, with HP primaries. Movement speed is nice, but avoid attack range.

Gladiator

PVP Tier

A/S Tier – Best Rare tank, definitely worth awakening to 7 for most people

Primary Use

PVP: Tank

2 Star Skill

Shockwave Stomp smashes the ground dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 350 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 100% HP – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Spark

Rune Sets

Tank Runes Sets: Vitality, Guard, Nimble. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed and Def are nice, avoid atk range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 690+% HP (Vitality, Primaries), 200+% Def (Guard, Secondaries), 17.5+% Dodge Rate (Nimble), 18+% Movement Speed (Secondaries), <10% Attack Range, ideally 0% (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Earth Hero Chest

Base Stats: 63 ATK, 42 DPS, 0.667 APS, 840 HP, 25 Def, 150 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

The main f2p tank of the current meta, Gladiator has a ton of HP. He also has a significant amount of def. Leaf Blade, Ornok, and Paladin are the only tanks ranked higher, and I think of Paladin as more of a support tank with his team buff and sp2. All three of which are much more difficult to get to 7 star than gladiator. Once you get 1 or 2 commons to 7 star, it is time to start using Magic Medals on Gladiator.

While you can technically use Gladiator as a front line AOE smasher, almost everyone uses him as a Pure Tank. You’ll need Vitality, Guard, and Nimble rune sets with HP primaries. Movement speed and Def are great if you can be picky.

Goddess

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Can be used early game for pushback

Primary Use

PVP: Early Game Crowd control, Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Mini Tsunami shoots a wave pushing back opponents and dealing x0.25 damage to each enemy hit. It has a width, so it can miss ground units based on the spawn height of Goddess relative to other heroes, but it’s pretty large, and can even hit flying heroes.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 100% HP – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Water Hero Chest

Base Stats: 28 ATK, 14 DPS, 0.5 APS, 200 HP, 10 Def, 520 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Goddess is nice because her sp2 has push back, which helps early game and in blitz. She doesn’t need runes, but chilling can give her tidal wave a chance to freeze each hero it hits. She is also useful in the Guild Slay Event, as her Ultimate is a shield that is very helpful to keep heroes alive. I generally prefer Merlinus over her, as Merlinus will heal also, but you can use both. If you decide to use her in Guild Slay Event, Intelligent will allow you to use her Ultimates more frequently.

Gold Knight

PVP Tier

B Tier – Poor buff, if you give Vitality and Phalanx, can tank in Blitz

Primary Use

PVP: Tank

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Light 25% movement speed – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Light blitz team

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Vitality. Rune Primaries: HP, Any. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed is nice

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Light Hero Chest, Furiosa Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 40 ATK, 40 DPS, 1.0 APS, 480 HP, 15 Def, 150 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Gold Knight can be a decent tank in Blitz. His team buff is movement speed, which is helpful for a mostly Light team in blitz. This can push back the opponent closer to their crystal, and allow aoe heroes like Spike and Siegfried to hit the crystal, if they have enough AOE. Other than blitz, there’s not much use for Gold Knight.

He can use weapon level 3 with vitality runes for Blitz, I wouldn’t do much more than that for him.

Green Faery

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Has no use

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Shield adds a shield similar to knight shield to a random hero. The shield has 15% of Green Faery’s HP. This can be useful in Slay Boss event for survival.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 100% HP – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Earth Hero Chest

Base Stats: 40 ATK, 20 DPS, 0.5 APS, 250 HP, 14 Def, 460 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Green Faery adds a protective shield to a random hero for her sp2. This guarantees at least one extra hit, and for the slay event, this can be useful for survivor builds. It’s not that helpful in PVP. She’s not that good, one of the worst epics in my opinion. I took a quick poll in the CTA Discord, and they agree, she’s the worst epic. I just use her as Blitz filler.

Groovine

PVP Tier

C Tier – Useful buff for leaf teams, bad DPS.

Primary Use

Guild Slay Event: Crusher

2 Star Skill

Bee Swarm is a horizontal projectile that moves across the screen slowing opponents hit. The slowdown rate is based on the stars of Groovine. I believe it has a width, so it can miss ground units based on the spawn height of Groovine relative to other heroes.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 400% Atk – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Leaf blitz teams

Rune Sets

Crusher Runes Sets: Intelligent

Unlock From

Groovine Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 48 ATK, 48 DPS, 1.0 APS, 350 HP, 9 Def, 550 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Groovine is a crusher with a relatively poor quality crusher chest. The only hero I really like out of her chest is Thorn, so I don’t buy many of her chests. Her ultimate turns other elemental damage (other than fire) into earth damage. This is very useful against water bosses in the Guild Slay Event. Since my Groovine is relatively low star, most of my damage comes from other heroes when they are doing earth damage. To get more time for the ultimate you’ll want the Intelligent rune set.

Healer Bot

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, horrible DPS, healing insignificant. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Healing Beam heals an injured hero for 6% of Healer Bot’s HP each second for 5 seconds. It doesn’t specify, but I believe she chooses the hero with the lowest %HP.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 10 ATK, 10 DPS, 1.0 APS, 300 HP, 2 Def, 490 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

One of the two newest commons, Healer Bot just isn’t that great. Her sp2 heals for a total of 30% of her life, where Merlinus heals for 100%, and Vlad heals based on damage. This means she needs 2 star more than Merlinus to heal slightly more than him. As Merlinus isn’t that great of a healer, this limits the use of Healer Bot. I don’t recommend using her except for filling a slot in Blitz.

Hikari

PVP Tier

D Tier – Mediocre DPS, more used for buff, which is used in niche speed team

Primary Use

PVP: Buffer.

2 Star Skill

Piercing Hit attacks one hero dealing 5x damage

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 30% Movement Speed – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Speed teams, Dark Wolf

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Light Hero Chest, Starter Pack, Fortune Chest if f2p

Base Stats: 40 ATK, 40 DPS, 1.0 APS, 525 HP, 6 Def, 150 Attack Range, 170 Movement Speed

Hikari is a niche PVP hero. He is usually paired with Dark Wolf. Dark Wolf decreases opponent movement speed, and Hikari increases your team’s movement speed. These two heroes combined can keep the opponent’s team near their crystal. This nerfs any attack range buffs. It also allows your aoe to hit their crystal, and possibly defeat them without killing all their heroes. It’s somewhat of a trick tactic that you need to watch out for. I generally don’t use it except in Blitz, where I have to use every hero. Hikaris is also used in staging to speed up the rest of your stagers.

No runes are required, you just use him for his team buff. Frenzy is useful for staging.

Hooky

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Hook Gun grabs a distant hero and pulls them closer. It can affect flying, and make flying heroes temporarily vulnerable to melee heroes. The distance pulled closer depends on the star of Hooky. 200/230/260/290/320/350 at 2-7 star(not sure higher).

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Gunner 3% Attack Range – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Blitz Chest, Blitz Rewards

Base Stats: 36 ATK, 30 DPS, 0.833 APS, 420 HP, 20 Def, 450 Attack Range, 125 Movement Spee

Hooky is a relatively new Blitz Hero. His damage isn’t that great. His team buff increases earth attack range, and not many people use a lot of earth heroes. In addition, you can get all your required attack range from runes. His sp2 pulls opponent heroes nearer, which can help, but doesn’t seem to be enough to use him. I just use him as a blitz filler.

In February 2021, Hooky was buffed, and this may make him useful in gunner teams. Attack range is fairly difficult to come by, especially for aoe gunners, so this could be useful. He can also drag ranged heroes to

Ice Cube

PVP Tier

S Tier – Great tank in the current meta, where there’s a lot of dps, and not much leaf dps

Primary Use

PVP: End Game Tank

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit. Each hit has a base AOE radius of 150 and a 10% chance to freeze for 2s. Damage is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 400% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Against teams with a lot of fire members

Rune Sets

Tank Runes Sets: Vitality, Nimble, anything with HP Primaries (Guard and Resist are decent options). Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed and Def are nice, avoid atk range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 690+% HP (Vitality, Primaries), 17.5+% Dodge Rate (Nimble), 30+% Movement Speed (Secondaries), <10% Attack Range, ideally 0% (Secondaries), 25+% Resist

Unlock From

Water Hero Chest

Base Stats: 54 ATK, 45 DPS, 0.833 APS, 710 HP, 14 Def, 150 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

Ice Cube Just got a major buff in the July 2020 update. This puts him at the 3rd highest HP in the game. As many people have been building fire heroes to take out Glad and Leaf Blade, fewer people have been building Earth heroes that would take down Ice Cube. Ice Cube would also have the elemental advantage against these fire heroes. This gives him use right now, and probably in the future, and may make him the best tank outside of Ornok. As he’s epic, he’s out of reach for most people. Glad is still the best for most f2p.

For runes you’ll need Vitality and Nimble with HP primaries. Any third set with HP primaries will work, as Ice Cube doesn’t have high base def, and guard is the normal third set for barbarians. Movement speed and Def are nice for secondaries.

Ice Knight

PVP Tier

D Tier – Poor buff, not a great tank

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit. Each hit has a 10% chance to freeze for 2s.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 4% Freeze Duration – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Water blitz teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Christmas Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 48 ATK, 48 DPS, 1.0 APS, 370 HP, 15 Def, 150 Attack Range, 135 Movement Spee

As an event hero, Ice Knight is somewhat difficult to unlock, and very difficult to get medals for. His team buff is increased freeze duration, and many freeze builds do not want that because they rely on freeze explode (Frost Queen’s skill). I just use him as Blitz filler.

Jasmine

PVP Tier

C Tier – Good buff for fire , but that’s her only use

Primary Use

Blitz: Crit buffer. Guild Slay Event: Crit Buffer.

2 Star Skill

Dancing Blades attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Fire 200% Crit Damage – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Fire blitz teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend many materials on her

Unlock From

remium Chest, Blitz Chest, Fire Hero Chest, One Eye Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 45 ATK, 45 DPS, 1.0 APS, 240 HP, 8 Def, 150 Attack Range, 200 Movement Speed

Jasmine has some use for buffing fire heroes Crit Damage. This is very important for the Guild Slay Event, as critical hits are where most of the damage comes from. It also helps with a fire team in Blitz. She’s also very fast, and can be used in staging.

Joan Of Arc

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Piercing Multi-Hit attacks one time (not sure why it’s called multi-hit) attacking all heroes in a line with a fixed aoe radius of XXX (cannot be increased), dealing 5x damage to each enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Light 400% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Light Hero Chest, Atlantus Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 42 ATK, 28 DPS, 0.667 APS, 500 HP, 12 Def, 220 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Joan of Arc buffs Light Def. As there are only two Light heroes (Spike and Paladin) that have and need a lot of Def, she’s not very useful. She does have decent base HP, but Spike, Paladin, and Siegfried would all be better Tanks. I just use her in Blitz.

Kage

PVP Tier

A/S Tier – Great buff, great DPS if he can stay alive

Primary Use

PVP: Buffer. Guild Slay Event: Buffer.

2 Star Skill

Piercing Hit attacks one hero dealing 5x damage

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

universal 50% HP Debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Everyone

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Vitality – Don’t spend many materials on this hero unless you want to spend a lot. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Nothing Particular

Target End Game Rune Stats: 250+% HP (Vitality, Primaries, secondaries), 200+% Atk (Damage, Primaries, secondaries), 100+% Crit Damage (Primaries, secondaries), 40+% Attack Speed (Primaries), 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), <10% Movement Speed, ideally 0% (Secondaries), >10% more Attack Range than tank (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Dark Hero Chest, One Eye Crusher Chest, Seraph Crusher Ches

Base Stats: 75 ATK, 75 DPS, 1.0 APS, 260 HP, 6 Def, 170 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Kage is generally used for his HP debuff, which is useful in all aspects of the game. If you’re close to beating a new daily dungeon level, you can throw Kage in for some extra % done to the boss.

Kage, being a samurai, has low range and has a high chance to avoid AOE. While this normally does not matter, as he will be in the front, with a significant attack range investment he could theoretically be very tough. He also has the second highest base dps in the game. This gives him a lot of potential, but I haven’t seen anyone fund him enough to test out this potential.

Most people just use him for his Buff, which is plenty useful up through Mid game. For that, a Vitality set is nice to keep him alive for a bit longer, so he’ll do some damage for your team. If you wanted to fund him, I’d go Vitality then two of: Nimble, Damage, Swift, Precise, Rage.

Kasai

PVP Tier

B Tier – Good buff for fire, can be used in a niche roll to take out Glad quickly

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Piercing Hit attacks one hero dealing 5x damage

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Fire 400% ATK – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Fire teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Fire Hero Chest, One Eye Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 62 ATK, 62 DPS, 1.0 APS, 260 HP, 6 Def, 170 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Kasai has the 4th highest base DPS, but one of the lowest base HP. His buff is Fire Atk, and most PVP teams prefer universal Atk Buffs. He’s a samurai, so he has a high chance to dodge AOE attacks. The problem is he would need attack range to get behind a tank, and he’s just not worth spending on to get this. I just use him as a buffer in Blitz.

Kasumi

PVP Tier

Tier – Great buff, Can disrupt spawn positions, very good during female weeks, gaining popularity in L2+ Arena at 7/7

Primary Use

Stager. PVP: Buffer

2 Star Skill

Assassination teleports behind a hero and attacks 5 times 1x each time. This can happen every 8s. I’m not sure how the target is chosen.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 10% APS Debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Everyone

Rune Sets

PVP Runes Sets: Vitality, Nimble – Don’t spend many materials on this hero unless she’s 7. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Nothing Particular

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Dodge Rate (Nimble), 650+% HP (Vitality, Primaries), 200+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries) or 12.5+% Stun Rate (Stunning) or 25+% Resist

Unlock From

Dark Hero Chest, Starter Pack, One Eye Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 38 ATK, 38 DPS, 1.0 APS, 240 HP, 8 Def, 120 Attack Range, 220 Movement Speed

Kasumi has an sp2 with teleport, which makes her very fast for staging, and the best Dark staging hero. She also debuffs opponent attack speed, which is useful in PVP. During the Female Rogue Arena week, she can be quite strong. Teleporting into the backline can be disrupting. She has a lot of uses, but she’s really not good enough for most people to spend a lot of materials on her. If you get her to 4 starearly enough, she’s useful just for her debuff, so you can use her in your arena team. You don’t really need to give her runes, but if you do, Vitality and Nimble will help with survivability.

Krouki

PVP Tier

B Tier – Good buff for leaf , decent 1v1 dps for leaf

Primary Use

Blitz Filler. Guild Slay Event: Crit Buffer.

2 Star Skill

Shoot Big Bullet attacks one hero for 4.15x damage.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 200% Crit Damage – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Leaf teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Earth Hero Chest, Sorrow Crusher Chest, Groovine Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 45.6 ATK, 38 DPS, 0.833 APS, 280 HP, 10 Def, 490 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Krouki has some use for buffing earth heroes Crit Damage. This is very important for the Guild Slay Event, as critical hits are where most of the damage comes from. It also helps with an earth team in Blitz.

Krunk

PVP Tier

C Tier – Good buff for light , but that’s his only use

Primary Use

Blitz Filler. PVP Buffer

2 Star Skill

Shoot Big Laser attacks one hero for 4.15x damage.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Light 400% Atk – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Light teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, LightHero Chest

Base Stats: 33.6 ATK, 28 DPS, 0.833 APS, 600 HP, 14 Def, 410 Attack Range, 120 Movement Speed

Krunk is tied for the third most HP in the game. This makes him a backline tank, which isn’t very useful. He does buff Light Atk, which is useful in Blitz. If you’re using Spike, it’s also useful in Arena and GW. He doesn’t need any runes for this buff though.

Leaf Blade

PVP Tier

S Tier – Great tank, relies on Auto-Shield

Primary Use

PVP: Late game Tank

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 400% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Ornok and everyone

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Vitality, Phalanx, Nimble. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed and Def are nice

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 690+% HP (Vitality, Primaries), 17.5+% Dodge Rate (Nimble), 250+% Knight Shield HP (Phalanx), 30+% Movement Speed (Secondaries), <10% Attack Range, ideally 0% (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Earth Hero Chest, Starter Pack, Furiosa Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 50 ATK, 50 DPS, 1.0 APS, 370 HP, 16 Def, 150 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Leaf Blade is arguably the second best tank in the game. As a knight, he has a shield. But more importantly, he has an Auto-Shield ability, which makes him immune to damage after he falls below a certain %. It is possible to bypass this Auto-Shield if enough damage is applied to kill him, when he is above that %. When combined with Vlad, the Auto-Shield is long enough to mostly refill his health, which means you basically have to kill him twice.

The main build for him is pure tank with Vitality, Phalanx, and Nimble Rune Sets with HP primaries. Movement speed and Def secondaries are nice to haves. Since it takes a long time getting him to 6 or 7 star, you can be a little picky with the secondaries.

Light Knight

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS/HP for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks seven times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 25 ATK, 25 DPS, 1.0 APS, 350 HP, 15 Def, 120 Attack Range, 220 Movement Speed

Light Knight is a fast common, so he can be used for staging. Light Knight is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities.

Luka

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Has no use.

Primary Use

Stager.

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks seven times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 25% movement speed – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Water blitz teams

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

First Hero

Base Stats: 37 ATK, 37 DPS, 1.0 APS, 240 HP, 8 Def, 120 Attack Range, 220 Movement Speed

Luka is your first hero! Luka is a fast Water hero with a movement speed buff, so he is primarily used for staging. He’s the best water hero for staging. Other than that he only has use as a Blitz filler. You can give him frenzy to speed up staging, but runes are not required for this hero.

Lycan

PVP Tier

S Tier – Wounded is awesome

Primary Use

PVP debuffer

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit. Each hit has a 100% chance (can be resisted) to cast wounded on the target. Wounded increases the damage taken of the target (before def is applied) by 50% at 2 star to 100% at 7 star

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 10% APS – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Everyone

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Vitality, Nimble, Resist, Swift. Rune Primaries: APS. Rune Secondaries: Attack range is required and HP is nice

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 250+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 17.5+% Dodge Rate (Nimble), 25+% Resist (Resist), 70+% APS (Primaries), 96+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Halloween Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 45 ATK, 45 DPS, 1.0 APS, 500 HP, 18 Def, 190 Attack Range, 145 Movement Speed

Lycan is being introduced for the Halloween 2020 event. As an epic, he’s going to be somewhat difficult to obtain, with a low chance of getting him from the chests. He’s going to be extremely good though, possibly the best hero in the game for PVP. While he has stats to do damage, the best use of him will be to apply wounded to the opponent tank. This increases the damage done before def by 50% at 2 star to 100% at 7 star. Which means it will actually increase damage by more than this after def. While even with godly runes, you won’t be able to keep wounded up all the time when the opponent has Vlad or Kasumi, it’s still going to dramatically increase your team’s damage.

While Lycan can go the dps route, I think it’s best to deliver wounded as much as possible. This means avoiding being crowd controlled with dodge and resist, surviving as long as possible with vitality and attack range, and attacking as fast as possible with aps primaries.

I did some analysis on Lycan with perfect 6 star runes, all aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. For Ornok I used Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx, with HP primaries and Def Secondaries. I used all 7 star buffers. Lycan will do the most damage with Vitality, Damage, and Precise sets. Below are the results. I don’t necessarily recommend these builds, as I think a survivor build with aps would be best.

Magmus

PVP Tier

B Tier – Bad buff, can tank in Blitz

Primary Use

Blitz: Tank.

2 Star Skill

Multi-Hit attacks three times dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 150 doing a total of 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay Kronos did some testing through friendly battles, and it appears that the aoe starts about 170 in front of Chaos. Magmus likely has the same 170 value.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

fire 400% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Fire teams

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Vitality. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed is nice

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise) or Dodge Rate (Nimble), 250+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 400+% Atk (Damage, Primaries, Secondaries), 30+% APS (Primaries), 50+% AOE (Primaries) – need about 2x the aoe as attack range, 20+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Fire Hero Chest, Furiosa Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 130 ATK, 65 DPS, 0.5 APS, 520 HP, 18 Def, 220 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

Magmus is the best Fire Tank, but being the best in an element is not good enough to be useful in Arena. I use him primarily as a tank in Blitz. Some people use him in Arena, but his tankiness doesn’t stack up against Gladiator. It’s also easy to protect Gladiator with Spark, where Magmus would require Namida to lower Water heroes’ attack. Spark is much easier to get to higher star as he’s a rare, while Namida is a Blitz hero and requires flooz. Atlantus is fairly popular late game, so you really do want water protection. That said, Namida is a great hero, so if you’re going to use her, you’ll already have water protection.

Magmus just needs a 3 rune set of Vitality for Blitz.

Manta

PVP Tier

B Tier – Debuff is mediocre, but only on specific teams. Healing debuff helps, but not sure if it’s enough. Should be great in a freeze explode team, but relies on other heroes to be good.

Primary Use

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Light Hero Chest, Blitz Shop

2 Star Skill

Water Bubble creates an aoe orb originating at Manta’s target dealing 0.2x damage with an aoe decay to all enemies hit, debuffing the amount of healing they recieve for 15 seconds. At 2 star, the amount of healing is debuffed by 100% and increases 20% per star to 200% at 7 star. The aoe has a base radius of 350. This can hit flying heroes.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

100% AOE Damage Debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Frost Queen

Rune Sets

Late Runes Sets: swift, chilling, stunning. Rune Primaries: AOE – Mostly, Atk Speed. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 82.9% to get to 750 range

Unlock From

Blitz Chest, Blitz Rewards

Base Stats: 45 ATK, 45 DPS, 1.0 APS, 350 HP, 8 Def, 410 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Manta was released in July 2020 as a Blitz hero, but has been buffed in the October 2020 update. She decreases opponent AOE damage, which means anything with an AOE radius. Along with the update, she now debuffs Frost Queen’s Freeze Explode. Heroes like Goddess, Ra, Akwa, and Spark are not affected by this debuff. This can be very useful against AOE smashers like Siegfried and Atlantus, and Late/End Game heroes with aoe, like Thorn, Tesla, and Scud.

Manta’s sp2 has been updated to originate from the target, which allows her sp2 to hit the full team, with enough AOE primaries. Her sp2 also reduces the healing of heroes it does hit, so AOE is going to be important. This can be useful in both early game against Merlinus and late game against Vlad. Her damage isn’t that great, she has relatively high base attack, but only has a 10% crit rate. Below is some preliminary analysis showing her dps capability. It assumes all APS primaries, when she will need a few AOE primaries to hit the front line with her sp2.

She also has potential to be part of a freeze team. Since her sp2 can hit their entire team, adding chilling can freeze any hero. Adding Frost Queen, and she now has the ability to cause freeze explosions that will also hit the entire team, and possibly chaining.

Mecha Valken

PVP Tier

C Tier – Very good in blitz early on, as can deal damage and tank, but drops off quickly

Primary Use

Blitz: Tank.

2 Star Skill

Big Boom is an aoe attack dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 300 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Fire 400% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Fire teams

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Vitality. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed is nice

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Dark Hero Chest

Base Stats: 78 ATK, 65 DPS, 0.833 APS, 360 HP, 20 Def, 180 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Mecha Valken is really good early on. When you use him in Blitz, he’ll probably do the most damage for his team. I remember really liking him. He just doesn’t scale as well as others. His team buff is Fire Def, which is nearly worthless. As a front line hero, he just doesn’t have the HP to survive long enough to do damage later on, except in Blitz.

Mecha Valken just needs a 3 rune set of Vitality for Blitz.

Merlinus

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Heal doesn’t do enough. Has no use.

Primary Use

Guild Slay Event – Ult Shield. Don’t spend materials on this hero, but if you must:

2 Star Skill

Heal restores a friendly hero’s HP by the amount of Merlinus’s max HP, and then dispels all negative effects.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Light 125% HP – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Don’t spend materials on this hero, but if you must:

Blitz Runes Sets: Intelligent (for slay boss), Vitality, swift. Rune Primaries: HP, Atk Speed. Rune Secondaries: Nothing specific.

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Light Hero Chest, Blitz Shop

Base Stats: 21 ATK, 14 DPS, 0.667 APS, 270 HP, 12 Def, 550 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

Merlinus is bad in PVP. I feel like every f2p player will see Merlinus fully heal an opponent tank in Gold or Platinum, and think this hero is amazing. Even early game, there almost always is going to be a better option in Arena, namely crowd control. As Merlinus only has 280 base HP, he’s going to need at least 1 star higher than the tank to fully heal it, and sometimes 2 star. He’s also on the ground, so every now and then, he’s going to have to heal himself from any front line aoe attacks. I use him most in the Guild Slay Event, as his Ultimate is a shield that is very helpful to keep heroes alive.

Featured offers were introduced like a year ago, and before that progression was slow enough that Merlinus had some use, but now you progress so fast early on that he doesn’t have a use.

If you want to use Merlinus in PVP, he’ll want Vitality and Swift with HP and attack speed primaires. In Guild Slay Event, Intelligent is useful to get more Ultimates in.

Misty

PVP Tier

A Tier – Decent buff, Great DPS, somewhat difficult to built

Primary Use

PVP: Mid to Late game aoe gunner dps.

2 Star Skill

Shoots a poisonous ball that lands behind the target dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 150 dealing 4.15x damage which is reduced by aoe decay. Each enemy hit has a 30% chance to deal 1.2 ATK*base_aps for 5 seconds.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 400% ATK – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Leaf teams

Rune Sets

Late Runes Sets: Damage, then two of: Swift, Precise, Rage, Poisonous, Blight. Rune Primaries: 30-50% AOE, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Dmg. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 89.9% to get to 750 range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Crit Build, 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 150+% Crit Damage (Rage, Secondaries), 200+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 70+% APS (8xPrimaries), 30+% AOE (1xPrimaries), 96+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Poison Build, 20+% Poison Chance (Poisonous), 90+% Poison Duration (Blight, 2-3xPrimaries), 250+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 50+% APS (5-6xPrimaries), 30+% AOE (1xPrimaries), 96+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Dark Hero Chest

Base Stats: 24 ATK, 20 DPS, 0.833 APS, 280 HP, 8 Def, 410 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Misty is a really good hero that I always forget about. She has the lowest base damage of any gunner, but she’s an aoe gunner, so she’ll hit multiple heroes, and she has a 30% chance to do poison. For her poison, her attack is applied once per second for 5 seconds. Her team buff is Earth Attack, which is great for an Earth team, and it’ll at least buff her own attack.

Since Misty does a high percentage of her damage from poison, I think a poison build would work on her, the problem is getting the poison runes. You cannot easily get the voodoo chest, to directly get poison runes. You’d need to buy Epic Rune Chests, and a lot of them to make that build. Once you start using the Crit Sisters, the damage setup definitely becomes better. You’ll want Swift, Rage, Precise with 30-50% AOE, Atk, Atk Speed, and Crit dmg.

Mizu

PVP Tier

C Tier – Good buff for water , but that’s his only use

Primary Use

Blitz Filler. PVP Buffer

2 Star Skill

Piercing Hit attacks one hero dealing 5x damage

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 400% ATK – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Water blitz teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Water Hero Chest

Base Stats: 56 ATK, 56 DPS, 1.0 APS, 260 HP, 8 Def, 170 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Mizu is one of those heroes with an elemental attack buff and decent attack, but not enough survivability to be useful. His buff is Water Atk, and most PVP teams prefer universal Atk Buffs. He’s a samurai, so he has a high chance to dodge AOE attacks. The problem is he would need attack range to get behind a tank, and he’s just not worth spending on to get this. I just use him as a buffer in Blitz.

Monki King

PVP Tier

A Tier – Great buff, Great CC, decent DPS end game

Primary Use

Stager. PVP: Crowd Control.

2 Star Skill

Combo Attack is 7 quick aoe attacks dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 300 dealing a total of 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay. Due to lancer’s 30% base stun chance, this has an extremely high chance to stun everyone hit. This attack appears to be unidirectional, meaning it won’t hit opponents behind the attack. Usurper did some testing through friendly battles, and it appears that the aoe starts about 80 in front of Monki King.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Fire 10% APS – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Scud, Spark

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets: Vitality then two of: swift, splash, dazed. Rune Primaries: AOE, Atk Speed, Stun Duration. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range is nice, avoid movement speed if possible

Late Runes Sets: swift, splash, dazed. Rune Primaries: AOE 50+% total – and must be at least 20% higher than Attack Range, Atk Speed, Stun Duration. Rune Secondaries: 30+% Attack Range, avoid movement speed if possible

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Perma-Stun Build, 110+% Stun Duration (Dazed, 3xPrimaries), 57.5+% APS (Swift, 4-5xPrimaries), 50+% AOE (Splash, 1-2xPrimaries), 48+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Backline Stun Build, 90+% Stun Duration (Dazed, 2xPrimaries – can do more AOE instead of APS primaries to hit farther back heroes), 17.5+% APS (Swift), 235+% AOE (Splash, 7xPrimaries – hits 750 ranged heroes), 48+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Arena Shop

Base Stats: 38 ATK, 38 DPS, 1.0 APS, 210 HP, 8 Def, 320 Attack Range, 180 Movement Speed

Monki King, aka MK, is the best Fire stager as he has one of the fastest movement speeds of any Fire hero, an aoe sp2, and a team buff that increases his attack speed, which helps him tear through opponents quickly. He’s also the best Early to Late game Crowd Control hero out there, so he’s very useful in PVP. I spend a lot of time in the questions section of the CTA Discord, and often get asked to help people build their arena team. I always recommend Monki King to newer players for his sp2. His sp2 is an aoe that has a high chance to stun. The tool tip doesn’t explicitly say what his sp2 does, I’m of the opinion that it is a 100% stun unless it’s dodge or resisted. Some people say that he attacks 7 times, with his natural 30% stun chance, this works out to a 91.8% stun chance. Either way, it’s very high, and without runes it will stun the entire front line. With aoe runes, you can stun some back line heroes too.

Early on, most people don’t have attack range secondaries on MK, and aoe gunners can hit him if they have some AOE buffs. I recommend getting a Vitality set for survival, then buffing his sp2. Swift gets more frequent sp2s, splash increases his aoe to help stun backline heroes, and dazed increases his stun duration, so pick 2 of those 3. Late game, you can get attack range, and use that for survivability. With that, you can just use swift, splash, and dazed. You’ll need your aoe to be at least 20% higher than Attack Range. I have heard of a Xak/MK team that doesn’t use Attack Range, but tries to stun lock the opponent. When it works, it’s great, and when it doesn’t, those two slots were just wasted, but there are some people who pull it off well. If you use both Xak and Monki King, you have to be careful that Monki King does not outrun your tanks, as Xak increases movement speed.

Monki Merry

PVP Tier

A Tier – Decent buff, decent sp2, somewhat difficult to built

Primary Use

PVP: Mid to Late game aoe gunner dps.

2 Star Skill

Magic Gifts gives a random buff, either Atk up 100%, Atk Speed up 100%, or Dodge up 50%, to three heroes (buffs can be different). Atk up 100% is really 2x, it doesn’t add to runes/auras. Cannot buff self. At 2 star, the buffs last 3s, and increase 1s per star up to 8s at 7 star.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

6% Resist – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Fire teams

Rune Sets

Late Runes Sets: Swift, Frenzy, then 3 random runes with aps primaries. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 56.3% to get to 750 range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 12.5+% Frenzy Chance (Frenzy), 100+% APS (9xPrimaries), 70+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Christmas Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 50.4 ATK, 42 DPS, 0.833 APS, 420 HP, 10 Def, 480 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Monki Merry is the Christmas 2020 event hero. Lycan was the first hero whose main job is to buff/debuff with his sp2, and Merry is the next. The whole point of Merry is to dish out buffs. Atk will help your dps heroes. APS will help dps and CC heroes. Dodge helps mainly your tanks, but will help all with survivability. You want to get as many sp2s as possible to buff your team.

For runes, Monki Merry needs attack speed! This comes from Swift, APS primaries, and frenzy. More speed means more buffs.

Monki Mortar

PVP Tier

A Tier – Decent buff, Good DPS, somewhat difficult to built

Primary Use

PVP: Dark Team Buffer. Mid to Late game aoe gunner dps.

2 Star Skill

Shoots a big bomb that lands behind the target dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 150 dealing 4.15x damage which is reduced by aoe decay.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Dark 400% ATK – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Dark Hunter, Sorrow, Skeleton Giant, Dragon Bot, Vlad

Rune Sets

Late Runes Sets: Damage, then two of: Swift, Rage, or Precise Sets. Rune Primaries: 30-50% AOE, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 85.2% to get to 750 range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 200+% Crit Damage (Rage, Primaries, Secondaries), 300+% Atk (Damage, Primaries, Secondaries), 50+% Atk Speed (Primaries), 30+% AOE (Primaries), 96+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Dark Hero Chest, Sorrow Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 42 ATK, 35 DPS, 0.833 APS, 230 HP, 6 Def, 405 Attack Range, 170 Movement Speed

Monki Mortar is tied with Scud as the highest base damage AOE gunner (ignoring Torch). He also buffs Dark Attack, and Dark is a very popular element. Where other elemental buffers are downplayed because they’re not universal buffers, Monki Mortar is still great because of the number of great Dark heroes. There are some all Dark Arena teams out there, but many still have 5 or more dark heroes, so Monki Mortar would buff half of your team. He’s not a must have, but he can be useful to a lot of teams if you’re going Dark.

For runes, Monki Mortar is going the basic dps set with three of: Damage, Swift, Rage, or Precise. He’ll want 30-50% AOE from his primaries to hit the full front line and possible Monki Kings/other front line flying heroes. The rest of the recommended primaries will be attack, attack speed, and critical damage. Later on he will need Attack Range to stay out of the front line AOE smashers.

Monki Roboti

PVP Tier

A Tier – Great buff, Great DPS, somewhat difficult to built

Primary Use

PVP: Buffer.

2 Star Skill

Big boom smashes the ground dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 350 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 400% ATK – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Everyone

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Vitality. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed is nice

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 100+% Crit Damage (Secondaries), 150+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 80+% Atk Speed (Primaries), 200+% HP (Vitality, Primaries), 48+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Lucky Spin Chest

Base Stats: 64.9 ATK, 50 DPS, 0.77 APS, 450 HP, 20 Def, 165 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Monki Robot is a unique hero as you can only get medals for him from the Lucky Spin Chests. He has a universal attack buff, which is very good. He doesn’t have the base dps of some of the other brawlers, but has more HP than those, so he has decent survivability. I generally prefer Onyx and Scud as my universal buffers in Arena, but if you’re starting with Spike, you can use him, as he’d get other Light buffs. I do use Monki Robot every GW though, his universal buff is very valuable in a 2nd or 3rd GW team. He’s also very good in Blitz.

Monki Robot is mostly used for his buff, so I just give him a Vitality set so he can survive longer, and help tank if I don’t have a higher star Siegfried or Spike in a Light Blitz team. You may decide you don’t need to give him runes and just use him for his buff.

Musashi

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Piercing Hit attacks one hero dealing 5x damage

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 25% Movement Speed – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Leaf blitz teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Earth Hero Chest

Base Stats: 50 ATK, 50 DPS, 1.0 APS, 300 HP, 8 Def, 150 Attack Range, 170 Movement Speed

Musashi buffs Earth movement speed. His stats aren’t that great, so I just use him to buff other Earth heroes in Blitz.

Namida

PVP Tier

S Tier – Great buff, Great CC, Great DPS in freeze explosion teams

Primary Use

PVP: Crowd Control.

2 Star Skill

Bubble Rockets shoots a missile at each of the three farthest back opponent heroes dealing 1.08x damage per missile. Each hero hit will have slowdown applied to them, slowing their movement speed, aps, and any timed sp2s for 5s. The amount slowed down is based on star, it starts with a 0.6 multiplier at 2 star, and decreases by 0.05 for every star above that.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 200% ATK Debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Akwa, Frost Queen

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Swift, Chilling, Stunning – Optional splash if you don’t have decent stunning runes. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed – Most important, AOE. Rune Secondaries: Some Attack Range is nice

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Solo Crowd Control Build, 12.5+% Freeze Rate (Chilling), 90+% Atk Speed (Swift, Primaries), 30+% AOE (Primaries), 12.5+% Stun Rate (Stunning), 50+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Paired with Frost Queen, 12.5+% Freeze Rate (Chilling), 70+% Atk Speed (Swift, 6-7xPrimaries), 60+% AOE (2-3xPrimaries), 200+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries) or 12.5+% Stun Rate (Stunning), 50+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Blitz Chest, Blitz Rewards

Base Stats: 30 ATK, 25 DPS, 0.833 APS, 320 HP, 6 Def, 415 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Namida is a relatively new Blitz hero and has great crowd control. Her sp2 attacks 3 back line heroes and slows them. She is also an aoe gunner, so she attacks the whole front line. Many people add chilling to her to crowd control both the front line and back line. She also debuffs opponents Water damage, which is quite useful against some freeze builds that use a lot of Water heroes. She also flies, which makes it quite difficult to kill her without going through the tanks first. Many regard her as the 2nd or 3rd best Blitz hero, so she is very useful.

While Namida could be built to do damage, most build her for crowd control, as there are many Earth tanks that Namida would be weak to. She normally uses Chilling, Swift, and Stunning sets to get as much crowd control as possible. Attack speed is the most important primary, but some AOE can be helpful too. It’s worth noting, when paired with Frost Queen, Freeze Explosions caused by Namida can cause stun, if she has stunning runes.

Natura

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Piercing attacks one time attacking all heroes in a line with a fixed aoe radius of 300, dealing 5x damage to each enemy hit. I’m not sure if this has an aoe decay or not

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 400% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Earth Hero Chest

Base Stats: 51 ATK, 34 DPS, 0.667 APS, 440 HP, 12 Def, 240 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Natura buffs Earth Def, which isn’t a good reason to use her in Arena. There are 4 better Earth tanks to tank in Blitz, so I don’t use her as a Blitz tank. I just use her in Blitz as a filler.

Necromancer

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Summon Skeletons summons either a Skeleton Infantry, Skeleton Archer, Skeleton Giant, and Chaos every 10s. His current rates of summoning are 10 in 21 will be Skeleton Archers, 6 in 21 will be Skeleton Infantry, 4 in 21 will be Skeleton Giants, and 1 in 21 will be Chaos. If Chaos is summoned, his team buff does not get added.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Skeletons get 200% HP/ATK/Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Skeleton Giant, Chaos

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: (possibly?), 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise) or Dodge Rate (Nimble), 250+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 400+% Atk (Damage, Primaries, Secondaries), 30+% APS (Primaries), 50+% AOE (Primaries) – need about 2x the aoe as attack range, 20+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Blitz Chest, Blitz Rewards

Base Stats: 57 ATK, 38 DPS, 0.667 APS, 250 HP, 15 Def, 605 Attack Range, 130 Movement Speed

Necro is a really cool hero, and with the July 2020 update, he is no longer horrible. He spawns Skeleton Infantry, Skeleton Archer, Skeleton Giant, and Chaos heroes. The update decreased the rate of Skeleton Infantry, and removed a weaker version of Skeleton Archer. His current rates of summoning are 10 in 21 will be Skeleton Archers, 6 in 21 will be Skeleton Infantry, 4 in 21 will be Skeleton Giants, and 1 in 21 will be Chaos. Being a Blitz hero, he is quite expensive to get to 7 star. With this buff, I may give him 3 runes for fun, but I’ll just use him as a Blitz filler, and for his 20% Blitz bonus during his week.

Neko

PVP Tier

B Tier – Poor buff, Great DPS if can stay alive, very difficult to built, very much a niche hero for all dark speed teams

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Neko combo attacks one hero 5 times dealing 1x damage each hit. Neko’s combo counter increases with each hit, but all hits use the combo at the start of the sp2

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Dark 25% Movement Speed – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Dark teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Dark Hero Chest, Seraph Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 80 ATK, 80 DPS, 1.0 APS, 300 HP, 20 Def, 175 Attack Range, 180 Movement Speed

Neko has the highest base dps of any hero, and highest damage potential with her brawler combo. She buffs Dark movement speed, which is useful in some primarily Dark builds. She has very low HP and low attack range, so her survivability is low. Unlike samurai, who also have high base dps, she does not dodge AOE, so even if she does get behind a tank, she will still likely die. I just use her as a Blitz filler, with no runes.

Oceana

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multicast attacks three times for a total of 5x damage to one opponent.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 100% HP – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Water Hero Chest, Groovine Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 48 ATK, 40 DPS, 0.833 APS, 360 HP, 8 Def, 480 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Oceana competes against Fire Monk as the worst rare heroes in the game. You’ll only use her as a blitz filler. Her team buff is HP, and team buffs do not get the 10x multiplier in PvP that base HP and runes get. This makes it useless.

One Eye

PVP Tier

B Tier – Great buff, Poor DPS

Primary Use

PVP and PVE: Attack Speed Buffer. Guild Slay Event: Crusher – Hitter.

2 Star Skill

Ninja storm attacks 5 times dealing 1x per hit to one opponent.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Light 10% APS – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Tesla

Rune Sets

Crusher – Hitter Runes Sets: Swift, Precise, Frenzy. Rune Primaries: Crit Dmg, Atk Speed. Rune Secondaries: Nothing Specific

Early Buffer Runes Sets: Vitality. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range is nice

Late Buffer/DPS Runes Sets: Vitality, then two of: Swift, Damage, Rage, Precise. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range – Base of 120, whatever is required to stay behind your front line tanks

Unlock From

One Eye Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 32 ATK, 32 DPS, 1.0 APS, 480 HP, 8 Def, 120 Attack Range, 220 Movement Speed

One Eye, aka OE, is a niche hero. He buffs Light attack speed, so he’s used in primarily Light teams. As a crusher, he does great damage to Gun Lord. He doesn’t have great survivability against him though, since GL will do 2x damage to OE. OE has decent HP for a non-tank class, so if he can get behind a tank, he will have decent survivability.

The different rune combinations are above. OE doesn’t really need runes, unless you’re going to be a hitter or you have a specific build that you need OE.

Onyx

PVP Tier

A Tier – Great buff, Mediocre smasher

Primary Use

PVP: Early to end game Buffer. Mid to End game front line aoe smasher.

2 Star Skill

Smash Attack jumps and smashes the ground dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 350 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 400% Atk – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Everyone

Rune Sets

Runes Sets:Vitality for survival, Damage then one of: Nimble, Swift, Rage, or Precise Sets. Rune Primaries: AOE, HP, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range to stay behind your tank

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 350+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 200+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 200+% AOE (Primaries), 40+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Dark Hero Chest, Atlantus Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 108 ATK, 54 DPS, 0.5 APS, 300 HP, 12 Def, 250 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Onyx is a great hero that doesn’t seem to get enough recognition because she’s slightly worse than Scud. A lot of teams use her in the end game (L2+), as she has a great buff, and forces opponents to have attack range on all their backline heroes. She doesn’t have the survivability as a properly runed Scud, who will not be in range for most AOE attacks. If you are doing primarily dark dungeons and buying Atlantus Crusher Chests, your Onyx won’t lag too far behind Scud in star.

Onyx doesn’t need runes early on, as she will die quickly no matter what runes you give her. Once she has caught up in star, you can give her runes so she can contribute. Vitality is a must for survivability. Nimble will also help with survivability, if that’s what you want. The other option is to focus more on damage, by giving her 2 dps rune sets instead of 1. Damage, Swift, Rage, and Precise all help with damage. It’s probably best to give her HP primaries early on, again for survivability. Later on AOE, Atk, Atk Speed, and Crit Damage can all be used to prove her with more dps, but you may still want some HP primaries too.

Ornok

PVP Tier

S Tier – Best or second best tank in the game

Primary Use

PVP: End game Tank

2 Star Skill

Shield Power Force pushes back nearby heroes and deals aoe damage with a base radius of 300 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 300% Knight Shield HP – per star above 3 star(reduced by PVP multipliers)

Synergizes With

Everyone, Leaf Blade, Paladin

Rune Sets

Runes Sets:Vitality, Nimble, and one of: Guard, Phalanx. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed and Def are nice, try to avoid attack range

Unlock From

Legendary Chest

Base Stats: 76.8 ATK, 64 DPS, 0.833 APS, 500 HP, 35 Def, 150 Attack Range, 110 Movement Speed

Ornok is arguably the best tank in the game. He’s about 6th in baseline health if you combine health and his knight shield, and second in def. Paladin is the only hero that beats Ornok in both stats. Where Ornok trumps Paladin is the elemental weakness. Currently there is only one end game Light dps hero (Tesla) and one late game Light dps hero (Siegfried), where there are many end game Dark dps heroes (Vlad, DH, trickster) and many late game Dark dps heroes (Sorrow, Monki Mortar, and Onyx). The downside with Ornok is that he is extremely difficult to obtain at high star. Many whales that have been playing for years do not have him at 7 star yet. Most f2p will only use Ornok in Tier 1 blitz. Ornok’s buff is for knight shields (another reason why Ornok is great), so for that purpose only, some people start using him at 5 star. At 7 star, his buff increases shields by 1200%, which basically doubles any knights total health (HP + Shield).

For runes, it only matters for end game. Vitality is a must, but the other two, I’m not sure about. The options are: Phalanx, Guard, and Nimble. All sets in HP primaries. Since most people who build this are whales, they can also be picky with secondaries. You’ll want Def and movement speed secondaries. You probably want them all to have Def, and some to also have movement speed. Movement speed is great to nerf the opponent’s attack range. If you push their tank back a bit, their DPS may be stuck at the crystal, which may be closer than their attack range.

I did some analysis with perfect 6 star runes with Ornok versus Tesla, who is the Onok killer due to being a Light hero. Tesla has Damage, Precise, and Rage sets with all aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. Ornok has a few options for his sets, all used HP primaries and Def Secondaries, except the last case which used Def primaries and HP secondaries. I used all 7 star buffers. Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx sets gave Ornok the highest survivability. This is good news, as it doesn’t depend on Guard, which could mean there could have been a different best configuration against Scud, or another gunner. I did switch the attacker to Scud, without changing runes, to verify this was still the best. The fourth option shows how much better HP is than Def: All Def primaries will die twice as fast as All HP primaries.

Paladin

PVP Tier

A Tier – Great buff, Great tank, except for element

Primary Use

PVP: End game Tank

2 Star Skill

Angel Barrier creates a dome for 8s healing everyone inside for 1% of Paladin’s Max HP each second.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 25% Negative Buff debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Ornok

Rune Sets

Runes Sets:Vitality two of: Phalanx, Guard, Nimble. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed or attack range depending on the team, avoid the other one. Def is nice to have

Unlock From

Blitz Chest, Blitz Rewards

Base Stats: 35 ATK, 35 DPS, 1.0 APS, 550 HP, 40 Def, 150 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Paladin is one of the best tanks out there. He has great survivability between his HP, knight shield, Def, and healing sp2. His weakness is the elemental weakness to Dark dps heroes. Depending on when you add him to your team he has to worry about Vlad, DH, Trickster, Sorrow, Monki Mortar, and Onyx. If you place him behind another tank, he can be a very good supporting tank with his heal.

For runes, he only has one build with a few variations. He’s a tank, so he requires the Vitality set. Phalanx, Guard, and Nimble all would help also. He requires HP primaries. Def secondaries are nice. If Paladin is supporting Ornok or another tank, then you want Paladin behind that tank, so you would want to give him attack range, and avoid movement speed. If Paladin is your main tank, then you would want movement speed, and avoid attack range.

Petunia

PVP Tier

B Tier – Poor buff, interesting CC, mainly used early game

Primary Use

PVP: Early Game Crowd control, Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Every 6s, turns a random hero into a frog, removing that heroes def and preventing it from attacking. The duration of the frog is 7s plus 1s per star above 2 star

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 500% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Earth Hero Chest

Base Stats: 90 ATK, 45 DPS, 0.5 APS, 300 HP, 16 Def, 405 Attack Range, 180 Movement Speed

Petunia has a very fun sp2 called Frogify, that turns opponents into Frogs. It happens every 6s, so it is not affected by attack speed. She can be added early on to help slow down the opponent’s attack, but she doesn’t need runes to do this. Later on, her crowd control doesn’t hold up to buffers and better crowd control heroes. Then she becomes a blitz filler, and maybe used in GW.

Pinky

PVP Tier

D Tier – Bad buff, bad DPS. Has no use.

Primary Use

Stager

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks 4 times to one opponent for a total of 5x damage

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Rogue 200% Atk/HP/Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Lunar New Year Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 42 ATK, 42 DPS, 1.0 APS, 200 HP, 12 Def, 120 Attack Range, 230 Movement Speed

Pinky is a fast Earth hero with a movement speed buff, so he is primarily used for staging. He’s the best Earth hero for staging. Other than that he only has use as a Blitz filler. You can give him frenzy to speed up staging, but runes are not required for this hero.

Pirato

PVP Tier

B Tier – Good buff, mediocre DPS

Primary Use

PVP: Water Atk Buffer. Mid Game: Freeze or DPS

2 Star Skill

Shoots a big bomb that lands behind the target dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 150 dealing 4.15x damage which is reduced by aoe decay.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 400% Atk – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Water teams

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets:Don’t spend many materials until late game

Late Freeze Build Runes Sets: Chilling, Swift, Precise. Rune Primaries: 30-50% AOE, Atk Speed, Atk, Crt Dmg. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 83.8% to get to 750 range

Target End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 200+% Crit Damage (Rage, Primaries, Secondaries), 300+% Atk (Damage, Primaries, Secondaries), 50+% Atk Speed (Primaries), 30+% AOE (Primaries), 96+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Water Hero Chest, Atlantus Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 33.6 ATK, 28 DPS, 0.833 APS, 200 HP, 6 Def, 420 Attack Range, 180 Movement Speed

Pirato is a great hero that is out of the current meta. There are many Gladiator and Leaf Blade tanks out there, Earth heroes that are resistant to Water and therefore to Pirato. He can be found in some Freeze Explode builds, but generally isn’t used as much as he would be without the Earth tanks dominating the meta. For example, he has better base attack and better attack range than misty, but misty is higher tier, because she’s not water. He buffs Water Attack, so he can be paired with Atlantus.

To work with the freeze explode team, Pirato uses Chilling, Swift and Precise. He needs some AOE to hit Monki King with low attack range buffs. Attack speed is next important, the faster he attacks, the more he will freeze. Attack and Crit Damage are also useful. He needs a lot of range to avoid front line AOE smashers, but since this is a freeze build, if you can keep their front line frozen, they won’t get an AOE off.

PumpKing

PVP Tier

A Tier – Buff useless except for very specific team compositions. Great smasher potential. Niche hero.

Primary Use

PVP: Late game Front Line AOE Smasher

2 Star Skill

Poisonous Spurt is a spew attack dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 440 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay. Each enemy hit has a 30% chance to deal 1.2 ATK*base_aps for 5 seconds. This attack appears to be unidirectional, meaning it won’t hit opponents behind the attack

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

50% DMG from Poison – per star above 3 star- this is applied after %ATK is applied (so it multiplies, not adds with it)

Synergizes With

Clawdette, Thorn, Misty

Rune Sets

Late PVP Runes Sets: Vitality and Damage, then one of the following: Precise, Swift, Rage, Poisonous, Blight. Rune Primaries: A total of 50%-150% AOE, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Dmg. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range – Base of 220, whatever is required to stay behind your front line tanks

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 20+% Poison Chance (Poisonous), 300+% HP (Vitality, 1xPrimaries, Secondaries), 350+% Atk (Damage, 2-3xPrimaries, Secondaries), 120+% AOE (4-5xPrimaries), 72+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Halloween Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 48 ATK, 40 DPS, 0.833 APS, 550 HP, 20 Def, 220 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

PumpKing is a Halloween event hero that has the largest AOE in the game with his sp2 at 440. He also buffs poison damage, which does get the Arena/Blitz/GW multiplier applied to it. He’s ranked B Tier in the PVP tier list. I’m not sure we haven’t found the right team for him. He obviously works well with Misty and Thorn and their poison. If you sit him behind Gladiator or Leaf Blade, he should have plenty of survivability. He is a Barbarian so he’s in the first spawn group, which means a hero would need to pass him if he spawns first. He likely also needs some attack range to stay behind the front line hero. I just use him with 3 piece Vitality set in Blitz. The above is what you could use with him, but since he’s so difficult to get star for, you may have better use of those materials than on PumpKing.

Ra

PVP Tier

B Tier – Niche hero – can be a great tank, but have to build a team around him.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Mini-Sand Storm creates a wave of sand to push back opponent heroes and deal 0.25x damage to each hit. It has a width, so it can miss ground units based on the spawn height of Ra relative to other heroes, but it’s pretty large, and can even hit flying heroes.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Magician 200% HP/Atk/Def- per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Stunning optional – Don’t spend many materials on this hero

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 690+% HP (Vitality, Primaries), 17.5+% Dodge Rate (Nimble), 30+% Movement Speed (Secondaries), <10% Attack Range, ideally 0% (Secondaries), 25+% Resist

Unlock From

Easter Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 57 ATK, 38 DPS, 0.667 APS, 190 HP, 15 Def, 350 Attack Range, 130 Movement Speed

Ra is the Egyptian Sun God. His first form has a sand pushback, which is useful for early game Arena. Once his first form is defeated, he becomes a mummy that has a lot of HP. It’s a fun mechanic, but not a very useful one. I just use him in Blitz as a filler.

Robin Hood

PVP Tier

C Tier – Good buff for leaf, but that’s his only use

Primary Use

Blitz Filler. Guild Slay Event: Crit Buffer

2 Star Skill

Multi Fire shoots five arrows each dealing x1 damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 200% Crit Damage – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Leaf blitz teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Provided near account creation

Base Stats: 30 ATK, 30 DPS, 1.0 APS, 270 HP, 6 Def, 590 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Robin Hood has some use for buffing earth heroes Crit Damage. This is very important for the Guild Slay Event, as critical hits are where most of the damage comes from. It also helps with an earth team in Blitz. Runes aren’t needed for this buff though, so don’t spend many materials on him.

Rufus

PVP Tier

B Tier – Good buff for water , decent 1v1 dps for water

Primary Use

PVP: Late Game Buffer and 1v1 Gunner

2 Star Skill

Large Caliber attacks one hero for 4.15x damage.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 200% Crit Damage – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Water blitz teams

Rune Sets

Late Runes Sets: Damage, then two of: Swift, Precise, Rage. Rune Primaries:Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 74.4% to get to 750 range

Target End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 125+% Crit Damage (Rage, Secondaries), 325+% Atk (Damage, 1xPrimaries, Secondaries), 80+% Attack Speed (8xPrimaries), 84+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Water Hero Chest, Sorrow Crusher Chest, Atlantus Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 48 ATK, 40 DPS, 0.833 APS, 240 HP, 10 Def, 480 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Rufus, the only hero that is in two Crusher Chests. If you buy Crusher Chests, he will be one of your first rare 7 starheroes. Since the July 2020 update, he buffs Water Crit Damage, which allows him to get used in a few teams now. He has good attack for a 1v1 gunner, but he has low attack range, so it’s difficult to keep him alive in PVP. He has potential in water teams and in gunner teams.

For runes, you’ll want the standard DPS set: Damage, Precise, and Rage. Swift can be used if it has good primaries also.

Scud

PVP Tier

S Tier – Great buff, Great DPS

Primary Use

PVP: Early to end game Buffer. End game aoe gunner dps.

2 Star Skill

Shoots an explosive that lands behind the target dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 150 dealing 4.15x damage which is reduced by aoe decay.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Universal 400% Atk – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Everyone

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets:Vitality for survival then two of: Damage, Swift, Rage, or Precise Sets. Rune Primaries: AOE, HP, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Damage, Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, the more the more likely Scud will not be hit by front line AOE

Late Runes Sets: Three of: Damage, Swift, Rage, or Precise Sets. Rune Primaries: 30-50% AOE, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 87.5% to get to 750 range

Unlock From

Fire Hero Chest, Starter Pack, Sorrow Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 42 ATK, 35 DPS, 0.833 APS, 210 HP, 8 Def, 400 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Scud is the best hero you can get from Magic Medals / request from Epic Sunday. Even though you can use Magic Medals on him, you should not use them on Scud. Scud’s 4 star ability is to buff the entire teams Atk, which is extremely useful. As a gunner, Scud will bypass some of the opponent’s Def, which allows him to do great damage. In addition his attacks do aoe damage, so he can hit the entire front line, and with some AOE runes, some of the medium ranged heroes, like Monki King. In the Legendary Arena Leagues, he can be found on almost every team. It is recommended that you request Scud for every Epic Sunday request until you get him to 7 star.

Early on Scud can be added to any PvP team to buff their damage. For an epic, he is the easiest to get to 7 star, because he is in the most popular Crusher Chest. Once Scud is 6 star, he will be able to do damage for your team. His attack range is fairly low, so in order to be out of most aoe range, he will need about 85-90% attack range to survive most Late to End game battles.

Early on, Scud does not really need runes as he will not survive an opponent SG or Spike’s sp2 AOE. I suggest using vitality to keep him alive, so that he has time to do damage. AOE primaries on AOE gunners are nice, so that you are able to kill Monki King behind the front line. This will allow your front line to do more damage, as they won’t be stunned as much. Or it forces Monki King to add range, which degrades his AOE. In the end game, it is common to go up against high Def heroes like Ornok and Paladin, so having a gunner who ignores 96% def is very valuable. Useful primaries to increase his damage are: Atk, Atk Speed, and Crit Damage.

I did some analysis on Scud with perfect 6 star runes, all aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. I considered Ornok, Leaf Blade, and Gladiator, but the order of best to worst did not change based on the defender, or if Spark was used, or if Scud used 1 primary for AOE. For Ornok I used Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx, with HP primaries and Def Secondaries. Ornok had the highest times, due to the lack of elemental weakness to fire. I used all 7 starbuffers. For Ornok, below are the results without using Spark as a defender. Scud will do the most damage with Damage, Rage, and Precise sets. Below are the results.

Ser Shu

PVP Tier

A/S Tier – Mediocre buff, Great CC, stun immune, 2x damage to dark backline if built correctly

Primary Use

PVP: Crowd Control

2 Star Skill

Spear Charge jousts the opponent dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 400 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay. Each opponent hit gets an attack debuff for 4s and is stunned for 2s. The attack debuff starts at 10%, and increases for higher star

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Lancer 3% Atk Range – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Vitality and two of: swift, splash, dazed. Rune Primaries: AOE 50+% total – and must be at least as high as Attack Range, Atk Speed, Stun Duration. Rune Secondaries: 25+% Attack Range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Damage Build, 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 300+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 250+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 150+% AOE (Primaries), 40+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Perma-Stun Build, 110+% Stun Duration (Dazed, 3xPrimaries), 67.5+% APS (Swift, 5xPrimaries), 50+% AOE (Splash, 1xPrimaries), 48+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Backline Stun Build, 110+% Stun Duration (Dazed, 3xPrimaries), 37.5+% APS (Swift), 200+% AOE (Splash, 6xPrimaries), 48+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Lunar New Year Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 42 ATK, 30 DPS, 0.714 APS, 430 HP, 32 Def, 340 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Ser Shu is basically Monki King, but on the ground. Flying is one of the best aspects to Monki King, it helps so much with survivability, and Ser Shu doesn’t have that. She does have more base HP, which helps, but it means she will need higher star for survival. She buffs Lancer Attack range, which can help Monki King, Onyx, and Atlantus, but it’s only 3% per star, so it’s not that great. Her sp2 stuns and debuffs attack (the debuff increases with star), which is nice, but later on, most of the dps is coming from the back line, which would require about 100% AOE.

For runes Ser Shu need a Vitality set for survival, and two of: Swift, Splash, Dazed. Splash is the worst one, so if you have good runes of the others, skip Splash. AOE, attack speed, and stun duration are the desired primaries. You’ll need some attack range to avoid being hit by aoe gunners, how much you’ll need depends on how much attack range your tank has. Attack range nerfs some of the AOE, so the more attack range you get, the more AOE you’ll need.

Seraph

PVP Tier

S Tier – Good buff, Good DPS, gets elemental advantage over Ornok

Primary Use

PVP: Buffer and DPS

2 Star Skill

Multi Fire shoots dark or light arrows (depending on which is most effective against her target) each dealing x1 damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

400% Ranger Attack – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Alda, Dark Hunter, Valkyrie

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Three of: Damage, Swift, Precise, Rage. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 44.2% to get to 750 range

Unlock From

Seraph Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 38 ATK, 38 DPS, 1.0 APS, 250 HP, 6 Def, 520 Attack Range, 120 Movement Speed

Seraph was just introduced in October of 2020 as the newest Crusher. She buffs all ranger atk, which then buffs her own damage. Once she gets to 6 star, she will start doing great damage for your team. Her unique ability is to change her attack between Light and Dark depending on her target. Since her Crusher Chests are very good, it’s generally best if you buy more of these than other Crusher Chests. This allows her to get to 6 starfairly quickly. Her Crusher Chest also contains Alda, Kage, and Dark Hunter, which are very good together in an Arena team. Late game she excels as she starts facing Ornok, and can use her elemental ability to her advantage. She has a decent base dps, and with her high base attack range and flying, she is easy to keep alive, and you do a lot more dps while alive than while dead.

Seraph is all about the dps, so it’s best to use the rune sets that increase damage: Damage, Swift, Precise, and Rage. Since she buffs her own atk, Damage becomes less effective later on. If you add Valkyrie and Alda, then Rage might also become less effective. The best rune sets are going to depend on what your team is, and how many star they have. Seraph has fairly high base attack range, so she only needs a little to avoid the front line AOE smashers. That makes her fairly easy to build, as attack range can be difficult to find.

I did some analysis on Seraph with perfect 5 star runes, all aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. For Ornok I used Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx, with HP primaries and Def Secondaries. I used all 7 star buffers. Seraph will do the most damage with Damage, Rage, and Precise sets. Below are the results.

Shelly

PVP Tier

S Tier – Great debuff, Good to great Tank/Smasher

Primary Use

PVP: Tank or Smasher

2 Star Skill

Heavy Blow smashes the ground dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 350 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay. The amount of damage done creates a shield to protect Shelly. Each hero hit has a 30% chance to be stunned for 2s. The shield accumulates health up to a maximum of 30% of Shelly’s total HP.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

100% Crit Damage Debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Everyone

Rune Sets

Tank Runes Sets: Vitality, Nimble and either guard, resist, Damage or Swift. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed and Def are nice, avoid atk range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Tank, 690+% HP (Vitality, Primaries), 200+% Def (Guard, Secondaries), 17.5+% Dodge Rate (Nimble), 18+% Movement Speed (Secondaries), <10% Attack Range, ideally 0% (Secondaries)

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Smasher, 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 300+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 250+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 200+% AOE (Primaries), 60+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Crusade Shop, Fire Hero Chest

Base Stats: 57.6 ATK, 48 DPS, 0.833 APS, 700 HP, 25 Def, 170 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

Shelly was just introduced in December of 2020 as the newest Epic Hero. She is in the Crusade shop, so will be easy to obtain, and somewhat easy to get higher stars on. The great thing about Shelly is her amazing debuff, which only affects the bonus damage. This means crits will always do more damage than normal attacks. It’s interesting that Shelly’s buff gets better the better your opponents are. In Diamond arena, it may not be that great. But in Legendary 3, I will guess it will be mandatory in a few months. Below is a chart about how much Shelly affects late game teams. (L1-2 0 Crit Sis team is mine, the other two are fictional)

Shelly can be built as a pure tank or as a smasher. She has 170 base range, which isn’t really ideal for either. You’d want less for a tank and more for a smasher. Since her sp2/smash gives a shield, she will have great survivability built as a smasher. The only risk is she will be more prone to CC as she has low range. If she doesn’t get her smash off, she won’t get a shield.

If you go the pure tank route, you’ll need Vitality, Guard, and Nimble rune sets with HP primaries. Movement speed and Def are great if you can be picky.

For smasher, Shelly needs Vitality, then two of: Damage, Rage, Precise, and Swift. She needs at least 100% AOE early on, and up to 200% later on. 100% gets 700 range, where 150% gets 875 range. Most people aim for 750 range, when they can afford it, so 100% will take care of any hero with only some attack range.

Siegfried

PVP Tier

A Tier – Poor buff, Great smasher against dark backline heroes

Primary Use

PVP: Mid to Late game front line AOE smasher.

2 Star Skill

Shockwave Stomp smashes the ground dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 350 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Self 200% HP – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Late PVP Runes Sets: Vitality and Damage then one of: Rage, Precise, Swift. Rune Primaries: A total of 90-150% AOE, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Dmg, HP. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range – Base of 200, whatever is required to stay behind your front line tanks

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 300+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 250+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 200+% AOE (Primaries), 40+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Light Hero Chest

Base Stats: 38.4 ATK, 32 DPS, 0.833 APS, 780 HP, 14 Def, 200 Attack Range, 125 Movement Speed

While Siegfried is out of the current meta, he can still do significant AOE damage with his sp2. There are so many good Dark dps heroes, and this makes it risky to run Siegfried. If he’s in the front, he will melt against many Late game teams. If you give him ~100% AOE, and he lives long enough to get his sp2 off, he can destroy the back line, especially if it has dark heroes, which again a lot of teams use. His “team” buff is HP, and only affects himself. It does not get the 10x multiplier in PVP, so while not useless, isn’t as good as it seems.

For runes, Siegfried needs Vitality, then two of: Damage, Rage, Precise, and Swift. He needs ~100% AOE, I personally use 170% AOE, and get quite close to the opponent’s crystal. 100% gets 700 range, where 150% gets 875 range. Most people aim for 750 range, when they can afford it, so 100% will take care of any hero with only some attack range. Very few people will get more than 875 range, so 170% makes sure I hit everyone.

Skeleton Giant

PVP Tier

B Tier – Great front line dps early game, no buff

Primary Use

PVP: Early game Tank. Early to Mid game front line AOE smasher.

2 Star Skill

Shockwave Stomp smashes the ground dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 350 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Damage Then Vitality sets then one of: Swift, Rage, or Precise Sets. Splash set if you are desperate for AOE. Rune Primaries: A total of 70-150% AOE, HP, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Nothing specific.

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 300+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 250+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 200+% AOE (Primaries), 40+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 90 ATK, 45 DPS, 0.5 APS, 380 HP, 20 Def, 220 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

Arguably the best starting hero in the game. Commonly referred to SG. SG is very useful in all PvP aspects until late game (commons fall off around the Diamond 3 / Legendary 1 arena level), where commons cannot compete against rare and epic heroes. As a common, it is easy to get SG to 7 star by requesting medals in the guild, medals from daily dungeons, and Magic Medals. Because of the exponential aspect of evolving and awakening, by focusing on SG, he can be your best hero very quickly, and hold this rank for months. He will be useful past the one year mark for most people.

SG has enough HP to survive being on the front line, but he really shines with his damage. He has the highest damage and damage per second of any common tank. His sp2 is an aoe that can decimate entire teams. Most guides recommend focusing on dark daily dungeons, and that works out really well with SG, and heroes that buff SG. Most guides also recommend focusing on Sorrow’s Crusher Chest, and 4 out of those 6 heroes work great with SG. For these reasons, SG could be the best starting hero.

While SG is your best hero, it’s best to build your arena team around SG. You will want 5-7 buffers/debuffers and 2-4 crowd control heroes. Buffers/debuffers must be 4to activate their buff. Most crowd control heroes use their sp2, so they need to be 2 or higher. Useful buffers include: Scud, Onyx, Monki Robot, Monki Mortar, Valkyrie, and Alda. Useful debuffers include: Dark Hunter (DH), Kage, Kasumi, and Vlad. Useful crowd control include: Monki King, Namida, Circe, Frost Queen, Xak, Goddess, Ra, Petunia, Bungun, Ser Shu, Trickster, Valkyrie, anyone with stunning, or any water with chilling.

For runes it depends on how far you’ve progressed. Just starting out, it’s important to get to weapon level 3. I recommend using the Damage set, but the Vitality set can also be useful. Starting off the set is more important than the stats, but you’re looking for HP, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Dmg, and AOE primary stats. Once you get to weapon level 6, you will want to use the Damage set and Vitality sets, you should have plenty of both by this time. Runes with AOE primaries become more important. Eventually you’ll want about 100% aoe so you can hit backline heroes. When you reach weapon level 9, it will depend on what runes you have. If you’re low on aoe, you can add splash runes. If you have enough AOE, or have some in the following sets, it’s best to use one of the following: Swift, Precise, or Rage.

As your arena team builds up, SG will remain as a front line AOE dps hero. Once you get a couple 5 star damage buffers, the damage set is no longer required. You will want the Vitality set and two of the following sets: damage, swift, precise, and rage. You will still want 100% aoe to hit their back line heroes. Other useful primaries include HP, Atk, Atk Speed, and Crit Dmg.

Skeleton Infantry

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS/HP for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks seven times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 30 ATK, 30 DPS, 1.0 APS, 300 HP, 6 Def, 160 Attack Range, 200 Movement Speed

Skeleton Infantry is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities. After maxing SG, Spike, Dragon Bot, and Bat, it’s good to max Skeleton Infantry and Skeleton Ranger, so that you will only get rare and epic heroes in the Dark dungeon.

Skeleton Ranger

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS/HP for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks five times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 30 ATK, 30 DPS, 1.0 APS, 300 HP, 6 Def, 160 Attack Range, 200 Movement Speed

Skeleton Range is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities. After maxing SG, Spike, Dragon Bot, and Bat, it’s good to max Skeleton Infantry and Skeleton Ranger, so that you will only get rare and epic heroes in the Dark dungeon.

Snowman

PVP Tier

B Tier – Great buff, Mediocre DPS, can be great in freeze explode teams

Primary Use

End Game: Freeze Crowd Control

2 Star Skill

Creates a giant snowball that rolls across the field, dealing 0.5x damage to everyone and lowering the def to all enemies hit

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Water 400% ATK – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Water blitz teams and freeze teams

Rune Sets

Late Freeze Build Runes Sets: Chilling, Swift, then one of: vitality (if you have low attack range), rage, precise, damage, splash. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 70.5% to get to 750 range

Unlock From

Christmas Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 30 ATK, 30 DPS, 1.0 APS, 280 HP, 11 Def, 400 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Snowman is a fun hero that was introduced over Christmas of 2019. His sp2 rolls out a giant snowball that lowers opponent Def by 50%. This can be really good later on against heroes like Ornok, Paladin, and even Glad. If you attach chilling to him, he will then have a chance to freeze each of the heroes his snowball hits. He buffs Water attack, which is nice in the freeze build, and can help heroes like Atlantus. A fun quirk to snowman is the hero that kills him gets turned into a stationary snowman for a time. This can be useful early on when people are building teams around one front line AOE smasher (like SG or Spike).

Most use Snowman for Freeze crowd control, and for that you’ll want Chilling and Swift. The third depends on how strong your Snowman is and what runes you have. If he’s fairly low star, you can give him Vitality for survival. For high star, it’s mostly precise for dps.

Sorrow

PVP Tier

A Tier – Good buff, Good DPS, easy to build, great starter hero

Primary Use

PVP: Mid to Late Game DPS

2 Star Skill

Fatal Weakness shoots a bullet at the weakest enemy and stuns them, dealing 5x damage

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Gunner 400% ATK – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Gunners and dark teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Damage, then two of: Swift, Precise, Rage. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 21.0% to get to 750 range

Target End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 200+% Crit Damage (Rage, Secondaries), 250+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 90+% Atk Speed (9x Primaries), 35+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Sorrow Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 70 ATK, 35 DPS, 0.5 APS, 350 HP, 16 Def, 620 Attack Range, 180 Movement Speed

Sorrow is the favorite Crusher for PVP. She buffs all gunner atk, which then buffs her own damage. Once she gets to 6 star, she will start doing great damage for your team. As a gunner, she ignores 96% of the opponent’s Def, which can be important. Her sp2 has a stun, while useful, it’s not nearly as important as the damage she does. Since her Crusher Chests are very good, it’s generally best if you buy more of these than other Crusher Chests. This allows her to get to 6 star fairly quickly. Her Crusher Chest also contains Monki Mortar, Scud, and Dark Hunter, which are very good together in an Arena team. Late game she fades out as more difficult heroes to build can out damage her, such as Thorn and Tesla. She has a decent base dps, and with her high base attack range, she is easy to keep alive, and you do a lot more dps while alive than while dead.

Sorrow is all about the dps, so it’s best to use the rune sets that increase damage: Damage, Swift, Precise, and Rage. Since she buffs her own atk, Damage becomes less effective later on. If you add Valkyrie and Alda, then Rage might also become less effective. The best rune sets are going to depend on what your team is, and how many star they have. Sorrow has very high base attack range, so she only needs a little to avoid the front line AOE smashers. That makes her fairly easy to build, as attack range can be difficult to find.

I did some analysis on Sorrow with perfect 6 star runes, all aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. For Ornok I used Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx, with HP primaries and Def Secondaries. I used all 7 star buffers. Sorrow will do the most damage with Damage, Rage, and Precise sets. Below are the results.

Spark

PVP Tier

A Tier – Great buff in current meta, Good DPS, great against leaf heroes

Primary Use

PVP: Debuffer and DPS

2 Star Skill

Piercing Arrow shoots horizontally and damages each hero hit by the arrow. It has a width, so it can miss ground units based on the spawn height of Spark relative to other heroes. I’ve tested this, and Spark’s sp2 has a 60% chance to hit another ground unit. There’s two components to the damage, a 3x normal damage, and 1x Atk*base_aps for 3 seconds fire DOT. The damage done decreases by 30% (I’m guessing multiplicatively) for each enemy hit. I’m not sure if this affects the normal damage or burning, or both.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Fire 50% ATK debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Gladiator, Leaf Blade

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Damage, and two of: Burning, Swift, Ignite, precise, rage. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Burn Time. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 48.5% to get to 750 range

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Burning Option: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 50+% Crit Damage (Secondaries), 50+% Burn Duration (Burning), 350+% Atk (Damage, 2x Primaries,Secondaries), 70+% Atk Speed (7x Primaries), 70+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: Crit Option: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 150+% Crit Damage (Rage, Secondaries), 350+% Atk (Damage, 2x Primaries,Secondaries), 70+% Atk Speed (7x Primaries), 70+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Fire Hero Chest

Base Stats: 36 ATK, 36 DPS, 1.0 APS, 250 HP, 8 Def, 505 Attack Range, 170 Movement Speed

Spark has a really fun sp2 that shoots across the screen. It only has a certain width, so it may not hit all the ground units, depending on how high Spark is standing relative to the opponent ground heroes. This gives him some RNG on how useful he is. Since he can hit a lot of heroes, it means Vlad will then be forced to heal multiple heroes, instead of focusing on healing the tank, which is nice. Spark’s team buff is a Fire damage debuff. This is extremely useful keeping Gladiator and Leaf Blade alive. The 4x fire damage advantage drops to 1.5x when Spark is 7 star. As Scud does a ton of damage, this is very useful late game.

Spark’s sp2 has 100% chance to burn, so the Burning rune set is very useful to increase his damage. Ignite would only affect his sp1, so it’s not quite as useful, but as there aren’t many uses for Ignite, you can stick them on Spark. Damage and Swift are what you’d ideally like if you have good runes on those. As someone who hasn’t bought many Epic Rune Chests, I had higher priorities than Spark for runes, so I use Ignite, since I had some decent ones.

Spike

PVP Tier

B Tier – Great front line tank early game, inexpensive smasher later on, no buff

Primary Use

PVP: Tank. Early to Mid game front line AOE smasher.

2 Star Skill

Heavy Blow smashes the ground dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 350 dealing 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay. Each opponent hit has a 30% chance to be stunned for 2s

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets: Damage then Vitality sets then one of: Swift, Rage, or Precise Sets. Splash set if you are desperate for AOE. Rune Primaries: A total of 70-150% AOE, HP, Atk, Atk Speed, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Nothing specific.

Tank Runes Sets: Vitality, Guard, Nimble. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement Speed and Def are nice

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 300+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 250+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 200+% AOE (Primaries), 40+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 31.2 ATK, 26 DPS, 0.833 APS, 580 HP, 30 Def, 200 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

In my opinion, Spike is tied with SG as the best common hero in the game. SG wins out the best starter common because of his ties to other dark heroes, but Spike has great base stats and sp2 for a common. You can easily use Spike as your main starter common. If you do not choose Spike as your starter common, he is a very good 2nd or 3rd common to get to 7 star. Spike is very useful in all PvP aspects until late game (commons fall off around the Diamond 3 / Legendary 1 arena level), where commons cannot compete against rare and epic heroes. As a common, it is easy to get Spike to 7 by star requesting medals in the guild, medals from daily dungeons, and Magic Medals. Because of the exponential aspect of evolving and awakening, by focusing on Spike, he can be your best hero very quickly, and hold this rank for months. He will be useful past the one year mark for most people.

Spike has very high base HP to survive being on the front line, but his damage is not as good as SG’s. He has the highest HP and Def of any common. His sp2 is an aoe that can decimate entire teams, and as an added bonus, it has a chance to stun.

One concern about using Spike is the number of Dark backline dps heroes that get used later on. Early on, these heroes will not be that strong, and Spike will do 2x damage against them if he has enough AOE, usually killing them in one hit. Once the Dark backline dps heroes are strong, you’ll have other commons to 7 star, and likely rares will be getting close to being able to Tank for you.

If you choose Spike for your starting hero, it’s best to build your arena team around Spike. You will want 5-7 buffers/debuffers and 2-4 crowd control heroes. Buffers/debuffers must be 4 star to activate their buff. Most crowd control heroes use their sp2, so they need to be 2 star or higher. Useful buffers include: Scud, Onyx, Monki Robot, Krünk, Thor, One Eye, Arcana, Valkyrie, and Alda. Useful debuffers include: Dark Hunter (DH), Kage, Kasumi, and Vlad. Useful crowd control include: Monki King, Namida, Circe, Frost Queen, Xak, Goddess, Ra, Petunia, Bungun, Ser Shu, Trickster, Valkyrie, anyone with stunning, or any water with chilling.

As your arena team builds up, and you have a few 7 star heroes, Spike will switch to a pure Tank hero. You will want the Vitality set, Guard set, and Nimble set. You will no longer want 100% aoe, you will want runes with HP primaries.

Once you transition Spike off your arena team, you can either keep him as a tank for blitz and GW, or switch him back to a front line AOE smasher.

Sprout

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Seed Blat attacks 3 times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 34 ATK, 34 DPS, 1.0 APS, 260 HP, 8 Def, 370 Attack Range, 180 Movement Speed

Sprout is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities. Sprout is good against Frostwing, but if you’re focusing on PVP, Bat will be the fourth best common. You can then use Bat with Groovine’s ultimate to do a lot of damage against Frostwing also. And that way you won’t be wasting materials on a hero that is not good in PVP.

Spyro

PVP Tier

C Tier – Good buff for fire , but that’s his only use

Primary Use

Blitz Filler. PVP Buffer

2 Star Skill

Burning Spear Multi Hit attacks 4 times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit. Each hit has a 30% chance to burn at 0.6x Atk*base_aps for 5 seconds

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Fire 400% ATK – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Fire blitz teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Fire Hero Chest, Atlantus Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 90 ATK, 45 DPS, 0.5 APS, 320 HP, 12 Def, 220 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Spyro is a lancer with low base HP, which makes it difficult for him to survive and be useful. He does buff Fire damage, so he is useful for buffing Fire in Blitz and GW. He doesn’t need runes for his buff though.

Swift

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS/HP for a common. Has no use

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks five times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 9.2 ATK, 24 DPS, 1.25 APS, 250 HP, 10 Def, 380 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Swift is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities.

Tan Suu

PVP Tier

A Tier – Support hero that can help tremendously with survival, especially with light teams

Primary Use

Arena Support

2 Star Skill

Summons a Wall (treated as a hero) with neutral element, that has 600 base HP, and has a health decay that will remove all health over 12s. The wall is placed in front of Tan Suu’s team’s front hero. Immune to status effects. Gains Tan Suu’s rune stats and universal buffs. It also does 5x damage with an aoe of 200, and damage decay due to aoe. It spawns every 8th attack (7x sp1 then sp2), instead of every 7th attack like all other non-timed sp2. Also, while the wall is active, all aoe damage gets cut in half.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Light 20% Elemental Damage Reduction (only affects dark attacking light) – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Light teams

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Vitality, Swift, then either Resist, Stunning, or possibly Nimble. Rune Primaries: APS. Rune Secondaries: Attack range is required and HP is nice

Target Late/End Game Rune Stats: 200+% HP (Vitality, Secondaries), 80+% APS (Swift, Primaries) One of: 17.5+% Dodge Rate (Nimble), 25+% Resist (Resist), 12.5+% Stun Chance (Stunning), 84+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Lunar New Year Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 45 ATK, 30 DPS, 0.667 APS, 410 HP, 10 Def, 450 Attack Range, 130 Movement Speed

Tan Suu is being released with the Lunar New Year event in February 2021, which is right around the corner as I write this. As an event hero, he is going to be difficult to get medals for and therefore difficult to get high star. This will be easiest if you already have the light nearly maxed, and that’s the people this hero will benefit the most. Before the update, dark was known for their dps, and they get 2x damage against light, who was known for their HP. This has made lighjt a fairly weak element. Tan Suu’s team buff allows light to be viable again, it reduces the 2x elemental advantage down to 1.12x when Tan Suu is 7 star. This is going to make light tanks viable again, especially Paladin.

I placed Tan Suu as A tier in the PVP tierlist, but that is just a guess at the moment. It’s possible there are some great light builds out there that make him S tier. I experimented some with him in beta, and posted a video of it. I already had a 7/7 Siegfried, and Tan Suu seemed as good as he was, so I placed Tan Suu at his tier.

For runes, I recommend focusing on getting the walls out as fast as possible. This means APS from primaries and swift. Vitality is also important to allow the walls to survive. Then it comes down to preference. Nimble and Resist would help prevent Tan Suu from getting CC’ed. Stunning would allow you to stun their front line, although it may only stun the front hero as the aoe is not large. It’s possible to skip Vitality and run both Resist and Nimble, as long as you get sufficient HP secondaries.

Tellus

PVP Tier

C Tier – Very good in blitz early on, as can deal damage and tank, but drops off quickly

Primary Use

Blitz: Tank.

2 Star Skill

Stone Combo attacks four times dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 300 for a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit, which is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 400% Def – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Leaf blitz teams

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Vitality. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed is nice

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Earth Hero Chest

Base Stats: 78 ATK, 52 DPS, 0.667 APS, 480 HP, 28 Def, 180 Attack Range, 140 Movement Speed

Tellus is the tankiest of the brawlers. He has this Block Damage ability, that no one seems to understand the mechanics of. Not many people have spent enough materials on him to really test him out, so there’s a possibility of him being stronger than we think. Most just use him as a Blitz Tank, with three Vitality runes.

Tellus has an ability called block, which reflects damage and stuns the opponent. The chance of blocking is ~20%. I’m not sure how much damage is reflected, I’ve seen reports of 50%. The one test I performed was 25%, but that was before def was applied, so maybe it’s 50% after def.

Tesla

PVP Tier

S Tier – Decent buff, great dps, especially against Ornok

Primary Use

PVP: End Game DPS

2 Star Skill

Electric Hit throws an attack that lands behind the target dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 150 dealing 4x damage which is reduced by aoe decay. This currently does not hit flying heroes, hopefully will change in the future.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Self 800% Atk – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

One Eye and against Ornok

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: three of: Damage, Swift, Precise, Rage. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 92.3% to get to 750 range

Target End Game Rune Stats: Built for no Arena buff, 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 260+% Crit Damage (Rage, Secondaries), 150+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 90+% Atk Speed (Primaries), 100+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Target End Game Rune Stats: Built for Arena buff, 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 260+% Crit Damage (Rage, Secondaries), 390+% Atk (Damage, Primaries, Secondaries), 50+% Atk Speed (Primaries), 100+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Fortune Chest

Base Stats: 43.2 ATK, 36 DPS, 0.833 APS, 360 HP, 6 Def, 390 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Tesla is the end game counter to Ornok. Her “Team” buff is a self buff that gives her massive amounts of attack. Her normal attack has a chance to stun, and her sp2 is a small aoe stun. Most end game teams use few front line heroes, so this isn’t that important, but it can help take out late game teams. It does give a full dps team some crowd control.

A 7 star Tesla will have 640% Attack from her self buff, and another 640% from a 7Scud and Onyx, so she has a lot of Attack %. During buff weeks, team buff does not get the bonus applied to it, so Damage runes are still important. Swift, Precise, and Rage are the other rune sets she needs. She’ll want attack speed and crit damage for primaries, but attack primaries can be used, if they have attack range on them. Tesla needs a ton of attack range, as end game, most teams will have a 100% aoe Onyx or other front line AOE smasher.

I did some analysis with perfect 6 star runes, all aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. Ornok used Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx, with HP primaries and Def Secondaries. While Tesla is good against other heroes, she’s really the counter to Ornok, so I was focused on him. I used all 7 star buffers. Tesla will do the most damage with Damage, Rage, and Precise sets. Damage, Precise, and Swift comes in a close second, and it has the added benefit of quicker attacks, and therefore more frequent stuns on Ornok. Below are the results.

Thor

PVP Tier

B Tier – Decent buff, can mess with spawn positioning

Primary Use

Blitz Filler. PVP Buffer

2 Star Skill

Rush through enemies, knocking them down, this happens every 10s

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Light 400% Atk – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Light blitz team

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Blitz Shop

Base Stats: 96 ATK, 48 DPS, 0.5 APS, 600 HP, 14 Def, 200 Attack Range, 100 Movement Speed

Thor is an interesting hero that can be used with mostly Light teams as he buffs Light attack. His sp2 is Rush, that looks like a whirlwind that can send him behind the opponent’s front line. He has a decent amount of HP, so he can disrupt an opponent’s hero position. As many teams use Dark dps, and Light is weak to Dark, Thor doesn’t usually last very long at that location. As Spike is usually the second or third common worked on for f2p players, Thor can be used to buff him in a second GW team or blitz. He doesn’t need runes for this buff.

Thorn

PVP Tier

S Tier – Great Debuff, Great backline killer

Primary Use

PVP: End Game DPS/Backline Clearer

2 Star Skill

Poisonous Wave creates an aoe orb originating at Thorn dealing 1.2 ATK*base_aps for 5 seconds. The aoe damage has a base radius of 600 and is reduced by aoe decay.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 200% Atk Debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

PumpKing, Clawdette, Misty

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Blight, Damage and either Swift or Splash. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, 90-150% AOE, ~100% more than attack range. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 50.0% to get to 750 range

Target End Game Rune Stats: 102+% Poison Duration (Blight, 3x Primaries), 150+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries), 150+% AOE (5xPrimaries), 60+% Attack Range (Secondaries), 17.5+% APS (Swift)

Unlock From

Groovine Crusher Chest

Base Stats: 40 ATK, 40 DPS, 1.0 APS, 400 HP, 6 Def, 500 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Thorn has the best AOE attack in the game. It has a range of 600, it attacks both ground and flying heroes, and it does a total of 6x damage. The downside is that it’s poison, and you can’t crit on poison damage. It’s not amazing damage, but it forces Vlad to heal other heroes other than the tank, and that is extremely valuable. As an Earth hero, he has a damage advantage over Water heroes, which is valuable taking out freeze teams and Namida in general.

For runes, Thorn will need Blight, Swift, and Damage sets. Attack range counters AOE, so the more attack range you have, the more AOE you’ll need. You’ll need some attack range to get out of the range of front line aoe smashers. The other useful primary is attack speed.

According to testing performed by Bisping, poison duration for thorn’s sp2 increases by a 1 second tick at 62%, 82%, 102%, and 122%.

I did some analysis on Thorn with perfect 6 star runes, 5 AOE primaries, and remaining are aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. For Ornok I used Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx, with HP primaries and Def Secondaries. I used all 7 star buffers. Thorn is meant more for killing backline heroes than the tank, so I included her sp2 damage, and that’s the important metric here. Thorn will do the most sp2 damage with Damage, Swift, and Blight sets with 5 AOE primaries, 1 aps primary, and 3 poison duration primaries. Below are the results.

Tiny Dragon

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Dragon Fire attacks 3 times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit. Each hit has a 5% chance to burn for 0.6x atk*base_aps for 5s

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 38 ATK, 38 DPS, 1.0 APS, 210 HP, 8 Def, 300 Attack Range, 180 Movement Speed

Tiny Dragon is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities.

TNT

PVP Tier

A Tier – Poor buff, great backline killer

Primary Use

PVP: Late Game Backline Clearer

2 Star Skill

Summons a Kamikaze bomb that moves forward for 4s, then explodes, dealing 5x aoe damage with a base radius 250 to the enemy hit, which is reduced by aoe decay. Each hit also burns for 0.75x atk*base_aps for 4s. Kamikaze has a base crit rate of 0%, movement speed of 140, and hp of 10,000. It can be crowd controlled, even possessed.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

10% Burn Duration – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Xak

Rune Sets

Late Runes Sets: Damage and two of: Precise, Rage, Swift, Splash, Burning. Rune Primaries: AOE, Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 56.3% to get to 750 range, as much movement speed as possible

Target End Game Rune Stats: 240+% Atk (Damage, Secondaries, 1 Primary optional instead of an APS), 70+% Attack Range (Secondaries), 20+% Movement Speed (Secondaries), 50+% Crit Damage (Secondaries), 85+% AOE (3x Primaries OR 2x Primaries + Splash), 65+% APS (6x Primaries + Swift OR 7x Primaries)

Unlock From

Blitz Chest, Blitz Rewards

Base Stats: 40 ATK, 40 DPS, 1.0 APS, 220 HP, 10 Def, 480 Attack Range, 125 Movement Speed

TNT was just released in July 2020 as a Blitz hero. He has a new team buff that increases the duration of burn. I believe this was Godzilab’s attempt to make burning more important, I just don’t think they went far enough. Right now it’s 10% per star, starting at 4 star, and I think 15% or 20% per star would have been more interesting. For the few heroes that burning isn’t bad for, you really need +120% burn duration from runes to make it work, so an additional 40% at 7 star isn’t nearly as big as it seems.

The more exciting aspect to TNT to me is his SP2. He summons a bomb that runs toward the opponent and explodes after 4s. Attack range makes this worse, as it starts the summon farther away from the opponent. In addition Kamikaze spawns a bit behind TNT, maybe 20 units. Movement speed, either from team buffs or runes is a must for this. Kamikaze has a base movement speed of 140, and 4 seconds only gets him 560 towards the opponent. At 750 range, this would barely hit the front hero. With just runes, you can get to 230 movement speed, which would allow the summon to move 922 in 4s. Even with AOE buffs, this might not be enough for Late Game. If you add Xak to the team, the summon could move 1480, and explode in the middle of the opponent’s team, hitting everyone. Xak alone will allow Kamikaze to move 1120. I see this as the most likely use of TNT, being paired up with Xak.

TNT’s damage isn’t that great, he has relatively high base attack, but only has a 10% crit rate. Below is some preliminary analysis showing his dps capability. It assumes six APS primaries and three AOE primaries.

It’s not great for a hero that’s meant to kill the tank, but TNT has potential to be a better back line killer than Thorn. The problem is he has to rely on another hero, who doesn’t do a whole lot of dps in order for this to happen. People who used him in Beta testing seem to have a better impression of her than I do, and I’m willing to have my mind changed when I see him in action. I’m guessing he’ll end up at A tier with what I’ve seen so far. My thoughts of him right now is that the 50k flooz requirement to get him to 7 star is more than he’s worth.

Torch

PVP Tier

B Tier – Mediocre buff, could be built as a smasher in a burn team

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Shoots fire at the enemy with an aoe of 400, dealing 1x damage plus burn damage for 0.6x atk*base_aps for 5s, which is reduced by aoe decay. In February 2021, his sp2 now is able to hit flying.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

50% Burn Damage – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Fire Hero Chest

Base Stats: 56 ATK, 40 DPS, 0.714 APS, 300 HP, 10 Def, 345 Attack Range, 125 Movement Speed

Torch is a weird hero. He’s a back line class, but has the lowest attack range. I haven’t been fond of Torch in the past, but his HP has been buffed, and his sp2 now hits flying. He has very similar stats to Onyx, but hits flying. So you can build Torch as an aoe smasher even though he is not a traditional smasher. His buff isn’t nearly as universal as Onyx, so I have placed him in B tier as a niche hero.

Trickster

PVP Tier

S Tier – Good team buff, good CC, great DPS for a CC hero

Primary Use

PVP: Crowd Control and End Game DPS

2 Star Skill

Throws three cards, one each at different opponents starting from the front to back, each dealing 1.65x damage. Each sp1 and sp2 cause a random debuff from one of the following: attack lower attack, slowdown, lower def, or stun. The SP1 varies linearly from 2s at 1 star to 4s at 7 star. The SP2 varies linearly from 3s at 2 star to 6s at 7 star

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

6% Negative Effect Duration – per star above 3 star(this adds to runes)

Synergizes With

Other CC heroes

Rune Sets

Crowd Control Runes Sets: Swift, Dazed, Stunning. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Stun Duration. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 47.0% to get to 750 range (for late game survival)

DPS Runes Sets: Swift, Damage, and one of: Rage, Precise. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 47.0% to get to 750 range

Target End Game Rune Stats: 300+% Atk (Damage, 2x Primaries, Secondaries), 60+% APS (6x Primaries), 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 250+% Crit Damage (Rage, 1x Primary, Secondaries), 65+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Easter Event, Reminiscence Event

Base Stats: 48 ATK, 48 DPS, 1.0 APS, 340 HP, 10 Def, 510 Attack Range, 200 Movement Speed

Trickster was just released over Easter 2020, and has a lot of fanfare. He has decent base dps, decent attack range, and some really interesting crowd control. Both his normal attack and sp2 try to apply attack down, slow down, def down, and stun, the durations of which increase with star. His team buff increases negative effects, increasing these durations even more. Most people are going to use him for his crowd control, but some may use him for his dps.

For Crowd Control, Trickster will want Swift, Dazed, and Stunning with attack speed and stun duration primaries. Early on, if you can just get some attack speed on him, that will be enough. Later on you’ll need some attack range to avoid front line AOE smashers.

I did some analysis on Trickster with perfect 6 star runes, all aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. For Ornok I used Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx, with HP primaries and Def Secondaries. I used all 7 star buffers. Trickster will do the most damage with Damage, Rage, and Precise sets. Below are the results.

Valkyrie

PVP Tier

A Tier – Great Mid to late game buff buff. Decent DPS, good against , but generally not worth awakening to 7

Primary Use

PVP: Mid to End game dps, buffer, freeze crowd control. Guild Slay Event: Crit Buffer.

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks five times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit. Each arrow has a 10% chance to freeze the enemy for 2s.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

300% Crit Damage- per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Heroes with Precise

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets:Don’t spend many materials until mid game

Late Runes Sets: Three of: Chilling, Swift, Damage, Precise, Rage. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range, needs 36.4% to get to 750 range

Target End Game Rune Stats: 250+% Atk (Damage, 1x Primaries, Secondaries), 60+% APS (6x Primaries), 17.5+% Crit Rate (Precise), 300+% Crit Damage (Rage, 2x Primary, Secondaries), 55+% Attack Range (Secondaries)

Unlock From

Water Hero Chest, Starter Pack

Base Stats: 32 ATK, 32 DPS, 1.0 APS, 280 HP, 12 Def, 550 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Valkyrie is one of the Crit Sisters. She and Alda are able to give Crit buffs to everyone and are fondly known as the Crit Sisters. This makes her very good in both the Slay Event and PVP. Valkyrie is not in any Crusher Chests, which makes her difficult to obtain and difficult to get high star. Once she does get to 6 star, she can do decent damage, but she can help freeze at any star. Water is weak to Earth, so she doesn’t do much damage against two commonly used earth tanks: Gladiator and Leaf Blade.

Early on, Valkyrie doesn’t need many runes. Chilling and Swift can be useful to increase how many times she freezes heroes. Later on, it depends on how you want to use her. Chilling and Swift can still be useful, or you can try to do more dps with her. Then you’d select three of: Swift, Damage, Precise, and Rage. You can use AOE primaries in freeze explosion teams.

I did some analysis on Valkyrie with perfect 6 star runes, all aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. Valkyrie isn’t known for her damage, but this will provide you with an idea of how much damage she can do. For Ornok I used Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx, with HP primaries and Def Secondaries. I used all 7 star buffers. Valkyrie will do the most damage with Damage, Rage, and Precise sets. Below are the results.

Vlad

PVP Tier

S Tier – Great Debuff, Good DPS, Good Healing

Primary Use

PVP: Mid to End game dps, buffer, healer

2 Star Skill

Blood Lust attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit. The damage done is then multiplied and healed to friendly units based on their remaining health. The multiplier is 1200% at 7*.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

10% APS Debuff – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Everyone

Rune Sets

Late Runes Sets: Damage, Precise then one of: Swift, Rage. Rune Primaries: Atk Speed, Atk, Crit Damage. Rune Secondaries: Nothing specific

Unlock From

Blitz Chest, Blitz Rewards

Base Stats: 42 ATK, 42 DPS, 1.0 APS, 250 HP, 6 Def, 560 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Vlad is one of the best PVP heroes in the game and is extremely easy to add to any team. His team buff decreases opponent attack speed, which helps keep your team alive and with fewer crowd controls. He also heals based on damage, which helps keep your heroes alive even more. A significant portion of Legendary Arena team use him, and the ones that don’t, only do so because Blitz heroes cost a lot of flooz and require a whole lot of saving between Vlad events.

For runes, most people run a Swift set on Vlad. This allows him to heal more frequently, which is great for the survivability of your other heroes. It is not necessarily going to be the best dps though. Precise is a must, because his base crit rate is really low. The other two depends on what primaries you have and your team composition, but it’ll be either Damage or Rage. You’re looking for mostly Attack speed primaries, but attack and crit damage will help with dps for the remaining runes.

I did some analysis on Vlad with perfect 6 star runes, all aps primaries, with atk and crit damage in first 2 secondary slots. For Ornok I used Vitality, Nimble, and Phalanx, with HP primaries and Def Secondaries. I used all 7 star buffers. Vlad will do the most damage with Damage, Rage, and Precise sets. Below are the results.

Voodoo Archer

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks five times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 24 ATK, 24 DPS, 1.0 APS, 240 HP, 6 Def, 425 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Voodoo Archer is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities.

Voodoo Dagger

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS/HP for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Stager. Blitz filler.

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks seven times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 35 ATK, 35 DPS, 1.0 APS, 200 HP, 8 Def, 120 Attack Range, 220 Movement Speed

Voodoo Dagger is a fast common, so he can be used for staging. Voodoo Dagger is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities.

Voodoo Spear

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS for a common. Has no use

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks three times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 64 ATK, 32 DPS, 0.5 APS, 320 HP, 6 Def, 220 Attack Range, 160 Movement Speed

Voodoo Spear is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities.

Vulcan Archer

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS for a common. Has no use.

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks five times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 24 ATK, 24 DPS, 1.0 APS, 200 HP, 10 Def, 380 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Vulcan Archer is not a top 3 common hero. By the time you get 2-3 commons to 7 star, you’ll be focusing on Rare for Arena, so the next common you use requests on doesn’t depend on the common’s stats or abilities.

Vulcan Fighter

PVP Tier

D Tier – No buff, bad DPS for a common. Has no use

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hit attacks multiple times dealing a total of 5x damage to the enemy hit

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 30 ATK, 30 DPS, 1.0 APS, 240 HP, 10 Def, 120 Attack Range, 150 Movement Speed

Godzilab didn’t even make an emoji of this hero. Enough said.

Vulcan Hammer

PVP Tier

B Tier – No buff, Starter hero

Primary Use

Blitz Filler

2 Star Skill

Multi Hammer Hit attacks three times dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 350 dealing a total of 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

None

Synergizes With

No one

Rune Sets

Runes Sets: Don’t spend materials on this hero

Unlock From

Silver Chest, Daily Dungeon

Base Stats: 90 ATK, 45 DPS, 0.5 APS, 400 HP, 10 Def, 130 Attack Range, 110 Movement Speed

In February 2021, Vulcan Hammer’s sp2 aoe was upgraded from 150 to 350. This puts her on par with Skeleton Giant, and allows her to be used as a starter hero. Fire has a really good pool of heroes, so this is a reasonable hero to choose for a starter if you want to focus on Fire.

Wolfie

PVP Tier

B Tier – Good buff for leaf , Can also tank in blitz

Primary Use

Blitz: Tank.

2 Star Skill

Multi Hammer Hit attacks three times dealing aoe damage with a base radius of 150 dealing a total of 5x damage which is reduced by aoe decay

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Leaf 400% Atk – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Leaf blitz teams

Rune Sets

Blitz Runes Sets: Vitality. Rune Primaries: HP. Rune Secondaries: Movement speed is nice

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Earth Hero Chest

Base Stats: 42 ATK, 35 DPS, 0.833 APS, 600 HP, 16 Def, 220 Attack Range, 130 Movement Speed

Wolfie is a decent tank in an element full of great tanks. He buffs Earth attack which is useful in Blitz. I just use him as a Blitz tank with 3 Vitality runes.

Xak

PVP Tier

A Tier – Generally poor buff, except in certain teams, Great CC

Primary Use

PVP: Crowd Control.

2 Star Skill

Shock Wave creates an aoe orb originating at Xak dealing 0.2x damage with an aoe decay to all enemies hit. Shock wave stuns (can be resisted) all heroes hit. The aoe has a base radius of 600. This can hit flying heroes.

Team Buff (4 Star Skill)

Fire 25% Movement Speed – per star above 3 star

Synergizes With

Fire blitz teams

Rune Sets

Early Runes Sets: Vitality then two of: swift, splash, dazed. Rune Primaries: AOE, Atk Speed, Stun Duration. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range is nice

Late Runes Sets: swift, splash, dazed. Rune Primaries: AOE 75+%, Atk Speed, Stun Duration. Rune Secondaries: Attack Range – depends on build. 78.6% gets 750 range

Unlock From

Premium Chest, Blitz Chest, Fire Hero Chest

Base Stats: 30 ATK, 20 DPS, 0.667 APS, 180 HP, 10 Def, 420 Attack Range, 170 Movement Speed

Xak is a really good Stun hero. His sp2 is a massive stunning AOE. He generally works well with Monki King, who will increase Xak’s attack speed, and therefore how often he uses his sp2. If you increase Xak’s aoe, he can stun the back line, which is important starting around Mid game, but can be useful early on to stun other crowd control. Xak also has a shield for an Ultimate, which is useful for survival in Guild Slay Event.

For runes, early game Xak could use vitality for survival, otherwise it’s the same from early and late game. You’ll want swift, splash, and dazed runes, with AOE, attack speed, and stun duration. The more attack range you get the more AOE you’ll need, but attack range helps with survivability. I have heard of a Xak/MK team that doesn’t use Attack Range, but tries to stun lock the opponent. When it works, it’s great, and when it doesn’t, those two slots were just wasted, but there are some people who pull it off well.