I’ve just now come across this thread, but I’m lucky enough to have all 3 of those on my bench so I’ll give my perspective.
I’ve had Freya the longest, she’s maxed now and has seen use for months. I really love her, she’s become overall one of my most favorite heroes. She adds some strong defense to the table with the beefy minions being meat shields, plus the +30% defense. But more than that, those beefy minions also bring some offensive power to the table, if you can build those up in numbers they start to seriously add up. And she does all of this fast. I use her on my anti-Tell team. Not that her skill is especially well tailored against Telly (it’s not), but that combo of fast defense protection with the offense of the minions as well is just useful so much, I find. I use her on lots of teams, both PVP and PVE. And I haven’t even given her emblems yet, which I will (focused on HP then attack, as those will benefit the minions).
Those times where you’ve got 1 or 2 enemy wings still standing and you can’t line up tiles to hit them or you don’t want to give them mana, those minions can pick away at them nicely while you ghost tiles up the middle.
And, not the most exciting or important but farming is actually one of my uses for her, and she’s good there, good for speed, and it’s very satisfying to see those minions rip through bosses at lower levels like S1 8-7. And I can farm/auto-play on very decent difficulty levels with her and without a healer (which means more offense which ultimately saves time, over and over). With farming and grinding being a relatively big part of the game, this is a big plus imho, even if not spectacular.
I’ve had Clarissa for some months too, but have not taken her beyond 3.70. If I get the tabards hopefully I can one day, she seems widely useful to me but without really standing out or being especially killer in one category - except of course her speed. Her damage is not quite high enough though imho to make put her at the top of the priority list, but of course I’ve only seen her in action personally at 3.70 where her damage output isn’t where it will be at max. It’s interesting how much she is like Gravemaker on paper, yet in practice it just seems the lower damage makes her a lot less deadly. Sometimes small details matter a lot.
Alfrike is relatively new for me, got her in the July Valhalla summons. She’s getting close to max now, I haven’t used her extensively yet but a few times. Like today’s class trials. It can’t be said enough how much of a BEAST she is. I plan to put some emblems on her (as many as possible), and see how she does as tank. In terms of overall effectiveness, because of her speed she’s not going to be the most devastating hero in the game overall, and probably not as effective as tank as Ursena (who is waiting on my bench), but when she goes off it is just so… nicely destructive. It’s just really satisfying and fun. And since this is a game afterall, this is at least as good a reason as any to choose one hero over another, maybe even the best reason.
Objectively in terms of usefulness overall this is how I would rank them:
- Freya
- Alfrike
- Clarissa
There are of course specific circumstances where any could be particularly good or bad… in the rush tournaments Alfrike will be hard to beat, while in bloody battle Freya is extremely good in particular, for example.
In terms of fun factor or satisfaction to use, Alfrike is probably first, though there will be times where her slow speed is going to cause some frustration too on the other hand. Freya is a close second I think, I just really like those minions. Nothing wrong with Clarissa, but imho I would rank her below both the others overall.
Just my 2 cents based on my own experiences with them so far.