Channeling Zeus: Bob’s Practical Guide to Titans

a note on Bob’s Practical Guides: these guides are intended to be as helpful, informative, or at least thought-and-discussion-provoking as possible to a wide range of players, but are primarily for players who DON’T have all the latest-and-greatest, because of limited resources, limited luck, and/or being new players. If these guides are useful or interesting to better-resourced players as well, that is a nice bonus, but not the main intent!

So: let’s talk about titans.

Titans drop loot. (Sometimes.) But notably — when they do — items that aren’t generally farmable. (Including, potentially, random titan body parts for crafting.) Plus? PoV/PoG tasks often have you chasing these mega-monsters.

But regular map-stage, event-stage, or raid teams generally don’t cut it here: titan teams are their own kind of specialty, enough so that the intersection between “my best titan heroes” and “my best heroes overall” can wind up being quite small.

This is hardly the first titan guide, and I’m not going to pretend that it will be, or should be, the last. But I’m going to try to touch on each of the major “food groups” of taking down titans, as much as possible, all in one place.

Firstly, the first rule of titan fighting is

  • tile damage, tile damage, tile damage

Doing direct damage from Special skills almost always pales in comparison, so let’s talk about how tile damage works.

An excellent resource is this old thread, most notably

This estimated formula is behind many of the major abilities you’ll want to pack on a titan team.

Firstly, θ is a random parameter you can’t help, but the ratio of attack to defense you certainly can, and note that the ratio is inside a power law: once attack starts to exceed defense — and the more it does — damage output rises rapidly.

Let’s start with offense:

  • color stacking: bringing a strong color against the titan’s color is double damage, so generally you want to stack as much of the strong color as possible

  • Titan teams are often mono, or at least 4-1 (if an important ability on this list isn’t available in the strong color, or is simply much better in a different color)

  • base attack rating: add up the attack scores of the heroes, so… while abilities are important, bigger titan specialist heroes are preferable to smaller (or just lower-attack) ones, all else equal; a good “filler” when you don’t know what else to bring is one or more heroes that make this attack total as high as possible

  • attack up: many heroes, but also items, can boost the overall attack rating by multiplying by a significant percentage (often more than just adding a high-attack hero… but adding and multiplying is even better when possible)

  • normal attack up: notably stacks with regular attack up, leading to truly prodigious attack boosting. (note: this ability will often note the maximum amount of attack stacking allowed, so read up)

  • Note that regular attack-up buffs generally tend to have “upward tilting sword” icons and “normal attack up” icons tend to be “flexing arm” icons (as opposed to “dice” icons, which come with a miss chance, see below point) . Examples of those include Bertulf, cWilbur, Shar’kai, Tarlak, Miki, Gastille .

  • Also note: if you are using a miss-chance attack-up buff, that applies to ALL attacks, not just normal attacks (usually denoted by “dice” icon, e.g. Edelaide, Wu Kong, Ranvir) – but the miss chance ALSO applies to your Specials… which can be a real problem if you are relying on Specials to apply defense-down, elemental defense down, or other debuffs. Either be careful with timing (fire all debuffs before firing the “dice” buff) or try to avoid using miss-chance buffs altogether! (Thanks @gargon for the catch!)

  • growth: when it affects attack, in some sense, very much like an attack-boost buff, but is permanent and stackable, with itself and with attack buffs. The size of the Growth stat adjustment and your ability to fire it several times during the titan fight are both considerations.

  • critical hits: critical hits do double damage, so substantially increasing to chance of crits — which automatically already counts all tiles that hit the titan’s weak spot! — is an attack modifier not to be ignored when available

Affecting defense: note that since damage depends on the ratio of offense to defense, cutting defense rating in half is equivalent to doubling offense rating — and, of course, the two effects amplify each other.

  • defense down: a common ability, and even replicable by using harpoons (when a titan is stunned), but generally the first step to this side of the ratio. Pay attention both to the amount of defense down and to its duration!

  • elemental defense down: notable as it stacks with regular defense down, so a powerful addition (and thus sought after)

  • wither: like growth, permanent and stackable, with itself and with defense debuffs. The size of the Wither stat adjustment and your ability to fire it several times during the titan fight are both considerations.

  • ”damage received is increased": straight up multiplies damage after the damage calculation takes place. If that sounds powerful, it’s because it is; examples include the 3* Buster, 4* Franz, 5* Gastille (the latter who is a titan-slaying king due to his massive “damage increase” AND “normal attack up” abilities)

You might be noticing that this a lot of statuses to keep up in the air at once, and that can mean getting your timing right. Unless the tiles especially like you, that means mana and tile manipulation

  • direct mana boosts: heroes that boost mana generation, hand out free mana, or more commonly, mana potions of various sizes and/or tornadoes or hurricanes

  • tile manipulation: heroes that boost tiles in various ways (attack, but also mana), or ways to horse tiles directly (tornadoes and hurricanes again, or expensively, scrolls of alteration)

There’s another dimension to titan hunting, of course: keeping your heroes from dying.

  • raw size: if your titan specialists are big enough and/or you don’t hunt the biggest titans, you might just shrug off hits, or even titan specials

  • attack down/defense up: buffing yourself and/or debuff the titan’s hit (note that the latter is an effect of throwing harpoons)

  • preventing specials: depending on the titan’s special attack, you might prefer to block it from going off with mindless attack or the like, mana cuts, or even time stops (note: this can sometimes matter even more with Rare titans; make sure you are aware of what the Special actually does, and be ready for it if you aren’t just keeping it blocked)

  • healing: not a primary titan fighting ability, but could be handy, not least if you have healers that throw one or more of the buffs or debuffs above

  • stunning: good old fashioned “hit the titan where it hurts” – ideally, you want to direct strong tiles into the titan’s weak spot, but any tiles will do (unless it’s a Rare titan with elemental reflection!), and stunning freezes the titan’s normal AND special attack for that turn. Can be effective if you keep stirring the board with tornadoes, etc.

I’ve mentioned battle items in passing, but let’s talk about them specifically for a moment

  • attack up items: these can replace an attack-up hero, or supplement one before/between such a hero firing — the most common and cheapest here are bear banners (+25%, 4 turns); the more expensive dragon banners give +defense as well, but only marginally better +offense, and all for 3 turns instad of 4; titan banners are significantly bigger at +50% but are expensive Hunter’s Lodge items

  • defense down items: if you don’t have much of a DD hero in your color, harpoons, while somewhat expensive, are popular for harvesting titan parts and applying attack-down and notably defense down (but only when titan is stunned!); valkyrie’s bane directly applies DD, but are expensive/rare enough that if you’re using them, you’re saving them for Rare or Mythic titans

  • items to help you not die: the absolute cheapest are arrow attacks and their miss chance, though axe attacks and their attack debuff are also fairly cheap; harpoons are more expensive but count toward titan body parts and apply attack-down even if the titan isn’t stunned; time stops are a gold standard for “I’m bringing one or more tiny heroes with good Specials against a big titan,” but are more costly, and keep an eye on the titan’s mana bar — time stops stop normal attacks for a few turns, but they won’t stop the titan Special from firing when its mana fills (unless you time stop it again in time to drain its mana, or otherwise block its Special); the fancier, more expensive time freezes (hunter’s lodge) work similarly; finally, various healing potions are a possibility, or even antidotes if the titan’s Special inflicts a crippling/lethal effect

  • mana: practically required — as you cannot count on friendly tiles to get all your statuses running at the same time. Don’t sleep on minor mana potions for cheapness and for topping up almost-full heroes, but mana potions and super mana potions (the latter especially for effects you want on turn zero) are also good brings, depending on how many item slots (and how many resources)

  • tile manipulation: overlaps with mana, as expensive tornadoes and hurricanes directly supply mana and RESHUFFLE THE BOARD, which is a good way of moving things along when the tiles are garbage. (note that tornadoes give partial mana to all heroes, hurricanes give full mana to three heroes). The gold standard here are scrolls of alteration, which FORCE there to be tiles of your desired color, but tend to be “special occasion hit” items only

Note that often the most direct way to get a much bigger titan score is to force the issue with some amount of these tile manipulation items — but that really depends on your ability to resource them!

Personally, I tend to have a few standard item loadouts for titans:

  • BUDGET: Bear banner, minor mana potion, mana potion, arrow attack OR axe attack

  • BUDGETPLUS: Bear banner, minor mana potion, mana potion, harpoon OR time stop

(the last slot isn’t that budget, but I tend to use only 1-2 per fight)

  • FULL: Bear banner, mana potion, time stop, tornado

(when I’m more actively aiming for a bigger individual hit)

  • MAX: Titan banner, hurricane, tornado, scroll of alteration

(pretty much only for Mythic Titan hits, usually my first one or two attacks; it’s generally not sustainable to spend these items constantly)

Let’s put it all together.

If this seems like a lot, it kind of is (and you hardly need to try to pack ALL the abilities above into five heroes!); given the multiplicative nature of many of these modifiers, even though titan fights are on a timer, it often pays to be deliberate.

A few tiles that strike while many buffs and debuffs are running may do far more damage than an entire cascade of tiles with few or no effects running.

So it pays to choose effects that last longer, and it may pay to not just hammer through match-3s (or even fire Specials the instant they are ready) - you really want to have as many effects as possible running at once, then, while they are, hit with as many strong tiles as possible.

That… is an art form, not a science.

In this example, a 14* yellow titan is under attack, and note that a mono purple team has

  • attack up
  • normal attack up
  • defense down
  • elemental defense down: purple
  • “extra damage taken”
  • mindless attack

running simultaneously. Here, single tiles inflict over 10000 damage each as critical hits, and while Gastille is a particularly lucky fine example of an anti-titan specialist, the other heroes are not especially large in power.

Finally, let’s talk about loot. (An old, but good resource.) Let’s condense this, focusing just on successful titan kills. Loot depends both on the titan level (TL, the number of stars the titan has) and the “grade” of your total titan hits relative to the other members of your alliance.

  • A+: #1 total score in your alliance, Loot Tier TL+3
  • A: #2-5 total score in your alliance, Loot Tier TL+2
  • B: 6th place or lower AND > 3.3% of titan’s HP in damage, Loot Tier TL+1
  • C: 6th place or lower AND > 1.0% of titan’s HP in damage, Loot Tier TL
  • D: 6th place or lower AND < 1.0% of titan’s HP in damage, Loot Tier TL/2 (rounded up)

If you’re getting going on titans, you want to start consistently scoring at least a “C” as much as possible (since the loot tier can be significantly different between C and D).

You may notice that the actual loot random rolls aren’t that much different between C, B, A, and often even A+; a slightly higher loot tier gives you theoretically a slightly higher chance of Good Stuff, but often it’s hard to tell the difference titan to titan.

Oh, and titan body parts and the harpoon count?

How many harpoons your alliance throws at a titan determines the level of titan spleens and whatnot that drop as crafting items for the Hunter’s Lodge. Notice each titan has three checkpoints: a relatively small number, a moderate number, and a berjillion :crazy_face:

The harpoon count checkpoints influence titan body-part drops, not other drops. Most alliances will at least seek to hit the first harpoon checkpoint every titan to get some crafting material drops, and it’s not uncommon to aim for the second checkpoint (this varies by alliance, as to resourcing harpoons and how much people want increased drops of this kind). Fully filling the harpoon bar is possible, but seems uncommon for many.

As always - Questions? Comments? Feedback? This post may evolve as folks sound off. Let me know what you think, and may RNG occasionally show you mercy!

Also feel free to check out my other Practical Guide to Snipers!

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Nice writeup!

One detail: the “dice” effect from Wu Kong is actually a special case of general attack boost, not a special case of normal attack boost, it´s only used in the same context because of the big number and the fact that it would be pointless to stack with a normal attack since both effects are capped and would cancel each other out. The only practical consequence is that you can stack a general attack boost like a banner to cap out a normal attack, but if you do that to Wu Kong you simply overwrite him.

And I should write a disclaimer that I haven´t used Wu in ages and may be making up stories in my head about how it works…

Woop! I had to go check because I thought that Wu Kong… or at least one of those dice icons… was +normal attack, but on checking, you’re right that it’s a mega +attack. Good catch, and thanks!

Now edited into the original post. Will try to keep updating this as folks spot stuff – at least we can try to get a lot of the most titan-relevant info all in one place!

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that´s why it also works on special skills :smiley:

How about a little newbie team building example. I mean yes the whole guide would explain that, but a quick example might make it more easy to get the idea.
Say you try building a team for a red titan (I think that was the last titan thread I read). Explain what heroes you would look for in each of the positions to fill all the most essential ones. Heroes to look out for would be Nordri, Grimm, Buster/Franz, Bertulf/WuKong or something like that. A team even a newbie can get C-loot with on any titan.

Also maybe a mention of items? Especially cheap ones, that everybody, including newbies has available. Or did you do that and I just missed it now?

  1. Items to fill essential functions of the team and free up hero slots: like banners for attack up
  2. Items to help with survivability (so you can skip the healer and put another useful hero in instead): Arrows (the one I use), but Axes and Turtle banners work just as well.

I had mentioned items in passing when talking about major abilities to bring — but item loadouts are important enough that I’ve now added a full section of their own. Good call!

Also added: notes about harpoons and titan-body-part drops (in the loot section).

I think more example teams (how to get started) is a great idea too, and I’ll think on that… may put that in its own post (and link it from the top post).

Part of what I’ll consider is “how common is common?” Wu Kong is probably most folks’ first real titan specialist hero, but at least, as you say, “keep an eye out for” kinda heroes like Bertulf and Buster (and the various EDD heroes) that may be gettable but hardly on demand.

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