Well, I finally got around to beating S3 hard yesterday. I am onto S4 BEFORE S5 comes out. While mostly psychological, being 2 seasons back just seemed much worse.
Hereâs the short explanation before I drone on like I usually do. Beat it with this time on the first try using this team:
Wasnât bad at all. No one got to red health or anything, at least in a meaningful way or time that I can recall now. I technically did this last night.
for my last practical set of S3 summons!
Now, the longer explanation for those interested.
I beat it on the first try with that team, but failed two times prior with a different team. The other teams was just too conservative/defensive. It essentially made this battle a battle of attrition and there are just a lot of stages with lots of HP on bosses for that sort of fight. The perk is I never really brought âheavy firepowerâ in terms of items. Even when I lost I didnât burn through items, so there wasnât much of a material cost.
The failing team was:
Gullinbursti +20 & LBâd
Gretel +20 & LBâd
Hansel +20 & LBâd
Lianna + 10 in costume
Raffaele
Basically it was slow mana with Lianna and stop it with Hansel and Gretel. I thought their relatively high A stats (aside from Raffaele) would carry me, but they couldnât. I had too much mana control. I was holding fire a lot to wait on timing, etc.
Both times I was rolling until the board went REALLY dry on me. Given I was grinding them down slowly, the tree count was usually at 2.0, so while I was blocking specials the slash attacks were too much to take on bad boards with no stuns. I didnât have revive scrolls either time, so usually when a key hero died I fled before trying in vain and burning items.
I fell into my old mana control pattern and the writing was on the wall it shouldnât be that hard. Like how legendary 10 on CoK took me like 9 minutes 
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I do this because for the longest time itâs what my roster gave me and by extension what I am used to. I figured I needed to try and control them less and see if I can just blow them the heck up.
Biggest thing would be EDD. In my case it is either red or yellow from Guardian Falcon or Guardian Jackal. The down side is my reds and yellow are kind of weak, or I should say not durable, so any board drought will spell the end. In yellow I donât have a normal D dropper. In red it would be Gormek, but that was less appealing.
Not using EDD left me with the following for D dropping:
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Malicna in purple. I also have some durable purple heroes. The RNG of her special in a critical fight was a turn off though. My unemblemed Tibs had durability concerns.
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Green is still just Buddy. He did help on normal, but I just wasnât feeling it. Most of my greens to bring with are more support heroes than heavy firepower too.
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That left my blues, which are pretty strong as I have Athena and Magni costume. Also unelected Grimm, but he would be a survivability risk.
Blue it is!
Raffaele and Gullinbursti I knew I still wanted for over heal and big back up heal. These two can really keep a team alive. Athena +20 &LBâd was the third. Going for fire power Magni +20 w/ MCB was a natural choice. The 5th slot was a toss up between Glenda +20 and Richard +20.
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Glenda offered the special skill boost, would extend her and Raffâs EL to the whole team. Mostly for Raffâs, Glendaâs too weak minions did not weigh in. Her damage is okay, but her buff would be dispelled by the tree.
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Richard is more. durable but I decided his special wouldâve more useful as the enemies would still get to 2.0 strength from the tree, so the A drop would be great.
Thatâs how the team came together and it worked pretty well. Blue was neutral on the first and last guy, and strong on red. When the red boss got to low health and started me on fire, the hope was blue tiles make that duration on being on fire as short as possible.
Items were l:
Time Stops as my mana control
Revive Scrolls just in case
Hurricanes to fill my 3 hitters as needed
Super Mana probably for my healers outside hurricane range
I was nervous as my E&P brain is wired for mana control. I used all my time stops, which is fine I have plenty, and 4 of 5 hurricanes. I didnât touch the revive scrolls or mana. I am also not sure the bosses when it titan form ever fired a special. I was really surprised how strong the blue hitters worked. The battle went really fast.
I really need to work on more aggressive teams going forward. Maybe PvE seasons would be less of a drag if the fights didnât take so long then 
) Anyways, here was the winning team (pretty basic heroes and gear):
