Gargon´s Guide to Soul Exchange 9

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Soul Exchange 9 (I think)

My view on this is from that of a Top 200 alliance player. At my level more heroes are playable than in the Top 20, but I am mostly interested in heroes that make me better, not that keep me floating where I already am. And I suggest the same view for everybody, no matter where they are at. The big guys obviously don´t care much about anything here, they´ll probably select something for the museum or a triplet for a hero that they like both copies they already have. Players in lower parts of the game will have more heroes of interest, but since they pay the same price I would still suggest to look at the best hero possible, rather than something that is affordable and barely good enough for a top 1000 alliance war.
I find the selection this time more complex than usual, as there are many heroes that can be useful, but there is not 1 clear must-choose-hero like Ludwig and Milena were.
So generally speaking, what is a good hero to pick from SE (or same principal at a lower level also in Fated Summons)?

  1. A hero that is simply super strong (very rare in SE/FS)
  2. A hero that fills a specialized niche, but is otherwise useless. (Usually the option for people with a higher quality roster)
  3. Most importantly: a hero that makes you better at something that you want to be better at. And that can be nearly anything depending on interests.
    And generally speaking what is a bad hero to pick? A pure damage based hero, because those get outdated the fastest and since all heroes in SE and more so FS are already old, you start out with something that is outdated by the time you get it. So better pick a hero with a timeless skill, that doesn´t degrade over time, then your only worry are the stats.

Now for this current selection:

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10 souls: Nothing outstanding as usual, but still a few niche heroes. For most people that only have 10 heroes to trade, the recommendation would be (as always) to save up more heroes for next time, for those that have more, look into the higher categories. But there are options even here!

Uthragan: Bottom 3 this time around, relatively new hotm at very fast speed, nothing much else good to say.
COdin: Odin used to be a meta defense hero a few years back and this costume is an upgrade, of course the meta has moved on considerably, but for 10 souls one cannot complain about this guy for defense. Solid choice for small rosters.
CFrancine: Was decent when she came out, especially with a strong family bonus (mana boost), but the damage just isn´t there anymore. Can be an option for EDD for titans on the costume, if one is looking for that (no Almur???), but generally speaking the original seems more useful than the costume.
Yang Mai: Old hotm, far and away worst hero in here, a whole order of magnitude below everything else, no idea how she got that spot, wouldn´t even get a recommendation in FS…
CSnowWhite: An absolute top choice in her rush niche! She can be a monster by herself, but also deal very effectively with the nastiness called MDW.

15 souls: Nice variety of heroes that can be useful in their respective niches.
Dr Moreau: OK hero, but with the quality of heroes in this SE, not a good choice in the 15er category.
Dabria: I am not a fan of revivers, but this one comes at least at avg speed, which is a major step up compared to most others, but the following survivability is not great and general utility as a healer is rather low. Check out current FS selection for other revivers (Alby/MN). Lots of choice available right now if you want a reviver.
Ekanite: An absolute steal at 15 souls. Definitely top of the shelf in the 15 souls category, but even a contender overall. 3rd generation Ninja, with hit-all at Ninja speed, plus utility with counterattacking minions. Great choice!
Xiaotu: Decent choice, mainly for the anti-Waterpipe/LotL minion passive. As a damage hero (avg speed sniper) always only second choice behind Laohu, now more than a year old, an OK, but not a great choice anymore.
Cinnamon: Another good choice in the 15 soul category: EDD to all! Hit-all, dot-all, but only at avg speed, so make sure the speed matches your other blue hitters on the team. Not much point hitting with Cinnamon after all your other heroes and since a lot of people probably picked up another avg speed blue EDD from FS last round, this spot may already be taken…

20 Souls: Most of them are nice!
Narcisa: A fast speed bard with attack down utility, can´t see how one could regret this choice.
Anne: One of the superstars in this SE. BUT! She´s a pure damage hero and as such suffers badly from power creep. Not all that long ago she was one of the most OP def heroes in the game, badly in need of a nerf, now she´s already available for cheap in the second hand shop, which tells you all you need to know. Still a good choice for people that need an upgrade for their defensive flank or damage department on offence.
Athos: A good sniper at very fast speed with additional anti-minion action. As all anti-minion heroes suffers a bit from lack of minion targets on current defenses at higher levels in this game (say top 200 alliances, maybe even more?). Not a bad hero, could even have been a good choice in previous SEs, but with the choices available this time, he is overpriced.
Cupido: Another superstar! Only avg speed, but absolutely amazing utility for both regular speed and especially rush settings.
Bubbles: Potentially strongest hero of this SE? Great utility hero at fast speed with shifting mindless, but also a DD and decent sniperhit, so you can potentially take out targets, but if the damage isnt enough anymore the target is still incapacitated. Waddles is already a superstar for many, this is his big brother! Or sister I guess.

Recommendations:
Too many to just give one or even three, but I will try …

Overall best hero, if you can´t decide on your own who to pick: Bubbles! There´s just no downside here! Or:
Best deal: Ekanite at 15 with a 20 soul quality.

20 Souls: All of them (except maybe Athos) are worth 20!
15 Souls: Ekanite is the top choice, but depending on needs most of them can be worth 15.
10 Souls: SnowWhite is worth 10 souls for her niche, maybe even Odin.

Purple: Narcisa
Yellow: Anne
Red: Cupido
Green: Ekanite
Blue: strongest color: All 3 are viable choices depending on needs.

Feel free to add or disagree as much as you like :slight_smile:

In case you are new and don´t know the abbreviations:
SE = Soul Exchange
FS = Fated Summon
EDD = Elemental Defense Down
DD = Defense Down
I hope that covers it.

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When that new owl hero arrives whose minion can send your heroes to owlhalla, Xiaotu will be super valuable in shutting that ridiculous effect down. Maybe she’s a just in time counter for him

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Not going to include heroes that haven´t even been released yet in a recommendation, but sure in the future many things can change and all Lunar heroes are useful against minions that have an effect other than HP. The problem for them right now is that no such heroes are commonly used on defenses, for the simple reason that Lunar heroes do exist. It´s like the opposite of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So whatever heroes they do release with super minion powers will not end up on defenses because Lunar heroes exist, and therefore you don´t need Lunar heroes lol.
And the more people have those heroes (this SE will breed a lot more Lunar hero owners as well besides the recent Lunar event) the less minion heroes will be played on defenses.
I would maybe recommend her for someone with a bigger roster (and no other needs in this SE), but without Lunar heroes. Good to have one. Just to keep it on the bench in case things change in the future, but I would not level her before such a change.

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I agree that this argument is valid. In wars however where 6 attack teams are needed, we may see super strong minion summoners like this owlhala in def team

And funny enough, if we go 1-srep further, with your argument, most people will not select XiaoTu and in turns make this new minion summoners appear more in def team (since XiaoTu will be still rare – just a joke btw :wink: )

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Calling Xiaotu “not a great choice anymore” is crazy, and instant grounds for my closure of this thread lol.

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I mean……look at the top 20 teams and tell me how many times Phorcys shows up. Xiaotu is still very much relevant and is a great hero! :joy:

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Both of these statements and the addition to new minion summoners is the reason why I chose her.

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This hero is invaluable because of the game’s mechanics.

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Trust, this guy doesn’t know what smack he’s talking lol…

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Haha looks like I stepped on a few toes there. Some hardcore Xiaotu fans I see. Well have fun with her, you could have picked worse is I guess what I can say. Also because she´s only at 15, she´s worth her prize, just not something I would recommend widely.
We´ll see how long it takes for the next minion def wave to come around.

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That is a interesting point, but I would counter with: it clearly isn´t happening, not for lack of strong minion heroes, the most obvious example is waterpipe. The meta tank before arrival of Lunar heroes and completely inexistent at top level since then. She would be an amazing hero especially for rush even today where her stats are far from meta. But since the appearance of Lunar heroes, there have been no more minions with effects in any meta def.

At lower levels in alliance wars waterpipe still exists and that is also where new strong minion-heroes will appear occasionally. However those heroes are so rare that you will only find them in 2 or 3 defs on a war board in the low reaches and therefore the attacking alliance doesn´t need a lot of Lunar heroes to always have one. Well in the ideal case where people know what they are doing. Low down of course lots of people will attack with their standard (often mono) teams without much thinking and then these defs will cause a lot of headache. but this problem can´t be solved with better or counter heroes…
I am happy to have the Lunar tiger, and also have him maxed and LB1, but he doesn´t get out to play all that often. It´s an auto-win button against waterpipes yes, but if there are 2 waterpipes on a def (and that´s not every time) it doesn´t always mean the target is available for hits when I get there. Other people do have a taste to hit such weaknesses as well.
Waterpipe at our level would be an insanely strong tank still if all 30 teams had her, but at our level nobody does. And at the level where alliances have 30 waterpipes their enemies also have 100 Lunar heroes… Lunar heroes are just much more common (EHTs and now even SE) than the killer minion makers in some crappy odds premium portals.

I guess Xiaotu still is a good pick for people that want to be on the safe side, you know just to have one in case something bad (super amazing minions) happens. Or maybe for the social types that want to contribute to herd immunity (rather than freeload/profit from herd immunity), btw and admirable personality trait! And as I said earlier people that have all the other bases, except a Lunar hero, covered. It´s nice to be able to make fun of a waterpipe instead of trembling in fear. I just don´t think that there are people out there that constanltly have to hit waterpipes and that is the only problem they have in wars or raids or whatever.
For me it´s a question of quantity. How often do I need to kill a waterpipe and how often would a say Cupido (same color and speed and age) solve a problem? In my world Cupido would get played in every war and in rush I probably could use 3-6 every time. My Lunar hero? If I had to guess I would say 1 in 3 wars? BTW just to argue against myself: I found a Sorrow tank this rush war, Laohu was very happy :smiley:

Anyway, long story short, I don´t want to call her a bad hero, just one that is a niche hero with few use cases in a selection where many heroes with lots of use cases exist. Maybe that sums it up :slight_smile:

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Maybe in traditional raids (at the very top) this is true.
But waterpipe and LOTL make many appearances in rush and no heal tournies, in raid league and still have a decent presence in some top wars.

That is the reason I went with X

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This is a nice point. For super active players and alliances, Cupido is a major card for wars.

(I will be honest that compared to you guys, i am quite casual and skip many game events)

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Xiaotu is absolutely against Ekanite: elemental, minions; Why is Ekanite better than Xiaotu? :rofl:
With Xiaotu: Waterpipe, LOTL, M&M, W3K Heroes… not a problems (Diaochan cost 20 souls)

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I can help Gargon on one perspective (even though I love XiaoTu more than Ekanite, i actually have a tough decision between the two).

In short, this is a team building not a head-to-head, and the arguments are that Xiaotu is minion’s specialist (and minions defence team may not be super popular), while Ekanite is more generalist and can be used in wider situations

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Xiaotu can be used everywhere; she hit very hard.
Ekanite with 3x-mana (360% to all) is only slightly better than Kenémy (average, 330% to all) (15 souls);
In VF tournament/war, Ninjas don’t have any advantages.

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I would agree there, however you won´t (and shouldn´t) find Ekanite in a lot of defenses, so it´s rather irrelevant. Both are offense heroes and need to do a job.
I find 5 tile heroes quite generally much preferable to 9 tile heroes. I do find that Legendary troops are changing this view, but at the level I play Legendary troops only exist on defenses, nobody has enough to equip their attack teams with them. So until that changes, I prefer faster heroes. And in my personal case this will probably take longer than the remaining lifespan of this game.
Anyway back to Xia vs Eka. Avg speed sniper? That in itself is a really bad deal. Snipers should be fast or very fast. And most of them are, avg speed is a major downgrade. 5 tiles on the other had is close to the fastest in the game (only the 3 classes of Ninjas with 4% mana node get regularly to 4 tiles). So that´s the major plus here. So I can get a 5 tile hit that increases survivability and adds counterattack. Nothing that needs to be nerfed anymore nowadays for sure, but at least it was powerful when the hero came out. Xia on the other hand just like every Lunar hero, was never anything but the passive. Laohu was a decent hero (not OP) and way better than Xia. Now we also have new Lunar heroes with 1year newer stats. If you have none of them, I find Xia a decent choice, otherwise she´s pointless.
As to the damage they all deal. Well this really isn´t the right thing to talk about. All heroes in the SE are outdated (more than 1 year old) already and as all damage heroes do, they age rapidly. If you still find their damage adequate right now, chances are you will soon stop thinking that way with every passing month. Look at Anne, the by far best damage dealing hero on this list. An absolute chase OP monster hero when released and now for nearly free in SE. Sure today she may still be a damage upgrade for many, but for how much longer? No damage hero, not even Anne would make my top 3 choices.
I very generally do not recommend damage heroes as picks simply for the fact of their low life expectancy. And if we go back to Xia vs Eka: for me the damage is rather unimportant on both, so it leaves the rest of their functionality which is the minion skill passive on Xia vs the counterattack minions for Eka. So an extremely small niche (hardly any minions on defs and those often are only meat shields without any important functions), basically you need to find a def wiht 1 of a handful of heroes as tank (maybe flank) for Xia to make any sense, against a skill that is always useful. Even more rare than mionion heroes on defs are anti-minion heroes on defs, which makes Eka useful in basically every single fight.

So my recommendation which is meant as a general recommendation will go by the quantity of use cases. A hero that is useful in basically every fight is a lot easier to recommend than a hero that gets used 3 times a month. I am not saying Xia cannot be the right choice under certain circumstances, but for the avg player I do not think she is the best choice.

see above, but if you want damage, at least take Anne, she does way more at faster speed.

Agreed! Ninjas do not only not have advantages, they actually become slower during VF wars, 6.5/13/19.5 tiles instead of 5/10/15 tiles. So absolutely no recommendation for Ninjas in rush.

Also maybe the recommendation for Ekanite may look a bit too strong, because I recommend him for both the 15 souls category as well as the green choice. But mainly that is because there is no strong competition in either category. The 15ers are all OK for 15 souls, but there is no one super strong hero in there. Out of the 5 Eka is the one I would personally use most often. And the green 20 is unfortunately much worse than all other 20ies so that Eka wins there as well. But to put him into perspective: he would not make my top 3 overall because too much of his special is damage based.

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Hi Gargon, thanks for this guide, very interesting.
I have a question about Ekanite’s minions.
How damaging are they as counterattackers?
Will a current AOE or trihitter meta hero die from counterattack damage?
If the answer is yes, imho Ekanite is worth it.
Thanks in advance and good luck in the battles :slight_smile:

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How many tiles for Ekanite special to get MAX charge? legit question.

Edit: Found the answer, to max charge speical,15 tiles normal. 20% mana bonus bring it down to 12.5 tiles.

the 1st stage (8% hp) Minions and 200% damage to all are just too weak in today’s game…

2nd stage are okish…

To get to max effect, he is basically a slow hero…

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That´s not as easy a question as it may seem. It depends on lots of circumstances. Like how many HP does the hero have to start with (which is greatly increased by base stats, LB1/2 and especially legendary troops), how many HP does he have when he hits? Damaged by previous specials (Eka and others)? Overheal? How hard does he hit? Do your heroes have enough HP to dish out full counter damage? Hit-all has a much higher potential to die than hit-3 of course. 60% counterattack is not very high, but still considerable enough to potentially kill.
In the end I don´t have him and therefore don´t have enough practical experience to say how often the counterattack will kill vs. not kill. And since it still depends on where in the game you are I am afraid there really isn´t a way to know other than to get him and try it out…

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5/10/15 tiles for the 3 charges. So depending how you collect those tiles it is a LOT more powerful to fire a Ninja 3 times at 1st charge than 1 time at 3rd charge. Not just more direct damage, but also 3 times the additional counterattack damage.
This is of course mainly true for 3rd generation Ninjas that hit-all on all 3 charges.

1st and 2nd generation Ninjas are different as they increase number of targets with increasing charges, so the overall damage for them is much lower with 3xcharge 1 vs 1xcharge 3. Here charge 1 is a purely tactical choice.

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