Having good heroes is important, but knowing how to use them is even more important. A well constructed team of maxed 3*, through complementary specials and appropriate placement, will have enough synergy to beat a haphazardly built team of maxed 4*.
In order to get the most out of your heroes, there are a couple basic principles to remember.
- Like buffs don’t stack. If you have an attack buff active and you fire off another one, it will override the first. If there is an attack debuff active, you can counter it with an attack buff, and vice versa. Same with other buffs and debuffs. Generally, if the symbol is the same (sword, shield, heart, etc), it will override.
- For defense, the AI fires charged specials from left to right. Arrange your heroes accordingly. For attacking, you choose when to fire them. Fire dispellers, cleansers, buffers and debuffers before hitters.
- Heroes fall into different categories based on their special abilities. Most 4 and 5 star heroes fall into multiple categories.
- Healers. They heal your heroes of damage. Some heal all, some adjacent, some immediately and some over time.
- Cleansers. They remove negative status effects from your heroes, same as an antidote would.
- Buffers. They apply positive status effects to your heroes. They can boost attack, defense, or mana generation. They can block new negative status effects. They can share damage among all your heroes
- Debuffers. They apply negative status effects to your opponents. They can drop attack, defense, or mana generation. They can blind or silence.
- Dispellers. They remove positive status effects from your opponents.
- Mana controllers. They slow or block your opponents from gaining mana and firing specials.
- Hitters. These are your damage dealers. They can be snipers, who hit a single target really hard. They can be splash hitters, who hit one opponent and the heroes on either side of him. They can be Area of Effect (AoE) hitters who affect all of your opponents heroes. Sometimes they do all their damage up front, and sometimes they do Damage over Time (DoT).
- Miscellaneous. These are the skills that don’t really fit into any other categories. Ameonna’s Ghost, Gobbler’s Minion Eater, and the various heroes who create minions fit in here. These heroes often have niche utility rather than general purpose utility.
A well balanced team will have a good mix of skills. For attacking, I like to run 1-2 healers, a buffer, a debuffer, at least 3 hitters, and sometimes a mana controller.
For example, on red titans, you could use:
Wu Kong ( attack buffer that DOES stack with others )
Kiril ( healer, attack buffer, defense buffer )
Grimm ( defense debuffer, hitter ) x2
Sonya ( dispeller, hitter )
- Affects 3 Heroes. These guys require specific positions on your attack and defense teams to get the most out of their buffs, or careful targeting to maximize the damage they inflict. If they buff their neighbors, put them either tank or flank so they have 2 neighbors to buff. If they damage 3 targets, aim at tank or flank heroes so they have 2 neighbors to hit. Don’t put these guys on the wings, and generally don’t aim them at the wing heroes.
