🎅 Santa Claus: Santa's Challenge – Thoughts & Discussion (2019)

Santa’s Challenge Hero RETURNING: Santa Claus!

This is deprecated / duplicate topic, which is not getting updated with balance changes.

Please use the following topic to discuss Santa Claus

Hero Card


:bar_chart: Stats

Rarity Element Class Mana Speed
:star::star::star::star::star:
Legendary
:fire: Fire/Red Monk Slow
:crossed_swords:
Attack
:shield:
Defense
:heart:
Health
618 830 1437

:dizzy: Special Skill: Ultimate Gift Sack

  • Deals 150% damage to all enemies.
  • Summons an Elf Minion for each ally with 10% HP and 10% attack inherited from the caster.
  • All enemies get -34% attack for 3 turns.
  • All enemies get -44% defense for 3 turns.

:thought_balloon: What do you think of Santa Claus?

This thread is for thoughts and discussion on Santa Claus.

Based on preferences of Forum members expressed recently, please try to stick mainly to Santa Claus and not wander off topic too much to other heroes.

Some Popular Questions for Discussion

  • Is he worth summoning for?

  • Would you use him on Defense? Offense? War? Quests/Events? Titans?

  • Would you give Santa Claus Monk Emblems? Which Talent Grid path would you choose?

  • What do you think of his special?

  • What do you think of his character design?

  • The theme of Santa’s Challenge heroes is Minion Summoners paired with hitting and negative effects (except Mother North, who pairs Minions with healing and reviving). What do you think of this sort of special skill?


:broken_heart: Avoiding Overspending & Heartache :broken_heart:

Or: How many summons are needed to get Santa Claus?

Special thanks to @Garanwyn for assistance on summoning odds and proofreading for this section.

It’s important to remember that Seasonal Event Heroes have extremely low summoning odds. No amount of summoning will guarantee a Seasonal Event Hero.

On average, in a 10-pull, you have a 2.96% chance of summoning Santa Claus.

But that statistic can lead our minds astray in exactly how our odds play out as we continue summoning.

Some useful insights:

  • 26 times out of 100, you’ll get Santa Claus by pull 100 (26,000 gems)
  • 95 times out of 100, you’ll get Santa Claus by pull 1000 (260,000 gems)
  • 99 times out of 100, you’ll get Santa Claus by pull 1530 (397,800 gems)

Putting that in Perspective

  • 74 out of every 100 people won’t get Santa Claus by the 100th pull
  • If 1 Million players each summoned 100 times, 740,000 of those players wouldn’t get Santa Claus
  • 5 out of every 100 people won’t get Santa Claus by the 1000th pull
  • If 1 Million players each summoned 1000 times, 50,000 of those players wouldn’t get Santa Claus

More Insights & Reading

I highly recommend reading these two threads for more information and context on summoning odds:

If you’ve read them a million times before, you may consider reading them again before deciding on your budget for summoning. A little time spent deciding on how much money you want to risk on summoning goes a long way to avoiding disappointment, frustration, and regret later. :slight_smile:


:star2: Epic Hero Tokens Can Be Used for Seasonal Summoning

The Seasonal Summons replaces the regular Epic Hero Summons.

Because of that, unlike Challenge Event Summons, the Summoning Portal for Seasonal Events allows using saved up Epic Hero Tokens that can otherwise normally only be used for Epic Hero Summons.

That makes Seasonal Events the only place you can currently use Epic Hero Tokens for a chance at non-Season 1 heroes.

Many people regard the Christmas heroes as the best Season Heroes, and therefore prefer to save their Epic Hero Tokens for December or early January during this Santa’s Challenge Event. For more discussion of this, please see: What is the best Seasonal Summons?

You’ll also have the same chance at the HOTM as usual when using Epic Hero Tokens.

Because Santa’s Challenge 2019 is expected to run from through all of December into the beginning of January, you should have an opportunity to Summon while either HOTM is available.

For information on the December and January HOTM, please see:


:thinking: Wondering About Your Personal Situation?

Feel free to discuss your team and roster here, and ask for advice from other Forum members.

If you’d like more extensive advice on sorting out your particular roster, I recommend creating a new thread in Gameplay Help & Tactics, and posting screenshots of your hero roster, along with your questions.


:bulb: Have an Insight on Santa Claus’s Game Mechanics?

Click for Info on Creating Player Guides

This thread is a great place to discuss anything and everything related to Santa Claus.

Once those discussions have yielded notable insights, I encourage others to make reference guides in Player Guides that synopsize specific questions and answers about Santa Claus.

Topics that are most appropriate for that are ones that players are likely to be searching for or wondering about in the future.

Creating a guide is a good way to make that information findable in the future without having to read through a ton of posts. You can make use of the Forum quote feature to avoid having to rewrite explanations that have already been well written.

Here’s an example of such a post: [GUIDE] How does the Queen of Hearts’ Taunt work with AoE specials, or specials affecting nearby enemies in addition to the target?


:ballot_box: Polls

Do you already have Santa Claus from a previous Santa’s Challenge?

  • Yes, I have Santa Claus already from a past Santa’s Challenge
  • No, I tried to get Santa Claus previously, but didn’t succeed
  • No, I was playing during Santa’s Challenge last year, but didn’t try for Santa Claus
  • No, I wasn’t playing during the last Santa’s Challenge
0 voters

Do you plan to Summon for Santa Claus this Santa’s Challenge?

  • Yes, I want to try to get Santa Claus this Santa’s Challenge
  • No, I already have Santa Claus, and don’t want to try for another
  • No, I’m not interested in Santa Claus, or don’t think it’s worth trying with the Summoning odds
0 voters

Overall, what do you think of Santa Claus’s usefulness?

  • I think Santa Claus is one of the very best heroes
  • I think Santa Claus is above average
  • I think Santa Claus is very average
  • I think Santa Claus is below average
  • I think Santa Claus is one of the very worst heroes
0 voters

Be sure to share your detailed thoughts in comments below!

What do you think of Santa Claus’s design?

  • Santa Claus is one of my MOST favorite hero designs
  • Santa Claus is one of my LEAST favorite hero designs
  • I’m indifferent to Santa Claus’s design, I don’t have strong feelings either way
0 voters

:link: Related Threads You May Be Interested In

Main Thread for Santa’s Challenge 2019: 🎅 Santa's Challenge 2019: Teams, Strategy, FAQs, Discussion, and Links – Christmas Event

Older Threads Discussing Santa Claus

Other Recent Threads on Santa’s Challenge

2 Likes

Old St. Nick is meh incarnate.

2 Likes

Subpar attacker due to his speed/effect, poor Titan hitter, solid tank (but still only 4th best red tank), below average at any other defense position.

2 Likes

What other red tanks are better than him besides BK?

2 Likes

Zimkitha?


 or perhaps that’s just me 


I wouldn’t place Zim above Santa as a tank. Not by a long shot.

3 Likes

I wasn’t entirely serious. But fact remains, since I started tallying my non-revenge raids against various tanks, I have an 89% success rate against Santa, and an 83% success rate against Zimmy.


 but just 18 raids against Zimmy tanks, so far, so the confidence is low. :slight_smile:

More seriously, I guess Queen of Hearts could be a contender. I’ve faced her even less frequently, so I don’t have any confidence in my numbers; she just feels kinda good and tanky.

for me, it is a toe to toe for best red tank with BK and santa. I hate santa tank going off
imo, both better than ares tank.

1 Like

Imo, Ares is no longer a defense hero. I fear a Marjana tank more than I fear an Ares tank.

2 Likes

Buff him to 4 turns please, at slow his effect simply doesn’t last long enough. He’s been good for me in map and event type stuff but outside of that, he doesn’t see much use. Wilbur shouldn’t so thoroughly outshine a rare event 5 star.

5 Likes

Mitsy and Gravy, by a wide margin.

1 Like

I don’t consider either of those to be good red tanks. They both shine much better as flanks, a lot like Onatel.

2 Likes

They are easier to take down. Far easier in Mitsuko’s case: I have a 95%(!) success rate against Mitsuko tanks, and a 91% success rate against Gravemaker tanks. Whereas:

1 Like

Santa only shines in rush attacks.

I respectfully disagree.

2 Likes

Ares w emblems is a good tank

I had my paladin emblems on my Ares on node 8, took a reset emblem and gave those emblems to Frida because she is a better tank and overall paladin. Ares doesn’t punish anyone and there are too many heroes that dispel.

4 Likes

shrug

Ares is a viable tank at +17

I log in and some days am down, and some days I’m up cups. The most extreme case was when I went from 158 globally to 6th while offline.

That was Ares at +14.

I believe Frida may be better at 4/80. But by 4/80+12 or so, Ares improved a lot

I can tell you that at their current levels Ares is better than a +13 Drake at tank.

2 Likes

Santa needs to come join my team and be the only 5* red in my roster I’ll leave some milk and cookies for ya big man lol

Managed to pull PiB in Grimforest, but had no summoner hero then.

Then pulled a Santa each in 2 successive 10 pulls. This should be fun. LOL.

And looks like I have my Red Tank.

1 Like