A young member of our alliance asked me the question shown in the title above. The in-game-explanation tells us nothing by describing ‘power’ as: “Power shows the strength of your hero in combat”.
So, what is it?
It’s a number representing the combined total of rarity (stars) + stats + special skill level + talent tree nodes.
I’ll refer you to read this topic if you want to exactly know how the game calculates card power:
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Thank you! Now I get it 
And astonishingly 
neither mana speed nor the effects of the skill are taken into consideration when evaluating the hero power.
Think if those factors actually mattered 
I guess they factor it in on how much attack, defense and health a hero has. A very fast hero with damaging SS like Kageburado has his health below average (I think, not sure though).
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The ‘power’ of a hero is often deceiving when it comes to the actual usefulness of that hero. Especially Season 3 and Costumed 5’s, the power is very inflated.
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Ooohhh… I get your point. S3 heroes and the costumed versions of S1 heroes, because of their high stats, have much higher hero power.
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Dimensioning the skill on hero power, rather than hero power on the skill would be a somewhat curious approach.
Which BTW would explain why monsters like Telluria and Vela have been created.
Hero power should measure the power no matter how you conceive it, because if not… you will never know if your design was bad.
I also have a bad time understanding the base CP: are we measuring the actual power or the potential? Do we care how many stars a hero is when we evaluate what it is capable of?
I certainly don’t 
And, PLEASE, don’t tell me that Danzaburo’s skill is as worth as Wu Kong’s 
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As a proud owner of 2 maxed Danzaburos, I gotta say he can push the limit sometimes.
He’s no WuKong, but did me proud as a +20 tank before I pulled a 5* yellow.
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I’m not saying this or that hero skill is worthless (though I really have a bad time fielding the likes of Chao, Jabbar, Little John and others).
What I say is that it is pretty unadvanced to calculate the hero power without factorising mana speed against its defense, for instance.
Or the kind of skill.
Let’s consider healing: yes, it should come into play after you suffered some damage, but not after you heroes are dead.
How can Vivica’s slow healing be worth the same 5 CPs as a 4* average healing?
Yes, Vivica gives you extra defence and debuffs.
Which is cool if your heroes are still alive.
Are they, by the time she fires?
In war probably not (my experience says you can’t rely on Vivica being the only healer)
Skills are way too big part of a hero to just say “5 CPs for every level”.
Let’s admit that in origin everything was balanced. Or balanced for the finished hero (4-80 neat).
But how can Lianna’s skill be worth the same when she is 3-70, 4-80 or +20?
That’s just wrong.
Well, some players have opined that Vela was not good when she was released as HOTM. She became relevant and vital only when Telluria was released due to the synergy of their skills and the ideal positions when defending, and a lot of players have stripped emblems on their Alberich and Zimkitha just to pour it to Vela.
Curious if you are proposing that the hero power must be based on the hero’s skills and not on the stats. If so, how can you measure the power of a hero then? How can you measure and differ the power of healers from snipers from supporters, etc.?
It matters. Generally, apart from the fact that legendary heroes have several secondary skills compared to their 4 star counterpart, the stats of legendary heroes are far superior than epic ones, and stats of 4 star heroes are far better than 3 star ones. The stats contribute how strong the damage can be dealt, how high the heals are and how sturdy the hero is when being punished by tiles or SS. If stats doesn’t matter, then I may understand why you are leveling and maxing more 1* and 2* heroes than your 3, 4 and 5* ones.
Well, I find Danza far being useful in most facets of the game than Wu, whose usage only excels against titans and nowhere else. Both have a 1/3 chance of getting a bust from their skills, but while Wu boosts the attack of all his allies (this is the only thing you get from Wu apart from the disappointment of the misses you see on the board), Danza may greatly damage all enemies and blind them at -54 accuracy or buffs allies’ defense with +24 mana generation (you get 2 out of 3 good things from his skills). I like Danza. Only got 1 maxed.
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Again, the stats. At +20, the raw damage output from her SS is insanely crazy. At 4/80, she deals massive damage when activating her skill to a single target. At 3/70, her SS MAY decently kill an enemy hero with less than half HP.
I’m not proposing hero power to be based only on skills.
It should take into account skill and stat and, honestly, even the relationships between the two because 300% attack is not the same when attack stat is 600 or 700 (which can happen and happens on the same hero)
As for power it is just wrong to consider POTENTIAL into power.
The fact a 5* gets better than a 4* is of no use when you want to evaluate the power here and now.
We should settle for the fact that 100-100-100 is better than 95-95-95 no matter the stars because… numbers, not concepts.
[The starting CP is one of the causes of unbalanced matchmaking in wars for new players, there have been several threads about it]
At the moment CP is deceiving (i.e. wrong) because, simply put, it focuses on concepts which don’t appear to be mirrored by numbers.
Then, can you propose a measuring guide instead for SG to implement? A calculation establishing the true power of heroes factoring in their stats and skills altogether. And how would you factor in the difference between healers, utility-support, snipers, AOE, hit 3, heal 3, etc in the true power of a hero? Would snipers have higher power than healers? Would AOE heroes have higher power than utility-support heroes? I hope you can come up with a tool that can be used to reflect the true power of each hero. If you can and pass it with flying colors, who knows, SG may adopt it… and pay you for your efforts.
You need to probe the developer’s mind to know why they think they are of equal worth.
Or… SG can implement an elo-like system that, rather than outputting a number that doesn’t really mean much, tells us at least which heroes are most popular and ranks them on a data driven base.
The fact something has been made difficult (by SG, not me) is not a good excuse to make it “confusing”.
Also…
Hero Power is at the base of war matchmaking…
Also you should consider every part of the skill. There are healers that also deal damage, for instance. In general, it would be too complex and impossible to measure, because a skill’s effectivity depends on many external factors, not only hero’s stats or level.
I think “power” is intended to be similar to every hero. If you take everything @Yhc is mentioning (and more), you could end with heroes with 750 power and others with 1000 power. I don’t believe that’s the idea of “power” numbers.
I really don’t understand how you propose evaluating a heroes usefulness based on skill with some kind of number.
What you’re asking is for a computer to grade the hero based on how useful they are. That’s equivalent to having the game criticize the heroes usefulness for you, which I think is very unrealistic to expect that.
Let’s use your example with healing. There’s Vivica’s skill which heals, vs Anzogh’s skill that heals and hits, vs Freya who summons minions, vs Wilbur who doesn’t do any of the above.
Would Wilbur then be considered to have a bad skill by the power calculation you’re proposing? How would you factor all the unique skills into one number? How do you design a system that also future-proofs it against future new skills?
You shouldn’t take Card Power seriously. You said it yourself:
The information the game provides with power is just that – a rating made out of a combination of numbers and values present on the card. It is not telling you how good or useful that hero actually is. Nor should it be the games job to tell you (it isn’t possible because whether a hero is useful or not is all subjective and/or requires a lot of time playing to determine the actual usefulness).
It is the players who use the heroes that determine how useful and what value those heroes really have. If the computer would do all that, then there wouldn’t be a need to have a discussion forum in the first place as there really wouldn’t be anything to discuss if that was the case.
To put it in perspective, Elkanen technically has the highest overall stats of all Season 1 heroes. And yet, no one in their right mind would argue that he’s anywhere near the best S1 hero.
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That would be interesting if “Power” wasn’t meant to be just that: a measure of the hero power.
I didn’t decide it. The devs did.
They use it in war matchmaking.
It’s not the only factor, but if it’s just a number… why use it at all? Just go full ELO.
If it’s just a number you have to sort out… Why even bother calculating or showing it?
Elkanen is an interesting example: a couple of persons in my ally threw ascension materials on him based on his power. Bad move.
Sorting out the game is one thing and is ok, sorting out the game against the numbers it presents… Well, that’s totally different.
The forum existence can be extremely debatable, but it’s not part of the game, you need to look for it and… Oh, yes, you have to understand a language that’s not your own (in my country only a third of the population arguably understand English)
As I said: an Elo-based ranking of the hero would be more useful. A popularity-based ranking. An effectiveness-based ranking. Even a ranking based on expertise by affirmed players.
Which happens to exist, just not in the game. Why?
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Bad move is a little far…he is pretty decent, especially if you are FTP or CTP. He is sturdy and can follow a hit from Evelyn (Hard to get) or Almur (Easier to get) and do massive damage.