What is better in defence 4 star crit or 4 star mana troops

[yelnats_24]

For defense, mana is better. Unlike on offense, there is no treshold, even unleveled mana troops can make defending hero fire faster, especially for either very fast (like GM) or vely slow heroes.

While mana troops have lower defense and lack health bonus, it give healing bonus which is good if you have healers on your defense team. When a healer like Delilah have mana troops, she will always benefit from it when she use her skill. For other heroes, the healing bonus only benefit them if they are still alive when Delilah use her skill. So I prefer mana troops for healer.

@yelnats_24

@Sparrow

For offense teams you always aim for certain mana boost values, that will fill the mana bar one tile earlier than default. Are there specific values like that for defense teams, too?

Unfortunately, it is hard to calculate specific value for defense team, but it is generaly do not need to meet certain values as high as on offense. Allow me to quote @Kerridoc for this matter:

@Kerridoc

On defense, the general wisdom is that Mana troops are superior. The Crit bonus is only applied on the occasional “slash” attacks, which occur far less often on defense than tile hits on offense. Also the mana increase is more valuable: mana on offense is gained in discrete packets from each tile, while on defense heroes gain mana both from tile hits and gradually. Therefore, even lower-level mana troops like these can have a meaningful effect on how quickly they cast.

It’s not exactly 1 mana for 1 tile hit on defense:

@Kerridoc

• on offense, a hero only gains mana by matching tiles (unless boosted with a gain-mana buff from, say, Alberich). You gain one tile’s worth of mana when the tile hits a foe, or two tile’s worth if it “ghosts” (doesn’t hit a foe). Certain troops or specials increase the amount of mana each tile is worth.
• on defense, every hero gains a tick of mana each turn. Any hero hit by a tile will gain a chunk of mana; the chunk size decreases the more tiles hit in a particular turn (so a huge cascade may not charge all foes’ mana). Again, mana-boost troops and specials may increase the mana gain.