I keep seeing Maeve, Kvasir, Bauchan, etc. at top of leaderboards in tourneys. Are S1 and S2 3*'s worth putting emblems into? I do have Gunnar, Aqeela, and Bane maxed and +12 already. Namahage, Balthazar, Brienne, c.Melia, Valen, Nashgar, Isshtak, Gill-ra, Carver, Gan Ju, Ei-Dunn are almost maxed. I guess I’m having second thoughts on dumping all my emblems into them, because I worry I’ll need them for my 4’s later on. I don’t have mats to ascend my 4 stars all the way so I’m not worrying about them yet. Is the loot from tourneys and challenge quests worth it?
lots of questions to consider!
depends almost entirely on playstyle and preferences and your overall roster. Belith and costume have their uses; C. Oberon can be underrated for Rush with uncleansable poison. Tyrum and costume are essential to have a dispel or cleanse (or both if you max two or more) option for the 3* roster if you rely mostly on S1 and S2 heroes; ditto Mnesseus and costume. Gill-Ra kind of fell out of favor with the release of Treevil, but she is also a rare 3* cleanser. Carver is actually pretty sneaky for some tournaments because of the mana cut too.
not to mention, the whole lot of S1s got significant buffs with the introduction of Superior Talents.
the game is usually (“usually”) pretty good about keeping you where you have the best chance to succeed while also challenging you. imo, there’s nothing wrong with maxing your 3* heroes, including emblems, and waiting for more resources to arrive for your 4* heroes. that’s largely what i did when i maxed (and LB, when that was a new feature) 3* and 4* heroes while keeping most of my oft-used 5* heroes at +7 emblems and not limit breaking any 5* for about a year or so because 1) i used the aethers on 3* and 4* heroes and 2) i didn’t really have a good sense of which 5* heroes to LB, especially since none of them were at +20 emblems (or +18 or +19 depending on the class).
i then reached a point where i pretty much built up the roster i wanted to use for most tournaments, so i felt a lot freer to push (substantial) resources into finally building my 5* heroes–pushing them to +20 emblems and finally LBing them. (Norns was my first LB!) yes, it did take me longer to get them to that point, but i had fun along the way with my 3* and 4* army.
even more reason to build up your 3* army!
tourneys are one of the only ways you can acquire aethers to limit break (LB) your heroes. they can also be a good way to farm summon tokens. yes, RNG is what it is, but i use it as a good source of epic troop tokens.
not sure entirely what you mean by “challenge quests,” but i guess you mean the monthly challenge events? those have good rewards just for completing them. competing for top placements requires a significant investment of gems and/or WE refill flasks. i wouldn’t worry about those unless you find yourself enjoying replaying levels over and over again to get top scores.
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Bane is a running joke in my alliance. He seems to be in every portal. I keep Gunnar only because I already maxed him out when I was still using 3 stars. Ditto Carver, Dawai and a couple others. Kvasir is a great 3 who I almost always take into the 3 raid tournies. Helo works too because he heals everyone and that Nun lady from the 3 Kingdoms (forgot her name) for the same reason. A lot of this of course hinges on where you are in the game. if you only have 1-2 4 and above then keep them and keep levelling.
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I would say loot from the tournies and events is worth it considering the low costs of upgrading good 3*s.
I think really good ones also have applications beyond just those 2 areas though. This team got me into diamond
Now aqeela is definitely the weak link but she has been invaluable in the first few months of building my account, and still holds her own at this level.
There are far better 3*s too like tree, some of the other season 5 heroes, some of the new event heroes
There are decent ones in s1 too. Gunnar and kaylani are excellent and allow you to punch far above your weight in pve content
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You have to play with what you got. You’ll find that you’ve got a long road ahead and you’ll look back at this question with affection. Relative to the players you’ll be paired against, you’ll find your 3 stars are fine… until they’re not. But by then you’ll have better heros to replace them. Hang in there. It’s a bumpy road.
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As @dawnsempires and @Homaclese said, the tourneys are a good windfall for relatively little put into them (3* hero resource cost), so definitely join them and ideally get a good set of 3* s to use in them.
I generally care little about 3* heroes, and only have 15 of them (3 per element), but those 15 are all valuable beyond 3* tourneys and I use them in W3K as well among other things. Find the 3* s that have value and then don’t look back when you emblem and limit break them.
For reference:
DARK
Treevil (great for Rush wars and tourneys, even when facing epic and legendary teams)
C.Tyrum (a Fast speed dispeller/cleanser is a great thing)
Para (my only healer at 3*, I like the fact it also causes an attack down on enemies)
HOLY
C.Kvasir (the gold standard of useful 3* heroes, IMO. I take him all over the place; events, 3* tourneys, 4* and 5* buff booster tourneys, Minion Wars, etc.)
C.GanJu (the ability to reduce the mana of a target by 40% is pretty huge at 3*)
Edelaide (I use her in my Dark Titan attack team, among other things. Others use Wu-Kong but I am happy to use Edelaide instead)
ICE
Yao (he creates a beefy minion for himself, hits decently relative to 3*, and the minions ability is unique at this tier)
Joukahainen (excellent option for shutting down buffs, I have even taken him into Diamond raids when it was buff heavy…just for fun…obviously great for buff booster tourneys)
Dawn (one of the best 3* heroes IMO, her ability is great and her Owls are cute! Mana slashing minion are unique at this tier)
NATURE
Jing (one of the best sniper at this tier)
Gramps (resurection is rare in 3*, he can even be used in 5* Rush war and tourneys if push comes to shove)
Whacker (nothing special I just love his art and animation 
)
FIRE
Buster (awesome hero, damage increase is valuable regardless of what tier the hero is. I currently have him on my Nature Titan attack team and I use him in Rush regardless of tier)
C.Azar (love her art and I am a sucker for mana slashing, she does it to 3 making her unique in this tier)
Basil (my newest, he is great for lots of things and is a more effective Gunnar IMO)
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Emblems? Yes. Use them on the 3* heroes now. When you are ready with the bigger heroes then strip the emblems from the heroes you don’t want them on and put them on your shiny bigger heroes. I do it all the time. Reset tokens for emblems are not difficult to come by in this game. Just do not LB them unless you think it’s really worth it as you cannot get those aethers back (At the moment).
Whatever you decide I hope it works out for you
Game Well 
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Aqeela has definitely been my MVP so far. I did LB her and Gunnar. Always wonderful support and advice here. It is truly invaluable. Helps me to know which heroes to invest in. 
Keeping at least two TC11s running 24/7, usually TC2 also. Slow but steady. You guys are awesome!
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I generally agree with this comment, except I might caution against reflexively stripping your 3s when you finally do max some 4s and 5s. Emblems make a bigger difference in Rare tourneys (and challenge events, if you ever decide to try to compete in those), and stripping one 3* won’t get you very far on a 4* or 5* anyway.
Separately, I just want to say that I love this topic, both because it gives me a chance to pontificate on 3s, and because it gives me a chance to procrastinate a bit more before getting back to work after lunch.
- S1 3s that are still relevant: Gunnar, Kailani, Brienne (use her with Gunnar or Kailani against titans!), Belith, Tyrum
- S1 3* costumes: Belith, Brienne (use her with arrows against titans!), Gunnar (MUST have for challenge events), Ulmer, Oberon (in rush), Isshtak, Hawkmoon, Tyrum
- S2: Gato, Mnesseus (and costume), Melia (buff booster)
- S3: By-Ulf (buff booster tank, maybe rush tank too?), Ei-Dunn (challenge events), Sudri (rush), Grevle, Kvasir (and costume)
- S4: Helo, Poppy
- S5: Rekhetre, Aqeela, Faiez (AMAZING in rush wars and ofc tourneys, perfect Alfrike counter, please particularly take note of his passive)
And here are the ones worth “chasing” from less frequent event portals (as much as anyone might ever chase 3*s, which is really more of a P2W move, but whatever, like I said I need to procrastinate):
- Christmas: Buster, maybe Frosty
- Halloween: None
- Kalevala: None, but Joukahainen’s not bad in rush
- Sand Empire: None
- Easter: None, but Chick Jr. is a challenge event specialist (and is serviceable in rush; pairs ideally with Gato)
- Wonderland: Shrubbear can be very effective on offense in rush
- Villains: None
- Slayers: Maeve, Noril
- Pirates: None
- Pets: None, but Rufus isn’t bad in rush
- Avalon: Treevil, Bauchan
- Guardians: None
- Gargoyles: None (but the 4* Kalo is 5*-quality)
- Grimmforest: None, Pixie is OK
- Starfall: None
- Bard: Zarel (for rush, because she can get certain other heroes to charge in six tiles with her passive ability)
- Hunters: None, but Edelaide can be a really good raid tourney defender
- Styx: None, but neither of the 3s in this portal are bad either. Just not “must have.”
- Ninjas: None
- Magic: Dolgoon
- Alliance Quest (Wolf/Raven): None, but Bertulf is great for titans
- W3K: None
Edit: Forgot to mention Dawn, I forget which portal she’s in, but she’s a pain in the ■■■ as a defender.
Edit 2: Added some formatting for emphasis and fixed typos
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This is an excellent summary!
I have most of the ones listed at +20 and limit broken as I focus on 3* and 4* weekly tournaments. But I would add a few more:
Wonderland: Phoenicus is an excellent attack + mana booster for monthly tournaments
Villains: Edd - very useful to shut down Shrubbear, Gunnar etc; Skrekok hits 3 and we’re short on good reds that are not slow speed
Halloween: Goopy is great with huge mana delay to all enemies
Plains Hunters: Fianna is strong hitting 3 and fiends are good in Bloody Battle
Mighty Pets: Ribbit also hits 3 and cuts mana and leaves an ailment
Pirates - Sally is good in Rush
Finally, I find Bane a good counter to Treevil as part of a yellow stack. It may not elevate him to the list of the strongest 3*s, but he is not useless…
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Gill-Ra gets so little love. Probably my favorite S2 3* and I would say still very relevant, especially in rush. -34% Def, -34% att for all enemies and cleanses for all allies. Beautiful little hero even if she may not look that way.
Game well
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I almost mentioned her 
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Such awesome insight from you guys! I actually just pulled Faiez, Waqas, and Ptolemy from Dunes so I’m super happy about that! Definitely want to get Poppy, Treevil, Bauchan, and Kvasir still. Goopy seems really good. I thought about whether to strip them down the road, but i dont think I will. I didn’t mind removing them from Layla after leveling Aqeela. Will still keep her for sentimental reasons though. I’m hoping I’ll be able to finish S1 soon, grinding 8-7 over and over gets boring lol.
I liked your list tho disagreed in a few points… I will simply post my 3* roster.
Remember that even if your particular 3* you have lvl’d isn’t great for tourney/titan/event it can still be a pawn in low stage tower events assuming you’re only going for the completion prize(s) bc you need your roster to stretch out curses along the way so—even before being able to complete a tower event you can score a cheap handful of blems from the first few stages (like last ninja probably could have gotten to at most stage 9 with 3*’s but then two dawn’s does a whole lot of time stop abuse prevention lol. Enjoy. [ Count them, if you don’t see two fully lvl’d banes in my roster I must have ate one to feed Ludwig, w/o costume babe is worth like 3k xp at lvl 50; with costume maxed he’s worth more like 5k—don’t fool yourself tho, that’s a significant xp loss according to the amount of xp fed to bane initially—but heck, 3 years later after so much service he was useful again!)
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Have you managed to find a use case for Budatin?
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Theoretically, sure, on my 2020 mono purple team the Balthazar +3x Bjorn + Budatin team for which I finally pulled c bjorn yesterday? Day before? Lmao he really seemed like he’d be useful on paper bc I love heroes that increase mana gained from tiles like those awesome 5*’s that do that, right? Lol. Ok, you got me!
I was thinking Ribbit. Bertulf, Goo, Rekhetre, Kinshashi, Adreyn (tho you simply forgot her name). Did I miss one?
Goo is a 3* version of That green lumberjack 4* with % mana gen down for rush tourneys.
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Joukahainen is an absolute stud in all tourney formats. priority dispel and then buff immunity? the only drawback is that it’s at the 3* level, so it’s riskier to bring into higher level raids and war hits.
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I’m biased vs slow heroes
Jouka is Average. i know Mr. Spock made that “average heroes are basically slow” argument, but having dealt with Slow and Average heroes in recent tourney weeks (not including Rush), there is a definite difference and advantage in favor of Average speed over Slow speed. i’m having a lot more success not just relying on Fast mana, even in Bloody tourneys.
Joukahainen is a beast, so is Dawn. Those are my 2 favourtie Blue heros in any 3* tournament at the moment
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