Greetings, and welcome to this guide. In it I will be looking at each of the various heroes in turn, reviewing and providing analysis of them and their cards, and providing some help on creating team comps. Since I'm nice like that, I'll also take a pass at giving some advice on athlete choices and itemisation.

Please note that the majority of this guide is primarily intended for Hell difficulty. Everything I say should more or less still apply at lower difficulties, but on lower difficulties you can get away with a lot more bad decisions. As such, please don't come to me claiming that X or Y are busted because you've been facerolling with them on normal - you can do that with essentially anyone. I also probably won't listen to you either way, since I'm arrogant like that.

Well, I have of course beaten the game of Hell with very little difficulty. More to the point, aside from my guide-writing skill (or lack thereof, depending on your opinion), it's worth saying that I'm a veteran of card games, MOBAs and autobattlers and have contributed to theorycrafting and published articles relating to the first two.

Alternatively, because I'm a voice on the internet and therefore must be right. That's how the internet works, right?

Hereafter referred to as 'League'. While this game was clearly inspired by MOBAs in general, there are several areas where a lot more 'inspiration' has been taken from League - Frank is virtually a carbon copy of Dr. Mundo, for instance. The comparison is inevitable, and I'm an old League player myself, so the natural temptation will be to refer to League terminology a lot of the time. I've tried to resist the urge in most cases (with the exception of ADCs, which I refuse to call 'marksmen' and always will), but can't promise I won't have slipped and missed a few here and there.

I have provided a glossary below of some of the League terms I'll be using, though, if you're fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the game.

The eagle-eyed among you will note that I like to pepper comments throughout my guides which I, in my weaker moments, like to think aspire to comedy. Hopefully they amuse you, but frankly, I write them to keep myself entertained so if you don't like it you're just going to have to live with it :3

Hello once again, dear readers. That's right, I'm assuming there's more than one of you. Call me arrogant.

v3.0 has hit, along with the DLC drop with five new heroes (and spoiler alert, they're pretty impactful). I was originally planning on doing a fairly basic update since there's no new items or variants, but when reviewing the guide I've noted a number of errors, lapses in judgment, and things which no longer reflect my current thinking.

I'm therefore going to be doing a full 180 - this update will be a full review and update of the entire guide. Expect a lot of heroes to have their entries tweaked, new team comp suggestions, more detailed itemisation analysis, and more (maybe, assuming I think of something else that needs adding).

That's right, I waited until the DLC with zero new items added to do a more in-depth itemisation review. I'm the best writer ever.

Given the scope of the changes I'm making, I've opted to do this bit-by-bit instead of in a separate document then transposed. I apologise if there's anybody checking this thing regularly, because you'll be seeing updates come erratically as-and-when I feel like doing them - but they will come, I promise. And I always keep my promises*.


* Content warning: Author is known to play rogue in every game he possibly can, enjoys deception games, and would characterise himself as a natural liar.

Hi everyone, it's been a while. The DLC is finally here, along with a major content patch overhauling athlete management. I had initially intended to simply update the various entries with the launch of the DLC, but the two content drops have added so much (variants, heroes, additional equipment) that this approach simply isn't feasible (well, okay, I could do but, but I'd be rewriting the entire guide and I don't have that kind of energy).

To separate out the older analysis (which mostly remains valid) from the new analysis (which is entirely valid provided you believe a word from my mouth), I'll be appending the new data to each section with its own heading labelled v2.1. This should mean that those of you who only care about the new stuff (which is most of you) can skip to it easily, and make things easier for me (the most important thing, obviously). The single biggest change to the guide, really, is that all these new sections make it much more annoying to navigate.

Before I get into that, though, there are a few points I want to address in response to the various comments I've received on this guide...


Firstly, thank you to everyone (okay, almost everyone) who commented on the guide so far. There's been a lot of love and appreciation (yay) and a fair few valid criticisms. I do however want to remind some commenters what is and isn't useful:

- Positive comments are useful because they make me feel good. Hurray.

- Criticism with detail, reasoned arguments and/or acceptance of personal preference are useful because they let me reconsider my own analysis. Good, even if I don't agree.

- Any argument which essentially boils down to 'you said this is bad but I won with it' is not useful. It's entirely possible to win the premier league with basically anything, even on max difficulty. Results-oriented analysis is useless. Additionally, bear in mind that I'm writing a guide here. I'm not going to explain every possible way to win - that just isn't possible. I'm here to tell you what's strong and what's not so that the people who struggle with these things know what's what. If you can win with less strong things, great, but that's not really useful for me (or, in fact, anyone else).

- Comments which pretend to be critique but soak themselves in vitriol are beyond useless. You could be making the most valid point in the world, bookmarked by a cure for cancer and a recipe for perfect eggs benedict - you'll still be considered a douche and your comment ignored if you can't express it without pointless insults. If this is you, do yourself a favour - uninstall League of Legends and spend a few months learning basic social skills. Trust me, it'll benefit you in life.


One extremely valid point made several times in the comments is that my analysis tends to heavily favour late game strategies over early game ones. This is a valid argument not because I'm wrong to do so (as I'll explain), but because I clearly did a bad job of explaining my reasoning. Hopefully I can fix that now.

As with all things in this game, it's entirely possible to win with both early- and late-game strategies. There are several issues with early game strats, however:

- Early game strats are much, much more difficult to pull off when your athletes are weaker than your opponents. They largely rely on early kills, and those are much more elusive when your field hit and fight hit are low. With the right comp you can win late game teamfights even at a substantial stat deficit.

- Early game strats are something of a gamble - if you build for them and fail, you're heavily unfavoured as the game continues. You could argue that the same is true for late game strats - and that would be entirely fair if this was a real MOBA. It's not, though, and the AI is not good at drafting early game comps to dumpster your late game build. It's better at drafting solid teamfight comps.

- Thanks to the AI's mediocre drafting, it's not really all that hard to build with an eye to the late game without leaving yourself weak early. Your choice then boils down to 'good early and weak late' or 'ok early and good late'. With the most simplistic analysis possible, 1.5 > 1.0.

Overall, my view is that it's a much easier and more reliable strategy to focus on late game than early game. Once again - both are possible, both are viable, one is easier.

ADC - Attack Damage Carry, a MOBA term for the role marked 'bot' in this game. Technically inaccurate since Attack Damage isn't a thing in this game, but I refuse to use the term 'marksman' or 'bot laner'.
AP - Attack Power, this game's equivalent of base damage. Not to be confused with the League of Legends term AP, which stands for Ability Power and is specifically tied to the effects of certain abilities.
Champion - League of Legends term for hero. I've tried to use 'hero' throughout the guide because that's the term the game uses, but I can't promise I haven't slipped somewhere.
Counterjungle - The act of stealing enemy jungle camps to both gain gold for your team and prevent the enemy jungler from farming.
GA - League term for Guardian Angel, an item which revives the holder when killed; in the context of this game, I use it to refer to any item which triggers on death and can negate that death.
Frontline/Backline - General MOBA term for characters who want to fight at the front of the team vs fighting at the back, screened from incoming attacks. This distinction is relevant because multiple roles fall into each category - both tanks and Fighters can function as frontline, for instance.
Gank - General gaming term for a surprise attack with intent to kill; in MOBA context, this usually means going to another lane (or coming from the jungle) to initiate an uneven fight.
Global - MOBA term meaning an effect which either hits every viable target on the field, or can be targeted on anything on the field, ignoring range.
Inevitability - A function by which a hero or item builds up damage or effectiveness over the course of a fight, discouraging or outright preventing stall tactics.
Mage - Usually a burst- or sustained damage-oriented dealer of magic damage; as in this game there is no differentiation between damage types the only real difference between ADCs and mages is itemisation.
Skirmish - A small fight involving 1-3 heroes on each team; usually initiated with the expectation to get a single kill or to push enemies out of lane through damage rather than to wipe them all out. Some team comps build around seeking lots of skirmishes.
Snowball - A term referring to the tendency of some heroes to get rapidly stronger when they start to get ahead, with each subsequent kill making the next come more easily.
Squishy - A hero with low defences, easily killed if targeted for incoming damage.
Stat Stick - A term meaning a large amount of stats with no added effects. Usually used in the context of items (e.g. the AP+100 Sword is a stat stick), but can also refer to heroes where they have no in-fight effects and instead seek to overpower through raw stats.
Tower - Alternate word for turret.
True Damage - Also called Pure damage, this is damage which ignores damage reduction and armour effects.
Tutor - A term from the Magic The Gathering community which has since gravitated into general card game lexicon, to tutor something means to search your deck for it and add it to your hand. Comes from this card[scryfall.com].
Vanilla - Normal, ordinary, with no distinguishing features.

This section is for those of you who don't have the interest or attention span for longer analysis. Quick tips on how to improve at the game.

• Just because you have 8 SP doesn't mean you have to use them. It's often better to use only what you can get a substantial effect from and store the rest so that your next turn will come sooner.
  
  
• Similarly, always always always try to line up your SP usage so that you get a turn at 0 on the next objective fight timer. It's not necessarily possible every time if you have a big play to make, but 9 times out of 10 you're better off making that big play at 0 on the timer so you can get the objective off the back of it as well. Remember that if your play doesn't result in a kill, doing it at 1 on the timer lets your opponent recall to heal, which they can't do at 0.
  
  
• As I go into in the Heroes section, some heroes have good cards and others have bad ones. The ones with bad ones often have good passives or bonuses in a fight to make them worth bringing. It's slightly counter-intuitive, but you generally don't want to draft a team full of heroes with good cards - SP is a finite resource and there'll always be cards you simply can't play. Instead it's usually better to draft some with good cards - which are the ones you'll play - and some with bad ones, whose cards you'll ignore but whose passives you'll make use of in a fight.
  
  
• There are certain heroes that the AI really likes to ban because they can be a hard counter to certain strategies - Wukong is one example of this, and Bart is another. Even if you have no intention of ever actually playing them, it's usually a good idea to have your athletes pick up and master those champions simply to absorb AI bans, giving you more freedom to run the comps you actually want to run.
  
  
• This game is, at its core, a card game. That means the key to success is, as always, screwing the action economy like a three wanged billygoat. Energy gains and cost reductions are almost always fantastic so that you can do more things. Doing things is good. We like to do things.
  
  
• Much like in League, counter-jungling is a viable strategy and can be very effective. Unlike laners, junglers can't farm if they don't have any camps up; stealing your opponent's jungle can and will leave them sat in a hex doing nothing until something spawns. If done enough, you'll leave them falling far behind on gold unless they can find kills to make up the gap. Importantly, since junglers won't path into hexes they don't control (unless on their way to ones they do), you can also use this to protect a vulnerable lane - take the jungle in that area and your opponent will be forced to expend movement cards to even get in range for a gank.
  
  
• One of the strongest things you can do in this game is to funnel resources into a single hero. Assuming the hero is appropriate to be funnelled, they can take over the game and become an unstoppable monster. You'll need to pick the right comp to funnel them properly though.
  
  
• You can expand an athlete's hero pool for free, albeit at the cost of a weak game and not picking the hero in question. If you ensure that an athlete's entire hero pool is banned out such that they have absolutely no available heroes to pick from, that athlete will be assigned a randomly chosen hero for their role. After the game is finished, that hero will then be added to the athlete's pool at the beginner mastery level.
  
  
• Pushing lanes is a lot more valuable than it might immediately seem to be. Taking a tower provides some gold, yes, but 120 gold for each hero isn't hugely impactful in a vacuum. The real benefit to doing so is that it flips jungle tiles to your team. Junglers will only automatically farm in their own jungle - if you flip enough of the enemy jungle to your control, you'll find your own jungler picks up a lot of gold and the enemy jungler starts to starve. Just two tiles can be enough to build up a sizeable gold lead in the jungle over the course of a game.
  
  
• For some reason, although it's not stated outright anywhere in the game's rules, heroes all attack in a specific order. I won't list the exact order of every hero (because frankly it would take forever and I've got absolutely no interest in doing it), but paying attention to the order of fights will give you a general feel for which heroes tend to attack early and which attack late. This usually isn't overly relevant, but can have an impact in some circumstances (e.g. effects triggered by attacks, or if you're trying to get gold onto a specific person).
  
  
• Junglers path from camp to camp in order to continue farming wherever possible. While it's usually better to steal enemy jungle camps, there are some circumstances when it's appropriate to use card effects to kill your own jungle monsters, specifically targeting them to force your jungler to take a specific path - leaving them in a specific hex in a few turns' time ready for an initiation. This requires careful manipulation of your SP to work, however.

Since it was requested (and I was in two minds as to whether to include this section anyway), allow me to explain the ruleset I, personally, find most enjoyable.

When playing for fun, I don't play on Hell difficulty itself - I find the athlete lifespan system, while it makes sense, stops me from feeling invested in my players and therefore weakens my engagement with the game. If I'm going to be keeping athletes for the entirety of the game I feel I may as well hand-pick them, so I start with custom athletes.

This obviously runs the risk of making the game too easy. To counteract this, I start from the Hell difficulty preset and then customise to increase difficulty where I can. The following are my changes from Hell difficulty:

Difficulty:
Difficulty of Enlightenment: increased from High to Very High
Follower Increase: increased from Low to Very Low
Hero Mastery of AI club Athletes: Increased from None to Very High

Team Composition:
Custom Initial Athletes: Yes
Hero Pool Limit: 16
Heroes any position: No
All Decay settings: None

Fight Details:
No Changes

Version Rules:
[This depends on how I'm feeling when starting the game, but if I'm just relaxing I'll change to:]
Mode: Gradual Addition
Survey: Yes
Equipment per version: Max
Equipment added: 3
Equipment removed: 0
Heroes: All unlocked at start
Minor rules reroll: 0

League:
No changes

Club:
Coach notes remind: Off
Salary level: 150%
Tactics Training: 800 points

Other:
Hero variant mode: Self-Adjustment [Descriptions are broken; so far as I can tell, Self-Adjustment makes Variants random, while the other changes whatever heroes are most used, which has a nasty tendency to leave heroes stuck on their worst Variants]


Every setting I didn't mention is left on whatever the default is for Hell difficulty.

Obviously, for Hell difficulty achievements I just throw on Hell and deal with it, but personally I don't find that enjoyable to do repeatedly - just something I did once for the challenge.

Finally, as I would hope wouldn't need stating (yet experience indicates does): This is my personal preference. It's your game, you play it how you enjoy. Hell, it's a single player game, use cheats if you want. I'm not your mother (so far as I know), I won't stop you. This is just to give you an idea of what I find fun to play, and so might be a prompt for you to find a ruleset you enjoy. The only caveat is that this guide is written from the perspective of having the 'Difficulty' rules page set to maximum.

Slightly disappointingly from the management side of things, there actually isn't much difference between athletes in this game when you get right down to it. Skills, attributes and hero pools can all be changed or improved after the fact, so realistically the only lasting differences between athletes lies in their Routine and Match traits; meanwhile, Routine traits broadly just translate into 'get more stats somehow', so they're all pretty much the same as each other.

As such, pretty much the only thing you should care about when building your roster is Match Trait - the difference between a good one and a bad one can be pretty huge, and they're about as close as the game currently gets to giving your people personalities.

The one exception to this is with your Substitutes. There's really no reason to actually sub people in and out in this game - at time of writing there's no morale, no form, and the hero pools per athlete are big enough to give pretty solid coverage even in the roles with plenty of heroes in them. That said, you should pick up two subs as soon as possible. The reason is that while they'll never actually see a game, there are lots of Routine Training blocks which boost other players while doing little or nothing for the player in question. You can therefore use your subs to boost your real athletes' attributes - which means that for subs, you should actually care about their Routine Trait.

With the new patch the athlete system has seen a substantial overhaul. You'd think that would invalidate a lot of my previous analysis, but in all honesty there's not a lot to change. The biggest difference is that you can now use Intensive Training to change out Tactics cards, which basically lets you pick and choose your loadout - this does open up some potential combo strategies that would otherwise be really awkward to pull off due to having to wait to find the right cards, but doesn't change what you're looking for in an athlete.

Realistically, you're still looking to pick up athletes you can build into strong players. You can get away with just continually buying already strong players each transfer season (and I suspect the devs wanted this to be a thing), but when you get down to it that's just going to get annoying having to continually search for athletes with decent match traits and repeat your Intensive Trainings. You're better off looking for athletes with high potential (and, importantly, large hero pool potential) and training them up - it doesn't take all that long to make them competitive and they'll last a lot longer.

The emotion, loyalty and friendship systems which have been added all have a moderate impact on your game, but these aren't systems you can really game - just prioritise building up friendships and loyalty first, then spend your team building budget on improving emotion. The only real agency you have is in your athletes' Personality traits, but while these do matter they're really not worth paying any attention to when signing - Match Trait, Potential and Hero Pool are all FAR more important.

Note - while I've been saying that Hero Pool potential is important, in pure optimisation terms it's actually less so than either Match Trait or Potential. In real terms though, if you're anything like me, you'll get bored playing the same comps over and over. If you're planning on playing this game a lot, you'll want a big potential hero pool just to keep things fresh.

For clarity, since it's not really explained well in-game:
- Mood provides a simple buff or nerf to your athlete's stats, as well as modifying attribute XP earned. It randomly increases or decreases each week, with winning making increases more likely and vice versa. Chances to increase or decrease can also be modified by relationship with other players and Personality traits. Oddly, major events such as being promoted don't have much impact.

- Better relationship with teammates increases your chances of mood improving.

- Better Team Spirit (i.e. loyalty) has no impact on emotion, and instead makes the athlete easier to please during contract negotiations (so they'll need less money and/or demand fewer conditions to re-sign).

- All of these can matter for contract conditions. Generally you're better off refusing to sign any contract that requires them, though, in favour of just throwing more money at the athlete - money should never really be an issue, so you may as well make your expenditure reliable.

While 3.1 hasn't touched the underlying athlete system, the one thing that has changed is the hero pool maximum is now 16, up from 12. This is a big change, which can have massive ramifications on pick/ban - and has a knock-on effect on your priority for athletes.

Now that it's possible to have such a wide pool, you should make every effort to get that wide pool in the roles that need it - specifically, top and jungle. Mid laners will also make use of the expanded pool, but realistically a lot of the mid lane options are things which function better in other lanes - the main value in expanding your mid pool is to be able to flex pick.

For those not in the know - to flex pick is to grab a hero early in the draft which you can play in multiple roles - for instance, if your top, jungle and mid can all play Aurelio, he's a flex pick for you. This allows you to pick up desired heroes early but still keep plenty of flexibility open for your later draft when it comes to counterpicking and putting power where you want it to be.

Besides flex-picking, though, top and jungle are the only roles that have a huge variety of heroes that you will want access to in a pick/ban. There still aren't all that many heroes for the ADC or support roles, and even within their limited pools there are some dud picks or those which are simply interchangeable with one another in most comps. Bigger hero pool is always better, of course... but it's not a priority for those roles like it is for others, and if you have to choose between them, favour athlete stats over hero pool for them.

Similarly, there isn't really much to prioritise on the attributes side of things. All five stats do different things, but frankly they're all pretty much equally useful and so you should just prioritise looking for even stat growth across the board as much as possible. If you wind up with one or two stats surging ahead or falling behind, don't worry too much about it and maybe adjust routine training a little to compensate. It really doesn't make too much of a difference.

Which isn't to say that the attributes themselves don't make a difference - they in fact make a huge difference. With a deficit in attributes compared to their opponents, you'll find they miss their attacks more both in and out of fights, continually get shoved in and lose their towers simply from laning, and get less gold as well. It's still entirely possible to win games at a stat deficit, especially with a good pick/ban, but it obviously gets much harder. Unfortunately there isn't a huge amount you can really do to push for faster attribute growth aside from Intensive training, which is generally better spent on improving hero mastery.

The one thing to bear in mind if you've got an eye on the late game is that as of v3.0, players have no hard cap on total attributes, but the basic cap on any given attribute is 120. This cap is then modified by the player's personality traits, almost all of which will increase one or more attributes' maximum. This isn't visible while playing the game, however - if you're interested in how the stats change, start a new game with custom athletes turned on and go take a look at them. It doesn't make all that much difference until you hit late game, though.

Yes, you want this.

Okay, a little more detail I suppose. Generally speaking this is the most important part of developing your athlete - each single point of mastery is worth a lot when playing that hero, of course, and the bigger your hero pool is the more freedom you'll have in pick/ban (particularly since the AI has a tendency to ban things you have no intention of actually playing). Don't drop everything to focus on this, but usually your priority for intensive training should be to max out hero pool size for each of your athletes (to the extent that your coaching license allows, and assuming you're keeping that athlete around), and then work on maxing out masteries.

Note that blue (Expert) mastery is generally enough for a player to be reasonably competent on a hero. That isn't to say you don't want more - you definitely do - but you should usually try to reach blue mastery on each hero first before starting to max them out. Once they're blue, you can pick one to max out, then another, and so on. Note that the AI likes to ban things your athletes are very good at, so you can actually draw bans away by maxing a hero you don't want to play often.

Pretty much covered above. You should generally prioritise:
Hero Pools > Hero Mastery to Expert > Hero Mastery to max > Attributes, with live streaming as necessary to obtain the training points needed.

Skills, generally speaking, aren't very impactful (with one major exception). Since there's a lot of very similar skills, and most of them don't do a whole lot, I don't propose to go through them all one by one. However, I can set out some simple rules below.

DO TAKE:

• Harass hit rate boosts. Harass hit rate is hard to find outside of attributes and a few very specific Match Traits, and it is exceptionally useful. More harass means more gold, more pushing, more damage on enemy towers, and more injured enemies when your turn comes around and you're looking to make plays. The combination of useful and hard to get anywhere else means you should get harass rate wherever you can from skills.
  
  
• Crit rate boosts on your ADC (and possibly mid or jungler, depending on how often you play through those roles). Crit rate is most useful on dedicated damage dealers, of course; it won't generally be all that good on a support, and top laners play enough tanks to get less value as well. Mid and jungle, meanwhile, are often secondary damage and don't get enough crit to make a few points worthwhile. Your ADC, however, can always use crit. Getting more from skills isn't essential, but one gold-quality crit skill can be worth it.
  
  
• Farming efficiency. Specifically, unrestricted farming efficiency - avoid things like 'farming efficiency before round 30' or 'after round 50'. Farming efficiency is for steady, reliable income. The one exception to this is top lane, which is usually pretty safe from ganks - you can potentially take 'farming efficiency until first death' on your top laner. Avoid this on your support, since they get less gold from farming than other roles.
  
  
• Presence boosts on your top and support. These are the roles you usually want getting hit, and there aren't many ways to get more presence (itemisation, which can vary per season, and hero mastery are about it). In particular, the 'gain presence if above 50% health' skill is very valuable since it helps your frontline to soak damage until they're low and then stop.
  
  
• The silver, or even bronze, levels of a skill if you've already got the gold one but want more. It is entirely reasonable, in fact, to run the bronze, silver and gold versions of Harass Rate or Presence gain skills all on the same character.

DON'T TAKE

• Pretty much anything giving flat stats, like health or attack power. The amount you get from these is comically low - usually a single level of mastery will give you more impact than an entire gold-tier skill. Gaining 5 attack power when even at level 2 your heroes are breaking 100 means it will almost never have any substantial impact. The same applies to health. The one exception is maybe taking a single flat AP skill on your jungler since they'll be fighting early and involved in all objective fights, so getting a little boost early on can matter. That's still pretty debatable, though.
  
  
• Anything that requires kills. Not only are the amounts involved still pretty low, being triggered on kill essentially makes them 'win more' options - they won't help you win, just make you win harder when you're already winning.
  
  
• Anything that requires card hits. Even if you routinely play through one lane, you really don't want to restrict your strategies like that (and once again, the amount of stats provided is generally too low to matter anyway).

This section intentionally left blank.

...For now. Will be filled in when I've spent more time playing around with the new skills available as of v3.1.

As noted in the Attributes section above, while they're important, there isn't any particular priority you should acquire them in. Generally, then, for routine training you should simply use whichever blocks you'll get the most EXP from, potentially moving your athletes around if one of them starts to get lopsided stats. Remember to pick up two subs as soon as possible to use as training minions.

For reference (since the game only lists them as 'all EXP'), the following is how much total EXP the Basic Training blocks give you. Note that the later Basic Training blocks outclass a lot of the C- and B-rank training blocks. Don't be afraid of using Basic Training blocks if you don't have anything better, particularly the later ones.

Basic Training 1 - 40 EXP per block, one block
Basic Training 2 - 60 EXP per block, one block
Basic Training 3 - 70 EXP per block, two blocks
Basic Training 4 - 85 EXP per block, two blocks
Basic Training 5 - 120 EXP per block, three blocks

Routine Traits generally are all much of a muchness; they're more EXP, but it doesn't usually matter too much which one you have since all your various sources of EXP will tend to blur together. That being said, try to avoid Routine Traits which give fans (which are basically useless outside of accruing training points) or which are reliant on medals (which are unreliable).

Where Routine Traits actually matter is on your subs, since they're literally only there for Routine Training boosts. You therefore want a trait which boosts the effect of their training courses, not boosting training EXP (which will just affect them). Alternatively, there are supportive Routine Traits like Waiter and Old Captain which work well.

Unlike Routine Traits, Match Traits actually matter. They can have a big impact on how your team plays and your overall strategies, with some traits giving access to plays you simply couldn't make with anyone else.

Since virtually everything else about an athlete is fixable after you get them, this is what really counts for picking an athlete. Assuming you aren't phenomenally lucky in team generation, therefore, you're going to want to search for specific traits during your early transfer windows to create a team you can then build up.

There is a total of 71 Match Traits, so I'll split them up into three categories - good, mediocre and bad - and give some very brief commentary on each. Obviously you should avoid the bad traits, and frankly since you have a lot of freedom to do so, you may generally want to hold out for good ones. Mediocre ones can still work fine, though.

The general premise of my rating system is that:

- Traits which give discounts and/or enable you to do things you wouldn't normally have been able to do are good
- Traits which add cards are generally bad unless that card is added to your hand and free (or added to deck and has innate cycle)
- Traits that give stats need to give enough stats to be relevant
- Traits which are very situational or require you to play in a specific way are generally bad unless they allow for you to get very strong
- Traits which amount to being 'win-more' bonuses are generally bad

Charge Horn - Somewhat low impact and not controllable, but all upside and can enable you to pull off more in a turn without needing to burn any cooldowns. Works well with single-use Tactics cards like Warm Up.

Chatterbox - Can enable some very strong combos by timing your Deployment Phase for right after you reshuffle your deck, meaning empty discard pile.

Eager To Fight - Very strong for any gank/skirmish-oriented comp, note the timer is extended by kills/assists whether you start the fight or not.

Emerging Talent - While it costs SP to play, Warm Up Is just a small amount of nice stats and also an additional card draw since the card is generated in your hand rather than your deck.

Energy Efficiency - Good, on-demand card burst. Weaker in metas where dragon is late, but still useful.

Evolving AI - Actually quite weak under normal circumstances, but obnoxiously strong when you funnel resources into a lane bully like Qube. Makes Felyn even more busted than she already was.

Fierce Aura - Fight hit rate is great and also very hard to get outside of attributes; generated card is free, added to hand, and works on enemy jungle.

Minimalism - Can be low impact, but requires you to do absolutely nothing to get a decent chunk of free stats.

Performer Personality - The even better version of Evolving AI above, makes for a truly vicious lane bully who will steamroll towers if funnelled.

Road Hog - Harass Rate is great, the extra farming is just an added bonus.

Superpower - Specifically used for funnel strategies, usually on a secondary carry like a jungler (if your main carry's plan gets derailed).

Take The Initiative - Only triggers once per game, but lets you basically chain two back-to-back Deployment Phases which is kinda busted. If you're able to keep the athlete from killing until a late game objective fight you can close the game out immediately for free.

Unexpected Inspiration - Full hand discount on-demand and without taking up a card draw. Possibly the single best trait in the game for that reason.

Violent Tendencies - Only useful for high combat skirmish-heavy styles, but amazingly good in them.

Warrior Spirit - Really good on top laners. 4k health is easy to hit, and 15% to both scalings is great.

Not too much to change here. The only thing of note is I suspect I've overestimated Road Hog a bit - harass hit rate is nice, but probably not worth an entire match trait given the power of some of the other things in this list. The farming efficiency can make up the gap, but you'd need it to be active an awful lot for that to happen, which will mostly only happen if your athlete is already better than their opponent.

Bloodlust - Good scaling, but the generated cards can tend to fill up your hand awkwardly and harass is inherently unreliable.

Champion of Initiating - Requires the athlete specifically to get the kill just to give you a discount of 1 at some future time. Ironically, given the name, there are a lot of better initiation traits.

Conductor - Not terrible, but only triggering once per game limits its use too much.

Deadly Focus - Would be amazing if the harass rate didn't reset on leaving lane; as it stands, too win-more to be worth it.

Dragon Hunter - Again not terrible, but requires several things to go right just for card draw.

Early Bird Ticket - Low impact.

Expedition - Decent, especially as charges can be triggered on-demand, but becomes utterly useless if you're struggling in lane.

Fast Puncher - Fight duration being reduced unfortunately cripples this trait. Still can be quite good on specific heroes that rely on burst, but being useless when not on those heroes makes this a pass.

Fiery Determination - Again not too bad, but falls apart in a late-dragon meta and can be a bit restrictive on finding the appropriate card.

Fortune Teller - Can be okay if only one athlete has it, becomes useless on more than one. Also can lead to occasional issues with dry hands.

Illegal Intrusion - Awkward trait, incentivizes you to spend mana stealing jungle, but also to start fights. Poacher card is also very expensive for what it does and can clog up your hand and deck.

Instructor - Low impact, would still be passable if not for it ending on first death. Still usable for a top laner.

Invader - A 30 round cooldown just for a simple two hex move before initiating. Ridiculously low impact.

Investor - Not that bad, but requires a lot of investment (heh) of energy and Tactics cards to function properly, and even then is quite passive.

Invoker - Discount is great, but the discard effect can cause some serious issues, making it highly unreliable.

Keep Cool - A nice hand reset. Works extremely well if you have a team of athletes that can provide hand discounts, letting you dump your hand, refill it and dump it again. Outside of that very niche setup, though, has much too long of a cooldown to be good.

Low Risk - Not awful, but very low impact. Turns out low risk means low reward.

Mercy - Unfortunately, while the effect is good, it doesn't trigger a deployment phase. This means half the time you'll trigger it, only for the hero to recall or die before you can even use it.

Nomads - Pretty solid actually, but requires attacking by card effect to trigger it which means it'll sometimes trigger when you don't want it to, and sometimes won't trigger when you need it. Basically just a worse version of more reliable discounts.

Overloaded - Not actually too bad for a top laner, but otherwise far too easily reset. Even when it works, low-to-medium impact.

Overspeeding - Low impact stats. Compare to Warrior Spirit, half as much scaling in exchange for a single round's worth of push.

Poacher - Can be decent on heroes with efficient jungle clears like Zealot, but the generated card itself is very inefficient, especially as it forces a move.

Secret Manual - Would actually be really good if it weren't limited to four times per game max. Most of the time you won't even get that many, since it's based on number of cards played rather than times you get the discount.

Serial Killer - Decent stats, but requires a huge amount of work to get them. Very win-more.

Sharer - Would be fantastic if it wasn't limited to ally jungle. As is, way too slow to actually do anything relevant.

Silver Crown - 12% farming efficiency is pretty low impact, and it also turns off when you're doing well which is a little weird. Decent for a top, but still not great.

Snowballing - Very win-more, generating SP off kills only. Amusingly, despite the name, the image shows a very different kind of ball.

Technical Excellence - On the cusp of being good due to being simply reliable flat stats. 2% field hit just doesn't do enough for harass to get it there.

This Is My Turf - Spawns a pretty solid card, but unfortunately much too unreliable to trigger.

VIP - Meh. Requires a lot of SP investment to maintain.

Wilderness Survival - Would be fantastic if only it didn't require them to survive. As it is, far too easy to fail to trigger due to bad luck.

A few changes to make here.

Firstly, I obviously underestimated Invoker - while in a vacuum my ranking is probably appropriate, the point of it is that you'd use it alongside search effects to turn a funnelled hero in a monster with very little investment. There's a reason the trait is disabled on Hell difficulty.

Secondly, Early Bird Ticket. Generally I stand by my analysis here too - for general play, yeah, it's pretty mediocre. On the other hand, if you play a lot of aggressive comps it becomes really very powerful because it hands you priority in every game, whether blue or red side. Now, personally this doesn't matter too much to me because I like to play varied comps (and, as I've gone over elsewhere, think later-game comps are more reliable) - but if you are one of those players who loves aggression this should be a priority pick.

Bigger Stage - Every deployment phase, get a low value card that costs way too much SP to use. Pass.

Bodyguard - Low grade stat boosts, most of which vanish if someone dies, along with a card that boosts maybe two athletes' farming in exchange for disabling their own (which amusingly also makes most of the stat boost useless too).

Capitalist - Low stat gain every 500 gold, by the time it reaches a level you might notice it, the game's over.

Combo Bonus - Essentially just makes one poke-style card 1 cheaper every 15 rounds, if you're going to initiate. Hard pass.

Competitive - Extremely win-more and becomes useless when you're behind (and so most need the help).

Fast-Paced - Won't even become available until halfway through the game, assuming you're already able to win objective fights, and your reward is a decent SP boost that then clogs your deck with garbage.

Gold Crown - Again, purely win-more, becomes worthless when behind.

Imitation Master - Utterly bizarre and fairly low impact.

Isolated Island - Low level of stats. While removing cards can be useful for some funnel strategies, there are very few heroes in the game who you don't want any of their cards. Note it also removes tactics cards, which makes it even worse.

Machine Learning - Kicks in waaaay too late in the game.

Neural Connection - Barely does anything.

Opportunism - Clogs your deck and is very low impact.

Pause Here - Ironically, the 3 times per game limit is a benefit because it reduces the number of times you might be tempted to play that awful card.

Pursue The Advantage - Very low impact for only triggering at most twice per game. The image is pretty cool though.

Rapid Growth - Fairly low stats that then vanish quite quickly, replaced with a mediocre benefit if you win.

Skirmisher - If you get a kill in a fairly tight time frame, get rewarded with low value cards clogging your deck. Yaaaaaay.

Sprinter - Small influx of cash early, then even smaller reduction late. Mehhhh.

Surfing Lover - Clog your deck with garbage cards - the trait.

Tactical Expert - A decent benefit, but being limited to once per game makes it ridiculously low impact.

Vanguard - Essentially just a much worse version of Emerging Talent.

Violent Lucky Cat - Would be okay if it didn't shut off randomly at round 50.

Watchdog (all three types) - Extremely low impact, the only way you're getting any real value out of this is if you've already won.

Zen-Like - A single discount per deployment phase in exchange for making a bunch of cards in your hand virtually unplayable afterwards. Can be cheesed slightly by playing a single card and then ending turn repeatedly, but results in massive awkwardness for fairly low value.

There are a lot of Tactics cards, so again, I'm not going to go over all of them. There are, however, a few points to keep in mind when selecting them:

• As a general rule, Tactics cards are worse than, or less efficient than, Hero cards. For instance, Hero cards which initiate will always be better than Initiate, and almost always better than the different Tactics versions of Initiate (Meticulous Plan, Perfect Opportunity etc.). Only take a Tactics card which is likely to overlap with Hero cards if it's something you really want to guarantee you've got access to - initiation cards most notably for a jungler, as some junglers lack good initiation.
  
  
• These cards are going to make up a sizeable chunk of your deck, at least initially; since Hero cards are generally better, Tactics cards which can be cheaply used and which are removed from your deck are preferable, as they let you thin your deck out to just the relatively good cards. Warm Up is a great example of this, being cheap, useful and cycling as well as removing itself.
  
  
• As always with card games, anything you can do to mess with the action economy is king. Discounts and SP generation are phenomenal for ensuring you can do more than your opponent can in any given turn, particularly early game. Thinking Tank is possibly the single best Tactics card in the game, followed by cards like Tactical Adjustment and Quick Decision.
  
  
• As a general rule, movement cards are almost all extremely overpriced in this game; while moving can be useful to set up for a gank, you really don't want to be burning 2+ SP doing so. Avoid movement Tactics cards for this reason - not only are they overpriced, but being Tactics cards you'll always have them but rarely be in a position to need them. There are however a few exceptions to this rule - Quick Recall and Teleporting For Support are particularly notable for this, and Quick Recall in particular is something you should always have at least one of across your team.
  
  
• While farm-oriented cards can be useful as filler cards when you don't have a specific play to make, avoid cards which require substantial SP input to be good (like Gold Rush or Farming Training). Also avoid cards which just redistribute farm, such as One-Carry, as these essentially spend SP to net zero for your team. By contrast, Hot Hands is particularly good as while it's expensive, it gives you farm and bonus stats, and is removed when played.
  
  
• Note that most search effects can pull Tactics cards as well as Hero cards. If you're planning on using search effects a lot (which you should), ensuring your Tactics cards are cheap and versatile is key, particularly on the roles you're likely to search on (jungle and bot).
  
  
• Poke cards, as a general rule, aren't worth it - while cheap, they don't really have much impact beyond minor harass. The one exception to this is if you tend to play solo lane bullies, as these heroes often have mechanics which interact with Attack cards (and even then, don't overdo it).

One major thing of note I didn't point out before, which is the Clear Mind card.

Generally speaking, Clear Mind isn't optimal. It's not bad by any means, and if possible I tend to run a single copy because it can sometimes give you an absurd turn (especially if, like me, you like your Warm Ups), but there are also plenty of times it gets stuck behind something awkward or unplayable and does nothing but fill your hand with nothingness.

However, what needs to be highlighted is it can very occasionally do some filthy things, specifically around generated cards and/or self-cycling cards. If it winds up on the far left of your hand, and anything drawn or generated comes in from the left, it'll discount whatever you pick up mid-turn.

Why do I say this is filthy? Well, let's look at Merisi. He generates Intimidation for each time Boss procs, which takes four hits. Intimidation costs 1, and it hits anything within 2 hexes.

See what I'm getting at here? Get Clear Mind to the left of your hand when Merisi is in range of four targets and you can literally keep playing it over and over for 0 SP until he either misses enough to fail to trigger Boss or something dies. With a good amount of field hit, it's a 0 SP automatic kill.

That's why I felt this needed to be pointed out, and why I keep one around even though it's probably not the best thing I could have. It's worth awkwardness just for the occasional smile as your tank goes insane and bludgeons the entire enemy team to death for free.

New in v3.1 is the Reserve Tactics mechanic. This allows you to keep a separate set of three Tactics cards for each athlete and swap them out before any given match starts. For clarity (since the game doesn't explain it), to do this between matches you just go to the Athlete's page -> Match Statistics tab and hit the little red A button. To do this after pick/ban, access the athlete's page during item selection and, again, hit the red A.

You don't actually need to engage with Reserve Tactics at all - a set of three generalist Tactics cards works just fine. However, you can get an edge through using them to pick three cards which work well with one specific hero and swapping them in as and when you draft that hero. I strongly recommend keeping a set of three generalist Tactics cards as your main set, however, and just having three alternates available, rather than trying to use the Reserve functionality to tailor exact Tactics for any given hero; this is possible but will heavily restrict your pick/ban.

If you're going to engage with the mechanic at all, I strongly advise that you pick up Reserve Tactics whenever they're offered, even if they're garbage. Later on you can then swap a bad card into your main set (via the athlete screen) to replace it with what you actually want in Intensive Training, then swap them back.

Rather than going into huge detail here, I'm instead going to call out specific Tactics cards on each hero's v3.1 entry where relevant.

As for which are the best generalist Tactics cards, the original entry for Tactics cards should point you in the right direction (and what's best is heavily dictated by your personal preferences, playstyle and pick/ban tendencies), but a few examples are:

Thinking Tank (support only because it's literally the best card in the game)
Tactical Adjustment
Warm-Up
Quick Decision
Quick Recall
Perfect Opportunity (of course those two are next to each other)

And to a lesser extent:
Rethink
Clear Mind
Perfect Tempo
Teleporting for Support
Watch This

Below I'll list the salient points of my current team, which (on Hell difficulty) has won every Premiere League season they've participated in (eight seasons now). Important - I'm not saying that this is the optimal team. It is, however, a good example of a strong lineup which you can use to inform your decision-making.

Top
Match Trait - Evolving AI
Tactics cards - Tactical Adjustment, Precision Poke, Quick Recall
Skills - HP and Presence when HP > 50% (gold and silver), Presence and HP (gold), Harass rate (gold), Armour and HP (gold)
Hero Pool - Wukong, Hass, Justice, Frank, Bart, Kid, Qube, Cubey, Big Foot, Merisi, Babe, Reinhardt
Commentary - Match trait matches my tendency to play a lot of Qube, Cubey, Justice; Precision Poke complements this. He takes Quick Recall because someone needs to. A couple of heroes I don't have in the pool that I'd like in a perfect world - Nihil, Lan, Mihawk - but with a max pool of 12 there's only so much you can do.

Jungle
Match Trait - Emerging Talent
Tactics cards - Feigned Attack, Probe Attack, Stealing Jungle
Skills - Attack Power (gold), Crit rate (gold), Crit rate and crit damage (gold and silver), Farming efficiency (gold)
Hero Pool - Gillis, Aurelio, Zealot, Kamaitachi, Hakuna, Mo, Xiangxi Ke, Nihil, Manta, Bond, Reinhardt, Lubos
Commentary - Happily, jungle hero numbers are small enough that I can take everyone I care about. Emerging Talent for match trait because junglers rarely die; Feigned Attack and Probe Attack as coverage for heroes that have no initiation (or bad ones) with as much SP efficiency as possible. Stealing Jungle is somewhat inefficient but almost always playable and helps to improve the delta between junglers. Crit-oriented skills because a lot of junglers either want crit or get a lot of bonus AP to use it well.

Mid
Match Trait - Charge Horn
Tactics cards - Probe Attack, Hot Hands, Precision Poke
Skills - Harass rate (gold and silver), Crit rate (gold), Crit rate and crit damage (gold), Farming efficiency (gold)
Hero Pool - Enidi, Niels, Aurelio, Wolfgang, Dylan, Digo, Crank, Lan, Lady Deadfire, Bunu Shan, Kamaitachi, Mihawk
Commentary - Built for versatility. Charge Horn gives you a nice boost in the early game; Attack cards reflect my tendency to pick Wolfgang a lot (and provide a second Probe Attack to help jungle get efficient ganks off). Double harass rate keeps the lane relatively stable even if ganked a few times.

Bot
Match Trait - Performer Personality
Tactics cards - Hot Hands, Warm Up, Tactical Adjustment
Skills - Crit rate (gold and silver), Crit rate and crit damage (gold and silver), Harass rate
Hero Pool - Everyone except Shougong Lei
Commentary - The absolute best match trait for playing a lot of Felyn (which I do). Taking both Hot Hands and Warm Up would be greedy if it weren't for my support's Match Trait; with that they synergize nicely with getting Signal Detection from Blocker to thin out the deck heavily in the first Deployment Phase. Skills are all crit all the time as the best ADC scaling skills.

Support
Match Trait - Unexpected Inspiration
Tactics cards - Tactical Adjustment, Witted, Thinking Tank
Skills - HP and Presence when HP > 50% (gold), Presence and HP (gold), Harass rate (gold), Armour and HP (gold), Farming efficiency for other athletes (gold)
Hero Pool - Acedia, Palulu, Dylan, Blocker, Lady Deadfire, Tivie, Beverly, Paisai, Peter, Charon, Crank, Peiniang Zhu
Commentary - Match Trait is fantastic for getting big turns off along with the SP-heavy Tactics cards. Skills are a mixed bag as supports need to be versatile.

This section blank until my team in my current playthrough proves they deserve to be immortalised. Lazy bums.

You won't have access to all the items in the game at any given time (unless you've been futzing with the item settings, anyway), so I don't propose to review each item individually or give specific builds for each hero. However, if League is any indication, I'm guessing most people aren't great with itemisation (and certainly the AI is terrible at it), so I'll be giving some advice below.

Firstly, I'll lay out some general points around itemisation. However, I want to make clear that these are general points and may not hold true for absolutely every hero. Following this, I'll give some basic advice about gearing for specific roles.

• Items which only have an effect in a specific round are generally bad. A small proportion of heroes rely on front-loaded damage, however, and they can be good for those heroes.
  
  
• Multiplicative scaling is important to consider. What this means is that if you've got a lot of one offensive or defensive stat, that makes other related stats more valuable to purchase. To give a very simplified example, if you've got 100 attack power, adding 1% crit at 150% damage equates to an average of 1.5 damage increase per attack. If you've got 1,000 attack power, meanwhile, 1% crit would equate to 15 average damage per attack - but 1% crit will cost the same in either case.
  Functionally this means that if your hero has external sources of crit, you want attack power; attack power, you want crit; health, you want armour; and so on.
  
  
• Remember to factor item cost into your builds. There's not much point in putting 10k gold of items onto a support's item list, because there's no way they're ever completing it. Similarly, if you're looking for your hero to snowball (say, Lan), it may be worth putting a relatively cheap item first in their build list so that they can get a big power spike off early kills.
  
  
• Remember to do your hero builds manually every time the items change. It's a pain, I know, but the AI makes some really stupid decisions when automating item builds (like building Feather of Phenix as a first item on Digo, for instance).

A tank's only duty in this game is to soak damage which would otherwise hit more important members of the team; this contrasts to their role in true MOBAs which is as much to do with disruption and threat as it is damage soaking, but never mind. To that end, tank itemisation should prioritise presence, followed by armour; presence makes them more likely to be targeted, allowing them to soak, and armour improves their durability so they can soak for longer. While health can be a welcome bonus, it should by no means be a focus because tanks get a lot of health naturally through gold and levels - you'll get far more mileage for survival out of armour.

A tank being played in the support position, meanwhile, should aim for any generalist tank items providing all three stats. This is because support roles are typically operating on much less gold than their laner counterparts, which both reduces their natural statline and also makes them unlikely to complete more than one item until the very late game.

Avoid the temptation to build AP on a tank unless it's an incidental part of an item you're building for other reasons. A tank's role isn't to deal damage (or if it is, it'll be baked into their kit). If you're considering building AP anyway, it's probably because you're itemising a Fighter instead.

Fighter itemisation varies heavily from hero to hero based on their innate abilities; the key point, though, is that all fighters are going to want some survivability and some damage. Some, like Qube, want relatively high damage from items to take advantage of their in-built damage amplification; others, like Kid, can expect to get enough damage from elsewhere to lean more towards survival. In the end it's a judgment call.

Mages aren't really a true itemisation category in this game as there's no differentiation between physical and magical damage types; mages only differ from other classes due to having access to magical equipment rather than physical. Much like Fighters, therefore, itemisation heavily depends on the hero in question.

Generally speaking, most ADCs will want to lean towards crit chance and crit damage due to having good amounts of damage built into their kit. You should pretty much disregard defensive itemisation on ADCs as it generally won't be enough to buy more than an attack or two, and will severely limit their offensive output. The closest thing to defences an ADC should buy is a GA effect.

Supports can be differentiated into support tanks and support mages; however, what this really boils down to is melee vs ranged. Melee supports have no real effects that make you want them to stick around or itemise for damage - this means you should always build them as tanks. Even heroes like Beverly and Acedia, who don't really seem like tanks, should be built this way because realistically all they have to offer in the context of a fight is weak autoattacks - so they may as well soak some damage for the more useful heroes. Ranged supports, meanwhile, all have reasons you want them to stick around a bit longer, so you can usually get away with building a generalist damage item on them unless there's a support item available that's actually good (which is rare).

The DLC added 20 new equipments which, as you'd expect, range from garbage to fantastic. There are two very clear winners - Acceleration Coil is phenomenal on any hero with extra attacks (Felyn, Merisi and Kamaitachi most notably), and the Farmer's Bell is very nice as a cheap equipment for an early power spike which improves your gold income via farming, eventually becoming a solid stat-stick for its cost. A couple of other notable combinations - Protein Powder is good on any health-stacking tank, but particularly Wukong for obvious reasons; shield items work nicely for the newly added Foso, and the Ultra Iron Fist is an extremely efficient way of getting your money's worth from Babe's passive.

With a new update comes a new me - and this new me has decided to put more detail into itemisation. I'll be adding more in the individual heroes' entries where particularly strong items present themselves, but for those of you who wanted more help in this area, well, here we go.

When creating an item build for a hero, the first thing you're going to need to do is decide what role they're going to fit into. The following is a good spread of roles you're likely to want to consider for itemisation purposes - however, it's not exhaustive, so don't just brainlessly follow my every word (until I start that cult I've got on my to-do list, anyway). I'll go into them in more detail later.

- Pure tank
- Tank (1 damage item)
- One Slap Chap
- Bruiser
- Assassin
-Multi-hitter
- AoE
- ADC
- Mage
- Buffer
- Seat-warmer
- Special Case

Once you've picked one of these roles, you're going to need to further decide whether you're prioritising crit or not. Crit is a stat which gets better the more you have until the cap - not because it changes anything numerically, but because it makes your crits more reliable. It hurts to dump your SP on an initiation only to miss out on the kill because you missed your crit chance, after all.

If your hero wants crit, you want to prioritise crit equipment. If they don't, you don't. Sounds simple, but there's some nuance there. Some items are just generally solid and also have crit on them, for instance. Others have no crit, but have crit damage and therefore work well with crit-centric heroes. Judgment calls abound, but be sensible.

After that you're going to need to think about the game's cadence and gold income:

- If you're playing an aggressive comp with multiple assassins and initiation methods you should give strong weighting towards cheap items. Your objective is to get early kills and snowball that lead; completing items gives a spike in effective power. Your objective should be to pick up early kills, use the kill gold to get items quickly even if they're lower impact than the technically optimal ones, then use that power spike to get more kills. It doesn't matter if your opponent has a "better" item build than you if they reach the final fight with only one item completed.

- If you're looking towards teamfights, often a late-game style, plan accordingly. Go for more expensive, potent items, sure - but remember that you can't guarantee the gold. If there's a particular item that ties your hero together, don't leave it til the third item because half the time you won't even see it.

- If an item stacks itself over time, it should be your first item. If it can't be your first item, don't build it - it'll always underperform, even if the stats are right. As a corollary to that, if there's a good item that has 'must be built first' attached, you're going to need to weight that against the stacking item of your choice. That said, if you do have access to a stacking item with relevant stats, it's usually a good build for teamfighting/late game comps, because they wind up being very gold-efficient in the long run.

Finally, once you've finished all those considerations, you're ready to decide on your build. Congratulations! However, don't just write it off as finished - you'll need to review every build after each content patch as items are added and/or removed. New seasons, meanwhile, will mean a complete re-do. It's a never-ending battle.

So, to the individual roles:

Pure Tank
Best items: Link Line, Double-Layered Armor, Iron Tire
Examples heroes: Hakuna, Bart, Peter

Pure tank itemisation should be aimed, as a general rule, at any hero that doesn't have any pressing mechanical reason why they should be hitting things hard. Any hero without innate effects to boost their AP or crit rate fall into this category. Heroes with effects that boost them when taking hits (like Frank, Merisi etc.) also fall in here. A purely vanilla hero with no in-fight effects falls into this category for the simple reason that if you're not doing anything special, your job is to eat the damage so the people who are doing special things get to keep doing them.

One last type of hero to throw this itemisation on are heroes who aren't vanilla, but who only need to exist in a fight to apply their effects. Examples of this include Peiniang Zhu and Big Foot - items don't really touch their effects (with some very limited examples), and they proc based on other people doing things. That means all you really want to do with them (again, aside from some specific examples) is to tank them up so they stick around to apply their effects more.

Pure tank itemisation should prioritise two stats above all else - Armor and Presence. Health is very important for tanks, certainly - but you'll usually get a good amount of that from levels and gold anyway, and a lot of tank items wind up with health on them as a matter of course. Armour, on the other hand, is a lot harder to come by and makes a huge difference in reducing incoming damage to keep your tank around a lot longer. Presence is just as vital, though, because a tank that isn't getting hit is a tank doing nothing.

Avoid pure health items like Big Guy Vest in almost all circumstances. Even on heroes with innate health scaling like Wukong and Frank, you're going to be better served grabbing armour to keep them around for longer because that health item is only going to be contributing a relatively small amount to their actual health total. Also generally avoid healing items on tanks (yes, Mandrake Elixir isn't great); they look good on paper, but in practice they're going to be eating a lot more damage than they could ever heal, such that an armour item will keep them alive and kicking for far longer. The only exception is if you have a hero with extremely high armour through other means (e.g. the Wolfgang variant that can self-stack armour).

Example builds:
Link Line, Double-Layered Armor, "Mockery" Textbook
Double-Layered Armor, Glorious Shield, Heart Mirror

Tank (one damage item)
Best items: Self-Increasing Dumbbell, Gravity Converter, Giant Warhammer
Examples heroes: Wukong, Merisi, Frank

These guys are very similar to Pure Tanks. The distinction between the two is that this latter category has some kind of innate mechanic to make them something of a threat - either something to boost their AP, or something to give them extra attacks.

While these heroes have something extra in their kit to make them more dangerous than a dumb brick wall, in most cases their innate mechanics aren't enough in isolation to make them any more than a dumb brick wall with a few spikes on top. For these guys you'll want to consider a standard tank build, but throwing in a single item somewhere to help them really scare the things they're hitting. Your rule of thumb should be that if you're a tank getting extra attacks (i.e. if you're Merisi) you should look for something which procs on-hit; if you're not, take something that boosts your one attack more based on your bulk.

Importantly, this category does not fit tanks that have a single-use effect. Heroes like Hakuna and Reinhardt might have some nice team-wide AoE on turn one, but after that they become vanilla (okay Reinhardt has some minor splash, sometimes, but the damage is so low as to be irrelevant). It isn't a good idea to base your item build around a single attack unless that attack is the be-all and end-all of the entire hero.

It is critical, however, to only apply this category when there's a relevant item to slot in. You can't just throw any old damage item in there and expect it to have any real relevance; a Hundred Atk Sword or Sword of Heaven isn't going to do jack. Slot in a damage item if there's an item which synergises with that hero's bonus stats or innate effects; if there isn't itemise them like a Pure Tank.

Note that Merisi, as the only real tank to get bonus attacks, is a great user of Acceleration Coil since he'll stick around long enough to stack it and his AP is low enough that pretty quickly it'll overtake his actual attacks for damage. Helium Tank is a strictly worse alternative, being more expensive and quickly being outscaled in exchange for ignoring armour. Fearless Headband, on the other hand, is pretty fantastic.

N.B. While itemisation timings vary, you'll usually want your damage item to be your second item, sometimes third. Getting an actual tank item in place is almost always necessary to let them actually function (a Merisi without a Presence item is a Merisi who never gets an extra attack). Once that's in place, THEN you can afford to get them a damage item - and you'll usually want this place second so they can start really impacting fights. Only push it to third item on heroes like Frank, for whom dealing damage is very much a luxury.

Example builds:
Link Line, Gravity Converter, "Mockery" Textbook
Glorious Shield, Self-Increasing Dumbbell, Double-Layered Armor

One Slap Chap
Best items: Armor-Piercing Round, Lonely Penguin, Ghost Claw, Terror Anthology
Examples heroes: Hakuna, Reinhardt, Chen FengCheng

Yes, I came up with this name myself, and yes, I'm very proud of it.

A one-slap chap is a hero who shows up to a fight, does one special attack to the entire team, then lapses into being vanilla. Importantly, Lubos is not a one-slap chap because he pokes rather than slaps. Or possibly because he actually deals damage. Take your pick.

Again these heroes have very similar itemisation to the Pure Tanks. The differentiation here is that their special attack targets the entire team and in the first turn - meaning they're a fantastic vector for any item-based debuffs that your current patch has access to. Armor-Piercing Round is the most ubiquitous of these, and has a drastic impact if you can get it applied immediately in fights, but other debuffs can also be relevant thanks to their early application.

Note that while I've listed it above, Lonely Penguin is not something to throw on without thinking about it. Only build it if at least one of your damage dealers is also building it - that way your tank can apply the debuff so your damage dealers guarantee their damage bonuses.

Example builds:
Link Line, Armor-Piercing Round, "Mockery" Textbook
Glorious Shield, Lonely Penguin, Double-Layered Armor

Bruiser
Best items: Charged Barrel, Mechanical Arm, Dragon Slayer, Golden Ticket
Examples heroes: Hass, Justice, Wolfgang, Nihil

At last moving away from the Pure Tank itemisation categories and into something with some weight being it, the Bruiser is a catch-all term for anything which is bulky but expected to be a durable damage-dealer rather than a bullet sponge with a fist attached. Notably the game separates this into the Fighter and Gladiator subcategories, but this only really influences base stat growth.

Usually you'll be looking for items here which boost both damage and survivability to some extent or other, or which provide a lot of flat stats without needing to synergise with others. You should avoid items which place much emphasis on crit (though don't disregard crit items entirely, some like Bunny Dagger may be worthy of consideration in a weaker item version).

IMPORTANT - Plate of Agony would be a great item for this kind of hero, but currently seems to be bugged - so far as I can tell, it functions exactly how it's supposed to except its stacks never clear. This means that in longer fights, rather than delaying incoming damage, it instead stacks up huge amounts and unavoidably kills you.

Example builds:
Chicken Rib, Dragon Slayer, Gravity Converter
Height Detector, Golden Ticket, Mechanical Arm

Assassin
Best items: Little Lightning, Conversion Gear, Obedient Whip, Sharp Piercer
Example heroes: Lan, Xiangxi Ke, Raven

Quite the contrast to the previous archetypes, Assassin itemisation is all damage, all the time. Disregard any downsides, you don't care how squishy you get - that ADC can't hurt you if he's dead before he gets to shoot, after all.

Notably, there are two kinds of items that can reasonably fall into the Assassin category. The first is the more obvious Assassin item - things with a whole lot of damage and no defences, or sometimes even negative defences. The second kind, on the other hand, is less obvious - offensive items with smaller bonuses whose main benefit is they're cheap. Assassins like to snowball off kills, and one way to do that is to make your items cheap enough to chain together, letting you turn one kill into many more.

Much like with bruisers, you should usually avoid crit items for your Assassins - you want to reliably murder squishies, not do it if you land your 40% crit. The obvious exception to this rule is when your hero's mechanics revolve around crits such as with Manta or Lan - for the former you want enough crit to hit 100% without going over, and for the latter you want as much as you can get.

Note that as with ADCs, there's an argument to be had for picking up a GA effect like Phoenix Feather or Dissonance on your Assassins. In this case, though, it's usually not worth it - Assassins are usually melee and you expect them to fall over in teamfights. You just need to build to make sure they deal crippling damage before they do.

Example builds:
Little Lightning, Sharp Piercer, Carnivore's Medical Record
Handy Knife, Isabelle, Obedient Whip

Multi-Hitter
Best items: Acceleration Coil, Helium Tank, Ghost Claw, Terror Anthology
Example heroes: Felyn, Kamaitachi, Qube

These guys are a little weird. They don't necessarily hit hard, but they do hit often, and that means a whole different approach to itemisation - look for items which give you damage or stacking debuffs from attacks.

This category has a lot of flexibility in it because there are plenty of heroes that attack more than once but don't really go overboard - Elemi, for instance, along with Kid, Reinhardt and others. These heroes can be built as multi-hitters but won't excel in the role - you'll usually want to build them via one of the other categories unless they're the only multi-attacker in the match, in which case you can lean into that aspect a little more.

Multi-hitters also don't really need to be classed as such to do their job; you can build them via other categories and they'll perform just fine. This only really becomes a role in itself when there's multiple strong, appropriate items available in your version. Nonetheless, you should keep it in mind when building one of the relevant heroes. You should also bear in mind that these builds can fall flat if you're doing badly in a game for the simple reason that they rely on a lot of instances of damage; if fights are shorter and more lethal they won't have time to do their work.

Example builds:
Acceleration Coil, Helium Tank, Terror Anthology
Fearless Headband, Ghost Claw, Extendable Sword

AoE
Best items: Blue Monolith, Stealth Dagger, Dissonance
Example heroes: Niels, Enidi, Foso

The AoE category struggles a little to differentiate itself, and instead slots somewhere in between the Assassin and Multi-Hitter archetypes. While not very similar in mechanical terms to Assassins, your approach is similar - deal as much damage before you die as possible; mechanically they're much closer to Multi-Hitters, the main difference being that multi-hitters tend to have lower damage on each target, while AoE heroes deal full damage to everything (but usually with a drawback of some kind).

There aren't many true AoE heroes in the game - in fact, that list above is arguably all of them - and they basically all use magic items. Look to maximise your damage potential and don't worry too much about anything else - damage, damage and more damage. Debuffs and such are nice, but they can be applied by heroes with less power behind them. Your AoE-users are there to throw the biggest, most potent splashes of damage possible before they inevitably get shanked.

Example builds:
Blue Monolith, Locust Swarm, Archmage Hat
Psychic Glove, Stealth Dagger, Locust Swarm

ADC
Best items: Sword of Heaven, Handy Knife, Laser Sword, Boxing Gloves
Example heroes: BaJie, Bond, Shougong Lei

You'll have an ADC in the vast majority of comps you play, and for good reason - you'll usually need someone whose job it is to deliver single big punches in teamfights. ADCs have very low defensive stats and there's not really any getting around that; don't worry about defensive items except maybe a GA effect (or Stealth Dagger on the ADCs that have access to it).

The big difference between ADC and Assassin itemisation is you'll care a lot less about budget for ADCs and a lot more about crit. ADCs have naturally high AP which works very nicely with crit; you'll almost always want to be aiming for as close to 100% as you can reasonably get. The only time you won't want to build crit items on your ADC is if they're slotting into another itemisation archetype (like Felyn) or there just aren't enough crit items in your version to make a build out of.

Don't worry too much about item costs for your ADC - their entire reason to exist is for insurance for late game teamfights. Don't get silly with it of course - BaJie is the only one who can pick the Ultimate Iron Fist without being comically optimistic - but expect your build cost to break 9k gold. The exception to that rule is with first-build items, like stacking ones (Physics Textbook can be very nice) or Chicken Rib, which can help to bring your overall cost down to something a little less exorbitant.

Example builds:
Sword of Heaven, Handheld Telescope, Laser Sword
Physics Textbook, Limitless Chip, Carnivore's Medical Record

Mage
Best items: Fragile Sticker, Blue Monolith, Stealth Dagger, Jar of Doom
Example heroes: Lady Deadfire, Bunu Shan, Crank

At first glance, this really isn't a category. After all, it's another 'all the damage' archetype - so what's the difference between a Mage and an Assassin, or an ADC?

The answer is in what you're allowed to build. Although there's fairly similar numbers of Physical and Magical heroes, the vast majority of the latter are either mages or supports - and supports don't tend to get enough gold to qualify for this archetype.

That means that Mage itemisation is similar to your Assassins or ADCs, but with access to a set of items that far fewer heroes can use - often your Mage is the only one that has access to these items and has the gold to buy them.

Mage items also have a much greater tendency to offer big percentage damage boosts - Blue Monolith and Jar of Doom being good examples - which work out to a lot more power than the flat AP you get on physical items. They also don't have much access to crit. That means you're just looking for damage-boosts and mage-specific utility above all else, with flat AP a welcome secondary concern.

Example builds:
Stealth Dagger, Blue Monolith, Jar of Doom
Archmage Hat, Obedient Whip, Dissonance

Buffer
Best items: Lunchbox, Stimulant, Scallion Oil Noodles, Herd Immunity Flyer
Example heroes: Paisai, Palulu, Anna, Fatty White

Heading into the Support archetypes, the Buffer is a semi-rare category which specifically includes heroes which apply buffs to friendly units either team-wide or repeatedly (ideally both).

Although both relevant heroes and relevant items are quite few in number, this is nonetheless an important category to keep in mind because when you can combine them they produce disproportionately powerful effects. Paisai alone is a useful, if generic, support; Paisai with both Stimulant and Scallion Oil Noodles has a drastic effect on your team's stats.

Where there aren't enough buffer-specific items to fill out a build, you should still do as much as you can - buff-oriented items are very cheap and extremely potent - before moving into the Seat-Warmer category below to fill the rest of the item slots.

Example builds:
Stimulant, Scallion Oil Noodles, Lunchbox
Stimulant, Herd Immunity Flyer, Potion Pouch

Seat Warmer
Best items: Battle Flag, Interest Note, Herd Immunity Flyer
Example heroes: Beverly, Charon, Acedia

This category belongs to the heroes who sit in the Support role - and therefore get very little gold - but who have few or no in-fight mechanics. They don't really do any damage with their attacks, AP has little to no relevance to their effects. You brought them for their cards or their passive effects.

In a perfect world you'd itemise these heroes as Pure Tanks so that they would actually provide an in-fight benefit - by soaking damage - but this world is far from perfect and your support doesn't have the money to buy those kinds of nice things. Instead you should look to items which have a decent impact but cost substantially less - allowing your support to give you some relevant item spikes sometime before Hell freezes over.

Note that aside from a few extremely powerful support-buff items (Herd Immunity Flyer, most notably), if the game goes super late and/or there are version rules which promote Support gold generation, these builds will become inferior to simple Pure Tank (or, in some cases, Mage) ones. The point is that in the nine games out of ten that that DOESN'T happen, you're better off having three mediocre items than two decent ones. All the same, consider throwing cheaper tank items into this category as well to add to soak efficacy (Double-Layered Armor is a great one since it costs about the same anyway).

Example builds:
Interest Note, Herd Immunity Flyer, Scallion Oil Noodles
Battle Flag, Fragile Sticker, Double-Layered Armor

Special Case
Best items: N/A
Example heroes: N/A

As with any categorisation system (at least one looking at a reasonably complex data set), there's always going to be a few outliers that just don't really fit in anywhere. Be ready to throw all these rules out the window for certain heroes, and to heavily modify them for others. I won't go into detail on these heroes - that's saved for their individual entries - but will give a brief summary of the most notable ones below:

Peiniang Zhu - Not an AoE mage or multi-hitter but has a huge number of potential damage instances - effects which proc specifically off damage rather than attacks are amazing.
Digo - Has absolutely no interest in defences of any kind, ever, no matter what.
Zealot - Weirdness around clones means flat stats at the start of a fight are key.
Babe - Massive discount on your first item. Either get something stacking very early or get that Ultimate Iron Fist for less than the price of a Little Lightning.
Raven - Only hero that benefits from penetration more than just directly.
Felicity - Eats debuffs. Don't use them.

Another addition with the patch, this is mostly for flavour and shouldn't need too much analysis. In short - upgrade to the next venue size as soon as you can afford to (it'll pay for itself very quickly); fill the slots in each area while keeping a balance between the two stats (you can have high ratings even with the utility slots, so you may as well take things which improve attributes etc.); check attendance after each home game and keep increasing ticket prices until you drop just barely below 100% attendance. That's it. If you really want to get fancy you can take out a loan to upgrade to the next venue tier (and you probably should do so), but honestly if you win games you shouldn't need to.

Below you'll find full analysis of each individual hero in the game, which is what I imagine most of you are here for. For the sake of categorisation, I'll be putting heroes into the lane I consider them best suited for analysis (because it's easier for me, and that's all that matters damnit).

I will precede each lane with a tier list. Importantly, please note that this tier list is not an absolute measure of power; for the sake of minimising the amount of incorrect and argumentative comments I get, I'll be posting the key for each tier list individually.

For each hero, I'll be following the template below:

Name: I really hope you don't need me to explain this.

Position: Top, jungle, mid etc. with my opinion of their best position highlighted in bold.

Role: Tank, fighter etc.

Mastery choices: I won't be re-printing all the mastery tiers - you can look those up in-game if you want to know them - but I will note where there are choices of two options and will highlight the optimal choice in bold.

Itemisation: A simple guideline for itemisation, possibly highlighting particularly useful items.

Synergies: Brief, non-exhaustive list of particularly good heroes to pair with them.

Countered by: Brief, non-exhaustive list of counters to that hero.

Summary: The TL;DR.

Analysis: The long-form explanation of my view of the hero and their potential, as well as how to play them to best effect.

Cards: Long-form analysis of each hero's cards, because I apparently insist on exhaustive detail.

Interactions: A longer-form explanation of heroes which work well with, or against, that hero. Again, this will be non-exhaustive because I'm not going to list (for instance) every hero with a shield for every hero that likes to get a shield.

I'll be adding the following to each hero entry in honour of v3.1:

v3.1 Updates: Will include a reference to any changes I've made in the preceding entry as a result of my changing thinking, plus any buffs or nerfs that happened (if I noticed them).

Item build: Points you towards which set of items in the items section above to lean towards, then highlights any outliers or build versatility available.

Reserve Tactics: Any tactics cards that work particularly well with that hero which you might consider keeping in your reserve set.

Funnelling: What you might hypothetically do if you decided to pour the majority of your resources into this hero. Whether that's a good idea is another matter.

Rejected gags: For my own entertainment, any gags I considered for the start of the entry but didn't use. Because if it makes me smile, it goes in the guide, no matter how pointless it is.

Probably the single biggest change from the DLC and update, Variants are a kind of pseudo-patch system which causes heroes to be randomly changed between slightly different kits with each successive game version. In some cases this makes little difference (and in a few are straight up buffs or nerfs), but a lot of variants can have a substantial effect on how a hero plays and rapidly shift them up or down tiers while adding or removing synergies. Pay attention to the Variant changes each game version, because this matters a lot.

Note that Variants fall into three categories in my eyes:
1. Variants that make the hero better at doing what they were already doing. These are great.
2. Variants that shift the hero's kit so much their role in a comp changes drastically. These can be hit-or-miss.
3. Variants that shift the hero's kit, but not enough to change their role. These are almost universally bad, because they make the hero worse at what you'd bring them to do while strengthening them in ways that are either irrelevant or redundant.

Again, please understand that the tier lists are not definitive. You shouldn't just go into a game, pick everything I've listed as A tier, and act confused when you lose. The purpose of the tier list is to show which heroes are useful in more situations, or can be built around as the basis for a comp - it is not the be-all and end-all, which simply can't exist for a game like this unless balancing is a trainwreck (which it isn't in this game).

You'll generally want to include at least a couple of S- or A-tier heroes in your comp simply because those are the heroes you're going to build your game plan around and who are likely to be your main carries. Other roles can comfortably be filled with any tier of hero all the way down to B tier - B tier heroes can still perform their roles adequately, they just aren't going to take over any games. Even C tier will do in a pinch - just avoid D tier for that role because they simply don't do much.

The far, far more important question is whether your team comp and synergies are appropriate, which is something we'll come to later.

The tier lists are now appended with their v2.1 incarnations. I considered including all of the Variants, but decided against it - realistically most of the Variants are sidegrades or minor buffs or nerfs and aren't enough to move an entire tier. As before, the tiers aren't in any particular order, and in all cases use the vanilla version rather than any specific Variant. Refer to the individual entries for Variant analysis.

S Tier: Heroes that can be safely blind-picked, with no real counters, strong cards and which counter some heroes; or heroes that have the potential to completely take over a game in the right comp

A Tier: Solid picks which have few counters, if any, and which can generally perform at least adequately in any given situation while having strong potential to excel, but lack some key tool(s) for being a complete package; or heroes that can become extremely powerful with the right comp and setup

B Tier: Heroes who are very situational, only working well with a great setup and/or against specific enemy heroes or comps (e.g. counterpicks); or heroes that can become extremely powerful, but are heavily countered by too many heroes to feasibly ban out for; or heroes that are good in fights but have terrible cards, or vice versa.

C Tier: Heroes that generally don't perform amazingly; they lack the tools to excel, meaning the best they can hope for is to perform their role in a satisfactory fashion.

D Tier: Heroes that will pretty much never do anything, really. This is the only tier of heroes you should generally avoid.

S Tier: All uncounterable, with both Wukong and Hass being amazing counterpicks while Kid and Qube have a lot of potential to take over games.

A Tier: Solid picks. Cubey stands out as being the one who underperforms unless supported, but with support can completely ruin entire teams.

B Tier: Mostly situational heroes. Wolfgang, Aurelio and Zealot are all notable as very strong heroes but who struggle to perform in the isolated top lane. The rest either slot into specific comps or are counterpicks.

C Tier: Tiger Boy and Hakuna are both unimpressive heroes who don't really merit solo lane gold. Felyn, meanwhile, is a fantastic hero but who badly needs support, much better suited to bot lane; she's also very easy to bully for heroes like Qube.

D Tier: Fatty White is just terrible and a complete waste of solo lane gold. Peter, meanwhile, can provide some utility but he can do that just as well from the support slot without taking up a chunk of your gold income.


Top lane is where I spend a lot of my bans, as there are numerous heroes who can completely derail your game plan (Wukong, Hass, Kid etc. etc.). That aside, I treat top lane as a place where a hero can sit safely and farm up ready for teamfights unless I want to pick a lane bully and lean on it. I'll only go the lane bully route if the enemy picks a squishy top laner (in which case they're asking for it) or if I'm building a Fighter-heavy team (in which case I'm picking a Fighter either way, so I may as well pick one that'll beat the crap out of their opponent).

Absolutely nothing changes aside from the introduction of three new heroes into the lane - while some heroes got stronger or weaker thanks to itemisation, these changes typically hit heroes who are better suited to other lanes and can't really get the full benefit in top.

S Tier: Foso comes in strong as she does in every tier. A resilient mage who has strong counter-kill potential in 2v1 ganks and scales well throughout the game.

B Tier: Both Matata and Qin Hu are middling heroes who can be made to work but usually have better options available. Qin Hu is better in top than the other two roles - he likes solo lane gold but doesn't want to be involved in skirmishes - but the difference isn't enough to bump him up a tier compared to other lanes.

Four of the five new heroes can be played in top lane, bringing the number of possible top lane picks to an absolutely absurd 31 - this is why hero pool is so important on top laners. That said, there are an awful lot of B tier picks which are honestly just things you pick up for very niche use-cases or flex pick possibilities. A few things shift around as a result of my evolving thinking.

S tier: Frank makes the jump from A to S tier - I've come to the conclusion that he's one of the best generic tanks in the game, alongside Wukong, offering a huge base health pool and a great utility card without otherwise clogging your deck too much. Hass and Qube, meanwhile, drop out of S - they're still great picks, but I have concluded that neither are heroes you can pick in any situation.

A tier: Fernan, Chen Fengcheng and Leon all land in A tier on arrival. All three are solid picks with no real counters and who are quite comfortable sitting in an isolated lane soaking solo gold, but none are so strong as to be must-pick. Hass and Qube drop down to here for the same reason, while Bart makes the climb up from B tier - he's on the same level as Wukong or Frank as a generic tank pick, but his obnoxiously expensive cards keep him held down. Nihil drops down.

B tier: Remains exactly what it is - the dumping grounds for all the heroes who work just fine but are either very situational, mediocre, or work better in other roles. Bart and Nihil trade places - the latter simply never seems to do enough with his solo lane gold and still needs a Hass ban before you can blind pick him.

C tier: Felicity arrives, but her card utility is pretty much wasted up on Isla Del Top Lane and she doesn't otherwise contribute enough to justify the solo lane gold. Otherwise unchanged, though I was amused to see a recent forum post advocating for top lane Felyn (I'm always happy to see the AI pick her because it means I get a lane I can farm kills in).

D tier: Unchanged. Don't give these guys extra gold and levels. They'll do nothing with them.

Although Babe is a registered superhero, he currently has no heroic acts on record, nor does anyone know he exists. This is primarily because Babe has yet to figure out what he stands for, what he believes in, or what the hell is going on with his costume.

Name: Babe

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices:
Free-For-All costs 2 less / Free-For-All increases its duration by 1 round

Gift Bundle has no maximum for tokens / Gift Bundle provides an additional 2 AP and 13 health per token

Itemisation: Fighter / ADC / Mage (hybrid)

Synergies: Big Foot (Rapid Cooling)

Counters: None

Countered by: None

Summary: Stat-stick Fighter with no real strengths or weaknesses.

Analysis: Babe is a Fighter who exists exclusively to be a stat stick; he has no real unique qualities other than getting a lot of stats. His passive similarly provides stats - he gets his first item for 20% of the usual price. This allows him to get a chunky power boost early on in the game, though it does of course become entirely irrelevant in the late game when everyone is sitting on full builds.

Besides his cheap first item, Babe's main distinguishing feature is Gift Bundle, which stacks up Happy Happy stacks (giving stats) while it sits in hand. Notably this provides armour as well as AP and health, giving Babe a lot more staying power than you'd expect from a Fighter. Since you're getting plenty of survivability from your Happy Happy stacks you can generally itemise Babe with whatever items will give him the most damage - an approach which his Hybrid damage type assists with. You can also turn him into a fairly effective damage sponge, but with no innate effects or additional Presence he won't perform particularly well in this role.

Babe's lack of unique effects leaves him a fairly reliable, if uninspired, pick. He'll rarely excel, but he also won't get demolished - a safe blind pick, but not a power pick. You'll usually want to put him in top lane - he has enough stats to survive being isolated, and his effects are global so he can work from anywhere. The only reason to run him in mid is if you're in a meta with early objective fights where mid lane is involved, in which case you can use his early item completion to try to leverage a free objective.

Cards:
Target a hero; move to that hero's hex and give them the Invitation effect, which causes them to be picked as a Free-For-All target next time it's drawn. Then dispel debuffs from all allies within 1 hex and give them a shield equal to 10 x Happy Happy stacks. Babe returns to his original hex at the end of the round.

Quite expensive for what amounts to a fairly small shield; you'll mostly want to use this to designate a target for Free-For-All if you're looking to force them out of lane or pick up a bounty. Avoid playing this card unless you have a specific plan in mind, and remember that Invitation applies to Free-For-All when you next draw it, not immediately.

While this card is in hand, Babe gains a stack of Happy Happy at the end of each round. If played, Babe gains 5 stacks of Happy Happy and this card moves to the far left of the hand.

Really quite expensive to play - it amounts to 4 SP for 20 AP, 125 health and 2.5 armour - but still worth it to keep it in hand. Otherwise just leave this to sit in your hand and accrue stacks. Note that the only reason to take the mastery for extra stats from Happy Happy is if you're entirely focussed on the early game - it amounts to 50 AP and 325 health at full stacks, meaning the unrestricted stack mastery will surpass it after 38 stacks for AP and health (and immediately at 25 stacks for armour since the bonus mastery doesn't give armour).

When this card enters your hand it randomly selects 2 allies and 3 enemies from those that are currently alive (a target with Invitation from Home Delivery will always be chosen). When played, start a fight with Babe and the selected heroes, lasting 4 rounds (or 5 if this is your first card to be played this Deployment Phase).

Unreliable, but thanks to masteries, a cheap and fairly long duration initiation. Due to Babe's early item gain and stat boosts you'll want to play this frequently early on, then become more discriminating as the game wears on to only take favourable fights. Note that if you kill one of the chosen heroes after this card has entered the hand it will give you a favourable numbers advantage.

Interactions:
Big Foot - Being entirely generic, Babe has no real interactions with anyone; Big Foot is however somewhat notable as his Rapid Cooling card can allow you to keep Gift Bundle in hand without paying the exorbitant 4 SP price.

No huge shift from the updates; some small buffs from solid equipment being added, but otherwise remains as above.


Removed - Search Gift Bundle when participating in a kill, moving it to the far left if already in hand.

Gained - Each time Babe buys an equipment, Free-for-all's cost reduces by 3 until played.

This variant generally winds up being a small nerf - Babe's power lies in simply out-statting opponents, which is harder to do without Gift Bundle being searched into hand for free. With good luck on your hero selections this can allow Babe to set up very cheap fight kills, but unless you're building a comp around lots of skirmishing it's hard to really make this reliable (and if you are, only getting the discount three times per game is awkward). Does allow for Babe to snowball quickly, though, since picking up kills will get him to his next equipment, and in turn discount, faster.

v3.1 Updates: No changes to Babe, he's still the same big ol' statstick he always has been.

Item build:
Ultimate Iron Fist, Gravity Converter, Dragon Slayer
Farming Bell, Gravity Converter, Self-Increasing Dumbbell
Archmage Hat, Blue Monolith, Jar of Doom

Reserve Tactics: Find Another Chance to retain Gift Bundle for 10 rounds - debatable as you could just pay the 2 SP extra to get 5 stacks, but this fits into your turn better and overlaps into a second Deployment Phase.

Funnelling: Keep Gift Bundle in hand without playing it by spamming Free-For-All every DP; amplify any buffs granted to Babe via expensive but accessible equipment. Not entirely recommended, but you could do worse.

Rejected gags: None. The character design is too ridiculous to easily ridicule.

Wait. Wait a second. "Home Delivery"... is this an alternate design for... her[questionablecontent.fandom.com]?!

After achieving major success at such a young age, Bart's teenage years were troubled by wild parties and substance abuse. His appearance in this game is several years following his successful stint in rehab; however, he insists on donating his salary to charity, instead continuing to live off the royalties from 'The Simpsons'.

Name: Bart

Position: Top

Role: Tank

Mastery choices: Increase Presence by 1 and reflect an additional 5% AP physical damage / Shield Wall shielding increased by 10% of Bart's health

Gain 1 armour per level / Gain 2 Presence and 200 health

Reflect an additional 7.5% AP physical damage / Gain 2 Presence and 35 health per level


Itemisation: Full tank, prioritising Presence and Armour.

Synergies: None

Counters: Low health/high AP physical attackers

Countered by: Magic damage, Manta

Summary: Brick wall tank with some reflected damage.

Analysis: Bart is a pretty straightforward hero really - he stands at the front and soaks damage, and if it's physical, he hits his attacker back. That's about it; his AP is very low so he doesn't really do much damage worth talking about with his attacks. His cards are effective at facilitating a tower-push strategy, but they're also incredibly expensive so if that's your goal you're going all-in.

There really isn't any finesse or intricacy you can pull off with him - you draft him if you want a big meaty tank. That's that. Notably he doesn't reflect damage when struck with magic damage, and given that the reflection is essentially all of his damage contribution, you only really want to take him if the enemy don't have much in the way of magic damage.

If you want him to survive, or even win, skirmishes you should prioritise armour over other stats - the damage reflection is based on the attacker's AP, not the damage taken, so mitigation matters. At the end of the day, though, he's useless without Presence since he contributes sod all if not being hit.

Unfortunately, while he's a decent enough tank in a fight, his cards are pretty lacklustre. Bart winds up being just a bit meh, never really excelling, and while he can perform just fine, there's usually better heroes you can pick for the role. That said, the one niche he does perform very well is acting as a wall against certain crit-centric heroes like BaJie and Lan due to his immunity to crits.

Cards:
Pick a tower; it takes double damage for the rest of the game.

Very expensive for what it does. It's not that the effect is bad, but it really doesn't do anything to actually help you win lanes - just makes it happen faster once you are. For four SP that's really not good enough.






Give a teammate a shield equal to 20% of Bart's max health.

Not a bad card in general, but that's about it. Decent chunk of a shield, indefinite duration.







Pick a lane and push it three times.

Much like with Metal Fatigue, doesn't really do anything to win the lane, just wins it harder once you already are. The combination of the two can push down a lane quickly, but you'll only really want to play them both immediately after an objective fight which you won convincingly or if that's your main game plan.




Interactions:

Immunity to crits protects against crit-oriented heroes, and an on-demand shield can provide assistance to the heroes that like that kind of thing. You can also combine Metal Fatigue with direct tower damage, but usually the SP cost of doing so is prohibitively high.

Manta - While Bart is immune to crits, Manta is immune to being immune to crits. This makes Manta one of the few heroes that can realistically gank top lane and expect to walk away with kill gold.

No inherent shift. That said, he's always going to be a counterpick tank, so arguably the Variants are never going to make any difference at all to your decision-making process.


Changed - When taking Physical damage, deals 30% 25% of the attacker's AP as damage to the attacker.

Gained - If the Physical damage taken is a critical hit, increase the damage dealt to the attacker by 50%.

Makes Bart a more potent counterpick into crit-reliant heroes like BaJie, at the expense of being worse into non-crit heroes. Mostly a buff when you're picking something that can reliably kill those crit-centric opponents after Bart chips them down, though it's still not going to kill them on its own.


Gained - When taking Magical damage, the attacker takes damage equal to Bart's Armour.

A straight up buff, but a small one. This does allow Bart to reflect damage in more circumstances (and has some synergy with some of the equipments which can stack armour to a nasty extent), but once again the damage isn't really enough to make a difference in most cases. Note, however, that this procs when taking magic damage, not when attacked by magic-using heroes - with a few good armour items you can get a lot of chip damage onto incidental damage-dealers like Peiniang Zhu and Crank.

v3.1 Updates: Changed my view on his second Mastery choice - while armour is definitely nice, Presence is harder to get easy access to and lets Bart do his job more effectively in the early game if the meta has early top-lane objective fights. Otherwise, a number of tweaks and additions here and there, particularly around variants and in recognising the efficacy of tower-push strategies.

Item build: Standard Pure Tank. Terror Anthology is an option since it works off Bart's damage reflection, though bear in mind it's only going to be applying to physical opponents.

Reserve Tactics: Aggressive Tower Push / Break-In - synergises nicely with strong pushing strategies if that's the approach you're taking. Break-In is lower risk since you don't need to take damage and they're removed when played, but will only let you hard push one lane rather than doing it all game.

Funnelling: Tutoring Bart's cards will be necessary if your strategy is to rail towers into oblivion. Bonus health from cards or gold will contribute towards making him an immovable object at the frontline, but make sure he's got the Presence to stop the enemy team just walking around him.

Rejected gags:
Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself.[media1.tenor.com]

Proven at long last to really exist; ironically his feet are pretty much reasonably proportioned.

Name: Big Foot

Position: Top

Role: Tank

Mastery choices:
Frostbite costs 1 more but applies two stacks of Frozen Stiff / Frostbite damage increases by 5%

Gain 35 max health per level and 1 Presence / Gain 200 max health and 2 Presence


Itemisation: Tank

Synergies: Stall-oriented comps and heroes, Babe (Rapid Cooling for Gift Bundle)

Counters: Multi-attacking tanks

Countered by: Wukong (debuff reflection)

Summary: Bulky tank that shreds the AP of the enemy team.

Analysis: Big Foot is a tank who, unfortunately, doesn't really feel like he does much. The hero is entirely reliant on his debuff, Frozen Stiff, which applies a stack to an enemy hero whenever they attack in a fight; each stack reduces AP by 6% (with masteries) to a maximum of -30% at 5 stacks. Once fully stacked, they then take 8% of their current health as damage with each action instead. [Changed with v3.1 - Frozen Stiff can no longer be improved by masteries and deals 6% current health at max stacks. Why they felt he needed nerfing I have absolutely no idea.]

The trouble is that this debuff isn't really enough to justify an entire hero slot, and all he brings otherwise is one good card and several bad ones. The %current health damage is laughably low, even when the target has multiple attack sources to make it trigger frequently, and while the AP shred is good it works like all similar effects in that it snapshots rather than being dynamic. This means that any effect which triggers after the debuff is applied will be unaffected - for instance, if Kid has five stacks and then a unit dies, Kid will gain the full amount of AP he normally would get rather than reducing the gain by 25%. Given the number of item-based effects which can raise AP, this leaves the Frozen Stiff debuff a lot weaker than it really should be.

That being said, if you're operating a strategy reliant on a heavy tank line, Big Foot operates fairly well. His debuff helps to improve survivability not just for himself, but for your other tanks as well, and he is quite impressively bulky himself. It's unfortunate that he's restricted to top lane - he would work a lot better as a defensively-oriented support. That said, he can function - just don't expect any miracles from him, and generally avoid picking unless you have a specific strategy in mind.

Cards:
Pick a card in hand. When it would go into the discard pile, instead put it on top of your deck.

Big Foot's one strong card, this lets you at the very least guarantee a card will be available to you two Deployment Phases in a row, and if you have at least one card draw in hand will let you double play. The power of the play depends entirely on the card being returned, of course, but effects such as Kid's Amnesty, Cubey's Accelerated Metabolism and Beverly's Renovation are all examples of very strong cards to repeat. It's important to bear in mind, however, that this isn't going to let you re-use a card which is removed when played (though it will return it to your draw pile if you let it discard unplayed).
N.B. This card is currently either bugged or misrepresented. The hero screen suggests that it's generated at levels 1/6/11/16, which is the same format used for heroes whose cards are removed when played. Rapid Cooling is in fact not removed when played, so one copy is generated at level 6 and then no further copies are generated.

Pick an enemy hero and apply the Frostbite effect, causing them to take additional damage equal to 10% of Big Foot's max health the next time they take damage.

Rather expensive for what it does, this card is mostly useful as a means of setting up for future fights. 10% of Big Foot's max health isn't a huge amount in the first place, and this is pre-mitigation damage, so the actual damage dealt will be lower still. Not a priority card to play, but one that can have some uses if you need to swing an upcoming fight you anticipate being closer than you'd like.

Choose an enemy hero. They, and all enemies within 1 hex, receive two stacks of Frozen Stiff which remain until the end of the next fight.

Absurdly over-costed, 4 SP for two stacks of Big Foot's passive is ridiculous. Yes, it applies the AP debuff on the field, lowering potential harass and attack card damage, but 4 SP for 12% AP reduction is never going to be worth it. The only time you'd ever want to play this card is if you're running a designated stall comp, and even then you'll be very likely to have better things to spend your SP on.


Interactions:
Stall comps - While Big Foot doesn't have much in the way of direct synergy, the combination of AP shred and big tank has value for team comps specifically designed to out-last. Heroes with inevitability or damage-over-time, such as Crank, Wolfgang, Peiniang Zhu etc. can get some value out of him.

Multi-attackers - A very soft counter, Frozen Stiff is applied whenever an enemy takes an action. This means that heroes which attack repeatedly will gain stacks quickly and start taking damage - Felyn, for instance, will immediately stack to full and take some chip damage right at the start of the fight. Frozen Stiff damage is too low for this to be a genuine counter, but it is worth noting if you're stuck for a pick.

Big Foot's Variants make some pretty huge changes to how he works. Variant 2 in particular makes him a much more appealing pick.


Changed - Frozen Stiff reduces AP by 5% 3% per stack.

Changed - At max stacks, Frozen Stiff deals 6% current maximum health as damage after each action.

Shifts power out of the AP debuff and into damage. In most circumstances this is a minor nerf to Big Foot - you're picking him to shred AP, after all, not deal damage. It can make him a pretty vicious counter to big tanks though, and improves his synergy with Crank by making the periodic damage more lethal.


Removed - Frozen Stiff reduces AP by 5% per stack; at max stacks, instead deals 6% current health as damage.

Added - Frozen Stiff reduces armour by 4 per stack, to a maximum of 32.

A major shift in Big Foot's pick priority; instead of being a defensive tank, he now becomes a vicious offensive tank. While the debuff takes a while to stack up, it will wind up being incredibly impactful as a fight wears on - 32 armour is most, if not all, of a squishy's defences. This also makes Big Foot a very potent counter to high action heroes, particularly when combined with Raven. Lastly, the higher stack count coupled with damage amplification makes Blizzard a slightly more attractive play (though still hideously, painfully overpriced).

v3.1 Updates: Updated the entry to reflect that masteries have changed slightly and the debuff weakened (I think this might've actually come in in v2.1, but Big Foot is useless enough that I didn't notice). One important change, however, is that with the ascent of Peiniang Zhu into the high priority supports, Big Foot becomes a strong niche pick thanks to his passive triggering Lightning Mark once fully stacked.

Item build:
Standard Pure Tank. Heart Mirror is a good item since the AP shred will lower attackers' damage, letting more of it be blocked. Terror Anthology could see some niche use, but won't actually proc until the attacker is fully stacked.

Reserve Tactics: Consider Focus to get rid of his garbage cards (on your support, the only role that can get it). Rapid Cooling can be used to keep cards like Forceful around for longer.

Funnelling: Definitely not. No good can come of this.

Rejected gags:
Big Foot looks so freakin' happy in his character portrait. I guess it's true what they say - cold hands, warm heart.

Despite their similar names, there's no relation between Cubey and Qube. At least, so far as anyone knows. They do look kinda similar though...

Name: Cubey

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices: None

Itemisation: Fighter

Synergies: Search effects, max health buffs

Counters: None

Countered by: Mihawk (high health, high armour target), repeated ganks.

Summary: Greedy top-lane Fighter who underperforms if he's not prioritised and overperforms if he is.

Analysis: It's easy to write Cubey off. After all, it looks weird, and it doesn't really do a lot if you just pick it without a setup. Indeed, what commentary I've seen on Cubey all seems to think he sucks. However, what those people don't seem to have realised is that if you prioritise supporting it, Cubey can become one of the meanest Fighters around.

The key to Cubey's playstyle lies in its cards. Each time it plays one of its Differentiation cards, it gains a stack of Evolution. For each stack of Evolution, Cubey enters fights with a stack of Drain The Life, each stack of which gives 4% lifesteal and 8 armour. This in and of itself gives you a good reason to spam Cubey's cards - with a good number of stacks, Cubey will be virtually untouchable for the first few rounds of a fight. Additionally, once it gets to 6 Evolution stacks, all the effects of Differentiation are doubled (including the ones you already played) and it gains an additional card to help bolster played Differentiation cards.

On top of the Evolution stacks (which are, as noted, very strong), Cubey's Differentiation cards all function based on its health (or rather, the amount of health spent to play them). Since one of them boosts max health (and max health will naturally get higher over the course of the game via gold), each subsequent Differentiation card played will provide more stats. As such, you get out of Cubey what you put in - if you don't focus on playing its cards then of course you'll struggle to get enough stats built up to matter. If you build a team around it, on the other hand, you can stack up to some disgusting numbers:







One important note however - I don't know if it's actually intended to or not, but for some reason Cubey's Drain The Life buff can fall into the negatives. Cubey gains a stack when hitting and loses a stack when taking damage, but chances are over the course of a fight it will eat more hits than it dishes out - and it's entirely possible for this to drop below zero. There is no effect from negative lifesteal, fortunately, but it is possible to see your armour drop into the negatives as a result.

On the whole, therefore, Cubey can be reasonably compared to Frank. If just picked without thought, Cubey will just act like a much worse Frank; if given priority, however, it becomes Frank++, a Frank which has all the health but also far more AP, and keeping that AP even at high health. In other words, you wind up with a Cubey that does this:


Cards:
Doesn't start in the deck - spawns in the draw pile when Cubey reaches 6 stacks of Evolution. When played, heal Cubey to full health and then search a Differentiation card.

Once Cubey starts rolling, this card spawns and helps to keep things going. Given the fact that Cubey has to spend health to get stats from its cards, heals are extremely valuable to it; aside from any Emergency Recall cards you happen to have in your deck, this is the main way to heal your Cubey up so that its other cards have full effect. It also helpfully searches out a card for you to play to ensure that health isn't wasted.

Take 25% max health as damage; gain 1 max health for every 2 health lost. Gains a token each time it's played; at 5 tokens, this card is removed and a second copy of Differentiation-a is spawned in its place.

Effectively a 12.5% max health increase, rising to 25% when you hit 6 Evolution stacks. This is the priority to play - more max health means more AP from your other Differentiation. That said, since you can only play this five times, there is something to be said for delaying slightly - more max health from gold means more health from this card. It's a bit of a balancing act, but in my view it's more important to get this card played ASAP so you can get enough health stacked up to start being a menace.

Take 35% max health as damage. Gain 1 AP per 25 health lost, then attack all enemy heroes and towers within 1 hex.

This, on the other hand, is how Cubey takes over the game once its health is stacked up. For context, this equates to 14 AP per 1000 current health, doubled once you hit 6 Evolution stacks. This may not sound like a lot, but when you focus on buffing Cubey's health and healing it up, it can stack up very quickly. The attack built into this card is something you'll usually forget even exists - it's definitely not why you play the card - then you play two copies in the late game and your lane opponent explodes. Always funny.

Interactions:
Search effects - Cubey wants to play Cubey's cards. It's that simple. Any search effects you can give it will boost its effectiveness as the game goes on. As you might expect, Blocker (as the premier searcher in the game) is your best choice - particularly because Cubey only has cards it wants to play, so even Interference Field will probably help find one (as well as healing you up to boot). Reinhardt is also notable as while Supersonic is weaker than Signal Detection, late game it can move you into position to explode other lanes as well.

Health boosts - All of Cubey's stat-boosting cards operate based on Cubey's health. This means that max health boosts feed into the entire operation, bolstering its stats even more. Even in the absence of max health boosts, simple healing can help Cubey to stay at its max health so as to get the most value out of its cards. Finally, in the absence of either of these, note that the Differentiation cards are coded as damage rather than expenditure, so you can actually shield the damage taken while still getting all of the benefits.

Digo - Worth noting as probably the best bot lane pick in a Cubey team. The entire point of your pick/ban is to make Cubey an unkillable monstrosity - and if Cubey is unkillable, so is Digo. You'll be taking Blocker anyway, who can function okay in a 1v2 gank, and Digo doesn't have many cards so you'll have more chance of getting Cubey's. Of course, it's all much of a muchness when your Cubey has 3k+ AP, but optimisation matters I guess.

Variants again make big changes to Cubey's efficacy. Its effective playstyle remains the same - stack stack stack - but with differing outcomes.


Gained - At the beginning of each round on the field, increase Cubey's max health by 3 x Evolution stacks

Removed - Gain Drain the Life stacks on entering a fight, granting 4% lifesteal and 8 armour per stack. Gain 1 stack when hitting and lose 1 stack when being hit.

Gained - Gain Active Body stacks on entering a fight, granting 10 armour per stack. Lose 1 stack when being hit.

Generally a substantial buff to Cubey's playstyle because it mitigates a major issue it has - you want to spam Differentiation-b early, but doing so has less impact on its max health than it does later into the game when its health pool is larger. Gaining max health continually over the course of the game softens the blow. Active Body is generally weaker than Drain the Life due to not being able to regain stacks, but honestly this is something of an afterthought - your goal is to make Cubey into a 3k+ AP monster, not to lifesteal-tank things.


Gained - Base armour is set to 0.

Gained - Each stack of Evolution also grants 6 armour. Once Evolution reaches 6 stacks, the armour gain is doubled (retroactively).

On paper this looks like a buff - once you hit 6 stacks you're looking at 72 armour, which is an increase over the normal base. In practice, however, it makes Cubey much more dependent on healing effects on the field - having no armour early results in it taking more damage, which in turn leaves it lower on health and therefore reduces the impact of the Differentiations. If you can align your healing properly, though, this is a big fat buff.

v3.1 Updates: No huge changes. Updated position suggestion to reflect my new view that mid-lane Cubey is stronger - he's more vulnerable to the ganks that can shut him down (since dying makes him drop his cards from your hand), but much more likely to be able to explode his lane opponent (and to catch the jungler in the crossfire).

Item build: Cubey can build most things, honestly. What he really doesn't need is flat AP - believe me, he gets more than enough of that. Armour items can help to protect a midgame Cubey, early health items allow for better ramping, and he has a big enough health pool from stacking that he can happily take drawback items like Blue Monolith without the slightest concern. Mechanical Arm is notable due to giving him massive amounts of armour when stacked as well as a little Presence to waste some attacks.

Reserve Tactics: Quick Recall is a must to heal up for efficient Differentiation plays. Resource Sacrifice (on other athletes) can actually be worthwhile since Cubey will multiply incoming stats exponentially and is unlikely to die with them. Solo Show can also help to get him rolling quickly enough to impact the midgame.

Funnelling: Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. Do not play Cubey unless you're funnelling him.

Rejected gags:
Turns out evolution was just leading us back to being big, amorphous blobs.

The smaller blobs aren't actually a part of Cubey. They're just there so he doesn't have to pay for a babysitter. Blobsitter. Whatever.

Lazy, uninspired[en.wikipedia.org] or stolen[leagueoflegends.fandom.com] character design? Don't be ridiculous!

Name: Frank

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Tank

Mastery choices:
Gain 35 health per level and 1 Presence / Gain an additional 5% of damage taken in the field as health

Gain an additional 3 health per 25 gold / Presence increases by 2 when above 50% health and reduces by 1 when below 50% health

Itemisation: Tank, particularly armour

Synergies: Gang, Kid

Counters: Lane bullies

Countered by: None

Summary: Health-stacking tank with some moderate damage output.

Analysis: Frank is a tank. Specifically, a tank who stacks up a lot of health thanks to his passive, which grants him 25% of any damage taken on the field as max health. While his cards help out by forcing enemies to attack him, he performs best when played into lane bullies like Felyn and Qube who can't really operate in any way but to attack him. He's also assisted in this approach by having naturally high health scaling per level, but zero base armour - which makes him squishier than his health total would suggest, but ensures he gets the maximum health gain from being hit on the field.

In fights he leverages his sizeable health pool to soak hits. Importantly, for every 15 health he's missing he gains 1 AP - meaning the tankier Frank is, the more damage he can potentially deal. Note that he doesn't get any bonus max health from taking hits in fights - he only gains it on the field.

As a tank with a good innate source of damage, Frank fits nicely into most team comps to add bulk to your frontline. It's important to realise, however, that Frank is not a damage-dealer; if you're picking him for his AP scaling, you're making a mistake. If you want a top laner who'll deal damage, either pick a fighter like Qube or a funnel like Cubey. You pick Frank if you need a tank first and foremost, with his additional damage being the cherry on top.

Cards:
Gain 4 SP, then all enemy heroes attack Frank (globally), always hitting. Spawns in your deck at level 6/11/16, removed when played.

An understandably restricted card, as it's incredibly potent - 4 free SP and a pile of max health for Frank. Very little needs be said about this card - it's great, play it when you have it.





All enemy heroes within 1 hex of Frank attack, and are attacked by, Frank twice. The enemy attacks always hit.

Slightly comical that you'd pay 3 SP for the privilege of being hit, but that's how Frank rolls. Although the price tag is high, you'll want to play this as often as possible to make sure Frank has plenty of health for teamfights; ideally, you'll time it for when the enemy jungler has wandered past to maximise the health gain.



Interactions:
Mihawk - Mihawk and Frank have a slightly odd relationship. On the one hand, Mihawk deals a huge amount of damage to Frank in teamfights due to his %current health true damage; on the other, Mihawk's true damage on the field can give Frank an extremely high health pool, making him much more resilient to other heroes' attacks.

Kid - A minor point, particularly because both heroes usually want to be played in top lane, but Kid's Amnesty becomes even better when played on Frank since the self-damage is a benefit rather than a hindrance. This is amplified further if you happen to have Niels on your team for Revelation.

Gang - Gang likes to throw damage around, and half the time it's aimed at his team. While it's not optimal for Gang's AP gain to throw bombs up to top lane, Frank is the one hero on your team you want to hit with stuff. Using Gang and Frank in this way mitigates some of Gang's risk, though also lowers Gang's reward somewhat since he's not hitting the maximum targets (by targeting bot lane).

Raven - Frank's base 0 armour pretty much ensures Raven is going to be railing him with big crits unless he picks up a good armour item. Doesn't really matter enough to be a counter, since you kinda want the assassin beating on your tank instead of anyone else, but does mean he'll go down a fair bit faster than you'd want him to.

Variant heavily changes Frank's draft priority, but otherwise no huge changes.


Removed - Frank gains an additional 50 max health per level.

Gained - When dealing damage to enemy heroes on the field, Frank gains 25% of the damage dealt as max health.

The effects of this Variant vary based on the amount of investment you put into Frank:

- If you're not investing in him at all and just playing his cards when they're strong, this is a substantial nerf

- If you're playing his cards every time you get them but not otherwise supporting him, this Variant is about the same as the base one

- If you're investing into Frank by giving him extra attacks on the Field (whether through hero cards like Paisai's Barbarian Runes or through Tactics cards like Poke) this winds up being a solid buff

The overall result means that Frank stops being a standard mid-priority tank pick and becomes a hero to base your comp around. Draft heroes like Paisai, Palulu or Blocker, run Tactics cards like Continuously Poke, and grab equipment to boost his armour. Note that this Variant of Frank plays nicely into athletes who run multiple attack Tactics to synergise with other lane picks that like to smack things (Qube, Cubey etc.). It also becomes much, MUCH better in mid.

v3.1 Updates: No particular changes to Frank, he exists as he always has. Nonetheless, he's moving up tier lists simply because he's a full tank who can do a tank's job while also doing bruiser-tier damage.

Item build: Pure tank, optionally with a single damage item IF there's a good one available (Gravity Converter, Self-Increasing Dumbbell, that kind of thing). Armour is a priority since he has zero base, which is good for his health boosts but terrible for teamfights.

Reserve Tactics: Reckless Assault gives you an additional bootleg Fisticuffs, though swapping it in means a lot of SP being potentially allocated to Frank. Failing that, any of the Poke-oriented cards can give you some heavy hits if he's low in lane. Overpower is of course the hardest-hitting of these (and will wreck squishies), but bear in mind it's removed when played.

Funnelling: Tutoring Frank's cards is great - they're all things you want to play a lot. Fisticuffs on cooldown may leave your top lane turret at risk, but will ensure Frank becomes the monster he already appears to be. Don't try to target him with bonus stats though - his health and AP both get massive increases from his passives so anything you give him would be a drop in the ocean.

Rejected gags:
Okay, I get that they put Frank together out of mechanical parts and, presumably, body parts... but why a peg leg? That just seems inefficient.

Despite being known for his Shadow Imitation, Hass isn't actually very good at impressions. It's just that nobody's been brave enough to tell him.

Name: Hass

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices:
Hunt in Shadow costs 2 less / Hass deals an additional 30% damage to his target during Hunt In Shadow

Itemisation: Fighter

Synergies: None

Counters: Heroes with shields or temporary buffs

Countered by: None

Summary: Solid stat-stick hero who directly counters a lot of supports

Analysis: Hass is a Fighter generally taken as a counterpick thanks to his unique effects. Whenever he strikes a target in a fight, he steals all of the shields and temporary buffs they have; to facilitate this, he always targets the enemy with the most buffs where applicable.

It's important to differentiate between temporary and permanent buffs however, which the game's tooltip doesn't. Hass doesn't steal permanent buffs - in other words, Hass won't steal effects such as Beverly's Renovation or Frank's max health gain. Aside from shields, he'll steal effects which either have a set round duration, expire after an attack, or which expire at the end of a fight; strong examples include Aurelio's Flame, Wolfgang's Absorb, Kid's Judgment and Tiger Boy's Double Trouble.

Incidentally, while Hass will target whoever has buffs, the same doesn't apply to shields unless they're the result of a card. That means Traveler's Blessing will result in targeting and stealing, but something like a Blocker shield or Runic Ward will come down to whether he decides to smack them (once all the buffs are gone).

While Hass' main value comes from his counterpick potential, he's still a pretty solid stat stick even with no buffs to steal. Thanks to Shadow Imitator he'll usually out-stat his opposite number, so if all else fails he can simply act as a hefty Fighter. Thanks to these bonus stats he's a surprisingly good general purpose pick as well as counterpick, and can be drafted early simply to restrict your opponent's options.

Cards:
Target an enemy hero within 1 hex; start a fight with a 2 hex participation range and 5 round duration. The fight ends early if a hero dies; during the fight Hass deals 50/80% bonus damage to the targeted hero.

An awkward initiation to use, both because of its high cost (which is fixed with masteries), short range, and wide participation range. This card is the main reason you'll want to run Hass in top lane rather than mid - it's a lot easier to find yourself in a position to isolate your target in top lane rather than mid, and while Hass deals bonus damage to his target, you don't have any other way of actually making him hit them.

Target an enemy hero to copy 20/35% of the target's AP, health and armour. If played again, the previous buff is replaced.

The reason Hass is a good pick even without countering anyone. Not only are you simply stealing 35% of a target's stats (leaving Hass in a position to simply have more stats than anyone on the other team), but you can specifically target enemies who receive bonuses - so you can help yourself to 35% of a Beverly's stat bonuses, for instance. Note that as with all similar effects, this card operates on a snapshot basis rather than being dynamic - you gain 35% of the stats they have when played, and these aren't updated based on subsequent changes. This means you'll want to periodically re-play this card simply to get the benefit of your target's gold, level and equipment scaling; it also means that if you time it right you can steal a chunk of temporary buffs such as Bunu Shan's Wrath or Crank's Spectral Weapon.

Target an enemy hero within 2 hexes; attack them. This attack always hits, deals 150% damage, and Hass gains gold equal to the damage dealt.

For obvious reasons, this card is primarily used to give Hass even more of a stat lead over the enemy team, simply generating bonus gold; however, it is phenomenally expensive even taking the gold generation into account. For that reason you should avoid playing it before you've managed to play Shadow Imitator (as the bonus AP helps to generate more gold). Note that as gold generated is based on damage dealt, targeting enemies with low armour (particularly Frank) will have the best results.

Interactions:
Shields/buffs - As noted throughout the entry above.

No changes here; can cripple Raven by stealing Abyss though.


Changed - Steals all one of the target's buffs when hitting.

Gained - Increases Hass' damage by 12% per buff.

A slightly awkward change; Hass' damage tends to increase with this Variant, but it makes his main selling point - utterly neutering buff heroes - much less reliable. Increases Hass' pick priority into heroes with repeatedly-applied buffs which aren't consumed (e.g. Aurelio), but it was already basically max anyway, so...

On the other hand, unless your opponent REALLY screws the pooch in the draft (which isn't common for the AI nowadays) you're probably not getting any more than one buff per attack anyway, so in most cases this is probably just a straight buff.

v3.1 Updates: No major changes, but added a paragraph to clarify interaction around shields and targeting. Hass has fallen a little in my estimation simply because there's so many top lane picks now, and so many of them can do silly things, that Hass falls behind unless he's specifically countering a particular buff.
Since I didn't specifically list them in the original entry, the following are heroes that Hass really ♥♥♥♥♥ over. To be clear, this is not an exhaustive list of buffs he can steal - it's just the heroes that Hass basically shuts down entirely.

Aurelio (Flame)
Kid (Verdict)
Deep Space (Full Firepower)
Gillis (Accumulation, IF she misses her attack)
Cubey (Drain the Life or variant thereof)
Dylan (Strengthening Potion)
Wolfgang (Absorb)
Nihil (Ghost Cloak)
Raven (Abyss)
Fernan (Reshape)

Item build: Generally you'll want to build Hass as a generic bruiser to leverage his absorbed stats. The main exception to this is when you've got him hard-countering one of the above heroes - in this case you can build in the expectation that you'll get that particular buff. For instance, if Hass is countering Fernan, you can build him with a much heavier damage focus since he'll be picking up free armour and lifesteal.

Reserve Tactics: Really nothing much.

Funnelling: Not worth it. Hass' cards are too expensive and niche to be worth repeatedly searching out, and his functionality comes from his innate effects. He's also going to have a stat advantage either way. Pick someone else.

Rejected gags:
Does Hass have a black beard because he's dying his beard, or does he dye his hair and moustache the same colour? Is he secretly a pirate?

You might think that Justice's name comes from her prediliction for punishing her enemies with giant swords, but in fact that's not the case. It's actually a nickname that dates back to her early school days when she made a mistake when self-serving a drink at a fast food restaurant and filled a cup with nothing but ice.

Name: Justice

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices:
Gain an additional 2.5 AP and 10 max health per level / Gain an additional 1.5 AP and 18 max health per level

Itemisation: Fighter

Synergies: Mihawk (%current health to get enemies low)

Counters: Frank (Execute when he's most dangerous)

Countered by: None

Summary: Lane bullying hybrid Fighter with an automatic execute.

Analysis: Justice is an aggressive laning Fighter whose signature ability is to execute enemy heroes below 25% health. To do this, she gains stacks of Sword of Justice whenever she hits an enemy hero with a card or an in-fight attack; these stacks don't do anything themselves (other than give 5 armour each at max mastery). Once Justice has 4 stacks, the next time an enemy hero drops below 25% health in a fight she'll expend all four stacks to instantly kill them.

While this is the most obvious part of Justice's kit, in fact you'll usually only see it happen a couple of times per game. The main thing that makes Justice a strong pick is being one of only four heroes in the game marked as Hybrid heroes - allowing her to choose both physical and magical items when choosing her item build. This lets her create an optimal Fighter build which, coupled with her cheap offensive cards, usually means she'll win lane fairly convincingly. Unlike similar bullies like Qube she's unlikely to pick up solo kills, but will instead just push her opponent out of lane and accrue a gold advantage for teamfighting.

Given these factors, it's advisable to pick Justice when you need a strong, general-purpose Fighter to hold down a lane; she can then join later game teamfights and supply an execute (which realistically will usually boil down to a single attack's worth of damage, but still). She has no real counters, and so is a safe blind pick who'll perform well in pretty much any comp.

Cards:
Attack a hero or tower within 1 hex. Deals 2 damage to towers, or draws 1 card if it hits a hero. Also generates a second stack of Sword of Justice if it hits.

A useful poke tool, as it's cheap and self-cycles; particularly good if you have a hand discount card available of course. Its ability to target towers instead, if you so choose, gives it some versatility which is valuable for Justice as a tower-pushing lane bully.



Gain a 20/30% max health shield and the I Am Justice buff, which increases AP by 30/35% until the end of the next fight. Also grants 2 stacks of Sword of Justice.

Very cheap for the power of the effect, you should try to get this up ASAP after each fight; the shield will keep Justice in lane by absorbing harass, while the increased AP will help her to slap her opponent around. At the very least you should ensure the effect is in place prior to objective fights Justice will be involved in.


Kill an enemy hero or turret with less than 25% max health. Costs 4 stacks of Sword of Justice.

For some reason only spawned in your deck once Justice has hit level 6, despite her being able to execute enemies in fights from level 1. The vast majority of the time your only target for this card will be turrets, as enemies tend to recall when they drop below ~40% health; it is possible to use this as a follow-up after throwing some damage cards around, of course, but it's very expensive to fit into a combo like that. Generally you shouldn't bother with this card as its price is prohibitive, but occasionally you'll find a use for it.

Interactions:
Mihawk - Justice has no particular interactions with any heroes, but it's worth highlighting her partnership with Mihawk in teamfights. Mihawk's main strength is dealing damage to high %health targets; the lower their health gets, the less damage he deals. Justice being able to clean up after him allows both to function efficiently, and while this partnership isn't incredible, it's still worth noting as a decent synergistic set of picks.

Minor changes.


Changed - Sword of Justice execute triggers when an enemy unit drops below 25% 18% health. The execute kills that unit all enemy units below 25% health.

In almost all circumstances this is a nerf. In theory it can allow Justice to instakill two or more targets; in practice this requires enemies to fall into a very narrow band of health between 18% and 25% without slipping any lower. This simply isn't reliable, and so in practical terms usually means you're just working with a lower execute threshold. You can try to play for it by drafting AoE (Foso, Niels, Enidi), but you'll still rarely see a multi-execute.

v3.1 Updates: No changes, she's still exactly the same and my analysis stands.

Item build: Generally Bruiser, but since she's hybrid you can flex in any other items she might want. Most of the Magical items are a bit too glass cannon for her, but a few like Golden Ticket or Height Detector can be worth a look.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing special. Might see some use out of the tower-push cards, but honestly not enough to justify spending a reserve slot on.

Funnelling: Can be worth tutoring for the sake of picking up a lot of anti-tower cards if she's pushed up. Don't funnel bonus stats onto her though - not that she can't use them (as well as any other bruiser at least), but Justice usually wants to sit in a more aggressive pushing comp which closes the game out quickly, while stat-buffers usually want the game to run late. If you do wind up drafting her as a safe blind pick to start off a buff comp, you'll have a better target in mind.

Rejected gags:
Most of the heroes move around on their Archive screen, but not Justice. I'm pretty sure it's because her sword is stuck in the ground and she's too embarassed to admit it.

A sad indictment of the criminal justice system, as criminal convictions show a disproportionate prejudice towards melee individuals.

Name: Kid

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices:
When a unit dies in a fight, restore an additional 5% of its max health / When a unit dies in a fight, gain an additional 7% of its AP

Gain 1 additional armour per level / When a target affected by Eye of Judgment dies, gain 4 armour

Gain 1 Presence and an additional 35 max health per level / Gain 2.25 AP and 30 max health per level

Itemisation: Fighter, possibly with a little tank

Synergies: Assassins (fast target elimination), Gillis (Charm gold duplication), Mo (bounty generation)

Counters: Attrition-based comps

Countered by: Hass (steals Kid's stacks). High incoming damage, very high durability tanks

Summary: Vulture Fighter who heals and gains AP on deaths to take over late stages of fights.

Analysis: Kid is a Fighter whose role is to act as an insurance policy for long fights, giving you a major edge in fights that go the distance. He has two effects, the first of which is to apply Eye of Judgment to an enemy hero (prioritising melees but otherwise random). This has the dual effect of making Kid focus his attacks solely on them, and also causing Kid to attack them whenever they attack another hero. Secondly, whenever a hero dies (friend or foe) in a fight, he heals for a proportion of their max health and gains some of their AP for the rest of the fight.

The overall effect of these two abilities is to make Kid a fairly unimpressive Fighter at the start of the fight, throwing around low damage attacks at relatively tanky frontline targets and not accomplishing much. As a few heroes die, however, you suddenly find Kid is full health despite soaking substantial damage, and is putting out some substantial hits. Your goal with itemising Kid, therefore, is to a) keep him alive long enough for other heroes to die and start him snowballing, and b) to give him enough damage to be a credible chip damage threat even before that. Ideally you'll pick up some crit at the same time, to multiply out the bonus AP he gets during fights. This is also why you take the armour per level mastery - when the Eye of Judgment targets start dying, he's already ascendant and the fight probably going in your favour, so it's more important to focus on getting him there.

Kid has some pretty impressive innate tankiness, and between that and his solid gold-generating cards, can generally be relied upon to function as a solid frontline in teamfights. Thanks to that, his lack of counters and strong mid-fight snowball potential, he's a very strong pick in top lane and can safely be blind picked. He doesn't really need any particular comp to work well, and even if you don't need him as a Fighter can function fairly well as a pure tank. His only real weakness is being burst down before other heroes start dying, but that isn't easy to do (and usually means the enemy team is full of squishies which are easy to kill to get things rolling anyway).

Finally, it's worth noting that Kid has a relatively small set of cards - just two cards with one copy each - which helps to keep your deck consistent. They're also pretty good cards, for what that's worth.

As an aside, Kid has some of the weirdest character design, even in a game with heroes like Tiger Boy in it. The names of his passive and his cards suggest a 'judge' theme, and the hair style could feasibly be a nod to that as well - but then, why the bizarre frock coat and ruff? The addition of the six legs, meanwhile, just looks like lazy design stealing[leagueoflegends.fandom.com], since they have no real reason to be there otherwise.

Cards:
Choose an allied hero and hit them with a double damage, always-hitting attack. Both heroes then gain gold equal to Kid's AP.

A very solid, if expensive, card. This is another good reason to build Kid as a Fighter rather than a tank - more AP means more gold, both to him and his ally. As the game goes later, this can wind up generating 500+ gold for each of them, giving a solid gold lead. Best usage is to hit tab to check which of your team is closest to hitting an item, since getting additional items can be a major power spike.


Choose an enemy and give them additional bounty equal to Kid's level x 30. That target then receives a debuff causing them to take their bounty as additional damage the next time they're damaged.

Less potent as a gold generator than Amnesty, but still pretty solid; this also doubles as a setup card, letting you get some nice spike damage at the start of an upcoming fight without letting your opponent heal it away. It's important to note, however, that you need to kill the target at some point to get the gold from this card - try to avoid throwing it at pure tanks that you're unlikely to be able to pick off. Note that the damage debuff seems to be capped at 1000.

Interactions:
Gillis - While a very expensive combo, Charm can combine nicely with Amnesty for a major spike in gold. Also works nicely combined with the below.

Mo - Mo lives and breathes off claiming bounties, which of course is hard to do unless you're losing (at least in one lane). Conviction can add a pretty sizeable bounty to targets that Mo can then claim - and coupled with Gillis' Charm above, even more gold can be generated. Cha-ching!

Generally Kid's Variants work out to be a nerf in practice because they don't really play into the role you draft him for. He also loses out a bit on the new itemisation, none of which is really all that good for him.


Changed - When a unit dies, Kid heals for 15% of that unit's max health 500 health.

Changed - When a unit dies, Kid gains 15% of that unit's AP 2 x battle round AP.

A major nerf, these changes are only positive in the very early game when health and AP numbers are very low. You're not drafting Kid for an early game comp either way - he exists to take over the late game - so avoid drafting him when this Variant is up.


Changed - When a unit dies, Kid gains 15% of that unit's AP 15% increased AP.

A minor nerf in practice. This change causes you to need to prioritise decent AP equipment on Kid to let him take over like he's supposed to - but doing so renders him less likely to survive to the later stages of a fight where he's most valuable. The one bright spot is that this does snapshot his AP when proccing, so ways of increasing AP over the duration of a fight (e.g. Paisai) get multiplied (i.e. 15% on the first proc, 15% plus 15% of that on the second, etc.) but that doesn't really make up for what you're losing. Not really a dealbreaker though.

v3.1 Updates: Again no major changes aside from highlighting the Hass counter that I didn't make clear last time. Kid's still doing his Kid thing.

Item build: Pretty much just straight bruiser. If you're up against a full squishy team you can maybe swap in a tank item, or even two, to make sure he lives long enough to become threatening himself. Avoid Presence, though, he's not the guy you want eating hits.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing, really. There are some weird things you can do with Resource Sacrifice to really funnel gold onto a particular target (then recoup your losses with Amnesty) but really not worthwhile. Especially since Bruiser builds tend to run to the expensive.

Funnelling: Not really worth it. His cards are few and expensive, and the only bonus stats he cares about are the ones he generates himself.

Rejected gags:
If you're wondering about Kid's eye, he damaged it playing sports and had to get a cornea transplant from Monokuma[danganronpa.fandom.com]. And with that, I finally got a Danganronpa reference into the guide.

A man riding a giant chicken? Using it as a battle mount? How utterly absurd[finalfantasy.fandom.com].

Name: Miki

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Tank / Fighter

Mastery choices:
Seize the Initiative grants 1 additional SP / Seize the Initiative draws 2 additional cards

Itemisation: Tank

Synergies: Everything that likes shields (notably Niels)

Counters: None

Countered by: Hass (shield stealing)

Summary: Fairly vanilla tank with a focus on objectives.

Analysis: Miki is a Tank (badged by the game as a Fighter) whose main distinguishing feature is that he always shows up for objective fights no matter where he is on the map (unless dead, of course). Furthermore, when showing up for an objective fight he gives his team a shield equal to 10/17.5% of his max health, and generates a powerful card afterwards if he wins.

All of this means, quite obviously, that Miki is best picked if you want to focus on winning objective fights. Having said that, pay attention to your current ruleset - there's not much point in picking Miki in mid, for instance, if all your objective fights would involve mid either way. Miki himself really doesn't bring a whole lot to the table besides a small shield; his value lies in being able to make objective fights lopsided.

Since he has no other effects than a shield (based on his own max health), Miki is best built as a tank to soak damage for other more damage-capable heroes. To that end, you need to be careful with your draft - if you wind up with too little damage it often doesn't matter whether a fight is lopsided.

All of which results in Miki being a fairly low priority hero. He can provide some benefits in objective fights (and has a fairly nice initiation), but he doesn't bring all that much in himself compared to a lot of other heroes. That said, he can be a perfectly serviceable tank with a few nice upsides if you do manage to win fights, so he's okay as a fall-back pick if your priority picks aren't available.

Cards:
Gain 2/3 SP and draw 3/5 cards. Spawned into hand in your Deployment Phase after winning an objective fight; removed when played.

Your reward for running Miki and succeeding at doing what Miki wants you to do. This card allows Miki to act as a kind of pseudo-support - help your team to win objective fights, and then let them play more cards to snowball their advantage. Probably for the best, since Miki doesn't really have any tools to snowball with himself.



Target an enemy hero within 3 hexes. Initiate a fight with a 1 hex participation range and 4 round duration.

A pretty solid initiation card thanks to its good range and increased duration over the vanilla. That said, Miki often struggles to use the range because (due to not really doing much in fights besides soaking) the best way to have him actually contribute is through the use of Chick Running below. The 3-tile range on this is the only reason you'll want to run Miki in mid - if your bot lane (or top I guess) can easily win fights, Miki can start them for you.


Miki moves up to 2 hexes, then gives a shield of 10% of his max health to all allies within 1 hex (including himself).

Relatively cheap for a movement card, but just as low impact as movement cards usually are. Your best use for this is to throw shields around to assist the other lanes, particularly if you can sync up recalls with bot lane.





Interactions:
Buffs - Although lacking in carry potential, if you don't have a clear funnel target Miki can be a decent choice simply because of his omnipresence. Between his passive and his long distance engages, Miki will be a part of the vast majority of fights; you can therefore argue that you'll get the most efficiency out of throwing buffs to him rather than other heroes. Having said that, your best option is still usually a carry.

Niels - A notable minor synergy, Niels is probably the hero who appreciates shields more than anyone else in the game. Miki having an extremely cheap shield in Chick Running, as well as applying them automatically to the entire team in objective fights, can help to ensure Niels has a shield in most engagements without having to spend too much SP.

Barely changes at all. No real itemisation shifts, and the Variant is low impact.


Changed - At the start of objective fights and the Final Fight, Miki grants a shield equal to 10% of his max health AP equal to his level x 7 to all allies.

Changes one low impact effect to another. In most practical terms this is a buff - 7 x level AP is often quite substantial, especially for tanks - but really you're not going to notice either of them.

v3.1 Updates: Fixed role designations (I had him down as a jungler - not sure if he was ever a jungler or if that changed). Aside from that, nothing changes aside from a note on his engagement range.

Item build: Pure tank. Again, the game badges him as a Fighter and I have no idea why - he has absolutely no way of using bonus AP and the few buffs he provides are either stat-agnostic or determined by his health. Make him a beefy boi and let him soak for the people who can actually deal damage.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing. Maybe an extra Quick Recall if you want to get fancy, since if you're drafting Miki you're going hard on objective fights.

Funnelling: As a last resort, sure. He has both automatic entitlement to objective fights and a very long range initiation, so he can make the bonus stats matter a lot sooner than most. He doesn't really do much with them, though, so you'll only really target him if you pick an early buffer and then the pick/ban shifts to make your original strategy unfeasible.

Rejected gags:
Despite riding a giant chicken for some reason, the most perplexing part of MIki's design to me is that he uses a bident for some reason. Who uses a bident? Who even knows what one is aside from me?

Well of course I only shoot guilty people. I only shoot people who I've hit with my bat, don't I? And I wouldn't hit someone with my bat if they weren't guilty. So they must be guilty! BLAM! - Qube

Name: Qube

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices:
Swift Negotiation will search Climax even if the attack misses / Key Clues will search Interrogation/Swift Negotiation even if the attack misses

Add a copy of Interrogation to your deck / Swift Negotiation spawns a copy of Interrogation in your draw pile rather than your discard

Itemisation: Fighter

Synergies: Multi-attacker synergies

Counters: Solo lane squishies

Countered by: Solo lane tanks, Felicity

Summary: Strong teamfighting lane bully Fighter.

Analysis: Qube is a Fighter with high damage output in teamfights and a penchant for bullying lanes. Her central mechanic is Suspect - whenever she hits an enemy hero with an attack on the field they gain a stack of Suspect (max 5). In fights she takes two actions per round; the first is a swing from her nailbat, dealing 70% of her AP as damage and applying a stack of Suspect, while the second fires her revolver at all enemies with Suspect stacks to deal (30% x stacks) AP damage. Note that Suspect is NOT a debuff despite seeming like one, so it can't be reflected by Wukong or cleansed by the various debuff-removal heroes (as funny as it would be to see Qube shoot her entire team).

Qube's theoretical damage output is astronomical (if she were somehow able to apply 5 stacks to every enemy hero prior to a fight); actually reaching this maximum is functionally impossible. Nonetheless, she'll still do pretty obscene damage - so long as you're diligent about applying stacks, just going into a fight with 5 stacks of Suspect on her lane opponent will leave her doing 220% AP damage per round minimum (for context, an Awakened Bunu Shan does 240%). This leaves Qube doing comparable damage to heroes like Kamaitachi across the course of a large teamfight; her damage will naturally fall off towards the later stages of a fight as her 5-stack targets die, but by that point (hopefully) you're already winning the fight.

Besides being a high damage Fighter in teamfights, Qube is mainly picked for her lane bully status. She packs multiple attack cards used both to chip her opponent down and to build up Suspect stacks; unlike other lane bully heroes, however, she doesn't seek to force her opponent out of lane with her damage. Instead she uses her own initiation card to start heavily advantaged fights and pick up solo kills, similar to Wolfgang (albeit less reliably).

Qube is a strong pick into most team comps thanks to packing a lot of damage into a fairly high durability Fighter shell. More important than her own team comp is the opposing comp; while she can just sit in lane against a tank and farm, this isn't really using her to her strengths. She's best picked into a squishy laner who she can bully and solo kill repeatedly - she is, for instance, the best answer you can get to a top lane Felyn (or was, until Felicity arrived). Having said that, she's still perfectly solid as a low maintenance teamfight Fighter, hence her high tier status.

Cards:
Attack all enemy heroes in the same hex as Qube. If there aren't any, Qube instead pushes once. Spawn a Swift Negotiation into your draw pile and remove this card.

Expensive for what it does, but necessary to keep the Negotiation-Interrogation chain going. Note that although the game doesn't bother stating it, this card and Swift Negotiation are effectively different forms of each other - one turns into the other when played.



Attack an enemy hero within 2 hexes. If the attack hits, search Climax into your hand. Spawn an Interrogation in your discard pile and remove this card.

Much more desirable to play than Interrogation, this has enough range on it to get stacks on the enemy jungler instead of Qube's lane opponent if you're looking to set up for an objective fight as well as searching out Qube's initiation card for solo murderin'. Note that if you take the mastery to add Interrogation to your draw pile instead of your discard you can chain the two back to back across quick Deployment Phases to stack 5 Suspect on a laner quickly.

Target an enemy hero within 2 hexes; move to that target's hex and attack it. Search Interrogation or Swift Negotiation to your hand.

In isolation just a worse version of Swift Negotiation, this is primarily useful for closing a gap so that you can use Interrogation (and actually hit something with it instead of paying 2 SP to move 1 hex). Can be used to jump to an enemy jungler so you can beat them down instead of your lane opponent.



Starts a fight with all enemy heroes in Qube's hex, and all enemy heroes within 2 hexes that have at least one stack of Suspect; adds a stack of Suspect to each enemy that already has at least one. Fight duration is (Suspect stacks) rounds.

Relatively cheap initiation and can give a nice juicy 5 round fight against an isolated target; thanks to the Suspect targeting, this can allow you to pick a fight with, and kill, a laner even if their jungler is right next door. Be careful if trying to do the inverse however (fight a jungler but not your laner) because heroes on Qube's hex will join either way, and you really don't want to be fighting someone you haven't stacked up first. Also be careful about applying stacks to enemy junglers if you're not going into an objective fight soon, as you could wind up inadvertently preventing yourself from getting an isolated fight as a result.

Interactions:
No particular interactions beyond the standard multi-attack synergies/counters.

Itemisation improving multiple small hits boosts Qube's efficacy all the more. Her Variant is also pretty damn good. One of the winners of the update.


Changed - Qube's second attack deals 30% 15% damage for each Suspect stack.

Changed - Suspect stacks are removed at the end of a fight on death.

A very, very nice change. While it looks like a nerf - literally halving your Suspect damage per stack - it actually winds up being a buff in most cases because you're not going to have stacks drop off constantly from enemies starting little skirmishes or from them declining an objective fight. You can safely invest into adding Suspect stacks to everyone that comes near Qube, knowing you're very likely to see value from them sooner or later. Makes mid lane Qube notably stronger since she's more likely to be able to toss stacks on the jungler.

v3.1 Updates: Minor adjustments to reflect Felicity's arrival in the meta. Otherwise no real changes; she'll still beat the crap out of a squishy solo laner.

Item build: Bruiser and/or Multi-Hitter. Qube can work well with either sets of itemisation; as a general rule you should take the strongest items available from the latter (in other words, take Acceleration Coil) and then fill the rest of the build with Bruiser items since her kit is fundamentally built around AP. You can also build her glass cannon, though you'll need some high Presence tanks to keep her alive long enough to stack up.

Reserve Tactics: Poke cards, particularly Continuously Poke, do give Suspect stacks and are worth keeping in Reserve if you play Qube much. Alternatively, the unplayable cards can be useful - Suppression is a good way to maximise farm income if you wind up laning against something you can't solo kill, while Aggressive, Energy Boost and the like can help to give you the accuracy to keep the chain going.

Funnelling: Decent on both fronts. Qube needs to find a lot of her own cards to be able to reliably murder opposing laners, and thanks to her multi-hitter melee status makes great use of any stats you can throw at her. One of the better Funnel options around (that isn't an obvious choice, anyway).

Rejected gags:
I'm convinced there's a nail missing on the side of the bat you can't see. That's what she uses to keep her hat on.

I have no idea what's going on with Qube's aesthetic - the bright yellow eyeshadow, the dipped tips, the tiny hat - but I'm kind of into it. I didn't think a voxel game would awaken something in me.

I'm in everything, and it's because I'm the best. I'm the greatest there is. It's definitely not because I'm in the public domain as an ancient Chinese myth. - Wukong

Name: Wukong

Position: Top

Role: Tank / Fighter

Mastery choices: Indestructible gives +100 max health / Bludgeon Bash reduces armour by 10 more.

Gain an additional 1% of your max health as AP / Gain an additional 1 armour per level.

Add a copy of Indestructible to your deck / Gain 1 Presence and 35 health per level.

Itemisation: Mostly tank. You may want to add some crit or other damage stat to take advantage of the AP bonus, but avoid flat AP since you get plenty from health.

Synergies: Minor synergies with some flat bonuses (e.g. Dylan).

Counters: Anything that relies on debuffs, notably Crank, Tiger Kid.

Countered by: Nothing really. Mihawk is about as close as it gets.

Summary: Extremely strong top laner with good damage, survivability, and debuff immunity.

Analysis: Wukong is a very, very good top laner. In fact, he has a strong claim on being the single best hero in the game, if such a thing exists - he has no real counters, he himself counters lots of different heroes, he's naturally very tanky but has substantial AP scaling, and all of his cards are good and worth playing.

This doesn't mean he's the right pick in every situation of course - while he's never bad, there will often be other heroes that fit your comp better than he does. It does however mean that your top laner should always be able to play Wukong well, because if nothing else the AI will ban him almost every time.

The one debatable point around Wukong is how much Presence to build on him. On the one hand, the more Presence he has the more likely it is that he'll intercept debuff-carrying attacks; on the other, he'll also intercept more damaging attacks and die sooner, leaving the rest of your team vulnerable. In my opinion, the default position should be to build limited amounts of Presence at most, relying on simple law of averages to assume he'll be hit sooner or later; only against very heavy debuff teams should you swap to building as much Presence as possible.

Note that technically Wukong cannot be affected by buffs either; however, this only applies to temporary buff effects. Permanent ones, such as Dylan's Green Bottle or Beverly's Renovation will work just fine (although since he doesn't have any kind of multiplier he's generally not the best target for AP buffs).

Cards:
Hit an enemy anywhere on the map, removing 25 armour for 10 rounds.

Amusingly the worst card in Wukong's deck is a card a lot of other heroes would die for. It can target any enemy on the map, shreds 25 armour (which is a crazy amount) for 10 rounds (which is a long ass time), and all for a fairly low cost. Great for use prior to burst or initiation. Now called Skullcracker. I don't know why either.




Start a fight with any enemy hero, and anyone within 1 tile, from anywhere on the map.

Essentially this is an entirely basic initiation card, but made infinitely better by giving it no range restriction. This means that Wukong, who is required to go top, can quite happily impact other lanes with no difficulty whatsoever.





300/400 increase to Wukong's max health for the rest of the game. Simple, but extremely effective, particularly with the bonus AP from health. You'll probably want to play this any time it's in your hand.








Interactions:
Counters: Tiger Boy, Lady Darkfire, Big Foot, Crank. While there are of course other heroes with debuffs that can be reflected (e.g. Shougong Lei), these are the big four that are basically defined by the debuffs they dish out [and then came Felicity]. Note that Wukong isn't just immune to the debuff, but actively reflects them onto the entire enemy team - so a single Tiger Boy attack will stun the entire enemy team simultaneously.
Wolfgang has a slightly unusual interaction, as his debuff is reflected while the drain proceeds as normal. If Wolfgang hits Wukong, he receives the AP and armour that he should get from Wukong (despite Wukong being immune). The debuff then applies to all of Wolfgang's team (including himself), reducing their AP and armour.

Mihawk - Mihawk's %health true damage is particularly effective into Wukong who relies heavily on stacking as much health as possible.

Fernan - Not quite a counter, but a relatively disadvantageous matchup. Fernan can hit Wukong and get his stack of Reshape, but the debuff goes onto his team; the debuff doesn't actually do anything deleterious. That means Fernan can keep stacking Reshape from slapping Wukong all day, and while he can't get Improved Reference from him, he does get it from his own team dying. Probably the only reasonably bad matchup Wukong has.

Some small itemisation wins. His Variants are something of a mixed bag, but mostly just change what itemisation you're looking for - his role and pick priority remain largely unchanged.


Changed - When Wukong would be inflicted with a debuff, that debuff is reflected onto all enemy units one random enemy unit.

Changed - Wukong gains AP equal to 2% 5% of his max health.

This variant makes Wukong substantially worse at his counterpick role (though still very good); in exchange he becomes a pretty nasty beatstick in all circumstances. This Variant changes Wukong from a hero you take as a counterpick but who works well in general, to a hero you take as a high priority bruiser in general with the debuff-countering an added bonus.


Changed - Wukong gains AP equal to 2% 1% of his max health.

Gained - Wukong gains an additional 100 max health per level.

A minor nerf overall - you'll pretty much never get enough health from levels to make up for the AP you're losing, but you get enough health in exchange to make Wukong a more durable tank. In versions with strong single damage items (e.g. Heavy Dumbbell, Gravity Converter) can work out to being a small buff.

v3.1 Updates: Added in notes around Felicity and Fernan. Nothing else to note. Wukong's still great. They did change the name of one of his cards for no reason though.

Item build: Anything from the Pure Tank, One Damage Item and/or Bruiser categories. Generally the optimal build in my experience is to grab the best armour item you can as your first item, grab a damage item second (ideally Gravity Converter/Dumbbell), then any generic tank or bruiser item third depending on whether you want Presence on him or not.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing really stand-out. Is one of the few top laners that can really justify the investment into Hot Hands, though, since he uses stats so well. Could also justify a Solo Show pick if you really want to go ham on building him up. Since The Descent does actually move Wukong to the targeted hex, I could see an argument for taking Clash as a follow-up if you don't secure all the kills (referred to in this circumstance as 'bayonetting the survivors').

Funnelling: Good for tutoring, you want to play Indestructible a lot and The Descent is just generic good stuff. Not the best target for bonus stats, but will happily soak any random health buffs you've got lying around at least.

Rejected gags:
Unlike Bond, this really is a monkey that can go anywhere. Or at least anywhere there's something to hit with a stick.

One of the shadiest employers on the job market, Qin Hu is notorious for hiring an underling for every attack and then firing them as soon as it lands. He does, at least, provide protective gear for his Wardens.

Name: Qin Hu

Position: Top / Mid / Support

Role: Support-Mage

Mastery Choices: Warden gains 25 more armour. Homefront provides an additional 25% of Qin Hu's AP as a shield. / Attack Order's cost reduces by 1. Victory Rush provides an additional 5% of the slain unit's AP.

Gain an additional 4.5 AP per level. / The Warden gains 2 Presence and 300 max health. [AP works out to 11.25 max health per level]

Itemisation: Flat AP

Synergies: Squishy solo laners

Counters: Kill-dependent heroes such as Lan.

Countered by: Specific targeting, Foso

Summary: A vanilla vector for a very expensive bodyguard.

Analysis: Qin Hu himself is an entirely generic, if passable, hero. His main draw is his Warden - a fairly tanky summon which, uniquely, joins any fight anywhere on the map, regardless of Qin Hu's position (assuming he's alive, anyway). This is both a blessing and a curse - it lets him provide support constantly with no prior setup needed, including defensively, but also makes it much more likely that the Warden will fall over sooner or later. The big problem with the Warden is that, useful though it is, reviving it requires a hideously painful 6 SP card to be both found and played - and until you do, Qin Hu himself is pretty useless.

Having said that, the Warden can be incredibly useful in the right comp. Its ability to pop up anywhere without setup allows for an important layer of protection for squishy solo laners like Niels (and in fact any mage mid-laner); this is particularly evident in the early game when damage is lower relative to health pools and securing kills often comes down to the last attack thrown. The Warden might be extremely expensive to replace, but when the alternative is a successful enemy gank you'll usually be happy to pay the price.

Qin Hu's other contribution to the team comes in the form of his Tactical Target debuff - on entering a fight, you simply pick an enemy unit and shred 20 of its armour. If you can manage to kill that unit your entire team gets 15% of the slain unit's AP - basically giving you a team-wide Kid proc. You're heavily incentivised to throw this on a squishy - 20 armour is more impactful on low armour targets, they're more likely to die, and they give you more AP when they do - which in turn means you get some degree of synergy from heroes you can target-select with (e.g. Xiangxi Ke).

Given that Qin Hu's power all lies in support functions you might reasonably think that he would function better in the Support position. In actuality the truth is quite the opposite - the Warden is basically the entire reason you're drafting him, and its stats scale nicely with both levels and AP. Unless you're trying to protect multiple squishy solo laners you'll probably want him in a solo lane himself to get the extra gold and XP to ensure that protection is worth the SP you're paying for it. He can still function acceptably from the Support role - you'll just hate paying that 6 SP even more.

Taken in total, Qin Hu winds up being a pretty mid-tier pick in each possible position. He doesn't really excel at anything (besides protection), but packs a decent set of cards and utility functions to make him work in a lot of comps.

Cards:
Gains a charge every 25 rounds (max 2). When played, expend a charge and discard your hand, then search both of Qin Hu's hero cards plus one hero card from each other hero.

A handy (ha) reset, this card is much like Qin Hu himself - doesn't really excel at anything since it only searches out one card for each hero, but acts as a nice, solid toolbox in a variety of situations. Having said that, nine times out of ten you'll be playing this because your Warden fell over and you need to find a replacement. Note that this tutors hero cards, not just cards, so it won't grab Tactics cards; whether that's good or bad is entirely situational.

Respawns the Warden and grants a shield of 100% of Qin Hu's AP to all allied heroes.

Painfully expensive, yet nonetheless necessary to play if you don't want to forfeit Qin Hu's entire reason for existence. The shield is very much an afterthought (or, more accurately, an apology for the cost); nonetheless, it gives you another reason to put him in a position to gain some decent AP and has some minor synergy with shield-benefitting heroes like Foso and Felyn.



Each allied hero attacks an enemy within 1 hex. If a hero has no valid targets, they push once instead.

Generally a bit too expensive for what you're really using it for (which is typically for a specific hero to get an attack off); the cost reduction from mastery is necessary to make it a good play. This card leans into the idea that you can use the Warden in place of a real tank, since the more damage-oriented heroes you've got the more value you'll get from it. Note that if you've got ways to bring your team together around a single enemy you can use this to dogpile them, which is pretty funny (if unreliable without good field hit).

Interactions:
Warden: Since it's basically the only reason Qin Hu exists, anything which reduces the Warden's usefulness makes Qin Hu a worse pick. Notably, Lubos can make it semi-irrelevant (unless the target can win the damage race in a Duel, the Warden accomplishes nothing), while Foso facerolls it like she does every other summon.

Weakest Link: Tactical Target/Victory Rush likes high AP, low health, easily targeted enemies - squishy melee heroes like Lan are ideal. If your opponent picks a squishy solo lane melee early for some reason, Qin Hu can form the start of a nasty comp; victimise that solo lane and you can give yourself a very easy target to pick off early into teamfights for a nice AoE AP buff.

Stop Resisting: Attack Order is usually pretty mediocre, but if you can gather a lot of heroes in one place it suddenly becomes potent. Felicity's Return to Embrace can pull a lot of heroes together ready for a big fight - at which point Attack Order suddenly delivers an awful lot of relevant damage. If you can isolate a single target to be beaten on, you can also pretend you're a typical US police force arresting a suspect.

v3.1 Updates: Complete 180 on my recommended Mastery choices, I now believe the best choice is to make the Warden as beefy as possible because if you're not relying on it, you'd have picked someone else (and because it's so painfully expensive to resummon). Also fixed my referring to him as a mage in the text - that's how you should think when itemising him, but he's actually physical (I'm not actually sure if that was always the case or not). Further tweaked things here and there to add clarifications.

Item build: Mage, despite not having access to magical items. All you really want on Qin Hu is AP, the more of it the better; more AP means a beefier Warden, and again, if you didn't care about the Warden you'd have brought someone better. Defences should be redundant with your summon around, while crit is inefficient.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing much. Solo Show can give you both the cards and the SP to bring back the Warden if it falls over, but that's an awfully big investment to make.

Funnelling: Probably not. Can make decent use of bonus AP to continue to bulk up the Warden, but that's about it; Qin Hu's cards are ones you play when you have to, not because you want to.

Rejected gags:
Qin Who? - Most people who play this game. Because, y'know, he's unpopular. Get it? You get it.

You'd think losing an eye would prompt him to revise his 'only the lower face' helmet policy, but I guess he's stubborn. Maybe he just wants to show off those killer eyebrows.

He heard there was a ninja around masquerading as a pirate, and so arrived to teach her a lesson - by killing everyone, stealing their stuff, and ignoring her entirely.

Name: Chen Fengcheng

Position: Top / Jungle / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices: Gain 4 Ship Coins per round; Reward and Punish generates 50% more gold. / Gain 4 Ship Coins per round; Reward and Punish generates 50% more Ship Coins.

Gain 3 Ship Coins per round; special attack deals an extra 35 x level damage. / Gain 3 Ship Coins per round; gain 50 Ship Coins when participating in a kill.

Itemisation: One Slap Chap

Synergies: Nothing too notable.

Counters: Isolated squishies.

Countered by: Ganks of any kind, Anna (first turn armour)

Summary: Bruiser that shows up with a big hit and then does little else.

Analysis: Our first DLC 2 hero to look at is, unfortunately, the least interesting. Chen Fengcheng (hereafter referred to as Chen because I'm lazy) has two mechanics in his toolbox, both of which revolve around Ship Coins. He generates 20 Ship Coins per turn on the field, plus an extra 4, 3 and 3 from masteries (total of 30 for those of you that are REALLY bad at maths).

These Ship Coins have two uses. Their main use is on entering objective fights (or any fight after use of Expedition Preparation). In these circumstances Chen will start the round by crashing an inexplicably ghostly ship into the enemy team; total damage is equal to his Ship Coins plus 100/135 per level. This damage is applied evenly across the team (before mitigation). The second, much less interesting use is through Divide the Spoils, which splits half his Ship Coins as gold between all living heroes.

The main point of interest for Chen is that his special attack's damage is divided between enemies. The actual base damage is pretty high - he can easily be putting out ~2000 damage in early fights - but when split across a lot of enemies it becomes just a gentle tap. To really see value from it you're going to need small fights, at most two enemies (preferably one); anything more and it'll water down too much. The trouble with that, however, is that his special attack is all he's got; once it's spent he's left with wet noodle slaps for attacks and nothing else. This leaves you in the awkward position of either needing to be targeting a single very squishy opponent, or having a pocket jungler around to deal the actual damage.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that you're not getting the special attack at all (outside objective fights) unless you play the painfully expensive Expedition Preparation first, and that gets eaten from a single fight unless that fight is coming from Chen's own initiation card. So not only do you need very specific fight participation, you also need a very specific card to be initiating with. And on top of that, if the enemy team initiate a fight with him, say goodbye to your boat.

All of this could be taken to mean he's a bad hero. He's actually not - he just needs to specifically sit in top lane, where he'll rarely be ganked and he's got a reasonable shot at pulling in a 1v1 or 2v1 fight with Burn, Kill and Loot. You'll hopefully only need to drop the 5 SP once or twice in the game, and can smash the (presumably squishy) opposing laner to pieces with your weaponised maritime vessel. A very specific pick, then - but an effective one.

Cards:
When Chen next participates in a fight, he may use his special attack. This effect is not expended when participating in objective fights, the Final Fight, or if initiated by Burn, Kill and Loot.

This is essentially your tax for playing Chen. It does absolutely nothing on its own, so you're paying 5 SP so that he actually does something when he next fights. For obvious reasons, you reeeeeally want to avoid situations that will make you pay that 5 SP again.



Initiate a fight on an enemy hero within 2 hexes. 2 hex radius, 3 round duration. If you kill something, search Divide the Spoils after the fight.

And this is how you get to use the boat without paying more taxes (who'd have thought a pirate would be all about tax evasion). A decent range, 2 hex-radius initiation would be a good card on most heroes, but for Chen that radius is a severe detriment - the last thing he wants is other people soaking some of the blast. This card is a great argument for passing Deployment Phases with little to no SP expenditure repeatedly, waiting for the perfect opportunity - you want your jungler to path near top while the enemy jungler is bot side. Incidentally, for those of you considering a little pirating yourself, this would be a terrible order to do things in - you'll only be looting ashes. Instead, kill first, loot, then burn last.

Attack an enemy hero within 1 hex. Attack always hits, and Chen gains gold and Ship Coins equal to the damage dealt.

Doesn't look impressive on the surface - just Hass' Shadow Blade but paying 1 less SP for half as much gold. The real value is in the Ship Coins though - your one attack's worth of damage is converted into Coins which will then apply that damage to every boat-bomb for the rest of the game. If you're playing to pick up isolated top lane kills (and you should be, if you're picking Chen) then that's definitely worth the SP cost.


All living heroes (friend or foe) gain gold; the amount is equal to 50% of Chen's Ship Coins divided equally among them.

The much less impressive payoff for your Ship Coins. Since the gold is divided between both teams, you're specifically looking to play this when you have more living heroes than the opposing team does; however, if only one enemy is dead (i.e. a 5-4 split) you're only getting a tiny relative gold gain (1/9th of Chen's Ship Coins is the delta). It's a benefit, sure, but a tiny one. There are two ways to use this, therefore - you can either avoid playing it at all unless the stars align and you get a great fight result, or (if you're smart) you can tailor your item builds towards more expensive items and play this whenever you have it. If both teams get extra gold, the ones with the more expensive items benefit more. Alternatively, just hit tab in every DP and see if you'll hit an item spike by playing this.
Note that while it's not made very clear, these are one-time-use - you get one for each equipment you activate. That's arguably a good thing, because it protects your deck from this mediocrity.

Interactions:
Damn you, Anna - Turns out when literally all your power is in the first round, you get screwed if the enemy team have a lot of armour that round. Arguably a hard counter.

Not Charming - You'd think Divide the Spoils would pair nicely with Gillis' Charm to generate bonus gold. Unfortunately, it really isn't - the actual gold gain is minimal, so paying an extra 4 SP to replicate it really doesn't do much. If you're running an Acedia already, on the other hand, it's a little extra on the side I suppose.

Centaurs are bad sailors - Unfortunately Reinhardt is not the great synergy you'd hope for with Chen thanks to the foibles of action order. Chen will smash his ship to splinters for the eighth time that game, then Reinhardt will shred the enemies' armour afterwards. They really need to have a chat with each other.

v3.1 Updates: Added. Obviously.

Item build: One slap chap. He gets his one big attack off (you hope), then down to lacklustre bruiser stats for the rest of the fight. You can itemise him with maximised AP - that will give him extra damage for Reward and Punish and also the damage to follow up in his solo fights - but expect him to severely underperform in teamfights if you do.

Reserve Tactics: None in particular. There's an argument for cards like Teleporting for Support, or movement cards on your jungler, to try to manipulate good Burn, Kill and Loot initiations.

Funnelling: Tutoring is decent, since you'll want to Burn, Kill and Loot whenever you have a good opening to justify the prep cost. Stat gains aren't, really, since there's no AP scaling on the special attack - you'll get some benefit through increased Reward and Punish damage.

Rejected gags:
"Aye, I know me ship has cannons - but that would be hard to animate. Now, ramming speed!" - Chen Fengcheng

They told me I could go anywhere. Do anything. SO I DID. - Fernan

Name: Fernan

Position: Top / Jungle / Mid / Bot

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices: In the first Deployment Phase search Ephemeral Collection to your hand. / Ephemeral Collection cost reduced by 2.

Mirror Flash cost reduced by 1. / Gain 3 AP per level.

Itemisation: Bruiser

Synergies: Nothing special

Counters: Nothing specific

Countered by: Hass (Reshape stolen)

Summary: Absurdly flexible bruiser with middling in-fight performance.

Analysis: Hoo boy, this guy. There's an absurd number of interactions possible with Fernan, so many that they're getting their own section below... but I suspect he'll be the reason for half my post-3.1 views, so I'mma have to do him justice. Strap in folks, this'll be a long one.

To start with Fernan's cards are... weird. Weird because they mostly involve stealing other peoples' cards and using those instead. That's such a mixed bag that I'm just going to ignore it for now and we'll talk about it in that section. Instead, let's talk about fights.

In fights, Fernan has some awkward mechanics. When he hits an enemy hero he gains a stack of Reshape, giving himself 5 armour, 5% lifesteal and 8% bonus AP (the only hero in the game with innate lifesteal besides Nihil, incidentally). He then applies the Reference debuff to that target. Importantly, Reference does nothing whatsoever to the target; it's there essentially as a way to say 'Fernan already got his Reshape stack from this target'. If a target with Reference dies, however, Fernan gets 8% of their AP and removes all of the other Reference debuffs. The AP gain is permanent, though the game doesn't make that clear initially. It's also snapshotted at the moment you gain it - you don't get more AP when the target does.

This is a lot of moving parts to essentially just give you a fairly resilient bruiser. While he does gain AP from two different sources, in both cases the numbers are low enough that Fernan's never going to take over a game from them - they're just high enough to allow him to exist and not be ignored.

In isolation, Fernan's kit makes him a passable, resilient bruiser in a similar category to Nihil - never getting enough power to dumpster opponents, but existing as a hard-to-kill hero that still outputs passable damage. This needs to be taken in the context of his absurd cards, though, which can massively warp what he's able to do in fights. As a result, whether he's worth playing entirely depends on what interactions you can squeeze out of him; generally you'll want to sit him in top lane unless there are specific cards you're targeting.

His cards though... oh boy.

Cards:
Pick a card from the hero you targeted [with Extract Memory]. Create a copy in hand belonging to Fernan and give it Single-Use and Vanish.

Generated through Extract Memory and nothing else. Costs nothing and will disappear when you end your turn, so make sure you play it unless you really don't want anything they're offering.





Move to any spot on the field. The cost of this card then becomes equal to the number of hexes travelled [base cost 2].

Just as screwy in its own way as the rest of Fernan's kit, you can literally have him appear wherever the hell you want him to. Use caution though - if you go too far, you'll basically render this card unplayable for the rest of the game, so make sure you're okay with that. Importantly, if you've got a cost discount applied to this card, try to make sure you play it even if you don't want to move - if you play it and choose to go nowhere, you set its cost to 0 for when you do need it.

Single use. Pick an enemy hero, then pick one of their cards; add a copy of that card to your hand. It's controlled by Fernan, has 3/4 tokens on it, and is removed when the last token is expended.

And this is where it starts. Importantly, despite the game stating 'a hero' in the card text, this is limited to enemies only. Pick a card, any card... and take it. Note that Ephemeral Collection (EC) is single-use, unlike Extract Memory (EM), and the generated card is not; that means you should avoid using it to grab single-use cards, since you'll still only get the one use from them. Instead, use EC to grab things you want to play several times (and for a more efficient SP price), while using EM to grab the singletons. Gets a lot less painful to play once you have the mastery to drop its cost to 2.

Target an enemy hero (global) and Attack. If you hit, spawn Reappearance in your hand linked to that hero.

The much worse version of Ephemeral Collection, this costs the same (with masteries) but needs you to land an attack and only generates single-use cards. Still allows some ridiculous things to be done. Note that the card generated doesn't vanish if unplayed (unlike Reappearance), so you can grab unplayable cards like Cache without penalty; the card does vanish if it leaves your hand though.


Interactions:
Fuggen everyone: Yeah, Fernan is weird, that's why he has his own section. Things get weird when he's around.

Wukong - No interaction. Note that I mistakenly indicated previously that Wukong would reflect Reference, which is not the case. Oops.

Hass: As with any hero that buffs themselves, Hass will make Fernan very sad. Avoid.

Everyone else: Seriously, he's weird. You might not be counterpicked, but you might be taking cards from someone who'll make you counterpicked. Give it a lot of thought or just throw him in there and have fun with it, your call.

v3.1 Updates: Added, to my chagrin.

Item build: By default, you want Bruiser/Mage items on Fernan - he doesn't have big enough steroids or any multi-hits to really justify heavy AP gain, but he needs at least some damage to be an actual threat. Don't leave him too squishy since Reshape stacks are unreliable to generate.

Reserve Tactics: There's an argument for Find Another Chance or Patient Waiting to keep an EM-generated card around until you actually want to play it. Clear Mind is also more likely to get value since you're generating cards over on the left of your hand (and so can get value if that's where Clear Mind is).

Funnelling: Probably not worth tutoring unless there's something really good you're looking for. Decent target for stats, though, since he's bulky enough to stick around to use them and has enough AP to deal decent damage.

Rejected gags:
Just look at that douchey smirk. He knows he's messing up my screenshots by refusing to sit still. He knows.

Had his hair styled to create an ahoge[animanga.fandom.com] specifically to audition for a role in Danganronpa 2x2, not realising that all the old cast were returning. He's still bitter about it.

Right, here we go. I'm going to be separating these out by hero, and into three categories:
Good - These heroes are a reason to pick Fernan.
OK - Not reasons to pick Fernan, but their cards will do if you need a target.
Bad - Their cards are terrible for Fernan, don't take them.
Pending testing - I still need to find games to test Omaha and Raven interactions, so they're not listed yet.

Good
Aurelio - Protagonist is great, and Inferno March will let you steal chunks of the enemy jungle while refunding most of the cost. Note that you won't be able to use Protagonist to tutor Flame Assault unless you use EC to create one first.
Peiniang Zhu - Since EM disregards token limits, you can play Thundercloud more than she can, and with solo lane levels. Kinda filthy.
Tiger Boy - Weirdly good, Whimsy will draw cards while refunding your investment with its discount. Double Trouble does, in fact, let you become a Tiger Boy with better stats.
BaJie - Pay 2 SP, generate a card that prints free money. Probably the best reason to keep a Patient Waiting in reserve.
Reinhardt - Cavalry Charge will let you start fights in bot lane from top lane (if the stars align). Supersonic is a decent utility tool, albeit at a huge SP premium.
Lubos - Duel is a fantastic way to murder solo tanks in top lane since it has no round limit on it. Knight's Oath also isn't terrible if your other lanes are getting ganked a lot.
Cubey - Great. You don't get his Evolution passive or anything, but you're still generating bonus stats. Little expensive, but worthwhile.
Hakuna - Dominant Onslaught lets you mess with mid from the comfort of your island. Note you'll get the Plunders after the fight (if you kill things), there's no need to spend 2 SP on generating them directly unless you've got a turret on 1 hp you really want knocked over.
Niels - Bound has some niche application, but the main reason this is in the Good category is you can generate Revelation to get the field power without having to, y'know, play Niels.
Babe - Gift Bundle is worth using to grab free cheap stats. Make sure you use EC to get it so it doesn't vanish, though, and remember you're capped at 25 stacks since you don't have his masteries.
Crank - Oblivion is too expensive for Crank to play for the sole reason that he can already apply his passive by attacking things. You can't. Steal it and play it right before an objective fight to get Crank's inevitability.
Paisai - Elixir and Barbarian Runes both have such good utility that they're worth playing even at a premium. Barbarian Runes in particular is a great EC target.
Lan - Since Step A/B/C all generate each other, you only have to EM one of them to become bootleg Lan - start with C for a head start. Save EC for Reboot since Step C is single-use anyway and generates a fresh Step A when played.
Ada - She has to complete an entire equipment to get a Mod Upgrade; you just need to hit an attack. On the other hand, she only pays 2 SP for it and you pay 6, so I guess that evens out. Remember Mod Upgrade is single-use, don't waste your EC.
Qin Hu - Okay, sure, Homefront is even more expensive for you than it is for Qin Hu. On the other hand, playing it makes you now do literally everything relevant that Qin Hu does. Until that Warden dies, you're a better version of Qin Hu than Qin Hu is.
Quinn - EC her Tea Time and get yourself ~50% crit by the end of the game. Yes. Very yes.
Foso - She only gets a single copy of Libra for a reason. You get as many as you want. Remember not to waste EC on it (though Astral Guardian isn't a terrible EC target).
Anna - Your choice between generating one of the three single-use cards immediately at a fair price, or generating Floral Language to get them later at a much better one. Either is solid.
Leon - Generate Eternal Brand (remember, single use, don't EC) and you can steal his effect - but bear in mind you don't auto-target Branded heroes because that's Leon's passive. You can grab Nightmare Slayer from EC if you want to murder your targets occasionally, but you're usually better off Branding tanks to give you some inevitability on them since you're not getting the focus targeting.
Felicity - Most of her cards are bad for you, but Return to Embrace can still net positive with the right setup. Blessing may be relevant in very niche scenarios.

OK
Bunu Shan - Outburst and Wrath are both solid cards.
Wukong - Indestructible is still good paying an SP premium and not getting HP -> AP scaling. The Descent lets Fernan get involved while sitting in top lane.
Bart - Very expensive, but getting Metal Fatigue without having to commit to a dumb brick wall tank is useful.
Kid - Great cards, but already expensive before you're having to dump 2 SP to get them.
Elemi - Generally underwhelming, especially since you won't have Overclocking without paying even more SP for it, but they'll do if you've got nothing else to spend your SP on. Very good if you're playing with an attribute advantage.
Manta - A whole lot of middling cards. Much like Elemi, they'll do if you need to dump SP.
Kamaitachi - Much worse for Fernan, since you don't have Kamaitachi's passive to proc off the discards; can still be okay if you really need to fish for other cards. Best use is to grab Meisou and manipulate your SP to start the next DP with it at the right of your hand.
Gillis - Decent cards, but way too expensive to be generating this way. Enchanting Invasion isn't the worst thing in the world to grab, though, since you can Mirror Flash into the perfect spot for it.
Blocker - Lots of SP investment required - you'll need to EM an Interference Field first, then EC a Signal Detection - but then gives you a great tutor effect that'll last all game. Note you don't get the shielding/armour effects from Interference Field, those are his passive.
Palulu - Decent cards, but a bit too expensive for what they do even on Palulu. On the other hand, you probably have more SP behind you.
Frank - Generating Painful Pleasure will be net positive on SP, but to get it you'll either have to give Frank health (EM) or only get one use out of your EC card. You'll then get beaten senseless for using it. Still probably worth it though.
Hass - He's a Shadow Imitator, you're a Shadow Imitator Imitator. If you target Hass directly, then he targets you, you can wind up in a recursion of infinitely growing stats. Would be in the Good category if his in-fight mechanics didn't counter yours.
Miki - Avoid generating Seize the Initiative, the SP will net zero so all you're doing is drawing cards. Chicken Charge is a decent way to impact mid, though.
Peter - Shield Impact is obviously expensive as hell, but Hyper Protection is a good way to heal up in lane. Can a decent Shield Bomb if you've got something like a Hass or Cubey to generate bonus health from, though you lack the mastery to make it lethal.
Enidi - Not the most efficient play you'll ever see, but lots of decently cheap attack cards you can clone for some chip damage.
Digo - Generally way too expensive, but Dominance can give you a pretty brutal fight if you time it right and/or combine with the right Tactics cards.
Xiangxi Ke - Mostly iffy, Blitz can work in a pinch. Generating Old Time will give you Reaper stacks, but you'll probably have to wait until it falls out of your hand unless you really want to double down.
Justice - Stealing I Am Justice will give you two stacks of Justice's passive, but you won't generate more from either fight attacks or Justice Slash. If you play it twice the game will tell you he'll get the execute, but this is a lie. The stats are nice, though, and I guess you could then steal Justice Execute later.
Zealot - Devour is way too expensive, and Assimilation is just a decent poke card unless you first EC an Engage. If you do, though, you get a solid combo at a playable cost (rather than the obnoxiously good cost Zealot gets it).
Lady Deadfire - Generally her cards are expensive even for her, but you do get Dark Flame stacks from playing them (though not for the movement part).
Charon - VERY expensive, but Death Finger is very potent, so consider it a niche choice.
Tivie - Avoid Melody of Revive. Rain of Life can have niche use if you need to heal AND get rid of a debuff (it's too pricey to do only one). The main draw is Heaven Rainfall, which can still net positive on SP even while costing 3.
Bond - Monkey See isn't a terrible use of SP to give you targeting for your next fight. The other two cards aren't worth it though.
Wolfgang - Chain of War will never be worth grabbing since you'd need to EC it, then repeatedly EM Devouring Soul to give it tokens. Devouring Soul alone is a good way to stabilise in lane, though, and Haunting Coil will apply Wolfgang's passive.
Fatty White - Mostly bad, but Throw Snowballs is a slightly worse version of Skullcracker if you need a pre-fight boost.

Bad
Bariel - Cannon Strike is overpriced, and Charge won't do anything unless you already generated Into The Breach. Stealing the latter amounts to paying 2 SP to generate an Initiate Tactics card.
Shougong Lei - Obnoxiously expensive cards, entirely balanced around Fragile. Fernan doesn't have Fragile, so these are basically unplayable.
Beverly - You'd think being able to get Beverly's schtick without her useless vanilla body would be great... but you're having to pay 2 SP to EM a Designation before Renovation even does anything, and you're not getting the chunk of extra stats and Mech Mastery she gets from her Mastery tree. Horrifically inefficient.
Big Foot - Already overpriced cards when Big Foot has them, you really don't want to spend SP just to get them. Note Rapid Cooling will not let you hold onto an EM generated card since it leaves your hand first.
Deep Space - Pay a lot of SP to generate Missiles that you then have no way to dump without spending more SP. Pass.
Kaka - You don't have a dog, Fernan, what are you even doing. Hilariously, Stone Curse will still cost you 2 SP if you generate it, even as it buffs nothing.
Mo - Generally not worth anything to you; you're not generating bounties like Mo is, and the main draw of Slayer's Intuitiion is how cheap it is... for him.
Mihawk - You don't have his passive, so you can't generate tokens for his cards. Literally your best play is paying 5 SP for a vanilla Drain the Soul, that's how bad it is.
Dylan - Pay double the SP for weaker copies of Dylan's cards which then cost you gold unless you pay another 2 SP for a Balance which will vanish once it leaves hand. Yeah, no. Technically will net positive on gold if you clone a Blue Pill on your first turn, use it on Fernan and never die... but there really must be better uses for your first turn SP.
Acedia - You're wide awake my dude. Fernan can't generate Sleepiness stacks, so avoid unless you want to pay 5 SP for a Good Night for some reason.
Merisi - The AP gain is from tokens on Fight in the Prison so you'll have to EC that first, then start paying 3 SP to EM Intimidations. Your reward is a tiny amount of AP and an EC card that might become playable by the end of the game. Nope.
Gang - Gang blows himself up to generate AP. You don't do the latter.
Qube - You don't get her passive, so you just have a selection of poke cards at an exorbitant price. Pass.
Felyn - You don't get her passive either, so no Energy Level. Assault Mode is playable, though, if you desperately need shielding and/or poke.
Nihil - Even Nihil doesn't like Nihil's cards. If he did, he wouldn't be so edgy about them.
Matata - Once again, you don't get his passive so his cards are all vanilla garbage at a ludicrous price.
Chen Fengcheng - Ye don't have a boat, landlubber. Reward and Punish gives gold but no Ship Coins, Expedition Preparation does literally nothing, and you can't even generate Divide the Spoils.

S Tier: Heroes that can be safely blind-picked, with no real counters, strong cards and which counter some heroes; or heroes that have the potential to completely take over a game in the right comp

A Tier: Solid picks which have few counters, if any, and which can generally perform at least adequately in any given situation while having strong potential to excel, but lack some key tool(s) for being a complete package; or heroes that can become extremely powerful with the right comp and setup

B Tier: Heroes who are very situational, only working well with a great setup and/or against specific enemy heroes or comps (e.g. counterpicks); or heroes that can become extremely powerful, but are heavily countered by too many heroes to feasibly ban out for; or heroes that are good in fights but have terrible cards, or vice versa.

C Tier: Heroes that generally don't perform amazingly; they lack the tools to excel, meaning the best they can hope for is to perform their role in a satisfactory fashion.

D Tier: Heroes that will pretty much never do anything, really. This is the only tier of heroes you should generally avoid.


S Tier: Kamaitachi is probably the single best general-purpose jungle Fighter, only let down by his lack of initiation. Zealot, meanwhile, can be utterly dominant if properly supported.

A Tier: Nihil and Reinhardt are solid frontline picks who don't need much in the way of assistance. Aurelio's kit is perfect for jungling and providing substantial teamfight damage, while Gillis will inevitably build up a big gold lead.

B Tier: Mostly situational picks. Hakuna is underwhelming but the best choice for a pure tank in the jungle. Mo varies between C and S tier depending on the current ruleset (i.e. whether he gets extra bounties or not).

C Tier: Bariel doesn't know what he wants to be; if you really want an ADC in the jungle, take Bond. Lubos, meanwhile, has situational appeal but ultimately doesn't bring enough to the team.

D Tier: Kaka sucks. 'Nuff said.


If I'm on blue side (and so single first pick) I'll usually draft a jungler with a plan in mind; if I'm planning on supporting my jungle I'll go for S tier, and if not, usually A tier unless I've got a specific plan in mind or I'm feeling spicy. Jungle bans usually aren't necessary unless you need to ban Gillis to avoid a counterpick.

Itemisation and my evolving thinking has caused a few shifts here. Nothing groundbreaking in its novelty though.

S Tier: Aurelio was already right on the cusp of S tier; gaining some solid extra crit itemisation finally gets him there. Zealot has a new major counter, but only the one, so the impact on your pick/ban isn't big enough to lose him his spot.

A Tier: Raven arrives and grabs himself a spot in A tier thanks to his potential to dominate, but misses out on S tier due to being useless if not being focussed on. Hakuna also makes the jump into A tier - this isn't down to any changes, I just think I underrated him before.

C Tier: Matata is mediocre at the best of times. The jungle - where he can't really use his Heavy Slash to shred armour - is not the best of times.

A lot of changes arising as a result of my updated thinking, most notably the jungle ADCs rising up. Four of the five new heroes can be played in jungle, and while none of them make S tier there are some solid picks amongst them.

S Tier: No changes. Kamaitachi might have fallen down to A due to increasing numbers of good picks being available, but Reserve Tactics suddenly appear and patch his initiation-less weakness.

A Tier: A lot of changes here. Nihil falls to B tier much as he does in top lane - he's a solid but generic bruiser and deserves a solid but generic ranking. Bond and Bariel both jump all the way up to A tier as I come to recognise that the combination of good mobility, average initiation and great damage give them a lot of skirmish power even if it does really push the frontline responsibilities onto your solo lanes. Finally, Felicity and Leon show up here; Felicity has a great kit but doesn't quite have the damage to really back up ganks off standard initiation cards, while Leon is a very specialised tool that you won't want in every game.

B Tier: Nihil falls to here and Bond leaves for better things, but otherwise no changes. Still decent heroes that can do their jobs in the right comp but don't jump out.

C Tier: No sooner does Bariel leave than two new heroes arrive to take his place. Fernan has an acceptable bruiser kit, but absolutely nothing to give you a reason to put him in the jungle - he lacks the damage for good skirmishing, he's not strong enough early to want to push him into objective fights, and he has no initiations without stealing them or relying on generics. Chen Fengcheng, meanwhile, brings absolutely nothing to the table in the jungle role besides a mediocre initiation, and only avoids D tier because he at least has a passable bruiser statline.

D Tier: Kaka remains, as always, utter garbage. Poor guy.

The gift of fire is mine. I wield the ever-burning flame, harnessing its almighty magic to smite my foes with the most potent force known to man - a big ol' sword. - Aurelio

Name: Aurelio

Position: Top / Jungle / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices: Protagonist applies an additional Flame stack / Inferno March cost reduced by 1

Flame provides 6 armour per stack / Flame provides an additional 8% crit damage per stack

Gain an additional 3% crit damage per level / Gain 35 health per level, and increase Presence by 1.

Itemisation: Mix of damage and survivability items; you may want a single crit rate item for reliability in the early parts of a fight, but no more than that. Crit damage, on the other hand, is very effective.

Synergies: Dylan (Strengthening Potion), Felicity (great card synergy)

Counters: None

Countered by: Bart (Crit immunity), Hass (Flame stealing)

Summary: Strong all-rounder Fighter, stacks up a huge amount of crit and crit damage.

Analysis: Aurelio is a solid generic Fighter choice. He's pretty decently tanky, but more importantly, can build up to deal a substantial amount of damage thanks to his Flame mechanic. It's important to note that the Flame buff can stack up as much as you like, but he can only gain one stack per enemy hero in fights - that means that if you want him to go off in a big way, you're going to need to play Protagonist as many times as possible prior to an important fight.

Regardless of how many stacks he can get, though, it's entirely possible for Aurelio to get stuck on a single target, often a tank, and wind up being extremely underwhelming in fights; if he can't get attacks on multiple targets to reach high crit levels and a high crit damage multiplier, he's not going to perform. This means that generally you don't want to prioritise him against balanced enemy teams with both solid frontline and backline. Instead, pick him into teams with a lot of frontline Fighters - enough melees that he'll be happy enough spreading his attacks around, none of which are building heavy defences. Give him a decent team comp to work against and some backup on the frontline and he'll be your quintessential Fighter - dealing enough damage to kill things while remaining tanky enough to eat a few hits without falling over.

There are two reasons to pick Aurelio in your comp. The first is as a safe blind pick (at least if Hass is banned out) - he may not excel, but he can perform just fine without support in most comps. The second, much more notable, reason is to lean hard on bot lane. Your one initiation is too expensive to play without a lot of targets, but between Inferno March and Flame Assault you've got enough mobility to cross the length of the map and slap those squishies in the head. Gank bot early and often, snowball Aurelio, be happy.

Note that while you can pick Mastery choices which make him into a passable damage sponge, it's really not worth it - Aurelio's mechanics scream 'damage', Flame stacks come in over time, and he has no other utility. Ask yourself: do you want a fairly tanky high damage bruiser, or do you want a not-actually-very-tanky tank?

Cards:
Move up to 2 hexes, then attack all enemies and monsters within 1 hex. Gain 1 SP for each target hit.

This card does a lot of heavy lifting for Aurelio, acting as a combination movement card, SP generation and light poke. Realistically though, its main use is as SP generation - anything you get out of it beyond that is a bonus. You'll usually want to target the hex you'll get the most mileage out of it therefore, ensuring there's at least three monsters in range so you'll refund your expenditure as a minimum - and if they're coming from the enemy jungle, all the better.

Gain 2 stacks of Flame, then search Flame Assault into your hand.

A very useful card, particularly with the Mastery choice to give you more Flame stacks. Going into a fight already stacked up is extremely valuable, and given that the card costs nothing you'd be a fool not to play it on cooldown.






Start a fight with an enemy hero within 2 hexes and all heroes within 1 hex of them. Duration is equal to number of participants.

An initiation card pretty much custom-built for ganking bot. The prohibitive cost makes playing it on any other lane unappealing - you'd be paying 8 SP for a vanilla Initiation card with extra range - but jumping over to bot for a nice five round beating is great. Even so, given the cost you're probably not going to play this without discounts or Inferno March.



Interactions:
Bart - Crit Immunity. Obviously anyone who relies on crit damage to kill things is going to struggle when faced with a frontline that can't be crit.

Hass - Buff stealing. Hass can steal Aurelio's Flame stacks as quickly as he can generate them, and since they last for the duration of the fight that means bad news for Aurelio.

Search effects - Blocker, Reinhardt. Despite only having two cards worth playing (Flame Assault generally isn't), being able to search for Aurelio's cards is surprisingly valuable. Inferno March can make for good SP generation if timed right, and you want as many Flame stacks going into a fight as you can get. Not the best target in the game, but by no means a bad one.

Felicity - New arrival Felicity doesn't have any in-fight synergy with Aurelio, but her cards are very much another matter. Return to Embrace easily stacks up 3+ enemies on a single tile, while Mirage Scales gets to be extremely expensive (counterbalanced by round count increasing with participants). Enter Aurelio: Inferno March can double down on the SP gain from Return to Embrace, while Flame Assault has all the duration of Mirage Scales but usually costs a lot less in these circumstances. You can't do it all that often, but when you can, it works amazingly.

Doesn't really get much from the new itemisation (though the crit stacking item is worth a look). Does have a very good Variant however which takes him from top tier to even higher.


Changed - Flame stacks give 20% 10% crit rate and 15% 25% crit damage.

This is very much an early game nerf, making your crits much less reliable so securing kills is a gamble. Late game however, once you've itemised some crit, this can let your Aurelio hit like an absolute truck. Overall something of a sidegrade.


Changed - Flame stacks give 20% 15% crit rate and 15% 10% crit damage.

Removed - Aurelio can only gain one stack from each enemy unit.

Variant 2, meanwhile, makes Aurelio absolutely disgusting in longer fights. His skirmishing takes a hit of course - Protagonist provides less power after all - but it's worth it to get continual Flame stacks over the course of a fight. If you happen to make it to Final Fight, sooner or later Aurelio is going to start one-shotting things, particularly because he no longer struggles if he gets stuck on a tank. If this Variant is in play you should strongly consider him in any comp (and ensure you pick or ban Hass).

v3.1 Updates: Tweaked entry a bit, and more importantly, fixed my previous analysis of Flame Assault. Not sure how none of the comments called me out on that one, because that was just stupid. Oh, added in the great Felicity synergy too.

Item build: Bruiser. You may want to sprinkle in some crit or crit damage, but you probably don't want to go full glass unless you've got tank(s) and they're getting early Presence. The exception is if you're on Variant 1 (Flame II giving lower crit chance but higher crit damage) - that Variant pushes you towards itemising crit so you get to throw the crazy 300% crit damage hits around more often.

Reserve Tactics: You'll want to pocket the standard Initiation card of your choice so you can still gank solo lanes when the situation calls for it; any of them work, but probably Feigned Attack works best since Meticulous Plan can be awkward with Inferno March SP gain and Surprise Assault will likely be deactivated by Flame Assault.

Funnelling: One of the better Bruisers to funnel, both for cards and stats. Innate crit while being a frontline bruiser lets him use pretty much any stats you can give him, and searching his cards lets him doublejump to bot lane freely. Still probably suboptimal since his teamfight performance is unreliable, but you could definitely do a lot worse.

Rejected gags:
I literally cannot play Protagonist without yelling "PWOOOOTAGONIIIIST". Damnit LittleKuriboh.

For an alleged Protagonist, Aurelio sure does look evil in the card art. Are... are we the baddies?

After being rescued from a lab which taught him to play card games[yugioh.fandom.com], this monkey took up the name Bond and attempted unsuccessfully to become a professional card game player. Two years later, having racked up substantial debts from gambling and an addiction to banana daquiris, he was eventually forced to make money in a less savoury way - by becoming an assassin.

Name: Bond

Position: Jungle / Bot

Role: ADC

Mastery choices:
Monkey Business costs 1 less / Add one copy of Monkey Business to the deck

Gain an additional 0.2 AP per 25 gold / If Monkey Do's attack misses, gain 2 additional SP

Itemisation: ADC

Synergies: Mihawk (%health)

Counters: None

Countered by: None

Summary: Generic ADC with initiation options and good damage output.

Analysis: Bond is an entirely generic ADC with only one real distinguishing feature - his attacks deal more damage the lower health his target is. For each 1% health the target is missing, Bond deals 1% more damage; while fairly unimaginitive, this does lead to Bond dealing quite surprisingly high damage in fights.

This bonus damage from missing health makes Bond particularly good at skirmishing, as it makes it far more likely that small, short fights will end in kills; as a result, Bond can perform well in the jungle (having decent cards for finding skirmishes as well as good stats for winning them). His cards are unimpressive in lane, so Jungle is generally his preferred role.

While Bond has a lot of damage potential, this is all focussed into a single attack rather than being split across several like, say, Elemi; this makes Bond relatively unreliable, especially when played at a skill deficit.

Due to being an ADC whose best position is jungle, you'll necessarily be creating a fairly squishy team if you run Bond. You'll therefore want to field him alongside relatively beefy solo laners - with two ADCs you shouldn't need to worry all that much about damage from your top or mid lane. Aside from this restriction Bond can be picked fairly flexibly, as he has no particular weaknesses or counters (besides being a squishy ADC, anyway).

Cards:
Bond moves up to 2 hexes, then searches Monkey Do into hand.

A simple movement card which can at least be made free via masteries (which you should do). Pretty much useless in lane since you should be, y'know in lane (and therefore in range to initiate) - this is primarily useful in the jungle for moving into position for a gank and searching your initiation card into hand. That said, it can find the occasional sneak kill on mid if you don't mind taking a bit of bot tower damage to get it.



Choose an enemy hero within 1 hex and attack them. If the attack hits, initiate a fight (1 hex participation range, 2 round duration); if it misses gain 3 SP. If this card results in a kill (either from the attack or the subsequent fight), it returns to your hand and Bond gets an extra 300 gold.

A very short duration initiation effect, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem - the main reason you'll be playing this is to secure quick kills on vulnerable targets which you can reach relatively easily through use of Monkey Business. The SP refund on miss serves to bail you out - either you hit your attack (giving you effectively an extra free round of damage) or you get some of your payment back. In extreme circumstances it can even give you extra SP (for example, if played via Acedia's Eureka). Meanwhile, the bonus gold from kills allows Bond to snowball very quickly if he can find the right spots.

Bond gains the Oo-oo-ee-ee buff which, as well as having a really stupid name, gives him 8% Field Hit and causes him to target the lowest percentage health enemy in fights. Lasts until the end of his next fight.

A really stupidly named buff for a rather overpriced card - the 8% field hit helps you to hit with Monkey Do, but that's about it. The main use is to ensure Bond is maximising the effect of his passive by targeting the lowest %health enemy, but bear in mind that this can work against you in some cases - he'll target a tank with 9500/10000 health rather than a carry with 2000/2100 health.

Interactions:
Nothing particularly noteworthy. Can have some synergy with Paisai due to extending the length of Monkey Do, and his passive works well to clean up after initial spike from One Slap Chaps.

No particularly big changes. ADCs didn't really get much in the way of good new itemisation.


Removed - Bond's hero feat is doubled for his first attack in each fight.

Gained - Whenever a unit dies in a fight Bond gains a stack of The Final Moment, increasing his damage by 10%. Stacks up to 5 times.

Generally a pretty big buff - the original effect was very much an afterthought intended to encourage short fights against injured enemies, but it didn't really make a lot of difference. This Variant gives Bond a nice pseudo-Kid effect, giving him enough damage to compete with the hypercarries in the late game. Note that it procs off friendly deaths as well as enemy ones, helping the clean-up effort - but remember that Hass suddenly becomes a counter.

v3.1 Updates: Cleaned up the entry to reflect my newfound realisation that Bond isn't actually that bad in the right comp.

Item build: ADC. No reason to get fancy with it, he's just an ADC at the end of the day.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing in particular - there's an argument for running a generic initiation to make up for Monkey Do's unreliability, but I wouldn't bother personally. If played in bot lane, Poke cards can be useful to get some initial chip damage in so your passive can do more work later.

Funnelling: Cards, not really. Stats, sure, Bond uses them as well as any other ADC.

Rejected gags:
After that obnoxious debate over whether Idris Elba should play James Bond, casting a monkey was the next logical choice.

Between the backpack and the weird particle effect... is Bond shooting acid? That's pretty messed up, even for a monkey.

Psst, Sam Fisher[splintercell.fandom.com] called and he wants his goggles back. And his franchise back, actually.

Following the development of an unfortunate late-onset allergy to rubber, Gillis was forced to abandon her previous career[dungeonkeeper.fandom.com], superglue horns and a tail to herself and try to find work as a succubus.

Name: Gillis

Position: Jungle / Mid

Role: Assassin / Mage

Mastery choices:
Gain 6 additional Presence in the first round of fights / Charm increases both cost and duration by 2

Hypnosis also searches Enchanting Invitation / If Charm is used on an enemy hero, they're forced to attack Gillis in the first round of the next fight

Itemisation: Full damage

Synergies: Gold generation effects (e.g. Kid, BaJie)

Counters: Round 1 damage effects, especially when AoE (Felyn, Reinhardt, Hakuna)

Countered by: Acedia (entirely negates Gillis' kit), Hass (steals Accumulation stacks); true damage (e.g. Mihawk, Digo)

Summary: Strong alpha strike mage-assassin with expensive, but decent, cards.

Analysis: Gillis, like many heroes, is defined by her passive effects. On entering a fight, for the first round she is almost entirely immune to damage (99% damage reduction), and each time she's attacked (hit or miss) she gains a percentage of the attacker's AP as Accumulation stacks. In the second round she converts all her Accumulation stacks into AP for one attack. Between her naturally high AP, high gold generation and potential for substantial AP, this second round attack will usually do significant damage, in many cases one-shotting enemies.

Once past the second round Gillis becomes vanilla in fights; however, thanks to Charm's gold generation she'll usually have a lot of money and equipment, allowing her to continue putting out solid damage numbers. Alongside this, she also bears one of the stronger initiation cards of the game.

Thanks to the combination of screening for her team in round 1, massive alpha strike damage round 2, and some good cards, Gillis is a strong all-round pick who can provide some pseudo-tank for an otherwise squishy team. She becomes less impactful alongside actual tanks, whose higher Presence reduces her chances of taking attacks in round 1; the flip side is that once her initial effect wears off she'll need tanks around to keep her alive long enough to use her Charm/kill gold.

Cards:
Choose any hero (friend or foe) and move them 1 hex.

A versatile movement card, though very expensive for what it does. You'll usually want to use Hypnosis to set up for an Enchanting Invitation, either bringing in reinforcements or isolating enemies; to that end, the mastery choice to search it out is very useful. Only play this if it's necessary to secure kills, though, as it's very expensive otherwise. Note that the art for this card shows a bat; Gillis is clearly some kind of demon (presumably a succubus), which have no associations with bats, and there aren't any heroes in the game associated with bats either (unless you count Qube or maybe Babe's chest sigil). This implies Gillis just randomly hypnotises bats for fun.

Initiate a fight with all heroes within 2 hexes of Gillis with a 4 round duration. After the fight, all surviving participants move to Gillis' hex.

A solid initiation card, boasting both improved range and duration over the vanilla version. Its main drawback is being specifically centred on Gillis herself, which can lead to difficulties in isolating targets; Hypnosis is usually the best answer to these problems. The post-fight movement is also surprisingly helpful in the early game, as it helps to group your team up to protect them from counter-engages on your opponent's turn and encourages your team to recall to reset their health. Remember you can Hypnosis your own team as well as enemies.

Target a hero (friend or foe) to give them the Charm effect. While this effect lasts, any time the target gains gold, Gillis gains the same amount of gold.

Expensive, but can lead to massive gold gains to secure a substantial economic lead for your team (or more specifically, for Gillis). Given the cost, I strongly recommend you don't just play this whenever it enters your hand - 4 SP is simply too much for five turns of farming income. Instead, you should play this alongside other gold generation cards such as Kid's Amnesty, or immediately before an objective fight targeting whoever you think will get the most kills. You should generally avoid playing this on enemy heroes for this reason (you don't really want to manipulate them into getting more gold), although it can be a useful bail-out tool if you're losing fights.

Interactions:
Acedia - Important to note that Acedia hard counters Gillis in fights; putting Gillis to sleep entirely negates her round 1 damage soaking, which in turn also negates her round 2 burst.

True damage / targeted damage - A much softer counter is to draft heroes who you can either have specifically target other heroes (e.g. Nihil, Lubos) or, failing that, at least damage Gillis through her damage reduction (e.g. Digo). Neither of these entirely resolves the problem, of course, but they will at least help to mitigate it.

Gold generation - As noted above, any cards which generate gold can have their effects functionally doubled through use of Gillis' Charm. Most notable are Kid's Amnesty, BaJie's Cache and Acedia's Alarm Clock.

Got a really nice new item in the Archmage Hat, which is generally a bit too pricey to be a universal pick but works nicely with Gillis' Charm-accelerated economy. Her Variants are hit-and-miss, but none are dealbreakers.


Changed - In the first round first two rounds Gillis gains 99% 40% damage reduction. When attacked gains 75% 40% of the attacker's AP as Accumulation stacks.

This Variant does make Gillis a fair bit weaker - she loses enough damage reduction to be potentially focussed down, and her mastery choices only cover her for the first round. The extra round of coverage can be useful if you're running a full squishy comp, though.


Removed - When attacked in the first round, Gillis gains 75% of the attacker's AP as Accumulation stacks, increasing her AP for her next hit.

Gained - When attacked in the first round, Gillis gains 35% of the attacker's AP as Enchantment stacks, increasing her AP for all attacks from round 2 onwards.

This one, on the other hand, is VERY strong. She loses the single huge hit, but instead gains almost half as much AP for the entire duration of a fight. Obviously this is good for late game objective fights, but really you'll see the benefit in any fight lasting 4 rounds or more. I wonder how long Enchanting Invasion lasts...

v3.1 Updates: Fixed an embarassing error that had true damage in the 'counters' rather than the 'countered by' column. Sure is a good thing nobody actually reads this thing, or that might have been awkward. Otherwise tweaked things.

Item build: Usually Mage. If the right items are around you can create a strong tweaked Gillis build - Glorious Shield gives her a big Presence boost which will wear off after she takes hits, Golden Ticket will help keep her from dropping any lower, expensive things like Ultimate Iron Fist and Archmage Hat can be affordable for her - but she'll work just fine with a standard Mage loadout in the absence of those things.

Reserve Tactics: Teleporting for Support can give you a better Enchanting Invasion without having to pay the SP for Hypnosis; failing that, Quick Recall is always handy. If you don't have too expensive of a build, you can run things like Resource Sacrifice and then rely on Charm to make up the numbers. Clash, while generally underwhelming, can clean up after an Enchanting Invasion since everyone moves to your hex and you'll be all but immune for the duration.

Funnelling: Generally no. Her cards are too expensive to want to play frequently, and she gets plenty of gold to bolster her statline. Could do worse, but usually can do better.

Rejected gags:
Okay, sure, she's a murderous demon with a penchant for bat abuse. You can't deny though, she's got some great colour coordination.

Look at her hips on Charm's artwork. How the hell does she even get into those clothes, let alone out of them?

I smack with tree. Gun? No! No sword, no spear, no gun. SMACK WITH TREE! - Hakuna

Name: Hakuna

Position: Top / Jungle

Role: Tank

Mastery choices:
Furious Charge distance increases by 1 / Furious Charge damage increases by 10% of the target's max health

Itemisation: Tank

Synergies: Reinhardt (big first attack)

Counters: None

Countered by: None

Summary: Fairly generic tank with a very good initiation.

Analysis: Hakuna matata is a wonderful phrase ...Let me start again.
Hakuna is a generic tank whose only unique attribute in a fight comes with his first attack. When Hakuna makes his first attack of a fight, you can choose the target; that attack then deals an additional 16/20% of the target's max health (pre-mitigation) damage, with 50/60% of that amount being dealt to all other enemies.

While this hit is fairly hefty, Hakuna otherwise being a tank means it's not going to be able to really burst down any targets; instead its best usage is simply to take a chunk out of a tank's health. This approach deals the most damage possible, both to the target and to their teammates. Unfortunately, after this point Hakuna becomes an entirely vanilla tank - he doesn't even get the bonus Presence several other tanks get to help do their jobs better.

Hakuna's main role outside of 'generic tank' is initiation with a view to tower pushing. He has access to arguably the best initiation card in the game for starting big teamfights; alongside this, his other cards provide bonus damage to towers as well as some decent chip damage to heroes.

While this initiation power has some value from the jungle, the rest of Hakuna's kit is simply too weak to recommend. I therefore consider him to slot into a fairly narrow niche - he's a decent pick in the jungle if you have a very teamfight-centric comp. Otherwise, pick someone better.

Cards:
Choose an enemy tower and deal 2 damage to it. Removed when played.

Doesn't exist in Hakuna's deck as standard, and is instead generated by kills from Dominant Onslaught; that's good, because it would be a pretty inefficient draw. As it is, it's free tower damage.






Start a fight involving all heroes within 3 hexes of Hakuna, 5 round duration. For each enemy hero killed, generate one Plunder card in hand.

Fantastic teamfight initiation, you can usually start a 3v3 or 4v4 without any real difficulty. The five round duration means you're likely to be able to secure kills without too much trouble as well, and doing so will generate bonus tower damage via Plunder. The main downside is that the range is so long that you can struggle to find a numbers advantage, so if you fall behind to the point that you can't win teamfights it becomes useless.


Target an enemy hero within 1 hex of Hakuna and move both him and the target 2 hexes in a chosen direction. On arrival, attack all enemy heroes and towers within 1 hex. Heroes take 10% of their max health as additional damage, while turrets take 1 damage.

Rather awkward to use due to the range of the movement, but is probably your best bet for lining up a good Dominant Onslaught. The tower damage is very low, so avoid using it for that purpose - if you want tower damage you're better off setting up a good initiation to generate Plunders. Bear in mind you can't play this if the movement would take you off the map - it doesn't just stop when you hit a wall.

Interactions:
Nothing particularly major; has some minor synergy with Reinhardt due to his round 1 armour shred allowing for maximising Hakuna's special attack damage, and generally slots nicely into an Alpha Strike comp.

No particularly big changes; his Variants just shift things around a bit without really increasing or decreasing overall power.


Changed - Special attack deals bonus damage equal to 16% 26% of the target's hp and deals half one quarter damage to all other enemy units.

Hit the one target harder and the others a little weaker. Works out to an overall buff - the team-wide damage goes from AP + 8% target hp to AP + 6.5% target hp, which isn't too much of a loss, while the target gets chunked significantly harder. This is most noticeable in skirmishes, where Hakuna becomes much more effective at securing kills. On the other hand, he's not really the kind of hero you draft for a skirmish game.


Changed - Special attack deals bonus damage equal to 16% of the target's hp and deals half one quarter damage to all other enemy units.

Gained - Special attack ignores armour.

Honestly this barely makes a difference. It does push you towards targeting tanks, but you were usually going to do that anyway, so who really cares?

v3.1 Updates: A few minor tweaks, nothing notable. Does have some better team synergy now Chen has arrived and brought his boat.

Item build: One Slap Chap. Hakuna is basically the definition of the archetype - so you might want an item built to work off his single hit, but aside from that he's a tank through and through.

Reserve Tactics: A reasonably cheap movement card - Skillful Roaming, Teleporting for Support - can be useful to set up a lopsided fight given the radius of his initiation. Alternatively, tower-pushing cards can help to capitalise on a good fight win alongside Plunder.

Funnelling: No. His cards are only really there for initiation, and that's all he's good for too. Even if you want to funnel a tank, pick one that actually uses the stats.

Rejected gags:
This man skinned a bear and didn't even bother to wipe the snot from its nose before putting it on. You have to assume he didn't clean it either. He's fighting with bear brains slowly trickling down his forehead.

Who's a good boy then? Who's a good boy? Is it you? Yes, it's you. You're a good b- HEY! STOP EATING MY SP! BAD DOG!

Name: Kaka

Position: Jungle / Mid

Role: Mage

Mastery choices:
When Stone Curse has at least 2 tokens, Stone Hound gains 30 armour / When Stone Curse has at least 2 tokens it reduces SP by 1 instead of 2

Lurk movement range increases by 1 / Lurk cost reduces by 1

Stone Curse provides an extra 20 AP and 60 x Kaka's level max health / Stone Curse provides an extra 40 AP and 25 x Kaka's level max health

Itemisation: Mage

Synergies: Search/discard effects

Counters: None

Countered by: None

Summary: Very weak mage with an expensive pet.

Analysis: Kaka is... well, unfortunately Kaka is kinda caca.

The principle behind him isn't terrible. Kaka has a pet/summon called Stone Hound which can be moved independently of him, which shreds armour on entering a fight, and which can have its stats buffed over the course of a game. Unfortunately the implementation is absolutely terrible; unlike his counterpart Wild Heart, Kaka will drop dead if Stone Hound dies even if he's on the other side of the battlefield, and Stone Hound has no offensive scaling besides that which is given to him by card effect.

What's worse is that instead of being a card you can play, for some inexplicable reason Stone Curse cannot be played and instead takes effect when it enters your hand, reducing your SP at the same time. This can completely ruin your carefully laid plans to line up your SP with the round an objective fight starts, which in turn can basically throw entire games. You can at least cheat the system by searching Curse into your hand at 0 SP, which will give you the token for "free".

Kaka's other cards are nothing to write home about either, essentially consisting of moving the Stone Hound around. Lacking any other passive effects, Kaka himself is purely vanilla with mage itemisation. The Stone Hound, on the other hand, is not very effective at dealing damage (due to having no innate scaling along with no crit or itemisation), but can do an okay job of soaking damage (until he dies and takes Kaka with him, of course).

Overall, Kaka brings nothing much to the table. He's a vanilla mage with a mediocre blocker who kills him as often as he saves him, has weak (and numerous) cards, and can completely wreck your strategies. Avoid at all costs.

Cards:
Target a monster or enemy hero within 2 hexes, move Stone Hound to that hex. It then attacks all enemies and monsters within 1 hex, always hitting heroes. After being played, is replaced with Callback, a 0 cost card which returns Stone Hound to Kaka and becomes Blood Scent again.

The closest thing Kaka gets to a decent card, it can provide some harass and counter-jungling power at the expense of 2 SP and splitting the two of them up. While, like Lurk, this can allow Kaka more coverage, it also makes it more likely that you'll be fighting with half a hero but all of the risk. Still, it's about the best you've got so you may as well play it.

Move Stone Hound 1 hex, then search Wild Hunt into your hand.

Very meh. Even for 0 cost via masteries, it's an extremely low impact card which clogs up your deck. Its uses are to leave the Stone Hound by a lane to help protect it while Kaka farms (which brings the attendant risk of death for Kaka), and as a cheap way to move for a Wild Hunt setup.





When this card enters your hand, lose 2 SP and gain a token. For each token, Stone Hound gains 80 AP and 300 max health. If discarded during a Deployment Phase, it returns to the deck.

The signature card of Kaka's deck, it bears the baffling design of functionally being worse than automatically played. Not only does it chew up your SP when you draw it, which can ruin your plans entirely, it doesn't even leave your hand when it does so, making it incredibly hard to spam without access to one of the very few discard effects in the game. Regarding the armour mastery, which has unclear wording - it only adds 30 armour once, when the card reaches 2 tokens, rather than changing Stone Curse to also give 30 armour. Also note that although there is an achievement for getting Stone Hound to 'max size' (i.e. 5 tokens), this only refers to the size of the model; stats will continue to grow even after that point.

Choose an enemy hero within 2 hexes of Stone Hound; Stone Hound moves to them, then initiates a standard 3 round 1 hex fight.

Good range and relatively cheap, but you're paying for those benefits by only getting half a hero out of Kaka unless you happen to be attacking someone very close to him. Unless you're packing other movement effects or your target has been poked down pretty severely, this will not secure kills easily.




Interactions:
Search-and-discard - About the only thing Kaka has going for him is Stone Hound, so if you've insisted on drafting him for some inexplicable reason, you're going to need search effects to find Stone Curse so that he isn't dying instantly in every fight; searching it out also means it'll be in your hand rather than your deck, so you're not going to get screwed out of SP at an inopportune time. If you really want to double down (and again, I don't recommend doing so), draft a discard effect as well, so you can get Stone Curse out of hand to then find it again. Paisai is notable for having both a discard and a search effect.

Sweet, huge update, hero reworks, surely they'll make Kaka playable right? Oh... oh wait, no. Just one Variant which barely changes anything and a new hero who absolutely dumpsters him. Poor dude.


Removed - Stone Hound shreds 10 armour from all enemies at the start of a fight.

Gained - Stone Hound shreds 15 armour per attack, applied before the attack lands.

Really makes barely any difference. In theory should help with Kaka's intended playstyle of map-wide skirmishing since it makes picking off individual targets easier, but it doesn't do anything to resolve his deal-breaking problems.

v3.1 Updates: Absolutely no changes, Kaka was garbage before and is garbage now.

Item build: Mage. A GA effect (Phoenix Feather or Dissonance) will stop him from imploding if the Stone Hound is killed (provided he's in the fight), but really you're expending half the item's budget on half-heartedly duct taping over the gaping crack in Kaka's hero design.

Reserve Tactics: Rethink will let you discard Stone Curse, as will Perfect Tempo. Assuming you're okay with burning a Reserve Tactic on the single worst hero in the game, that is.

Funnelling: If you're really desperate to make Kaka work, funnelling is about the only way to do it. Don't bother with bonus stats - he gets absolutely no scaling beyond the vanilla mage - but drafting discards, searches, and tailoring your Tactics cards to thin your deck out is your best bet. You'll wind up with a comp that looks something like:
Frank [only two cards and you need a frontline]
Kaka
Xiangxi Ke [Discard effects]
Omaha [Only two cards and you may as well swarm the field since you're banning Foso anyway]
Paisai [Discard and seach] or failing that Qin Hu [Discard and unreliable search, limited by charges]

It still won't be good, but at least you'll have a comp that has frontline, decent damage and a good setup for buffing up the Hound so Kaka isn't instakilled every fight.

Rejected gags:
Stound Hound is a stupid name, it's more of a descriptor. I think I'll instead name it... Titi, after lake Titicaca.

Don't worry Titi. Maybe in DLC 3 they'll actually remember to make me playable.

I am the master of the blade. I strike swiftly and with a suddenness which- what? A sword? Of course not. Swords are for pansies[en.wikipedia.org]. - Kamaitachi

Name: Kamaitachi

Position: Jungle / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices:
Immediately gain two stacks of his passive on entering a fight / Hayate draws an additional card



Gain an additional 3.5 AP and 17.5 max health per level / Gain an additional 1.5 AP and 38.5 max health per level

When Meisou discards at least 5 cards, draw 2 additional cards / When Meisou discards at least 3 cards, draw 1 additional card

Itemisation: Fighter/Multi-Hitter

Synergies: Anything with bonus attacks

Counters: Anything with bonus attacks

Countered by: Anything which punishes bonus attacks, notably Felicity, Crank, and to a lesser extent Merisi

Summary: Multi-attacking Fighter who can put out chunky damage in fights.

Analysis: Kamaitachi is a versatile and high-damage Fighter who can fit into virtually any team comp by virtue of having only one string to his bow - he attacks, and he attacks often. On the field, every time 5 cards enter your discard pile he takes a swing at an enemy within 1 hex; in fights, he attacks once for every 5 actions taken by any hero, friend or foe (though for only 75% damage). Note that while I class him as a Fighter, the game considers him an Assassin (despite him having no tools to actually assassinate anything), giving him higher AP growth and lower health growth than others fitting the Fighter archetype.

This effect leaves Kamaitachi in the position of being useful in almost any team simply because of his damage output. In a big 5v5 teamfight he's guaranteed to get two free swings off at a minimum, along with his own, giving him a total of 250% AP damage per round (for context, Bunu Shan does 240% per round, albeit with a lot more AP). This gives him fantastic scaling with both AP and crit. On the field, meanwhile, he attacks based on cards entering your discard - so if he's in position he'll be taking swings even if you don't play any of his cards.

The only real weakness Kamaitachi has is that self-same scaling. As a Fighter reliant on attacks to be relevant, shutting him down with ganks, counterjungling etc. has a higher effect on him than it does other heroes; a crippled Kamaitachi can't put out any damage worth talking about, nor can he take more than a couple of blows before falling. Given that this is a weakness shared by pretty much all Fighters, it's telling that it's only worth pointing out for Kamaitachi - you expect so much more from him. It's also worth bearing in mind that he has no innate Initiation tools, so if you're playing him from the jungle you'll probably want to draft another initiator.

One final benefit to note about Kamaitachi is his discard-oriented cards. Usually these won't be all that relevant, but if you find yourself playing with heroes that like discard effects (Xiangxi Ke, Kaka) or heroes with bad cards (Big Foot) you get some extra benefit in separating the chaff from your hand.

Cards:
Discard all cards to the left of Meisou when played, then draw an equal number of cards. Starts with 3 tokens and loses one when played; removed when no tokens remain.

Meisou is used for the dual purposes of resetting your hand if you don't like your cards, and for triggering Kamaitachi's passive to get a free swing off or two. Generally its efficacy is dependent on your draft - the more heroes you have with bad cards, the more you'll want to use this. If you drafted several heroes with bad cards, therefore, you'll want to be a little more wary of using Meisou for the damage - unlike a lot of token-based cards, there's no way to refill tokens once they're spent, so you'll want to be careful of wasting them.

Choose an enemy hero (globally) and attack them, then discard two cards. If you trigger your passive from this effect, attack again (for a total of three attacks).

Probably Kamaitachi's weakest card, simply because all it provides is attacks. It's important to bear in mind that unlike his other two cards, Jin doesn't draw - make sure you're happy to discard your two rightmost cards when you play it. Note also that (in English at least) the description is wrong - it states 'return to original hex at the end of the round', which should in fact be on Hayate's description since Jin doesn't involve movement at all.

Move to an enemy hero's hex, then attack all enemies within 1 hex. Then discard two cards and draw two cards. Return to original hex at the end of the round.

A much more playable card than Jin thanks to drawing cards to replace the discarded ones, as well as moving to a target's hex. You'll often want to play this early to ensure Kamaitachi is in position to use his passive attacks as you play cards, even if you're not intending to make a play with him.



Interactions:
Fuggen everything - Since combat in this game is very simplified and pretty much entirely based on attacks and buffs/debuffs, it's inevitable that a lot of heroes will have effects which either provide additional attacks or effects which trigger on attack. There are, therefore, a lot of heroes who interact with Kamaitachi, depending on which team they're on. About the closest you get to a counter, though, is Crank - if he can apply his debuff to Kamaitachi early, he'll start eating damage multiple times per round.

Felicity - Move over Crank, Felicity is here to really screw over the multi-attackers. Unlike Crank there's no random targeting to worry about, and every instance of damage is going to stack that passive up. Do not take Kamaitachi into Felicity, ever.

In keeping with the general theme of 'the rich get richer', Kamaitachi is a big winner of the update. Not only did he get some nice new itemisation in Acceleration Coil and Helium Canister, but both his variants are good. Strong before, stronger after.


Changed - On the field Kamaitachi attacks an enemy within 1 hex for every 5 6 of your cards entering the discard pile.

Changed - In fights, after every 5 6 actions Kamaitachi gets a bonus attack dealing 75% 120% damage.

A sizeable improvement in fights - you're going from 15% damage per action to 20%. For best results itemise heavy AP instead of on-hit items. You do lose a little bit of field power, but not much overall (you'll usually see 1-2 procs per deployment phase either way). Jungle Kamaitachi remains the superior model.


Changed - On the field Kamaitachi attacks an enemy within 1 hex for every 5 4 of your cards entering the discard pile.

Changed - In fights, after every 5 4 actions Kamaitachi gets a bonus attack dealing 75% 55% damage.

By contrast, a small nerf in fights (going from 15% damage per action to 13.75%) in exchange for a sizeable jump in field power. You can potentially play around this heavily on the field for some nasty out-of-fight murder builds; either way, though, this makes Kamaitachi incredible as a partner for Bunu Shan. If you're able to build on-hit equipment (especially Acceleration Coil) you can actually wind up gaining damage in fights, too. Mid lane Kamaitachi steals the crown due to usually being in position to smack something.

v3.1 Updates: Some tweaks to note the Assassin stat growth and herald Felicity's arrival to finally give him a counter.

Item build: Multi-hitter. Probably the iconic multi-hitter for the game, you want anything that triggers off attacks on Kamaitachi, pronto. Acceleration Coil and Ghost Claw are the premium picks.

Reserve Tactics: Grab an Initiation card (any of them) since he has none of his own, at least assuming you're taking him in jungle. Perfect Tempo can let him get a parting shot off even in lane, though Rethink should probably be avoided since it's overlapping with Meisou.

Funnelling: Not so much on his cards, but definitely throw stats his way. Lots of attacks means lots of opportunities to make gifted AP matter, and being melee (with Assassin health gain) means bonus health can keep him alive under fire.

Rejected gags:
For a long time I'd assumed his hat was just designed that way because it was the closest they could get to a conical hat[en.wikipedia.org], but his portrait doesn't match up. I think he might just be wearing a wicker basket on his head.

Despite the name, there were always four musketeers rather than three. Unfortunately, the other three didn't like Lubos very much, forcing him to find alternative employment.

Name: Lubos

Position: Jungle

Role: Assassin / Fighter

Mastery choices: None

Itemisation: Assassin / Fighter

Synergies: Targeted attacks (Xiangxi Ke, Nihil, Leon)

Counters: None

Countered by: Anna

Summary: Unimpressive alpha strike Assassin/Fighter.

Analysis: Lubos is an extremely underwhelming melee who can be built as either an Assassin or Fighter. His entire kit is invested in a single ability - when entering a fight, he replaces his first attack (doesn't get a standard attack in the first round, unlike Reinhardt) with a targeted strike which deals (with masteries) 160% normal damage, ignores 30 armour, and shreds 25 armour from the target.

This single attack is very strong in and of itself, primarily because the armour shred lasts for the duration of the entire fight; unfortunately, it's literally everything Lubos brings to the table. He has no other effects, so once the first round has passed he's purely vanilla. This means that while the game tags him as an Assassin, he's actually better off being built as a Fighter unless you're basing your strategy around lots of small skirmishes - in larger engagements, you're better off building him to soak a few hits rather than trying to build entirely around a single attack.

Lubos' only other claim to fame is having the only example in the entire game of an initiation card with no round limit on it. These tools aren't enough to make him worth picking, unfortunately (it's of limited use starting a fight with no round limit when it's a fight you're unlikely to win from a level playing field), so Lubos should generally be avoided.

Lubos has, at least, gained a solid synergistic pick in DLC 2 hero Leon. Both are able to target a specific enemy hero in fights; Leon's weakness is his low damage output, while Lubos' is that he hits reasonably hard, but only once before losing his targeting. The two working together are able to single out and kill a specific squishy target quickly, at least so long as Brand stacks match up, and while this isn't enough to make Lubos a good pick it does at least create niche comp potential.

Cards:
Target an ally. For six rounds, if the targeted ally fights, Lubos will fight whether he's in range or not. Doesn't apply to special teamfights.

Really not a good card. It is at least global, but that's really not enough to justify dropping 2 SP ensuring one of the weaker heroes in the game participates in a fight; 2 SP is much, if not all, of your pre-initiation budget. You can also use this pre-emptively to head off a gank you can see coming, but even then this is still pretty meh.



Initiate a fight with an enemy within 1 hex and all other heroes within 1 hex. Lasts until Lubos or his target dies.

Unique, as the only initiation card in the game (besides objective-based initiation cards) with no round limitation. Other than that it's pretty generic as a one hex, 6 SP initiation; the guarantee of a kill happening at some point is nice, but has a nasty tendency to mean missed kills when your target dies prematurely.



Interactions:
Targeted attacks - Thanks to his special attack striking whatever you tell it to, you can sometimes deal enough damage to make a specific enemy hero the lowest health target. This lets you pick a specific target for heroes like Nihil and Xiangxi Ke to go after - and the armour shred will help them finish the job. New arrival Leon is perhaps the best choice for this, though you'll need to be careful to send Lubos after whoever has the most Brand stacks.

Lady Deadfire - Notable for giving up to 3x damage from a single attack; the combination of Lubos and Lady Deadfire can instakill a squishy target before the fight really starts. This is probably the only reason to build Lubos as an assassin rather than a Fighter.

Itemisation really didn't help Lubos at all, but his Variants are both potential upgrades in the right comp. The update wasn't enough to push him higher on the tier list (sorry to the commenters who insist he's good), but it does open up more comps where he can actually be useful.


Removed - Lubos' special attack deals 135% damage and removes 15 armour.

Gained - Lubos' special attack always crits.

Depending on itemisation this can often wind up being a substantial nerf - base crit damage is only 150%, and the armour shred is useful for follow-up. If your current version has some nice crit damage boosting gear, though, you can build Lubos up to be a nasty instakill assassin, especially if you can lean on a lane to keep one target weak. Very snowbally.


Changed - Lubos' special attack deals 135% 75% damage and removes 15 25 armour.

Generally a buff as well, despite the sizeable damage reduction - under normal circumstances Lubos isn't going to be one-shotting anything and so will always be relying on follow-up from other heroes. Shredding an extra 10 armour will usually make up the damage difference inside 1-2 attacks, so you're much more likely to see that targeted enemy fall over by the end of the fight. Also helps Lubos win Duels against health-stacking enemies like Frank.

v3.1 Updates: Some slight tweaks as a result of Leon showing up. There's definitely comp potential for Lubos now (at least, ones that don't involve drafting a full team of squishies), but he's still not a good general purpose pick, nor those specific comps good enough to pull him out of trash tier.

You'd think Anna would be great for Lubos, especially since what little lore the devs give indicate the two of them are linked - but for some reason they decided to make Anna's passive go off after Lubos'. He also has a nasty tendency towards Lan syndrome, where he shows up and does 80% of the damage but a teammate picks up the kill, so getting Rosemary on him is a real pain.

Item build: Bruiser / Assassin. You'll only want to build him Assassin under specific circumstances, those being when version/itemisation strongly encourages it or when you've got a comp built around exploding one target immediately. Otherwise just take your first turn armour shred and make the best of it.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing much. Maybe a Probe Attack to help spam quick, efficient Duels, or a Watch This since Duel should generally give you a kill unless something goes horribly wrong.

Funnelling: No. Only two cards, one of which is barely worth playing. Pouring stats into a one pump chump isn't efficient in the slightest.

Rejected gags:
People seem to think I'm biased against Lubos - I see more comments complaining about my treatment of him than anyone else. I can assure you, I don't hate him just because he looks French. I also hate him because of his smug smirk, his underperformance in virtually every game I've played him in, and how weirdly flat his hat is.

Fish fish fish! - Fizz[leagueoflegends.fandom.com] Manta

Name: Manta

Position: Jungle / Mid

Role: Assassin / Fighter

Mastery choices:
Undercurrent gains tokens while in hand / Undercurrent grants an additional 2% AP per token

Wave Assault grants an additional token to Undercurrent for each attack made / Wave Assault's range is increased by 1

Trident of Radiance gains 1 range and can crit / Gain 10% crit chance

Itemisation: Fighter or Assassin; Assassin generally synergizes better with his kit.

Synergies: Dylan (crit boost)

Counters: Bart (crit immunity bypass), armour-heavy tanks (true damage)

Countered by: None

Summary: True damage critting melee who primarily hunts isolated tanks.

Analysis: Manta rejoices in the unique effect that makes his crits deal true damage, bypassing all damage reduction effects and even ignoring immunity to crits (Bart cowers in fear). He also gains 25% crit rate innately, with another 10% from masteries and increased by another 25% if there's only one enemy hero in the fight.

All of this puts Manta in a slightly awkward position, itemisation-wise. He wants to primarily be hunting isolated targets (as Undercurrent can't work unless the target is isolated and he gains the crit bonus) and wants to build at least a decent amount of crit, which pushes him towards the Assassin route; meanwhile, the fact that his crits inflict true damage makes him want to be hitting tanks, which inclines him to more of a Fighter build.

The general use-case for Manta is to take him mid into a squishy mid-laner you want to lean on to weaken for teamfights; he's a great pick into something like a Cubey or Dylan mid lane to keep them out of the way and their cards out of hand. He can also play into lane bullies like Qube and Justice since his isolation crit gives him a major leg-up in the 1v1.

You can take Manta in the jungle too, but this is more of a niche situation because he struggles with bot lane ganks (which are a jungler's bread-and-butter). In this case he's more suited for leaning into top lane ganks, using his crit boost to bring down bruisers and tanks in the 2v1. It's unusual that you'll have a top laner that needs shutting down like this, but if the AI decides to draft a top lane Cubey or swaps Felyn up there into a tank it may be necessary.

Cards:
While not in your hand, gains 1 token per round. When played, targets an enemy within 2 hexes that has no nearby allies and starts a fight, during which Manta gains 4% bonus AP for each token.

Very much an assassination initiation rather than a normal one due to the single target restriction; this makes for quite an awkward-to-use card since frequently your desired target won't be available through simple pathing. What's more, the token system it uses ensures that you won't get as much benefit from spamming it, reducing its potential even more. Its main purpose is to give you a cheap way of starting a 1v1 in lane, along with the bonus AP to win it.

Choose a direction and attack all monsters, enemy heroes and towers in that direction, dealing 2 damage to towers and causing pushback on heroes struck.

Very much designed for laning, you need the stars to align nicely for you to get a good line-up from the jungle (or to manipulate your SP by taking short turns, at any rate). From the jungle this is best used for counterjungling; if Manta's ganking is going to be restricted by Undercurrent's awkwardness, you may as well hold back the enemy jungler to stop them scaling as well. Note that if your Manta happens to push under the mid tower you can double dip, which is nice.

Target an enemy hero within 2 hexes. Manta and any allies within 1 hex of the target attack it.

Expensive for what it does, which is generally get a maximum of 3 attacks off (and frequently less than that). Once again an awkward card, you'll usually want to play this in bot lane to get your money's worth, but bot lane is the lane Manta usually can't gank. The main use for this, rather than the attacks themselves, is to stack more tokens on Undercurrent (via masteries) to allow for a more effective solo kill, and it's absurdly expensive for that purpose when the entire point of Undercurrent is to be cheap.

Interactions:
Dylan - While very few heroes have any particular synergy with Manta, Dylan's unique ability to grant crit chance and damage to an ally via Strengthening Potion can help tremendously to give Manta reliability.

Bart - What beats crit immunity? Crit immunity immunity!

Anna - Cheap, brutal 1v1 kills are Manta's byword, and Anna is a great support for aiding skirmishes. Her free armour will make sure you come out on top of your early 1v1s, and the bonus AP from Rosemary will then help secure later ones - to the point of being able to use Mandala Flower as a bootleg Undercurrent. Alternatively, Mandala Flower also lets a jungle Manta grab a gank in bot lane without having to draft in Reserve Tactics.

No particular benefit from the new itemisation - even less so than others, in fact, since several of them provide armour penetration which Manta doesn't care about at all. His Variants are a little weird, but generally strengthen him slightly.


Removed - Manta gains 25% crit chance when only one enemy unit remains.

Gained - Manta gains 10% crit chance on killing an enemy hero, to a maximum of 30%.

This Variant makes Manta much stronger - that bonus crit is permanent and goes a long way towards helping him attain his goal of 100% crit. It is of course dependent on Manta getting the kills, which can be awkward when teammates finish off wounded enemies... but fortunately you have an initiation card specifically designed for 1v1s against isolated enemies. Moves Manta up the tier list by almost a full tier since he can now treat teamfights like 1v1s and act like a scarier Aurelio in general.


Removed - Manta gains 25% crit chance when only one enemy unit remains.

Changed - Manta has 25% 50% increased crit chance.

Gained - After each attack Manta loses 15% crit chance for the rest of the fight, stacking up to three times.

A major downgrade. Hypothetically makes Manta better at early game ganking from the jungle, but in practice means he gets a tiny bit better at the bot lane ganks he's not designed for and much worse at the 1v1 kills he's supposed to be getting. Don't pick Manta with this Variant active.

v3.1 Updates: Reworked his entry to reflect my new view that mid Manta is the way forward. Also tweaked his Variant entries to note that Variant 1 is A tier bordering on S, while Variant 2 is Lubos-tier (i.e. 'can sometimes get a few nice kills to trick you into thinking he's not garbage').

Item build: Assassin. You want to be bringing Manta to murder mid lane over and over (I now realise), so you want to itemise for that. Build exactly enough crit to get to 100% on isolated targets (so 40% or 50% depending on mastery level) then AP after that. Remember his crits deal true damage, so armour pen is pointless.

Reserve Tactics: If you're going with a jungle Manta, bring an Initiation card so you can gank bot (he's bad at it, but sometimes all you need is a warm wet slimy body). For mid Manta, while nothing is necessary, Watch This with a good lane matchup can basically just give you a free kill off Undercurrent.

Funnelling: Probably not. Undercurrent is designed to deter you from playing it too often, and the rest of his cards are kinda garbage. Meanwhile, weakened performance in teamfights makes stat investment less efficient, though you may rethink this if Variant 1 is in effect.

Rejected gags:
The styling on that headband makes me think he doesn't actually have an angler fish style light naturally and it's just the underwater equivalent of a miner's helmet.

Mo' bounties, mo' problems - Mo

Name: Mo

Position: Jungle

Role: Fighter / Assassin

Mastery choices: None

Itemisation: Fighter

Synergies: Kid (bounty generation)

Counters: Charon, Enidi (bounty generation)

Countered by: None

Summary: Very meta-dependent Fighter who can become incredibly powerful with the right ruleset.

Analysis: Mo is entirely defined by bounties. At the start of the game he adds 50 bounty to every enemy hero, an effect which is repeated after each dragon fight. Additionally, whenever Mo claims bounty gold he increases his AP by 50% of that amount; he also gains 33% of the bounty gold if he assists in a bounty kill but doesn't secure the kill himself.

In a vacuum, this leaves Mo to fill a fairly unimpressive Fighter role; he'll usually get a modest sum of AP from his generated bounties (depending on how many dragon fights are in the current ruleset), but no more than that. On the other hand, paired with or against heroes which generate additional bounties, he can get some very substantial amounts of AP under his belt. If you happen to be in a meta with the ruleset 'heroes gain 5 bounty per round', Mo suddenly becomes pick-or-ban material.

While the game characterises him as an Assassin (with an Assassin's stat growth), Mo is much better built as a Fighter; if you're picking him, it's probably into an environment where he can stack up substantial bounty gold, giving him both a gold lead and substantial bonus AP. Given he has no way to specifically target an enemy, he's better off getting the survivability to keep taking chunky swings than investing further into damage which may well be wasted. This is in spite of having an additional passive effect to allow him to take a free always-hitting attack at an enemy ranged hero that attacks him once per fight.

To conclude, Mo will underperform unless picked into the right team and the right meta; under good circumstances, however, he can and will take over games.

Cards:
Target an enemy hero within 2 hexes; move to their hex and then attack them. If it hits, gain half the target's bounty.

Pretty much just used to claim bounties; without that effect this is a very overpriced card. Unfortunately weakened by needing to hit in order to function; this means that if you're picking a specific hero to give bounties to, you should target ones who are easier to hit.




Target an enemy hero within 2/3 hexes; fight (standard duration 3 range 1). During the fight, all enemy heroes with bounties take 30% increased damage.

Solid initiation card, bearing the normal cost but with very good range and a chunky 30% damage increase debuff. Thanks to Mo's innate granted bounties this should usually apply to every participating enemy unless you're camping a lane; you'll usually want to avoid doing so regardless because Mo wants to wander around hoovering up bounties.



Until the end of this round, Mo participates in all fights.

Unique in that this card has no restrictions, meaning that it applies to objective fights, unlike every other example of this effect. This is of limited relevance, however, due to the single round duration and the fact that Mo is restricted to the jungle role, which participates in the vast majority of objective fights anyway. It is, at least, very cheap (free with masteries and enough bounties), and due to lasting for one round rather than the Deployment Phase can be used to head off enemy ganks if you're on blue side.

Interactions:
Bounty generation - As has been stated (okay, beaten into the ground) above, all bounty generation works nicely for Mo. Kid's Conviction is the most readily applicable, but both Charon and Enidi have cards which apply bounties to friendly heroes (making Mo a mild counter to them).

The update winds up giving Mo a lot of very small benefits - some marginally better Variants and a nice expensive beatstick item to synergise with his bonus bounty claims. Not enough to shift him up the tier list, though.


Changed - At the beginning of the game and every time Dragon respawns enemy heroes gain 50 100 bounty.

Gained - In fights, Mo's bonus attack against ranged enemies removes 10 armour.

Works out to being a general buff. While you no longer get extra bounties over the course of the game, the extra 50 from round 1 makes Mo much more effective at snowballing which can easily make up for it if he claims even one of them in full. The armour reduction, meanwhile, is fairly low impact but hey - free shred is free shred.


Removed - At the beginning of the game and every time Dragon respawns enemy heroes gain 50 bounty.

Gained - Enemy heroes always have at least 50 bounty.

This meanwhile is a buff so long as Mo is claiming bounties at any reasonable rate - you're not having to wait on Dragons, nor roam around to different lanes. No more awkward moments when your laners kill their opponents without Mo's involvement, either. You can even camp a lane and still claim bounties! Overall makes Mo much more flexible in his approach, which is a sizeable benefit.

v3.1 Updates: Mo No changes at all, my analysis stands.

Item build: Bruiser. As noted above, he's a beatstick with a good source of free AP and just the one extra attack (that might not even go off). You're better off itemising to keep that bonus AP in the fight rather than adding more on top.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing really, he already has a good initiation. If you really insist on taking some kind of Mo-related Tactic, taking a Field Hit bonus like Aggressive can help avoid those depressing moments when you whiff a 500+ gold bounty claim off Death From Above.

Funnelling: Not worth. He only has one card really worth playing often, and that's pretty expensive. He already gets free stats, too. You must have better options.

Rejected gags:
He doesn't actually have a scar. It's leftover makeup from his secret hobby - cosplaying[finalfantasy.fandom.com] Final[finalfantasy.fandom.com] Fantasy[finalfantasy.fandom.com] characters[finalfantasy.fandom.com].

Okay, let's see here. Katana, check. Unnecessarily bare torso, check. Red eyes, check. Grimdark effect names, check. Confirmed, we've got an edgelord here. Sound the edgelord alarm.

Name: Nihil

Position: Top / Jungle / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices:
Gain 3 stacks of Killing Intent when hitting an attack during a fight / While in Crimson form, gain 2 stacks of Killing Intent at the end of each round in a fight for damaged enemy heroes rather than 1

Killing Intent provides 50% more armour penetration / Ghost Cloak provides 5 more armour per stack

Itemisation: Fighter

Synergies: Targeted assassins

Counters: None

Countered by: Hass (steals Ghost Cloak)

Summary: Versatile Fighter shifting between assassination potential and durability.

Analysis: Nihil is a Fighter with a lot of moving parts which can make him a little tricky to understand. The central mechanic of his kit is Killing Intent, a passive which gains stacks periodically - he gains 2 stacks when dealing damage or killing monsters with card effects on the field provided he's above 60% health (if below he heals instead), and also gains one stack at the end of each round of combat for each hero (friend or foe) that was damaged that round.

Killing Intent has two effects based on Nihil's current form; he changes form based on his current health, Crimson if at 60% health or above, Azure if below 60%. While in Crimson form he automatically targets the lowest health enemy and gains armour penetration equal to 100/150% of his Killing Intent stacks; while in Azure form he instead gains 75% of his Killing Intent stacks as percentage Lifesteal. Finally, at the end of a fight he consumes all his Killing Intent stacks

Notably, Nihil also has only 10 base armour. In return for this he has a second passive, Ghost Cloak, which is only active in fights and which gives him 10/15 armour per stack, gaining one stack at the start of combat and at the end of each round to a max of five.

The overall effect of this is to make Nihil extremely flexible as his status shifts depending on the situation. In smaller skirmishes and in the early stages of a fight he uses Crimson to target enemy squishies, and while his base damage isn't incredible he will at least cut through a chunk of their armour; during this period he's fairly squishy (you'll want to get the bonus armour mastery for this reason). As the fight goes on he grows progressively tankier thanks to Ghost Cloak, eventually arriving at 85 armour (with masteries), comparable to a low grade tank - and when he's taken a few hits he'll shift to Azure form and use the Killing Intent stacks he's accrued to start lifestealing instead. Between his stacking armour and lifesteal he can become very difficult to shift, this coinciding with the point of the fight when your other frontline units are dying and he starts taking more focus as a result.

Due to his ability to get some chip damage onto enemy carries while still performing a durable frontline Fighter role, Nihil is a solid pick who can be flexed between all three solo positions. Note however that you shouldn't expect miracles from him - he will hit carries like an assassin, and he will be quite durable like a tank, but he won't perform either role like a dedicated hero. He's not going to kill an ADC alone, nor is he going to soak several rounds of full focus; what he will do is provide solid damage output on key targets while also being more durable than most Fighters.

You should, therefore, consider Nihil a safe and versatile pick, but not a priority one. Either take him as a blind pick if you're looking to counter what your opponent is doing, or save him as a fall-back pick if your priority picks are banned out. He has no real counters, so he can be grabbed in any situation - the one downside is that his cards are both overpriced and numerous at 4 total copies.

Cards:
While this card is in hand, whenever you play one of Nihil's cards it gains a token; loses all tokens at the end of the round. Costs 1 less for each token. When played, start a fight with a hero within 1 hex (1 hex participation range, 3 round duration). Nihil gains 3 stacks of Killing Intent for each token.

Rather overcomplicated for what amounts to a vanilla initiation; the token system is basically a discount for playing his otherwise overly-expensive cards. The bonus stacks are so low impact as to be borderline irrelevant, so just treat this like a standard Initiation card.


Nihil moves 1 hex, then attacks all enemy heroes in both his starting hex and the one he moved to.

Awkwardly short range for the cost, you'll be lucky to get more than one attack off with this; nonetheless it's more likely to be useful in lane where you're at least near-guaranteed to have something to hit with it. Can be used to get in range for Deathmatch, and thanks to the discount from tokens you'll functionally be playing 1 SP to do so.



Target a hex 1 hex away from Nihil. He attacks all monsters and enemy heroes in a fan-shaped area in that direction (the targeted hex, his own hex, and the two to either side of it).

Again quite expensive for what it does. You'll get most value out of this from using it to counter-jungle; happily you can do that from lane, especially if you happen to have lost your turret already. Otherwise you're paying 2 SP to clear a couple of monsters and maybe slap an enemy if you're lucky.



Interactions:
Targeted assassins - Due to his low-health targeting in Crimson form, Nihil can act as damage support for targeted assassins like Xiangxi Ke. He doesn't have enough damage to kill targets on his own, but he certainly has enough to supplement their damage to make kills more likely.

No massive changes. His Variant is pretty good though.


Removed - If Nihil is in Crimson form in fights he prioritises attacking the lowest health enemy.

Gained - If Nihil is in Crimson form in fights he gains 4 AP per stack of Killing Intent.

Generally a solid buff - Nihil lacks the damage to straight up assassinate anything, so targeting the weakest enemy was always a bit unimpressive. This Variant instead gifts him with some tasty extra damage so he can contribute more when the enemy is ignoring him. Note that this does remove his synergy with certain heroes (Xiangxi Ke, Lubos) - but really, you weren't going to run them anyway.

v3.1 Updates: No major changes, though did notice his Variant's entry had him gaining 3 AP rather than 4 per stack - unsure if that's my error or if he got a tiny buff for some reason. He drops in the tier lists simply because he's just a bruiser (albeit very bruiser), lacking sufficient identity to be the optimal choice in many comps.

Item build: Bruiser. Nihil is the quintessential bruiser, dealing passable damage and being extremely hard to shift. You should itemise him as such - enough defences to avoid him falling over before Ghost Cloak stacks up, and enough damage that keeping him around actually does something.

Reserve Tactics: If you really like Nihil, keeping a Focus card in your support's back pocket is valuable because aside from Deathmatch his cards are pretty garbage.

Funnelling: Middling. You don't want to search his cards - they suck - but throwing him extra stats can have value since he's unlikely to die easily.

Rejected gags:
For someone whose mechanics are all about red and blue, that's an awfully brown-grey colour palette he's working with there.

Like any good cavalryman, the centaur Reinhardt charges enemy lines in the optimal way - entirely parallel to the line, then returning to the front to fight normally. Alternate gag - I'm holding out for Reinhardt 2 - Reinhardter.

Name: Reinhardt

Position: Top / Jungle

Role: Fighter / Tank

Mastery choices:
Supersonic costs 1 less and can move 1 more hex / Supersonic searches 1 more card

Reinhardt's special attack inflicts 10 more armour reduction / Reinhardt's special attack hits ranged units as well as melee ones



Reinhardt's bonus damage to ranged enemies increases to 50% / Gain 35 health per level and 1 Presence

Itemisation: One Slap Chap

Synergies: Lan, Felyn (round 1 armour reduction); alpha strike comps

Counters: None

Countered by: None

Summary: Strong defensive Fighter with mild offensive and support capability.

Analysis: Reinhardt is a tanky Fighter who brings a bit of everything. He has good defensive base stats along with being melee, which lets him function fairly well as a tank; he also has an effect which causes him to make a single special attack on entering a fight, striking all enemy melee (or all units, with masteries) and reducing their armour for one round, which makes him good in smaller skirmishes. On top of that, he has some good utility cards, and a passive which causes him to deal 30/50% damage to a ranged unit when he attacks a melee.

All of these added together let him fill several roles in a team depending on what you want him to do. He can work as an initiation tank, in which case he'll primarily be drafted for his cheap initiation and armour shred attack; he can also function as a pseudo-support, healing and searching cards for a carry. His best role, however, is to built as a Fighter with maybe one defensive item; this allows him to use all the parts of his kit effectively, and particularly his passive damage spreading onto ranged units.

While Reinhardt has no actual counters as such, he's best picked into teams with at least one backline carry and at least one pure tank. This is because his passive does nothing if he's actually hitting a ranged unit, nor if the enemy have no ranged units at all. An enemy tank is likely to have some external Presence, either from items or masteries, which makes it much more likely Reinhardt will hit them (and thus also get damage on the backline at the same time).

Note that he can function just as well in top lane and jungle; personally I feel top is the better choice because the full-map travel distance can give you a secondary initiation method, but find I just can't justify the hero pool slot on my top laner. It's much easier to find room for him in your jungle pool. Regardless, either can work, particularly as cards are generally global.

Cards:
Target an enemy hero (global) and attack them. This attack always hits and heals all allies within 1 hex for 250% of the damage dealt.

Another good reason to build at least some damage, this card is pretty solid as a pre-initiation tool to heal up your team and poke down an enemy. While not usually a priority card, between global range and always hitting it's a good way of dumping excess SP. I usually find myself playing this just to snipe a low health target after a fight.



Choose an enemy hero in a straight line from Reinhardt; initiate a standard 3 round fight (1 round participation range). Reinhardt's special attack in this fight deals 10% more damage for each hex Reinhardt moved to reach his target.

A little underwhelming, primarily because it's very awkward to get a good line-up on an enemy hero and the payoff is just a standard 3/1 initiation. That said, it's very cheap for an initiation card; the bonus damage is rarely enough to be relevant.


Choose an allied hero. They move 2 hexes, then search one of their cards into hand.

A decent utility card, but very expensive for what it does (mostly because the game seems to hugely overvalue movement). Its best use is often to line Reinhardt up for a charge (he can target himself and with the mastery to draw two cards instead of one, will always draw Cavalry Charge). As a search card it's decent but not incredible due to the cost; bear in mind that the target has to move at least one hex, which can cause some awkwardness for heroes like Felyn.

Interactions:
Alpha Strike - Reinhardt's special attack shreds a solid amount of armour in round 1. This is beneficial for heroes who dump a lot of damage in round 1 - Felyn and Lan most notably, but also Lubos, Ada etc. With the addition of Chen Fengcheng there's a lot more opportunity to build a comp around bit first round damage, though note that unfortunately Chen's attack happens before Reinhardt's so you don't get the armour shred on it.

Funnelling - Supersonic's search functionality combines nicely with heroes who want to be funnelled. Felyn and Cubey are the two obvious examples.

Something of a loser in the update overall - he didn't really see much itemisation he likes and his Variants are unimpressive due to pushing him towards itemising damage. Having said that, you're mostly drafting him for his cards, so his position in tier lists doesn't change.


Changed - Reinhardt's special attack shreds 25 10 armour for one round.

Changed - When hitting a melee enemy Reinhardt also deals 30% 35% damage to a random enemy ranged unit.

Barely changes anything. The loss of some armour shred for the first round might in theory weaken his skirmish game, but in practice the extension of duration makes up for it within 3 rounds. Between the extended duration and the slight boost to his pierce damage, his objective game does get a lot stronger though.


Changed - Reinhardt's special attack shreds 25 armour for one round ignores 45 armour.

Changed - When hitting a melee enemy Reinhardt also deals 30% 40% damage to a random enemy ranged unit.

A slight nerf. These changes push you towards building damage on Reinhardt, which is precisely what you don't want to do - he's not going to deal damage worth a poop either way, so you're better off bulking him up. Meh.

v3.1 Updates: Updated mastery choices as I've greatly changed in my view. Otherwise tweaked his entry, most notably around his position - he feels better in top lane, but good luck finding a spot for him in the incredibly bloated top lane hero pool.

Item build: One slap chap. Like Hakuna, he shows up, blows his load and then hangs around not doing a lot. Itemising for his pierce damage is a mistake, since he's never going to do much damage on his attacks either way and it hurts when he decides to just hit a ranged unit anyway.

Reserve Tactics: Not much. You can maybe justify bringing in a movement card to line up Cavalry Charge, but half the reason that card is good is it's so cheap, so dropping SP lining it up is a bit counterproductive.

Funnelling: No. He's there to search cards for you, not get them searched, and he doesn't use bonus stats well enough.

Rejected gags:
The point of a joust is to unseat your opponent, Reinhardt. Being a centaur is cheating.

I really thought that was face paint, but given the different eye colour, I think that might actually be a bizarre cybernetic eye-implant-thing on his face. Apparently centaurs have sci fi technology. And yet still fight using sharpened sticks.

Yarr, I be a pirate! I got me hair over one eye like an eyepatch, and I got me... uh... katana... and I got me... Uh... Okay, fine, I'm not a pirate. I just wanted to look cool and different. Is that so wrong? - Xiangxi Ke

Name: Xiangxi Ke

Position: Jungle / Mid

Role: Assassin

Mastery choices: None

Itemisation: Assassin

Synergies: Other forced-target effects, particularly Lubos

Counters: Low health backline carries

Countered by: A lack thereof

Summary: Unimpressive assassin who can focus low health targets. Sometimes.

Analysis: Xiangxi Ke is a pirate ninja assassin girl cosplaying as a pirate-ninja-assassin whose playstyle is defined by her The Reaper buff. So long as she has at least one stack of this buff, her attacks in fights automatically target the lowest health enemy, expending a stack in the process. She acquires stacks by discarding her Old Time card, of which there are two in her deck (with masteries).

The trouble is, that's basically all she does. When an enemy dies she gets an immediate free attack on the lowest health enemy with a 25% damage buff (doesn't use a Reaper stack), but this isn't really enough to make all that much difference, and besides her targeting she's otherwise a vanilla assassin. She's extremely squishy, and so effectively pins her hopes on being able to take out a critical target before she inevitably dies herself (which, in fairness, is pretty much what a MOBA assassin does).

Her other distinguishing feature is her discard effects; Old Time needs to be discarded to do anything, and her other two cards require her to discard a card to play them. This makes her one of very few heroes in the game with an at-will discard, which can be of some value to comps which want to search a specific unplayable card repeatedly (but you almost never want to do that, and even if you do, Paisai has a discard effect and is actually decent).

The overall result is that Xiangxi Ke simply isn't good enough to be worth drafting unless you have a very specific reason to do so. She performs her role, but not particularly effectively, nor are her cards particularly noteworthy. Look elsewhere unless you absolutely need a consistent backline targeter in your lineup. Has some small synergy with Leon thanks to his ability to force-target backliines, which can help get Xiangxi Ke to hit the things you actually want her to target instead of spending the first three rounds beating down a random support.

Cards:
Has no effect and can't be played. When discarded, Xiangxi Ke gains a stack of The Reaper.

A weirdly awkward card unless you're actively discarding it - since you can't play it to get rid of it, it just clutters up your hand until it's discarded due to hand size, at which point you draw another card for no real benefit. On the other hand, if you discard it with a card effect it self-cycles, putting you in the same position as if you hadn't drawn it - except you had to play a discard effect which was probably pretty underwhelming. Something of a catch-22. Either way, sooner or later this'll hit the discard and give you a stack of The Reaper.

Discard a card to play. Target a hex within 2 hexes in a straight line. Xiangxi Ke moves to that hex and starts a fight with all heroes within 1 hex, standard 3 round duration.

Pretty much a vanilla initiation card; it has a slightly better range, but you have to discard a card for the privilege. The main benefit to playing this card over a more generic alternative is that it targets a hex rather than a hero; this can help you to pick out the specific heroes you want involved in the fight. Still pretty unimpressive, though.


Discard a card to play. Target a hex within 2 hexes in a straight line. Xiangxi Ke moves to that hex, then attacks all monsters and enemy heroes within 1 hex.

Somewhat awkward, but reasonably priced for what it does. You'll primarily want to use this to counterjungle since otherwise you're paying 2 SP for a couple of hits, which is only barely worth it.





Interactions:
Forced targeting - In a vacuum, Xiangxi Ke's low health targeting accomplishes very little. To actually get some value out of it you need to deal enough damage to that target to kill them in a reasonable timeframe, and the best way to do that is to focus them. Bringing multiple forced-target or AoE attacks at once will hopefully allow Xiangxi Ke to pick off the weakest enemy and then start a chain reaction using her passive to greater effect. This is most notably useful with Lubos, as his armour shred helps Xiangxi Ke to secure kills and his special attack deals enough damage to usually allow you to pick which squishy you want to focus down.

Some small wins for the pirate wannabe - she finds some use for the new itemisation (armour penetration is definitely tasty for assassins), and her second Variant is very strong. Might actually be worth playing when her second Variant is active.


Changed - Xiangxi Ke's extra attack procs whenever an enemy any unit dies, dealing 125% 80% damage.

Generally a nerf - in theory you can get more value out of this since it'll proc more often, but in practice if anyone on your team is going to fall over it's usually the glass cannon melee. Arguably makes no difference because she was underwhelming before and is underwhelming after.


Changed - Xiangxi Ke's extra attack deals 125% 100% damage.

Gained - Xiangxi Ke gains 4% bonus damage for each stack of The Reaper.

By contrast, this is a BIG buff. Losing a little bit of damage on the bonus attack does reduce your snowball potential in fights, but not by much - the damage gained from The Reaper stacks balances it out. More importantly, gaining a sizeable damage boost from the stacks that make you target vulnerable enemies greatly enhances Xiangxi Ke's ability to kill off a weakened target quickly, which is her entire raison d'etre. If you see this Variant come up, seriously consider teaching your jungler to play her.

v3.1 Updates: Some minor tweaks since Leon has showed up to make everything more complicated.

Item build: Assassin. She's there to stab low health targets, and she only has a limited number of stacks to do it. Make them count.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing much. You could grab a discard effect like Rethink to dump Old Time, but Reaper is the sort of thing you build up over the course of the game rather than prioritising and has an upper effective limit. Well worth doing if you've got Variant 2 active, though.

Funnelling: Pretty good, actually, on both counts. Tutoring her cards lets you pull Old Time and throw it away repeatedly, more AP lets her cut down her target, and more health gives you the optimistic hope of her surviving more than one hit from an ADC.

Rejected gags:
If she actually looked like she does in her Old Time artwork I'd be so much more into the character. Just an angy kid with a stick beating down adults with guns. I'd try so hard to make that work.

Her hair being over the wrong eye in Blitz's artwork makes me so sad. And before you say it, no it's not just flipped - compare the eye makeup in the artwork to her portrait. Maybe she just has a really indecisive stylist.

Here I am trying to come up with dumb jokes for this entry and the whole time she's giving me the side-eye from the archive screen. I KNOW I'M NOT FUNNY BUT I'M TRYING OKAY LEAVE ME ALONE

One day, Zealot was discussing amongst itself which was the best of them. 'I'm the original' said Zealot, 'so clearly I'm the best.' 'Yes, but I was the first clone' said Clone #1. 'Without me, you'd be nothing.' 'But I get all the kills' said Clone #2, 'you soften them up, but I finish them off'. At this point Bond, who'd overheard the conversation, chimed in. 'You're all Zealot' he said, 'so you're all equally important'. To this, Zealot replied simply 'bugger me, a talking monkey!'.

Name: Zealot

Position: Top / Jungle

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices:
Gain an extra 2.25 AP and 30 health per level / Gain an extra 3 AP and 22.5 health per level

Gain an additional 1 armour per level / Levels and gold grant 85% effectiveness instead of 75%

Itemisation: Fighter. Avoid Presence (he really doesn't need more focus) and crit.

Synergies: Buffs (triple effect)

Counters: None

Countered by: AoE

Summary: Very potent triple hero, very high cap but vulnerable to being nuked.

Analysis: Zealot is, simply put, three heroes in one. When its gets into a fight, two clones show up with the same stats as Zealot and all three fight for you. This is obviously pretty great - three attacks per round! - but it does also have its drawbacks; Zealot is very prone to taking an excess of damage in fights simply because there's more of it to hit. It also only gets 75/85% scaling from levels and gold, so its stats are naturally slightly lower than other Fighters - and while this isn't an issue for AP due to having three bodies, it is problematic on the health front because all three Zealots share the same health bar.

This cloning effect makes Zealot one of the best heroes in the game to target for buffs. The clones will receive any buffs Zealot itself receives, and being naturally somewhat vulnerable to incoming damage, health is extremely welcome; AP's effectiveness is, of course, tripled. On top of this, it has one of the most effective set of ganking cards in the game, making it one of the premium junglers in the game.

When itemising Zealot you should be careful to identify items which it will use to full effectiveness. Any passive effect on an item will only be given to Zealot, not to its clones; only the stats will be shared. Zealot's clones also don't receive any crit chance or crit damage effects, making crit entirely redundant. While the clones do receive Presence, this should be avoided because Zealot already has issues with being focussed - adding Presence to all three Zealot instances is going to make it soak the vast majority of hits, leading to it falling over very quickly. On the other hand, any effect which improves Zealot's AP, health and armour will be shared by the clones provided it works before the fight; any effect which happens during the fight will only be received by Zealot itself.

As a result of its relative vulnerability, Zealot is not a good generic pick. If you want a jungler to operate without assistance and be self-sufficient, look elsewhere. If you're able to supply it with buffs, on the other hand, Zealot becomes one of (if not the) best junglers in the game; it buffs well, ganks well, and therefore snowballs very quickly.

Cards:
Target a hero or turret within 2 hexes. Zealot moves to that hex and attacks three times, healing for 15% of its max health for each hit. Then search Code: Engage to your hand.

A very strong card, particularly because (if you're doing it right) you'll be giving Zealot plenty of bonus AP and health. For just 1 SP you're getting 2 hexes of movement, three attacks, healing a chunk and searching your initiation card into hand. One of the rare cases of adding an extra card to your deck being a very good thing.


Zealot moves up to 2 hexes and kills all monsters within 1 hex, gaining 50% bonus gold and experience from them.

Unfortunately very expensive for what it does, 4 SP is far too much to spend on speeding up farming your own jungle, particularly as Zealot gets reduced effectiveness from gold and levels. You should only play this when you can use it to steal a substantial chunk of the enemy's jungle so that you're starving them as well as boosting Zealot.



Start a fight with an enemy within 1 hex. 1 hex participation range, 3 round duration.

Entirely generic initiation other than its reduced cost of 4; nonetheless a fairly effective one simply because the cost reduction lets you poke the target down first. Being searched by Code: Assimilation is the real clincher, since you get a nice natural progression of poke -> engage. That said, if you've got a better initiation card from somewhere feel free to use it, since this is otherwise vanilla.


Interactions:
Buffs - As has hopefully been made clear, Zealot is a great buff target due to getting triple AP scaling and needing health to keep itself alive. Your main buffers are, as always, Beverly and Dylan. Also note that any buff effect which gives a bonus outside of a fight but expires after one attack is particularly effective on Zealot, because the clones will retain the bonus for the entire duration of the fight - this is most notable with Crank's Spectral Weapon and Bunu Shan's Wrath.

AoE - By contrast, AoE can really mess Zealot up. Even just the relatively low grade AoE of Reinhardt plus Hakuna can be enough to chunk Zealot out and leave him vulnerable to incoming attacks - avoid picking him into Niels or Enidi wherever possible since he'll functionally be taking triple damage from them.

Multi Attacker - As a hero who effectively attacks three times, Zealot interacts with all the various heroes who function on a per-action basis (Kamaitachi, Merisi etc.)

One of the few strong heroes that didn't get stronger with the update. He didn't gain anything much from the new itemisation, and his Variant makes next to no difference if you're using Zealot the way you should be (i.e. the way I told you to because I'm a double-triple-super-genius). He didn't lose anything directly, of course... but now there's a hero who counters him so hard you basically lose the game on the spot if you screw up the draft. Good times.


Changed - Levels and gold only have 75% 15% effect on Zealot's max health.

Removed - Zealot and his clones always share health.

On paper something of a mixed bag; the reduction in health makes Zealot more likely to die to any kind of sizeable hit, but on the other hand, he won't die if his clones do (and they'll keep fighting if he goes down). In practice this really doesn't do much at all because if you're drafting Zealot it's because you're planning to 'roid him up with Beverly/Dylan/etc anyway, so you won't really notice anything at all besides a bit more staying power in long fights. The main downside is that this weakens Zealot's snowball potential, particularly in versions with high gold income or low equipment cost - once you've got your equipments, kill gold does much less for him. Does at least make him more reliable since if one falls over the others stay standing for a while.

v3.1 Updates: No real changes. He's the same as he always was; 3.1 gave him some minor protection from one-slappers via Anna, but you're going to be drafting a buff support so that doesn't matter much. He's also vulnerable to Chen's boat, but not enough for it to be a counterpick.

Item build: Special case. Again, Zealot wants raw stats that work before the fight starts. If an item gives them, great, he gets three items for the price of one. If not, he's paying for item passives that he doesn't use as well as others thanks to his weakened gold scaling. A short, non-exhaustive list of solid Zealot items:

Cheap but surprisingly effective items: Dirty Little Pistol, Little Lightning, Farming Bell

Stat sticks: Inherent Shield (terrible item generally, but better than most for him), Link Line (Presence counteracted by the clones each counting separately for armour gain), Double-Layered Armour (Cheap and always active on clones), Glorious shield (ONLY while Variant is active because the clones will keep the Presence and soak hits for the original when he falls low), Giant Warhammer (buff your buffs), Fearless Headband, Big Guy Vest (third item only), Hundred ATK Sword (if you want to pay 1000 gold more for a Dirty Little Pistol)

Only good if combined: Gravity Converter & Limitless Chip (the crit isn't shared, but the stats are great and he should have a lot of health from buffs)

Reserve Tactics: Nothing. Zealot is the complete package.

Funnelling: Yes. Tutoring his cards is fine since they're generally good. Buffs are important - don't play Zealot unless you're drafting a support to bolster his statline.

Rejected gags:
I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about this game, but I have absolutely idea what the hell is going on with Zealot. What even are they? Why are they called Zealot? Do they hold particularly strong beliefs? Are they even sapient? Biological? I have no clue.

Code: Engage's artwork is in fact a promotional poster from the only tour ever performed by short-lived post-punk band Zealot & The Clones.

Sorry guys, the Batman reference is just too easy. I can't resist. Because, you see... HE IS THE NIGHT. ...At least I avoided the Rick and Morty reference.

Name: Raven

Position: Jungle / Mid

Role: Assassin

Mastery Choices: Gain 1 extra stack of Abyss when entering Objective Fights or the Final Fight / Restore all feathers when you have 3 feathers left. Gain an additional 2 AP per level.

Gain an additional 2% crit damage per level / Gain 1 extra stack of Abyss when entering Objective Fights or the Final Fight.

Itemisation: Armour penetration and damage.

Synergies: Movement effects.

Counters: Squishy solo laners, especially Niels.

Countered by: Anything with a lot of armour, being forced into fights.

Summary: Very feast-or-famine snowballing assassin.

Analysis: Raven is an extremely awkward hero to use. He has awkward cards, awkward positioning, an awkward passive, nothing about him is intuitive. Despite this however he merits a high placing in the tier lists for the simple reason that IF you can get him to work he becomes incredibly dominant and will destroy teams with ease. He's much like Lan in this regard - assassins who require a lot of investment but who will return that investment tenfold if things go right.

The first thing to understand about Raven his is feathers. He starts the game with one feather for each direction (so six total since the game is hex-based - maths is fun!). Two of his cards consume feathers; additionally, if he is moved due to a card effect (including forced movement from enemy cards), and if there's an enemy in an adjacent hex and if Raven is still in possession of the feather for that enemy's direction, he will consume that feather to attack them. You only get feathers back when you've spent several of them(3 or 4 depending on mastery).

While this is all irritatingly complex, what you have to realise to play Raven well is that the feathers don't really matter - what matters is spending them. This is because for each feather expended he gains an Abyss stack, and these are where his power really lies. When entering fights Raven gains two additional Abyss stacks; each of his attacks (only in fights, not on the field) will ignore 4 armour per stack and then remove one stack. Importantly, if that attack ignores all of the target's armour that attack will automatically crit. Also importantly, the mastery granting Abyss 1 extra armour pen seems buggy (at least he seems to sometimes fail to penetrate targets he should be able to).

Your goal to make Raven work is twofold. Firstly, you want to build up a lot of Abyss stacks. You'll primarily do this by moving him around, but small skirmishes will also help - since you gain two stacks on entering a fight, if he only attacks once during that fight he comes out ahead. Secondly, once you've got a lot of Abyss stacks you want to give him a lot of AP - pretty much every attack he throws from that point will be dealing true damage and auto-critting, so gaining AP has a big impact on his actual damage output. If you can successfully complete both steps, you'll wind up with a Raven who can happily chunk tanks and one-shot squishies.

Importantly however, without reaching that critical mass of Abyss stacks, Raven is pretty much trash. He'll just swing ineffectually and then go down fast. For this reason, you shouldn't draft Raven unless you plan on playing around him or he'll be nothing but a liability. He is at least much less all-or-nothing than Lan is - Abyss stacks don't wear off other than through attacking so you can take your time building them, and once you've got plenty you can happily throw some attention towards other heroes.

In summary, Raven winds up being a version of Lan who does even less early on, but who's paradoxically less of a pain to manage SP-wise and becomes more reliable when fully online. Like all assassins though, be wary of drafting him against better teams - glass cannons are a lot less effective when they can't reliably hit things.

As an additional note - Raven gains 2 Abyss stacks going into an objective fight even if that fight doesn't happen because the opposing team declines the fight. Good setup for your objective game can give you some easy stacks this way. You should also take care in your itemisation - Dawnlight Cloak, Whip of Obedience and Archmage Hat can all make a big impact on keeping Raven slapping for longer.

Cards:
Pick an enemy hero in a straight line from Raven and expend a feather to initiate a 3-round 0-radius fight.

In keeping with Raven's theme this is quite an awkward card to use - you need to expend a feather to play it, so you can't reposition to play it at close range since every time you do so, the corresponding feather will be consumed. It does come with some bright sides though - it's straight-line but unlimited range so you can make plays from the other side of the map, it consumes a feather while starting a fight (so you go in with 3 extra stacks, guaranteeing you'll at least break even), and it's one of the very few initiations which only pull in heroes from the target's hex, so you can pick off enemy heroes even if the jungler's stood next to them.

Expend a feather to move up to three hexes in that direction.

Simple, though a bit expensive, this does at least have good distance on it and expends at least one feather to try to justify the cost. You'll usually want to be using this to move laterally to set up a Death Claw (i.e. moving northeast so you can initiate southeast etc.), or to jump across the map to join in someone else's initiation. You can also use it to move out of a target's hex (if you're on top of them) to line up a Death Claw without burning the relevant feather.



Move 1 hex, then return this card to your hand and increase its cost by 1. Cost increases reset when Raven gets a kill in a fight.

A bit of a shame this only resets on fight kills - otherwise a fed Raven could just flap around the map throwing death at everything he could find. You'll find yourself most commonly using this to pick up cleanup kills after a fight, unfortunately; alternatively you can just throw it out when you've got the spare SP just to grab some Abyss stacks (provided you're in range to throw a feather at someone, of course). You should try to do so especially when you're anticipating a fight Raven doesn't have to initiate - either because a teammate will do it or because there's an objective fight coming up - since you're likely to get the cost reset anyway. You'll almost never want to play this when it costs 2 or more.

Interactions:
Shred: Raven's crits happen when his armour penetration is greater than the target's armour. The main way you do that is by improving his armour pen via Abyss, but you can also take the inverse route of lowering the target's armour before he attacks. There are a lot of ways to do that, of course, so look for ways of landing targeted, longer-duration shred (e.g. Wukong's Bludgeon Bash) or team-wide shred (e.g. Reinhardt's initial attack).

Move me: Feathers can be expended from card movement, no matter who it comes from; you can therefore try to draft additional movement sources to help Raven to dump his feathers and get those Abyss stacks rolling. Of course, the catch there is that movement cards in this game are almost universally overcosted, and the few that aren't still cost a lot. There are a few notable cards (Reinhardt's Supersonic, Lady Deadfire's Flame Spread) which are worth bearing in mind though (Crank's Swap doesn't count for some reason).

v3.1 Updates: No changes. Anna cucks him pretty hard though. Also note that Raven's strength heavily varies based on the items in your current version - Double-Layered Armour is a ubiquitous tank item that will be virtually impossible to peck through until late into the fight.

Item build: Assassin. Avoid crit - you're working towards your full penetration auto-crits after all. armour penetration is nice, but be wary of indexing too hard into it at the expense of raw AP; crit damage is great if you can get the stacks, awful if you can't.

Reserve Tactics: A movement card of some kind can help you dump feathers when Fly in Night's cost becomes prohibitive. Nothing much else, though.

Funnelling: Probably not. You can tutor his cards with a mind to dumping more feathers, but they're kinda pricey for that. Unlikely to be worth throwing stats his way unless you're really sure you can get the Abyss train rolling.

Rejected gags:
I just realised - Raven doesn't seem to have hands, so he had to pay someone to sew that flag on his archive screen for him. That's absolutely adorable.

Hmm. Wikipedia indicates that corvus species tend to have rounder, straighter beaks with no extant species having a jagged lower section. You know, I'm starting to think this guy might not really be a raven at all.

Some designs are original, some are stolen from other IP. Leon was clearly the product of an emaciated homeless man being kicked through a Hot Topic.

Name: Leon

Position: Top / Jungle

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices: Nightmare Slayer's duration increases by one round / Gain 3 AP per level

Itemisation: Bruiser

Synergies: Targeted or semi-targeted attacks

Counters: Heavy frontlines, Frank, Deep Space

Countered by: None

Summary: Target-selecting bruiser with built-in inevitability.

Analysis:
While there are several heroes in the game that prioritise certain targets, Leon is unique in being the only one who gets to pick his targets for the entire game, before anyone even enters a fight. This is accomplished through the card Eternal Brand, which gives its target a debuff (with, confusingly, the exact same name).

While bearing the debuff, targets will receive stacks every time they're hit by Leon in fights (one stack), on the field (one stack), with Eternal Brand's attack itself (three stacks), or with Terrifying Swing (five stacks per hit). Stacks do nothing in themselves, but represent a threshold - if Leon damages the target while they're below this threshold (not the attack which drops them below), he will instantly kill them and earn 20/35 bonus gold for each stack, then if he's in a fight he gets another attack for free. The stacks are then removed (or halved, if killed using Nightmare Slayer). Incidentally, these stacks clearly aren't stacks of Eternal Brand since the debuff still exists at zero stacks, implying the existence of a third effect - the debuff - also called Eternal Brand. What great design.

Eternal Brand (the card) is generated once at the start of the game, then once again each time an item is equipped by Leon. This leaves you in a slightly awkward position - the whole reason you take Leon is to focus a key target or two, but sooner or later you'll have generated four of these things. You get to choose between risking Leon hitting an irrelevant target or having entirely unplayable cards cluttering your deck, neither of which feels good.

Furthermore, outside of his debuff stacks Leon is just a vanilla bruiser - he has no added damage, nor all that much AP from stat growth. He'll kill a squishy eventually, but it won't be quick. If you actually want to kill a priority target before it can do whatever it is that's making you prioritise them, you'll need to draft some AoE or another targeted effect to expedite the process.

Despite this issue Leon is a strong, if niche, pick in the jungle. He may not kill his targets quickly, but he will kill them sooner or later, and that can matter a lot. Throw in a Felicity, Lubos, Xiangxi Ke etc. and that target won't be a problem for long.

Leon in top lane, on the other hand, is weird. You're forced to Brand your lane opponent for half your kit to function - but, it being top lane, that's probably a tank. Do you want your top laner to accomplish nothing in lane, or do you want him to focus something he might actually kill? Rough choice. Unless it's Frank.

Note: Despite being a debuff, Eternal Brand isn't treated as one for the purposes of debuff removal. It can't be cleansed by Tivie etc., nor can Felicity eat it or Wukong reflect it. I'd say that's necessary for his kit to function, but it's not like they gave that courtesy Crank or similar, so...

Cards:
Initiate a fight with the target with the most Eternal Brand stacks (seems to prioritise order of debuff application in event of a tie). Four round duration, and no 'join fight' effects apply. If Leon kills his target, they only lose half their stacks.

An awful lot of card text for what amounts to a scuffle. Given Leon's bruiser profile, you're not getting the kill here unless you line up a lot of stacks beforehand (which is what the card wants you to do) or you're picking off a weakened target. Thanks to retaining half the stacks, though, you can use this to really abuse a stacked target and generate a nice amount of bonus gold.

Costs 1 SP per Branded hero. Each Branded hero attacks a random hero within 1 hex (friend or foe, can't target themselves). Nightmare Slayer is then added to your hand.

Really terrible card, I have no idea why it's designed this way. Random friend-or-foe targeting means nine times out of ten it'll hit a friendly target; even if it does hit an enemy, they're doing the hitting, not Leon, so you don't get any stacks. Never play this.



Leon attacks all enemies within two hexes, and for each hit, adds an extra four stacks of Eternal Brand (total 5). If there's only one eligible target, attack it twice.

This, on the other hand, is great. The damage itself is going to underwhelm, of course, but if you can isolate a target (and hit twice) that's a cool 30% added to their execute threshold and 350 gold waiting for you to claim. Get a couple of those off and Nightmare Slayer is going to start printing money.



Give an enemy hero the Eternal Brand debuff, then attack them. Single use, start with one copy and generate another every time an equipment is activated.

The card that starts it all. Can't be used on Branded targets, so good luck getting rid of them all. Note the debuff always applies whether the attack hits or not.




Interactions:
Double-dip items: Eternal Brand is created when an equipment is activated rather than purchased; this has the curious effect of making the item Chicken Rib generate an extra copy when it turns into Golden Chicken Rib. Really that just means don't build that item on Leon, because he really doesn't want more Brands.

Frank: Since Leon generates stacks from field hits, he acts as the ultimate counter to Frank - sooner or later, Frank will be unable to play his cards without you executing him. What's more, you remove him from teamfights when he's at his most dangerous. The trade-off is you're having to Brand a tank, and he'll almost always have the most stacks.

Deep Space: Hey look, someone who needs to avoid ever getting hit. Guess who's getting hit every round now? Good thing too, Deep Space really needed another counter.

v3.1 Updates: Added.

Item build: Bruiser. You're going to need enough damage to get your target into execute range, and enough health to survive long enough to get there. Getting gold from stack count means you're disincentivised from building full damage on Leon, but if you're building an assassination comp it might still be worth doing so.

Reserve Tactics: If you're running him in the jungle, bring an Initiation card since all he's got is Nightmare Slayer. You should probably also bring Focus on your support to get rid of your excess Brand card(s). Ditch Mad Whisper too while you're at it.

Funnelling: Not bad, actually. Searching his cards is generally bad, but double-dipping on Terrifying Swing when you're lined up for it is great; bonus stats, on the other hand, help him do exactly what you brought him to do.

Rejected gags:
You just know Leon is that one 40-year-old guy at the student club trying and failing to pick up girls half his age. What a creeper.

Maybe this guy's Babe's villain. He does have a chest emblem after all...

Man, and to think I called Nihil an edgelord. These guys just love to double down on me. I still haven't forgotten the whole Hakuna/Matata thing.

Everyone always brings up the whole snakes with boobs[i.kym-cdn.com] thing. But isn't a snake with hair creepier? Especially with that hairstyle.

Name:Felicity

Position: Top / Jungle / Mid / Support

Role: Support-Mage

Mastery choices: Gain an additional 10 armour / Gain 1 armour per level

Mirage Scales cost reduced by 1 / Happiness damage increased by 5% of target's AP per stack

Itemisation: Debuff Mage

Synergies: None; anti-synergy with allied debuffs, allied shields

Counters: Multi-hitters, debuff cleanses, periodic damage, Deep Space

Countered by: Wukong (debuff reflection)

Summary: Targeted debuff-oriented support-mage

Analysis:
Before I even start - yes, I know she's probably modelled on a Lamia[en.wikipedia.org] rather than just a snake with human features. But that's not funny.

So, Felicity. Her existence in fights revolves around the Happiness debuff (misspelled as Happniess in v3.8 to my amusement), a debuff which she targets at the start of fights, deals damage equal to 15/20% of the target's AP after they take an action, and stacks whenever they deal damage. For clarity on exactly how the debuff works, see the entry further down. Whenever she attacks in fights, meanwhile, she cleanses all debuffs from her target - which is to her benefit, because Happiness can't be cleansed and instead deals damage when you try.

While this is her only contribution to fights, it's a big one. Even with no other mechanics kicking in, the ability to target a dangerous squishy and make them destroy themselves - not even that slowly since the damage is based on their own power - is incredibly powerful. Then you start getting into the underlying mechanics and how it stacks based on damage, not attacks, and you'll realise that we finally have an actual counter to the various multi-hitters that have been dominant in the game since release. Not that that stops them being dominant - the AI bans her all the time for a reason - but at least it's something.

On the field, meanwhile, Felicity has an absurdly powerful card combo to set up a huge, long-lasting teamfight - 8 round 4v4s on her first turn are not uncommon. This is limited-use due to Return to Embrace being token-based, but allows for some massive early game plays; it also provides much-needed support for teamfight comps fighting against skirmishers in allowing you to get a real fight where your comp can work as designed.

While she can be slotted into any role but ADC, the best places to run her are jungle or support. In the jungle she has the best access to big teamfight initiations, as well as using her unusually well-costed mobility to find opportunistic kills. In support, meanwhile, she still provides the debuff you brought her for, and since it's based on the target's AP rather than her own she doesn't suffer too much from a lack of gold. You can also bring her in a solo lane, but her initiation is terrible for 1v1s and she'll find it much harder to find good spots to fight in.

A word of caution however: while Felicity is a very strong hero with a lot going for her, she does not play well with others (ironically). The fact that she eats her own team's debuffs means she's almost as hard a counter to your own team as Wukong is, if you're not careful with your draft; she also dislikes friendly shields since her debuff only stacks if health damage is dealt. She won't fit into every comp, so think of her as something you either first pick or grab late in the draft as a counterpick.

N.B. While Felicity is marked as a melee, has access to melee items and melee stat growth, she has a ranged hero's Presence. It's unclear whether this is a bug or an undocumented feature.

Cards (N.B. Like with Lan, I've reordered the cards from how they appear on the archive screen for my own satisfaction.):

Move one hex, then search for another of Felicity's hero cards and add it to your hand.

Step A. Rejoice, for in a rare show of reasonable thinking the developers decided to give you a cheap movement card. If anything this is undercosted - searching one of your cards is greatly necessary to facilitate your combo. Note that you have to move, there is no same-hex option (hexophobes!) so make sure you're going where you want to go when you play this (and keep it in mind if for some reason you want to search this to play it again instead of just searching the other combo piece).

Every hero (friend or foe) within 2 hexes of Felicity moves to her hex. You gain 1 SP for each hero targeted. Starts with 1 charge and gains 1 every 20 rounds. Note that despite the text saying you can have two charges, the max is in fact 1.

Step B. Now you're in position from Wriggle, it's time to gain an absurd amount of SP while also pulling in every poor idiot who thought he was safe in lane, as well as their families, pets and passing wildlife. Note that the card text is wrong on two counts - not only do you only have 1 max charge (and so should dump it on cooldown to avoid waste), but your targets don't actually need to move to give you SP - even if they're already on your hex, you still get paid. Can be used as an SP refill even if you don't feel the need to follow it up, but that's probably a waste.

Costs 2 SP plus one more for each hero in Felicity's hex. Initiate a fight with all heroes on Felicity's hex, with round count equal to the number of participants.

Step C. Payoff. Everyone's grouped up, so it's time to get a big ol' teamfight going. Assuming you're playing this off Return to Embrace (and that's usually the only time you'll play it), the fight is going to go on until one team is dead, so expect blood. Note that you could make this playable in lane with the cost reduction mastery (which would make it a cheaper Confrontation), but doing so means you miss out on a chunk of the debuff damage which is the entire reason you brought Felicity in the first place.

Target hero (friend or foe) has all buffs and debuffs removed. If you targeted an enemy they attack themselves once.

Step 2: ???[en.wikipedia.org]. The black sheep of Felicity's card family, this doesn't interact with your other cards at all, instead just providing minor utility (or overpriced poke). You'll usually find yourself leaving this card unplayed, as its best application is to remove expensive or fight-turning buffs (e.g. I Am Justice, Traveler's Blessing) or indefinite duration debuffs (e.g. Death Finger). Note that in line with Felicity's theme, this card causes a self-attack and so can deal surprisingly good damage if targeting an enemy squishy. Further note: buff removal does not include shields. Targeting, for example, Traveler's Blessing, will result in the buff component being removed while the shield will remain (subject to the target's self-attack).

Interactions:
Multi-hitters: Yep, you heard right, they have a counter now. Every instance of damage will add stacks, every action will cause damage. Kamaitachi quakes in fear.

Damaging items/debuffs: Again, it's every damage instance. Acceleration Coil, Lightning Mark, Frozen Stiff - any source of damage will stack up the debuff. Note that while these effects stack the debuff, it only triggers when the target takes an action or the debuff is cleansed.

v3.1 Updates: Added.

Item build: Mage/Support/Tank. Felicity can support a wide range of items. From the jungle you'll probably want to bring some AP items so she's got a chance of succeeding in ganks. In any role you'll want any good items which synergise with periodic damage ticks (i.e. Terror Anthology). For a support Felicity (or a jungle one if you have a high damage team) you'll probably want to lean into tank items thereafter since your debuff vanishes if she dies.

Reserve Tactics: For jungling, bring an initiation card since hers is virtually impossible to use well without some weird Deployment Phases; alternatively, a movement card can let you use Mirage Scales for ganks, but they're generally overpriced.

Funnelling: Generally no. Her combo requires a token on Return to Embrace, which is going to limit you a lot more than finding her cards (especially since you have a built-in tutor). Her debuff is entirely agnostic to her own stats, and that's all her power, so don't bother.

Rejected gags:
Forehead? Fivehead? At this point we're going to need to go into powers of ten to describe that hairline.

Frankly I'm disappointed they patched the Happniess typo. It kinda fit her, feeling like she wanted to create and/or manipulate human happiness without actually understanding it fully. Forever in my memory.

Is it me, or is Blessing's card art kind of... uh, vaginal? No? Just me then. Okay.

Happiness and Attack mechanics:
Since Happiness is a little weird in how it operates, I've opted to put the full description here rather than in the main entry. I'll also list points regarding Felicity's cleanse mechanic. I'm listing the points as bullets, both to make them easier to read and (far more importantly) easier to write.

- Damage is dealt before the target actually takes their action, and can kill them before they act.
- Target gains stacks whenever damage is dealt. Damage absorbed by shields does not count as damage being dealt. Damage from debuffs does.
- Damage from the debuff is based on the target's current AP - very unusually for this game, the debuff damage updates dynamically as the target's AP changes.
- Debuff triggers from any action the target takes, even if the target doesn't deal damage with that action. This can even include pre-fight actions provided Felicity's debuff application is before them in the action order (e.g. Anna's first round armour is an action and will trigger Happiness).
- Debuff damage does count as Felicity's damage for the purposes of mechanics like Lifesteal.
- The target needs to actually take their action for the debuff to trigger. Stunned targets don't take actions and so won't trigger the debuff damage.

- Felicity cleanses debuffs on her target after she attacks them, but before any additional effects from that attack. This means her debuff damage will occur after her attack's damage, and means that if Felicity's attack bears any other debuffs (e.g. Tiger Boy's Double Trouble) they'll be applied without being cleansed.
- Only effects applied by the heroes themselves count as cleansable debuffs. Debuffs from items (e.g. Terror Anthology) will not be cleansed.

S Tier: Heroes that can be safely blind-picked, with no real counters, strong cards and which counter some heroes; or heroes that have the potential to completely take over a game in the right comp

A Tier: Solid picks which have few counters, if any, and which can generally perform at least adequately in any given situation while having strong potential to excel, but lack some key tool(s) for being a complete package; or heroes that can become extremely powerful with the right comp and setup

B Tier: Heroes who are very situational, only working well with a great setup and/or against specific enemy heroes or comps (e.g. counterpicks); or heroes that can become extremely powerful, but are heavily countered by too many heroes to feasibly ban out for; or heroes that are good in fights but have terrible cards, or vice versa.

C Tier: Heroes that generally don't perform amazingly; they lack the tools to excel, meaning the best they can hope for is to perform their role in a satisfactory fashion.

D Tier: Heroes that will pretty much never do anything, really. This is the only tier of heroes you should generally avoid.


S Tier: Wolfgang murders whoever made the mistake of laning against him; Aurelio acts like a bruiser, a carry and a pseudo-jungler able to reach any lane from mid.

A Tier: All solid picks. I don't actually like Kamaitachi in mid at all, but can't deny his bully potential along with Qube. Bunu Shan does nothing in mid, but is still well placed there so you can run one of the super-high-attacking ADCs. Lan is a murderess, pure and simple. Enidi, Crank and Deadfire are all solid, reliable picks.

B Tier: Situational or comp-specific picks. Frank, Gillis, Kid, Hass, Digo and Nihil are all notable as heroes who perform very well in general, but are better suited to other lanes; nonetheless, viable mid lane picks, particularly if you want to swap them between lanes for counterpick potential.

C Tier: Niels and Elemi are both picks that beg your opponent to gank mid over and over; Cubey is quite vulnerable as well due to its self-damage. Justice simply can't bully lane like the better mid lane picks can and is somewhat vulnerable in mid. Miki's only job is to join objective fights he shouldn't be able to, and mid lane usually gets to join them.

D Tier: Tiger Boy, Fatty White and Palulu are all heroes that don't use solo lane gold well; Palulu in particular is terrible in mid because you can literally gank her with zero risk. Kaka, meanwhile, continues to be terrible.


I tend to leave mid as a late pick so that I can take whoever will fit my comp best; I'll only pick earlier if I'm going for a double-buff strategy and need Dylan. There's a raft of solid A-tier picks who can slot into most comps as needed, so there's not much risk in leaving picks until late; Wolfgang is the only concern, so you might need to spend a second round ban on him if the opponent plays him.

Aside from four of the new heroes all being available for mid, the biggest shift is Merisi rocketing to the top of the list. There are a few other movements around the place; note that mid lane, having such a large potential pool of heroes, is the most prone to Variants shifting power around.

S Tier: Foso lands here - again, she does everything you want a general-purpose mage to do while requiring no investment but welcoming it if you've got it. Merisi also jumps up to S tier - I now realise I grossly underestimated him before, and the new itemisation is also very good for him.

A Tier: Raven arrives, just as in Jungle - between his movement cards and straight-line initiation he can throw ganks at every lane while soaking solo lane gold. Hass jumps up to A tier mostly because he's better in mid than I thought - having access to squishier targets lets him generate more gold from Shadow Blade. Note that Crank, Deadfire, Kamaitachi and Qube all have the potential to jump to S tier if their better Variants are brought in.

B Tier: Matata and Qin Hu arrive; both are okay but not great. Cubey hops up a tier here as well - he still feels better in top due to being more isolated (and so taking less damage, allowing for better stat generation), but mid lane gives him a more dominant late game thanks to having a squishier opponent and higher chances of the jungler wandering by to eat Differentiation-a hits. Note that Frank in particular can jump into A tier in mid if his damage-dealing Variant is active since he's more likely to have two targets here for Fisticuffs.

A lot of moving around based on updated thinking, but nothing mindblowing.

S Tier: Nothing changes. Nobody has made to a position of uncounterable strength besides these four.

A Tier: Frank hops up (he was always on the cusp), as does Manta, who I now recognise as being ideally suited to lane bullying. Felicity arrives in mid - I believe she's better in jungle or support, but still functions great in mid and just isn't the best use of solo lane gold. Enidi drops down to B tier since he does, in fact, get countered by being slapped in the face on the field and fights; Bunu Shan does the same due to being extremely vulnerable without support. Lan drops like a rock.

B Tier: Enidi and Bunu Shan come in - this is really where they belong, being situational/comp-specific picks. Elemi and Bariel hop up from C as their old ranking was based on ease of ganks which realistically isn't much worse than the mages; Justice follows suit, being worse in mid than top but functional. Fernan arrives, but is far better suited to top where he doesn't need to actively skirmish. Mihawk falls.

C Tier: Lan falls heavily down the table - I don't know what I was thinking, she's fundamentally comp-specific and also much better suited to top lane. Mihawk also drops here since he doesn't really perform any better than the situational mages while having truly awful cards. Palulu hops up because, while obviously a sitting duck, she's actually more able to survive the lane than a lot of mages (albeit with zero counter-kill potential) and can do decent work in the right comp. Niels drops down, Elemi hops up. Chen arrives, but can never activate his ship without it being immediately taken away again.

D Tier: Niels falls to D - he's so vulnerable in mid that you may as well be paying your opponent alimony. Palulu vacates her seat for him.

Drafting: While previously I tended to give mid counterpick priority in draft, top has now been given that honour. There are so many unique top lane counterpicks, as well as a vast hero pool up there, that keeping your options open matters a lot; mid also has a big pool but a lot of the heroes there are ones you build a comp around or that work better elsewhere.

On Crank's character model his horns curl upwards; on his character portrait they curl inwards. My immersion is RUINED.

Name: Crank

Position: Mid / Support

Role: Mage

Mastery choices:
Swap searches one of Crank's other cards to hand / Swap searches one of the target's cards to hand

Itemisation: Mage

Synergies: Peiniang Zhu (Debuff synergy), targeted assassins, Zealot (Spectral Weapon)

Counters: Deep Space, Kid, Multi-attackers, particularly Kamaitachi

Countered by: Wukong (debuff immunity), debuff removal

Summary: Debuff mage bringing inevitability (if the enemy team can't remove debuffs)

Analysis: Crank is a debuff-oriented mage whose main contribution is to apply Endless Vengeance to enemies hit by his attacks in a fight. Endless Vengeance is only applied if the attack hits an enemy that isn't already afflicted - in other words, Crank's attacks don't stack it - and causes the sufferer to take 25% of Crank's AP in damage every time they take an action. Note that as with most calculations, this is done on a snapshot basis - if Crank has a temporary AP buff (such as his own Spectral Weapon), the debuff will be correspondingly higher and continue to apply every round.

Importantly, this debuff provides an element of inevitability. This is the case not just because it causes unavoidable damage every round (which it does), but also because if an enemy dies while afflicted, the debuff's damage is applied to every enemy hero in the fight - including those that were already afflicted. This means that each enemy death creates a snowball effect, each causing its allies to take increasingly high damage. Note that as the entire debuff's damage is applied (rather than just a single instance) this becomes multiplicative - if the initial hero dies with 25% AP of debuff, a second hero who also had 25% AP debuff would now have 50%; if that hero died, each other hero would have 75% debuff minimum (25% from the first death, 50% from the second). Confused yet?

Cranks cards are generally supportive in nature; despite this, you're better off running him in mid than support simply because his entire kit is damage-oriented and based on his AP. You'll usually get more mileage out of him with solo lane gold than simply throwing him into bot lane, particularly as your ADC won't get any assistance from him in general. From the mid lane, Crank can fit into most comps (provided Wukong is banned and you don't want to play Felicity), providing you with damage support and some added inevitability to close out fights.

Cards:
Grant an ally 100% of Crank's AP for 10 rounds or until they next attack on the field, or act in a fight.

In a vacuum, a fairly underwhelming way of delivering an additional chunk of damage; if you're seeking to use it on the field your best bet is either to give the AP to a hero with a lot of damage amplification for their field attack (e.g. Lady Darkfire's Ignite or BaJie's Rocket Punch) or a hero who can turn the damage into gold (e.g. Hass' Shadow Blade). While it can also provide a spike of damage in a fight on heroes who specify target (e.g. Lubos), its best use in fights is to give it to a hero who can turn that AP into a full-fight benefit, like Zealot or Crank himself.

Give an enemy hero the Endless Vengeance debuff.

Absurdly expensive just to apply Crank's debuff to a specified target. You'll almost never want to play this at even close to full price; the only reason to do so is if you really need an edge in a teamfight or you'll get a huge amount of mileage from applying the debuff immediately to a hero (e.g. Deep Space, a heavily stacked Felyn).




Target an allied hero. Crank swaps places with them.

On its own, pretty useless; only really usable to put a heavily fed hero in range for an engage. Its main use is with masteries to provide a cheap single-card search effect - you'll want to use this to search for the target, since Crank has a 50% chance of giving you the virtually unplayable Oblivion. If running Crank in the support role (which you shouldn't really do), can allow you to get a surprise gank on bot lane.



Interactions:
Peiniang Zhu - Worth highlighting as the otherwise unimpressive support can function rather well paired with Crank, with Lightning Mark proccing on every tick of Endless Vengeance. Now in 3.1, with Peiniang Zhu ascendant, this can be a vicious comp setup.

Wukong - As always, Wukong shuts down Crank as a debuff mage.

Targeted attacks - Assassins who can pick off a debuffed target will allow you to quickly spread Endless Vengeance.

Deep Space - Deep Space wants to avoid damage for as long as possible; Crank can ensure this never happens, both removing all his stacks and preventing him from generating more. Of course, first you either have to hit him or dump half your phase's SP on one card...

Anti-synergy - Crank's debuff can cause some issues for other debuff-centric heroes, notably Felicity and Lady Deadfire. Don't pick them together.

Like a lot of heroes, doesn't get much from the new itemisation. The new Variant is phenomenal, however, so mid-lane Crank's stock rises a little.


Changed - Endless Vengeance deals 20% 12% of Crank's AP as damage.

Gained - If Crank attacks a target that already has the Endless Vengeance debuff, Crank procs the debuff with his attack.

It might sound like a nerf - the debuff is the entire reason you're taking Crank after all - but this Variant hugely improves Crank's reliability in fights. Have you ever had a teamfight where your Crank refused to spread his debuff around and instead just sat slapping a tank all fight? Of course you have, that's what he seems to do every fight. With this Variant you're no longer punished for irritating targeting RNG and instead get some bonus damage to help bring down that first target to spread the debuff all around. Note that this does make Crank weaker into zero tank teams due to a lack of any high Presence targets.

v3.1 Updates: Couple of tweaks to update for a shifting meta. Crank is fortunate that his job is important enough to not fall down the tier lists considering Felicity basically now does his job but better.

Item build: Mage. Crank will take any decent debuff-relevant items (once again, Terror Anthology is a winner), but otherwise just wants as much flat AP as you can give him since that's what his debuff works with.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing much. Oblivion's cost is painful, but not bad enough to burn a Focus on.

Funnelling: He's not worth tutoring, since of his three cards, one is terrible and another just tutors someone else. He probably doesn't want stats either unless you're working with his Variant, since vanilla Crank has a nasty tendency to sit beating on the same tank for the entire fight and accomplishing nothing.

Rejected gags:
I'm sure it's a magic wand of some kind, but from the moment I saw Crank's model I decided he was holding a giant toothbrush and I cannot unsee that no matter what I do.

Looking at his archive screen, I find myself overwhelmed with curiosity as to who dug an entire grave for their pet goldfish. And also who made a target dummy smaller than Crank himself.

Proponents of modern pop music, particularly female artists, will say that 'sex sells'. Enidi is short, fat, somehow manages to be bald and have a bad haircut at the same time... and he's more popular than anyone. He's just that good.

Name: Enidi

Position: Mid

Role: Mage



Mastery choices:
The Finale requires 1 less token / The Finale requires 1 more token, but hits all enemy heroes

Itemisation: Mage

Synergies: Bunu Shan (lots of field attacks), Niels (AoE on AoE)

Counters: Deep Space, Zealot (AoE hits)

Countered by: None

Summary: Mage focussed on field attacks with some limited AoE in fights.

Analysis: Enidi is a mid-lane mage whose main function is to provide AoE in teamfights. While he doesn't have quite the same guaranteed output as Niels (who will always attack all targets), he's a much safer pick due to not having a crippling lack of armour or self-stun potential.

Enidi's mechanics require him to first deal damage on the field, which fortunately his cards are quite good at doing. Each time he attacks an enemy hero on the field, meanwhile, he gains a stack of Charisma (losing a stack each time he's hit, either on the field or in a fight). Once he gets into a fight, he then expends Charisma to add attack targets - for each stack of Charisma he expends, he attacks one more enemy (so with 1 Charisma stack he'll attack two targets). Usually this will mean 2-3 rounds of attacking all of most enemy heroes before reverting to a vanilla mage for the rest of the fight.

Thanks to his reduced need for support compared to the other main AoE attacker in the game (Niels), Enidi fits much more comfortably into a variety of comps. While fairly versatile, however, Enidi performs best when drafted alongside other heroes with a lot of attack cards - Felyn or Gang in bot lane, for instance, and Qube or Justice in top. Also note that while Enidi has a lot of attack cards, none of them are guaranteed to hit, so athletes with Field Hit match traits are generally favoured for playing him.

Incidentally, while I can't say for certain, I assume Enidi is named for prog rock band The Enid, who have had some moderate success since the 1970s. The Enid's supporters are referred to as 'the Enidi', which seems like rather a big coincidence...

Cards:
Attack all enemy heroes who have been hit by an attack this round.

At 3 SP this is pretty expensive; additionally, as you're dumping a lot of SP into hitting multiple targets instead of focussing attacks on one enemy, its main use is playing before an objective fight to chip down enemy health bars and generating extra Charisma. Note that to be valid targets, enemies need to have been hit with an attack, not just targeted for one.




Enidi gains 5 stacks of Charisma, then gains gold equal to 20 x his level. He then adds the same amount of gold to his bounty. Removed when played.

Fairly unusually this is a card which can be as big a detriment as it is a benefit; while 5 stacks of Charisma is nice, Enidi has plenty of ways to generate Charisma, and generating both gold and bounties can help your opponent to close a gold gap. It is free, however, so it can be used to generate 'emergency' Charisma if you're expecting (or starting) a fight and have no other means of getting it. Note that although the game doesn't bother to state this, you start with 1 copy of this card in your deck and generate an additional one at levels 6/11/16.

Target a hex (globally) and attack all monsters and enemy heroes within 1 hex. Enemy heroes that are within 1 hex but not actually in the targeted hex suffer 1 knockback, but take 25% less damage.

A slightly weird card, it has a lot of moving parts and most of them are fairly irrelevant. Its main use is for hitting enemies who haven't yet been hit for the purposes of Return Performance, due to its global effect, but it can also be useful for counter-jungling, especially if you've lost control of the jungle.



While in hand, gains 1 token every time you play another card. Can only be played with 5/6 tokens; when played, attack 3/5 enemy heroes.

A cheap and potent attack card with the obvious drawback of needing to stack tokens up to be able to play it. This generally isn't a problem though, as the kinds of heroes you'll tend to draft Enidi alongside (attack-oriented heroes) will usually have quite a few cheap cards available - and if you're playing smart you'll be setting yourself up with plenty of discounts and SP generators as well. For this reason, I recommend taking the mastery option which increases the token cost and effectiveness of this card, rather than the one which merely reduces the token requirement. Note that despite unclear wording, you can't stack more tokens on this card than are needed to play it (so you can't pile up 20 tokens on it and then re-cycle it to play it three times in a row).

Interactions:
Niels - Enidi plus Niels is a recipe for a lot of AoE. Add in a decent frontline, some shields, and ideally a targeted assassin, and you've got yourself a party.

Death in the field - A few more additions to Enidi-Niels can change a comp from a teamfight AoE machine to a field-murder one instead. Draft some kind of search effect to find Niels' Revelation, then throw in a couple of slap-happy heroes (Qube, Zealot, people like that) and you'll find yourself burning down squishies without ever needing to change screens.

AoE - A small number of heroes are particularly vulnerable to AoE - Zealot is the main one, but Kaka, Omaha, and to a lesser extent Deep Space, are also notable.

Stop poking me bro - While much less vulnerable than Niels is, Enidi still doesn't particularly appreciate being focussed - he's less likely to die, but will still be losing Charisma stacks at an upsetting rate. Leon can do a decent job of keeping his singing interspersed with yelps of mild pain.

No massive changes. The Variant does make Enidi more swingy, though.


Changed - Enidi loses 1 2 stacks of Charisma when attacked.

Gained - Enidi gains 2.5% crit chance per stack of Charisma.

Pushes Enidi towards being a bit more feast-or-famine, rewarding you more for building up a lot of Charisma before fights and punishing you more for letting him get hit. In theory this hugely improves his damage output, particularly since mage gear rarely has much crit on it; in practice you'll probably lose most of your stacks to ganks anyway so your damage output winds up close to vanilla, concentrated into a couple of big bursts at the start of a fight. This does make Enidi much better in skirmishes and ganks, though, especially into single targets where vanilla Enidi gets nothing from his Charisma.

v3.1 Updates: No major changes aside from Performance Max's picture being inexplicably broken in the guide and requiring me to re-upload an identical image to fix. Enidi drops in the tier lists simply because I overrated him before, but if anything he's gotten slightly stronger thanks to his designated slot as cleanup crew in an Alpha Strike comp.

Item build: Mage. No need to mess around, just throw as much AP on there as you can get and call it good. Note that he doesn't use on-hit effects as well as you'd think since he runs out of steam (i.e. stacks) fairly quickly in bigger fights; by the same token you may as well disregard defences on him since his performance will fall off no matter how you build him.

Reserve Tactics: There's an argument for running a Continuous Poke, but honestly unless you're just throwing Enidi in without a real comp behind him you're probably going to run out of SP before you run out of damage to throw around.

Funnelling: Tutoring, yes. Enidi's cards are all solid (even if Return Performance is pretty pricey), and The Finale in particular is phenomenally efficient for what it does, token requirements notwithstanding. Stats are more of a mixed bag, but giving him AP is good at least.

Rejected gags:
Enidi is not, in fact, bald. He just wears the top of a giant egg on his head like a hat.

Wait... tonsure... robe... is gospel music huge in whatever universe this game is set?

If you're wondering, her theme song is just the Trogdor The Burninator song but with 'Trogdor' replaced by 'Deadfire'. Known edgelord.

Name: Lady Deadfire

Position: Mid / Support

Role: Mage

Mastery choices:
Gain an additional 1.5 AP and 38.5 health per level / 3 AP and 22.5 health per level [x2]

Itemisation: Mage

Synergies: Burst damage assassins (e.g. Lan)

Counters: Field-hitting squishies (e.g. Felyn, Enidi)

Countered by: Wukong (debuff reflection)


Summary: Debuff-oriented mage with strong, if unreliable, burst damage.

Analysis: Lady Deadfire is a mage whose gimmick is the application of the Dark Flame debuff. Dark Flame is consumed when the target receives a hit in a fight, causing the attack to deal 20/25% increased damage, stacking up to eight times. Those of you who know how to do basic maths will have quickly identified that this means a potential triple damage from a single hit. Stacks are applied on the field any time an enemy hero attacks Lady Deadfire with a card (2 stacks), whenever she damages an enemy hero (1 stack), and whenever an enemy hero moves by card effect (1 stack). Stacks are also applied in fights whenever an enemy attacks or damages Lady Deadfire (2 stacks).

As should hopefully be obvious, this can lead to some extremely substantial burst damage - triple effectiveness from a high damage crit can straight up one-shot squishies after all. More importantly however, Dark Flame will dramatically improve Lady Deadfire's damage output - not only does she automatically target the enemy with the most stacks, but her attacks don't remove Dark Flame. In other words, if you can avoid anyone else hitting a squishy with a bunch of stacks on them, Lady Deadfire will attack them every round with a massive damage multiplier - which typically results in a dead squishy.

Lady Deadfire is not without drawbacks however. Dark Flame, while potent, is removed on any damage (other than her own) - a low damage tank or support will use up the stacks just as an assassin would, but with much less effect. Furthermore, she has the misfortune of being melee, making her more likely to be targeted for attacks but without much in the way of defences to protect her.

Despite these hindrances, Lady Deadfire is a strong general-purpose pick who can perform well in a vacuum and who can excel when assisting specific heroes or countering enemy picks. So long as Wukong isn't available she can be safely blind picked, and will typically be an adequately effective mage at the minimum - with the potential for much more if you can manipulate Dark Flame successfully.

Cards:
Choose an enemy hero; transfer all other Dark Flame stacks to that hero. If total stacks are then less than 5, increase them to 5.

Quite expensive, and depending on how many stacks you've been able to spread up to this point, can actually result in a net loss of stacks. You'll only really want to play this to target a squishy if there are relatively few stacks on the enemy team; remember that if you're going to play this you should play it first so that you can then add more stacks on top of it.



Target an enemy hero within 3 hexes. They gain 3 stacks of Dark Flame. Lady Deadfire then attacks them, applying the damage increase from Dark Flame.

Contrasting with Flame Embrace, this should generally be your finisher - unlike other field attacks it applies Dark Flame (but doesn't consume it), allowing you to get a sizeable chunk of damage off. Thanks to the 3 hex range you can quite happily murder ADCs from the comfort of mid lane, which is usually your best use for this card.



Choose a hero and move them 1 hex. That hero then attacks all enemy heroes within 1 hex, applying a stack of Dark Flame to each.

A nice multi-purpose card with lots of different applications. The immediately obvious is to use it to group up and debuff enemies ready for a fight; remember that if you choose to move an enemy with this effect you'll add an additional stack to them. Since the attack comes from the target rather than Lady Deadfire it can also be used to take advantage of a very high AP number, whether friend or foe, which is particularly useful if Lady Deadfire is being played in support. You can also use this to isolate an individual target for a gank, though bear in mind that 2 SP is a relatively high cost for such an effect.

Interactions:
Burst-reliant heroes - Lady Deadfire is a great supporting hero for assassins like Lan, Lubos and Manta who rely on getting a lot of damage out very quickly; indeed, partnering with Deadfire is probably the only reason to even build Lubos as an assassin.

Cash-out - Running a source of AoE alongside Lady Deadfire such as Enidi or Niels will let you get big chunks of damage across multiple targets early on in a fight. While potentially less efficient over the course of a longer fight (as Lady Deadfire gets fewer attacks on stacked up targets), this is a good way to use up the debuffs and make sure they do a lot of damage rather than risking them being used up by a low damage tank.

Anti-synergy - By contrast, low damage early hits will use up the Dark Flame debuff without really adding much damage. Avoid picking Lady Deadfire alongside heroes like Reinhardt, Felyn or Hakuna since they'll prevent you from getting much value out of Dark Flame. You should especially avoid picking Crank (whose periodic damage will burn Dark Flame as quickly as it's applied) and Felicity (who'll dispel it without even getting the benefits).

Counter-picking - Thanks to applying stacks of Dark Flame whenever she's hit by enemy attacks, Lady Deadfire is a good pick into any hero you anticipate throwing around field attacks. Lady Deadfire is about the only thing that can reasonably counterpick Felyn in bot lane for example - she won't stop Felyn from getting strong, but she will ensure Felyn is extremely vulnerable whenever she enters a fight. With Felicity's arrival there's a new counter in town (but she'll be banned so the above still applies in practice).

Variant makes solo lane Deadfire all the stronger while weakening support Deadfire. That's about it.


Removed - Dark Flame increases damage taken by the target by 20% per stack, max 8 stacks.

Gained - Dark Flame causes additional damage equal to 30% of Lady Deadfire's AP, max 6 stacks.

A fairly simple change - instead of amplifying anyone's damage, the damage is based on Deadfire's AP. This has simple results - good times if your Lady Deadfire has a lot of AP (i.e. is in mid), bad times if your Lady Deadfire has little AP (i.e. is in support). The damage output is actually pretty vicious if someone gets stacked and not attacked by others right away, so mid lane Deadfire is a terror in solo fights with this Variant. Deadfire also becomes much more consistent with this Variant in place since the damage dealt will be the same whether you proc it with a big hit or a small one.

v3.1 Updates: Small changes to bring in Felicity's existence and highlight the improved consistency of her Variant (which pushes her close to S tier, incidentally).

Item build: Mage-Bruiser. AP is, of course, great on Deadfire as you'd expect from a mage; however, remember she's a melee and part of her kit requires her to take attacks to reapply her debuff. Unlike most mages she should pick up a reasonable amount of survivability alongside her damage, or at least avoid the glass cannon items which will make her fall over far too quickly. If her Variant is in place, on the other hand, go full glass and watch thing explode.

Reserve Tactics: Reckless Assault is amazing on Deadfire since you get two attacks from it and also trigger your passive twice; if you're running mid Deadfire into a squishy, RA into Ignite can pick up kills with surprising regularity. Avoid other poke cards, as they only add one stack of Dark Flame without getting any benefit from them.

Funnelling: Decent, but not breathtaking. Deadfire's cards are generally solid but a little pricey to be playing constantly. Similarly, while she's a solid user of bonus stats (particularly defensive ones), she's not as good as a dedicated funnel target. Unless, of course, her Variant is in effect (seriously, that Variant is really good).

Rejected gags:
Okay I know I talk a lot of smack about the boring, uninspired or stolen hero designs in this game, but I have to give a lot of props to whoever designed Deadfire - her lower half being an inverted brazier is a cool idea. I'm not sure she'd agree though, considering she had to have her legs amputated and her genitals remain ablaze at all times.

In her spare time Lan plays a lot of MMOs. For some reason the cycle of quest-kill-reward deeply appeals to her. It is a mystery[knowyourmeme.com].

Name: Lan

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Assassin

Mastery choices:
Gain 1.5% crit rate per level / Gain 20% crit damage when crit chance is over 100%

Itemisation: Crit Assassin

Synergies: Lady Deadfire (burst facilitation)

Counters: Squishies, especially Niels

Countered by: Heavy tanks, especially Peter and Bart; Gillis

Summary: Skirmish-oriented assassin with a lot of burst.

Analysis: Lan is an assassin distinguished both by her card mechanics and her burst. When she enters combat her first attack gains 50% crit chance; if it crits, she halves her total crit chance and attacks again. And again, and again, until she either fails to crit or an enemy dies. For obvious reasons, this makes her up-front damage some of the highest in the entire game.

Her card mechanics are also quite unique. She goes from Step A - choosing a target - to Step B, fighting them. If the target dies, she moves to Step C, gaining power, and restarting the cycle. While this series of cards takes time and a fair amount of SP, it also has a lot of power due to being global range; pick the right targets and you can snowball hard.

When itemising Lan, you need to go all in on crit chance and crit damage. The more crit chance you have, the more attacks you can chain together at the start of the fight - which is where all of Lan's power lies - and the more crit damage you have the more likely those attacks will be made to count. Note that Lan only has 125% base crit damage compared to most heroes' 150% - this is necessary because otherwise she would simply explode things too easily. She gets a 50% boost (to 175%) once all her Step C upgrades are completed.

However, don't misunderstand - Lan is not easy to play. She needs to be picked into an enemy team that she's likely to be able to assassinate - squishy laners are good targets, especially if Niels is in one them, while tanks are a no-go. Especially avoid Gillis, who entirely counters Lan. It's also useful if you have laners who like to skirmish and can follow up Lan's burst to secure kills - Bond, Ada, Lady Deadfire, and any high damage solo laners are good picks - but enemy targets are much more important. If Lan is able to secure her target kills she becomes a terrifying assassin; if she doesn't, she's basically useless.

To give you an idea of the kind of team you want to manipulate your opponents into picking, and what happens when they do, the below is an example of one of my Lan games:
Note that despite her kills she didn't actually top out the damage graph that hard - that's not her job. What she did was murder bot lane relentlessly, getting herself, her ADC and her jungler ahead simultaneously, winning the game indirectly.

Cards: [N.B. This is the only entry that I've used a different order of cards to the game's order, because the game's order is stupid. Or possibly just meant to read right-to-left.]

Choose an enemy hero to become Lan's target (global). Next Deployment Phase spawn Step B in hand. Removed when played.

Rather expensive considering on its own this does nothing. Once upgraded by Step C it will at least attack the enemy, but even then 2 SP is a lot to be paying; consider it a pre-payment for Step B. Remember that your target needs to die - that may mean targeting a tank support rather than the squishier ADC simply because you're more likely to be hitting them. Also remember to keep an eye on the jungle, because you might be able to catch the enemy jungler isolated.

Start a fight (global) involving Lan and all heroes within 1 hex of Lan's target. Lasts 3 rounds. If the target dies during the fight spawn Step C into hand in the next Deployment Phase; if not, put a copy of Step A in the discard. Removed when played.

The meat of the kit, it's a pretty standard initiation aside from being global - Lan can go for her target no matter where they are. Note that this doesn't mean she should - if it's possible to catch them alone, she should wait to do so. If you fail to secure the kill you're out 7 SP, so better to wait a few rounds to make sure of the kill.

Gain one of Lan's three upgrades, then spawn Step A in the draw pile. If Lan has all three upgrades, she gains 50% crit damage. Removed when played.

The payoff. The order you should take the upgrades in is as follows:
1. Step A spawns Step B into hand when played. This is extremely valuable for letting you take advantage of opportunities immediately - there's nothing worse than seeing a golden opportunity, only for it to pass because you had to wait 2 rounds for your next Deployment Phase.
2. Lan gains an additional 50% crit chance on her first attack in fights. With this upgrade you're guaranteed to get at least two attacks off provided you hit (which isn't guaranteed); it also makes you more likely to keep the chain going. Definitely the most valuable upgrade for fighting.
3. When you play Step A, Lan attacks her target immediately; his attack can crit. Not incredible, but nice for softening up the target prior to murdering it.
Note that with masteries, Lan gains crit damage with each upgrade rather than only when she finishes them all, so she's gaining power no matter which one you pick. Also bear in mind that after you've got all three Step C will no longer spawn - that doesn't mean you should stop using Steps A and B, though, because at this point it's almost a free kill.

Starts with 3 tokens and removes a token when played; remove when all three tokens are spent. Lan gains 50% crit chance for 3 rounds and searches her current Step card into hand.

Very handy for keeping the ball rolling, as well as for getting the crit together for those first couple of kills. You only get three uses, but that should be enough - make them count. Don't be afraid to use this even when you don't need the search functionality; securing the kills is the important thing.



Interactions:
Targets to avoid - Big tanks are a definite no-no for Lan to target. Peter and Bart are notable because they can shut her down in teamfights even if she successfully gets fed (though other tanks tend to just fall over). Gillis will entirely negate Lan by soaking her burst and then one-shotting her. Anna isn't quite as hard of a counter, but will still make it much harder to get the snowball rolling (and isn't as good on Lan's team as she is with other skirmishers since Lan is more about repeated hits than single big ones).

Lady Deadfire - Notable as Lan's best teammate; Lan attacks very early in rounds, so stacking a bunch of Dark Flame onto Lan's target can allow for a huge opening crit and a secured kill. She can also sometimes isolate a target with Flame Spread, which is helpful.

Justice - Relatively minor point, but it's notable that Lan doesn't end her opening crit chain until she kills someone. If Justice is on your team and in the fight, she'll sometimes execute whoever Lan is currently stabbing to death - Lan can then continue stabbing someone else without the chain being broken.

Some nice itemisation benefits from the crit itemisation and armour penetration added, but the real winner is the Variant which makes Lan much less swingy.


Removed - Lan deals 25% less crit damage.

Removed - Lan's first attack gains 50% crit and repeats each time it crits, reducing crit chance by half each time.

Gained - Lan gains 40% crit damage in the first round of fights.

Gained - Whenever Lan crits she immediately attacks again. Can only trigger once per round.

A big boost for Lan overall, she no longer loses virtually all of her efficacy if she whiffs her first swing. She's more reliant on external crit sources thanks to losing her native 50% crit chance on first attack, but once she's got some she can continue to put out big chunky damage every round in fights. Importantly this also removes Lan's crit damage nerf so she gets even more benefit from stacking crit now.

v3.1 Updates: Minor tweaks here and there. Most importantly, added a link to the opening gag to clarify the reason for the second sentence. I'm sure you were all desperate to understand.

Item build: Crit. Crit. More crit. Maybe add a little bit of crit damage if you're feeling saucy. Unlike a lot of heroes Lan benefits greatly from surpassing 100% crit - her attack chain halves her crit each time, so the more she has, the more likely she is to get big chunky chains off. Note that crit damage is arguably superior to crit chance when your athlete is weaker, as the chain will shut off as soon as you miss so you may as well make the first hit(s) count.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing special. You could, I suppose take a Teleporting for Support on your mid to help secure the early kills, but realistically if you're not able to Step B and more or less guarantee the kills, you picked her into the wrong comp.

Funnelling: No. Step A-B-C should self-search once you've got your first kill. Stats can bolster the crit chain, sure, but once you've exhausted that she's down to glass cannon swings. You could argue that bonus stats will keep her around to use those 100% crits you built towards, but given she's an assassin and builds glass cannon, it's unlikely to make a difference one way or another.

Rejected gags:
Okay, I like her aesthetic because of course I do, we've already established I have a type. But what's really impressive is the heterochromic contacts and individual eyebrow dyes. That's dedication to a look.

Wristblades are on the outside of the wrist on Reboot, but on the inside on Step B. Maybe that's what the upgrade does - reposition the blades so you're less likely to stab yourself in the hands.

I'm not locked in here with you... you're locked in here with me!

Name: Merisi

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Tank / Fighter

Mastery choices:
Gain an additional 1.5 AP and 38.5 health per level / Gain an additional 3 AP and 22.5 health per level [x2]

Itemisation: Tank, usually with one Fighter item

Synergies: Multi-attackers, buffs

Counters: None

Countered by: Mihawk (anti-tank)

Summary: Lane bully tank who works well with buffs and does nothing without them.

Analysis: Merisi is a curious combination of tank stats with cards and passives that make him want to be a Fighter. He's very similar to Kamaitachi in that he gets a lot of free attacks in fights - whenever he takes damage in a fight he gains a stack of Boss, and at 4 stacks he gets a free attack on whoever last hit him. On the field instead of getting free attacks he instead stacks Boss by attacking or being attacked by cards, and at full stacks searches Intimidation into his hand from the deck.

The trouble with this kit is that while he gets a lot of attacks - either from his passive in fights or from his attack-heavy cards - he's a tank without all that much AP. Even with the bonus AP he gets via his cards, he's still slapping enemies with his scrawny little wet noodle arms, and so winds up in the awkward position of getting lots of attacks but doing nothing much with them. If this is rectified through the application of external buffs like Dylan's Red Powder or Beverly's Renovation he can become a pretty vicious lane bully who pushes lanes hard and beats down enemies in fights through sheer attrition; if it isn't, he just winds up being a brick wall.

As a result, while Merisi can still function as a tank either way, he's usually best picked into a team that has ways to buff him; alternatively, teams which have methods of capitalising on his additional attacks can find some success (e.g. drafting Kamaitachi and Peiniang Zhu alongside him). If you're not going to slot him into an appropriate team, however, you're better off running a more effective tank. Note that I generally recommend running him in mid - you're more likely to get two targets out of Intimidation, and more likely to match up into someone squishy enough for him to pick up solo kills later into the game. Fielded in top lane, he'll just sit there being a tank.

Cards:
Merisi attacks all enemy heroes in the same hex as him. For each hit he gains an extra stack of Boss and pushes once.

A decent, if overpriced, card for taking advantage of Merisi's lane bully nature; use this card to whittle your lane opponent down in conjunction with Intimidation, looking to force them out of lane so you can beat on their turret. Note this has slight anti-synergy with Fight in the Prison since the push effect makes it more likely you'll wind up fighting under a tower; also note that despite technically being AoE, you'll almost never get to hit more than one hero with this.

Gain 25 gold, then attack all enemy heroes within 2 hexes. Each hit deals 50% damage and adds a token to Fight in the Prison. Then search Fight in the Prison into your hand.

A raft of effects, but none of them are hugely impactful; the key to this card, much like Merisi's attacks, is to make up for their low impact by using them a lot. You'll search Intimidation into hand when Merisi hits 4 stacks of Boss, but not immediately - it'll come into your hand next Deployment Phase, so don't think you can chain together multiple uses of this card. As a result, when playing around Merisi you usually want to use small amounts of SP so as to frequently hit Deployment Phase and get Intimidation back.

Gains tokens via Intimidation. For each token, Merisi gains 8/16 AP and this card costs 1 less. When played, start a fight with all heroes within 1 hex of Merisi, 5 round duration. Is not discarded due to hand size limits.

The AP gained by this card isn't actually limited to the card itself and applies whether it's in hand or not (making you wonder why they tied it to the card rather than making it a passive effect like everyone else, but never mind). The card itself is rather restrictive due to its very short range, leaving it more suited to bullying your opponent out of lane rather than actually securing kills. Because of that you should basically never play it unless you've got max tokens to reduce the cost or your lane opponent is critically low on health.

Interactions:
Multi-attacks - As with many heroes, Merisi gets a lot of extra attacks and therefore has synergy and counter potential with all heroes that have similar effects.

Damage instances - Note that Merisi's passive works via damage instances in fights rather than simply attacks. Heroes which deal multiple instances of damage per hit (e.g. Felyn, Mihawk) will add multiple stacks from a single attack. It's entirely possible to have all four stacks added by a single attack (e.g. Felyn with an item that adds a damage effect firing at Merisi when he has Peniang Zhu's Lightning Mark on him).

Buffs - As noted above, Merisi gets a lot of swings, but lacks any power behind them. He uses AP buffs well, particularly because he has a tank's health pool and so should stick around for a while to make use of them.

Missingno - Very minor point, but Merisi's Boss proc in fights will only go through if the triggering hero is targetable. Digo, being untargetable while allies are alive, is capable of triggering the Boss proc and wasting the subsequent attack; the same thing can happen if an attacking unit triggers Boss but dies right after to something like Endless Vengeance or a Kamaitachi proc. Rarely matters, but worth knowing.

Possibly the single biggest winner of the update overall, Merisi is an absolute nightmare with the new itemisation (Acceleration Coil in particular). His Variant is also fantastic. Definitely pick-or-ban material, and finally gives us a real counter to Felyn. I should also add that I underestimated him in the first version of the guide - he should probably have been A-tier before and is definitely S-tier now.


Changed - When Merisi's Boss attack triggers in fights, the bonus attack ignores 30 shreds 10 armour from the target.

Just incredible. Merisi is not a burst hero, he doesn't care about penetrating armour on single hits. He's a tank who you stack with a few bonus AP sources so he can whittle down enemies with repeated hits. The 10 armour may not be a lot, but it lasts for the entire fight and in larger fights will proc multiple times per round even in the absence of multi-hitters.

v3.1 Updates: No changes. Still amazed I gave him an awful tier listing before.

Item build: Tank (one damage item). You really want a single good damage item on Merisi to take advantage of his free attacks - Acceleration Coil is obviously great, but Ghost Claw is also fantastic, and failing that any of the solid single damage items (or even bruiser items) will do.

Reserve Tactics: Nothin'. You could make an argument for running an Initiation card to help out your jungler when he passes, but I'd avoid it. Probably a better choice would be to take Focus on your support to strip out the copies of My Hood from your deck - they really aren't very good.

Funnelling: Tutoring, no. My Hood is low impact and overcosted, Fight in the Prison is sticky, and you'll be hard pressed to have a Deployment Phase where Intimidation doesn't show up. He's a great repository for bonus stats though, since he gets extra attacks and should be building armour to stretch any bonus health further.

Rejected gags:
The more I look at Merisi's moustache, the more I feel like he's a hardcore medieval reimagining of the guy from the Pringles tube.

All of Merisi's cards and effects would be more fitting if instead of having a weird prison guard motif, he was just an agoraphobe with severe anger management issues.

The secret of my power? No, it's not magic, nor is it my faith in the lord. It's my tiny fuggen piano! - Mihawk

Name: Mihawk

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Mage

Mastery choices:
Soul Flame costs 2 less / Soul Flame doesn't lose tokens when discarded

Deal 2% additional pure damage in the field / Deal 3% additional pure damage in fights

Itemisation: Mage / Fighter

Synergies: Justice, Bond (complementary damage)

Counters: High health targets

Countered by: None

Summary: Mage who deals true damage based on current health.

Analysis: Mihawk is a curious hero who has a pretty straightforward effect in fights, but weirdly over-complicated cards. In general, his thing is %current health true damage; on the field his harass deals half of its normal damage but an extra 8/10% current health as true damage, while in fights he deals his full damage plus 15/18% current health true damage.

This positions Mihawk rather uniquely as a purely anti-tank and anti-fighter pick. His preferred targets are tanks, since he can not only chip down their high health pools but also ignores their usually high armour; Fighters, with their larger health pools, are also good targets. As a backline mage, Mihawk tends to pick up a fair amount of AP on top of this, giving him a decent amount of punch for finishing off low health targets as well.

However, due to his damage being based on enemy current health, he can struggle without some other damage sources on his team to follow up. He also doesn't really do a lot against squishy teams, since if you disregard his bonus true damage he's otherwise entirely vanilla in fights. As a result, he should be regarded specifically as a counterpick to high durability teams rather than a general purpose pick.

As an additional note - all of Mihawk's cards use tokens. Tokens are accrued for each round a card is in hand, and expended at various rates. It's frankly an awkward system that doesn't really make any sense with such a small card pool, but it is what it is.

Cards:
A tremendously underwhelming film with inexplicably high box office receipts
While there are at least 8 tokens on this card, all your Initiation cards cost 1 more, but Mihawk joins the fight irrespective of distance. If he does so, 8 tokens are removed from this card and it's discarded. No tokens lost when discarded.

A rather awkward way of having Mihawk join fights, essentially costing 1 SP for an effect you don't deliberately trigger. This is particularly peculiar because Mihawk isn't all that good a skirmisher. Having said that, you can play this card for free to discard it early, so you're not forced to pay the cost if you don't want to.

Attack an enemy hero within 1 hex. The attack deals an additional 10% current health damage (+1% for each token). All allies are then healed for 50% of the damage dealt, with excess healing becoming a shield. When played or discarded, loses half its tokens.

The only card you really care about getting tokens; unfortunately due to losing half its tokens on discard there's a functional upper limit to how many you can reasonably accrue. This prevents it from being a fully fledged nuke and instead relegates it to the role of fairly expensive team heal; nonetheless, this is still quite a useful tool for topping up your team immediately before an objective fight.

Cost is reduced by the number of tokens on this card. When played, remove all tokens from this card and add the same number to Mihawk's other cards in hand. Loses all tokens when discarded (but not with masteries).

Again an unnecessarily complicated and awkward way of adding more tokens to Mihawk's other cards. If you really want to use Drain The Soul as a nuke (and it is hypothetically possible to instakill with it, albeit with an entire game's worth of prep), this is the way to do it. Other than boosting your Drain The Soul damage, though, this card really doesn't do much; while Avatar's effect can occasionally be useful, you'll almost never use it enough to need to boost its token numbers. Needless to say, this effect isn't valuable enough to be worth spending SP on, so only play this card if you've got at least 8 tokens built up.

Interactions:
Nothing particularly noteworthy that wasn't already covered elsewhere.

No particular changes aside from a pretty garbage Variant.


Removed - Mihawk's harass only deals 50% damage but also deals 8% of the target's current health as true damage.

Gained - At the beginning of each round, if you have none of Mihawk's hero cards in hand, draw one.

Really not a good Variant. Losing the true damage harass doesn't really do much other than weaken his ability to bully tank lanes (which itself is something he can only do with a big athlete gap); meanwhile, you're guaranteed that your hand will always contain at least one of Mihawk's cards, which would be good if they weren't mostly kinda trash. This Variant drops an already niche pick even further into the hole. It does at least make Drain The Soul one-shots more feasible.

v3.1 Updates: Adjusted his preferred role, but nothing else. Really you don't care whether it's top or mid, if you're playing Mihawk you send him wherever the tank is.

Item build: Mage. He has no mechanics to incentivize you to do anything else, especially since his base stats are squishy so you won't get much mileage if you try to build him tank to keep his true damage around longer.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing. You could take Patient Waiting or similar to keep his cards in hand to accrue tokens, if you really want to spend half your hand capacity on cards you're specifically not playing.

Funnelling: No. Just no.

Rejected gags:
It's taken me until the 3.1 update to realise that with the religious motif and tiny piano, he's probably connected to Enidi. I am ashamed. He might also be connected to Cubey given the similarity between Drain the Soul and Drain the Life, but that's a stretch.

Mihawk actually looks kinda simian in his card art, especially Soul Flame. Given Wukong and Bond exist... is Mihawk the missing link?

That room on the archive screen is why you don't go with the lowest bidder when sourcing stained glass windows.

Okay, this time we can't be accused of stealing designs. Floating mage, face hidden by a helmet, throws a lot of lightning AoE around. This is entirely original, right guys? R-right?[leagueoflegends.fandom.com] - The dev team, apparently

Name: Niels

Position: Mid / Bot

Role: Mage

Mastery choices:
Revelation is discarded when triggered but damage increases by 75% / Revelation damage increases by 15%

Itemisation: Mage

Synergies: Shields (anti-stun)

Counters: Zealot, Deep Space (AoE)

Countered by: Assassins, ganks, Leon, basically anything that can hit him

Summary: Glass cannon AoE mage with a penchant for self-stuns.

Analysis: Niels is about as glass cannon as this game gets. He has extremely high damage output potential because in fights every attack Niels makes targets every single enemy in the fight; he stuns himself after each attack, though this can be mitigated by keeping him shielded (as shielded units can't be stunned). On the other hand, Niels is one of the only heroes in the game with 0 base armour (the others being Frank, who gets huge amounts of health, and Nihil, who gains armour over time).

These effects render Niels potent but extremely unreliable. While his attacks are AoE, if at any point he attacks while unshielded he'll stun himself, losing his next attack; this effectively means his damage output is halved whenever he fights without a shield. More importantly, however, his 0 armour makes him incredibly vulnerable to incoming damage, both in fights (which at very least will remove his shield) and in lane (where he's vulnerable both to harass and to ganks).

As a result, Niels should only be played with a team built around him. He should have at least one source of shields in the field (Palulu most notably as her Traveler's Blessing lasts through fights if not broken); he should also have at least one high Presence tank to soak hits, reducing the risk of him eating attacks with his 0 armour. You should also avoid picking him into any team which includes target-selection heroes like Lubos, Xiangxi Ke and Nihil, since they'll almost always wind up targeting (and killing) him. Don't pick him with Leon unbanned unless you like playing a four man game.

Probably better picked into bot with a full tank support to keep him alive, as picking him into mid is just asking for ganks (though he can function into tanks and bruisers). Blocker is likely your best support since he's a tank that can also shield Niels; Peter is another good pick. Palulu can work but is a bit risky; you could also take her mid if you don't mind losing out on synergy with someone like Enidi.

Cards:
Can't be played. While in hand, if an ally hits an enemy with an attack on the field, Niels immediately attacks the same target for 50% damage.

An effective force-multiplier card, Revelation costs you nothing but a hand slot and adds a nice chunk of extra damage to all your attacking cards. This doesn't have much of an effect with standard low-grade poke cards, but effects which provide multiple attacks for low SP costs (such as Zealot's Code: Assimilation or basically anything Enidi does) can become even more potent. Note you should always take the mastery giving 15% increased damage rather than the alternative, since the main use-case for this card is alongside a lot of other damaging cards; so long as you get two hits off, more damage will be dealt (2x 65% vs 1x 125%).

Target an allied hero. Until the end of the next fight, if Niels fights, that hero will also fight. Removed when played.

While for most heroes this kind of effect would be used to create lopsided fights for ganking purposes, for Niels it's very much the opposite - he's not a good skirmisher (the more targets he's hitting the better he is), and he's vulnerable enough in fights to not want to risk it. Instead, the main use for this card is to provide Niels with some limited protection against enemy attacks - target a tank and he'll have some measure of defence if ganked. It's often not enough, but it's something. Note that you'll usually want to play this even if you don't think you'll be ganked simply to get it out of your deck to make room for better cards.

Niels attacks five times, with each attack targeting a random enemy turret, hero or monster.

Although on the face of it this is an efficient damaging card (five attacks is a lot), in practice it's fairly underwhelming. Random targeting hurts, but what hurts far more is the tendency to waste attacks on monsters or high health turrets, neither of which is overly impactful. It does at least provide some minor counterjungling, which is better than nothing.



Interactions:
Shields - As noted, any kind of shield is very welcome to avoid Niels stunning himself mid-fight.

Enidi - A good pairing, Niels bot plus Enidi mid can allow for a huge amount of AoE in fights and (thanks to Revelation) a lot of damage on the field too. It is, however, extremely vulnerable to ganks (Enidi doesn't do particularly well when ganked either, after all), so be cautious which teams you pick this into.

Buffs - Since he targets all enemies, Niels is a good target for any buff effects you happen to have available. Note however that he's not actually a good user of bonus health - you might think it helps to keep him safe, but realistically he's too squishy to live through many attacks regardless of being buffed or not, and you're getting less team effective health as a result of buffing someone with no armour.

A big loser from the update, Niels gained nothing from the new itemisation, is vulnerable to both Raven and Foso, and his new Variant is terrible. Doesn't shift on the tier lists, though, because his draft priority doesn't change - he remains an extremely niche pick you'll only want if you're carefully managing both your team and your enemy's.


Gained - Niels' attacks deal 40 + 20% of Niels' AP x Number of Targets damage.

This change makes Niels' attacks stronger whenever there are more than five enemy targets on the field, making him more of a counter to summon-based teams... in theory. In practice it's a massive nerf because the majority of the fights you'll see will have fewer than five targets, so unless it's VERY early game (for the 40 base damage to matter) he'll be flailing weakly. Considering Niels is an absolute glass cannon that you only pick for his great AoE damage output, and considering that most summons will die in one or two hits anyway, this is going to be a nerf, or at most a sidegrade, in the vast majority of circumstances. Even if the enemy does draft a lot of summons you'll be picking Foso into them anyway. Ick.

v3.1 Updates: Fixed a bunch of errors in the entry, plus updated his position to reflect him being better played in bot (pretty sure my original guide I was just trying to crowbar stuff into mid because it felt too sparse).

Item build: AoE Mage. You want all the AP, all the time; disregard defences, if you get hit you're dead. Dissonance is amazing on him though since you get an entire AoE attack off it.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing, unless you want to bring a Focus to strip out the Bounds more easily. You could even ditch Smite since it underperforms most of the time anyway.

Funnelling: AP only. You might want to tutor him occasionally to try to dig out Revelation, but you're at way too high a risk of hitting Bound in most circumstances. As noted in the article, giving him bonus health is generally a waste of time and resources.

Rejected gags:
You know, having just written the Mihawk entry, I'm starting to think there's a monkey conspiracy going on here. And I know what you're going to say - Niels has no monkey-like traits. OR DOES HE[bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net]?!

Trundlekaiser es numero uno[knowyourmeme.com]. Hue hue hue.

Name: Wolfgang

Position: Top / Mid

Role: Fighter

Mastery choices:
If Devouring Soul hits, it applies Absorb one additional time / If Devouring Soul hits add one additional token to Chain of War


Gain an additional 1.5 AP and 38.5 max health per level / Gain an additional 3 AP and 22.5 max health per level

Chain of War costs 1 more but gains a token every 12 rounds instead of every 20 / If Haunting Coil hits a hero, search Chain of War into your hand

Itemisation: Fighter

Synergies: None

Counters: None

Countered by: Burst damage, Hass (buff stealing), Wolfgang (debuff reflection)

Summary: Lane bullying monster of a Fighter-mage.

Analysis: Wolfgang is the premier solo killer in the entire game. There is no hero in the game more suited to destroying his lane opponent. Picking Wolfgang into lane (mostly mid lane) is a declaration of intent to solo kill the enemy mid repeatedly.

This comes as a result of Wolfgang's effect, an obnoxiously potent buff/debuff called Absorb. Whenever Wolfgang hits an enemy he steals 10% of their AP and 15 armour from them until the end of the round (or the end of the fight, in a fight). If you're not good with numbers it might not immediately come across how powerful that is, so let's review. You're reducing the enemy's AP by 10%. You're gaining the same amount of AP, so that's a 20% (of the enemy's AP) swing already. You're also reducing their armour, so your future attacks will do substantially more damage. And you're also stealing that armour, so your opponent's future attacks will do less damage. In other words, one single attack in a 1v1 situation can swing damage outputs by a good 30-40%.

As a direct result of this, nothing can really fight Wolfgang in a 1v1; the main hope is simply that you can outlive the fight duration. Even against tanks, who have high health and low AP (so not a lot to steal), the armour debuff alone will often be enough to seal their fate if the fight lasts long enough. The only way to actually beat Wolfgang in a 1v1 is to hit him so hard he dies before he can steal many stats.

In teamfights, meanwhile, Wolfgang is a solid but not amazing performer. His armour shred becomes the central part of his kit in these instances, with every attack he lands making his entire team deal more damage to the target. In longer fights such as objective fights he can scale up to the point of dominance, but it takes a while.

As a result of this disgustingly powerful effect, Wolfgang is possibly the best pick for a mid laner in the game. Wukong and Hass can both counter him, so make sure they're banned; once they are, Wolfgang is a supremely safe pick who will perform well both in lane and in teamfights and will secure at least a couple of solo kills in all but the most unfavoured of lanes.

Cards:
Wolfgang heals himself for 30% of his max health, with excess healing becoming a shield. He then attacks all enemies within 1 hex and adds 2 tokens to Chain of War.

The setup before you play Chain of War, Devouring Soul is necessary to get enough tokens onto the aforementioned card to start the solo kill train rolling. Happily, far from being a tax, this card is strong in its own right - it heals Wolfgang up, and can also pick up the initial stack of Absorb from the target to speed up the inevitable resolution of the fight. If you're lucky you'll even grab a few stats from a passing jungler at the same time.

Target an enemy hero within 1 hex; start a fight with them (and only them), lasting as many rounds as this card has tokens. Gains 1 token every 20 rounds.

This is how Wolfgang secures his solo kills - by making damn sure nobody else can get involved. Bear in mind that the token generation passively on this card is far too small to secure any kills; to rectify this you'll need to play Devouring Soul once or twice to stack it up. Once you have, however, Chain of War will essentially become '3 SP; kill an enemy hero'. Wolfgang's just that good.

Target an enemy hero or monster within 2 hexes and attack it. If you hit a hero, deal an additional 20% of their current health and apply two stacks of Absorb; if you hit a monster, kill it and earn triple gold.

Very expensive to be used for the purposes of stealing jungle (though still acceptable if you're not looking for a kill). Its main uses are to soften up a target you don't think you can kill quickly enough yet (in the early game), and to search out Chain of War for a free kill (in the late game). Both are very valid uses, though the combination of the two cards is a bit pricey so keep in mind you won't be playing too much else if you use them.

Interactions:
Buff/debuff counters - As with all debuff-users, Wukong can counter Wolfgang pretty hard (although amusingly, by debuffing Wolfgang's team rather than Wolfgang himself); meanwhile, as his Absorb also counts as a buff, Hass can mess him up pretty hard.

No particular gains from the itemisation; his Variants are kinda weird but mostly just mess with his playstyle rather than making him more or less powerful. Was strong, is still strong.


Changed - Absorption effect on-hit absorbs 10% 8% of the target's AP and 15 10 of their armour for the rest of the round/fight.

Gained - Whenever Wolfgang triggers Absorption he gains 1% of the target's AP and 15 max health permanently.

Generally something of a sidegrade, this Variant pushes you to get Wolfgang into as many fights as possible so you can stack up the permanent buff. Given Wolfgang is nasty in skirmishes and has his own potentially endless fight card this isn't bad, but when you get right down to it, is surplus to requirements - you don't get enough stats from the procs to make Wolfgang a powerhouse without absorbing, and at the end of the day you're drafting Wolfgang to repeatedly solo kill his lane opponent rather than mess around with non-fatal skirmishes.


Removed - Absorption effect.

Gained - Whenever an attack or harass hits (on field or in fights), Wolfgang gains 3% of the target's AP, 50 max health and 1 armour permanently.

Like Variant 1, this pushes you to fight with Wolfgang as much as possible; unlike Variant 1, it pretty much forces you to do so. With no Absorption effect Wolfgang no longer has absolute inevitability on his targets (or at least, very little of it), but on the other hand, his stats can get silly very quickly with this Variant. In particular, if you happen to have an athlete with a lot of poke Tactics cards and/or a nice field hit Match Trait, pairing Wolfgang up with search effects can make something of a monster - albeit one hampered by only getting a single swing per round.

v3.1 Updates: No changes. Wolfgang is still the mid lane murder machine.

Item build: Mage-bruiser. Debatable, particularly dependent on any Variants that might be in play. The more AP you get early, the sooner you can get to solo killing things, but on the other hand, with 8+ tokens on Chain of War that AP becomes redundant; after that point you really want defences to survive the higher damage coming in from teamfights. For base Variant Wolfgang I find one heavy AP item early (say, Blue Monolith) followed by a couple of bruiser items (e.g. Golden Ticket, Aluminum Lamp) works best. The more long-term your Variant, the more you'll want to lean into the health payoff items like Gravity Converter.

Reserve Tactics: Nothing, really. Wolfgang's kit is a self-contained set of all the tools you need to ruin a mid laner's day. Having said that, Watch This is a great niche pick since Watch This + Chain of War will become net 1 SP for a kill and a Rethink in hand.

Funnelling: Tutoring Wolfgang's cards can work, since the sooner Devouring Soul stacks up the sooner Chain of War becomes a free kill (and after that point, you're just searching for gold for your mid). He really doesn't need any more stats than he's already generating, though.

Rejected gags:
Huh, he has a cross on his chest. I guess Mihawk and Enidi have an edgelord buddy.

Now I just want to know what he keeps in that little toolbox on his archive screen. Or just how he manages to bend down to open it.

Damn. I made the dumb Lion King reference in my original guide and the devs just doubled down on me. I can't even be mad.

Name: Matata

Position: Top / Jungle / Mid

Role: Utility-tank

Mastery Choices: Gain 60 max hp after triggering Combat Rhythm / When triggering Combat Rhythm during fights inflict 5 additional armour reduction
[N.B. This was 2 armour reduction initially. The tooltip now says 5 additional armour reduction, but playtesting seems to result in 45 total... sometimes. And other times, just the base 30. Really no idea what's going on there.]

Gain an additional 2.25 AP and 30 max health per level / gain an additional 3 AP and 22.5 max health per level

Itemisation: Tank, optionally with one damage item.

Synergies: Health stacking, Raven (armour shred)

Counters: Nothing in particular

Countered by: Nothing really; minor counters from Wukong (debuffs) and Mihawk (health stack)

Summary: Decent tank with a focus on pseudo-lifesteal and armour shredding

Analysis: Unlike most of the tanks in the game, who either sit in a niche (Bart, Peter etc.) or have stacking mechanics to make themselves into threats (Merisi, Frank etc.), Matata is very much an all-rounder. He doesn't tend to excel and doesn't have the tools to take over games, but instead has a nice one-two punch of utility to help him survive on the frontline while boosting his team's damage. Note that the game classes him as a Fighter, which just doesn't work with his kit - he needs high health to proc his passive and he has no effects which boost his own damage specifically, so you're far better off building him defensively so that he can stay up on the frontline.

The survivability part of Matata's kit lies in fights; whenever he attacks an enemy unit, if their current health is lower than Matata's he applies a stack of his self-titled debuff to them. The Matata debuff works like a kind of team-wide lifesteal effect - whenever that target takes damage from any source Matata heals for 7.5% of the damage dealt per stack, to a max of 3 stacks per hero. While this can add up to a decent amount of healing over the course of a fight, it's important to keep the caveats in mind - he has no way of getting additional attacks in fights and so is stacking only once per round at most, and then only if he has more health than the enemy. Furthermore, those stacks do nothing if they're thrown onto a target that then isn't getting hit. These conditions mean Matata's debuff is much more of a minor supplement than a genuine survival tool; nonetheless it can buy him an extra round or two of survival, which can make the difference in close teamfights.

The main part of Matata's kit, however, is the Combat Rhythm mechanic. This is very simple - every time Matata attacks or plays a card (including field harass, though this isn't stated in the description) he gains a stack of Combat Rhythm. Once he has three stacks, his next card on the field gains an additional effect, or his next attack in a fight will shred 30 armour from the target. The Combat Rhythm stacks are then removed and he can start again. Generally speaking the Combat Rhythm effects on his cards aren't particularly impressive (which is good, because stacking on the field is a pain); in fights, though, 30 armour reduction for the entire fight is quite substantial, especially when targeting a squishy. Frankly the armour shred is Matata's biggest selling point, so try not to draft him into heavy tanks who won't care too much about it.

Overall, Matata is solid but due to not shining in any particular area he will almost always be outclassed by one hero or another in any role he tries to fill. If you want a heavy investment tank you'll get more value from Merisi and co; if you want a low investment tank you're better off with Bart; if you want an initiation tank you'll want Reinhardt; if you want a tank with some punch you'll want Wukong or Frank. On the other hand, a lack of strengths also winds up being a lack of weaknesses - if the tanks you're looking for are banned out or you want to double up he'll always be an acceptable pick... just not your first choice.

Cards:
Initiate a 3-round fight with all heroes within 2 hexes of Matata; enemy towers don't join. With Combat Rhythm, you gain an extra 1 2 rounds of duration and Matata enters the fight with three stacks of Combat Rhythm.

An acceptable but not overly powerful initiation tool. Notably when played with Combat Rhythm the card's effects become identical to Gillis' Enchanting Invasion (which is pretty strong); starting with full stacks is nice since it lets you lead with some armour shred to secure kills. Unfortunately that shred is a little disjointed with the wide initiation radius since you're more likely to catch stray enemies and so have more difficulty in focussing the shredded target down. In v3.1 you can now get a 5 round fight with Combat Rhythm, letting Matata mimic his jungler brother's main selling point.

Move 1 hex and, if you land on a monster, kill it and gain an extra stack of Combat Rhythm. With Combat Rhythm you instead get a 2 hex movement range and kill all monsters within 1 hexes of your landing spot.

Really quite unimpressive, primarily because it doesn't provide the bonus gold/XP that similar cards usually do. This restricts its utility - you'll often find there's little point clearing your own jungle any faster unless you're already winning lanes, so you'll only really want this for counter-jungling, and 2 SP is absurdly overpriced for just a single monster. You'll pretty much only ever use this with Combat Rhythm for wiping an entire side of the jungle, or to position for a better Warcry initiation.

Attack an enemy hero within 1 hex. With Combat Rhythm, if the target is in Matata's hex he shreds 15 armour until the target next dies, or if it isn't, he knocks them back 3 hexes.

Definitely Matata's best Combat Rhythm dump, this is the entire reason you want to run Matata in a solo lane rather than the jungle - shredding armour semi-permanently is very, very valuable for just 1 SP, and you'll almost never be sharing a hex with an enemy from the jungle. Can also be used to slap enemies around to position for an initiation. Note that you can't use Pounce to position for either effect unless you're specifically at 2 Combat Rhythm stacks since it'll consume them if you have three even if you're not using either empowered effect.

Interactions:
Clearly an Odin reference: Matata and Raven work very nicely together in mid and jungle respectively; Raven greatly enjoys the single-target armour shred Matata provides and brings the damage to kill targets, while Matata can also pull him in from pretty much anywhere in the jungle so he can reset his Fly in the Night cost. Probably the only time you'll specifically want Matata in your draft is to pair with Raven.

Monkey Business: Wukong's debuff reflection has some very odd effects with Matata. The armour shred will of course reflect onto your team, so you probably don't want to draft Matata into him; on the other hand, applying the Matata debuff to Wukong will also reflect that onto your team. While that sounds like it's two negatives, in actuality it's still Matata that gets the healing from the debuff - it's just that now he's healing from the damage the enemy team does to your team instead. The shred is much more impactful, so you'll want to avoid the matchup, but it's pretty funny that it works that way.