Experience Wanted

One of the most constantly talked about things in this game are resources.  I have not seen any concrete information on Experience Potions, so I thought I would post the exp potion cost of taking one hero from 0 - 120.

300 Exp Points	1500 Exp Points	7500 Exp Points

1	0
2	25
3	55
4	85
5	155
6	235
7	335
8	465
9	615
10	795
11	975
12	1,185
13	1,405
14	1,625
15	1,855
16	2,095
17	2,365
18	2,645
19	2,935
20	3,225
21	3,525
22	3,835
23	4,155
24	4,485
25	4,825
26	5,175
27	5,535
28	5,905
29	6,285
30	6,675
31	7,075
32	7,605
33	8,285
34	9,115
35	10,095
36	11,195
37	12,595
38	14,295
39	16,295
40	18,595
41	21,195
42	24,195
43	27,495
44	31,195
45	35,295
46	39,795
47	44,795
48	50,195
49	56,095
50	62,495
51	69,495
52	76,995
53	85,095
54	93,795
55	103,095
56	113,095
57	124,095
58	135,095
59	147,095
60	160,095
61	174,095
62	189,095
63	205,095
64	221,095
65	238,095
66	256,095
67	276,095
68	297,095
69	319,095
70	342,095
71	366,095
72	392,095
73	419,095
74	447,095
75	508,095
76	541,095
77	576,095
78	576,095
79	612,095
80	650,095
81	690,095
82	730,870
83	772,995
84	816,445
85	861,195
86	907,220
87	954,495
88	1,002,995
89	1,052,695
90	1,103,570
91	1,155,595
92	1,208,745
93	1,262,995
94	1,318,320
95	1,374,695
96	1,432,095
97	1,490,495
98	1,549,870
99	1,610,195
100	1,671,445
101	1,732,945
102	1,794,695
103	1,856,695
104	1,918,945
105	1,981,445
106	2,044,195
107	2,107,195
108	2,170,445
109	2,233,945
110	2,297,695
111	2,361,695
112	2,425,945
113	2,490,445
114	2,555,195
115	2,620,195
116	2,685,445
117	2,750,945
118	2,816,695
119	2,882,695
120	2,948,945

Critical Hit Chance Teams For Offense

Critical Hit team, is a Hero team that deals a huge amount of damage based on Critical Hit Chance.  If you need a refresher on Critical Hit Chance please see the previous article here:  Critical Hit Teams

What a Critical Hit is not:

These are very expensive teams to build, both in resources and real world money.  You will have to buy some of the heroes for this type of team.  This is also not a team that you want to start as a beginner.  These teams take a while to put together, and should not be done before you finish your first solid A team. This as everything else here is my opinion, and may not be suited to every style of play.  Don't expect to be up and running with this type of team in a short period of time.

So who are our Critical Hit Chance Heroes?

• Daredevil
• Ishmael
• Jhu
• Fox
• Artemis

All of these heroes use the Critical Hit ability a little differently, all have their strengths and weaknesses.  Ishmael is a special case.  Ishmael requires an extraordinary amount of resources, and is best left as a long term project.  If you are prepared to spend the time and resources, Ishmael can be an absolute monster.

Like any other team, Critical Hit teams benefit from support heroes.  Though our choices will be a little different in this sort of team composition.  Our choices here include:

• Jet
• Sebastian
• Elmir
• Nebula

The four listed above are absolutely crucial if you want to have the most powerful team that can be built.  That being said some are frustratingly difficult to get, Jet being the most notable example.

Since Sebastian is the hero of the month this month, now is a great time to get him.  I'm going to give a brief run through of Jet and Sebastian as I don't have them yet.  Elmir and Nebula will be covered later in the team breakdown.  Jet is an offensive healer much like Maya, but his Violet skill is what we're after here.  Jet's Violet skill gives the entire team increased Critical Hit Chance.  It takes a large amount of time to gain enough soul stones to summon Jet, but it is worth the effort.  Sebastian is another hero who will boost Critical Hit Chance, but he only does that for heroes that already have Critical Hit chance.  

The composition for this team is going to be a little different than the tried and true format that we use in our regular teams.  The construction: Tank+DPS+DPS+Support+Healer doesn't exactly fit what we're trying to do here.  

Since the goal is to create a team that does a massive amount of damage in a very short period of time, we don't really need a tank.  Healers are also not something we don't exactly NEED, though there are some exceptions that conform very well to our goals here.  Since we want to do as much damage as fast as possible, we will weight the team towards DPS.  We will also make our support choices based on how much damage they can do vs. their support.  This will narrow our list of choices considerably, and will give us the following format:  DPS+DPS+DPS+Support+Healer/Support.

With that in mind, let's walk through a breakdown of the team that I am currently building.

The heroes that we will be working with are: Ishmael+Elmir+Jhu+Nebula+Dorian.  These are choices that I made for my team based on compromises and goals that I have.  So before we get to the full breakdown, here are some reasons for my choices:

• Ishmael:  Ishmael is a hero that I have always wanted to build.  I have been working on him since I first got access to the Grand Arena.  Since he takes so many already limited resources, I decided that I could benefit by working on him in parallel with this team instead of making a new selection.
• Elmir:  Elmir is a fantastic choice for a Critical Hit Team for reasons we will explore in much more detail shortly.  Though he DOES NOT have Critical Hit Chance, we can attempt to give it to him and make him even more lethal.  Even without it, Elmir has abilities that can behave like the tank that we discarded from our composition.
• Jhu:  Jhu is a no brainer here, and belongs on a Crit Team.  He also can increase Critical Hit Chance for his team via his artifact.  Jhu along with Elmir also give their team ranged attack capabilities which is very useful.
• Nebula:  Honestly, if you're at the point where you are considering building this sort of team, you should know well the reasons we would use Nebula.  She boosts attack, she removes debuffs, she provides some healing, and she has a very strong physical attack on her own.
• Dorian:  Dorian is on this team for one reason.  He can give vampirism to nearby team mates.  When Elmir jumps to the back of the line, he will gain vampirism.  This makes him harder to kill, and is a huge benefit since Elmir doesn't have much in the way of armor or health.

Elmir will be the first hero up in our breakdown.  

Looking at Elmir's stats, we see that his main stat is agility.  We also can see that he has dodge as well.  If you refer back to the first Critical Hit Team article (linked above), you will find that Dodge is calculated in the exact same way that Critical Hit Chance is.  For our agility based heroes, armor is always an issue.  Dodge can help us to work around this; after all, you can't kill what you can't hit.  This means that we have to level Elmir to a minimum of Violet +2.  At Violet +2, his dodge glyph becomes available.  We will want to get that one built up fairly quickly.  Dodge is going to keep him alive, we will build his Armor Penetration next, and finally his Physical Attack.

Shifting Sands will be the first ability that we examine.  This is the ability that will work in tandem with Dorian.  When Elmir executes Shifting Sands, he will jump to the back of the formation and carry out ranged attacks for 10 seconds.  He will also get a physical attack bonus that is a derivative of his physical attack.  When Elmir executes this skill he will jump to the back of the line and gain vampirism from Dorian's Aura.  This will help keep Elmir from dying too quickly.

The Final skill that we will examine for Elmir's use in a Critical Damage team will be his Violet skill.  Elmir uses his Green skill to create clones of himself, his Violet skill increases his chance to create two or four clones.  This is why we want him in our Critical Damage team.  If we combine him with Jhu, and (in our example) Ishmael, we can give these clones Critical Hit Chance through their artifacts, once Jet becomes an option, they will have Critical Hit Chance for the duration of the battle.  At this point, we begin to see the value of Jet.  We will not be constructing this team with Jet however, as I do not have him.

At this point we will move into Jhu.  I will not go into an exhaustive breakdown of Jhu's skills and abilities.  That is another article in and of itself.  The importance of Jhu in this team is his Critical Hit Chance.  He is also predisposed to doing a lot of damage on his own through his abilities.  He also has a little bit of health regeneration.  The main reason we want him in this team is for his ability to give others on the team Critical Hit Chance through activation of his artifact weapon.

Nebula is in this team for one specific reason.  Her Violet ability.  This ability gives a significant attack boost to her surrounding allies.  This is important in our Critical Hit team especially if one of our Critical Hit heroes gets this boost and a Critical Hit at the same time.  In essence, she is a damage amplifier.

So that brings us to Ishmael.  Ishmael is a very powerful hero.  He is the only hero in the game that is capable of completing the tower on his own.  He has to be fully leveled up to do this, and it is costly to get him there.  As I said previously, Ishmael is a project that I have wanted to undertake for a while now.  That is the only reason I have chosen him for my team.  His artifact gives Critical Hit Chance to the entire team, he's very difficult to kill when properly leveled, and he does an absolutely devastating amount of damage.  In order to get the most out of Ishmael, he has to be leveled to maximum on Gift of the Elements, and his Glyphs.  He starts to become very useful once he has acquired his fifth star.  Ishmael also requires all of the skins offered for him.  Only one of these can be acquired in game without the use of real money, and that is his Champion Skin.  As I said previously, you will need the other two as well.

I will not be going into Dorian in full detail here.  He is in this team because he can, under the right circumstances, give Elmir vampirism, and he has healing abilities.

So, now that we have gone over the team, I feel I should tell you that this is not the ideal team.  Some of these team mates will be replaced by other heroes.  Nebula and Dorian are a good fit within this team, but they are not optimal.  Nebula will be replaced my Sebastian and Dorian will be replaced by Jet in the final team.

So how do we level these guys and gals?  For our Critical Hit Heroes (Jhu and Ishmael), we will concentrate on their Critical Hit Chance Glyph first.  The next consideration would be Armor Penetration, and then Physical Attack, then Main Stat, then Health.  For Ishmael specifically, you will need all of his skins.  His Romantic Skin and his Masquerade skins should come first.  Then his Champion Skin.  For Jhu, his Solar Skin and Winter Skins should be priority, the Solar Skin being the most important.  

For Elmir, his dodge glyph should be leveled first, then Armor Penetration, then Attack, then Main Stat, then Health.  Leveling his dodge glyph is important because it will give him a better chance at survival in battles.  His Devil Skin is now available for purchase, and you should consider buying this one.  It will increase his armor penetration, this is key to getting damage through enemy armor.

For Dorian and Nebula, you can level their glyphs in the normal order.  

I do not normally advocate buying skins, but in the case of this team, it is needed.  

Hopefully, this will give you an idea of which direction to take when planning and building your own Critical Damage teams.

Rune Event Investment Breakdown

Hillbilly has created a breakdown of costs/rewards for the rune event for those who would like to fine tune their resource expenditures during the event.  Just click the image to see it full size.

Luther, and In Team Hero Positions

I got a lot of questions a few days ago regarding team composition, and especially Luther.  This article will be about a less often talked about aspect of team composition, how it can affect your specific team, and hopefully, how to use Luther more effectively for those of you who chose to capitalize on his event recently.

So first things first, if you have not read the first article about team composition, you should consider doing so.  Though not required, it will be very helpful for this discussion.  You can find it here.

Each hero has a position in the team.  For Tanks, it is position one and two.  Support is usually 3 and 4 in the middle of the team, and healers often occupy position 5.  There are some notable exceptions:  Maya is a healer, but she will occupy positions 2 or 3 depending on who you have in your team.  Celeste will also do the same.  These two are not dedicated healers, they are actually support and will do quite a bit of damage, and heal also.  Sort of a two for one.  Some mages will occupy the fifth position on the back line. Orion, Helios and, Cornelius are notable examples.  

All of this has an effect on your team dynamic.  Certain heroes will be more effective in certain positions. Nebula works best in the middle of the team.  In position 3, she can give all of your heroes support.  If she is in position 4, she will mostly effect positions 3 and 6.  Since most of your damage dealers like to occupy positions 2 and 4, having her in position three has obvious advantages.

There is another position that is less talked about, and that is the position of "Off-Tank", or position two.  This is a position that, depending on overall team makeup, is occupied by the following heroes:  Galahad, Qing Mao, Ishmael, Maya, and Markus.  There are others, but these are the most important.  

You will notice throughout the course of battles you fight that once your Tank goes down, the line usually falls fairly quickly.  The same happens with a team's healers.  But what happens if your tank doesn't die, but instead leaves position one when they activate their first skill?  That, gentle reader, can be very bad; which brings us to the point of this article.

It will be helpful to examine this issue with a sample team.  For our purposes, I have decided to use heroes that most already have.  They were also part of the original discussion on this topic, so hopefully, will allow those of you who use them to take away some effective battle applications as well.

Our hypothetical team will be:  Luther+Qing Mao+Kiera+Nebula+Martha/Dorian/Celeste/Thea.  There are many other options for the last hero, I will not go into all of them here, there is an amount work you will have to do tuning your teams.  Martha would be good with this team, but Martha is good with every team.

Moving on...

So, let's examine this team in a little more detail, paying attention to the team member positions.

So our team line up is going to read from right to left here.  In Position one, We'll have Luther.  Position two Qing Mao, and so on down the line.  

So, in this team Luther will act as the tank.  He is classified as a tank officially, but functions in a crowd control capacity.  This can spell trouble.  Luther's first skill will cause him to jump into the middle of the enemy team.  At this point, he becomes a potential liability.  

Looking at the still pictured above, we see that Luther has left the team formation.  In doing so, he has cleared a direct path to the back of the line where Martha is.  This will make scoring damage on her much easier.  Krista in this team is occupying position two.  She will not put up much of a fight here.  This spells real trouble for the Luther team here.  

So how do we work around this?  If you're going to use a Hero like Luther or Ziri as a Tank, you will need to fill the second position with a very strong hero that has a good amount of armor and a strong attack.  This is commonly referred to as an off tank.  There are many heroes that can function as an off tank.  Galahad, Astaroth, Qing Mao, Luther, Ishmael, Aurora, Andvari, and possibly Elmir.

For our purposes, we are going to use Qing Mao.  She will work well in this team as she is paired with Kiera.  There is another reason for using this duo here.  Kiera and Qing Mao will work together to boost the team's damage output.  This is absolutely needed here.  If we are going to run with a softer Off Tank, and Luther is going to jump into the other team, we'll want to end this fight as quickly as possible.  This means the more damage, the better.

So we have Luther Jumping into the middle of the enemy team.  When he does this, he's going to attack the hero occupying the fifth position in the enemy team.  Often times this will be their healer.  If the healer is killed, the team will not be able to recover. This is where Kiera and Qing Mao come in.

Qing Mao isn't really set up to be a tank, but she has a lot of abilities that will allow her to perform the job with a little support.  Her first skill will damage the front line of the enemy team and push them back, this will give her a little breathing room.  Her green skill will deal damage and blind the enemy hit by it.  This means that the enemy's attacks will miss for the duration of the blindness.  Her Blue skill damages the enemy based on the level of their current health.  Qing Mao does not have armor.  This is a disadvantage, but she does have dodge.  If sufficiently leveled, dodge will allow her to avoid being hit by attacks.  Dodge success is determined in the same way that Critical Hit chance is.  If you have questions, you should take a look at the article on Critical Damage Here:  Critical Hit Chance and Dodge.

Okay, the last thing that we need to consider in the Qing Mao Kiera team is how they work together.  Kiera is a damage dealer plain and simple.  To do this efficiently, she needs to be able to get around the enemy's armor.  Armor penetration is needed here.  Kiera has a glyph that can be leveled to increase her armor penetration, as well as her Winter Skin.  Her second artifact will also increase her armor penetration, her first will increase Physical Attack.  

We can further boost her Armor Penetration abilities by teaming her with Qing Mao.  Once Qing Mao has been promoted to Violet, her fourth skill becomes available.  Every attack reduces the target's armor.  This effect will last the entirety of the battle, even if she dies.  The net effect of this armor reduction is the same as armor penetration.  Her main artifact also increases armor penetration.  This allows more of the damage from Kiera's attack to get through and um, damage the enemy targets.  Kiera has a very large AoE.  These two together are a potent combination.  

We follow up with Nebula.  I am not going to go into full details on her, if you'd like a more in-depth look at Nebula, let me know.  I will create an article specifically about her.  In this team, we need Nebula because she will do quite a bit of physical damage on her own, as well as boost Kiera's physical attack, and keep both Kiera and Thea/Martha alive longer.  She will also remove debuffs placed by the enemy team, such as Celeste's Cursed Flames, or Lian's charm.

This brings us to the healer, and our final considerations on hero placement.  It is important in this team to use a back line healer.  The reason for this is Nebula.  If we use a position 2/3 healer in this team (Maya or Celeste) Nebula will be the last hero in the line.  This means her healing effects will only effect the hero directly in front of her.  This reduces her efficiency.  This is bad for obvious reasons.

In closing, there is not tried and true formula that I am aware of to come up with the best placement.  You will have to look at your hero's stats, and decide for yourself in many cases.  Fight practice battles, and see what works, and what doesn't.  In other words, go forth brave hero, and be destructive.

Who Exactly Is Satori?

*UPDATE*

(Please skip to the end of the article, if you just want to see who Satori is effective against.)

Ravenous Pack

So with the Satori event coming up, I thought that I would go ahead and do a write up for him.  As one of our members found out today, he can be quite impressive. 

To start off, let's take a look at his skills.

His White skill: Ravenous Pack

Looking at his Skills page, we see that Satori's base attack applies "Fox Fire Marks" to the enemy opponent in addition to dealing magic damage.  When Ravenous Pack activates, Satori at this level deals 10641 Magic damage for every Fox Fire Mark! So if an enemy has three marks, Satori would deal approximately 30K damage!  That can kill some heroes in one hit!

His Green Skill:  Spirit Banishment

 

This skill attacks all enemies and applies a Fox Fire Mark, tying back in to his White skill.  This is just going to amplify all of that damage that we talked about with his white skill.

His Blue Skill:  Centurial Wisdom

This is an interesting skill.  It steals intelligence with every successful base attack.  You know who's smart?  Your HEALERS, and most of your support heroes.  Lars and Krista also are intelligence based heroes.  After the intelligence is stolen, Satori recovers 200% of damage that he was dealt as health.  Hit him with 10K damage?  He just gained 20K health!

His Violet Skill:  Looming Justice

Satori applies NINE, yes NINE Fox Fire Marks to every hero that gains bonus energy.  This ties right back in to his first ability.  When it fires, our example Satori is going to deal someone 90K worth of damage!

Satori's main artifact will give the whole team increased magic attack.   

All right, so let's break this down.  Fox Fire Marks are where all of Satori's damage really comes from. Since his artifact increases Magic Attack, he's going to fit in best with Magic based teams, or hybrid teams.  Team composition for Satori could go something like this:  Astaroth (Big Magic Attack), Maya (She's a good healer, and has an awesome Magic Attack), Celeste (She also increases Magic Attack, and is a great Healer), and Martha.  This is one time where a three healer team makes a lot of sense.  Other suitable heroes are: Jorgen, Lars, Krista, Kiera, Aurora, Galahad, Faceless, Kai, K'arkh (only if he's paired with Faceless/Kai/Lars).  

The most important thing about Satori in a offensive situation is his fourth skill.  It will apply 9 Fox Fire Marks to any heroes who gain bonus energy.  So how do we define bonus energy?  Energy is gained by attacking, and being attacked most of the time.  Any energy gained by a way other than this is considered bonus energy.  You know who gives away bonus energy like it's going out of style?  Jorgen.  So when Jorgen steals energy and gives it to himself or his teammates, he's basically signing their death warrant.  Satori is our fabled Jorgen Killer.  Simply put, don't fight a team that has him with Jorgen, and bring him to the party every time you face a team that has Jorgen.

What you don't see here is what happened next.  Satori fired his White Skill and killed Cleaver, Jorgen, and Martha in ONE SHOT.  The battle ended shortly after.

So, it has been pointed out to me that it would be helpful to know who exactly Satori is useful against.

To discover who we can take Satori to defeat, we need to go back to what he does.  Satori's skill applies 9 Foxfire Marks to ANY heroes that gain bonus energy.  As we've already seen, that can be a very bad thing for teams that use Jorgen; because he gives everyone on the team bonus energy.  

So, let's try to understand energy generation itself first.  A hero receives 10% energy for any ability they use other than their white ability, or their violet ability, even if the opponent dodges the attack.  The second way that Heroes gain energy is through health loss.  They gain 1% energy for every 1% of max health lost.  Finally, a hero gains energy for killing an opponent.

None of these are considered bonus energy in the game.  Okay, so what is?  Well, if it isn't listed in the previous paragraph, it's considered bonus energy.  

A little known element of the game, bonus energy is gained every time a hero executes a dodge.  This means that Satori will damage/kill a good deal of the Agility based heroes.  Ishmael, Auora, and K'arkh are an example.  Other heroes that give themselves bonus energy are Ishmael in Demon Mode, K'arkh (again I know), and Orion for example.  I will add more as I find them.

Feel free to leave your questions in the comments!

Upcoming Events - Jhu and Elmir, who are they, do you need them?

As you already know, resources are a major limiting factor in this game.  So it makes sense to skip heroes that don't fit into your strategy and/or teams that you've already worked on.  In this article, we'll get to know Jhu and Elmir.  Hopefully, this will help you decide if you should go all in, or pass on them.

Let's start with Elmir.  His event will begin on June 17th, ending on June 20th.



Summoning Elmir requires 30 Soul Stones.  He will have two stars.  We will need 150 more stones before he will be really useful.  If we look at his stats page, we see that he has a fairly strong physical attack, light armor, and fairly low health.  His main strength is Agility.  Moving down the list we see that Elmir has the dodge ability.  This means that even though his health is low, once we get him to Violet +1, we can start leveling up his dodge glyph, and in time he will be able to avoid getting hit.  Dodge works the EXACT same way as Critical Hit Chance.  If you missed that article, or need a refresher, you can find it here:  Critical Hit Chance

So, what can we do with an Elmir?  Looking at his skills page, we see that he has four skills like everyone else.  For the sake of brevity, I will not be posting screenshots here.

White Ability:
Elmir will move to the far line, (The Back) and use his second skill, if available, and carry out ranged attacks for the next 10 seconds.  He will get an attack bonus while this skill is active.

Green Ability:
Elmir will create a sand clone with a percentage of his health.  This percentage is dependent on his level.  The higher his level, the more health the clone gets.  At this point, the clone can only take damage.  This is good though, because while the enemy team is attacking the clone, your heroes aren't taking damage.

Blue Ability:
The clones can now attack!  Clones created with the first ability will continue attacking with ranged attacks from afar.

Violet Ability:
When using his Green Ability, Elmir gets the chance to make two, or four clones.  This is based off of chance, and the higher his level, the better the chance you will get two or four clones.

Okay, so what is all of this information really telling us?

Elmir is a force multiplier.  He adds more firepower to your team with his clones.  If Elmir can successfully create four clones, your hero team just went from five heroes to NINE heroes!  Used correctly, this can have devastating effects.

So how do we use him effectively?

As with so many other things, what you will get here is more opinion than fact or hard rules.  That being said, Elmir is not a good fit for a heavy armor team that can take a good deal of damage.  He will die early on in a fight like that.  So, we'll put him in a dodge/strike team.  This team is based on Critical Hit Chance.  The goal being, "Do as much damage as possible, as fast as we can, and get the hell outta' dodge."  <- Pun intended, you know, because Elmir has uh, dodge. Never mind... There is an upcoming article on the team that I am planning, and I will go into much more detail there.  For now, I will say that Ishmael is a key part of that team.  Ishmael's artifact gives his hero team Critical Hit Chance.  Elmir is adding up to four more members to that team.  I think you can see where this is going.  Nine heroes with Critical Hit Chance can be extremely difficult to defend against.

So now we come to the real question, should I go all out on this event?

Well, maybe.  If you are at a point where your main team is solid, and you've already done a good deal of ground work on your secondary team, this might be a good next step.  The issue you will run into is expense.  A good Elmir team will be VERY resource expensive if you want to really make it strong.  These teams also focus on less common heroes, some of which you can only get from special events.  The types of teams you will be creating with Elmir will likely be a little more exotic.  The team that I will be outlining in the Critical Team article consists of, Elmir+Ishmael+Dorian+Jhu+Ziri.  This is a team that will take quite some time to raise.  Other possible choices for this team could include Sebastian, and Jet.

Verdict?

If you're ready to start a Critical Team, you need Elmir.  Otherwise, don't throw everything you have into the Elmir event.

Satori will be the next hero event, starting 6/23 - 6/26.

Satori is definitely worth investing in.  Once he is sufficiently leveled, he can be absolutely devastating.  I will not go into a huge amount of detail here, if Satori is something everyone is interested in, I will write a separate article on him.  Just message me on Discord.  Satori works well in Mage based teams, and can be a good addition to mixed damage teams as well.  An interesting thing to note is that Satori's abilities are structured in a way that does significant damage to the opposing team when they gain energy.  I have been in battles where Satori has killed two of my heroes in one shot due to this ability.  He is not to be taken lightly.

The next hero event will be Jhu.  This event will run 6/28 - 7/1.

I will also not be going into detail on Jhu.  I do not have this hero yet, so I am still unfamiliar with him.  If you are planning a Critical Team, you really should participate here.  Jhu's artifact also gives your team Critical Hit Chance.  Jhu himself has Critical Hit Chance.  This means that in the team outlined above, specifically, Jhu+Ishmael can be a very big problem for your opponent.  Keep in mind, however, that he will need proper support.  If not, the fight will be over before it even gets started.

It is worth mentioning here that there will also be an event for collecting Runes.  You need these to level up glyphs.  Where Jhu and Ishmael are concerned, you will be needing lots of Runes so you can boost their Critical Hit Chance Glyphs.  To fully take advantage of what the month of June will have on offer and build a Critical Team, you will need to participate heavily in the Elmir+Jhu+Runic Milestone events.  Otherwise, I'd save it for Satori+Runic Milestone.

The Different Types of Damage, How to Defend Against Them, and How Does Armor Work?

This will be a short article.  We have a war to fight in 2 & 1/2 hours!  So, let's get to it.

There are three types of damage in Hero Wars.  They are:

Pure Damage, this will be shown as white in battle, and green in your hero's description page.  We are going to return to pure damage later.

Magic Damage, this type of damage will be marked as purple in your hero's description and in battles.

Physical Damage, this will be shown as red in your hero's description and in battle.

At this point, you may be thinking, "Well thanks Captain Obvious! I already knew that heroes did damage."  I hope you do anyway, if not then you might belong in one of those "other" guilds, like the one who's name rhymes with Everyone's favorite tank.

It is important to know what kind of damage is being dealt for a number of reasons.  In my mind the number one reason this is important, is because I play back battles, both training and real, as slowly as possible.  When I do this, I try to watch for what kind of damage this or that hero is taking.  This allows me to better assess where a particular hero is struggling, i.e is Magic Damage killing him/her, or is it Physical, or is it pure?  You can go back and replay all of those Guild War Battles, and Arena/Grand Arena for a reason you know.

Another less obvious purpose, is to go back and watch battles you have fought with opponents (think Guild Wars) and watch THEIR team to scan for weaknesses.  This can give you clues about what to bring to the next Guild War/Arena Battle.  I look for a weakness, and then I make the enemy suffer for it.

So far so good right?  Let's examine further.

Pure Damage is NOT, I repeat NOT effected by armor OR magic defense. That's right, if you're seeing a lot of white damage pop up, you're in trouble, and it's time to look at increasing your team's health glyphs, main stat glyphs, and attack glyphs.  Pure Damage is only defensible by adding health.

Magic Damage can be defended against by increasing your Magic Defense (I know right?) glyph.  You can also choose to add a hero to your team that can boost the team's Magic Defense with their abilities, or their artifact's activation buff.  Offensively, you can increase the amount of Magic Damage that you do, by increasing both Magic Attack, and Magic Penetration.  For teams that have Magic Defense, you MUST have good Magic Penetration.  If you're having trouble with Celeste in Dark Mode, then you need to increase Magic Penetration.

Physical Damage works exactly the same way.  Having issues with you heroes dying from Physical Damage?  Well my friend, it's time to visit the blacksmith and get some Armor.  No Blacksmith?  No problem.  You can increase Armor using glyphs, or by adding heroes that boost the team's armor.  Astaroth is a prime example of this.  Offensively, you can increase the amount of Armor Penetration that your hero has.  Some are better than others, for example Kiera's winter skin provides Armor Penetration, and Qing Mao's Artifact, and fourth skill provide Armor Penetration.

So how much Magic Defense/Armor do we need?  Glad you asked.  We can figure out an estimate with a formula:

Here are some armor values and how much damage they can reduce:

500 - 14%
1000 - 25%
2000 - 40%
4000 - 57%
8000 - 72%
12000 - 80%

If you'd like to stop here, you can.  Magic Defense works the same way.  You can use these values for Magic Penetration, and Armor Penetration as well.  If you want to have a more complete knowledge of what is going on, then fear not and read on intrepid explorer!

We take our Armor value/Magic Defense value (we'll use 3000 for simplicity.), and divide by 3000. We will always divide by 3000, unless the developers change something.  This number is constant.

So,

3000/3000 = 1

We will now add 1.  We will always add one, it is a constant number in the game.

1 + 1 = 2

Now we will divide 1 by our result (2).

1 / 2 = 0.5

Next we will subtract this number from one.  Again another constant.

1 - 0.5 = 0.5

Next we multiply by 100.

0.5 * 100 = 50.

That number is our Armor/Magic Defense value expressed as a percentage.  This means we will block 50% of the incoming respective damage.  Let's try another.

8000 / 3000 = 2.666

1 + 2.666 = 3.666

1 / 3.666 = 0.272

1 - 0.26 = 0.728

0.278 * 100 = 72.8 (This WILL be rounded down to 72)

and we get 72% which is how much incoming Physical/Magic damage that we are blocking.  

So, if we have 8000 armor, and our enemy does 9000 Physical Damage, we will block 72% of that damage.  Our hero takes 2,520 damage!  This is a HUGE decrease in damage.

Armor Penetration and Magic Penetration work in a similar fashion.  If you have a penetration value of 3000 and your opponent has an armor or magic defense value that is 2000, and additional 1000 damage will get through.  Hopefully, this will give you a new way to analyze your battles, and target areas you would like to improve.