Critical Hit Teams and Critical Hit Chance - AKA WTF JUST HAPPENED!? And How do I keep it from happening again?

Fig. 1-1 Ishmael is a hero with Critical Hit Chance

So what exactly is Critical Hit Chance?  Critical Hit Chance is the probability that a hero with critical hit capability will land a hit that does double the amount of damage he/she normally does.  Simple enough right?

Before we go on, there are only certain heroes that have Critical Hit Chance, and they are:  Daredevil, Ishmael, Artemis, Jhu, Jet, and Fox. (disclaimer, I don't have a lot of these heroes, so there may be others I'm not aware of.)

In figure 1-1, you will see the number 9070 in orange.  That was a critical hit, and it dropped Peppy like a bad habit.  Also, if you look closely, you will see that Ishmael just wiped out a team of 5 by himself!  Let's explore this further, and try to figure out what is going on here.

There is really no simple way to explain this, so we'll jump straight into the deep end.  Critical Hit Chance is exactly what it sounds like.  It is a chance, defined by probability.  Luckily, there is a way to calculate this.

The possibility of landing a Critical Hit is calculated by:  Hero's Critical Hit Chance / (Opponent's Main Stat + Hero's Critical Hit Chance).  We then multiply the resulting number by 100.

Our result is the possibility of a hero landing a Critical Hit; expressed as a percentage.

Let's try it:

So, if we look at Ishmael's stats page, we find that he has a Crit Hit Chance of 653 that's our first number.

Let's look at the opponent:

Peppy's stats page tells us that her Main Stat is Intelligence, and it is at 79.  That's our second number.

Let's plug it in and see what we get.

653 + 79 = 732

653 / 732 = 0.89

0.89 * 100 = 89

So, against Peppy at this level Ishmael has an almost 90% chance of getting in a critical hit.  At 90%, he will get in Critical Hits more than he won't.  Peppy is screwed here.  When Ishmael delivers a Critical Hit, he will do double his physical damage.  His stats page shows that as 4539.  So he will hit Peppy with 9078 damage with a critical hit!  Peppy's health is 2605.  When he hits her, she's dead.

Let's give Ishmael a bigger challenge.

Dorian's main stat is also Intelligence.  We can see that he is at 2085.  Let's use our formula to see what will happen:

653 + 2085 = 2738

653 / 2738 = 0.24

0.24 * 100 = 24

So Ishmael's chances with Dorian have dropped to 24%.  This is still something we should worry about, but not as bad of a situation as Peppy faced.

So now that we have a good idea of what is going on here, we need to figure out a good defense plan. The single biggest factor here, is our hero's main stat.  For Dorian that is intelligence.  Luckily for us there is an easy way to influence the value of this stat.  To do this, we need to head to the forge and upgrade his main stat glyph.

Looking at the glyph screen, we see that Dorian is at level 15 on his intelligence glyph.  This glyph is the last one to unlock, and that does not happen until Violet +2.  If you are coming up against critical damage, you need to be at Violet +2, and you need to level up that main stat glyph. Period.

Other strategies for dealing with Critical Hit teams involve using Agility based teams that can dodge, attacking critical teams with a stronger critical team, adding huge amounts of armor to your heroes, and outright overpowering the opponent.

There is also a devastatingly effective solution.  This is where Helios comes in.  Helios specifically damages critical damage capable heroes.

Every time your opponent scores a critical hit it, Helios will activate his fourth skill.  Flaming retribution does a ridiculous amount of retaliation damage when a Critical Hit is scored.  He is the best way to deal with these types of teams.

This defense will be most effective with a hero like Orion on the team with Helios.  Orion does obscene amounts of damage rapidly on his own.  His artifact adds Magic Penetration; further augmenting the retaliation damage don by Helios.

Hopefully, you now have a few skills in your tool box that will help you deal with Critical Damage teams more effectively.

Next time, we will build a sample Critical Damage team so we can explore using Critical Damage offensively.  

Team building basics, and dynamics.

The question that a lot of our guild members seem to have is, "Why isn't my team very good?"  Well, there are a number of reasons for this.  First we need to see what is going on, by asking a few diagnostic questions.

1. What is your team level, and what is the level of your heroes?
2. Am I losing to teams that are higher in level/overall power to me?
3. Am I losing to teams weaker in level/overall power to me?
4. Am I losing to teams equal in level/overall power to me?
5. I've seen other guild members just destroying higher level opponents, why can't I do that?

The answers to these questions will determine the next direction that you should take, as each requires a slightly different solution.

1. Your team level is going to be important pretty much throughout the game, and is a fair indicator of progress for you and your hero teams.  Team level is definitely not an absolute measurement, but is a strong indicator of your team's strength and capabilities.
2. If you are losing to teams that are higher in level, there's nor a whole lot you can do.  This is going to happen, and you will just have to accept that.  A general rule of thumb I use is, "Don't attack opponents that are more that 5K-7K higher in power level than you.  This will keep you from taking on challenges bigger than you can handle.  There are certain scenarios where you can take on opponents up to 50K stronger than you!  Some of these scenarios are relevant here, but I feel like those are best discussed separately.
3. If you are losing to teams that are weaker than you, this is an indicator of a problem with your team dynamics.  Fear not brave hero, the solution is at hand!
4. If you are losing to equal teams, then you may want to reassess your team's style.  For example, are you going up against a heavily armored opponent with a team that does only magic damage?  Hint: This is the wrong team to use for this, and you should avoid heavy armor if your team has no armor penetration, and does not do very strong damage.
5. If you are at level 80 and are getting absolutely destroyed by level 100-120 opponents, then pick a weaker opponent.  You are a brave and courageous soul, but that won't save you.  If your opponent is only a few levels higher, see our answer to #3 and you'll be taking down teams much stronger than you, and they won't see it coming.

So, the real issue here is number 3, and it stems from poor team dynamics.  If you can find the right team composition, issues 1 - 5 will mostly be resolved.

Firstly, let's try to examine what we mean by team composition.  Simply put, you need to find heroes that compliment each other.  

The ideal team will be composed of powerful individuals that all bring skills the team doesn't have.  Further, these individuals will compliment and augment each other.  To illustrate this concept, I will use team that I am building. 

So, the first thing we need to decide upon is a hero that we like, and a team specialization.  The idea with this team is to deal as much damage possible as fast as possible.

I really like K'arkh, he does loads of damage, and I got him during an event, so I was able to get a lot of soul stones for him.

So let's take a look at K'arkh, and see what he can do.  He has three abilities that are interest at first glance: 

The first is Negator of Laws.  This allows K'arkh, to block attacks.  For each attack blocked, he gains energy.  This means that he can attack repeatedly very quickly.

The next ability is Deadly Tendrils.  This ability allows K'arkh to deal damage to every enemy in the air.  This ability also deals double damage to enemies less than his current level.  Looking at K’arkh above, we see he's at level 89.  Every enemy he attacks that is at 88 or less will be hit with double damage. This squid is looking like a great choice so far.

The final ability of interest to us is his fourth skill survival factor.  When an enemy is thrown into the air and attacked, a percentage of his health will be recovered.  

Well looking at his main attack, we know that he is going to be healing himself if we promote him to violet.

So, considering the information we have found about his skills, getting heroes into the air is very important.

If we take a look at other heroes, we will find that Faceless can help with this.  

His second ability "Power Throw" will toss an enemy up into the air.  When this happens, K'arkh's third and fourth abilities get triggered.  This is great news for us, bad news for our opponent.  K’arkh and Faceless are going to seriously bust some heads.

I we look at his fourth ability, we find that Faceless actively provides magic defense for the ENTIRE team!  This is great, because we can now worry less about mage based teams.

Finally, Faceless copies the last used ultimate of ANY hero in the battle, friend or foe.  This can boost your healing or damage dealing capabilities depending on when this ability is used.

Now that we have our DPS foundation laid, it's time to decide who we need to add next.  Unless you are ridiculously powerful, you're going to want a healer, plain and simple.  We need to choose carefully here.

Since we want to do as much damage as we can, Celeste is an obvious choice here, but she is a better fit different team that I have, so we won't use her.  This really only leaves two viable options.  Martha, and Maya.  I do not have Martha, and unless you plan on buying here when she comes through, you won't either.  This means we're going to have to use Maya.



There are a number of things that Maya provides for the team.  She can heal them, and she has some crowd control with her third ability Poisonous Bonds, and she can restrain enemies and damage them at the same time with her fourth ability.

Perhaps the most important skill Maya provides is her ability to attack the furthest hero in the enemy team.  This is usually the healer, and we want the healer gone.

Also, Maya can heal AND do damage at the same time.  Celeste can only do one or the other at a time, and that is why we want Maya instead.  Also, with the other healing abilities that Faceless and K’arkh provide, we can depend on Maya even though she doesn't heal as efficiently as Martha or Celeste.

That's three down, we have two to go.  There are a couple of choices here.  We can add more support, we can add more damage, or we can put in a tank.

This team absolutely need to have a tank to help absorb damage.  K’arkh is kind of weak in armor, and Faceless is weak in health.  Our tank will help mitigate this.

For this team, I chose Astaroth.



Astaroth can protect the team with his first skill by creating a shield that protects from physical damage.  He has some healing ability, for those who weren't keeping track, we now have four out of five of our heroes healing on this team!  A whopping 80% of our team is now healing, this is going to make them really hard to kill.

He also has some offensive capability with his second skill and specifically reduces the energy of the farthest enemy which is usually the team's healer.  Now we have two heroes attacking the furthest enemy.  Things aren't looking too good for Martha...

Astaroth's fourth skill Last Word, is why we really need him.  Last Word can bring back a fallen ally. This ability alone can alter the outcome of a battle.

For our last hero, we are going to go with another support/control hero.  Jorgen is going to be our creepy ass manimal on this one.



Jorgen has some very interesting abilities.  He primary skill, Torment of Powerlessness, deals a crap load of damage.  We're a damage dealing team, so this is a good skill to have.  It also prevents effected enemies from gaining energy for 9 seconds.  This helps a lot if K’arkh attacks in this 9 seconds, since damage helps a hero gain energy, and we want them to fire their ultimates as little as possible.

Jorgen's second ability will shield an ally with a magic shield.  This shield increases their energy at a doubled rate until it is destroyed.  If he shields K’arkh, K'arkh can attack even faster!

Jorgen's third ability Leper, makes the furthest enemy the target of a curse.  When any enemy heroes take physical damage, the curse redirects the damage to the furthest enemy.  This is phenomenal, because K’arkh damages three enemies at a time!

This is now a third hero who is attacking that back line healer!  Everybody say, "Bye Martha!"

Jorgen's fourth ability allows him to steal energy from the enemy with every attack.  So we have two heroes that are now recycling their ultimate rapidly.

So now we know what everybody is doing on the team, are there any other ways they can benefit each other?

Let's examine their artifacts.

I will not be going into artifacts in depth here, that is an entirely different post.  For this discussion, I will assume you have your team's artifact weapon at three stars minimum.  This ensures 100% artifact activation.

When Astaroth fires his primary ability, he gives the team Armor.
When K’arkh fires his primary ability, he increases the team's Physical Attack.
When Faceless fires his primary ability, he increases the team's Magic Penetration.  Think of this as the equivalent of armor penetration; only for magic.
When Maya fires her primary ability, she gives the team Magic Defense.
Finally, when Jorgen fires his primary ability, he gives the team increased Magic Attack.

As you can see, we have all of our bases covered.  Armor, Physical Attack, Magic Penetration, Magic Defense, and Magic attack.  We don't have armor penetration, but it is easy to add with K'arkh's Stellar Skin.

This team is a potent combination, and can be absolutely devastating if they are well leveled.



Other heroes that can work well with this team are Nebula, and Dorian.

In summary, we have created a team that over laps and covers almost every offensive and defensive situation thrown at it.  When building your teams, you need to pay special attention to what a hero's skills do, as well as their artifacts.  You want to overlap whenever possible, but you can also create teams that augment in one direction like Physical attack, but it might compromise elements of your team such as Magic Attack, and Healing.

Remember, this is just an example.  You should create and experiment on your own.  Trial and error will be your friend.  Everyone in the guild is willing to give critiques, and suggestions on how to improve your team.

Here are a few ideas:

• Dorian+Helios+Orion
• Cleaver+Peppy
• Maya+Martha
• Jorgen+Lars+Krista
• Ishmael+Elmir+Jhu
• Jet+Sebastian
• Jet+Jhu
• Kiera+Qing Mao
• Daredevil+Fox - (I added this for completeness, but DO NOT recommend trying to build a team around those two, unless you have a good amount of experience.)

Leave your team ideas in the comments, and as always, I am available to help on Discord most days.

Good Luck Team Raze!

Inaugural Post

Welcome to Team Raze Warfighter 101!  If you have questions, or would like to up your game, this is the place for you.  I will cover topics like, team building and dynamics, specific types of teams (Physical, Magical, Hybrid, Critical Damage, etc.), strategies for winning battles, strategies for increasing your rank and rewards in the Grand Arena and Arena.  Heroes that are worth the effort, as well as heroes who are better left until much later after your team is established.

It is my sincere hope that you find this useful, and can come away from the information here with a better hero team.