[v2.1 Update]Yippo's In-depth Analysis & Guide to ESports Godfather

A full analysis of each hero and their cards, as well as suggested team comps, itemisation and similar areas.

Introduction

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.

Why should you listen to me?

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?

A note on League of Legends

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.

A note on humour

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

IMPORTANT: Update for DLC 1 and patch v2.1.8

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...

Comments

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.

Early Game vs Late Game

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.

Glossary

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.
Vanilla - Normal, ordinary, with no distinguishing features.

Quick Tips

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.
  
  
• 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.

Athletes

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.

v2.1 | Athletes

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.

Athletes - Attributes

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 a player's maximum total attributes is 500, while the maximum for any one attribute is 115. Obviously this means that it's not possible to max out every stat.

Athletes - Hero Mastery

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.

Athletes - Intensive Training

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.

Athletes - Skills

Skills

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).

Athletes - Routine Training & Traits

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

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.

Athletes - Match Traits

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

Good Match Traits

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.

Mediocre Match Traits

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.

Bad Match Traits

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.

Athletes - Tactics Cards

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).

My Team

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.

Itemisation

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.

General Itemisation Points

• 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).

Itemisation (cont.)

Role Itemisation

Tank

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

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.

Mage

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.

Marksman

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.

Support

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).

v2.1 | Itemisation

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.

v2.1 | Venue

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.

Heroes

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.

v2.1 | Variants

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.

Using The Tier Lists

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.

v2.1 | Tier Lists

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.

Top Laners

Tier list:

Key

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.

Explanations:

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.

Drafting for Top Lane

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).

v2.1 | Top Laners

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.

Babe

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 the AP and health you'd expect, 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.

v2.1 | Babe

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

Variant 1

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.

Bart

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

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, and his cards are honestly pretty mediocre at best.

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.





Interactions:

Nothing in particular. 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.

v2.1 | Bart

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.

Variant 1

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; that said, the damage is something of an afterthought, so doesn't have much real impact.

Variant 2

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.

Big Foot

Proven at long last to really exist; the irony is that 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.

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 30%. 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.

v2.1 | Big Foot

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

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

Cubey

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)

Summary: Greedy top-lane Fighter who underperforms unless prioritised.

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-b 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).

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.

v2.1 | Cubey

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

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

Frank

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

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 Frank's risk, though also lowers the reward somewhat.

v2.1 | Frank

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

Variant 1

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.

Hass

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.

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.

v2.1 | Hass

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

Variant 1

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...

Justice

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.

v2.1 | Justice

Minor changes.

Variant 1

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

Kid

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: 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!

v2.1 | Kid

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

Miki

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

Name: Miki

Position: Top / Jungle

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 the jungle, for instance, if all your objective fights would involve the jungler 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.




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.

v2.1 | Miki

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

Variant 1

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.

Qube

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

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. Having said that, she's still perfectly solid as a low maintenance teamfight Fighter, hence her top 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.

v2.1 | Qube

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.

Variant 1

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.

Wukong

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.





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. 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.

v2.1 | Wukong

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

v2.1 | Qin Hu

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, mage 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, is that 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.



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.

Junglers

Tier list:

Key

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.

Explanations

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.

Drafting for Jungle

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.

v2.1 | Junglers

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.

Aurelio

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)

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 pick him into 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.

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', so you want to maximise his threat, not bolster his defences.

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.

A relatively weak initiation tool as far as it goes - a 2 hex range doesn't really make up for it costing so much. You'll only really want to be playing this for ganks in bot lane where you can get the most duration out of it - for general purpose initiation, look to other cards (or just spend your SP strengthening your position instead).



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.

v2.1 | Aurelio

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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).

Bond

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 is the only ADC that performs well in the jungle (okay, fine, his only competition is Bariel, but still). Given that his cards are lacklustre (and indeed, Monkey Business is entirely useless in lane), you'll probably want to field him there.

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.




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 fight durations.

v2.1 | Bond

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

Variant 1

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.

Gillis

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); true damage (e.g. Mihawk, Digo)

Countered by: Acedia (entirely negates Gillis' kit), Hass (steals Accumulation stacks)

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 weaker alongside actual tanks, whose higher Presence reduces her chances of taking attacks in round 1, but still entirely usable.

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). 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.

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.

v2.1 | Gillis

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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 from round 2 onwards.

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...

Hakuna

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.


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, but that's about it.

v2.1 | Hakuna

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

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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?

Kaka

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.

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.

v2.1 | Kaka

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.

Variant 1

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.

Kamaitachi

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

Synergies: Anything with bonus attacks

Counters: Anything with bonus attacks

Countered by: Anything which punishes bonus attacks

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).

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. What's more, as a Fighter he has pretty good innate defences, so he can take a few hits as well. 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.

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.

v2.1 | Kamaitachi

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

Lubos

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)

Counters: None

Countered by: None

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.

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.





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.

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.

v2.1 | Lubos

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

Manta

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.

Generally I find you're best off building him as an assassin to get the damage together to ensure kills on tanky targets. He's best picked in the jungle as a counter to tank top laners, who he can prey on to get both himself and his own top snowballing. While he can be picked in mid, he tends to pick up a few isolated kills then not really accomplish much in wider teamfights. This leaves him as a situational counterpick in the jungle - his build awkwardness and reliance on solo ganks render him less effective in general than comparable picks like Gillis, but he can go off in the right circumstances.

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. If you can get kills more than once or twice with this card, you're doing well.

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.


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 lane gank.


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!

v2.1 | Manta

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

Something of a downgrade, this does make Manta all the more lethal in the skirmishes he's designed for but makes him drastically weaker in any kind of longer fight. Note that he loses the crit chance when attacking even if the attack misses. Moves him down the tier list a little.

Mo

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).

v2.1 | Mo

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

Nihil

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: None

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.

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), on par with a well built 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 an extremely valuable 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; you'll only really want to play this with multiple tokens on it unless you have a good opportunity - and more for the cost reduction than the bonus stacks, which really aren't going to do a whole lot in just a 3 round fight.


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.




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.

v2.1 | Nihil

No massive changes. His Variant is pretty good though.

Variant 1

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 3 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.

Reinhardt

Like any good cavalryman, the centaur Reinhardt charges enemy lines in the optimal way - entirely perpendicular 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: Defensive Fighter

Synergies: Lan, Felyn (round 1 armour reduction)

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 jungle is the better choice because it's easier to line up Cavalry Charge from the jungle (typically on mid lane), but either can work, particularly as his other two cards are 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.




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:
Round 1 - 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.

Funnelling - Supersonic's search functionality combines nicely with heroes who want to be funnelled. Felyn and Cubey are the two obvious examples.

v2.1 | Reinhardt

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

Xiangxi Ke

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 assassin cosplaying as a pirate 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.

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.

v2.1 | Xiangxi Ke

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

Zealot

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.)

v2.1 | Zealot

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.

Variant 1

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.

v2.1 | Raven

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).

Mid Laners

Tier list:

Key

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.

Explanations

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.

Drafting for Mid Lane

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.

v2.1 | Mid Laners

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.

Crank

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), 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.

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.

v2.1 | Crank

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.

Variant 1

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.

Enidi

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.

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.

v2.1 | Enidi

No massive changes. The Variant does make Enidi more swingy, though.

Variant 1

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.

Lady Deadfire

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 hit (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.

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.

v2.1 | Lady Deadfire

Variant makes solo lane Deadfire all the stronger while weakening support Deadfire. That's about it.

Variant 1

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.

Lan

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.

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.

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.

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.

v2.1 | Lan

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.

Variant 1

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.

Merisi

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.

v2.1 | Merisi

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.

Variant 1

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.

Mihawk

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.

v2.1 | Mihawk

No particular changes aside from a pretty garbage Variant.

Variant 1

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.

Niels

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 (AoE)

Countered by: Assassins, ganks, 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 Niels, 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. Finally, it's generally preferable to play him in mid lane; while you might think he should be in bot lane where he has a support to protect him, realistically he's going to die to ganks no matter where he is - and in bot lane he stands a good chance of dragging his support down with him.

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.

v2.1 | Niels

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.

Variant 1

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.

Wolfgang

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.

v2.1 | Wolfgang

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.

Variant 1

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.

Variant 2

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.

v2.1 | Matata

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 2 additional armour reduction

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 (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 round 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.

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.

Bot Laners

Tier list:

Key

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.

Explanations

S Tier: All heroes that can easily take over a game. Felyn is filthy, while BaJie is the single best general-purpose ADC pick.

A Tier: Both solid picks, do their job but don't usually run away with things.

B Tier: Acceptable picks, but usually somewhat risky or specialised. Bond stands out as being very close to A tier but falling down due to the relative weakness of his cards for laning.

C Tier: Bariel still doesn't know what he wants to be. Deep Space and Omaha both have a lot of damage but just aren't reliable enough compared to the high tier picks.

D Tier: There are no D tier ADCs - they can all do the ADC job, some just do it better than others.

Drafting for Bot Lane

If I'm red side and want to play through bot lane, ADC-support duo is what I pick. Remember that a lot of ADCs have a single support that tends to work particularly well with them - Felyn and Blocker, BaJie and Acedia, Bunu Shan and Beverly, etc. - and pick the pair if you're focussing on them. If you're looking for a different lane to make the plays you can leave ADC to later.

v2.1 | Bot Laners

No huge shifts - aside from the new arrivals not a lot changes. Foso's appearance does make Omaha and Deep Space slightly weaker, but they're already in C tier and realistically it's hard for an ADC to be useless enough to make it to D.

S Tier: No surprises that Foso once again lands in S. If there was a tier above S, Felyn would enter it if Acceleration Coil is in your version.

A Tier: Quinn arrives here - she's strong and has the potential to explode teamfights, but when you get right down to it she's just a weaker version of BaJie. Note Elemi can jump into S tier depending on her Variant and your comp preferences - she was already pretty close.

Ada

I'm supposed to make a bunch of emo tryhard jokes about her makeup and sniper rifle and all, but I keep getting hung up on how boss her blue highlights look.

Name: Ada

Position: Bot Lane

Role: ADC

Mastery choices:
Shield Generator's shield increases from 33% to 66% of Ada's AP / Multiple Shot attacks one additional target

Itemisation: ADC

Synergies: Skirmishers, particularly Lan

Counters: None

Countered by: Gillis

Summary: Skirmish-oriented ADC.

Analysis: Ada is an ADC built for skirmishing thanks to her signature ability. Whenever you fight, if Ada isn't involved, she makes herself involved - she intervenes by getting an attack in the first round of combat. While a single attack might not seem particularly impactful, Ada's cards are all designed to enhance her first shot in a fight - which works when she's intervening and can provide a substantial swing in your favour.

Ada's other benefit is that she's extremely low maintenance - all of her modification cards are used automatically, so the only input she needs is 2 SP three times in the game to play her Mod Upgrade. What's more, each time you do so it removes the relevant mod from the deck, making your draws more reliable.

Although Ada's first attack is quite punchy, gaining a variety of effects, once it's expended she becomes entirely vanilla. This means that if you're picking her, you need to be doing so either with, or against, a team oriented around fighting as often as possible. If you aren't getting value out of her first shot you'd have been better off picking literally any other ADC in the game. As a result, Ada is a very situational pick, but one who can be effective in the right setup (or to counter one).

Cards:
Doesn't exist naturally in the deck; one copy is added to your discard pile each time Ada activates an equipment. When played, choose one of Ada's modifications to gain permanently, removing its card from your deck. This card is removed when played.

Thins your deck out and, more importantly, lets Ada reliably provide whatever utility you're most needing. Personally I tend to favour Concussion Grenade > Multiple Shot > Shield Generator, as I find the stun to be the most useful, but this comes down to personal preference and the state of the game currently. Note that one of the early masteries reduces this card's cost from 4 to 2 - never play Ada if you don't have this mastery because 4 SP for this card is daylight robbery. Note also that Ada gets 15/30% increased damage on her first shot for having 2/3 of her mods active - this includes both effects from this card and from your hand.

Can't be played. While in hand, Ada's first attack during a fight targets 1/2 additional targets, then discards this card.

Straightforward, just lets Ada hit multiple enemies on the first round. I would recommend always taking this upgrade after Concussion Grenade, since just damaging multiple targets is usually less valuable than stunning one.





Can't be played. While in hand, Ada's first attack during a fight gives all of her allies a shield for 33/66% of her AP, then discards this card.

Can be handy if you're playing from behind; this is generally more reliable than Concussion Grenade but with a lower cap (the shield is worth more than stunning a tank, but less than stunning a carry). Multiple Shot, on the other hand, raises Concussion Grenade's reliability a fair bit and has no interaction with this card.



Can't be played. While in hand, Ada's first attack during a fight stuns her target(s), then discards this card.

The most impactful option, particularly for small, short skirmishes where missing a round of combat can swing the overall outcome considerably. Note that the attack needs to hit for the stun to go through. The combination of Multiple Shot and Concussion Grenade can also give Ada quite a big impact on midgame objective fights.



Interactions:
Gillis - Gillis is very strong into Ada because of her first round invulnerability - she can soak Ada's intervention quite happily and, while she'll be stunned for the second round, she retains the AP bonus until she gets to attack. Furthermore, Ada (as an ADC) will have a lot of AP built up which will really fuel Gillis' burst.

Lan - Lan wants to fight as often as possible and her entire effectiveness hinges on whether she secures kills. Ada gives Lan the freedom to gank lanes other than bot lane by contributing a chunk of additional damage, helping to secure the early kills that get the snowball rolling. They also feel quite thematically matched, if that matters to you.

v2.1 | Ada

Like most of the ADCs, Ada doesn't really gain anything from the new itemisation aside from a few crit options. Her new Variant is an upgrade, but not really enough to shift her up the list.

Variant 1

Removed - If you have 2/3 of Ada's bonus effects active, she gains 15%/30% AP for her first attack.

Gained - Ada's bonus attack deals 35% reduced damage.

Gained - When Ada first hits with an attack (which doesn't have to be her first attack) she applies Weakness Mark to the targets hit. This increases their damage taken by 35% (increased by 10%/20% for having 2/3 bonuses active) until the end of the round.

A notable buff - while this does strip some of the direct damage out of Ada's supporting attack, that really didn't matter all that much unless she got hugely fed. With this Variant she can more effectively work with skirmish-oriented playstyles thanks to providing a damage boost to whoever's fighting, regardless of her own stats.

BaJie

Disco Stu says remember kids - never go back to a firework after it's been lit. That's how you get both your arms blown off and replaced by badass rocket fists. - Disco Stu BaJie

Name: BaJie

Position: Bot

Role: ADC

Mastery choices:
Cache provides an extra 5 gold per card played / Cache gains 30 gold when it enters your hand

Once Cache has earned 400 gold, BaJie gains 5% crit damage / For each 100 gold Cache earns, BaJie gains 0.5% crit chance (max 5%)

Rocket Punch becomes global and deals 1 bonus damage to towers / Rocket Punch cost reduces by 1

Itemisation: ADC (prioritise crit)

Synergies: Acedia (gold generation), Dylan (Strengthening Potion for crit), Gillis (extra gold for Charm)

Counters: None

Countered by: Bart (crit immunity)

Summary: Extremely high damage crit-oriented ADC.

Analysis: BaJie is one of the hardest hitting heroes in the game; only Deep Space can really contest him for dealing the most damage with a single attack. This is an effect of his passive, which gives him bonus crit chance and crit damage from the gold he generates - by the end of a game he can easily break 1k AP and 300% crit damage (with 100% crit chance, of course) to throw big chunky hits around.

Of course, BaJie brings no real utility to his team; fortunately, utility isn't something you care about in the ADC role. He does wind up being a bit less reliable than other comparable heroes like Elemi simply because his attacks, while very hard-hitting, are also singular; a missed attack matters a lot when that attack could all but one-shot a carry. He also lacks agency in lane, needing support to do anything but farm and harass. None of these issues are deal breakers, but they're worth bearing in mind.

Despite having a huge amount of crit from his passive (to the point of being able to reach 100% crit without items with a few kills under his belt), you still want to itemise around crit chance where possible. This is because his passive ramps up granted crit damage once he passes 150% crit chance, providing 1.6% crit damage per 100 gold once he reaches that point. That said, also note that his huge multiplier means he gets substantial benefit from bonus AP.

BaJie is, therefore, a good general pick for an ADC; he hits harder than Elemi (but less reliably), than Felyn (but can't bully lane), and can contest Deep Space on the damage front (but without risk). He's not perfect, but still one of the best ADCs around simply because of his sheer damage potential - and when a team comp is built around him, he can wind up looking like this:






Cards:
Choose and draw one card in your discard pile.

Very expensive at 2 SP for what amounts to a single card draw, this is nonetheless situationally good simply for allowing you the freedom to grab any card from your discard instead of randomly drawing. This can be extremely helpful for getting off specific combos or spamming powerful cards. It's also literally all of BaJie's utility, so you may as well use it so he doesn't feel bad about himself.



Unplayable. While in hand, whenever you play another card, BaJie gains 25 gold.

Solid, effective card. It does nothing in isolation, of course, and can clog your hand up (especially since there's two copies in your deck), but giving your ADC free money would be good even if BaJie didn't gain additional bonuses from gold.




Attack an enemy hero or turret within 3 hexes. If turret, deal 4 damage. If hero, the attack can crit and if it does, search Cache to your hand.

The effect isn't bad, but the cost is absurd for what it does - 4 SP for what amounts to a single attack is outrageously expensive. Even if you get the crit on a hero you're unlikely to kill them since BaJie lacks any other poke tools (and you're spending half your SP on this card), and the tower damage is of limited use with no other push tools. Avoid this card.



Interactions:
Gold generation - BaJie benefits even more than other heroes from gold, so gold generation effects such as Acedia's Alarm Clock or Kid's Amnesty are extremely potent. Similarly, thanks to Cache he can generate bonus gold, making Gillis' Charm useful in the other direction.

Bart - As with all crit-oriented heroes, Bart will shut BaJie down for a while.

v2.1 | BaJie

Nothing much changes. All his Variants are sidegrades, and the itemisation is also sidegrade-y. Still super strong.

Variant 1

Removed - BaJie gains 0.3% crit damage per 100 gold, doubled when crit chance is above 100%.

Changed - BaJie gains 1% 2.5% crit damage for each 1% of crit chance over 150% 100%.

Basically this Variant just moves BaJie's power around during the game - he gains no crit damage early game until he hits his 100% crit chance target, but gains much more thereafter. This basically means he hits weaker early game and harder in the hyper-late game. The thing is though, he already doesn't do much early game, and he already hits like a truck made of razor blades and acid in the late game, so in real terms nothing much happens.

Variant 2

Removed - BaJie gains 0.3% crit damage per 100 gold, doubled when crit chance is above 100%.

Changed - BaJie gains 1% 0.5% crit chance per 100 gold.

Changed - BaJie gains 1% 8% crit damage for each 1% of crit chance over 150% 100%.

Similar story with this Variant. Here you'll be looking to get as much crit from your itemisation as possible, as early as possible - you don't get as much crit chance from gold. Once you hit your 100% crit target, though, his crit damage absolutely skyrockets, leading to comically high numbers. 1,000% crit damage is entirely possible (though at that point you're just playing with overkill numbers).

Bariel

Bariel has that mirror thing on his head because he moonlights as a gynaecologist. Into the breach indeed.

Name: Bariel

Position: Jungle / Bot

Role: ADC

Mastery choices:
Add 1 Charge to the deck; Charge grants 8 AP / Gain 3.75 AP and 17 max health per level

Final Shot gives 100% extra monster gold / Final Shot deals 1 extra damage to turrets

Gain 20% crit damage while shielded / Gain 20% more shields (from his passive, not from everywhere - total of 55% damage dealt)


Itemisation: ADC

Synergies: Anything that can shield him, particularly Palulu

Counters: Soft counter to assassins due to being relatively durable

Countered by: Bart (crit immunity)

Summary: Short-ranged, bulky ADC let down by his cards.

Analysis: Bariel is intended to be the game's only short-ranged ADC, and has a raft of passive effects to make this work. He has 20 bonus AP right from the start of the game; his first attack of a fight gains 60% crit chance; gains an additional 40% crit chance on any attack made while he's got a shield; and he gains a shield whenever he deals damage, based on the damage dealt.

On paper, this array of passives makes for a pretty strong hero. In practice, he's passably strong, but let down by his card set. Unfortunately his cards are set up to try to make him into a skirmisher and tower pusher, which he really isn't - he doesn't have the tools to really secure kills in short fights, nor to push especially well.

What he does do well is act as a relatively durable ADC thanks to his melee-tier armour and generated shields. While he still doesn't really want to soak, he can take a hit or two without folding. This makes him quite well suited to facing off against assassins like Nihil and Xiangxi Ke who try to target low health enemies.

Note that Bariel does also make for a pretty passable jungler. He's not top tier by any stretch of the imagination, but he can fill the role adequately enough thanks to his shields and easily found initiation card; he can fit well into comps that require a substantial damage source out of the jungle.

Cards:
Fires in a fan-shaped cone, hitting all monsters and turrets in the area.

Doesn't exist in Bariel's deck, but is instead generated by his cards. Also quite an underwhelming card, particularly for laning; while it can deal chip damage to towers, its awkward range makes that tricky, so you're better off using it for situational counter-jungling where possible. Note that this doesn't hit enemy heroes.




Deal damage to enemy heroes within 1 hex in one direction; hits cause additional knockback and spawn a Final Shot in hand.

Bariel's main tool for trying (and failing) to make him a strong tower pusher. Low grade poke for 2 SP is quite steep, knockback notwithstanding; it also has anti-synergy with Into The Breach since using this card to deal chip damage prior to fighting means you'll also need Charge to chase them down, and may well wind up under their tower to boot. Meh.



Bariel gains 150 shield and moves 1 hex. You then search Into The Breach into your hand.

Really quite a nothing card; the shield doesn't scale at all, and the movement is generally low impact. Its main benefit is ensuring you can search out Into The Breach readily, but given that that's also pretty underwhelming that's not saying much. The main use for this is ensuring you go into any given fight with a shield, even if it is tiny; I would recommend you play it any time it's in your hand, too, because it's removed on play (and so you'll draw something less useless in the future).
Note that you can get this card to give +8 AP via mastery choices - this is a trap option. The alternative AP per level will outscaling the AP from this card quite quickly unless you get a LOT of them spawning from Into The Breach, which is unlikely - and even then you'll be losing the health as well.

Standard initiation card with 1/1 range and 3 round duration. After the fight, add a Final Shot to your hand and a Charge to your deck.

Really unimpressive card since it's functionally identical to an Initiation card which spawns some also-underwhelming cards alongside it. Bariel does have some synergy with short fights, since he gets bonus crit on his first shot and will generally start with a shield for favourable trades, but that's not really enough to salvage this card.



Interactions:
Shields - Obviously, given Bariel's passive, he favours getting shielded wherever possible; unfortunately his own self-shield card is pretty lacklustre. His mid-fight shields are decent enough, but they won't stand up to a hit from anyone with any damage behind them, so you'll find more success with him if you either find him a much better pre-fight shield or pair him with someone (i.e. Palulu or Blocker) who can set him up mid-fight.

Bart - Being crit-reliant, he struggles to get through Bart, and while his self-shields mean he's not going to kill himself he can find his shields vanishing even as he generates them, lowering his damage output even more.

v2.1 | Bariel

Again no real itemisation boosts, but both Variants are buffs in real terms, so his stock rises a little.

Variant 1

Gained - Doubles self-applied shields when Bariel already has a shield.

Doesn't really do much, since Bariel's self-applied shields are fairly low impact outside of small skirmishes. Having said that, this is just a straight up buff, so you can't complain.

Variant 2

Gained - Bariel gains an additional 20 base AP.

Changed - Bariel gains 60% 80% crit chance for his first attack.

Changed - Bariel gains 40% 20% crit chance while he has a shield.

Gained - Bariel gains 30% crit damage while he has a shield.

Makes Bariel a little more swingy by shifting his power from crit chance into crit damage when shielded. In theory this pushes you into itemising more crit on him; in practice you'd be building some crit items anyway, so all you really see is higher damage potential at the cost of lower reliability.

Bunu Shan

Hm? Fight? Meh. Maybe later. - Bunu Shan

Name: Bunu Shan

Position: Mid / Bot

Role: ADC

Mastery choices: Serenity Training removes 2 additional stacks of Serenity / After Awakening, each attack in a fight deals 5% more damage.
[x2]

Itemisation: General ADC itemisation. AP and crit both good.

Synergies: Any hero with substantial Attack cards or AP buffs. Particularly good with Beverly, Kamaitachi, Zealot, Felyn, Enidi.

Counters: Nothing particularly.

Countered by: Lane bullies like Felyn, Wolfgang etc.; High tempo lane pushing heroes like Felyn, Gang, Justice.

Summary: Very late-game carry, terrible early and incredible late.

Analysis: The premier late-game ADC of the game, Bunu Shan is exceptionally powerful... eventually. They start the game with 70 stacks of the Serenity debuff, which doesn't actually do anything in itself other than track progress. They lose one stack of Serenity per round, plus an additional one each time an ally hits with an attack on the field - note that this does not include hits in fights, nor does it include harassment. Eventually, once all 70 stacks are gone, Bunu Shan Awakens, gaining two effects - firstly, their attack in fights becomes a triple attack, with the three hits dealing 50%, 70% and 90% of their AP respectively (or 60%, 80% and 100% with masteries); and additionally, they gain a bonus 5 AP per round (7 with masteries). They also replace their underwhelming Serenity Training cards with more powerful ones.

As I would hope is obvious, you want Bunu Shan to Awaken as soon as possible, both to get them nuking in fights and also to start their AP gain going. Despite this, it's generally not a good idea to take the Serenity Training boost option for their masteries - with only two copies in the deck your actual speed increase from these masteries is marginal compared to the rest of your team who have presumably been picked to assist with Awakening, and the additional damage is fairly substantial in a fight (30% AP per round). You should instead look to Awaken Bunu Shan through picking a synergistic team around them - you don't need every role to carry a lot of Attack cards, but at least one source of multiple hits is a good idea. Beverly works particularly well because her buffs both keep Bunu Shan alive and are amplified by the absurd power of the triple attack, while her Renovation counts as five hits on its own.

As an aside, one other benefit to running Bunu Shan is they're quite light on your deck - they only have two cards at any given time, making other heroes' cards more likely to come up. While your deck will still be fattened by Tactics cards and the like, they are still slightly better for running with heroes that like to play their cards as often as possible.

While mid-lane Bunu Shan is an option, it's generally not a good idea; without a support they're extremely vulnerable to ganks and are unable to really contribute all that much to objective fights. The one reason you'd want to do this is specifically to take Felyn bot instead, so that you can abuse her crazy amount of field attacks to Awaken Bunu Shan without having to resort to Felyn top.

There aren't really any hard counters to Bunu Shan, which is what makes them such a good bot lane pick; if facing them, your best bet is to try to build a high tempo team that can either snowball to victory before they Awaken, or at least to have such a big lead by that point that even the Awakening power boost isn't enough to save them. It is possible to target and assassinate them, either within or prior to fights, but as always with assassinations is a bit unreliable and will backfire horribly when it fails. This also generally isn't an option in the Final Fight.

As a final note, according to the ever-reliable Google Translate, Bunu Shan translates to 'Don't delete it' in simplified Chinese.

Cards:
Target an enemy within 1 hex of Bunu Shan and Attack them. Removed after Awakening.

A fairly unimpressive card, functionally identical to the Poke Tactic card. Despite being extremely underwhelming, you'll still probably want to play it most of the time simply to work towards Awakening.





Target an enemy within 1 hex of Bunu Shan and Attack them for 50% damage; if it hits, repeat this effect, with a maximum of 3 hits. Added to the draw pile after Awakening.

Somewhat underwhelming on the face of it due to needing multiple hit rolls just to deal up to 150% damage, this card is nonetheless quite potent because by the time you get it Bunu Shan will have Awakened and their AP will be skyrocketing round on round. Unlikely to secure a kill on its own, but in combination with poke can pick up surprise lane kills or soften a target up for a skirmish.

Give an allied hero the Wrath buff, giving them 30% of Bunu Shan's AP for 5 rounds. Added to draw pile after Awakening.

The real power card of Bunu Shan's deck, this can easily add 300+ AP to a hero and (unlike many similar effects) it isn't removed at the end of fights or after hitting. It can, of course, be applied to Bunu Shan themselves to really stack up the damage; alternatively, apply it to a high crit or multi-attacking hero for best results. Beware using this against Hass unless you like him getting huge damage for some reason. Maybe you're a masochist, I don't know.

Interactions:
Beverly - Notable for providing heavy buffs which are amplified by the multi-attack, and also for having the five-stack Renovation hits.

Zealot - Assimilation is a 1-cost card giving three hits, which is pretty fantastic; Zealot is also a great target for Wrath late game if you don't want to put all your eggs in the Bunu Shan basket.

Kamaitachi - Has multiple attacking cards, and also attacks via a passive which can add stacks even while you're doing other things. Another good target for Wrath late game, particularly as the triple attack gives three stacks of his passive.

Felyn - An absurd number of attacking cards. If you need the achievement for Awakening Bunu Shan quickly, run them mid, run Felyn-Blocker bot lane, and you'll usually see an Awakening by round 40.

Enidi - Similarly to Felyn, simply brings a huge number of attack cards to the table.

v2.1 | Bunu Shan

All sidegrade all the time.

Variant 1

Changed - Serenity has 70 90 stacks.

Changed - When Awakened, Bunu Shan gains 5 10 AP per round and attacks three times, dealing 50/70/90% 60/80/100% damage with each attack.

A very slight downgrade because if you're smart (or more accurately, if you're listening to me) you'll be taking the bonus damage per hit masteries; adding flat 5%s to the numbers means less when they're higher already. The increase in stack count does mean it's much harder to Awaken Bunu Shan without a comp with a heavy focus on field attacks; realistically, though, you weren't drafting them outside of a field attack comp anyway, so no huge change.

Variant 2

Changed - Serenity has 70 55 stacks.

Changed - When Awakened, Bunu Shan gains 5 3 AP per round

A very slight upgrade here, on the other hand. You get less AP per round once Awakened, yes, but your Awakened attacks lose none of their scaling and a potential 15 rounds of +3 AP means you'll only be losing a little by the late game. A small price to pay for having an actual hero in lane in the midgame rather than a glorified summon.

Deep Space

The sole survivor of the war against the Nibblonians[futurama.fandom.com], Deep Space has now learned that the best defence is a good offence - ideally mounted on an interplanetary spacecraft.

Name: Deep Space

Position: Bot

Role: ADC

Mastery choices:
Missile deals 80 more damage / Missile deals damage equal to Deep Space's level x10

If Volley gets at least one kill it generates 6 SP / Precision Airstrike generates 1 more missile, and the Fully Armed buff from playing Missile grants extra shielding equal to Deep Space's level x10

Itemisation: ADC

Synergies: High Presence tanks, Shields

Counters: None

Countered by: Persistent non-targeted damage (Crank, Big Foot), AoE (Niels), assassins

Summary: Risky ADC with very high damage potential.

Analysis: The definition of high risk/high reward, Deep Space is defined by his Full Firepower passive. He enters fights with two stacks (plus one per Precision Airstrike played), and gains an additional stack at the end of each round he doesn't take damage. He gains AP equal to 5x the round number (with masteries) for each stack, but loses a stack each time he takes damage.

The eagle-eyed amongst you (or more accurately, basically anyone) can see that this gives Deep Space some extremely high damage potential. Even just going into an early objective fight at round 30 he's going to be packing a minimum of 300 bonus AP from his two base stacks; going into a Final Fight at, say, round 80, with one additional stack from Precision Airstrike would net a total of 1200 bonus AP, with another 400 coming in each round he goes without taking damage.

The problem, of course, is taking damage. Whenever Deep Space takes damage in a fight he loses a stack - and if he drops to 0 stacks, he's basically vanilla. This makes it critical that you keep him from taking damage at all costs. If you can manage it, he'll put out damage surpassing even heavy duty carries like Bunu Shan; fail and he'll wallow in mediocrity.

Deep Space does come with a few tools to help keep himself stable. He has 1 less Presence than other heroes naturally, making him less likely to be targeted; he also gains the Fully Armed buff when he plays a Missile card, giving him a decent-sized shield going into the next fight. Neither of these is enough on its own, however, so it's strongly recommended that you draft at least one actual tank alongside him, ideally two, and build Presence on them wherever possible. It can also help to give him additional shielding outside of fights - shielded damage doesn't count as damage taken and so won't cost stacks.

Overall, Deep Space isn't worth the risk in my opinion - he can be very strong, but his peak isn't all that much higher than other ADCs while bringing with it the potential for disaster from just a couple of unfortunate attack targets.

Cards:
Target an enemy hero (global) and attack all heroes in that hex. If you hit, spawn a Missile card in hand and gain an extra stack of Full Firepower.

A tad expensive for just a single attack, though the extra stack of Full Firepower is nice. The gain of an additional missile is of limited use - you'll generally be saving them up for volley - but better than nothing. Note that the tooltip incorrectly suggests you gain a stack of 'Extra Magazine'. This buff doesn't exist and is in fact a mislabelling of Full Firepower - presumably an oversight.


Spawn two additional Missile cards in hand, then fire them all at random targets.

Phenomenally expensive, the only real way to justify playing this card is if you've got the SP refund mastery and can manipulate it into giving you a kill. Due to the random targeting you can't really guarantee anything (unless you can force enemies into the same hex for some reason), but otherwise it's just too pricey to be worth it. Having said that, if you stack a lot of Missile cards up - we're talking 10+ - then the shield can give you a lot of security going into a fight.

Target an enemy hero (global); they take true damage equal to Deep Space's level x 25. Deep Space then gains a stack of Fully Armed. Can only be played once per round, can't be discarded, doesn't count towards the hand limit, and is removed when played.

Individually, Missile is quite unimpressive. While the damage ignores armour, it isn't really enough to do anything more than poke down a target, while the shield won't survive a hit from anything with a little AP, making it borderline useless. Aside from being a global poke tool for securing kills or prepping for a fight, its main use is to be unloaded in huge quantities via Volley in order to get a lot of Fully Armed stacks up, thus going into a fight with a huge shield to preserve your Full Firepower stacks.

Interactions:
Frontline - As noted above, tanks are incredibly useful for Deep Space; since he needs to avoid taking damage to maintain his stacks, every little helps to make sure he's not the one taking the heat. Ideally you'll be running two tanks in your comp (e.g. Bart top and Peter support).

Debuff damage - Any source of non-targeted damage will utterly cripple Deep Space. Crank is the most notable hero to apply this, but Big Foot's debuff can also work - with these applied, even if nobody attacks Deep Space he won't gain a stack, and will instead lose one each time they tick. Note that due to their relatively low damage, pre-fight shielding can mitigate them, at least to some extent.

Targeted assassins - heroes who specifically target low health enemies - Xiangxi Ke, Nihil etc. - can be made to specifically attack Deep Space with some careful use of poke pre-fight. This isn't 100% reliable due both to miss rates and also to other heroes taking damage from the rest of your team, but can still be enough to shut him down - particularly because, as an ADC, he has very low defensive stats.

v2.1 | Deep Space

Once again no itemisation shifts. Both Variants are pretty bad, though, so expect his stock to drop (not that it can get much lower). On the bright side though, the Extra Magazine buff mentioned by Precision Airstrike finally exists, converting into stacks of Full Firepower on entering a fight.

Variant 1

Gained - Deep Space gains 1 stack of Full Firepower when resurrected.

Changed - Deep Space gains 2 1 stacks of Full Firepower when entering a fight.

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

Gained - Full Firepower has a maximum stack count of 5.

Mostly a nerf; the main effect of this is to give you a stack of Full Firepower on the field after dying and let you keep your stacks after fights. What you're paying for that privilege is getting a stack maximum, however, which is really not good for a hero that should only be picked if he's highly likely to be able to stack throughout fights. Lower ceiling, higher floor, but generally worse. Skirmish game does get a little better though, for what little that's worth.

Variant 2

Changed - Full Firepower grants 2.5 2 AP per game round per stack.

Gained - Playing a Missile card grants a stack of Extra Magazine.

Weakens Full Firepower's effect, but in exchange gives you more ways to stack it before getting into fights. This actually winds up being a benefit in less specialised comps - going in with more stacks means you can get more high damage hits off before you lose them from eating hits. In more specialised comps, meanwhile, this is mostly a nerf because you'll generally have to spend SP playing Missile periodically unless you drafted a way to search Volley (which does give you a stack for every Missile fired).

Digo

Iiiiiiiiiit's Digo![ghostbusters.fandom.com] - Digo

Name: Digo

Position: Mid / Bot

Role: Mage

Mastery choices:
Eternal Throne deals or repairs 1 more damage to the targeted turret / Eternal Throne costs 1 less

Itemisation: Max damage - ignore survivability entirely.

Synergies: Tanks and Fighters (essentially anything that stays alive)

Counters: High resistance targets, Assassins

Countered by: None

Summary: Untouchable mage who can sit safely and throw damage around.

Analysis: Digo is the final word in safe, reliable backline carries. So long as there's another allied hero in the fight, Digo cannot be targeted by any enemy attacks, nor can he be afflicted by enemy debuffs (friendly buffs still work just fine). What's more, Digo's attacks in fights ignore enemy armour and damage resistance effects. That's right - a carry that can't be attacked and deals true damage. If this guy were in an actual MOBA he'd be all kinds of broken.

In this game, while not completely broken, he's still extremely powerful. His main drawback is his cards - while he's exceptionally potent in a fight, on the field he's pretty lacklustre. His passive can also cause occasional issues, particularly in early game bot lane ganks - it's common for early game ganks to end inconclusively because not enough damage is dealt to kill anything, but with Digo being untargetable the enemy team will focus his support exclusively. This can lead to early kill deficits.

Generally speaking, though, you can safely draft Digo into your bot lane without too many issues; you should ensure you have a solid frontline (at least one tank and a fighter, usually) because, paradoxically, Digo only retains his safety so long as his allies are alive. He can also be taken in mid - he works okay there as well, but is much more vulnerable to ganks.

Cards:
Replace each destroyed turret with a special Digo turret. The special turret has very low health but gives no rewards for its destruction, deals the same damage as Digo, and allows Digo to attack all enemies within 1 hex when destroyed. This card spawns in the deck at round 60 and is removed when played.

Doesn't show up until round 60 at the earliest. This is a very good thing, because this card is atrociously bad. The effect itself barely does anything - the temporary towers essentially just slow down enemy pushes and provide some harass - and you're paying an absolutely absurd 6 SP for the privilege! Frankly, for an effect which amounts to 'lose a bit slower' (and, I suppose, some coverage from initiations), I wouldn't pay 3 SP for this. Avoid unless you're in desperate danger of imminently losing the game, and even then try to find something better to do first.

Target an enemy hero (globally) to start a fight with all heroes within 2 hexes of them. 4 round duration, and during the fight you're assisted by a special tower which has the same AP as Digo. Starts with 2/3 tokens and can't gain more; one token is removed when played, and the card is removed once all tokens are used up.

Much better. This is an extremely potent initiation tool, albeit a very expensive one. The global range alone is enough to make this strong, but add to that the special tower - which is essentially a Digo that can't miss - and you stand a good chance of picking up kills off this. Also notable is the fact that only one tower can exist in a fight at a time - so if you use this to initiate a fight with an enemy, you've got tower support and the enemy don't, even if they're hugging their tower at the time.

Target a turret (global); Digo attacks all enemies within 2 hexes of it. He then deals 2/3 damage to the turret if it was an enemy turret, or repairs the same amount of health if it was friendly.

Not an especially powerful effect, but with the cost reduction from masteries it can be a decent enough poke tool and provide some chip damage to towers. Alternatively it can repair friendly turrets if you're getting beaten in lane. Bonus points for using this to destroy the enemy nexus and kill someone at the same time.


Interactions:
Acedia - Digo's interactions with Acedia are a little weird. Acedia's effect functionally removes an enemy hero from the fight for the first round; however, as far as Digo's concerned, they're still there. As a result, if Digo and one other hero are in a fight against an Acedia, she'll have no choice but to target Digo's ally (as Digo is untargetable). The enemy heroes will then be in a position where they're not allowed to attack anything - Digo is untargetable, and his ally is too. This essentially gives you a free round where the only hero that gets to attack is Digo.
This effect becomes even more comical if Acedia is on your team and the enemy draft Wukong - if you target Wukong with Acedia's effect, Wukong's debuff immunity reflects it onto your entire team. This makes your entire team untargetable, so once again, Digo is the only one who gets to attack.

Rear Guard - Thanks to his untargetability and his tower-centric cards, Digo is probably your best bet for a carry to play when you're behind. In my current Hell difficulty playthrough, I won several early matches at a huge stat deficit by drafting multiple tanks plus Vigo, surviving to the final fight and then winning the teamfight with consistent true damage hits.

Buffs - Again because he can't be targeted, Digo is a fantastic repository for your team's buffs. He won't quite push damage the same way a multi-attacker like Zealot or Bunu Shan will, but he will guarantee that you'll get the benefit of those buffs for the entire duration of the fight. And what's the only thing better than true damage? Even more true damage!

v2.1 | Digo

Not much change. Same ol'.

Variant 1

Removed - Digo deals true damage.

Gained - Digo's damage type is Hybrid.

Gained - Digo gains the The King buff on entering fights, increasing his AP by 15% for each living allied hero.

Mostly a sidegrade; losing the true damage hits hurts Digo's ability to punch through tanks, but in most cases the AP bonus makes up for it. Notably, however, Digo does get much stronger into squishy teams (who have less in the way of damage reduction); the hybrid damage type serves to open up his itemisation options so he can pick up some solid crit items as well. Generally weakens him for skirmishes, but not enough that you'd notice.

Elemi

A lot of heroes thought they could get an advantage here by bringing a gun. I stayed one step ahead - I brought two guns. - Elemi

Name: Elemi

Position: Mid / Bot

Role: ADC

Mastery choices:
If targeting the same unit, the second attack multiplier increases by 15% / If targeting different units, the second attack multiplier increases by 7% [x2]

Gain an additional 4.5 AP per level / Gain an additional 0.2 AP per 25 gold [Breaks even at 562.5 gold per one level, which you'll usually exceed]

Itemisation: ADC

Synergies: Minor synergies due to multiattack (Peiniang Zhu, Kamaitachi etc.)

Counters: None

Countered by: Minor counter due to multiattack (Kamaitachi, Merisi etc.)

Summary: Solid all-rounder ADC with no notable weaknesses.

Analysis: Elemi is a good, strong ADC with no real weaknesses. She fires twice with every attack, the first dealing the standard 100% AP (pre-mitigation, of course) and the second dealing variable damage depending on mastery choices and whether she targets the same target or a different one. As an absolute minimum, though, she'll be dealing 40% damage with the second shot - which is still a solid 140% multiplier on her damage output at the very least.

Probably her biggest weakness, if you can call it that, is that with a relatively generic set of abilities and cards she doesn't really synergise with anyone to a massive extent. She can perform just fine with any support and in any team, but also doesn't pair up with anyone to really destroy games. That's fine though - she is in every respect a safe pick. She won't be counterpicked, won't get destroyed in lane, and will simply be a reliable and dependable choice.

Notably, also, her cards orient her towards wanting Field Hit - the better her hit rate, the more she'll dominate lane (even more so than others, that is). This puts her in the curious position of being one of the best ADCs to pick when you have a positive skill discrepancy in the ADC role - if your ADC is notably better than the enemy's ADC, Elemi will really dumpster them (similar to Felyn). Avoid picking her into mid lane, where she'll fall over to every gank and is often solo-killable by many of the more duel-oriented mids.

Regarding Mastery choices - essentially, your decision is between reliability and potential. Taking the option for better damage on the same target is better for overall damage output provided she successfully targets the same enemy twice; the other option is obviously better if she's not hitting the same target, but more to the point, means she operates better in teamfights where she's particularly unlikely to get a double tap. Personally I favour the option for extra damage when hitting the same target, as it makes her an extremely good skirmisher and helps secure kills in bot lane ganks, but both options are viable depending on playstyle.

Cards:
Unplayable; modifies her other cards if it's in hand. If drawn during a Deployment Phase, searches her other cards.

Given it can't be played, there isn't much analysis to be done on this card - if it's in hand, that's good. That's about all you can say. A good target to be searched for with any effect that lets you pick cards, since it then draws Elemi's other hero cards.




Attack an enemy hero in the same hex. If it hits, deal 50% damage, push once, and repeat. Deals 1 bonus damage to turrets.

Something of a win-more card; if you have high Field Hit this is a great lane bully and push card, but to get that Field Hit you probably need to outskill your opponent (or have a Match Trait to boost it). Its damage output is pretty low for its cost, so you'll mostly want to use this if you're trying to push for tower damage. Overclocking adds 2 more tower damage, making this very good for blowing up structures if you can get into position before playing it.


Attack a random enemy or turret within 2 hexes. If you hit, repeat but with 10% reduced accuracy. Deals 1 bonus damage to turrets, and has a maximum of four hits.

Great damage, but again, only if you've got a lot of Field Hit. If you don't, 3 SP is a lot to be spending for 1-2 hits with no additional effects; it does have some potential tower damage on it at least. Overclocking halves the accuracy penalty on each successive hit and raises the maximum to five, giving you the best odds for straight up mercing someone.


Interactions:
Multi-hits - Like anyone else with multiple attacks in fights, has both synergy with, and counter potential from, heroes that interact on a per-attack basis - Kamaitachi, Merisi etc. etc.

v2.1 | Elemi

One of her two Variants is very, very nice; also a decent user of Acceleration Coil, though you probably only want to build it when said Variant is active.

Variant 1

Changed - Elemi's second attack deals 80% 120% damage if targeting the same unit and 40% 20% damage otherwise.

Not a particularly big change; this mostly benefits Elemi in skirmishes and into single tank compositions. If you decided on the same-target boost from masteries this can add up to a lot of single target punch. Also encourages you to bring effects which can isolate targets pre-fight, such as Acedia and Tiger Boy (hah, yeah right).

Variant 2

Changed - Elemi's second attack deals 80% 60% damage if targeting the same unit and 40% 30% damage otherwise.

Gained - Elemi's attacks shred 7 armour each for the rest of the fight.

A very, very nice upgrade - you lose some power for smaller and shorter fights, but gain it in larger and/or longer fights. On squishier targets in particular, the armour shred can very quickly make up for the loss of second attack damage even in small skirmishes; in longer fights, meanwhile, Elemi adds an element (ha) of inevitability to her otherwise solid-but-unremarkable performance. Pushes Elemi up to top tier alongside Felyn, BaJie and Foso.

Felyn

Unlike a lot of heroes, Felyn doesn't bring any arrogance or cockiness to the game. She's just really, really, REALLY happy to be here. It's actually kind of creepy.

Name: Felyn

Position: Top / Bot Lane

Role: ADC

Mastery choices:
Improve energy level by 1 at the start of the game / Increase energy by an additional 1 when gaining a shield on the field

Increase energy by 1 after participating in a kill (after the fight) / Improve energy level by 1 at the start of the game

Itemisation: Hybrid ADC

Synergies: Search effects, field damage support

Counters: Gang, high resistance low health targets

Countered by: Lady Deadfire, Gillis

Summary: Lane bully ADC who can take over games if supported well

Analysis: Felyn is the premier bot lane bully and search target. If supported with search effects she can easily reach a state where she's double killing both of her lane opponents with just field attacks and winning skirmishes before they start; however, this requires heavy investment of support and SP.

Felyn's mechanics can be a little unclear at first glance, primarily because the game doesn't do a great job of differentiating between Energy and Energy Level. Energy is the bar beside Felyn's portrait with 7 pips in it; when she gains Energy, the bar fills up. Once the bar is fully filled (i.e. she's gained 7 Energy) she empties the bar and goes up one Energy Level. Energy is gained when gaining a shield on the field (+2) and when attacking in fights (+1, does not apply to her bonus shots), as well as from her cards.

Energy Level is immensely important to Felyn and influences everything she does. Firstly, whenever she attacks (whether harass, field attack or during fights) she deals additional true damage equal to her Energy Level x 10/15/20/25 (depending on mastery level). Secondly, several of her cards function based on Energy Level. Lastly, when Felyn first attacks in a fight, she follows her attack with a barrage of additional attacks. Each one only deals 15% AP damage and targets the highest health enemy, but applies her true damage passive; she fires a number of bonus shots equal to her Energy Level (max of 10/12/14/15 depending on mastery level).

The reason Felyn is so dependent on search effects is because of the way her mechanics snowball. Many of her effects increase her number of attacks based on Energy Level, but on top of that, increasing Energy Level boosts her true damage passive. That means each subsequent Energy Level gained provides successively more power, as well as spawning an Excited State in hand (which is her main tool for killing in lane). To give an example, going from Energy Level 1 to 2 will take her total passive damage at the start of a fight from 25 (1 x 1 x 25) to 100 (2 x 2 x 25); going from Energy Level 9 to 10 takes it from 2,025 (9 x 9 x 25) to 2,500 (10 x 10 x 25).

Note that there are natural break-points where Energy Level scaling reduces in effectiveness - level 5 (max Excited State attacks), level 10 (max Ultimate Charge attacks) and level 15 (max bonus shots at the start of the fight with max mastery level). She'll still get bonus damage from increasing her Energy Level after these soft-caps, but the total effectiveness will reduce slightly with each. That said, reaching Energy Level 15 is extremely difficult and unlikely to happen in the vast majority of games.

To conclude, Felyn has immense potential and can absolutely destroy lanes and games if supported with search effects to let her boost her Energy Level. If you want an ADC that doesn't require much investment, however, look elsewhere - a Felyn that doesn't have a lot of resources allocated to her is a Felyn that will accomplish basically nothing all game. Additionally, ensure you ban out any Lady Deadfire-playing supports if you want to play her unless you enjoy entering every single fight in the game with a 300% damage debuff on you.

Finally, to give an example, this is what happens when you play a properly supported Felyn:
Importantly, note that a) this game was at a sizeable athlete skill deficit, b) Felyn only had a single hero to support her, and c) this is her playing into one of her hard counters. Her teammates' damage isn't low because they were underperforming, it's low because they literally had nothing to do; Felyn simply murders lane and pushes down the nexus. And this isn't just me posting a good game - this is literally what happens every time you pick Felyn-Blocker.

Cards:
Does not exist naturally in the deck; one copy is spawned in hand when Felyn's Energy Level increases. Attack random enemy heroes in the same hex as Felyn up to 5 times based on Energy Level, each dealing 15% damage. Removed when played.

Extremely dependent on high Energy Level for dealing damage - each attack only does 15% of Felyn's AP as base damage to a maximum of 75% AP, but procs her passive up to 5 times. As a result, this should usually be the last card you play so as to maximise your Energy Level before firing (the exception being when you're using it to soften enemies up prior to initiating). Note that although this is removed when played, it isn't removed when discarded; you can intentionally leave this card unplayed in the early game so as to stack up 4+ copies, search them all out (via Blocker's Signal Detection for instance) and unload on your opponent.

Can only be played while Felyn is in lane. Felyn (and her support, if present) push all the way up to the outermost enemy turret, pushing enemy heroes back with them. She then attacks up to 10 times based on Energy Level targeting random enemy heroes in the same hex and dealing 15% damage per attack. Finally she gains a shield equal to 25 x her level.

Extremely expensive, you'll generally want to avoid playing this in the early game unless you've got a surplus of SP or you really want the extra 2 Energy to reach a new Energy Level. Instead this is usually reserved for the mid-to-late game when Felyn has stacked up to a high Energy Level; you can then pop this (hopefully with a discount) to shove the enemy into their tower and unload damage cards to either kill them or force them out of lane. You've then got several rounds to beat on their tower for free.

Felyn gains a shield equal to 25 x her level. She then attacks each enemy hero within 1 hex, gaining 1 Energy for each hit.

Your best single card for gaining Energy, this can generate up to 5 under normal circumstances (remember she gets 2 for shielding herself on the field). Damage-wise this is better than her other cards early game due to being 100% AP, but falls off later on due to only being one shot per target (and so only proccing her passive once).



Gain 3 Energy and draw 3 cards. You then can't draw any more cards this Deployment Phase.

A little bit pricey for just drawing 3 cards, you're more playing this for the Energy with the cards as a bonus. That being said, if you're playing Felyn, you've already made the decision to do everything possible to boost her Energy. Remember to play any cycle cards you have (e.g. Warm-Up, Tactical Adjustment etc.) before playing this since you won't draw anything after it's played.

Felyn (cont.)

Interactions:
Blocker - It really cannot be overstated - Felyn-Blocker wins lane and wins game, pretty much every time. Lady Deadfire can counter Felyn inasmuch as she sets up Felyn to be ganked, but even she can't stop Felyn from murdering her over and over. Blocker provides Felyn with all the search support she needs, and importantly, gives her a shield whenever it takes damage on the field - generating 2 energy each time. There is literally no better ADC-support pair in the game.

Gillis - Notable as the main teamfight counter to Felyn. To properly counter you need to run quite a squishy comp - Felyn's bonus shots will target the highest health enemy - but so long as Gillis is highest health going into a fight Felyn will hammer her with shots in round 1, generating a vast amount of AP for Gillis going into round 2. She will take a bit of a beating herself - her 99% damage reduction does nothing against true damage, obviously - but that's scant consolation when she proceeds to one-shot your tank.

Felyn is the only one out of 55 heroes that I went onto two pages for. Oof.

v2.1 | Felyn

No Variants - you can't improve on perfection. That said, did gain Acceleration Coil, which is a disgustingly good item for her. So I guess you can? Jeez, proving myself wrong in my own guide does not bode well for my writing career...

Gang

Gang refuses to tell anyone how he lost his eye, claiming it to be too traumatic. The truth is he's just embarassed - he lost it running with scissors.

Name: Gang

Position: Bot Lane

Role: ADC

Mastery choices:
Range of Happy Birthday increases by 1 / Happy Birthday deals 50% less damage to friendly targets

AoE damage in fights increased from 15% to 20% / Gain an additional 2 AP per hit on the field

Itemisation: ADC

Synergies: Peiniang Zhu (AoE damage increase), Enidi (field damage), Frank, healing

Counters: Deep Space (AoE)

Countered by: None

Summary: High risk high reward nuke ADC.

Analysis: Gang is all damage, all the time. Everything he does deals damage, and he doesn't really care who he deals it to - a fair few of his cards his allies as well as enemies. In fights, happily, this isn't a concern - he only hits enemies, and when he does, he deals 15% damage to all other enemies (note - the calculation is slightly weird for the AoE. So far as I can tell it's 15% post-mitigation pre-crit damage; crits don't seem to interact with the AoE at all).

In all honesty Gang's AoE in fights is something of an afterthought - it exists, but it doesn't usually do enough to actually matter unless you're fighting a full glass cannon team. The main source of Gang's damage comes from the field - he has several field damage cards, and notably, generates them periodically. He then gains AP from each hit (8 AP per hit with full masteries), friend or foe. If you prioritise playing his cards on the maximum targets he can stack up an obnoxious amount of AP (easily 500+) from this, making him a very substantial threat both in fights and on the field.

It's not all up-side though - while Gang can easily chunk out or kill his lane opponents by the midgame thanks to his high field damage output, he also has a nasty tendency to do the same to himself and his support. This is where the risk lies - it's quite possible to throw around a bit too much damage and become extremely vulnerable to a gank. At times Gang will get himself low enough to die to a lone jungler even if he successfully forces his opponents out of lane, which is normally something only Niels has to worry about.

As a result, Gang is something of a risky proposition to run. He can definitely run away with a game, that much is undeniable; unfortunately he can also sabotage it. On average he tends to pay off more often that he doesn't, though, which makes him a fairly high value bot lane pick - particularly because he doesn't really need any specific support (although he does prefer tanks since he's less likely to kill them).

When you get Gang rolling properly, this is what tends to happen:

Cards:
Attack all heroes (friend or foe) within 2/3 hexes.

Quite reasonably priced for the effect (provided you take the range increase, at least); you stand a good chance of hitting both mid laners and at least one jungler as well as everything in bot lane. That's a lot of potential AP waiting to happen, and can allow Gang to assist with mid lane kills without any real effort.




Choose a hex in a straight line direction. Attack all heroes (friend or foe) within 1 hex of it, dealing 75% damage. Does not spawn naturally in the deck; generated in hand every 10 rounds. Removed when played or if left unplayed at the end of a Deployment Phase, doesn't count towards hand limit.

More AoE field attacks; the straight-line targeting can make hitting anything other than bot lane awkward, but does open up the possibilities of hitting mid or even top for more intervention pre-fight. Note that despite hitting friend and foe alike, this costs nothing and generates AP, so you may as well throw it even if it's only hitting allies.

Attack all enemy heroes who have been hit by Gang this round. Removed when played or if unplayed at the end of the Deployment Phase.

A nice follow-up in a similar vein as Enidi's Return Performance, this is a good way to ensure that you trade up despite blowing half your team to pieces. Unfortunately, you only get one to start with (and it's expended on use), so your only way to get more is through the rather overpriced Demolish.




Choose a lane and attack the outermost hero or turret on that lane. Also attack all enemy heroes and turrets within 1 hex of that target. Turrets take 2 damage; if you hit at least one hero, spawn a copy of Shut Up in hand.

Extremely expensive for what it does, you're rarely going to hit more than 2 heroes with this so you're paying a lot of SP just for some chip damage on the tower. You do generate a Shut Up if you hit, but equally, having already spent 5 SP on this you're not doing much else with your turn if you play Shut Up as well. Generally avoid this card unless you're able to snipe down a turret or really going all in to kill something.

Interactions:
AoE - Given his innate AoE, Gang has interactions with all the various things AoE usually interacts with - Deep Space's passive, Peiniang Zhu's Lightning Mark, pairing with other AoE, etc. etc.

Frank - Frank is a good choice of teammate for Gang; he provides a nice solid frontline wall, and is also a good target for Gang to hit with his field attacks.

v2.1 | Gang

Very little change.

Variant 1

Changed - Spawns a Boom! card to your hand every 10 20 rounds.

Gained - Playing Boom! spawns a copy of Shut Up into your hand.

A very slight nerf - Shut Up is a decent card, but unlike Boom! it costs SP and can't target friendlies to stack Gang's AP up. Doesn't really make all that much difference overall, though.

Omaha

Omaha is much weaker than he should be in this game because Wild Heart's greatest asset is being immune to trap cards[yugioh.fandom.com], which sadly don't exist in this game.

Name: Omaha

Position: Bot lane

Role: ADC

Mastery choices:
Sentinel lasts for 3 more rounds / Eagle Soar costs 1 less


Wild Heart gets additional AP equal to 2 x Omaha's level / Wild Heart shreds 5 more armour

Itemisation: ADC

Synergies: None

Counters: None

Countered by: AoE, low health targeting

Summary: Vanilla ADC with a powerful but fragile summon.

Analysis: Omaha is what happens when you take Kaka and make him not terrible. In fights he summons Wild Heart, a summon which has the same AP as Omaha (if you're building right) and 25% of Omaha's max health (Plus some more - my calculations don't line up with what the mastery trees say, seems to be 30 x Omaha's level). Wild Heart also shreds armour equal to Omaha's level plus 5 with each attack, and unlike Kaka's Stone Hound, doesn't cause Omaha to spontaneously explode when killed.

This leaves Omaha in a position of dealing extremely high potential damage; he gets his own vanilla ADC attacks, plus a summon with all of his AP and a sizeable armour shred on the back of it. The downside is that Wild Heart is extremely squishy due to its very small health pool and being melee; while it costs you nothing in the longer run to have him die, once he goes down in a fight you're left with an entirely ability-less ADC. Note also that while Wild Heart inherits Omaha's AP, it doesn't receive crit chance, crit damage, or any of his item effects (much like a Zealot clone).

Omaha winds up falling into a slot in the middle of the tiers for ADCs. He has aforementioned great damage output, but Wild Heart is too squishy to be reliable; while his damage is technically higher than someone like Elemi, she at least keeps putting her damage out until she goes down. As soon as Wild Heart dies, Omaha's actual damage output isn't high enough to compare to any other ADC. You should only pick Omaha, therefore, if you've had a strangely high number of ADC bans come through - or if you're trying to run a very skirmish-heavy playstyle, which his cards do well.

Cards:
Choose an allied hero (global). For the next 5 rounds, if that hero fights, Wild Heart also joins the fight.

A nice way to get an advantage in skirmishes anywhere on the map for the cost of a hand slot. Surprisingly impactful due to Wild Heart's high AP total; can also be used to ward off ganks thanks to the birb soaking a couple of hits.





Choose an enemy hero (global); start a fight with all heroes within 1 hex of the target (3 round duration). Wild Heart joins this fight.

A pretty good initiation card - it's global, you get Wild Heart on your side, and it costs less than a vanilla initiation card to boot. Note that since you get Wild Heart either way, there's no need to wait for Sentinel to play this.





Interactions:
Vulnerable Birb - Omaha becomes trash tier if Wild Heart goes down early; as such, he's vulnerable to the various ways in which that can happen. Substantial AoE from Niels or Enidi, assassination from Xiangxi Ke, even Nihil's lower damage numbers are enough to put Wild Heart down in a couple of rounds.

Kid - Minor point, but despite not being a hero Kid counts as a target for the purposes of Kid's stat boosts. Omaha can slot nicely into a Kid-centric comp so that he'll get a nice chunk of AP when Wild Heart is inevitably sniped.

v2.1 | Omaha

Loses out pretty hard with the update - he gained nothing from the changes aside from a bad Variant and a few possible items, and in exchange got a big, nasty new counter in Foso.

Variant 1

Changed - Wild Heart shreds ignores armour equal to 1x 2x Omaha's level on hit.

An overall nerf - while this does boost the birb's damage in smaller engagements, this comes at the cost of the armour shred, which would boost everyone else's damage as well. Omaha was already pretty mid in vanilla, you don't want to draft him when this Variant is knocking around.

Shougong Lei

No I'm not related to Peiniang Zhu. What, just because we both have wings, bird legs, a beak, and use lightning powers, you think we're incredibly similar? Like we have some kind of really lazy designer? Racist.

Name: Shougong Lei

Position: Bot

Role: ADC

Mastery choices:
Thunderstorm cost reduces by 1 / Fragile debuff increases damage taken by 20% instead of 15%

Heaven Strike cost reduces by 1 / Gain 3 additional AP per level

Add a copy of Piercing Lightning to your hand in your first Deployment Phase / Heaven Strike costs 1 more but applies an additional Fragile stack

Itemisation: ADC

Synergies: Clean-up heroes

Counters: Very big, beefy tanks

Countered by: Wukong (debuff reflection)

Summary: Mediocre ADC with a damage-increasing debuff and absurdly expensive cards.

Analysis: Shougong Lei finds himself in the unfortunate position of a rather schizophrenic role designation. The entire hero design revolves around the Fragile debuff, which causes the recipient to take 15/20% increased damage until the end of the next fight; while this is a pretty decent debuff in and of itself, the one role you don't really want to be applying it is the ADC. The ADC's role is to hit things very, very hard - hard enough, in fact, that the Fragile debuff should be rather redundant.

That's not to say the debuff is bad - the issue is simply that you want it being applied prior to the ADC attacking the target, and ideally being applied by someone tanky enough to stick around to apply it a lot. Shougong Lei is neither of these things. You can, of course, apply the debuff prior to a fight (although not with harass, of course) - unfortunately, though, Shougong Lei's cards are all very expensive, which makes doing so consistently an unattractive prospect. This makes Shougong Lei very much appreciate Poke tactics cards to allow him to cheaply apply his debuff before going into a fight.

On the whole, then, Shougong Lei doesn't really have any kind of niche - he's not useless, but most other ADCs will do the ADC role better, and his debuff really doesn't wind up accomplishing all that much most of the time. You can get some mileage out of him as a setup for heroes that like long fights (Kid, for instance), or as a way to get through very beefy frontlines - but you're still better off drafting your other roles for that and picking up someone in the ADC role who'll do that job better.

Cards:
Attack all enemy heroes.

Simple, and extremely expensive. The main purpose of this card of course is to apply Fragile rather than the attack itself, and while 4 SP is a lot, it works out to being fairly reasonable for five attacks across the map. Unfortunately it has no innate accuracy bonus - misses hurt when you're spending half your SP on attacks - but all the same this is a strong card to be throwing out right before an objective fight.



Attack an enemy hero (global). The attack always hits, ignores armour, and applies an extra stack of Fragile if the target didn't have the debuff already.

Contrasting with Thunderstorm, which sets up for teamfights, Heaven Strike is best used as setup for smaller skirmishes or ganks (albeit with the assistance of discounts or SP gains to offset the ridiculous cost). It's reliable and adds multiple Fragile stacks to allow you to get enough damage in during a shorter fight window to secure a kill; it can also be used to assist with neutralising a priority target in larger fights.


Pick a lane; deal 3 damage to that lane's tower and attack all heroes on that lane. One copy spawned at level 6/11/16, removed when played.

Like Heaven Strike, primarily useful in setting up for smaller skirmishes. Unlike Heaven Strike, however, it doesn't really have a niche - it's too expensive to be a good pushing tool, and circumstances with more than two targets in one lane are pretty rare. Fortunately it doesn't clog up your deck much.




Interactions:

No particular interactions that are noteworthy other than Wukong's ubiquitous debuff-countering.

v2.1 | Shougong Lei

One of the very few heroes in the game with a Variant which is just a flat nerf. Inexplicable to me considering he's decent but not top tier, but the AI does love him, so who knows.

Variant 1

Gained - Shougong Lei's damage type is Hybrid.

Changed - Fragile increases incoming damage by 15% 10% per stack.

A small overall nerf; hybrid damage type does open up some new itemisation options (although considering you usually want crit for him, not a lot of them). Nerfing Fragile is pretty rough, though, considering it's the entire reason you'd draft him in the first place.

Variant 2

Changed - Fragile increases incoming damage by 15% 10% per stack.

...And here's the exact same thing but without the Hybrid damage to offset it. Absolutely avoid Shougong Lei when this Variant is active.

v2.1 | Quinn

Remember kids - gambling is FUN!

Name: Quinn

Position: Bot

Role: Crit ADC

Mastery Choices: Morning Greeting deals 125% damage / Morning Greeting restores 1 additional SP if the target dies.

Increase crit damage by 10% / Gain 1% crit rate per level

Itemisation: Crit and crit damage.

Synergies: Not much - some minor synergies with discard effects and external crit sources.

Counters: Nothing much

Countered by: Bart (crit immunity)

Summary: Gambling ADC entirely reliant on crit.

Analysis: The short version is this - Quinn is BaJie but more so.

Quinn's central mechanic is Roulette. When a fight starts this becomes Spade; this does nothing. When Quinn crits with an attack, Spade becomes Heart and Quinn also gains a stack of Ante Up, increasing her crit damage by 10%. If Quinn attacks while she has Heart active, Heart turns back into Spade - but if the attack crits it becomes a super crit, dealing crit damage x crit damage.

As should be immediately obvious, Quinn likes crit. As in, she's utter garbage in fights unless she can more or less guarantee landing crits on every shot. You should of course itemise crit wherever possible, draft any external crit sources you can, and - and this is VERY important - don't ever draft her at a skill defecit. A missed shot can't crit, after all, and a few attribute points can shift hit chances substantially.

If you can guarantee those crits (and indeed, hits) though, Quinn has the highest damage potential in the game - even higher than BaJie or Deep Space. The most absolutely vanilla super crit imaginable would still deal 150% x 150% = 225% damage; reaching 200% crit damage is nigh inevitable, which puts you at 400% damage. If you can add in a couple of other crit damage boosts she can do dirty, dirty things. This then feeds into her supplementary mechanic - if Quinn kills something with an attack in fights, the excess damage is dealt to all enemy units. On theme, this is something of a gamble (even if you weaken a target beforehand, you have no way of guaranteeing Quinn will target them, nor of ensuring other teammates don't) - but in theory it's possible to get a pentakill off a single attack. Incidentally, the game does automatically display the super crit damage while Hearts is active (by updating the crit damage readout), which is nice.

On the whole, Quinn is an entirely viable ADC so long as your athlete isn't notably worse than their opponent. Unfortunately though, she's competing in the hypercarry space with BaJie, who simply does the same thing but more reliably. If BaJie is banned out, Quinn is a solid alternative, but otherwise there's no reason to pick her.

An irrelevant but amusing aside - take a close look at Quinn's portrait. If there's any character in any media that expresses 'yandere' better with just a single look, I'd like to hear it.

Cards:
When entering the discard pile (whether discarded or played), searches Quinn's other two cards into hand. Starts with two charges and is removed when none remain.

A pretty nice way to tutor Quinn's cards - though generally only Tea Time is really something you want. Has some nice, if minor, synergy with heroes that can discard for you, like Xiangxi Ke and Paisai. Another small but valuable function is that if you no longer want this card to exist (i.e. Quinn is at 100% crit already), you can throw it out as soon as you find it and sooner or later it'll disappear, thinning your deck out.

Attack an enemy hero (anywhere). Quinn gains a stack of Ante Up at the start of the next fight she joins this round, and the first time an enemy dies this round you gain 2 SP.

An unfortunately underwhelming card because it just doesn't do enough of any one thing to impress - a single stack of Ante Up is rarely going to make much difference outside of very late game fights, a single poke hit doesn't deal much damage, and even if the stars align, all the SP restore is doing is refunding the cost. If you're highly likely to secure a kill this does at least allow Quinn to contribute some low grade poke for free map-wide, but otherwise you'll only play this with a discount.

End the Deployment Phase immediately. Until your next Deployment Phase starts, Quinn gains 0.75% crit chance per round, doubled if you had 0 SP after playing this.

A very nice card for bolstering Quinn's reliability - it won't provide anywhere near all you need, but playing this whenever you're ending a Deployment Phase should give you enough to reach 100% crit alongside itemisation and masteries. It's also very cheap, so you can usually slot it in alongside your other plays for the turn. Bear in mind though that this becomes entirely useless after you break 100% crit (it doesn't covert into crit damage like a lot of other things do).

Interactions:
No particular interactions besides Bart shutting her down even more than most crit ADCs.

Variant 1

Removed - If Quinn kills a target, deal the overkill damage to all enemy units.

Gained - When Quinn participates in a kill, she gains a stack of Blinds, increasing her crit damage by 4% and stacking up to 5 times.

Gained - When an enemy unit dies, Quinn swaps to Heart if she isn't already in it.

Slightly reduces Quinn's gamba potential - you're not relying on a big overkill spread to win fights, but instead can just chain kills together each time Quinn's crits kill targets. She also stacks up a bit of extra crit damage which is nice (particularly since a little for her goes a long way). Note that although the game states 'participates' in a kill, this doesn't seem to apply if she gets a cross-map assist via Morning Greeting; it also makes Ante Up more difficult to stack in fights because Hearts kills will keep you in Heart.

v2.1 | Foso

I realise she's as much star-themed as witch-themed, but all the same I am deeply disappointed that Foso doesn't have a black cat.

Name: Foso

Position: Top / Mid / Bot

Role: AoE Mage

Mastery Choices: When Foso has a shield she gains 8% AP / When Foso has a shield she gains 5 armour

Black Star grants a shield equal to 25% of the damage dealt / Astral Guardian grants an additional 15 shielding per level

Itemisation: Shield generation and damage

Synergies: Anything that can give her a shield

Counters: Summons, skirmishers

Countered by: Hass (steals her shield)

Summary: Very strong, splashable AoE mage.

Analysis: Despite summon heroes running the gamut from strong (Zealot) through okay (Omaha) all the way to garbage (Kaka), the devs apparently felt the need to introduce Foso - an already very strong hero who also hard counters all summon heroes. Not really sure what's going on there.

Foso is an extremely potent and very flexible mage. She has two major selling points, the first of which is simple - she always attacks two enemy heroes with each attack (assuming there are two in the fight, anyway). If there are summons present she will also attack them - note that the main double attack only targets heroes, so there's no danger of missed damage. Unlike the game's other AoE heroes there are no caveats, requirements or drawbacks - Foso just straight up has double damage potential.

That, itself, is already pretty strong. We then add to that her other major effect - when Foso has a shield, she gains AP. Specifically, she gets a percentage boost to her AP proportionate to the shield's size in relation to her max health - in other words, her shield / her max health is her total percentage AP boost. There doesn't seem to be any kind of upper cap to this, and it's entirely possible to go over 100% - and since you're already targeting at least two enemies, this acts as a multiplier on a multiplier.

As if these weren't enough perks, Foso also has a couple of other (relatively minor) perks - she gains 10 armour whenever she has a shield (which isn't much but helps to keep the shield up), and whenever an enemy unit dies in a fight she self-cleanses all debuffs and gets a shield equal to 8% of the current health of the highest hero remaining in the fight. With a high health tank around this can get snowbally very quickly as Foso generates a big ol' shield from killing one enemy and uses the AP it grants her to wipe out more.

To be clear, Foso is not a hypercarry as such. She's not an all-consuming threat like Niels can be, nor is she going to threaten team wipes on the field like Enidi. What she is, however, is a mage who can function in multiple lanes without issues, puts out large amounts of damage consistently, can bypass frontlines with moderate reliability, and doesn't need any investment to function well. Oh, and she's also strong in skirmishes (thanks to hitting a higher percentage of enemy units per attack) and keeps your deck thin. All that with no drawbacks - she manages to hit top tier without even needing to be countering any summons.

In short, Foso is pick-or-ban material in all metas and at all times. Fo' Sho'.

Cards:
Initiate a fight between the lowest percentage health allied and enemy heroes, lasting until one of them dies. The allied hero is granted Foso's shield when the fight starts. This card is removed when played.

An exceptionally nice card, you can pretty much guarantee it will get you a kill sooner or later. Note that it works off percentage missing health, not current health, so you can manipulate it fairly easily; you can shift the enemy target with one or two pokes in particular. Happily this card is also one-and-done, removing itself when played; you might think this is a drawback given its potential, but thinning your deck is always useful. You should try to play this as soon as you think you can get a kill off it, both to start the snowball and to improve your draw odds slightly.

Can't be played. Upon entering your hand, Foso gains a shield equal to 12% of the health of the highest hp hero.

Another nice card. It does have an unfortunate tendency to clog up your hand since you can't get rid of it without discard effects; while mildly vexing, this downside is heavily outweighed by the fact that it costs literally nothing and gives you something you very much want. There really isn't much analysis to be done beyond that - you can't choose to play it, so why do you need me to analyse it for you?


Target an enemy hero (anywhere) for Foso to attack them. Foso then attacks all enemy heroes within 1 hex of that hero, then within 1 hex of those heroes, and so on until she runs out of targets. She can only hit any given hero once.

Foso's only iffy card, and that's only because it's pricey for what it does. It's still not terrible - a globally-targeted attack can be extremely helpful even without the bounce effect - but at 3 SP you'll usually have a better play available. Having said that, with masteries it also generates a decently-sized shield, which is definitely enough to make you want to prioritise this.


Interactions:
Shields: It's obvious, and I've already mentioned it, but it bears repeating - Foso loves shields. Lots of shields. The more shielding you can throw at her, the harder she hits; she's also a bit more vulnerable to losing said shield than is preferable due to being melee (Stealth Dagger can help with that). On the bright side, being melee means Palulu will target her regardless of her Variant - you finally have a reason to draft her!

Health: It's really very counterintuitive, but Foso is the only hero in the game that doesn't want max health. In fact, you want her max health as low as it can possibly go. This is because of the way her shield boost works - the higher the shield as a proportion of her max health, the more AP she gets. Avoid items which give health, don't target her with any health buffs, and if possible buy items which lower max health (there aren't many, but Unicorn Crown was basically made for her). Your shields will keep you alive, and your AP will skyrocket.

Summons: Obviously, never draft summons into Foso. I'd say 'or if she's open', but if Foso is unpicked she should be banned. Every. Single. Time.

Supports

Tier list:

Key

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.

Explanations

S Tier: Flexible and powerful supports. They have specific ADCs they work particularly well with, but can all excel with a variety of heroes whether in bot lane or elsewhere.

A Tier: Solid, but not incredible, picks. Paisai has broad toolbox utility, with Dylan leaning more towards buffing and Deadfire more towards damage. Palulu is on the border between A and B tier, making A off the back of her counterpick potential and the handful of heroes who really like shields.

B Tier: Situational picks. Crank is powerful but really wants solo lane gold.

C Tier: Meh. Peiniang Zhu has synergy with a lot of heroes, but nothing really gets past the fact that she doesn't really do enough.

D Tier: Fatty White is bad. Doesn't bring anywhere near enough to compete with other picks.

Drafting for Support

Red side means first pick support plus support target, whether this is ADC or another lane; most common support target after ADC is jungle. Support is the role you're going to want synergy for most, so pay attention to it; generally isn't a role you need to ban for, however, unless you need to ban out Charon so you can gank focus bot. If you're taking a general purpose support, Acedia and Paisai usually do that best.

v2.1 | Supports

Once again no huge movement. Some of the Support Variants shift quite a lot of power, so pay attention to them.

S Tier: No changes, but Acedia can drop from S all the way to bordering between A and B with her Variant. It's not very good. Blocker and Beverly both have relatively weak Variants, but neither hurt their core strengths enough to shift the needle.

A Tier: I would probably have dropped Palulu down to B tier here - she's not quite as versatile as I thought - but her synergy with Foso and ability to support her from across the map lets her hold on to her place. For now, anyway. Deadfire's Variant drops her down to B tier while active, while Paisai's moves him up to S.

B Tier: Qin Hu arrives. While I maintain he's best in top lane, he's actually closest to reaching A tier here - not because he's stronger here, but because he has less competition.

C Tier: Crank drops down to C tier. He didn't really get any worse in the support role - although his Variant is bad for it - but I realised that if I'm dumping Peiniang Zhu down here because all she brings is middling damage without actual support, Crank should probably follow the same rationale (particularly given how weak his cards are).

Acedia

Stop trying to look up her nightdress on the archive screen. Don't think I don't see you. Y'dirty bugger.

Name: Acedia

Position: Support

Role: Support

Mastery choices:
If you have at least 10 stacks of Sleepiness, Alarm Clock gives 5 more gold per stack / If you have at least 10 stacks of Sleepiness, Alarm Clock costs 0

Itemisation: Support-tank

Synergies: Gillis (Charm gold multiplier), BaJie (gooooold!)

Counters: Gillis, Lubos, Reinhardt (remove first round action)

Countered by: None

Summary: Versatile support primarily used for gold generation.

Analysis: Acedia is a low maintenance support. She doesn't give as many benefits to your team as someone like, say, Dylan will; nor does she partner up with a carry to dominate a game like someone like Blocker will. What she instead does is provide some decent assistance to your team while requiring absolutely no SP to be spent playing her cards, allowing you to get value from her while still dumping your SP into heroes like Kid, Lan and Wolfgang - who are powerful but require a fair amount of SP investment to use effectively.

While on the field, whenever you play a card that doesn't belong to Acedia she gains a stack of Sleepiness. This buff does nothing on its own, and instead is used as token-fuel for a couple of her cards. In fights, meanwhile, she can choose an enemy hero and force them to skip the first round of the fight - they can't attack, but also can't be attacked. Note that this ability can't leave you with no targets to attack, so it can't be used if there's only one enemy and will end if her target is the only enemy left alive (notwithstanding Digo weirdness).

Her Sleepiness mechanic, coupled with her SP discounts, make Acedia a very versatile support who can be picked alongside any carry and into any team comp. She won't really excel (other than entirely shutting down Gillis), but she'll provide decent support for no real investment, and that's pretty much unique in this game.

Cards:
Choose an enemy hero within 2 hexes and attack them. If the attack hits, it deals no damage, but the target cannot participate in fights until the end of the Deployment Phase.

The only one of Acedia's cards you'll have to spend SP to play, and not coincidentally, the only one you'll never want to play. Its only effect is to prevent an enemy from fighting for the purposes of creating an isolated fight, but 3 SP is far too much to be paying for such an effect - especially since Acedia's passive provides a low grade version of the same effect - and what's worse is there's a chance for it to miss. Basically never play this.

Choose an allied hero (global). Expend all Sleepiness stacks to grant the target 35 gold per stack.

This would be a fairly lacklustre card if not for the mastery to make it cost 0 if you have 10+ stacks; with it, it's literally printing free gold. 10 Sleepiness stacks is not hard to get to - it's not like you want to be dumping SP into Acedia's cards, after all - so just keep this in hand until you've spent all your SP then pick a carry to enrich. It should go without saying (but I'mma say it anyway because I'm like that), but never play this if it costs SP.


Remove 5 stacks of Sleepiness (or as many as you have, if you have less). The next card you play costs 1 less for each stack removed.

This card effectively costs gold to play (since you're spending Sleepiness, which you'd otherwise be using to give gold via Alarm Clock). That said, it's still a pretty solid card, even if you're not getting the full value out of it (which you often won't be). Its best use is in heavily discounting an initiation card so that you can get a sizeable amount of setup done before starting a fight; this approach is aided by masteries, which make this card give you 1 SP so long as you're removing the full 5 stacks.

Interactions:
Digo - Acedia has all kinds of weird interactions with Digo. For more information, check Digo's entry.

Gillis - While Acedia shuts down other first round effects like Reinhardt and Lubos, Gillis is the most important one to keep in mind because she entirely negates Gillis' entire kit. Not only does she remove her from the first round, during which she's all but immune to damage, but this also prevents Gillis from gaining AP in the second round as well. It's also worth highlighting that if the Gillis is on your team you should hold Alarm Clock until you can first play Charm so that you get double the gold for your team.

First round vs first attack - It's important to differentiate between hero effects which proc on the first round, as opposed to ones which proc off the first attack. Gillis' effect, for example, works in the first round and so Acedia will negate it entirely. By contrast, heroes like Felyn, Hakuna, Lan etc. all work off their first attack - so Acedia won't negate their ability, just postpone it by a round.

v2.1 | Acedia

Not a lot of change here aside from a weak Variant.

Variant 1

Changed - Acedia gains a sleepiness stack each time you play a card belonging to another hero at the beginning of even numbered rounds.

Hypothetically could be an upgrade if you spend all your deployment phases playing just a small number of expensive cards (such as initiation cards); in practice though you'll almost always play a lot more cards than that, especially if you're not an idiot and so have drafted a lot of cost reduction Match Traits and Tactics cards. Avoid.

Beverly

Unfortunately, despite substantial studio funding, Beverly the Builder was a flop which didn't come close to surpassing the original.

Name: Beverly

Position: Support

Role: Support

Mastery choices:
Renovation provides an additional 5 AP / Renovation provides an additional 30 health

Renovation provides an additional 2 AP per stack of Mech Mastery / Renovation provides an additional 20 health per stack of Mech Mastery

Surge also searches Renovation into your hand / Maintenance costs 1 more, but restores 3 more health and increases max health by 3

Itemisation: Support tank

Synergies: Anything that does well with extra AP and health (notably Zealot, Kamaitachi)

Counters: None

Countered by: None

Summary: Strong stat-buffing support with some minor utility.

Analysis: Beverly is a support whose power lies in her cards. In your first Deployment Phase you can select a target, and from then on, Beverly can find her target's cards, buff their AP and health, and in fights, cleanse debuffs from them (not, as the tooltip erroneously suggests, from her attack target - that would be rather useless). Of course, this heavy utility comes at a price; her only assistance other than for her target consists of a low grade tower heal and poke.

Despite being quite tunnel-visioned on who she's supporting, Beverly winds up being extremely versatile in who she can pair with and lane against. She has no counters, and there are plenty of heroes in the game who scale nicely off one or both of her granted stats (or, failing that, just throwing it on an ADC will work okay). She is also quite SP-intensive since you need to play Renovation frequently to really see it shine.

Beverly is a safe pick you can grab early in the draft for security; she will rarely underperform unless you find yourself unable to designate a target early on as a result of a gank on red side, which can cause problems (but not insurmountable ones).

Incidentally, Beverly seems to have been severely overlooked for quality control - her debuff removal passive states 'target' instead of 'designated target', Renovation talks about stacks of 'proficiency' which don't exist anywhere else in her kit (meaning Mech Mastery), and the Mech Mastery tooltip refers to 'Renovation-T' which doesn't exist.

Cards:
Pick a turret and restore 3 health to it. It then attacks all enemy heroes, dealing the turret's damage and ignoring armour.

A cheap but mildly effective card, nothing it does is particularly groundbreaking. The heal, while useful in some cases, is no more than clearing up a little bit of chip damage; the tower attacks, meanwhile, quickly get outscaled to the point of barely doing anything. Still, for 1 SP it works okay, and since it can't miss it can help a little prior to big fights.



Search one of the target's cards.

Underwhelming in its vanilla form, just searching a single card is a little underwhelming when you're paying SP for it. It gets much better with masteries, as it also searches Renovation which you'll be wanting to play frequently, or with a discount for obvious reasons.





Pick an ally as Beverly's Designated Target, then search Renovation into your hand. Removed when played.

Barely even a card, this doesn't actually exist in your deck. Instead, one is generated in your first deployment phase and deleted once played. Note that you can't pick an ally that isn't alive, so early ganks can hurt if you're on red side.




Gives an ally 5 + (3 x stacks) AP and 50 + (30 x stacks) max health permanently, then goes to the draw pile and Beverly gains a stack of Mech Mastery.

With masteries can go as high as 10 + (5 x stacks) AP or 80 + (50 x stacks) health. You'll generally want to take the AP, since your best targets are people who have multiple attacks or at least good crit scaling. As this card gets stronger each time you play it due to gaining stacks, you want to play it as often as possible; this is aided by it returning to your draw pile instead of going to discard after being played. A shame Beverly can't designate herself...

Interactions:
Good targets - While any hero can make use of the stats Beverly offers, obviously some heroes are better than others. Zealot is probably the single best user in the game - they get triple AP scaling from their clones and really like the extra health due to their tendency to eat hits. Other good targets include:
Kamaitachi (multiple attacks and melee so needs more health)
Qube (ditto)
Cubey (extra health early provides a multiplying effect)
Bunu Shan (good AP scaling and likes Maintenance supplying five hits)
Merisi (multiple attacks and uses health well)

Debuff removal - while easily overlooked (and frankly pretty low impact), Beverly does remove debuffs on her Designated Target whenever she attacks (whether she hits or not). Won't usually matter much, but can be useful into heroes like Big Foot where debuffs are inevitable and stacking.

v2.1 | Beverly

Again not much change - her Variants just shift around a fairly small part of her kit.

Variant 1

Removed - After each of Beverly's actions in a fight, dispel one random debuff from her designated target.

Gained - After each of Beverly's actions in a fight, her designated target restores health equal to 80% of Beverly's AP.

Depending on the comp this is either a straight buff or a minor downgrade - if you've got things to cleanse, you want them cleansed, but if you don't then the heal is obviously better than nothing. Doesn't wind up being very impactful though - there's absolutely no reason to build AP on Beverly, and she's a support anyway so she doesn't get much gold.

Variant 2

Removed - After each of Beverly's actions in a fight, dispel one random debuff from her designated target.

Gained - Beverly's designated target gains 20 armour.

Pretty much exactly the same calculation as Variant 1 - worse if you've got debuffs to dispel, better if you don't. This Variant can be relatively good when you're buffing someone other than your ADC, since it's the only one of the three that works even if Beverly isn't in the fight.

Blocker

Half robot. Half turtle. Entirely inexplicable.

Name: Blocker

Position: Support

Role: Support-tank

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

Signal Enhancement reduces cost by 1 more / If Blocker's partner enters a fight with him at below 60% max health, they gain 15 more armour

Itemisation: Tank

Synergies: Anyone who wants to be funnelled; Felyn and Cubey are good targets, or Dylan for general purpose buffing

Counters: None

Countered by: None

Summary: Extremely strong support and tank for facilitating carries

Analysis: Blocker, despite its bizarre appearance, is one of - if not the - best supports in the game. This is primarily due to his cards, which are incredibly good for searching out an individual athlete's cards; his battle effects are okay, but quite low impact. In your first Deployment Phase, Blocker spawns an Interference Field card into your hand, which you then use to designate a partner for it. This partner then receives the effects of Blockers cards. Additionally, if both Blocker and his partner enter a fight they each gain 10 armour, and whenever Blocker takes damage (whether in a fight or field) he grants a small shield to his partner.

While you draft Blocker for his cards, he is still perfectly serviceable in the context of a fight. 10 armour isn't a huge amount but can definitely make a difference, and while the shield is small (6 x level), it procs frequently enough to add up to a decent amount. Blocker is also a pretty solid tank, and so can fill the frontline role fairly well (albeit restricted by the support role's lack of gold).

The one circumstance in which Blocker is not a good choice is in a team comp which doesn't have any particularly spammable cards. Frankly this is rare, and indicates a major error made at draft. Even so, Blocker can find some value by using his search functionality to find single-use Tactics cards like Warm Up and Hot Hands for each athlete in turn, thinning your deck so you've got a good variety of (apparently mediocre) cards in hand at any given time.

Blocker winds up being a slightly situational pick, but nonetheless one you'll find yourself using frequently (if you like winning, at least) due to being the only hero with such unparalleled searching. It's also one half of the brutal Felyn-Blocker lane combo, if you like dumpstering bot lane so hard that other heroes barely even register on the damage chart.

Cards:
Starts with 1 token and gains 1 more per 20 rounds. Requires spending a token to play. When played, search all cards belonging to Blocker's partner into your hand.

This is the big one, and the main reason you bring Blocker. Digging out every single copy of a hero's cards enables a huge number of power plays for heroes who get persistently stronger every time you play their cards; the only reason not to play this is if you already have good plays in hand and so don't want to burn 2 SP on it. Note that as well as finding hero cards, it also searches Tactics cards, so you can burn through your single-use Tactics cards at the same time (ideally via some kind of hand discount).

The SP cost of the next card played belonging to Blocker's partner is reduced by 2 (3 with masteries).

Much simpler, but discounts are always welcome. It can often be somewhat rare to find a card you want to play that gets the full discount, but even saving 1 SP is still a bonus. Happily, Blocker's favourite partner (Felyn) has a nice expensive card right there...




Target an allied hero to make them Blocker's partner. They then heal for 20% of their max health and search one of their cards into hand.

Created at your first Deployment Phase rather than starting in your deck, but since it isn't removed when played this is functionally identical to searching it at game start (aside from a small difference in hand size). If all else is equal you're best off playing this on Blocker's ADC so that they get the benefit of its passive if they get ganked, but this is very much a secondary consideration compared to who'll use the search functions best. Note that since it isn't consumed when played, you can swap Blocker's partner to someone else later into the game if you want to.

Interactions:
Felyn - This partnership is so good it deserves an entry all to itself (and I'll repeat myself in the comps section because damnit it's deserved). These two are a match made in heaven. Felyn wants nothing more than to spam her cards every single Deployment Phase so as to stack up energy and start dumpstering people, and that's exactly what Blocker does. It then protects her if the enemy team is so audacious as to try to gank them. It even gives her a shield if ever it takes damage on the field - which generates more energy. Disgusting.

Other search targets - While Felyn is the MVP pairing, there are plenty of other heroes that love to spam their cards for strong effects. Good examples include Cubey, Frank, Kid, Qube... Really, a lot of good choices.

Dylan - Deserves a post of his own because Dylan is very much a fallback option. If you want to run carries that don't have amazing cards to spam, you can take Dylan in the mid lane and pair Blocker to him instead. That then gives you access to Dylan's buffs on demand, which he can spam at your carry of choice to buff them up.

v2.1 | Blocker

Once again, no real difference other than the Variants weakening the Felyn-Blocker pairing (though not enough to knock them out of the 'gamebreakingly OP' slot).

Variant 1

Removed - When Blocker takes damage, whether on the field or in fights, grant a shield to his Interference Field target equal to 6 x Blocker's level.

Gained - When Blocker and his Interference Field target are both in a fight, they both gain 10 armour. When Blocker takes damage in a fight, his target is shielded for 35 and gains 1 armour until the end of the fight.

Shifts Blocker's power into keeping his target alive for longer fights - the shield size will generally be weaker past the early game, so you're relying on the bonus armour to matter. Does synergise well when you're using Blocker with a big chunky beatstick since the armour sticks around even if Blocker dies (Cubey, Frank etc.), but is generally worse when paired with an ADC since they can't take more than a couple of hits with or without a few more points of armour. Either way, you're taking Blocker for his cards, not his in-fight effects.

Variant 2

Removed - When Blocker takes damage, whether on the field or in fights, grant a shield to his Interference Field target equal to 6 x Blocker's level.

Gained - Blocker's Interference Field target gains 15 armour, doubled during fights.

The most hands-off Variant, that armour goes straight onto the target and stays there whether Blocker is around or not. Much like Variant 1, better for non-bot-laners, but this one does at least give a chunky 30 armour right from the start of fights, which can make a difference between survival and death for an ADC. Would be a good pick to protect a squishy from Raven if the AI ever picked him.

Charon

Accusations that Charon taking over Thanatos' responsibilities as well as his own have been met with stoic silence. And a scythe to the neck.

Name: Charon

Position: Support

Role: Support

Mastery choices:
Death Finger increases damage taken by a further 5% and increases bounty by an additional 50 / Death Finger costs 1 less and a second copy is added to the deck

Gain an additional 1.5 AP and 38.5 health per level / Gain an additional 3 AP and 22.5 max health per level

Itemisation: Support-tank

Synergies: High damage squishies; Digo (if outmatched)

Counters: Burst damage assassins

Countered by: None

Summary: A support who can keep your team alive when they should die.

Analysis: Charon is an extremely unique support, not least because he has no actual effects until an allied hero is reduced to 0 health. In fights the first time this happens, the ally is reduced to 1 health instead of 0, and your entire team gains the Walking Dead buff. This buff makes your team straight up immune to death, as well as increasing their AP by 25%; if an enemy hero is killed while the buff persists, everyone heals for 50 x Charon's level. The buff expires after each recipient takes an action.

This effect of course makes Charon a good pick in any game where you might expect your heroes to die frequently - in particular into burst assassins like Lan, who can find themselves unable to pick up kills reliably enough to snowball effectively. What's more, whenever an ally dies (globally), Charon generates a Value of Death card in hand; this grants gold to a targeted ally (albeit at the expense of a bounty). This allows you to mitigate deaths quite effectively, particularly if you're behind in multiple lanes, to focus your gold into whichever lane is actually doing well.

By contrast, Charon is pretty much useless in any game where you expect to be ahead. Without getting any value out of Walking Dead, all you're really left with are a couple of decent, but overcosted, cards. As such, rather than slotting into a specific team comp, Charon is best picked when your athletes are substantially worse than your opponents.

Cards:
Target a hero in a straight line from Charon. If they're an ally, move them to Charon's hex; if they're an enemy, Charon attacks them and moves them to his hex if the attack hits.

Expensive for what it does, but quite versatile; you can use this to create lopsided fights (on either side of the map), to pull in enemies when you're already ahead enough to win fights, or even (if you're feeling particularly malicious) to just pull an opponent out of lane so they have to recall while your laner beats on their tower. Note it's less reliable when used on enemies due to needing an attack roll.

Target an enemy hero (globally). That hero gains a 100 gold bounty and takes 25% increased damage until they die.

Very expensive, but tremendously valuable due to lasting indefinitely until the target dies. As with much of Charon's kit this is particularly useful when you're behind, as you can stack the effect on multiple enemies to scrape out a desperate last teamfight. Despite being an expensive card, avoid the mastery which makes it cheaper - this also adds a second copy into your deck, which you don't need and which will just weigh down your deck.


Spawned in hand when an ally dies, removed when played. Target an allied hero; they gain 150 gold and a 150 gold bounty.

Somewhat limited in its effectiveness due to only showing up when someone dies; thanks to the bounty, if your targeted ally subsequently dies the enemy will get about as much value from this as you do. That said, can help you pull back a deficit by giving a single carry a decent chunk of gold and trusting that they won't die.



Interactions:
Digo - The only real noteworthy interaction Charon has is with Digo, specifically in games where you're expecting to lose lanes heavily. Digo, like Charon, is good at stalling out a losing game; he's also about as safe as you can make a carry, even in losing games. You can therefore use ally deaths to fuel Digo via Value of Death, as he's relatively unlikely to give over the bounty and will get the most use out of the gold.

v2.1 | Charon

Once again, not a lot of change. Meh.

Variant 1

Removed - The Walking Dead buff grants 25% bonus AP in addition to its other effects.

Gained - Whenever an allied hero dies (anywhere), that hero gains 15 AP, stacking up to 5 times.

An extremely minor sidegrade Variant - you lose the 25% AP from Walking Dead (note, this is separate to the 25% AP buff which lasts for the duration of the fight - you get that and an extra 25% for the one round with the vanilla version). In exchange you get a small amount of AP every time you die for the entire game. In general this is probably a downgrade, but only a very small one - the 25% AP is relatively impactful but only lasts for one round (and only if Charon is in the fight), while the 15 AP is more likely to apply but is generally too small to be relevant. Might become a relatively strong Variant if your team habitually gets the crap kicked out of them, I suppose, but if that's the case you've got bigger issues.

Dylan

Psst. Hey kid, wanna buy some drugs? No? Wanna sell me some clothes then? - Dylan

Name: Dylan

Position: Mid / Support

Role: Support

Mastery choices:
Dylan's drugs cost 50 less gold / Dylan's drugs are 25% more effective

While Balance is in hand, playing a drug card adds a token to it. Dylan gains 3% farming efficiency for each token / While Balance is in hand, playing a drug card adds a token to it. Allies except Dylan gain 0.5% farming efficiency for each token

Itemisation: Mage

Synergies: Pretty much anyone who likes stats; anyone who can search cards for him

Counters: None

Countered by: None

Summary: A creepy mofo who provides a wide variety of buffs to specified heroes.

Analysis: Dylan is a creepy mofo. Unfortunately, he's also one of the better buff supports in the game, which means you'll probably have to tolerate him.

Dylan's effects broadly come from his three drug cards, each of which costs him gold to play in exchange for giving a buff to a targeted ally (which can be himself). Fortunately, his Balance card negates the gold cost, rendering his drugs much more effective.

In a fight, meanwhile, Dylan brings one further buff - Strengthening Potion. This targets one allied hero (again, can be Dylan himself) and grants them 30/35% increased crit chance and crit damage, as well as bonus AP equal to 20/25% of Dylan's AP. This is arguably the strongest part of Dylan's kit - there are plenty of heroes who interact positively with crit, and plenty more who wind up with very high AP numbers due to their own passives and can therefore use crit well. In a pinch, he can also just target himself to turn himself into a passable, if not particularly powerful, mage.

Dylan finds himself in a slightly awkward position meta-wise, however. You'll most want to play him in the support role simply because that's what he does; the trouble being that that means he's competing for a slot against other, less awkward, supports (most notably Beverly). As an alternative he can be played in mid lane, but he doesn't really use the extra solo lane gold all that well (his only multiplier being the 25% he gives to someone via Strengthening Potion). In the end, then, you'll pick Dylan if you really want buff support but Beverly is picked or banned, or if you want to really double down on buffing a single hero.

Cards:
Can't be played. While in hand, Dylan's other cards don't cost gold to play. When you play one of Dylan's other cards, this card moves to the far left of your hand.

This card is entirely necessary if you want to run Dylan without him making himself completely useless in the process. With masteries, happily, it actually lets Dylan generate more gold from playing his cards (don't pick the supportive option, it's less efficient). Don't feel like you can't play his other cards unless this is in hand, however - you picked Dylan for buffs, so play the buffs. Named after what everyone insists all game developers are bad at.

Causes you to remain in the Matrix
Costs 200 gold. Target an allied hero and grant them 20/25% farming efficiency; this effect is lost on death.

Curious that this buff is lost on death, unlike the others; presumably it's to prevent you from search-spamming it to generate absurd gold amounts, though frankly you can do that anyway. Arguably the best use is to throw it on a tank, as they're relatively unlikely to die to ganks at least. Digo is another good option.


Costs 200 gold. Target an allied hero to heal them for 400/500 health and increase their max health by 200/250.

Simple and effective. While you can use this to buff tanks, this is generally an inefficient usage; tanks get a lot of health from gold scaling already, so the extra isn't really going to have a huge impact. It's generally better to instead give this to your damage carries to keep them alive for longer in fights (unless, of course, you have a strong health scaler like Frank or Cubey).



Costs 200 gold. Target an allied hero to grant them 20/25 AP. Dylan gains 10/12 AP.

Not a huge amount of extra AP, but it adds up - especially when targeting heroes with multiple attacks. Note that since it also buffs Dylan's AP you get quite a lot of mileage overall - with masteries, 25 for the target, 12 for Dylan, and then another 3 from Strengthening Potion.




Interactions:
Search Effects - Since all of Dylan's cards are buffs, and he really wants Balance in hand while playing them, Dylan is a particularly good target for search effects. Blocker is, of course, the best source of these - though this does leave you in the slightly odd position of supporting a support so they support someone else...

Zealot - Particularly notable as a good target for buffs of all descriptions, particularly Dylan's. Double-buffing Zealot makes for a pretty potent team comp (see comp suggestions section for more on this).

v2.1 | Dylan

Ehhh. Some small benefits from a few of the items (Archmage Hat is pretty good for him, at least in mid), but on the other hand, his Variant just weakens him. Win some lose some I guess. Still hasn't found any clothing.

Variant 1

Changed - Strengthening Potion grants 20% 15% of Dylan's AP, 30% 20% crit chance and 30% 20% crit damage.

A straight up nerf. The numbers are big enough that this is impactful, particularly the loss of 10% crit; having said that, Dylan still does what you drafted him to do (buff someone up with cards as well as in fights), so it's not a dealbreaker. Shouldn't completely push you away, but if you were already on the fence about drafting him this could be the deciding point.

Fatty White

Fatty White, huh. That's what you're gonna call me. You don't see any problems with that. Right. Excuse me while I call my agent. - Richard 'Fatty' Q. Whiteman Esq.

Name: Fatty White

Position: Top / Mid / Support

Role: Tank

Mastery choices:
If Hail hits a champion they lose 10 armour for 10 rounds. Does not stack. / Hail repeats one additional time

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

Itemisation: Tank

Synergies: None

Counters: Targeted assassins, debuff-oriented comps

Countered by: Multi-attackers, particularly Felyn

Summary: Unimpressive tank with an armour buff.

Analysis: Fatty White, as well as an even more stupid name than Tiger Boy, is a tank whose main feature is the Mini Snowman buff. He can apply this outside of fights, applies one stack to all allies on entering a fight, and applies a stack to the lowest health ally after each action. Mini Snowman removes all debuffs from the target when applied, and grants 30 armour per stack for the next hit the target suffers, then vanishes.

The trouble is, while armour is nice, Fatty White really doesn't bring enough of it to the table to be worth talking about. He functionally protects his ADC (who is usually the lowest health target) from a single hit periodically; the rest of his team get nothing past the opening stack. Meanwhile, he brings nothing else to the table except bulk and the fact that he removes debuffs when applying stacks. This debuff removal actually winds up being the most important part of his kit - while situational, it's typically a lot more impactful than a small amount of armour, and can shut down some strategies which involve debuffing enemies before objective fights.

As a result, Fatty White winds up being simply underwhelming in every respect. The only effects he brings to the team have no scaling, so you don't want to run him in a solo lane - there are far better tanks for that - which means he's relegated to sitting in the support role and throwing his ADC armour/debuff removal. This does not compare well to supports like Blocker, Beverly or even Tivie, all of whom provide a lot more assistance to a specific carry, and to your team in general. Even if all you want is a fat support-tank, even Peter does that job better (if Blocker is banned out). Avoid.

Cards:
Attack an enemy hero (global). If it hits, they lose 20 armour until the end of the next fight.

Basically Wukong's Bludgeon Bash but with no actual AP behind it. Still, armour shred is helpful, so this is actually a pretty good card. Try to play it as close to an objective fight or gank as possible, because your opponent can clear the debuff by starting a fight themselves.




Choose a lane and attack the outermost hero or turret on that lane three times. If an attack hits a hero they get knocked back 1 hex.

3 SP for 3 attacks would be middling at the best of times, let alone being thrown by a hero that hits like a wet paper towel. Could be of some occasional use for pushing down an extremely low health tower by shoving its laner away, but that's about it.




Give an allied hero 3 stacks of Mini Snowman.

This card has the same issue that the buff in general has - it only lasts for one hit. It's all well and good throwing armour around, but when it crumbles on contact it's not going to be particularly impactful over a longer fight. That said, you picked Fatty White for some reason, so you might just be stuck playing this garbage for want of anything better to do.




Interactions:
Nothing particularly special.

v2.1 | Fatty White

Already an unimpressive tank, and doesn't get any better with the update. Winter is not, in fact, coming.

Variant 1

Removed - At the start of fights, Fatty White applies Mini Snowman to all allied units.

Changed - After each action, Fatty White applies Mini Snowman to the 1 2 allied units with the lowest health.

This is pretty much entirely a sidegrade, trading skirmish power for staying power. Probably should be considered a slight buff since he's able to cleanse two targets per action, improving his chances of clearing an important debuff from a specific target, but really doesn't add up to much.

Paisai

The only reason Paisai is willing to support heroes indiscriminately is there aren't any bandicoots[crashbandicoot.fandom.com] available to assist.

Name: Paisai

Position: Support

Role: Support

Mastery choices:
Barbarian Runes draws 1 additional card, whether hitting or not / Barbarian Runes costs 1 more but its range increases by 1

Itemisation: Support

Synergies: Multi-attackers, Merisi (tank + multiattack)

Counters: None

Countered by: Glass cannon comps

Summary: Solid support providing AP to your team.

Analysis: Paisai is a strong general-purpose support providing a raft of helpful effects through his strong card selection. In fights, meanwhile, he provides a simple team-wide buff - every ally gains AP equal to 2.5 x Paisai's level (with masteries) after every 5 actions. Note that this is every 5 actions, rather than turns - multi-attacking heroes will stack it up much more quickly. This means heroes like Kamaitachi and Merisi have a nice synergy alongside Paisai - their repeated attacks stack his passive more quickly, and in turn benefit from the increased AP.

Paisai's main weakness is he doesn't really excel in any particular area, and in particular, doesn't really pair especially well with any specific ADC. Where Blocker loves to team with Felyn and Acedia with BaJie, Paisai is much more general; this lets him slot neatly into a comp, but doesn't let you really accelerate a hero outside of fights.

The overall result is that Paisai is a middle-tier support; you can pick him happily if you don't want to focus on bot lane or if you're looking for a more general teamfight-oriented comp, but he doesn'tt end to as work well in strategies involving funnelling a specific hero (though he can still work). He does also function better in tankier teams as fights stretch longer, allowing him to stack his passive and off-set the tanks' relatively low AP.

Cards:
Heal an allied hero for 30% of their max health, then search your deck for any card and add it to your hand.

A nice universally-useful search tool with attached heal. Importantly this is weaker than many similar search effects because it doesn't allow you to search in the discard; as such, it can't be used to recycle cards for repeated play. Make sure you check that the card you want is in the deck before you play this.



Costs 1 token to play; starts with 2 tokens and adds 1 any time a hero dies. When played, target an allied hero; they attack all enemies within 1 hex. Draw a card for each hit.

Extremely useful general-purpose card draw and poke tool. With masteries you'll always guarantee this card will at least cycle itself for free (avoid the cost and range increase, it's less reliable) and more likely will draw multiple cards and deal some damage at no expense. While the card does use a token system this is almost never relevant because tokens are gained whenever a hero dies globally, and the chances of having no kills for an extended period are usually pretty slim.

Discard 1 card. Until the end of the round, any initiation card you play has a 1 round increased duration.

One of the few discard effects in the game, this is particularly useful if you're running a tankier comp since you'll need the extra duration to secure kills. Synergises nicely with Paisai's passive, and has some small synergies with the handful of heroes that want you to discard things (Xiangxi Ke, Kaka).




Interactions:
Merisi - While Paisai has good synergy with all multi-attackers, Merisi merits specific note due to being both a multi-attacker and a tank. He'll not only give bonus actions to help Paisai stack, but will usually hang around long enough to use them and gets a lot of benefit from extra AP. The main drawback is that Merisi usually wants a buffer on the team as well, which means you'll have to run him top lane so you can take Dylan in mid.

Glass Cannons - Paisai has natural anti-synergy with, and is soft countered by, comps with high offence and low defence. He wants fights to drag on for a longer period so he can stack his passive up for his team, and glass cannons on either side will tend to decrease fight duration one way or another. They also tend to get less benefit from his AP - it 20 AP matters a lot more when you've got 100 AP than when you've got 1000.

v2.1 | Paisai

One of the few supports with a clear buff Variant. That's about it though - new itemisation continues to unimpress for supports.

Variant 1

Removed - After every 5 actions Paisai grants bonus AP equal to his level to all allied units.

Gained - After every 5 actions Paisai grants bonus crit chance equal to 0.5% x his level to all allied units. If an allied unit is already at 100% crit when receiving this effect, they instead gain 0.2% x Paisai's level as crit damage.

A very, very nice upgrade for Paisai. For starters, granting crit chance/damage will almost always be worth more than flat AP - the former scales with the target's damage, so unless you're a tank you're going to get more value. More importantly however, this effect has a very large positive impact on heroes with crit interactions, of which there are quite a few. Aurelio, Quinn, Manta and Lan all love getting extra crit - Paisai's pick rate increases. Pushes Paisai up to arguably S tier.

Palulu

Palulu has wandered far and wide across the world, exploring everywhere she can think of in her quest to find a way to fight that doesn't involve shielding people. So far, she has been unsuccessful.

Name: Palulu

Position: Mid / Support

Role: Support

Mastery choices:
Traveler's Blessing costs 1 more, but applies an additional 100% AP shield and grants the target 10% additional AP / Traveler's Blessing heals 5% more health; when the recipient has full health they gain 15% farming efficiency

Runic Shield applies a 20% larger shield / Runic Shield's attack deals 15% more damage

Itemisation: As much flat AP as possible.

Synergies: Shields (Niels, Bariel, Felyn)

Counters: Tiger Boy (Shield negating stun)

Countered by: Hass (Shield stealing)

Summary: Middling support who spams shields and not much else.

Analysis: Palulu throws shields. That's basically all she does. She doesn't even attack - instead of attacking, she provides a shield to allies (melee ones unless there are no melees left). Importantly, Palulu also only gets 80% scaling from gold and levels until her mastery is maxed out, giving you a strong incentive to master her if you want to play her.

Since shields can't crit and Palulu is very much a backliner, your best option for itemisation is to stack as much AP as possible on her. More AP means bigger shields, which means her frontline stick around longer to keep her safe. Other than that, there's not really a lot of finesse involved to running Palulu - throw shields on what you want shielded and you're golden.

However, while Palulu is easy to run, she also doesn't really do much. She doesn't allow for proactive plays, nor does she really assist the team in securing kills. All she really does is block damage, and while that's useful, it's usually more useful to actively assist in killing. As such, Palulu sits around the middle tiers - an acceptable pick and can fit into most comps, but there's usually better options available.

Cards:
Give an allied hero a shield equal to 200% of Palulu's AP, and the Traveler's Blessing buff. This buff increases both field hit damage and farming efficiency by 30%, and also restores 15% max health per round, lasting until the target no longer has a shield. Additionally, the target retains shields at the end of fights (max 200% of Palulu's AP).

There's a lot going on with this card, which there kinda has to be for its cost. The one truly effective card Palulu has to offer (albeit one that will eat a chunk of your resources to play), this card ensures that the recipient will stay at full health while laning unless heavily focussed or ganked, while also providing some additional benefits while the shield lasts. Note that as far as the game is concerned, shields are shields - so you can top it up with Palulu's other cards if it's getting whittled down. Under ideal circumstances you'll eventually have this buff active on everyone (though that almost never happens, of course).

Apply a shield equal to 100% of Palulu's AP to all allied heroes. Palulu gets double.

Another pricey card, but providing a shield to your entire team makes it very much worth the cost prior to entering into an objective fight. The total shielding is equivalent to five rounds' worth of Palulu's 'attacks' in-fight, so unless your Palulu is very behind it will be a very welcome buffer for your team. On the other hand, outside of a fight the shields don't really do a whole lot, so you'll only want to play this in the run-up to a big teamfight.


Apply a shield equal to 100% of Palulu's AP to an allied hero; that hero then attacks an enemy within 1 hex. If the target already had a shield when you played this card, you additionally gain 1 SP.

A good follow-up to Palulu's other cards thanks to the SP refund - 1 SP for a shield and an attack is a decent price. Usually isn't worth playing on its own unless you've got nothing else to spend your SP on. Note that despite the ambiguous wording, the attack is based on the target's AP, not Palulu's.



Interactions:
Shields - Palulu gives shields. If that wasn't obvious by now, either you've got issues with comprehension or my Eng Lit degree was a massive waste of time (okay, fine, that one's a given). Aside from the general purpose of blocking damage, a few heroes (notably Bariel) gain substantial benefits when shielded; meanwhile, the fact that shields make heroes immune to stuns has notable interactions with a few other heroes (Niels and Tiger Boy most notably).

v2.1 | Palulu

Basically no change here. Extreme sidegrade Variant is about it.

Variant 1

Changed - Palulu's shields are distributed between allied melee/ranged units all allied units.

A pretty tiny change - Palulu's shields on your frontline are weaker, but she stacks some shielding on your backline at the same time to protect your more important carries from incidental damage. Makes very little difference, as the shielding gets diluted too much to actually provide much protection for your backline.

Peiniang Zhu

Okay, it's easy to get a cheap laugh out of 'Thunder Finger', but it's actually a pretty serious condition. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails while you're getting frisky like a few hundred volts.

Name: Peiniang Zhu

Position: Support

Role: Support

Mastery choices:
Lightning Mark deals an extra 4 + 50% level damage / Thunder Finger additionally adds two stacks of Lightning Mark

Lightning Mark deals an extra 8 damage / Lightning Mark deals extra damage equal to your level

Static Lightning cost increases by 1 but adds 3 more stacks of Lightning Mark / Attacks in fights add 2 stacks of Lightning Mark

Itemisation: Support-tank

Synergies: Anyone with multiple hits (Felyn, Qube, Kamaitachi etc.) or AoE (Gang notably)

Counters: None

Countered by: Wukong (debuff reflection), Blocker (extra shields)

Summary: Support adding inevitability through extremely low damage debuffs.

Analysis: Peiniang Zhu is, in theory at least, a support that works by adding the Lightning Mark debuff to enemies, causing them to take additional damage whenever they take damage for the rest of the fight. The debuff stacks, being added whenever an enemy takes an action (and, with masteries, from PZ's attacks as well), which should cause fights to slowly tip in their favour.

The problem is, the only thing PZ provides is damage. They give absolutely zero utility of any kind, so you need their damage to be substantial to make up for this - and it simply isn't. The debuff is fairly weak, and what's more, is affected by mitigation. In practice, they wind up not really doing much of anything in fights.

Due to stacking whenever an opponent takes an action, they can act as a minor counter to heroes like Kamaitachi - but again, the Lightning Mark effect simply doesn't do enough to count. What's worse, Lightning Mark is only flat damage with level scaling, so you can't even snowball with it. The overall result is that PZ is a "support" in name only, and not someone you want to be bringing along. If you want damage amp out of the support role, both Crank and Lady Deadfire bring it in greater quantities with more utility to boot.

I would also note that I recommend building PZ with tank items rather than damage items in spite of them being flagged by the game as a mage. The only effect they bring to a fight is Lightning Mark, and that has no AP scaling at all - as such, you're better off building to keep them alive to get more stacks applied than throwing damage on what amounts to a purely vanilla hero who won't generally get much gold in any case. And if they wind up soaking hits, frankly that's more utility than the rest of the kit brings.

Cards:
Gain 3 stacks of the Thundercloud effect, each adding a stack of Lightning Mark to all enemies when entering a fight. Start with 1 token, gains 1 more token for every 25 rounds, and can only play with a token.

Very expensive for what it does - 3 SP for 3 stacks of Lightning Mark per target is a lot - but still about the best you're going to get out of PZ's cards. And so, of course, it's token-gated. Wouldn't want them to have a card worth playing after all.



Add 2 stacks of Lightning Mark to one enemy, draw 1.

Low impact, but at least it's cheap and cycles so you'll find yourself playing this a fair bit simply to find other (better) cards to play. This does at least have the benefit of not being range-limited, so PZ can contribute to fights elsewhere; it's best used on Fighters who have a big enough health pool to be worth whittling down while not having any additional resistances to mitigate the damage.



Attack an enemy, always hitting, and apply the Thunder Finger debuff (when another enemy is attacked, the debuffed enemy takes an equal amount of damage, once only).

2 SP for a single attack from a low AP support is pretty terrible, so you're going to need to get a lot of mileage out of the debuff to make this worth playing. In practice that's unlikely to happen, since you can't control attack order; paired with Lubos you can at least make it happen, but Lubos isn't particularly strong either. Curiously, this is purely up-front damage, making it a burst-oriented card very much at odds with PZ's otherwise long-fight-oriented kit.

Interactions:
All multi-action heroes - Any allied heroes with multiple damage sources will get double benefit from Lightning Mark; meanwhile, enemy heroes which take multiple actions (slightly different to the above - doesn't include Felyn or those who build items with innate damage) will take additional stacks. AoE heroes will also proc damage from Lightning Mark - Gang is notable here because his AoE is omnipresent but something of an afterthought.

Wukong - as with all debuffs, Lightning Mark (and Thunder Finger, if you forget what you're doing and target him with it) will be reflected onto your entire team when thrown at Wukong.

v2.1 | Peiniang Zhu

No particular benefits as such, but does have two interesting Variants. Might be worthy of more consideration now depending on your playstyle.

Variant 1

Changed - Lightning Mark deals extra damage equal to Peiniang Zhu's level + 2.

Gained - Whenever you play one of Peiniang Zhu's cards apply a stack of Lightning Mark to a random enemy.

A curious Variant - Lightning Mark gets weaker, but you can stack it up before fights by playing Peiniang Zhu's cards. Said cards are generally decent but not incredible; whether this makes you play them or just acts as a consolation prize largely depends on your draft and whether there are other heroes that want that SP more. This Variant does encourage you to avoid fights, however, since your pre-applied marks will fall off as soon as that hero has fought.

Variant 2

Changed - Lightning Mark deals extra damage equal to Peiniang Zhu's level + 2 2% of Peiniang Zhu's AP.

Gained - Peiniang Zhu applies a stack of Lightning Mark when they hit with an attack.

An even weirder Variant, this is a very rare example of a support that wants to go all-in on AP. Given supports don't get much gold this is a difficult Variant to run (and requires you to itemise to make use of it); if your version happens to be running the rule which gives supports bonus gold generation, however, this Variant becomes really very good (basically a better Crank). Would be pretty great if you could run Peiniang Zhu in mid (though her other Variants would be garbage there).

Peter

Using a giant robot to fight with makes perfect sense, but let's be honest - the energy shield is just showing off. Use an actual shield you poser. - Auth.

Name: Peter

Position: Top / Support

Role: Tank

Mastery choices:
Hyper Protection restores an additional 20% max health / Hyper Protection restores an additional 5% max health and increases its range by 1

Gain an additional 35 health per level and 1 Presence / Gain an additional 3 health per 25 gold

Itemisation: Tank

Synergies: Deep Space (taunt to guarantee protection initially), Crank (Hyper Shield shenanigans)

Counters: Targeted attacks (e.g. Nihil, Xiangxi Ke)

Countered by: Anti-tank (.e.g Mihawk)

Summary: Pure brick wall tank best played in a support role.

Analysis: Peter is a tank whose main distinguishing feature is his Taunt ability. This effect forces the first 3/5 attacks made by enemies in fights to target him, during which time he also gains a chunk of armour. This, coupled with his 20 additional base armour, makes him a fairly solid damage sponge, particularly in smaller/shorter engagements.

Once his Taunt stacks are used up, Peter is essentially just a vanilla tank with a little extra armour; as such, he's best sited in the support role where he can use Taunt to protect his ADC from ganks while a better scaling hero takes the solo lane position. He also has access to a fairly good, if expensive, initiation for creating pseudo-ganks by pulling in nearby junglers.

Ultimately, lacking as he does any real tools for scaling or utility and with only a handful of Taunt stacks per fight, Peter is generally not a very good pick. Heroes like Blocker can fill a support-tank role with a lot more utility; top lane has access to heroes like Bart and Frank who can perform the solo lane tank role better. Pick someone else.

Cards:
Peter restores 30/50% of his max health. 50% of excess healing is then dealt as damage to enemy heroes within 1 hex.

A surprisingly chunky hit out of a pure tank, potentially up to 25% of Peter's max health. Unfortunately, since Peter lacks any other form of damage (and his initiation is too expensive to pair with anything else without discounts), it's difficult to really get much real value out of this. There are however some shenanigans you can pull with it if you really want to (see below).



Peter restores 50% of his max health, with any excess healing becoming a shield. He then starts a fight involving all heroes within 2 hexes, with a 5 round duration.

An extremely expensive engage, but one which can allow for some good lopsided fights in bot lane if timed when your jungler is nearby. The 5 round duration means you're more likely to secure at least one kill, even with Peter doing next to no damage. Ultimately you'll struggle to play this consistently simply due to the cost, but you can usually squeeze a good fight or two out of it over the course of a game.

Peter restores 30% max health, then applies the Reactive Armour buff to an ally within 3 hexes. This buff blocks 90% of the damage from one attack within 10 rounds.

Incredibly expensive for blocking just a single attack. About the only real use for this card is to heal prior to a shield bomb. Otherwise, avoid like the plague.





Interactions:
Shield Bomb - So, you want to explode people with Peter? Fair enough, here's how you do it. Firstly, you run Peter in top lane; you then run heroes who can provide him either with bonus health or bonus gold (Dylan in mid for example). In the bot lane support role you play Crank. Then, once Peter has a very substantial health pool (and, ideally, your bot lane opponents have taken some damage), you heal Peter up either via Quick Recall or Reactive Armour, use Crank's Swap to place him next to the enemy bot lane, and play Hyper Protection - which, in theory, explodes them.

In practice this is really not a practical approach - you're having to funnel resources into an otherwise low impact tank, you need to find three separate pieces in order to do it, and 9 times out of 10 the damage isn't actually enough to kill them anyway because Hyper Protection's damage is pre-mitigation, meaning it actually winds up dealing approx. 17.5% of Peter's max health to a 35 armour target. It is pretty funny when you can make it happen, though, especially if you somehow kill the enemy jungler as well.

v2.1 | Peter

Once again, barely changes.

Variant 1

Changed - Peter gains armour equal to 12 20 x his level while Taunt is active.

Gained - Taunt expires at the end of the first round.

Barely makes any kind of difference; Taunt expires at the end of the first round, but it'll do so anyway in most reasonably large fights and several of the stacks are usually used to block low damage swings anyway. Pretty much an irrelevance unless you're expecting to get ganked a lot early.

Tiger Boy

I'd love to come up with something witty here, but frankly this character design is so stupid there's really not a lot I can add that would be more comical than the hero himself.

Name: Tiger Boy

Position: Top / Mid / Support

Role: Support

Mastery choices:
Gain 3 AP and 22.5 max health per level / Gain 1.5 AP and 38.5 max health per level

Double Trouble grants an additional 10 AP per level / Whimsical also draws one card from the draw pile.

Tiger Boy can stun targets 2 turns after they were last stunned by him / Add an additional copy of Whimsical to the deck.

Itemisation: Support-tank

Synergies: Niels, Gang (multi-target stuns)

Counters: None

Countered by: Wukong (debuff reflection), Palulu (Shields)

Summary: Utility support providing stuns and card manipulation

Analysis: Tiger Boy is a utility support who exists to provide stuns in fights. That is essentially his only purpose, but it's a fairly useful one - after all, a stunned enemy is one who isn't attacking you back.

The downside is that he doesn't really do anything else, and unfortunately that puts him much further down the totem pole than a lot of other heroes. His main other benefit is his Whimsical card, which can allow for some nice recycle plays - but which is really quite awkward to get the maximum use out of, and can easily wind up doing absolutely nothing useful.

Much like Peiniang Zhu, Tiger Boy's big problem really lies in the fact that he has no real scaling on his abilities. Yes he provides stuns and such, but he doesn't really do much with extra gold (at least, nothing another hero wouldn't do more with); this leaves him in an awkward position of being classed as a mage and having access to multiple solo lanes, but having no reason to ever be picked outside the support role. It's for this reason, too, that I recommend building him more as a support-tank than a mage - there's not much point in giving him AP when he's not going to do much with it, so you may as well bulk him up so he can keep stunning enemies for longer.

Overall, Tiger Boy is an acceptable pick, but never a great one. Simply put, he'll do.

Cards:
Give an allied hero AP equal to 10x Tiger Boy's level, and also a copy of his stun power, until the end of the next fight.

A very variable card, it can work wonders on the right hero - and can be absolutely useless on the wrong one. For best results you'll want to put this either on someone who'll stick around for a long time in fights (and so maximise stun opportunities), or on someone who gets multiple attacks and can therefore stun a lot of enemies at once. Note that the target doesn't get the benefit of Tiger Boy's masteries, so you're only getting one stun off per fight this way.

Draw 3 from your discard pile and reduce their costs by 1 for this Deployment Phase. Can't draw any more cards this Deployment Phase.

A solid card, as anything that gives discounts tends to be. If you're able to manipulate your deck such that you can pick the cards that are in your discard pile - if, for instance, this is in your opening hand - it can work wonders. If, on the other hand, you're not able to do so, try to remember to play this after draw cards you happen to want to play.



Attack an enemy within 1 hex; if it hits, the target can't participate in fights this Deployment Phase.

WAY too expensive for what it is. Yes, it can set you up for an isolated fight in the right circumstances - but 2 SP for that effect, if it hits, and if you have relevant enemies inside the small 1 hex range, is far too much. You'll almost never want to play this.




Interactions:
Shields - Targets with shields are immune to being stunned. For obvious reasons, this can make shields a real problem for Tiger Boy. The immunity only applies if the shield holds, though, so your main issue is in larger pre-fight shields rather than the ones created in-fight; this is possibly the only argument for building damage on your Tiger Boy rather than tank.

Multi-hit allies - Double Trouble, if applied to a hero like Niels, Gang or Kamaitachi, can apply stuns to multiple targets per round and therefore give you a very favourable fight. They can only stun each target once per fight, of course, but that's still enough to give you a leg up.

v2.1 | Tiger Boy

Whee, more heroes with no major changes. Does have a weird-ass Variant though.

Variant 1

Changed - Tiger Boy's stun effect is no longer restricted to one proc per target and also causes the target to take 30% more damage for one round.

Gained - Tiger Boy's stun effect is only applied on odd numbered rounds.

This is... really, really weird. Having said that, assuming you're willing to play around it (and you are, if you're drafting him), this is actually a huge buff - pick your fights right and you get a nasty stun every round. Combine with Double Trouble for very low risk skirmishing. Pay attention to what rounds objective fights happen on, though, since if they're on even-numbered rounds you've got a vanilla support weighing you down.

Variant 2

Changed - Tiger Boy's stun effect applies once to each enemy unit applies whenever he attacks, up to a number of attacks equal to the number of enemy units.

Slightly improves Tiger Boy's reliability at the expense of sweep potential - he won't waste so many rounds stunning nothing because he's bonking someone he already bonked, but on the other hand, in longer fights you don't have an inevitable stun waiting for carries to eventually get targeted. Overall a slight buff, especially for skirmishing, but not enough to move the needle.

Tivie

Despite what you might think, Tivie is neither incapable nor unwilling to attack people. It's just that her hair is so absurdly long that she trips over it whenever she tries.

Name: Tivie

Position: Support

Role: Support

Mastery choices:
Rain of Life heals all allied heroes when it reaches 3 tokens rather than 4 / Rain of Life heals for an extra 50% of Tivie's AP

Melody of Revive costs 1 less / Melody of Revive costs 1 more but revived monsters are worth 35% more gold

Itemisation: Support-mage

Synergies: Cubey (heals on field), Wolfgang (create a monster), AoE jungle clearers

Counters: Debuff-oriented heroes (Crank, Big Foot etc.)

Countered by: None

Summary: Support who does nothing but heal allies.

Analysis: Soraka Tivie is the game's obligatory healer. She scales quite poorly - gaining just 60% of the standard AP and heal from levels and gold - and her attacks in fights heal the lowest health ally instead of targeting enemies. On the bright side, she gets a 10/30/60/100 bonus (levels 1/6/11/16) to her heals, so she's just squishy instead of useless; her heals also dispel all debuffs, which can be situationally useful.

Tivie also has a useful passive ability which heals your heroes for 30% of their max health at the end of a fight whether she was involved in that fight or not. This is possibly the strongest part of her kit, as it lets your heroes skirmish frequently while remaining at high health so as to push the lane afterwards. This, along with the excellent Heaven Rainfall card, is the main reason you'd pick her over a more effective support.

Due to her poor scaling, Tivie isn't generally a good pick. While she can help to keep your heroes alive, as a general rule it's more effective simply to buff them up to be more effective like other supports; the best strategy in fights is usually not 'lose more slowly'. That said, she also has no counters and can provide a lot of extra income to junglers who have a lot of clearance mechanisms, so your mileage may vary.

Incidentally, Tivie (like Palulu) can't crit with her heals, and several item effects which would cause damage or debuffs won't function with her. Make sure you check her item build to focus on AP and health, since other stats aren't useful to her.

Cards:
Spawned in the deck at levels 6/11/16 and removed when played. Reduce the cost of all cards in your hand by 1 until the end of this Deployment Phase.

A fantastic card, which is why you only get to play it a few times during the game. Discounts are always valuable, and as a 1 cost card you can get value out of this with just a couple of card plays even if you don't want to spend your full SP allocation; obviously it's most efficient to play all your cards, though. Note that unlike the comparable Quick Decision Tactics card, this card doesn't vanish if you don't use it, so you can hold it for the right moment.

Respawn all of the dead monsters in jungle hexes your team controls. When these monsters are killed by your heroes they grant 75% additional gold.

Quite expensive (the cost reduction mastery is important), this functions as a delayed gold bonus to your team (obviously usually your jungler, though other heroes can grab camps via cards). Due to being a multiplier on monster farming this card's value can vary immensely depending on your heroes' farming efficiency, pathing, how many monsters are currently dead and how much jungle your team controls; you'll have to gauge whether this is worth playing on a case-by-case basis. On the bright side, the bonus gold only applies to your team, so counter-jungling won't screw you too much harder than it normally would.

Target an allied hero to heal them for 200% of Tivie's AP and remove debuffs. This card then gains a token (shared across both copies). Once you have 4/3 tokens, this card targets all allied heroes.

Generally not all that useful. Unlike a lot of heals this doesn't have any overheal functionality, so it's mostly used to patch up allies to keep them in lane - reducing damage your towers are taking, but not really much else. Can be situationally useful to remove problematic debuffs before fights or to throw an emergency heal if you're worried about a gank.


Interactions:
Cubey - Cubey spends health to play its cards, and the effectiveness of those cards is predicted on its current health. Rain of Life can help to top it off to ensure you get as much value as possible out of those cards (although frankly you're still better off drafting a search function instead).

Wolfgang - Wolfgang continually scales up in fights to become a beast; this is especially notable for his armour gain. As a result, healing Wolfgang mid-fight has a disproportionately large effect, since thanks to his stolen armour each hitpoint will go further.

Jungle clearance - While Melody of Revive is a little underwhelming in a vacuum, it can be quite effective in conjunction with heroes who can quickly AoE clear their own jungle. Depending on circumstances you can either use Melody of Revive and then the clear to give them a nice influx of gold, or alternatively if your camps are mostly intact you can quickly clear them and then revive them immediately. Most notable with Zealot, whose Code: Devour has a built-in gold multiplier already.

v2.1 | Tivie

Say it with me - nothing much changes.

Variant 1

Removed - At the end of fights, Tivie restores 30% max health to all surviving allies (whether she participates or not).

Gained - At the start of objective teamfights Tivie restores 30% max health to all allies (whether she participates or not).

Something of a sidegrade - you lose Tivie's map-wide skirmish support (which admittedly is mostly just useful for pushing down towers), but in exchange you have to pay less attention to setting up for objective teamfights. On the other hand, setting up for objective teamfights should be second nature once you've been playing the game for a while, so this probably winds up being a nerf in most cases.

Team Comp Approaches

As should hopefully have become apparent if you read through the earlier parts of this guide (or at least skimmed them - let's be honest, there's a lot to get through), there are a few approaches you'll generally want to take when drafting a comp for this game. Importantly these aren't fixed, but just general guidelines to how you'll plan for the early part of the draft - once you know what's banned out and a few picks have happened on either team you can adapt the rest of your strategy accordingly.

The approaches are:

Bot lane focus - Pick a dominant bot lane pair early and look to snowball them. This can either be done by picking a lane bully ADC and hammering the enemy with attacks, or by picking a strong scaling ADC and ganking repeatedly. Other lanes should provide frontline and gank support.

Examples:
Reinhardt / Kamaitachi / Wolfgang / Felyn / Blocker
Frank / Aurelio / Enidi / Gang / Paisai
Wukong / Gillis / Aurelio / Bajie / Acedia

Jungle focus - Similar to bot lane focus, but playing around a jungle-support pair. ADC should be a strong general purpose pick. This approach tends not to win as quickly since your dominant hero isn't pushing a lane, but is able to spread out and help every lane at various times.

Examples:
Kid / Zealot / Dylan / Elemi / Beverly
Qube / Kamaitachi / Bunu Shan / Digo / Beverly

Single hero - This approach basically says 'I want to play this hero' and then builds a comp around them. Exactly how you go about this varies depending on the hero you're working around, but often involves double supports.

Examples:
Cubey / Reinhardt / Aurelio / Digo / Blocker
Merisi / Kamaitachi / Dylan / Elemi / Beverly
Kid / Zealot / Lan / Gang / Lady Deadfire
Qube / Aurelio / Dylan / Bariel / Charon
Bart / Hakuna / Enidi / Niels / Palulu

Theme - This approach picks a specific aspect to work around such as skirmishing, debuffs or assassination. This usually requires very targeted bans.

Examples:
Big Foot / Hakuna / Crank / Bond / Peiniang Zhu (Death by debuff)
Qube / Zealot / Wolfgang / Ada / Paisai (Fight All Day)
Nihil / Mo / Xiangxi Ke / Bond / Lady Deadfire (Bye Bye Backline)
Kid / Mo / Gillis / Bajie / Acedia (Money Money Money)

v2.1 | Yippochievements!

This is something I put together for my own personal amusement - a large set of achievements based on amusing game occurrences or dumb jokes. If you're only here for information, you can safely skip this section. If, on the other hand, you're trying to squeeze more life out of the game, maybe give some of these a try. Note that for some inexplicable reason I don't have the power of God over Steam, so all of these are obviously untracked and unofficial - you'll have to determine for yourself if you've earned them or not. Some of them are really freaking hard to do, so don't feel bad if you can't or won't do them - they're intentionally hard. I've also thrown explanations in a few places where you might not know how to even approach them.

P.S. Developers - if you're somehow reading this, feel free to steal these. You don't even have to give me credit, you can just use them. Credit would be kinda cool, though...

P.P.S. Yes, I'm aware that the name 'Yippochievements' is deeply, deeply cringe. All the same, I find it funny.

v2.1 | Hero Yippochievements (Part 1)

I'm Here To Save The... Oh.
Play Babe's Free-For-All when all invited enemy heroes are dead.

What Do You Get A Man Who Has Everything?
Play Babe's Gift Bundle when he already has the maximum stacks of Happy Happy.

House wins
Have Bart negate a Quinn super crit and kill her with the reflected damage.

Recycling Saves The Environment!
Use Big Foot's Rapid Cooling to play the same card for four Deployment Phases in a row. Second copies of the same card don't count.

Short Term Thinking
Kill an enemy Frank with Cubey's Differentiation-a, dealing at least 1000 damage.

Worth It
Cause Frank to die by playing his cards.

He Took Everything From Me
Kill Dylan using Hass' Shadow Blade when Dylan has at least one stack of Blue Pill active.

Just Iced
After Justice enters a fight with four Sword of Justice stacks, have the fight end with at least three enemy heroes killed, without Justice executing any of them.

Revolving Door
Kill the same friendly hero using Kid's Amnesty twice in one match.

Where is everybody?
Have Miki be the only participating hero alive when an objective fight begins.

Suspicious Mind
Have 5 stacks of Suspect on every enemy hero simultaneously. [N.B. basically impossible without Qube's Variant active.]

Modern Day Prometheus[en.wikipedia.org]
Have Shougong Lei kill an enemy Hass after Hass has stolen at least three Flame stacks from Aurelio during the fight.

Banana Hamma
Kill an enemy from full health in a single hit using Bond.

Unlucky Charm
Have Gillis attack and kill an enemy hero with an Accumulation-empowered attack while that hero is debuffed with Charm.

I. Smack. With. TREE!
Kill at least two enemy units simultaneously with Hakuna's special attack.

Best Boy
Have Kaka kill five enemies without ever joining a fight or playing a field attack card other than Blood Scent.

My Arm Is Tired
Have Kamaitachi attack six times in one round.

Duelist Kingdom[yugioh.fandom.com]
Have Lubos start a 1v1 fight with each individual enemy hero using Duel. Lubos must win every fight.

Expert Anglerfish[en.wikipedia.org]
Have Manta be involved in at least three fights initiated by enemies over the course of a game, killing at least one enemy in each fight.

Shades Of Steve Irwin[en.wikipedia.org]
Have Manta initiate a 1v1 with Palulu and kill her with one attack.

Wallet Whack
Have Mo kill a full health enemy ranged unit with his special reaction attack. Mo must have earned at least 1000 gold in bounties over the course of the game.

Whack-a-Mo
End a game with Mo on the enemy team. Mo must have 0 kills and at least 5 deaths.

Tastes Like Purple[leagueoflegends.fandom.com]
Have Nihil swap from Crimson form to Azure form and back at least three times during the same fight.

Roadkill
Have Reinhardt kill enemy units with his special starting attack at least five times during one game.

Set 'em Up, Knock 'em Down
Have Xiangxi Ke get a pentakill by attacking five times in a row [via her extra attacks on unit death].

I Love A Fair Fight
Have a fight against three enemy heroes using only Zealot. All three enemy heroes must be killed, each killed by a different Zealot clone.

Truly Endless Vengeance
Have an enemy hero equipped with a GA item [i.e. item which prevents death when triggered] trigger their GA and then die in the same round. Crank's Endless Vengeance damage must both trigger the GA and kill them. [Requires an enemy hero with extra attacks.]

Encore
Get a pentakill on the field with Enidi. Enemy heroes may only die to damage from The Finale and Return Performance.

Ready, Aim, Fire
In one fight, have a gun-using hero (e.g. Ada, Felyn etc.) kill three enemy heroes with three back-to-back attacks. Each slain hero must have had at least five stacks of Dark Flame when killed.

Who Is Even Paying For This?
Have Lan complete all three Step C upgrades by killing the same enemy hero. That hero must have 0 kills when the upgrades are completed, Lan must land the killing blow each time, and she must receive bounty gold each time.

Do Not Pass Go[en.wikipedia.org]
Use knockback effects to move an enemy hero at least 3 hexes, then have Merisi kill them with Fight in the Prison.

I Want To Cry
Play Mihawk's Drain the Soul on an enemy hero when it has at least 90 tokens on it. The attack must miss.

Group Bondage
Have all four ally heroes affected by Niels' Bound at the same time.

Shadow Realm[yugioh.fandom.com]
Have at least 50 tokens on Wolfgang's Chain of War, then play it targeting an enemy Quinn.

v2.1 | Hero Yippochievements (Part 2)

Working From Home
Have Ada kill all five enemy heroes with her special attack over the course of a game. In each case Ada must not be participating in the fight.

Look Ma, No Hands
Have BaJie kill two enemy heroes using Rocket Punch in the same Deployment Phase.

Chaaaaaaaaaaarge!
Have Bariel travel four hexes in one direction using Charge, then kill an enemy using Cannon Strike.

Always Angry[en.wikipedia.org]
Have Bunu Shan kill three enemy heroes with one attack in a fight.

Very Precise Airstrike
Play Deep Space's Volley with at least five Missile cards in hand. All of the Missiles must hit the same enemy.

Heavy Is The Head[en.wikipedia.org]
Kill at least two enemy heroes and destroy the enemy base with one Eternal Throne.

Very Rapid Shooting
Play Elemi's Rapid Shooting three times in one Deployment Phase. All of the attacks must hit.

She Just Can't Hide It[en.wikipedia.org]
Get a pentakill with Felyn on the field.

Big Badda Boom[en.wikipedia.org]
In one Deployment Phase, kill at least three enemy heroes and at least one allied hero with Gang.

But He's Supposed To Be Immune To Traps[yugioh.fandom.com]
Have Omaha's Wild Heart die to Bart's reflected damage.

Very Very Frightening[en.wikipedia.org]
Kill all five enemy heroes by playing Shougong Lei's Thunderstorm while you have Niels' Revelation in hand.

Air Superiority
Play Shougong Lei's Thunderstorm as your first card in a Deployment Phase. All enemy heroes must be hit by Thunderstorm, and all enemy heroes must be dead by the end of that Deployment Phase.

Quinn Who?
Kill Qin Hu with Quinn's overkill damage.

Not Such A Good Idea
Play Acedia's Eureka and expend five Sleepiness stacks, then play a card with a base cost of 0.

Practice Makes Perfect
Get Beverly to 20 stacks of Mech Mastery.

Indecision
Play Interference Field on each allied hero at least twice over the course of a game.

Nope
Prevent three different allied heroes from dying in one fight with Charon's Walking Dead effect. The fight must end with all allied heroes alive.

Poor Resource Management
Have Dylan have 0 gold at any point after round 5.

Hail Hydra[hailhydra.fandom.com]
Play Fatty White's Hail three times in one Deployment Phase, targeting a different lane each time.

Placebo
Play Paisai's Elixir twice in one Deployment Phase, both times targeting the same allied hero, and then kill an enemy hero using the targeted hero. The targeted hero must have been at full health both times Elixir was played.

You Don't Look So Good
Win a fight with no enemy heroes left alive when your only participating hero is Palulu. [Requires a delayed damage card like Crank's Endless Vengeance, and most likely an indefinite duration initiation like Foso's Libra.]

Give Them The Finger
Play Thunder Finger twice in one Deployment Phase. The second Thunder Finger must trigger the first one's debuff, and must kill both targets.

The Best Defence
Get a pentakill with one play of Peter's Hyper Protection.

Double, Triple... How Much Trouble?
Apply Tiger Boy's Double Trouble to each allied hero in the same Deployment Phase.

Drought
Win a game with Tivie without playing Heaven Rainfall or Rain of Life.

Flyby
Attack every enemy hero using Raven's feathers in one Deployment Phase.

No Score Draw
Play Foso's Libra to initiate a fight between Palulu and Tivie.

Baddieguard
Kill an enemy Qin Hu. Qin Hu's Warden must have joined the fight, and must survive.

Jackpot!
Kill all five enemy heroes with a single attack from Quinn.

What Doesn't Kill Me
Use an enemy Wukong to apply three stacks of Matata to all five allied heroes in one fight.

v2.1 | Team Yippochievements

What's Cooler Than Being Cool?[en.wikipedia.org]
Win a game with a team containing Big Foot, Hakuna, Matata and Fatty White

Seven Nation Cubey[en.wikipedia.org]
Have your Cubey fight alone against at least 7 enemy units (including summons) and survive, killing at least one enemy unit during the fight.

Could Take A While
Have a fight in which Frank and Cubey (one friendly, one enemy) are the only living participants, each with at least 10,000 health remaining.

True Justice
Achieve a pentakill with Justice against an enemy team including Kid.

I Wanna Be Like You
Have Hass steal both The Final Moment and Oo-oo-ee-ee buffs from Bond during a fight.

No Worries
Win a game with both Hakuna and Matata on your team with both having zero deaths and at least one kill each.

1v1 Me Bro
Initiate a fight which would involve only one allied hero but instead involves five using a combination of Knight's Oath, Slayer's Intuition, Bound and Overwatch.

Touchdown!
Move a hero (friendly or enemy) from one base hex to the other.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others
Win a game using a team comprising Raven, Shougong Lei, Peiniang Zhu, Miki and Mihawk.

Snooze Button
Win a game with both Acedia and Bunu Shan on your team. You must win before Bunu Shan Awakens, and you may not play Acedia's Alarm Clock.

Stay Out Of This
Initiate a fight which should involve three enemy heroes but instead only involves one using a combination of Acedia's Good Night and Tiger Boy's Mischief.

Investment Strategy
Generate at least 6,000 gold for one hero during a single Deployment Phase without killing any heroes or towers.

The Hardest Achievement
Lose a game in which you have Felyn and Blocker as your ADC-support pair.

The Slow Death
Have an enemy hero die while afflicted by Crank's Endless Vengeance, five stacks of Big Foot's Frozen Stiff and at least one stack of Peiniang Zhu's Lightning Mark.

Shielded Shield
Initiate a fight involving a friendly Bart or Peter and at least three enemy heroes. No enemy heroes may die, and Bart/Peter must have full health when the fight ends.

Could I Play Please
End a fight lasting at least three rounds in which no enemy hero took an action. [Requires lots of stun effects, e.g. Tiger Boy]

We Are Legion
Initiate a fight in which Zealot is the only participating allied hero. Have him joined by Qin Hu's Warden, Omaha's Wild Heart and Kaka's Stone Hound.

Mo Mo Mo Mo Monkey
Have Bond travel at least four hexes and then initiate a fight against an enemy Mo. Bond must die during the fight.

Win Lane Win Game
Win a game in which each of your heroes fought and killed the player in the same position on the enemy team. Each kill must be in a 1v1.

Conclusion

Hopefully this guide has been helpful to you. I've tried to cover everything someone might want to know (within reasonable limits - I'm not going over every trait damnit), but if there's something I've missed off please feel free to ask in the comments. I will almost certainly ignore you, but someone else will probably reply.

If you liked the guide, or found it helpful, please let me know and/or do whatever it is people do to guides to mark it as being good (rate it? Favourite it? I don't even know). Actually, do those even if you didn't like it, it's all the same to you and I'll appreciate it. As you might expect given the sheer size of this guide, it took me quite a while and I'd like to know that my effort wasn't a huge waste of my life.

I may or may not update the guide in future if more content is released - I'd like to say I will, but realistically my motivation stretches as far as my interest in the game, so if new content doesn't get me playing it again I probably won't update. Still, hope springs eternal, right?

v2.1 | Conclusion

And with that the guide is updated with new content. This took quite a while (although not as long as the first version) - primarily because I'm lazy, and also insist on writing far too much. Hopefully it will continue to help though.

As always, thank you for reading.

[Takina]

i think theres a lot of disagreement on your gameplay and many people gameplay, tbh we cant debate which one is the best because both work? because we are against ai which even thought they gotten better they still not consistent, it will be different if this against human, then early game comp is the best
you mention about hit rate and i understand that, when stats between you and enemy are like 100 point apart you will feel it, but the thing is, you just need to hit it, a lot.
or you just hit the tower, bart and elemi are the most known first deployment game ender.
theres a lot of things i want to point in this guide that so different from my understanding of the game (especially in hell mode) but i guess if its works, its works

[EdTheMad]

Just passing to appreciate your effort in writing this! Thanks a lot!

[kissblade]

I don't agree with all the tiers BUT this is by far the best guide for this game (in English at least) on steam.

[RSA]

Really good update! I agree with a lot of what you added... a little disappointed you didn't do a v2.1 My Team and v2.1 Team Comp Approaches because you are clearly a really creative player and I would have liked to see what else you have been able to cook up putting more hours into the game since writing the original, and with the new characters (maybe in a future update :3). Foso in all roles or only 1 Foso picker per team?

[dancin' clown]

Really strong and useful guide, but some things i don't like. I like to play macro-gaming, when every player trying to stay at his line as long as he can and buffing other mates or jungle for winning fights. because of that, Ada, Mo, Lubos, some others, in my eyes should've been higher tiers. Anyway, thanks for your work

[sfne76]

Also dont know if you metioned this but you can cheese wukongs ult with teleport for support. It will send him directly back to lane if you tp first then use his engage.

[sfne76]

Really great info and as someone with hundreds of hours in the game and have beaten it on hell using every type of strat i learned a good amount.

Disagree with some stuff though i think you seriously undervalue lubos. His engage is the best engage card in the game and with his first attack he wins a good chunk of one on ones. Add on any support and he can take over the early game. While hes not the best team fighter with good items and some early game gold he will nuke the enemy carry.

I have been playing alot lately with the random hero lanes and he has been extremely strong in both bot and top as well. The new modes have added so much depth to the game imo.

[Hemive]

clear mind is another rlly usefull one as well as resourceful. resourceful is basically draw 8 for 0. you can fish it out of your deck with alot of cards and then just play the cards next to it and draw more and more stuff and then dump a quick decision or 2. if you run Bajie adc you can get an insane economic headstart.

on top of that clear mind discounts adjacent cards by 1. i mean what more do you want. if you run through your 16 copies of warmup for 0 you will rlly warm up to clear mind. My midlane has the vanguard trait and gets another 22% perma farm and 4 more warmups if they kill or assisst before round 35. clear mind can give you 20+ cost reduction the first time you hit 8 strat points. thats alot for a card that you dont even have to play.

[twitch.tv/FdeAquino]

Thanks for the update! I love your guide! A hug from Brasil!

[Theguythatgets]

Thank you for making a guide and updating it