Heroes

## About

Heroes are an essential part of the game, where you can assemble a squad to go on an adventure in the Campaign or battle other keepers in real-time PvP. There are currently 32 heroes to choose from with varying roles and abilities.

## Hero Options

In the Heroes section of your keep you can manage your heroes with things such as updating their equipment or selection of skills, and increasing their level and rank to make them more powerful.

Here are several things on heroes:

   Amazon is also a rare, as evidenced by the blue border. (see next section).

* **Hero level** - Every hero has a level which is increased with Training Points. Increasing their hero level also increases their stats to make them more powerful including their attack, defense and active skills. The level cap is equal to your keeper level.
* **Star rating** - The star rating of a hero is their most important attribute. It's increased by collecting soul stones. Once enough are collected, a player may either promote the hero to the next star rating at the cost of gold or delay promotion (subsequent soul stones will be added toward the next star up to a cap of 125). Promoting a hero improves attack, defense, and health as well as the soul skill. At 2 stars, a 3rd active skill is unlocked. At 4 stars, a 2nd passive skill is unlocked. Maximum skill level is determined by star rating, initially capped at 4 but reaching 10 at 7 stars.
* **Soul skill** - The soul skill is a unique skill which varies between heroes. During combat the party's soul bar is charged through different ways (Dealing damage is best way), and once fully charged it can be initiated any time. Once initiated, the soul skill will immediately interrupt all combat, pushing your upcoming turns down by 1 in the process, and activate. All soul skills have a 10-20 turn cooldown. Faster actions and affecting multiple targets will increase the rate of soul energy acquisition. Some soul skills will be upgraded a small amount at level 55.
* **Active skills** - These skills are your hero's main set of moves that are performed actively during combat. All heroes start with 1 active skill when first obtained; the rest can be unlocked once the corresponding Skill Scroll has been obtained. The level of the skill can be increased through further skill scrolls or, if no skill scrolls are available, at the expense of skill points. Active skills improve mostly with the hero's level rather than skill level.
* **Passive skills** - Most passive skills improve the hero or party permanently in combat, such as increasing one's health or increasing all resistances of the party. Like active skills, they can be improved by using skill points or skill scrolls. These typically do not increase with a hero's level unless they deal damage. Importantly, passive skills cannot be dispelled or cancelled. Even when a hero is dead, any passive bonuses to their team will be retained. There is at least one hero with a passive that is treated like an active buff, in that it needs to apply itself and can be dispelled.
* **Equipment** - Each hero uses a specific weapon and armor class. Weapons improve attack and damage value while armor improves defense and armor value. Some weapons and armor have a balanced attack and defense boost, and most have a bonus effect when equipped (e.g. Increase crit chance by 2%). The rarer the equipment is, the higher its damage or armor stats—and typically the attack and defense bonuses as well, although not always. Rarer equipment will however have greater potential at the end game, as their level caps are higher (55 for super rare, 65 for epic, and 75 for the final recipe for an equipment type).
* **Hero loot** - Every 8 hours you can play a campaign level which has loot for a specific hero. The level chosen is random, but only from campaigns levels which have already been beaten, and typically selected from higher level campaign missions. The loot can be a soul stone, a normal skill scroll, or an ancient skill scroll.

## Find Loot

 Uncommon
 Rare
 Super rare
 Epic

To go further in-depth on the Hero Loot option, one can consider the drop rate of soul stones. Scrolls aren't that interesting once a player has a reasonable skill level, so soul stones are really the only reason to do Find Loot. Soul-stones for a hero can still drop without using that hero--it's just less likely sometimes.

The drop rate of soul stones depends on the rarity of a hero. Player Freenub on Kongregate made about one thousand find loot attempts, with seemingly the probability shown in the table. Now it doesn't appear because it's scammed (^^)

## Statistics

* **Attack** – A hero's offensive potential, and fundamental for every damage dealer. When attack is higher than defense (from the enemy), all damage dealt increases, and continues to increase the larger the gap grows until it caps at 3x, excluding damage modifiers, which occurs at 397 above defense. Similarly, if the defense (from the enemy) is higher than attack, the damage dealt is decreased, and it keeps decreasing as the gap gets larger until it's only 1/3x its base amount, excluding damage modifiers, achieved at 397 below defense. Skills, weapons, and armor that modify attack are very valuable, especially in PvP.
* **Defense** – A hero's defensive potential, and essential for survival. When defense is higher than attack (from the enemy), all damage taken decreases, and continues to decrease the larger the gap grows until it caps at 1/3x, excluding damage modifiers, which occurs at 397 above attack. Similarly, if the attack (from the enemy) is higher than defense, the damage taken is increased, and it keeps increasing as the gap gets larger until it's 3x the base amount, excluding damage modifiers, achieved at 397 below attack. Even back-line heroes require a high defense to survive against area damage. Skills, weapons, and armor that modify defense are very valuable, especially in PvP.
* **Health** – How much damage a hero can take before perishing. Health can be restored through heals, potions, or reinforced via bonus health.
* **Bonus Health** – Bonus health is effectively a heal in advance. It functions the same as regular health, except it can be stacked infinitely, beyond maximum health. A transparent blue shield over a character represents protection by bonus health in some unreadable amount. Bonus health only expires when moving to the next battle screen. Beware: the Spellsword and some enemies in bonus missions can wipe all bonus health away with their Mass Dispell soul skill.
* **Damage Type Bonus** – Damage bonus is a separate stat given by weapons but can be amplified by the hero's full attack if it's the same element. The full bonus is added onto the damage dealt to each target; it is not divided for area attacks. Multi-strike abilities like the Amazon's Triple Strike will also apply the full damage bonus on each strike. Damage over time skills, such as poison or bleed effects, will however divide the bonus damage evenly across each instance of damage. Weapons with "damage type" bonuses will apply their damage stat in a separate number with the element of the damage type. Weapons with two damage type bonuses will apply an additional application on top of that, for a total of double the item's damage stat. For level 55s, there is one weapon with triple bonus damage: the Eye of Chaos.
* **Damage Increase/Reduction** – Increases a character's damage output (e.g., Warmaster's Battle Fury skill) or reduces it (e.g., Amazon's Cover Allies skill or Knight's Parry). These do not apply to the damage stat on weapons with a Damage Type Bonus; their contribution from their damage stat will not be modified in any way by such effects.
* **Armor** – Armor is a percentage value reducing all physical damage taken. It is an additional multiplier independent of the attack/defense multiplier, and just as vital. Armor caps at 80%. It can be reduced by certain skills/enemies. True damage will ignore armor. Equipment and skills increase armor. All increases are additive, making armor scale incredibly well at high values.
* **Dodge** – A percent chance to avoid all damage from an incoming attack. Line, row, and full-screen damaging attacks cannot be dodged, unless the attack deals damage over time (ex. the Warlock's Shadowy Censer or the Mage's Acid Lance). The maximum dodge obtainable is 69% by the Swashbuckler with support. Equipment and skills can manipulate dodge.
* **Critical Chance** – A percent chance to deal double damage. The damage can be modified by the "critical damage" bonus on equipment. All types of damage in the game are capable of critical hits. The "fortified" bonus grants immunity to all critical hits, but it's mostly found on enemies and machines (although it is available for players on The Fortress). Skills and equipment can increase critical chance.
* **Initiative** – Affects the order for which heroes will attack first at the start of battle. A lower initiative corresponds to acting earlier. After the first skill cycle, initiative has no further influence on the battle. In determining the priority for each hero's initial skill precedence, initiative does however compete with other, more important factors, including:
	+ Cooldown reduction (5% cooldown reduction is more impactful than -0.1 initiative)
	+ Base cooldowns unique to each hero (e.g. Kensai is faster than the Ninja, even without cooldown reduction, in spite of having 0.4 higher initiative)
	+ Skill type (e.g. buffs like taunts or debuffs typically will always precede damage skills of the same cooldown class)
	+ Monsters have extremely low initiative, probably around 1.0 to 2.0.

As a result of these competing variables, items decreasing initiative, or the Ranger's passive, often won't influence the initial order appreciably unless in a mirror match up or if the value of initiative reduction is very high (e.g. -0.5 or -1.0), or if accompanied by significant % cooldown reduction.
* **Resists** – Resists are the equivalent of armor for non-physical damage attacks (except true damage, which ignores all resists except defense). Each hero has varying base resist, but the majority of resist will be acquired from equipment and skills. Like armor, resists are of utmost importance and become more valuable the closer it approaches the 80% cap. Unlike armor, resist reduction from enemies is extremely rare, making the resist stat resilient—especially for maintaining survivability against debuffers like the Black Fist Evoker. With a max-rank Cleric, Mystic, and Warmaster, you get a 51% resist boost for the party, and using good gear and levels is required to beat the campaign Gathering Storm.
	+ "Magic Resistance" applies an increase to Fire, Ice, Lightning, Poison, Light, and Shadow resistances, but not stun resistance.
	+ "All resistances" applies an increase to all resist types, including stun.
	+ Stun resistance determines the duration suffered by stun effects, including transform effects such as the Witch's Hex, as well as the effect of slows, including the Chill Turret's Freezing Aura passive. Rarely will Stun-type damage be encountered—most commonly the Archmage's Disintegrate ability—which can be mitigated by Stun resistance. Stun resistance's effectiveness is however of some ambiguity, as at least in one instance—the dragon from the guild boss portal—even with an 80% or 90% stun resistance, the dragon can be stunned for tens of seconds at a time-unless you use the meta setup. It's possible stun-duration-enhancing passives, namely the Witch's Dark Arts and Thief's Underhanded passives, may not be affected by Stun resistance.

**Buff Stacking**: All skills that increase or reduce a statistic can stack with each other. Each application however has its own duration and will dissipate individually when that duration ends. Percentage-based stats such as armor will be increased or decreased additively. Multiplicative skills affecting non-percentage-based stats, like defense (for example the Paladin's Holy Shield or Barbarian's Baleful Glare), will multiply by the *current* amount. This means successive Baleful Glare's will reduce by smaller and smaller amounts, while successive Holy Shields (only possible through cooldown reduction), will apply larger and larger amounts of defense. The Warmaster also increases defense by a %, as well as armor.

## Formulas

**Hero Levels**

Level
 34-38
 39-48
 49
 50-54

Hero levels require training points. The amount required increases the further a character progresses, according to the formulas in the table.

Beginning with level 25, it will become increasingly difficult to raise up new heroes, or to maintain a large roster of many heroes. Players leveling too quickly may find they have too few Training Points to maintain more than a few heroes at max level. It's much harder to maintain Artisan levels, for obvious reasons.

Fortunately, the stat value of a single level becomes less important as heroes attain higher star ratings and wear epic equipment. ~7 stat points isn't much when your hero already has over 700.

**Star Rating**

Unlike hero levels, Star Rating only becomes more important the further a player progresses. Each new Star is worth more bonus stats than the last, as well as unlocks higher level skills for a hero, which can have a crucial effect on the performance of percentage-based skills.

The sum total of all stats gained from all stars acquired is comparable to about 40 hero levels normally! Since these massive bonuses are weighted primarily on the 6th and 7th stars, stars become the decisive factor in determining a hero's performance. Start collecting these as early as possible for your favourite heroes.

### **Skill Levels**

Skill levels require skill points to increase. The one exception is for the initial level to unlock the skill, which always requires a scroll. Normal skill scrolls and ancient skill scrolls substitute for 50 and 200 skill points, respectively, at a cost of 100 gold each. In upgrading a skill, the order Ancient > Normal > skill points is always required, so you cannot spend skill points without first using up all of your scrolls for that skill.

The max skill level is determined by a hero's star rating (see table for star rating). Skill level up costs increase with the level of a skill, and also scale with the rarity of a hero.