How To Beat The Arena In Heroes vs Hordes

How To Kite

Back to the more general kiting strategy. Kiting is vitally important in later stages.

Stages 15+ begin with a set of tanky elites that you will need to kite (read run away from) in order to defeat. Kiting them with slows and freezing regular minions allows you to move around the zone safely.

That's why I put such a priority on disruption earlier.

The general kiting pattern is trying to do as much damage as possible while running to a corner. However, the elites in levels 19 and 20 are heavy kites crashing down on your face, so you won't have a lot of time to work with.

In this case, you can attempt using someone like Bunni, assume they will get to you relatively quickly, but then use revive rage to end them. It's a risky strategy, but it's worth using 60 gems for a second revive in the last two stages if you have the damage.

Blessing And Curses

And before you think this wasn't so bad, there's one more curveball Arenas throw at you - blessing and curses. The blessings are generally ignorable, but the curses matter.

In particular, one curse ends the Blademaster cheese - minus 100% Critical Hit Chance. Without being able to critically strike, the Blademaster can't ultimate and becomes a spinning duck for the horde.

You'll have to clear that stage by moving to a DPS-based hero and equipping ranger gear.

Several other curses generally make life miserable, including damage reduction and pickup range reduction.

Generally, the best heroes for Arena are ranged heroes that deal massive amounts of area-of-effect damage with some kind of disruption. The S+ tier hero for Arena is the Clockwork Mage.

Her innate slows guarantee you the ability to kite enemies.

Other burst-damage ranged heroes like Artificer, Assassin, and Bunni can progress relatively further than average heroes. Upgrading their weapons in the forge, ironically via clearing Arenas, can make them even better.

You can also turn Monk and Knight into Arena clearing boss men by upgrading their weapons in the forge.

But the ultimate Arena hero that everyone has access to is the Blademaster. His ultimate procs off of critical strikes and he becomes invincible during the duration of the ultimate. You can use that to your advantage by getting evolved boomerang to start, proccing the ultimate, and then kiting horde from corner to corner right when your ultimate is about to end.

You should literally end up counting out loud for when his ultimate ends. 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. run.

Or at least I do that by myself in the basement.

You might need to practice the Blademaster cheese a bit; it's an acquired taste.

And that's the infamous Blademaster cheese. He can clear the arena in full or partial legendary gear before any other hero, but beware the final curveball I'll talk about in a minute.

Now that you know what's at stake, let's suit up for success. Here's the gear you'll need to survive the Arena.

A unique aspect of the Arena is that any weapon or tome you acquire automatically gets to the maximum level. For example, you start a run with a max level 5 primary weapon.

Therefore, +1 starting upgrades gain a tremendous amount of value. Each starting upgrade is essentially worth 5 levels in normal mode for a weapon and 3 for a tome.

So, choosing gear with +1 to starting upgrades can help make Arena easier and allow you to progress further.

Wizard Chest and Noble Helm are two prime examples of gear with starting upgrades. The ascended Wizard Necklace offers +2 to starting upgrades for later game players.

With that in mind, a typical legendary build for progressing through Arena combines the Noble Helm, with the Wizard Chest, Ranger Boots, and Rogue Gloves, Necklace, and Ring.

The drawback is that this setup caps your max DPS, so it can take longer to down the horde.

Onto the Weapon priority during the run and a secret, very important mechanic.

Because the horde pour out into a relatively small area, the weapon priority shifts to establishing disruption before going into DPS. That means you're fishing for Ice Wand and evolved Boomerang before bombs, fire orbs, plus one.

Boomerang

→

Ice Wand

→

Fire Orbs

|

Bombs

→

Chain Lightening

In my opinion, for most heroes, evolved boomerang is the top priority because of the slow in the weapon + the movement speed from the tome combo.

And here's an important pro tip that goes back to the starting upgrades I discussed in the gear section.

I'm gonna zoom into my face to emphasize the importance.

You can manipulate the starting weapon upgrades to increase your chances of getting priority weapons.

As long as you quit the stage within the first 10s of the timer, in any game mode but Hero Clash, you get the resources back. In this case, you will get your 20 energy back.

If you don't get the priority disruption weapons, you can quit the stage, come back in, and then, this is the crucial part: change the weapon options by reshuffling in any of your choices. Reshuffling like that will change the weapons offered in any subsequent roll.

Didn't get a boomerang? Auit and reshuffle for another chance. You can do this any number of times.

Tomes to compliment the build are:

Movement Speed

→

Cooldown

→

Area

|

Duplicator

→

Damage

Jewels are very straightforward. You use the standard max DPS build of both ultimate jewels, vulnerability, cooldown til 60% in the detail screen, and then AoE.

Ultimate Charge

|

Ultimate Duration

→

Vulnerability

→

Cooldown til 60%

→

Projectile (P)

→

Area

→

Explosion

Run cooldown jewels until it hits 60% in the detail window. You cap cooldown at 60% because you get 30% from cooldown tome. 90% is the max cooldown cap in Normal, Hard, Arena, Boss, and Guild modes.

Area has a soft cap on Area Of Effect when the inner ring of 4* Fire Orbs hits the side of the screen. But that's not really a worry until you have Heroic gear.

You have some leeway here to use much higher-level jewels instead of lower-level cooldown jewels. For example, I'd consider a level 7 Projectile (P) over a level 1 cooldown. You can always test which does more damage in your game by doing the same run with the same gear and weapons but changing the jewels.

Main Pet

The best pet for the Arena is your highest-level pet. Typically, that means the Pyrokraken or Emberpaw. I just now, after about 300 eggs, got the Hydro Basilisk. Your highest-level pet should do the most damage, and that's the goal.

Passive Pets

I typically try to use Pyrokraken and Emberpaw to compliment my active pet. They will do the most damage and are available to the most players..