Hero Skills have been released for a while now, with even a new batch of offensive Skills released recently. But which skills are best in certain situations? In this article I while detail a number of situations and sketch a number of ways on which Skills are most useful in each. Some are very straightforward, others require some more thought. In the end, this will not be a long or difficult read, but could be helpful to some…

• 1. Types of Skills
• 2. Attacking general
  • 2.1 Attacking wall/advanced
• 3. Defending
  • 3.1 Defending wall/advanced
• 4. Campaign general
  • 4.1 Boss level double-tap
  • 4.2 Advanced campaign set-ups
• 5. Mining
  • 5.1  Mining warfare
• 6. Resource production
• 7. Final words

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1. Types of Skills

Right now we have a number of Skills at our disposal, which can be separated in a number of categories. Each category serves it’s own purpose, but Skills in some categories are useful in multiple situations.

• Offensive Skills. Used to enhance your attacking abilities. Skills included here are Spearhead, Bullseye, Close Quarters and Morale Boost.
• Defensive Skills. Used to enhance your defensive capabilities. Skills included here are Whoa There, Broken Bows and Shielded Maneuvers.
• Mining Skills. Used to enhance mining profits and speed, Included Skills are Marauder and Keep Digging.
• Resource Skills. Likely the most useless Skills, used to enhance rss production. Included here are the Skills Iron Ore, Timber, Quarrying, Farming and Pearl Harvesting.
• Epic Skills. These are the most precious among your Skill set. They include Fierce Loyalty (offensive), Breath of Life (defensive), and Revival (both).

So with this quick overview, let’s take a look at which Skills work best in certain situations.

2. Attacking general

For this category, assume you are attacking the city of much larger player. Most likely, this happens during TK tournaments. Focus should be on increasing attack as much as possible, while not bothering with defense. A typical Skill set would be:

• Revival. This is basically a mandatory Skill for all TK scenarios. Revival lets you bring back up to 19% of your killed troops in an attack. And the revived troops don’t count towards enemy TK’s! An absolute no-brainer.
• Fierce Loyalty. Does exactly what we need, increase attack. The fact it decreases life is of no concern in most cases.
• 3x Offensive Skill. The other 3 slots should be filled with offensive skills level II. Assuming you attack with different types of troops, a regular set-up includes all 3 varieties.

2.1 Attacking wall/advanced

Certainly in older servers, most might tends to come from chests instead of training. It so happens that not all troops are represented evenly in those chests. Anyone who has attacked large walls should be familiar with encountering much more Mist Globes/Fire Throwers (T3 mounted) wall troops compared to others. Like wise with the popular T3 troops, certain trends can be seen. In general, much more mounted T3 has been given out. Similarly, Battering Rams (foot) were given out in the “Sacks of Might” chests in large numbers, so you might see that as well.

Point is, when you see such situations, you should act accordingly. When you find a large Mist Globe (mounted) wall, you should attack with foot troops as they are strong against mounted, and change Skills to only boost foot troops:

I advise you to set up multiple heroes for this, instead of switching around Skills on one hero, IF you want to use different set-ups. Switching Skills will cost a lot of Scrolls and Enrollment Letters, and a lot of time, which you usually don’t have in TK. Swapping around gear does pose a problem unless you have identical Best Sets.

3. Defending general

For this, assume you open you city and have a much larger army than what your enemy throws at you. Here you focus completely on defense, and don’t bother with attack, as you will win battles nonetheless. A typical set-up here is:

• Revival. Same as for offense, this Skill limits losses and revived troops don’t count towards enemy TK’s. An absolute no-brainer.
• Breath of Life. Does exactly what we need, increase life. The fact it decreases attack is of no concern in most cases.
• 3x Defensive Skill. The other 3 slots should be filled with defensive skills level II. Assuming you defend with and against different types of troops, a regular set-up includes all 3 varieties.

3.1 Defending wall/advanced

Identical to the point in 2.1, it could very well be the case that among your (boxed) troops, there is relatively larger proportion of one troop(type). Again for wall units this is likely mounted T3, and for regular T3 either mounted or foot. If this is the case AND these are the troops you are defending with, it is best to switch Skills around so that they better debuff the attacker that is strong against those units. For defending a large Mist Globe/Fire Thrower wall, a more suitable Skill set looks like this:

 

 

Here foot troops strong against our mounted wall are debuffed three times for better results. While I limited the examples to a few troops types, this concept holds for all situations in which you are defending with relatively large amount of one troop type in the current defending tier.

4. Campaign general

In campaign, the primary concern is defense, as it adds much more to score to limit losses compared to limiting troops sent. In the most basic situation, especially for beginner or medium level players, the following set of Skills will work best:

 

• Revival & BoL. For the exact same reasons as standard defense. Limiting losses, plus revived troops do not count towards Vitality! Massively increases scores especially on Moria, Smaug and Lake-Town.
• 3x Whoa There. In CHS, you fight with Giants (foot) and MR (ranged). Only Giants take the punches ideally, so you will want to debuff the troops that are strong against them (mounted) the most. Again, this works best in MOST situations.

4.1 Boss level double-tap

The next step in getting the highest possible CHS score is double-tapping Boss levels. Please read this article on the subject to see what it is and how it works. What is important here is that in the final, scoring attack, only mounted goblins are left, and only enough to kill just 3-4 Giants. This means two things. One: that Revival has no use, as the Skill is not powerful enough to resurrect one of the 3-4 kills, and two: That we only benefit from debuffing mounted enemy troops, making the Boss level Skill set look like this:

4.2 Advanced campaign set-ups

Now this is where things get complicated and I am no longer able to give one full-proof answer that will satisfy all. But as you gain more and more powerful weapons and armor and increase your buffs and debuffs, you see you reach maximum scores at more and more maps. BUT, there will be some maps in which you will benefit more from increases in offense than defense. It could be for example that there is a map in Clearing the High Pass in which you lose one, or even zero Giants, but still need to send 7 MR to kill the Goblins. Increasing defense even more here is futile, while increasing offense to limit troops sent will increase the score.

In such cases, experienced players will do one of two things to increase attack for a small loss in defense: Either switch some gear from defensive to offensive and/or switch Skills from defensive to offensive.

A couple of points here. In many situations in which this is beneficial, troop losses are, similar to Boss levels, so low that Revival doesn’t work anymore, so that Skill goes. Also, as your attacking force is strictly MR, ONLY use Bullseye II as an offensive Skill, as it is the only Skill besides Fierce Loyalty to boost ranged troops. Such a Skill set could look something like this:

Getting rid of Breath of Life is something Im not sure about. In most cases, I see a lower score when I replace it with either Fierce Loyalty or Bullseye II. And having Fierce Loyalty AND Breath of Life seems a bit counter productive.

The last type of Skill set up focuses on maps individually. On certain levels, you will find only ranged/mounted/foot, or a combinations of two troop types. If you have the patience to set up Heroes for all possible combinations, it could help scores to have Heroes which focus only on debuffing these troop types. In my experience though, it does not add that much. So my advice/tip in having multiple Skill sets on multiple Heroes is that I personally find it easier to switch some more gear around, as it will have a similar result.

5. Mining

For basic mining we have two Skills at our disposal: Keep Digging and Marauder. Both can be equally valuable for people mining, but they serve different purposes. Keep Digging simply decreases mining time, meaning you’ll be in and out faster and will be able to collect loot faster.

Marauder on the other hand increases the amount of loot you can carry, but with it also the amount of time you need to mine. However, because the amount of extra loot is slightly larger than the amount of extra time needed, you will get more loot per given time unit.

Now if you compare the numbers on tokens (let’s assume that’s why everyone mines), you’ll see that per unit of time, Keep Digging earns you most tokens, followed by Marauder, followed by no Skills.

So which Skill do you use? It simply depends on how you mine. If you have a set number of times during the day in which you scout for mines, fill them with troops, and come back later on for the next run, you will benefit most from Marauder, as your mining runs are not time bound, and each run will net you more tokens.

IF on the other hand, you have a set window(s) of time during the day in which you mine (say, two straight hours), you will want to get the most tokens per time unit, in which case you will benefit most from Keep Digging.

I’ve also seen a lot of people mixing these two Skills, but my advice is to stick with one or the other depending on your mining style as discussed above.

5.1 Mining warfare

Of course mining is also prone to TKing, so are there any certain Skills to use? Well, the main difference between normal TK and mining TK is the sizes of the armies, which are roughly identical.

Hence it is, again, in general, more beneficial to balance attack and defense, so you COULD reflect that in your Skill selection, but my advice is to do this with gear and gems instead of Skills. The only really valuable Skill in all situations in Revival.

6. Resource production

I mention this category only for completeness. And this should be self-explanatory. Resource production works best with focusing a city on one resource type, so put a Hero in the production slot with the appropriate Skills. Then again, who still produces resources?

7. Final thoughts

So there it is, I hope there is still someone who can benefit from this. For some situations, the answers are straight forward and work best in all situations. In others, other factors such as gear and gems also plays a role, for example in advanced CHS. In any case, I hope I covered everything in clear way, and if you have any suggestions or comments, let me know in the comments.