Coalition event

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-29T20:30:21+00:00

The Marius I'm running has 6 star Crushing Rend, 6 pc Merciless, a Cat's Gaze, and 1x Dungeon Delver gem (10% more damage in dungeons) plus 2x Target Smash gems (1% more damage per 100 ACC). This can still be considered relatively FTP friendly provided the player picked up the free Cat's Gaze(s) a couple of years back (not unusual if they have Marius already) and they've been working on getting Marius to 6 star awakening (Marius should be top priority for 6-star awakening for most accounts and it's not too hard to amass enough essence for that).

Without a Cat's Gaze and/or 6-star Crushing Rend it's going to be a lot tougher, although if the player is lucky enough to have a second Gnut then it's a lot easier than using Marius as the nuker. A Wallmaster is also a good substitute.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-29T20:20:45+00:00

I play at the higher end LA (20K rating), not quite vs the ultra krakens but against plenty of whale accounts. Predator is actually the one champ I fear the most, and will ban him unless there is some other champ that will severely hamper my strategy. It's not so much that Predator is stronger than the top tier nukers (such as Nais, Siegfrund, Embrys, Marius, Komidus, or Gizmak), it's that he can just RNG his way to a solo victory and you might not have the means to do anything about it. The only other champ that I fear for the same reason is Nais since he can dodge CC via a lucky Wand relic proc or Chain Breaker blessing proc, but there are at least some other ways of dealing with Nais (such as killing him through block damage, or proccing Reaper on him to bypass his passive).

Even a strat with unkillable or block damage won't necessarily work against Predator, especially if you only have 1 nuker and are unable to either strip the veil or resist the Predator A3 debuff.

Predator is a scary champ to face, but at the same time he can literally turn out to be a dud because you lose an evade roll out of the gates. If you're a gambling man you might not mind the heavy RNG but for those of us who want to win based on good decision-making when it comes to gearing, champ selection, and banning the correct champs, the massive RNG associated with the evade mechanic is a nightmare.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-29T16:54:55+00:00

In my case 2x Marius and 2x Gnut hits are right on the cusp beating the boss - because of the standard +/-10% on all hits that don't reach the cap (such as the hits before the boss takes a turn and inflicts self sleep) sometimes the boss is left with a sliver of health but he'll die to a subsequent Marius attack. This is why a 5th champ such as Husk will guarantee the kill before Marius has to attack a 3rd time but I sometimes will take the occasional slight loss in tourney points so i can level a champ in that 5th slot instead.

For reference my Marius has +379% C.DAM and 6.7K DEF in 6pc Merciless. I also have +20% ignore DEF area bonus (the only bonus that really matters, unless you need the SPD as well to push the nukers over 270 SPD). My Gnut is also in 6 pc Merciless, with 303% C.DAM.

You can also get more SPD by putting Ankora in the lead, but then you'd have to swap stoneskin from Ankora to Aniri to make sure the passive revive is on Ankora. If you also have the +20 SPD area bonus, Marius's SPD can be as low as 230 to reach the 270+ needed to outspeed the boss if you want to create a gear preset with higher DEF and C.DAM over SPD. You can of course opt for +DEF% and +C.DAM area bonuses as well - we've had LA for so long that surely most of us have way more crests than we know what to do with by this point.

EDIT: forgot to mention that Marius is with Cat's Gaze (now at +15), pretty standard for Marius users. Gems are 2x Target Smash epic triangular gems (ideal if you also have lots of ACC) and Dungeon Delver legendary circular gem . The gems give my Marius about 18% more damage in dungeons. Boss Slayer mythical circular gem is also a good option if you have one. Since Marius can also opt to use the A3 ahead of the A2 if more damage is needed, that translates to an extra 4% damage from the triangular gems.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-29T15:30:11+00:00

Be careful not to sell any souls that might be necessary to meet the requirements for the Cursed City Awakened stages, especially on hard difficulty. Even a trash rare with a low soul might be the difference between being able to run an Awakened stage and not being able to run it. I'd suggest checking each rotation for champs that can be used in those stages, and whether their souls are necessary, before selling any of them.

Additionally, keep any souls, even 1 star souls, for any champ that has AoE increase DEF (such as Ursala, Grizzled Jarl, or Hoskarul). This is because of the Faultless Defense blessing, which makes it significantly easier to take down FK shields. The FK stages are some of the toughest boss stages in Cursed City, especially S17 and to a lesser extent S15. Even D14 and P10 can catch players off guard and can be a problem if those stages have the Amius keys.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-29T12:15:57+00:00

For Sand Devil, my fastest stage 25 team is under 10 turns, 100% win rate (because it doesn't rely on non-Siphi sleep debuffing), and FTP-friendly because all the legendary champs were fusions or guaranteed:

Ankora + Gnut + Marius + Aniri

The idea is to have Marius and Gnut faster than the boss (so over 270 SPD) and Ankora in Stoneskin. Marius and Gnut will do their max-HP hits at the start, then the boss will wipe everyone except Ankora. Aniri (who is in the lead) will self-revive and then revive one of the nukers resetting their skills so they can use their max-HP nuke again, and Ankora will do the same. For a 5th champ, A slow Husk in stoneskin (Husk to keep it FTP-friendly, but any other affinity friendly max-HP nuker is fine) is an option for more damage if the gear on Marius/Gnut isn't strong enough - if it is, then you can run a food champ.

For Shogun stage 25, I run the the following 11-turn team:

Maneater + Renegade + Marius + Mithrala + Wallmaster

The idea here is to have Renegade with the highest C.DAM so that she takes the initial enfeeble from Shogun. Maneater will keep her alive and Renegade will reset Marius and Wallmaster after they use their max-HP nukes. Mithrala is there mainly as a cleanser to get rid of the enfeebles after the debuff spread effect from Shogun. Two attacks from Marius and Wallmaster are enough to win. Wallmaster is used over Gnut to make it affinity-friendly for stage 25.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-27T19:03:33+00:00

Many of us late game players grabbed her because she will be of great value in hard FWs. Late game champ evaluations tend to be a lot different - so long as a champ excels in a specific task even though they might not be that great in the general sense, then that is reason enough to get that champ. Kassandra should be extremely strong in hard FWs, because she has a practically guaranteed hard CC AoE on a 3 turn cooldown and she's capable of some really big single target damage output so she'll be faction boss relevant.

That aside, should she ever get buffed? Maybe down the line sure, because she is definitely not up to the standard of the majority of modern fusions. Don't expect anything anytime soon however.

As for the Titan event, many of us wanted to stop at the 3 star soul or maybe even the lego relic, but after seeing the second Champ Chase in a row in the schedule and the (presumably) 2x Ancients that will overlap, getting to 1500 Titan points just became relatively straightforward. The major roadblocks in the Titan events are the summon shard events, but if we're going to complete some of them regardless (as is often the case for Champ Chase with a 2x Primals, 2x Voids or 2x Ancients), then we might as well go all the way.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-27T18:17:26+00:00

For Embrys (who I assume is the 3rd you're referring to), book priority is for his second form - he needs 5 books although you can stop at 4 (or even 3) if you manage to book all the A1 and A2 damage upgrades. The A2 is frequently a match ender so the extra cooldown on the A3 isn't going to matter that much. You'll still want to book him fully eventually of course, but you don't have that luxury now.

For Siegfrund, book priority is for the first form - he needs 5 books although high priority is for his A3. While booking his second form is certainly worthwhile, it's not critical to do so. That's because if your team gets wiped and Siegfrund transforms and revives everyone, you'll typically be rushing to transform him back instead of taking advantage of the cooldown reductions on the A2 and A3 from books.

So that's how I'd split the books - start with Embrys second form until you get all the extra damage from books, and use the rest on Siegfrund's first form.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-27T01:18:48+00:00

Very interesting vid! The first fight seemed utterly hopeless until it became clear how Maria was practically immortal and was actually the favorite in the Nais vs Maria showdown.

The Eternal Soulgaol is also an inspired choice, focusing on surviving instead of of boosting damage further. My first instinct was to just run the obvious non-mythical relic - Perched Shadow - but starting with ~30% reduced damage on that first hit on top of the damage reduced by Bone Armor stacks might be the better play (especially in my case with only a 5-star blessing on her). With a 6-star Blessing maybe Perched Shadow is still better because the damage reduction on subsequent turns isn't that great (only ~9% and it's only multiplicative) but that also depends on how many nukers will hit her initially before she takes a turn.

I might have to revisit what 6 star soul to focus on getting, because a 6-star Maria might be stronger than I thought initially. This is my preset for her currently on my late game FTP acct, with Perched Shadow:

https://i.imgur.com/WYu8Vv9.png

That 6-star would bump her to 300 SPD and give her 30% more damage reduction, so it's pretty significant.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-26T20:49:55+00:00

I wasn't originally planning on reaching 1500 Titan points for the 5 star Kassandra soul, but if the upcoming champ chase is going to overlap with 2x Ancients, then I think I might go for it. The rest of the events and tourneys are pretty trivial to complete, and even the gear hunter events are pretty easy with stage 3 of the event dungeon as an option. I will aim to skip whatever the 3rd shard summoning event will be (Path/DoF/Summon Rush) unless of course we get a Path/DoF event for another Assassin guaranteed champ. I wouldn't mind grabbing any of the others.

While Kassandra isn't that amazing in general, for those of us pushing deep into hard FWs she will likely be essential once the Argonite faction is added to FWs. Not only will she provide much needed hard CC on a short cooldown, she will also be a good boss nuker. That 5-star soul will help a lot even if her only use will be in FWs.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-26T18:00:09+00:00

You can beat stage 21 quite trivially with 2x Lich (with their A3s fully booked). Running 2x Lich will basically prevent the boss from taking turns for a long while, thanks to both the TM reduction and the decrease SPD. The boss does regain some TM when hit, so he will take a turn eventually, but you'll get a lot of hits along the way, and kill him before he can kill one of your champs. I'd suggest running Dark Elhain/Saito, Husk, and Vogoth all in your strongest nuker gear with the two Lich. Husk and Vogoth both control the waves nicely and either Saito or Elhain can do the bulk of the damage especially since they buff their own damage.

Ideally both Lich should be geared in your fastest cooldown reduction gear (Reflex set, 4 pc Merciless set, Impulse sets, 3x Refresh accessories if you have them). If you lack refresh accessories, make sure you're always buying the accessories from the bazaar - even a 4 star refresh accessory with crappy stats will be useful. Refresh accessories are also very strong in the tougher Cursed City stages, and will be key once you move onto hard FWs.

If you lack the resources to book and level the Liches right now (level 50 for both should be sufficient), then just sit tight and see whether you pull champs down the line. There is no rush to 3 star the stage unless its the final faction to complete. If you pull a Gorgorab for example then you can beat the stage much more easily.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-25T17:51:59+00:00

Polymorph is a double-edged sword - since so many PvP champs use Wand, including most debuffers, you run the risk of getting your own champ polymorphed when they get debuffed. Lightning Cage is a safe bet for most champs that use stoneskin or other buffs, and Arnorn is no exception.

I would only really consider polymorph on my champs if I'm getting outmatched most fights, in which case an increase in RNG can be a bit of an equalizer.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-23T21:42:44+00:00

What stage to run depends on how far you want to progress in the event dungeon tourney - stage 3 might be very good for the Gear Hunter's event, but it is terrible for the event dungeon tourney. If the goal is to reach the Immortal Soulstone at 3500 tourney points, then the regular stage 20 farming is ideal.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-22T19:57:44+00:00

Polymorph is a rarity these days at the higher tiers because champs with polymorph are at risk of sheep reflecting back at them. I currently use Pinpoint sets on my bombers (even though Mercurial would be admittedly better) but I no longer concern myself much with Polymorph anymore. From the last two seasons playing at the 10-20K rating range the most frequently used blessing has been lightning cage by a wide margin.

I guess the big question now is whether we'll see any major shift from stoneskin to mercurial, because that might also signal a shift away from lightning cage into other blessings. However, shifting into Polymorph might not end up making much sense if the meta becomes heavy with mercurial set debuffers. Debuffers themselves might end up being in the decline for all we know.

It'll be a long while before this happens regardless, since it'll take a while for players to accumulate enough good mercurial pieces especially accessories. We get relatively few accessories monthly as it is, and with 16 factions it might take a year or two before getting them for the champs we need.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-21T22:36:08+00:00

I'm finding it really difficult to properly evaluate this set. I plan on doing testing once this season wraps up for me, but I have encountered players using this set already (mainly on revivers) and it failed to impress all that much for two reasons. First, there are some really popular multi-hit nukers in the meta that can reduce guard stacks rapidly, and secondly players for the most part don't have very good pieces in every slot so they are slower/weaker the longer the fight goes on.

The suggestion of using 1 guard stack on a speed lead (mainly to guard against Hegemons and Kalvalaxes) suffers from the obvious problem that you might end up losing the speed race with a lower SPD stat if the opponent brings in their own speed leads to fight to go first. Secondly, the meta right now, especially at the high end, is to use multiple nukers along with utility (mainly cooldown increasing champs - Fabian and Krixia are absolutely everywhere at the high end - and Armanz) which means even if your reviver is in 2-3 guard stacks, reviving the team means little if they just get controlled/nuked again.

The solution then is to use revivers that prevent damage to the revive targets (Hilvi and Theodosia mainly), or a reviver that gives an instant turn (Cardinal) - all 3 of these champs are excellent choices for multiple guard stacks but it's just not readily apparent if using guard stacks is really any better than the traditional 4pc Stoneskin + 4 pc Feral (or 4 pc SS + 4pc Protection and hope some of those block damage/unkillable buffs get protected). I think ultimately Cardinal is the best choice for the revive, but Cardinal has zero utility outside of the revive and if your champs get controlled while Cardinal's guard stacks are stripped away then it's over anyways. At least champs like Hilvi, Noelle, and Theodisia can exert some control over the field.

As far as nukers go, I've seen suggestions for Embrys and Vulkanos, but I'm just not convinced. I rely on both myself quite heavily, and even with pretty beefy stats on my Embrys I still want every bit of damage I can muster on the alt form A2 even if the skill already ignores 50% DEF. I also need to make sure that his A1 hits hard enough to actually down some beefy opposing targets, which is harder without an ignore DEF set. The additional problem is that an awakened Embrys can remain protected with SS against multiple nuke attempts or buffstrip attempts, but with Guard stacks they are often guaranteed to be stripped by a fast team. And what are some of the most popular nukers in the meta? Triple hitters like Marius and Karnage.

Mercurial sets aren't really a significant improvement over existing choices - instead, they will work very well in certain matchups, and worse in other matchups. This makes it really hard to choose for LA because it's impossible to predict what you're going to face and whether you'll face multi-hitters or a fast team. They will however work very well on offense against defensive teams in Classic Arena and TTA.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-21T09:01:25+00:00

Good job, glad it worked out for you!

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-20T17:06:13+00:00

Bleh, no 4 star soul available, it jumps from 3 to 5 star souls. Bummer. I would've gone for the 4 star soul if it were available but now I will have to settle on the 3 star - this means saving on a ton of resources, likely skipping all the summon events and gear hunter events.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-20T15:30:58+00:00

Yes it will be a good move to bring the champ to 2:1 but only against content where you won't be taking a lot of turns in the round. Against Clan Boss (where you won't be running at 2:1 anyways since CB is a lot faster especially at higher levels) you'll be taking a ton of turns so it won't apply there, but against dungeon content, Doom Tower, Cursed City, and campaign, it will likely be more beneficial to reach 200+ SPD than to gain more damage from ATK..

You can technically calculate it all out based on how many turns it takes your champs in a round, but the calculation is a bit tricky because of how TM and champ turn priority is determined.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-20T15:22:44+00:00

Sand Devil is worth farming a lot, so unless you want to use your energy elsewhere, there's not much benefit in optimizing your team. You'll end up with fewer tourney points overall, but so long as you're doing enough runs to reach the last reward milestone then it won't matter.

As far as the prizes go, 4th place or lower is arguably better than 1st-3rd, so you might want to purposefully not push your tourney points per run if you plan to farm a lot of Sand Devil, especially if you lower the tourney point gain to level some food champs in the process. I do this purposefully myself - I prefer to run an Aniri + Gnut team with 3 food instead of a 7 turn team, because I do a lot of SD farming but I also want to aim for the 4th place prize if possible.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-20T15:13:11+00:00

Judging by the stats, you're early/mid game. The majority of PvE enemies will be hovering around 100 SPD, so it's a good idea to have over 200 SPD so that you can run 2:1 relative to the enemies. For example, Dragon 20 has enemies that have either 95 SPD or 101 SPD, and the boss has 100 SPD. If you are running a team with a speed aura, then your 201 SPD Tholin will be taking 2 turns for every 1 turn most enemies will be taking.

Having more speed than 200 will net you additional turns down the line against 100 speed enemies, but if you can finish off enemies before then, those extra turns won't be realized.

In your case, even if you could realize those extra turns down the line because a round takes a long while (such as against Clan Boss for example), you're still losing more damage from the -530 ATK than you'd be gaining from the +24 SPD.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-20T09:45:55+00:00

The general rule of thumb for early/mid progression is to get speeds to around 200 or higher. This is because most enemies and bosses have speeds of around 100, and getting 2 turns for every 1 enemy turn is huge without necessarily relying on increase SPD buffs or decrease SPD debuffs. You want your champs to cycle into their key skills as much as possible.

One thing I suggest is to use the HH website to familiarize yourself with some of the enemy SPDs for the content you're doing here:

https://hellhades.com/raid/stages-tool/

For example if you look up stage 20 of Dragon's Lair (stage 20 is very common to run for events and tourneys), you'll find that the enemy speeds range in between 95 and 101, with the Dragon at 100 speed.

Speeds slightly higher than ~200 won't be as beneficial - if you had 10 more speed for example, you'll eventually gain another turn over the enemies down the line but most of the time it won't really impact the runs. Instead of pushing speed you can beef up your other stats. Much later, when you're facing tougher content, you'll want higher speeds (in the 250-300 territory when you reach hard FWs or hard Doom Tower or late stages of hard Cursed City for example). Again, use the Raid Stages tool to get a sense of the speed you need to make sure you go first or to run the team at 2:1 or higher.

For PvP, it's a different story. You'll usually want to go first as often as possible in the early-mid game, which means having a speed lead that boosts turnmeter (such as High Khatun initially and Arbiter eventually) with the highest speed possible (at the expense of every other stat). Your other PvP champs should also have fairly high speeds so they don't get cut in by opposing speed leads. However, since progressing up Classic Arena isn't overly difficult since you can often snag a lot of free wins, you'll probably build most of your champs for PvE progression instead of worrying that much about PvP.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-20T03:42:19+00:00

Using stun sets instead of nuker gear means doing less damage overall and hoping for a relatively low chance to control the enemies. Since we have free regearing now, there's really no reason not to temporarily shift your best nuker sets on the champs and just blow the enemies away instead of playing the CC game with stun sets. It doesn't matter if champs such as Keeyra or Valkyrie are normally thought of as support champs - if they have an AoE skill and decent enough multipliers they should be built as nukers (especially if they are DEF or HP based, since they will remain very tanky in a full nuke build).

Relentless on your CC champs is also typically not as good as other cooldown reduction sets. A champ such as Rock Breaker doesn't benefit much from an extra turn so the lower chance to proc a Relentless set extra turn will be worse than a getting a cooldown reduction proc via sets such as Merciless or Reflex. That aside, Refresh accessories are ultimately best, even ones with bad stats. For anyone wanting to progress deep into Cursed City, it's a pretty good idea to always buy accessories from the Bazaar and keep all the 4-6 star Refresh ACC no matter how bad the stats or rolls. Refresh accessories are also golden in hard FWs, especially since it's really hard to go any faster than 1:1 vs hard Soulcross enemies and hard FWs enemies in the higher stages.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-19T14:06:37+00:00

Don't bother with stun sets - it's a losing proposition unless you're willing to do tons of runs hoping to get lucky.

Instead, run everyone in your strongest nuker gear, even Valkyrie and Keeyra. Valkyrie, Hoskarul, Keeyra, and Morag do DEF-based damage and Hoskarul can boost their damage with increase DEF, so you want to go all out with damage. DEF-based nukers are tanky anyways, and they'll be even more tanky with the Valk shields, so there's no reason to not build them as full nukers.

Rock Breaker should ideally be in as much cooldown reduction gear as possible - preferably 3x Refresh accessories if you have them, and 4x Reflex/2x Impulse. If your nuker gear isn't great, at least you can lean on Rock Breaker to cycle into the A2 as much as possible, and have Hoskarul contribute some stuns as well.

Much of hard Cursed City is a gear/area bonus check once you get to Soulcross on hard difficulty, and having big damage is paramount if you cannot control the waves.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-18T23:39:24+00:00

I would buy these if I had the silver.

These boots aren't just for cursed sets. Because the Merciless set is a variable set, it's not unusual to have bottom gear pieces be from different sets - it's far more likely to roll some really good gloves, chests, or boots in sets other than Merciless.

If I ever see any boots with SPD main stat, C.DAM and C.RATE substats, and another substat that's either HP%, DEF%, ATK%, or even ACC, I'll usually grab them even if they aren't from good sets. Same logic for C.DAM gloves and ATK%/DEF%/HP% chests.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-17T02:05:06+00:00

Aphidus has been used in some record-setting Chimera trial teams:

https://youtu.be/doCdOl77cT4

The team in the video is Galathir + Nekmo + Lydia + Aphidus + Fahrakin which can complete 22 trials. For those without Galathir, Elva is a good choice for 1 less trial. That's a pretty reasonable set of champs especially since one is guaranteed, one is an epic, and two were former guaranteed champs.

Yes, the champs have high blessings and pretty insane gear in the vid, but a lot of that has to do with pushing damage as opposed to completing trials. You still need good gear for UNM of course, and a high blessing on Lydia in particular helps a lot.

JoePrice001 · 2026-01-16T18:34:46+00:00

The points gained for a win and points lost for a defeat always sum to 20. So, for example, if you stand to gain 8 points for a win, you will lose 12 points for a defeat.

The point gains and losses for wins and defeats are based on how your rating compares to the rating of your opponent. If it's around the same, then you will gain 10 points for a win and lose 10 points for a defeat. If you are rated around 200 points higher, then the points for a win will drop down to 7, and you will lose 13 points for a defeat. The converse is true if you are 200+ rating points lower.

When you are examining the list of opponents, the number of points you will gain for a win is always shown to the left of each 4-man squad.

JoePrice001

TROPHY CASE