TLDR;
Hello heroes, Kolz here!
There's finally new content in Heroes vs. Hordes. New Horde Mode, new Normal Mode, new Nightmare Mode. I zoomed through Normal and Horde first, and honestly it was just pure AFK farming. Nightmare Mode was much the same right up until I hit 343.
343 and 349 are the two chapters of Nightmare Mode that can give you real trouble. Everything else you can basically sit back and farm. These two you have to actually play. So let's get into how to beat them.
I hadn't broken out my Werewizard build in a long time, so I had to dust off all the little bits and pieces. There hasn't been a reason to go over a build in almost a year. But with the new Guild War coming up, hopefully that changes.
The gear split is the whole foundation. You want two Rogue pieces, your helm and your gloves, and four Wizard pieces in your robe, boots, ring, and necklace. That's it. That's the build.
From there, everything is built around Ice Wand and Death Ray. And here's the key that people get wrong: you want to maximize Death Ray first. When you upgrade Arcane Wand into Death Ray, it applies a 90% slow. That's basically a second stun to go along with your Ice Wand freeze.
So you get Ice Wand freeze plus Death Ray slow, and the entire map slows down for you. That combo is what gives you enough time to survive. Rush Arcane Wand into Death Ray as fast as you possibly can, then max Ice Wand, then take any other disruption you can get: Scrap Hammer, Borer, a 2-star Boomerang, Crossbow. Anything with a stun or a slow is gold.
The real skill here is hexkiting. If you've read my kiting guide, you know the drill, but this is where it matters most.
Hexkiting is when you move up and down and lift your finger off the screen to execute the move. Watch the joystick on the bottom left of the game screen and you'll see my finger actually coming off it between moves. That's the important part. It lets you make clean 45-degree moves, up or down, left or right.
When you do it right, basically nothing should spawn from the left side of the screen. If stuff is filling in behind you, it means you're not killing enough horde on the right side. Kill enough on the right and they won't overtake you, and you give yourself room to heal back up. Do it wrong and the whole screen fills in and you can't outrun it.
Two little techniques to remember. Instead of always going short up and down, you can go long up or long down to reposition ahead of the next wave. And on wave 3, the number one rule is don't get hit by the butterflies. If you're going to take damage, take it from the mobs slowed and frozen around you, not from a wave to the face. Avoid the wave at all costs.
I ran my Werebeast at 1.7x speed until I couldn't, then swapped to other heroes to prove you don't need a maxed account to do this. I even ran suboptimal gear, mythic mixed with legendary, just to see if it held up. It did.
The best heroes for these two chapters, in order, are Shield Warden, Werebeast, and World Lord. But you can get away with a lot more than that:
Notice the pattern? You're looking for any hero with a slow or a stun baked into their kit. That's the extra survivability that turns a loss into a clear. The old-school top players like Wisdom and Wave used to run something like Smoke Bomb, sit in it, and regen shields the whole time because they had the health and damage to pull it off. Most of us don't, so we hexkite instead.
For jewels, you want as much Regeneration as you can stack. After that: Vulnerability, Weakness, Projectile P, and Projectile M. Fill out whatever's left with Ultimate Charge, Evasion, or a damage jewel like Critical Strike or Area Effect. And that's it.
That's the whole thing. Max Death Ray, then Ice Wand, grab any stun or slow you can, and hexkite your way through. Ice Wand and Death Ray are your best friends on 343 and 349, and once the combo is online the rest is just concentration.
If you want a full walkthrough of the rest of Nightmare Mode, check out my Nightmare Mode guide. And with the new Guild War on the way, I'll be putting out more content again. Thanks to everyone who's supported me over the last year and a half.
Now go do your Avengers.
Death Ray's 90% slow plus Ice Wand freeze lets you shred the whole line.
Watch the joystick, bottom left. Lift your finger between moves to hexkite.
Wave 3 on 349. Take mob damage if you must, but never eat a wave to the face.
