Faction Camp Guide For Heroes vs Hordes

Faction Camp 101: The Basics

This is a little-explored part of Heroes vs. Hordes. But, like I said earlier, it has an outsized influence.

As you star up heroes from levels 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and et cetera, they add power to the faction camp. This power is shared between other heroes in the same faction. So, heroes like Arcane Mage will buff up other heroes like Slime Sage.

Now, each completed star level of any hero in that faction will buff up the faction bonus. Note that this means that partial star levels don't count for anything.

As you hit certain star level thresholds, you're allowed to add more heroes into the faction camp bonus pool. You can then buy the Diamond Pass for $50 that will open up the fifth and final faction camp slot. While that Diamond Pass is really strong and I suggest it early in the game for people looking to spend some money, you don't strictly need it, as I don't have it for any of the factions and I've been perfectly fine.

As you star up heroes, the level increases up until a max level of 20, at which point any additional hero star levels don't impact the faction camp bonus.

A Deep Dive into Faction Bonuses

Now, the faction camp bonuses are not all created equal, so let's take a look at each one and understand which one is strong and which one you want to choose.

Each hero has a faction camp bonus. You'll see this on their standard profile page and in the faction camp, in the bottom left-hand corner of their card. I'll go through each one now just as they appear in my faction camp, but I'll point out the ones that are more important.

The Magic Council

Plus magic damage is good early in the game, but it falls off as you progress. So take it early, but then try to substitute it out late, as it's additive and not multiplicative.

As you see with the Fire Wizard, his is a multiplier to damage against burning horde. At max level, it's a $1.1\times$ damage to burning horde. And multiplicative damage is better later in the game for two reasons.

1. You can actually apply burning later in the game. It's hard to do early.
2. You're multiplying a bigger base level of damage.

So that's why additive damage is good in the beginning, and multiplicative damage is better later in the game. And that cutoff usually comes around talent level 150 or 200, where multiplicative will start outshining additive.

The Ice Wizard adds a multiplier to damage against a frozen Horde, which makes sense given his theme.

Now, you'll see that the devs get real lazy and most of the time, they're just going to add basic magic damage or physical damage, like most other heroes in the Magic Council. The one exception is the Oracle, who gets Effect Duration. Effect Duration is really niche; when it does work, it keeps your projectiles, or anything you shoot, on the battlefield for longer. So it really helps the Oracle and her orbs, but it is not generally effective.

The Warriors' Guild

And now, looking at the Warriors' Guild, you'll start to see why they're so strong in the late game and in the early game.

The big thing here is that you can get a lot of Warriors' Guild heroes for free. That includes Blademaster, Knight, Lion Heart, and Paladin. Throw in the Minotaur over many months of grinding, and you have a quorum of five really strong heroes in the same faction.

Now, what that does is it gets you to that level 20 cap much faster. It also just so happens that their faction bonuses are really strong.

Starting off with Knight and the plus armor, this is actually, in my opinion, the single strongest late-game faction bonus in the game. Getting 50 armor for free in modes like Nightmare mode, Hard Mode Arena, and Hero Clash is really important because you're gonna get hit by the horde. Any time you reduce the damage of that, it's really big.

And so the big thing with this faction camp bonus is that the Warriors' Guild has two of them! That additional 100 armor is really big. And that's why I'd appreciate it if they added an armor bonus to literally anybody in the Mage Guild. That would really help their late-game progress.

But ignoring that for now, the other really important buff here is the plus to crit. Blademaster's plus 10% critical strike chance at level 20 is huge. Each point in critical strike is like a 3% increase in your damage. And again, that's multiplicative. So where we saw $1.1\times$ the burning, this is like $1.3\times$ the damage. It's huge. It's basically better than a heroic talent, having Blademaster or any other hero with critical strike in your faction camp.

Now, you'll see most of the other heroes just have plus physical damage, which is like the equivalent of that plus magical damage; they're like the throwaways in the faction camp. But the two unique ones here for warriors are Pushback from Monk and Evasion from Paladin. Those are great, again, for the late game when you need it in Hard Mode Arena and Dragon's Tower.

Put it all together, and you have basically the best endgame buffs in the faction camp.

The Shadow Syndicate

In my Shadow Syndicate, I still haven't hit that cap. And so I do have potential bonus damage here in the form of additional critical strike and these multipliers if I can ever get any of these stinking shadow heroes.

Right now, I take advantage of as many multipliers as I can.

• The increased poison damage from Assassin is pretty big.
• The critical strike from Echo, we've already covered with Blademaster.
• Physical damage and magical damage again are straightforward.
• Then there's plus to slow damage from Dark Ranger, which is actually quite strange. Again, that's a multiplier on any slowed horde.
• Then there's two new ones: Area of Effect for Reaper will be good on generally every hero, and then there's two times chance to projectile. Each point in that basically increases your damage by that part. So a 1% increase to your chance to shoot two projectiles is like a $1.01\times$ that type of damage, in this case, magical.

And down at the bottom, you'll see Dark Paladin, another really strong hero for Hard Mode Arena, Nightmare Mode, and all the late-game content. And again, that's because he has armor built into his kit, and he provides it here in the faction camp.

The Mechanist League

Hopping over to the Mechanist League, you'll start to see some of the other really strong faction bonuses.

• The first being Clockwork Mage with cooldown reduction. This is part of the reason why she's so strong as a hero. Not only does she have a lot of cooldown in her kit, she provides cooldown in the faction bonus. Getting more cooldown is one of the quickest ways to increase your damage, particularly early in the game, as each point scales almost exponentially.
• You'll see with the Pirate Queen, again, a two times chance to physical projectiles.
• Moving over to Tinkerer, we have the first and only increased chance for XP, which can make farming a little bit easier. So if you don't have any other good farming heroes, getting additional XP can help you for farming and getting slightly more coins each run.
• Now, as for Artificer's projectile speed, it is very dependent on the hero. It makes a lot of sense for Artificer; it's his strongest trait. But it might not make sense for most other heroes.
• And lastly, unique to the Mechanist League is the ultimate charge reduction from Circuit Breaker. This is vitally important for making heroes like Centry Specialist super strong in the late game, as any reduction in her ultimate charge lets her charge up her sentry much faster.

The Nature Faction

Lastly is the Nature Faction. Now, the big ones here to note are Barbarian first for the increase in rage duration. Then there's Druid, who gives the same cooldown reduction as the Clockwork Mage. You also have the options for a bonus to slow in Tidewarden and increased poison damage in Rose Mother.

The real problem with a lot of these factions is that it's just hard to get a quorum of heroes. But that's one of the benefits of the Magic Council and the Warriors' Guild. A lot of the free-to-play heroes are all in the same faction.

The Hidden Power Problem: A Note on Game Design

But as I alluded to at the very beginning, the problem with the faction camp is that it's hidden. So you're getting all these buffs for free, and you don't really know that you're getting them.

Part of game design is having people make meaningful decisions that impact the game. These bonuses are more like auras or things in the background that you make a choice for, but you don't have a visual impact.

The way other games take them out of the background and move them into the foreground is by doing things like turning armor into shields or adding additional buttons you have to push in order to unlock the power. So instead of having flat armor, you can maybe push a button to get a shield for 100% of your health at a certain time.

Now, this game is much more casual than those other competitive games, and so maybe they don't want those visual indicators and additional buttons you have to push. But this faction camp bonus is what makes Warbeast and Warlord so strong in the late game. And you can see that you're lacking power when you don't have a max level of 20.

Don't Forget the Faction Global Bonus!

Now, what you also get from faction bonuses is the faction global at level 90. This takes starring up your heroes to two stars before you gain access to it. Now, again, those feel hidden and they're limited to the faction, but they do make a big difference, again, when you get a quorum of heroes in the same faction.

Recommended Faction Setups

And so with all that in mind, I'll go through some pretty solid setups that I use both early in the game and later in the game to help maximize my damage and get through different game modes. I'm going to use the Warriors' Guild as the example faction because this is the one where I do most of the switching around.

Early in the game, I suggest running Blademaster and then switching out between Knight and Lionheart. You can benefit from Knight's extra armor if you're trying to do some kind of flagpole build earlier in the game, which could be beneficial, or just take the flat increase to physical damage from Lionheart.

As you progress later into the game, you start wanting to run more defensive options combined with those more offensive options. So Blademaster is a mainstay. The plus to critical strike is the single best damage amp in the faction bonus. So you want to pair that up with either defensive or offensive builds as you progress through different game modes.

• For something like Hard Mode Arena, Nightmare Mode, and Dragon's Tower, I try and run two armor with crit, and then either plus physical damage if I need it on someone like Warbeast, or even more pushback for someone like Warlord who doesn't have damage by himself.
• And then for something like Boss Brawl, you're looking to maximize your status effect damage. So, jumping over to the Magic Council, you can see that I'd take increased burning, increased frozen, and projectile chance. All of those will maximize your percentage damage later in the game, making them strong for Boss Brawl options. Anytime you get a status multiplier, it's really good for Boss Brawl.

Every Grind Counts

And that's the general theory of faction camps. This is some massively big power that's kind of hidden in the game. I remember it quite vividly in patch 3.4 when I went from having about 12 star levels to 20 star levels in all the factions; it was a noticeable amp to damage.

So, just like every other thing in Heroes vs. Hordes, your faction camp is a grind, but every grind counts.