How To Forge Every Hero In Heroes vs Hordes

Arcane Mage

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Personal Rec: RLR

Right off the bat, we got the Arcane Wand for the Arcane Mage. Given what I know about the Arcane Mage, you actually want to go right for projectiles, left for stun, and then right for penetration.

Her big thing is she can't hit a lot of horde at once, so anything that lets you hit more horde is better for her.

Knight

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Personal Rec: LLL

Knight has one of the better forges in the game. If you want to clear hard mode, you need a four-star Knight.

• I go area of effect or crit. It depends on whether or not you want to do single-target or multi-target damage.
• Bleed is great later in the game.
• Slow is great earlier in the game.
• Runesword is a fantastic evolution, and I go for area of effect. You're not going to need that much cooldown, but you might need it early in the game before you hit the caps for all the game modes.

Dark Ranger

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Personal Rec: RLL

Next up, the Hunting Bow for Dark Ranger. Some thoughts.

• Instant kill is good early.
• Critical hit is good late.
• Projectile is good all the time.
• Cooldown is good early.
• Oh, he gets bleed. That's cool.

I would go +5% chance for enemies to explode, Multi-shot, and Sharpshooter.

Tinkerer

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Personal Rec: LLR

Level 1, you're looking for more damage to stunned or for more damage.

Level 2, II would probably not go status effect duration.

Level 4, Bigger explosions, that's actually a nice evolution.

At Level 5, the area of effect is better for game modes where you need to hit more horde.

Fire Wizard

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Personal Rec: RRR

I think the ideal forge setup for the Fire Wizard is to go with all projectiles.

So I would go +2 projectiles here, more damage, and then more projectiles.

The way projectiles work, it's going to be basically like an amp to damage versus an area of effect, which is going to hit more horde. And I think you're going to hit enough horde that I would just go for the more projectiles, especially if you have a five-star forge.

Ice Wizard

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Personal Rec: LLL

All right, Ice Gauntlets for the Ice Wizard. Interesting. I don't have anything for him yet.

I think I would go for a chance to freeze, a chance to freeze, and then more projectiles. That'll maximize your damage.

• 5% freeze chance
• 5% freeze chance
• Hailstorm: +5 projectiles. That's a lot.

Blademaster

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Personal Rec: LRL

Katanas for the Blademaster. You want crit, AOE, projectiles, and cooldown. Basically every talent.

• Level 1 - More projectiles or more area of effect. Both of these are good. I think projectiles probably do more damage.
• Level 2 - Instant kill chance or critical hit. Take the critical hit.
• Level 5- Area of effect or critical strike chance. Late in the game, you'll have so much crit chance that you'll just take area of effect here.

These options are actually pretty sad if you compare them to the evolution path for Knight. He's just not getting much benefit here from the forge. That said, you don't really need the forge for Blademaster.

Spirit Shaman

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Personal Rec: RLR

So, Spirit Shaman, what do these do? Spirit beasts + movement speed, cool. Spirit beast area of effect, I didn't know they had an area of effect.

Guardian domain - I actually like this one. The spirit beast teleports back to you when you get hit. This will make the pets take the aggro away from the horde, which is helpful.

So if you ever get this guy all the way forged up, I would go Venomous Strike, Guardian Retreat, and then probably actually Beastly Domain. You could do Feral Fury for more damage.

Paladin

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Personal Rec: LRR

Paladin and the Holy Hammer. For Paladin, you're looking for as much AoE as possible, and ideally to hit as many horde as possible. So let's see what we got.

• 1.1x damage? Yes. All day, every day.
• Area of effect versus more projectiles. It depends on where you are in the game. Area of effect would probably be better early. More projectiles make you do more damage later.
• And then if you want to do single target again versus multi-target.
• Lightning has a 25% chance to leave a burning area. Let's see what this one is. Lightning has a 50% chance to stun enemies for two seconds. You'll get burning elsewhere. I'm probably going slowly.

I would go Shock, Earthquake, and Mighty Strike.

Reaper

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Personal Rec: RRL

If I ever get this guy, I'll have 4,400 tokens for him. Reaper seems like a cool hero.

So I'm going slow, bleed, and Open Wounds. Pretty straightforward.

Pirate Queen

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Personal Rec: LLR

For Pirate Queen, you want projectiles and projectile speed. Effect duration also works well.

I'd go projectile speed, projectiles, and more projectiles. I'm overstocked on projectiles and projectile speed. I could see there's probably a federation is probably similar, but projectile speed makes it look more fun and more projectiles is always more fun.

Warlock

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Personal Rec: LLL

Warlock is actually a super-strong late-game hero. A lot of his forge improves how his curses interact with all of his skills and his weapons, making him one of the early heroes who accidentally got skill buffs from the forge. That makes him incredibly strong, particularly when you get his skills leveled up.

You're going with the cooler ones, so you're going Cursed Swarm, Demonic Frenzy, and then this would probably have to take a little bit of testing. My guess is that the portal is probably going to be better, but I am unsure, and you need to test that one.

Barbarian

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Personal Rec: RLL

I just got Barbarian up to five stars. Level one, I would go Fierce Strike for the increased damage. At level two, Torrential Assault would give you more consistent damage, and Wild Rampage would give you more spiky damage when you hit rage. I think the rage hits so much harder, it's worth getting those four additional points in it.

Again, this is another hero that benefited from a forge interacting with his skills early in the game, before I think they knew exactly how that would work. That's why he was so strong for so long.

Bloody Fang gives them bleed, and 5L one gives them a slow. I go bleeding all day, every day, for the increased damage.

Big Game Hunter

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Personal Rec: LLR

Big Game Hunter is so much fun in Boss Brawl. Before his forge, he was great. With a limited forge, he's actually like one of my top heroes for Boss Brawl. I have high hopes for him when I get him all the way up to five stars.

• Down at the bottom, 1.1x damage or two projectiles. Projectiles will generally give you a little bit more, I think, than 1.1x damage, but it depends on your game state.
• At level two, you can get Toxic Bullets for poison or you can get more kickback for pushback. I would personally go with poison.
• Deer Stand gives you a bigger dead zone area, and Bear Trap stuns any horde that goes in that area. I would go Deer Stand most of the time for more damage, although Bear Trap could be helpful in modes where you need the stun.

I've already seen a pretty decent increase in the Big Game Hunter's damage just going from 0 to 3-star forge, so I imagine the four-star forge would be another bump, but I'm not sure. And this is again focused only on Boss Brawl.

Clockwork Mage

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Personal Rec: LRR

Clockwork Mage is my favorite all-around hero. She's strong from as soon as you get her until the end of the game. Looking at her forge, early on, you take the increase to damage.

At level two, you can either take area of effect or more projectiles. Area of effect if you need to hit more horde, and projectile if you need to hit fewer horde for more damage.

Chrono Blades is a big spike in damage, so going from 3 to 4-star for her is a pretty big spike. Getting those blades out and onto the battlefield will help you do a considerable amount more damage in normal mode and your hard mode push. However, the problem is late, late game at like the end of Nightmare Mode and Hard Mode Arena, you're never going to get to evolve her weapon because you don't take cooldown. Same thing in Hero Clash. This kind of feels like a wasted tome.

At five, you either get bleed or more area of effect for the flying disc. I want bleed for more damage. However, I saw a negligible increase in damage with the five-star forge, and it's not something you really need to push for. Even in Hard Mode Arena, it didn't help me all that much.

Monk

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Personal Rec: LRR

Monk is a classic example of where a hero goes from almost unusable to one of the better heroes, particularly for pushing Hard Mode, once you get his four-star forge.

• At level one, you get more projectiles or area of effect.
• At level two, more pushback or more damage.
• War Staff is when it really gets going. The way he works is he's able to proc his skills the more times his war staff hits enemies. And that's why War Staff is so important, because now his projectiles get more range and they bounce off the side of walls, meaning they'll hit more horde, letting you proc all of his other skills more frequently, including his ultimate.
• At level five, you get effect duration or projectile speed. I think this is a wash. I went projectile speed here.

Again, the reason why these heroes are really strong is because of the way their forge interacts with their skills, and they did this by accident on these early heroes, and they do it much more intentionally now.

Tide Warden

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Personal Rec: RLL

For the Tide Warden, I think this is pretty straightforward. I would go Tidal Zone. You can kind of just pick which one you want here: Water Destruction or Aqua Spray.

Then I see Icy Water is 1.25x damage to frozen. If you can get frozen, that's a massive multiple, so that looks very tempting. And then damage to slow is probably more consistent, but less spiky, high damage.

Assassin

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Personal Rec: RRR

Assassin is great without a forge. He gets stronger with it.

• At level one, I went for area of effect from Venom Wheel.
• At level two, you can go either way: damage to bleeding or chance to double the amount of projectiles. The way math works, I think bleeding buff is always better than doubling the projectiles. I think that's just a straight 3% increase, and this is a 5% increase to bleeding. So you want bleeding buff.
• Chakram adds another flying chakram. I don't know how to control this thing yet, so I have not seen a big boost in his damage. I've actually been massively disappointed in getting this four-star forge for boss brawl. I saw basically no improvement in damage going from three-star to four-star forge, which is kind of disappointing.
• Level five, you get an extra chakram, or the chakram does bleed damage every second. I imagine the chakram is the way to go for a single target, and extra chakram is better for multi-targets.

Frost Queen

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Personal Rec: LRR

The Frost Queen, if you get her, get the three-star forge. It's fantastic. You're never really going to use her for much, just the global.

So I'll just briefly go through it.

I'd go Ice Pillars with Frost String and then probably Ice Sting.

She's a fun hero, but she just doesn't do a lot of damage, unfortunately. That three-star forge, though, is really big.

Oracle

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Personal Rec: RLL

Oracle is super strong with an increased forge. Get her to a four-star forge, and she'll do enough damage to clear out all of Hard Mode.

• At level one, you can get more damage or effect duration. Effect duration is really strong on Oracle because it leaves your orbs out longer to do more damage. So you want to go effect duration there.
• Damage to stunned or projectile speed. Projectile speed gets her orbs out faster, so that's probably slightly better. Depends on whether or not you can actually stun horde.
• The reason why Prophecy Orb is so great is that it connects all the orbs together. Part of the reason why effect duration is strong is that orbs remain out longer. They then all start doing consistent damage over time. So getting the four stars is a big bump up in damage for her.
• Then I would go left for Orb Mastery and for more links. All that AoE damage is going to make a big difference.

Artificer

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Personal Rec: RRR

Artificer is another guy who gets a tremendous benefit to his skills from his forge.

• At level one is critical strike or projectile speed. Projectile speed is his big thing, so go that way.
• Sharp blades for more damage or Blade Surge. This is it right here. So the first time you actually see a skill written into the forge, increase the chance to spawn an additional blade by 1,000%. Those blades are how you proc his skills, and so they're really important to have. And that's why he gets to do so much damage with his forge.
• Energetic Discharge is a really big increase in damage. And then Static Conduit just leaves it on all the time.

So Static Conduit with Blade Surge and Zeal is how I would forge Artificer. Most of the time, people can actually clear a lot of Nightmare Mode based purely on Artificer's massive amount of AoE damage.

Santa Claus

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Personal Rec: RLR

Santa is a lot of fun. You really want to get his three-star forge for the key chance, and then you can push to his four and five-star forge if you want to try and progress with him so you can, like, get that key chance as you're progressing. But those will kind of be wasted. And 5,000 super tokens are a lot to kind of waste, so I wouldn't recommend pushing past his three-star forge.

At one and two, I go for area of effect and for more damage.

Gift Blaster does amp his damage pretty substantially and will let you clear out harder chapters with Santa. They get really goofy big snowballs with level five, Snowball Cascade.

Dragon Empress

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Personal Rec: Coming Soon

Dragon Empress's forge is coming soon, and we're going to hit that point now where they decided not to give a bunch of new heroes forges upon release, which was a lame part of HF history.

Dark Paladin

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Personal Rec: LRL

Dark Paladin gets incredibly strong with his forge. He's one of those heroes who's relatively weak without it, but incredibly strong with it. And again, it's because of the way his weapon and skills interact with the forge.

• Level one, you want more projectiles.
• At level two, I would go with 100% chance for freeze most of the time. What makes him so strong is this freeze.
• Soul Vortex is a big amount of damage, and it gets really strong with Haunt, which gives each one of these souls a chance to slow.

So you get the freeze from level two, and then the slow from Haunt at 5. With those two forge options, the horde can never get to you. It's why Dark Paladin is so strong in Hard Mode Arena, Nightmare Mode, and, to a less extent, Hero Clash and Dragon's Tower.

Rocket Pilot

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Personal Rec: LLR

Rocket Pilot is not the strongest hero, but he's so much fun to play.

• At level one, I go with Incinerate for the chance to burn.
• Level two, more damage amp to burning.
• Then, at level five, you can either leave behind a damaging area (good for something with a lot of horde) or Cat Apocalypse if you want to do single-target damage.

Leprechaun

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Personal Rec: LRR

Leprechaun's forge is actually pretty fun, and it seems like his forge should do a decent amp to his damage.

• At level one, you're going more area of effect most of the time.
• At level two, late in the game, you probably don't need all that critical strike and instead can get this buff to your four times the critical strike coin.
• Woven Barrier is pretty cool. Every time you clear a horde, you gain a shield, which can be really helpful in Nightmare Mode and for some other modes.
• And then Four Leaf Fury just lets you do more damage via an increased chance of critical strike.

So Leprechaun can actually put out pretty substantial damage. Getting him all the way up to five-star would let you progress pretty far in the game, probably clear out all of Hard Mode and a whole bunch of Nightmare Mode with Leprechaun, which is nice for gold farming.

Rose Mother

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Personal Rec: LLR

Rose Mother is all about bleeds and slows, so I would go damage to bleeding at level one. I would go poison, enemies are also slowed, and then grow faster for more damage. Bleeding Thorns seems like it might be a little bit redundant, although you might get additional damage from that 360-degree shot.

Bunni

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Personal Rec: RRL

Bunni just recently got his forge, and the forge really improves his skills, so they make him do a whole butt-ton more damage.

• Level one, you want to do a little bit of testing to see which one does more damage in your game state: projectiles or damage.
• Level two, I'd go for the reduction to Swipe This's cooldown. You want that reduced cooldown. Again, that's a skill, meaning you'll do a whole ton more damage with Swipe This.
• And then at level five, you can get Egg Strike to again increase the damage of Swipe This, or Golden Support, which turns Bunny golden and has him do a bunch more damage.

I don't know off the top of my head which one of these is stronger. You're going to have to do a little bit of testing. Again, anything that improves the skill is usually the way to go, but Golden Support sounds pretty cool.

Warlord

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Personal Rec: LLR (Most Game Modes) | LRL (BB)

All right, and now we've got the most important forge in the game for Warlord. Warlord is super game mode dependent. You're going to do a lot of switching in this forge, depending on which game mode you're playing.

To maximize your single-target damage for something like Boss Brawl, you go Bleed Punisher, Brutal Force, and Quad Strike. With Quad Strike, all four of them can hit the same target, meaning you'll do a whole ton of damage to the boss.

For other game modes, like Nightmare Mode, where you want to survive and do a bunch of AoE damage continuously, then I go Bleed Punisher with Lifestealer and Bloodbath. Bloodbath does an incredible amount of damage if you can get it to spawn and then hit other horde. Super great for Hard Mode Arena and for Nightmare Mode.

Lifestealer is the infamous "Nerf Lord" where it used to be 5%. And now, having used this ability, if this was 5% health, he would be literally unkillable. So he needed that nerf because 1% is already strong; 5% would have been stupid.

And the big thing here is it procs off of Wide Swing, and the more times you get hit, it reduces the cooldown of it, meaning you get to heal more often. And that's why he was so strong in Nightmare Mode because you get hit all the time by relatively weak horde, and then just heal it back up via Lifestealer.

The reason why he does so much damage is in Quad Strike and Bloodbath. For whatever reason, the damage multipliers are just stupid, and you will get an insane amount of damage from going from 3 to 4-star and then 4 to 5. Like it's stepwise jumps in damage.This is the most important forge in the game. He's basically unusable until you get a four-star forge. After that, he's your strongest hero. And it's why everyone that says there isn't a tier list, but then also immediately says Warlord's the best hero, makes no sense logically.

Hoplite

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Personal Rec: RLL

Hoplite's got a great three-star forge. That's what you really want.

I would go Spear Barrage and Bleeding Edge.

And then at level four, you throw three big spears in a cone. Level five, throw one spear instead with 50% increased damage. Enemies hit are exposed. Oh, I didn't know that. Very rarely in the game do you see the word "exposed." And then, Explosive Spear, throw five spears instead. The first impact causes an explosion for 700 damage.

Hoplite's good in modes where you have to hit a lot of horde because of the way his shield bounces around all over the place. But there are other stronger heroes in the Warrior Faction, so you don't use him all that often.

He's used more for this three-star global that's fantastic.

Druid

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Personal Rec: LLR

Druid is the king of Boss Brawl, and it's a combination of his forge and his skills.

• At level one, you get ultimate activation requirement reduction or effect duration.
• At level two, you get more damage or more critical hit chance. It depends on your game state which one will be better there.
• At level five, you get Stunning Fruits, which cause the tree to stun, or Withering Curse, which causes the tree to do damage over time. Withering Curse is the really big one for Boss Brawl. This, combined with the exposed from his skills at higher levels, is what makes him so strong.

If you want to top the charts in Boss Brawl, getting him and Bunny up to five-star forge is how you do it.

Necromancer

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Personal Rec: RLL

With Necromancer and future heroes, we're going to start seeing a lot more skills and mechanics built into the forge, instead of just all those straight damage or projectile speed amps.

• Sturdy Undead: 50% effect duration is great for keeping your minions out longer and increasing minion health.
• Haste of the Dead: increased minions movement speed by 10% or Vast Necropolis increased minions attack area by 10%.
• Worms Fury causes the necromancer to spawn more minions, which is great.
• Minion Master is lame because it gets rid of the worm, but it will increase the damage of all your other minions.

I would personally go Worms Fury, Vast Necropolis, and Sturdy Undead.

Sentry Specialist

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Personal Rec: RLR

Sentry specialist, I thought, would be awesome at five-star forge, and she's not.

Don't waste super tokens on Sentry Specialist unless you have her at five-star levels. At five-star levels, the cooldown in her skills is so high that you can actually start to put out a tremendous amount of damage, but before that, even at four stars, the cooldown isn't high enough that you won't do any significant damage.

• At level one, you can either get more health or more damage. I went for more damage.
• And then level two, you can either get burning or a chance to stun. I go burning.
• Tesla Sentries are three additional sentries that you get added to the battlefield that link together with electricity.
• Random Bolt has them all attack one target, and then Tesla Boost just increases all their damage a lot.

Werebeast

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Personal Rec: LRL

Werebeast is my current project. I'm working on getting him up to five-star forge for Dragon Tower.

• At level one, you get more damage or more area of effect.
• Level two, more damage or damage to bleeding. You don't get bleeding until you have his Moon Charged Claws in his kit, so it's good once you have Moon Charged Claws and it's bad before that.
• Moon Charged Claws gives him additional damage.
• And then at level five, you get Pack Ambush for a whole bunch of wolves, or Howling Tower for one bigger wolf. I'm not sure exactly which one of these will be stronger at the end of the day.

Astral Mage

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Personal Rec: RRL

If you get Astral Mage up to five-star forge, she can beat the game. XGhetto in my guild used a five-star forge Astral Mage and beat every game mode.

• At level one, you either get more damage and more area of effect.
• Level two, reduced cooldown or effect duration. You want effect duration here. That will keep her portals out on the battlefield longer, allowing for more damage when she ultimates. And her ultimate is her really big source of damage; it's how she massively spikes up her damage.
• Infinite Void literally says that your weapon will now start increasing the number of portals and increasing their damage with effect duration and damage.
• And then Nova Pulse and Galactic Expansion are two different ways to up the Astral Mage's damage, depending on whether or not you want to use her void areas or just her main weapon with the Galactic Expanse.

The Great Forge Drought

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Personal Rec: Coming Soon

This was a nice little run here. They actually didn't give Werebeast and Astral Mage forges upon release. So, ignoring Sentry Specialist, there were 14 heroes in a row that didn't have a forge. That was a sad time in Heroes vs Hordes. Oof!

• Geomancer doesn't have a forge. He's a really fun hero though, and his skills are persistent, particularly his ultimate, which makes him pretty fun.
• Energy Mage has some fantastic globals but is missing a Forge.
• Void Raven isn't very good but is a lot of fun in faction wars and could maybe eventually be good in Boss Brawl if she ever gets a Forge.
• Shield Warden is great for clearing out Nightmare Mode, not so great in Boss Brawl as I learned this week. No forge.
• Scroll Sage has no forge. She doesn't deserve one.
• Lionheart could be fun if they gave him a forge, but he doesn't have a forge, so don't use him.
• Steam Golem has no forge.
• Bavarian has no forge.
• Pumpkin Shade has no forge.
• Crystal Mancer has no forge.
• Circuit Breaker has no forge.
• Glacial Sentinel has no forge.

Nutcracker

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Personal Rec: LLR

Then they came out with Nutcracker around Christmas time, and he has a forge. This forge is pretty fun, but it hasn't amped his damage up enough to make him viable, at least for me.

• Level one, you get more area of effect or more damage.
• Level two, you get a stun or more damage.
• And then at level five, you get Praise the Nut and Unbreakable Nuts. Unbreakable Nuts again interacts with his walnut skill, so that might actually be pretty strong. I have not seen anybody talk about his level five forge. His level four and five might give him a pretty nice amount of damage, but you're not really going to use him all that much, and so I wouldn't put a high priority on it.

Runemaster

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Personal Rec: Coming Soon

Next up is Runemaster. They went right back to not giving people forges.

Snake Emperor

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Personal Rec: LLR

But then they came back with Snake Emperor, and he's got a forge!

Snake Emperor is actually pretty strong. A lot of people in my guild got him and forged him up to level 4 or 5, and he does a solid amount of damage. His whole thing is poison, so he's gonna be poisoning enemies all over the place.

• At level one, you get a big amp to poison damage, which is nice.
• And then you get penetration at level two. Penetration is one of the stronger talents in the game, so I would go with that.
• Jade Fang is actually a nice boosted damage.
• And then at level five, you can either get a slow or just amp your damage even more.

I wouldn't make him a top priority. There are going to be other heroes like Artificer and Oracle that benefit more from a forge. But if this is all you got, he's worth starring up.

Echo

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Personal Rec: LRL

Echo's name in the game file is Shadow Phantom, which is way better than Echo, and they should rename her to that.

Her phantoms are her skills, so try to buff her skills with her forge. I would go with Phantom Frenzy here, probably Spectral Shade here, and then Phantom Daggers here.

Echo's ultimate is so wonky that you don't really ever use her for anything, but I think to amp her damage the most, focus on her interaction with Phantoms.

Bombardier

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Personal Rec: RLL

One of the best heroes for his globals. You don't really see that many people leveling up his forge.

These first two levels of forge are just basic damage amps, so see which ones work best for you.

You get Bouncing Grenades at four, having his grenades bounce around. And at level five, you can either have them bounce more or bounce less for more damage. If you're going to be fighting fewer horde, you want fewer bounces for more damage, and with more horde, you want it to bounce more.

Plague Keeper

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Personal Rec: RLL

Plague Keeper, I think, is actually super OP. He's one of these heroes where, if you can get him up to a high skill level with a high forge, he'll actually start putting out a ton of damage.

While levels one and two, you're basically just playing around with maximizing your damage, the big jump here is that four-star forge. Chaos Plague will significantly increase the amount of damage of the Plague Keeper.

At level five, Corrosive Toxins increases the amount of poison damage and its area, or Overflowing Flask leaves behind vials that do a whole ton of damage.

I have seen Plague Keeper put up some pretty solid numbers in Boss Brawl and clear out all of Hard Mode and all of Nightmare Mode with a five-star forge, so you can make him your main hero.

Blossom Ronan

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Personal Rec: RLL

• Level one: area of effect or cooldown? Again, depends on your game state.
• Level two: he's got exposed, so I would probably go with that most of the time over this chance to slow.
• At level four, you get a big amp to damage with Petal Forge Katana.
• And then at level five, you can either start adding a whole ton of bleed damage or increase the number of dashes that he does.

You're going to want to increase the dashes in modes where you have to hit a lot of horde, and you want to do Scarlet Bloom when you're trying to hit less horde for significantly more damage. Meaningful decisions are part of what makes Heroes vs Hordes so much fun.

Trapper

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Personal Rec: RRL

I really like Trapper. At this point, now, the devs went all-in on having you choose how to impact skills via the forge. So you're going to have to do some testing, and you can usually pick which one is better for your game mode.

• At level one, you either get more caltrops or more bear traps. Bear traps I think, are for disruption; traps are for damage.
• At level two, you either get Flame Scatter for a bigger explosive trap or a Pack Hunter for more bear traps. Flame Scatter will be better in modes where you can actually cast your ultimate and Pack Hunter is better in other modes.
• At level four, you get Spike Trap, which is just another trap on the battlefield, and you can either choose to have it bleed or poison. I would typically go with bleed because you can get poison elsewhere in your kit.

Easter Guardian

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Personal Rec: RLL

I forgot that he existed. At level one, you get to figure out how to increase his damage. At level two, you get accelerate or reduced cooldown. Accelerate looks like a lot more fun and impacts his skills, so I would go with that. At level five, you get Storm or Nest Blessing. Nest Blessing is better for AOE and York Storm again is better for doing more damage to fewer horde, which is the basic decision you get at a lot of the five-star forges.

Stormborn

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Personal Rec: LLL

With Stormborn and the Charged Axe, you're gonna get a lot of decisions up this tree.

• At level one, you get more electric cleave or electric cleave can now stun. Stunning enemies is big for him because that's how he procs a lot of his damage. But hitting you more with Electric Cleave is more consistent damage.
• Frequent Discharge will allow his skill with a shield to proc more often, allowing you to do more damage, but you're gonna have to juggle that without dying.
• And then Enhanced Guard lets you get more of the shield each time, which will help you survive better but do less damage. Again, a great choice.
• At Forge Level four, you get Storm Splitter, which is a big amp.

Slime Sage

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Personal Rec: LLR

All right, Slime Sage not a very good hero. The way his forge works is just improving his slime, which is his core damage mechanic. So anything that increases slime is generally better.

• Level one, you get a higher chance for slime or the slime doing more damage.
• At level two, you can either make his ultimate stronger with Status, or you can make his sludge pool stronger with Gloopy Grasp. Man, the words on this hero are just ridiculous.
• Glue Pocalypse will help you spread slime faster.
• Level five is Mini Fastidious, which gives you a little mini fastidious at the end of a Goopcalypse cast, which could amp your damage a bit. God, the words on this guy. Or you can get Slimy Amplifier which increases the number of slime that Goopcalypse adds by two.

He's a lot of fun conceptually, too bad he's not very strong.

The Avatar Heroes

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Personal Rec:

We got the three different avatar heroes up next. I don't know if I want to pay any attention to them, because if you don't have their forge now, you're never going to get it.

Dark Mage

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Personal Rec: LRR

And then the new guy that just came out, the Dark Mage. Dark Mage is incredibly strong. Early testing has been really good. I got a little sneak preview of him, and I thought he was going to be good, and he might even be better than I thought.

The big thing here is his forge and how it interacts with his main weapon's Decay. Decay is how he does all his damage, and this is going to be a big amp to decay.

• You can see here that you have a choice between impacting the effect of Lingering Misery, which is one of his core skills, to either reduce the damage of horde or to just amp your damage from Lingering Misery.
• Next, you have Spreading Decay, which increases the size of the aura of decay (which is like the thing around the Dark Mage that amps Lingering Misery), or Continuous Decay, which is when people get into that aura, they will start taking damage. Again, these are both amps to skills, and so they're going to do a lot of damage. I'm not exactly sure which one is better, but they're both going to be big amps.
• Book of Collapse starts giving you stuns, which is super strong.
• Then you can get Quaking Collapse, which will cause those stuns to start doing AoE, or Spreading Collapse, which will cause Decay to start shooting 360-degree projectiles of more damage.

Both of these are going to be big amps of damage built around Decay and Book of Collapse, so you have to figure out which one is going to do more. They both seem really strong.

And there we go. That was a speed run through all the forges for the heroes. The big thing here is that some heroes get tremendous benefits from their four and five-star forges, while others don't.

Heroes like Warlord, Monk, and Knight really benefit from four and five-star forges, but heroes like Clockwork Mage, Blademaster, and Werebeast don't get the same benefit from those forge levels. And so you can either postpone their forges or just not forge them up at all.

But I learned the hard way. Whatever you do, don't forge up Sentry Specialist until you have her at five stars!