Hey, heroes, Kolz here. Today, I'm going through the best gear in HVH.
I'm going to separate it into five different categories here, from all day, every day, down to your giveaways. I tried to use clothes concepts because we're talking about gear, get it?
I'm going to go through all 30 pieces of gear, talk a little bit about each one, why it's good, why it's not good, and why I think each piece is where it is.
But I'm going to focus mostly on what's good for most everyday players, and that is up to kind of like a set.
So there are three kinds of main gear sets that you should know about.
- There's the Max DPS set
- There's your farming set
- And then there's a Nightmare mode / more defensive build set
You wear your Max DPS gear for 90% of the game.
You wear farming for 9%, and you wear the nightmaremare mode kind of defensive bill for 1%.
The main way to prioritize gear, particularly early in the game, is just to wear your highest tier.
So even if I have something listed better here, if you're early and you have like a rare piece instead of a common piece, equip the rare version and not the common one.
S Tier - All Day Every Day
Rogue Amulet
Rogue Amulet is all day, every day, baby. It is one of the best pieces of gear in the game. The rogue set, in particular, is going to be generally very, very useful because it's part of the max DPS set.
You are going to use it in the early game, the end of the game, and all the time in between.
Early in the game, it has critical strike and movement speed, which are always helpful.
Then, when you get it to the epic level, you get the ability to have a 4x multiplier to crit. It's your first time getting that status, and it's going to amp your damage at that level massively.
So this is going to be used super early as part of your max damage build, and then later in the game, it adds more critical strike, which is always helpful.
A very, very strong and happy piece of gear.
The Noble's Robe
The noble robe is excellent. You use it early in the game as part of your farming set. Every time you go farming, throw on your noble gear for the increased experience and coins.
At the epic level, it gets a +10% chance for silver keys, so get that on as fast as you can.
Ideally, you want to get this thing to Ascended for the 5% increased chance for gold keys. A 5% gold key chance is the equivalent of a 30% increase in silver key chance.
Even in guild events and faction wars, I try to get this piece equipped for that key chance. Over time, those additional runs will net you some extra keys, and they help a lot.
Anytime you can afford to put on the noble robe, you should put on the noble robe for that massive increase to key chances.
Noble Helm
The Noble Helm is a beast. I love this thing. I'm really partial to farm gear since you do a lot of farming in this game.
While for 90% of content you're wearing DPS gear, you're wearing your farm gear the other times, and you're probably wearing it more often than not at the late game because you're just doing so much farming.
The Noble helm is fantastic for farming. It offers +1 starting upgrades early, which is really helpful in the arena; it helps you clear that content out early. Then it has +10 hero orbs later, which is fantastic. Anything with +hero orbs, you'll take all the time.
You're going to be wearing this all game as often as you can whenever you're farming. In any run where you can get away with it, you want to try to equip this along with the noble chest.
Noble Boots
Noble Boots are like their big brothers up here. They give you hero orbs early and then dust and then gold key chance.
The gold key chance is 5%, so again, it's the equivalent of a 30% silver key chance. Awesome.
Whenever you're farming, you want these equipped.
Rogue Helm
This is the best helm in the game, damage-wise, for basically the whole game.
Even at the end of the game in heroic mode, it adds 2x damage to all statuses, which is mind-bogglingly huge. So it becomes just an absolute beast at heroic, and you use it for your max DPS set for the rest of the game.
It's the best helm for damage, no matter what else you're running.
Ranger Boots
Ranger Boots are your max DPS boots. You're going to be using these in all of your max DPS builds. They add cooldown and they add projectiles. They are fantastic, fantastic boots.
They are the ones that give you the most damage amplification if you can get away with equipping them. Sometimes you won't be able to because certain game modes will require you to have slow immunity, or you're going to need wizard boots to get XP or something.
But as often as you can, you're going to want to be equipping your Ranger Boots if you need a damage boost because they do the most damage by far of any boots in the game.
Rogue Gloves
Rogue gloves are great. They are core to your max DPS build the entire game, and they're great from the start until the end.
They have critical strike chance, evasion, more critical strike, and then the chance to get 4x critical strike at Ascended.
These are the ones I'll substitute even into my farming runs when I need to do additional damage for that 4x chance to crit and all the critical strike before that.
I use them when I'm farming, I use them for my max DPS, and I use them all the time.
Rogue Chest
You use the Rogue Chest all of the time for your damage. This is the max damage chest, and you use it for 90% of the game.
The only time you're not really using it is in certain parts of the arena when you need to cheese for the extra starting upgrade, in nightmare mode where you're going more defensive, or in Hero Clash where you need additional spins.
Whenever you need additional spins, you substitute out this for the Ranger Chest. But the Rogue Chest is going to be your max damage chest 90% of the time.
A Tier - Core & Farming Gear
Rogue Ring
This is one of the weaker pieces in the rogue set, but it's something that you'll use in the early game. The plus to instant kill is great, the critical strike is great, and the increased spawn for power-ups is fine, but not something that's game-changing.
The most important thing here is the instant kill, which will help you in all the early game modes.
This is the core of your early game DPS build, and then once you get to the later parts of the game, you switch it out for the Wizard Ring.
Noble Gloves
Noble gloves aren't like the rest of the Noble set, and there are instances where I don't equip noble gloves when I'm farming.
These gloves only add coins and XP, so they're basically purely for farming coins early in the game. If you can get to one chapter higher that offers better resources, you can get rid of them in favor of rogue gloves for more damage, if it lets you AFK or auto-farm.
At Heroic, they add more guild points, which is nice for your guild but doesn't make a huge impact on gameplay, so it's not the best heroic bonus.
Noble Necklace
This is here with the noble gloves. You wear them to farm as often as you can, but they add +scrolls at their Ascended level. Before that, it is just coins and experience, and scrolls are the least valuable resource to farm.
So again, like the gloves, if you're trying to clear harder content with your farming gear, I substitute out the Noble Necklace for the Rogue Amulet.
With that in mind, you don't use it all the time, but you still use it a lot. This is going to be your farming necklace 95% of the time unless you're trying to get to that next stage of resources for more hero orbs and for more dust.
Noble Ring
The Noble Ring is core to your farm build and has a silver key chance at Ascended, which is fantastic, along with plus scrolls and plus coins. The plus chance for a chest is just essentially more coins, but a slightly weaker, more variable version of it.
B Tier - Luxury & Late Game
Wizard Ring
Okay, so the Wizard Ring is a fun one. This ring is the best late-game ring there is.
It has a 1.25x damage multiplier against frozen enemies at Ascended, and a 1.3x damage multiplier to frozen enemies at Heroic. That's massively important for events like Boss Brawl, where you're trying to max damage against the boss during its frozen period. You also just run it generally in nightmare mode for the status effect duration.
Unfortunately, before those endgame pieces of content, it is not the strongest ring. It doesn't have any instant kill, and instant kill is super valuable in early-game content like normal mode.
So I'm not putting it in "All Day Every Day" because you don't use it until you're in the 1% of people that are doing the end-of-endgame content.
Wizard Amulet
This wizard set is for when you're fancy. Its early game bonuses are basically worthless and you can't really use them.
However, when it gets to Ascended, you get two starting upgrades, making it fantastic for the arena and for hard mode arena.
It's a really good fit in luxury-wear because you're not going to want to run this until you're at least at Ascended, and probably more like Mythic most of the time.
Wizard Hat
The big thing that the Wizard Hat adds is status effect duration. That's fantastic later in the game when you need to freeze things for longer. But that's really its only use because it doesn't have any impact on damage.
It'll help you survive in certain situations or help you get a set bonus for the wizard if you need it, but you're not going to be using it otherwise. It's somewhere between special occasions and luxury-wear, like most of the Wizard gear.
C Tier - Special Occasions & Niche Use
Ranger Hood
Ranger Hood has a very niche use. I use it early in nightmare mode when you're under-geared elsewhere. The nice thing about Ranger Hood is it adds movement speed at the epic level.
You can use it early in nightmare mode just to outrun the horde. That's basically the only time I've used it in the game, as part of my "crazy taxi" build to clear the first 50 chapters of Nightmare when I was a little bit under-geared relative to the content and was just running away.
Unfortunately, the Ranger Hood is never ideal as part of a build, except for that one instance in early nightmare mode.
KnightAmulet
You use the KnightAmulet basically in nightmare mode. The +10% scaling to health is super helpful when you're trying to complete early parts of nightmare mode and you need the extra health.
You can also use this for the leprechaun sometimes. I use it for 390 hard mode if I want him to have a little extra tankiness during the beginning so I can make sure that he survives and can farm coins and additional resources.
Wizard Robe
The Wizard Robe is for a special occasion where you're going to love the starting upgrade at the rare tier. That is super helpful in the arena for cheesing it early in the game. You need those starting upgrades, and so that's what you're using it for: the arena.
After that, anytime you want additional starting upgrades, you might use it, but even then, there are still better options. It's not something that you're going to want to be equipping most of the time.
It's really just for the arena. It's got that one special use case.
Wizard Boots
These have a special occasion use too. They are used primarily when you need to attract experience or resources from a stage that you can't run around and collect.
If you have enough cooldown and you don't need Ranger Boots anymore, then you can consider using them in Boss Brawl to collect all of the experience so you don't have to run around. Or you can use it in nightmare mode for the set bonus.
If you don't need the slow immunity from Knight Boots, you can equip these, and they'll attract all of the experience in nightmare mode, allowing you to level up during waves and making the content a little bit easier. They have those two niche uses: Boss Brawl (maybe arena) and nightmare mode. A very particular use here; otherwise, the stats they add are not all that valuable.
KnightGloves
I like KnightGloves a lot. The nice thing about KnightGloves is that they add +5% to HP, which is really helpful later in the game. Plus, they add damage and some armor and healing.
They have everything that you want later in the game, so they can be really helpful in nightmare mode for getting you some extra damage and defensive stats, plus the additional health.
Ranger Chest
The Ranger Chest is great because it has +1 physical projectile and it adds additional shuffles. You run it in any mode where you need those additional shuffles in order to hit the weapons that you need.
It becomes super helpful in Hero Clash, hard mode arena, and in certain stages of nightmare mode. The Ranger Chest is a great piece of equipment that replaces the Rogue Chest in certain situations.
KnightHelm
The KnightHelm is a special occasion item that you're going to be wearing whenever you take your heroes to nightmare mode. It has a lot of armor and health regeneration all the way up to Ascended.
That's super helpful for the 60% armor in the stat screen that you want when you're running nightmare mode. It's great for nightmare mode because it has armor and health regen, but unless you're doing that type of content, you don't really run it otherwise. It has a very particular niche.
Ranger Necklace
There has not been a situation yet where I want to run the Ranger Necklace over anything else. That being said, it does have instant kill, so you can use it as part of the pirate queen cheese build.
So maybe it's not in the giveaway pile. Let's put it on the very tail end of special occasions. It's going to be part of your pirate queen cheese for the arena, and you're going to use it early in the game to replace your Rogue Amulet if critical strike is disabled. So there are those two instances, I guess, where you will use it.
D Tier - Situational Starters
Ranger Gloves
They're a little bit of a misfit set, unfortunately. This does have projectile speed, cooldown, critical strike, and damage to slowed enemies at Heroic, but there are just better gloves at every level.
You can use it if you level it up early, but that's about the only time you're going to. You'll use it if you level it up first, but besides that, you're not really going to equip it all that much.
The ranger set is probably the weakest set in the game, and one that you don't really use all that often, unfortunately.
F Tier - Giveaway Pile
Ranger Ring
You actually don't use this one all that much, unfortunately. It has instant kill early in the game, which is super helpful, so if you get it early, feel free to equip it.
But it adds projectile speed early in the game, and that's of no real use to anybody. You'll take the instant kill if it's the first one you level up to the required rarity, but after that, you're not going to use it.
Later in the game, there are just better rings than it across the board for different purposes, and so you never end up using it. The Ranger Ring is in my giveaway pile; I can donate that one to Goodwill.
KnightChest
Unfortunately, this is not very good. This used to be pretty good, core to nightmare mode because it would give you a shield to make you invulnerable, but they've basically disabled that in all modes.
At Ascended, its bonus is essentially worthless and gives you nothing, and that really hurts it. Early in the game, you might use it as part of a flagpole build with the knight, but even then, you'll generally want to run more offensive items, and it's one of the weaker pieces in the knight set, so you never really equip it. This is one of my giveaways; you don't really need a KnightChest.
Rogue Boots
These are the worst boots in the game, way down here. These could be the single worst item in the game. I have never equipped Rogue Boots. I can't think of a reason you'd want to.
There is one instance where I thought maybe if I had them at Mythic or Heroic before I had any other pieces of equipment, you could use them at the end of Nightmare Mode to beat hard chapters. It gives a ton of evasion, which is just not very useful, unfortunately. With that stat being its whole identity, you don't really ever use it.
Knight Ring
Unfortunately, this is not one that you use anymore. This again used to pair really well with the Knight Chest in order to clear Nightmare Mode. Because the Knight Chest gave you a shield, you could then let it explode with the KnightRing, and the combination would take out the horde. In nightmare mode, it was the only way you could actually clear the horde back in the day.
Now, that doesn't do anything anymore, so it's not really needed.
Summary
Overall, I'm pretty happy with this tier list. You could argue that the Wizard Ring should be higher, as you'll use it a lot once you get it to Ascended. The balancing act is that not many people have Ascended gear. Once it reaches Ascended, it replaces the Rogue Ring and you'll use it all the time. Before that, you don't use it at all, so most players won't need it.
Keep this in mind: if you have the Wizard Ring at Ascended, go for it. If you're in the early game, stick with the instant kill chance from the Rogue or Ranger Rings. I'm trying to make a tradeoff here between late-game and early-game players, since the majority of people are in the early game.
