The Best Passive Pets In Heroes vs Hordes

Today I'm doing the passive pet tier list for Heroes vs. Hordes. So, what are the best passives for your pets?

I'm gonna go through each one of these guys. There aren't any incredibly awful passives here, so I've gone with an S-A-B-C style ranking and will walk you through all of them. We'll just kind of go through the pets one by one.

Typical Setups

Generally, put your highest-rarity pet as the main and your next two highest-rarity pets as passives. That'll work 90-95% of the time.

Early in the game, you might run Emberpaw as main, then Pyrokraken or a Striker as passives. If you need Thornhoof's speed bonus, that's also fine early game.

Mid game, you might run Hydro Basilisk as main, then Pyrokraken and Emberpaw as passives.

Once you get Crystalsaurus and level him up, you might switch him to main and use Hydro Basilisk plus something like Emberpaw or Shellshock as passives. If you have a special event pet (e.g., Blazetail), you can slot it into the same framework.

In Nightmare Mode, you want to run Crystalsaurus as main and two snails as passives for the extra 30% hero health. That can be key for clearing tough chapters like 202. Alternatively, Hydro Basilisk plus one snail plus Storm Griffin might help you manage hordes. Experiment and see what works with your playstyle.

How Pet Passive Damage Works

After a lot of pestering on Discord, we finally got a general answer on how pet passive damage works. Thanks to @Schala we got this formula:

(Pet power in UI / 2000) * (Pet ability %) * (1+ DMG%) * (1+ physical when pet moves or magical when pet shoots dmg %) * (dmg tome up to 1+50%) * (Upgrade lv 100% per 5 lv up to 20 - max at 500%)

In regular human English, this says that there are three really important parts to measure a passive pet's damage potential:

1. The multiple on damage is very important because it scales off of HERO damage. Think of Pets as weapons. The .5 multiple on Cyclowl is 66% more damage than the .3 multiple on Emberpaw. Increase your hero damage from any source and your pets will do more damage too.
2. But, the pet passive has to hit horde. Emberpaw's is a bit more reliable.

3. Getting a pet's level up directly increases their passive damage.

So I updated the rankings, given that this was discovered on April 17, 2025, about 2 weeks after filming the initial video. The big impact is on Shellshock and Cyclowl's relative ranking.

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S Tier

Blazetail

Spirit Flame Orbs

Create 2 stationary fire orbs. Each Orb has an aoe area. Enemies within the area receive 50% weapon damage per second. The ability has a 7s cooldown.

Blazetail has the highest-damage passive in the game: it creates two stationary fire orbs. Each orb has an AoE that deals 50% weapon damage per second. That means it scales off your hero's damage, which is huge. Blazetail overall is a damage machine. He was also a one-time special pet that required a lot of resources to get, so not many players have him. If you do, lucky you—he blasts everything in sight.

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Crystalsaurus

Jurassic Period

Summon random meteors to rain down across the battlefield, each dealing 50% damage upon impact.

This one has an S-tier passive: it summons random meteors to rain down across the battlefield, each dealing 50% damage upon impact. The big question is whether it's 50% of weapon damage, pet damage, or passive pet damage. I suspect it's passive pet damage, which means if your Crystalsaurus is high-level, that rain damage will be very strong.

This is a great overall damage passive. If you have a high-level main pet (say Basilisk) and finally get Crystalsaurus, you can level him to 100 and swap him in as your passive. As you're working on leveling Crystalsaurus up to use as your main, using him as a passive is also a great choice.

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Shellshock

Orbiting Shell

Adds 2 orbiting turtle shell to the active pet. The turtle shell deals 200% damage.

Shellshock's passive adds two spinning turtle shells that each do damage. The wording is unclear, but the @Schala discovered, and Devs confired, that it scales off of HERO damage and pet damage. So Shellshock is fairly rare, being an event pet, but it's amazing if you get it. 200% is a very large multiple if you can get the shells to hit horde.

It works best if your main pet is melee, so that the shells end up in the middle of the horde, allowing the spinning shells to inflict more damage.

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Cyclowl

Mini Gust

Randomly creates small gusts that deal 50% damage in an area.

Cyclowl creates random little areas on the battlefield that deal 50% damage. I assume it's 50% of the passive pet's damage. It's 50% of the Hero + Passive pet's damage. That scales incredibly well for modes with a lot of horde.

The problem is it's random, so you have no control over whether it hits the horde or not. Therefore, use it in Normal Mode, Hard Mode, Nightmare Mode, and Hero Clash, but not Boss Brawl.

Emberpaw is more reliable. Pyrokraken bombs are more predictable. Still, if you have a Cyclowl you should be using it for modes with a lot of Horde.

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Hydro Basilisk

Passive Skill

+20% Critical Hit Chance For Active Pet

Hydro Basilisk has one of the top two best passives in the game. It adds a 20% increased chance of critical hit for your active pet. That roughly translates to ~10% more damage overall, and you can't really beat that kind of raw damage increase from anywhere else.

If you're using something like Crystalsaurus or Pyrokraken as your main, this passive is fantastic for boosting their crit chance. It's invisible in the sense that you don't see an obvious effect, but your damage output skyrockets.

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A Tier

Cloudhoof

Star Trail

Adds an aurora-like trail to the main pet, enhancing its presence with a radiant, sifting glow. (DOES DAMAGE)

Note: I confirmed since the recording it DOES do damage. So, I moved him from C Tier to A+ tier.

I don't have Cloudhoof, and I've never seen anyone use him as a passive. It supposedly adds an aura trail that looks cool. If it's purely cosmetic, it's basically a wasted passive. If it deals damage in a trailing line, then it's viable, but that's never been confirmed. Most people don't have Cloudhoof anyway, as he was a limited, expensive event pet.

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Emberpaw

Fiery Flames

Emberpaw gives the active pet a permanent ember fur aura that deals 30% of the passive pet's damage.

Emberpaw has a great passive for a rare: it grants your active pet a permanent Ember Fur aura that deals 30% of the passive pet's damage. This is super obvious visually—like a fire orb effect around your main pet. If your main pet is melee and mingling in the crowd, this passive does tons of extra damage. It's also strong in Nightmare Mode when the horde clusters around you. Less good if your main pet is ranged, but paired with a melee fighter, it's excellent.

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Pyrokraken

Explosive Surprise

Active Pet attacks have a chance of 5% to spawn a bomb to hit the target. These bombs deal 200% of the passive pet's damage.

Pyrokraken's passive is totally fine, though it often feels slightly weaker than Emberpaw's passive in practice. However, it is very good if your active pet is attacking the same target—like a boss. There's a 5% chance to spawn a bomb that deals 200% of Pyrokraken's damage. In boss fights, you'll consistently land those bombs on the boss, making it a valuable passive. Overall, I'm a big fan—especially if you're using a ranged pet as your main. Pyrokraken himself is also a good main pet early game (he's ranged), and you could pair another pet's passive with him.

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Snails

Passive Skill - Snail

+15% health to Hero

Snails have a super underrated passive, especially in Nightmare Mode. They add 15% additional health for your hero (not your pet). You can even run two different colored snails and get a 30% increase in health, which is huge in Nightmare Mode. Heroes like Werebeast, Shield Warden, or Warlord really benefit because they have abilities that scale off max health. In late-game content like Nightmare Mode, snail passives are exceptional. They're not bad in regular modes either, but they shine most in Nightmare.

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Storm Griffin

Passive Skill

+25% Pushback For Active Pet

Storm Griffin's passive is interesting: it adds 25% pushback to your active pet. Personally, I haven't gotten much use out of it because I'm not sure exactly how to optimize that pushback. However, better players (like Hax) say that it's super helpful in Nightmare Mode to keep hordes away. It does no direct damage, but in tough content, controlling the crowd can be invaluable. So it's a "niche" but strong passive for Nightmare or hard mode runs.

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B Tier

Strikers

Elemental Affliction

Base attacks apply a burn dealing 100% of the passive pet's damage for 1s.

Strikers used to be very strong when they could apply their elemental effect to both basic attacks and abilities. Now, in theory, they don't apply to abilities. However, there's a noteworthy exception: people like Spiderpig have tested that Earthstriker's passive will still apply to Blazetail's ultimate, slowing every enemy hit. That effectively gives you Hydro Basilisk's style ultimate combined with Blazetail's damage, which is huge. I'm still testing if it applies to Crystalsaurus's ultimate. If so, that's another strong synergy. In general, Striker passives might be lower tier now, but that synergy with Blazetail can be powerful.

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Elemental Bonobo

Elemental Bananas

Throws an elemental banana that deal 100% damage on impact and leave peels that burn your enemies.

These are similar to Lotus Blossoms in that they throw banana peels with elemental damage. You mostly get them from enchanted eggs. They're fun to collect, but generally not super necessary. I'd say they're around a low B tier—more of a novelty than a must-have passive.

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Lotus Blossom

Lotus Bloom

Thunderbloom lets plants grow. Collecting plants enhances the active pet for 5s. Adds stun to active pet attack that has a 20% chance to stun for 1s.

Lotus Blossoms are decent, but more of an earlier-game option. Their passives give you the ability to pick up a plant on the ground, which then grants some elemental or crowd-control effect (stun, freeze, etc.). They're lower in priority because you have to actively acquire these plant buffs during battle, so it's more cumbersome than a regular elemental Striker. Still, they're perfectly fine early game.

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C Tier

Thornhoof

Passive Skill - Boar

+20% Movement speed to active pet

Their passive is an increase to movement speed. This is useful early in the game. For example, if you have Emberpaw as your main pet (who needs to go in melee to swipe at people), having Thornhoof as a secondary passive can help Emberpaw get in and start attacking more quickly. It's not a great passive for the long run, but early on, if you only have Thornhoof, Emberpaw, and a couple others, it's perfectly fine to increase your main pet's movement speed and DPS.

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The Mouse

Mouse's Wit

Increases active pet damage by 10% of this pet's damage.

Sadly, this might be the worst passive in the game. It adds 10% of the mouse's damage to your active pet. The mouse is such a base-tier pet that leveling it up won't yield serious damage. So it's basically overshadowed by everything else. Use it only if you literally have no other options.

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