Facebook WarFlow Non-Gold Buyer’s Guide Part 3

Facebook WarFlow Non-Gold Buyer’s Guide (Part 3) by wilhung53

Hi everyone,

Sorry that it took a while for me to continue with my non-Gold buyer guide series.  Last time I have covered how to get your economy going by strategically upgrading Barn, Treasury, and Market.

This time we will discuss how to choose your starting Hero.  Even if you are several weeks into the game, I think you’ll find that analyzing each Hero’s strengths and weaknesses objectively will help making better choices for picking the right Heroes later down the road.

As you may already know, there are 9 starting Heroes to choose from.
I will go over each Hero’s advantages and disadvantages, both short-term and long-term.  I will provide a detailed analysis for each Hero, followed by my conclusions.

I will credit richthegreat198 with the Warflow hero guide – [url=thread-12926-1-1.html]http://forum.dovogame.com/thread-12926-1-1.html[/url].
Please use that as a reference.  I will focus this article on a detailed analysis of the Heroes.

Haera – Frost Longbowmen – High Parry Rate – Skill: Strafe
Str 67 Dex 48 Int 65
Haera is a very popular choice for players who like using skill ATK.
With a powerful Horse and Heroes that boosts Morale like Charidea, Haera can hit for huge amount of damage against all units.  However, the attempts to boost Morale can fail.  Also, Strafe can certainly be Dodged or Parried.
Thus, it is not as powerful as people think.  In fact, it’s very risky if you keep missing later in the game.

Also, people are typically fairly well prepared against an obvious combo like
this.  Expect people to wear Blue graded cloaks that are fully upgraded.

You better raise your Horse level (Loyalist – Yellow) and Weapon level to 3-V (Blue or higher) or preferably 3-X if you want to do serious damage.

In addition, you need to use other Heroes that can Parry in CR-Formation to maximize the synergy, such as Waxon.

Another strategy that seems to work is to use only Haera and 4 other Morale boosters.  Charidea + a bunch of war drummers.

Haitheis – Onagers – Extra High Crit Rate
Str 70 Dex 58 Int 52

Haitheis is a machine that can hit really hard with Critical Strike.
However, she cannot Parry or Dodge.
Thus, she is vulnerable to various skills including Confuse, Stun, and does not match up very well against opponents that can Parry and Dodge well.
Thus, the best way to use her is to hide her behind Jenlon or Waxon so that she can dish out full damage with Critical Strike as much as possible.

Another thing to note is using BD – Formation when your War Academy reaches level 30, which increases Critical Strike ability.

Combined with other Heroes that has High Critical Attack rate, and you can really obliterate opponent’s forces quickly.

Jacoblin – Shadow Cavalry – High Crit Rate
Str 71 Dex 60 Int 44

Jacoblin is a horse hero that can Dodge incoming attacks while dishing out high damage.  It takes a while to find and level up a good horse, but once that is done, he can hit hard with Earthquake against multiple targets.

Nevertheless, the biggest problem with Jacoblin is he seems to be in the middle of the pack with pure brute strength and skill ATK strength.
For pure skill ATK damage, Haera or Jenlon with Strafe can do much better.
Conversely for common ATK damage, Ballistas and Onagers do much better.
Finally, there are so many horse heroes to choose from that Earthquake skill will be outclassed by skills like Spur or Wirlwind from Dragon Cavalry.

Lyone – Heavy Infantry – High Damage – Skill: Shelter
Str75 Dex 58 Int 47

Lyone is outstanding defensive hero.  With the high damage trait, she can hit pretty hard as well.  However, she does not have the high DEX that Waxon has.  Nevertheless, she still should sit in the front line.  This way, she can deal decent damage while protecting your more vulnerable units in the back row.

In CR-Formation she still Parries well enough to make her a front-line fighter.

Lyroy – Golden Cavalry – Balanced – Skill: Charge
Str 65 Dex 68 Int 42

The advantage of Horse heroes in general is their high dodge rate.
However, Lyroy’s skill is just not great.  It isn’t bad by any means, but it doesn’t do much more damage than his regular attacks.

Nevertheless, there are better choices as you move deeper into the game.
If you have chosen him as your starting hero, then I say keep upgrading Horse and equipment, and dump him once he becomes obsolete.

Maceria – Flame Light Infantry – High Damage and Mobility – Skill: Karma
Str 70 Dex 75 Int 35
Very decent stats and dodge rate.  Karma can steal morale from opponent, which can prevent opponent from using skill attacks against your army.
However, the biggest problem is that you can’t always control when Maceria uses Karma because whenever someone Parries or Dodges, you don’t gain the Morale.  Also, they know how to hide the heroes with Strafe behind defensive heroes or War Drummers like Lloybuke.


Rojald – Flame Spearsmen – High Crit Rate – Skill: Taunt
Str 64 Dex 70 Int 46
Rojaldis a very unique combination of high damage output and anti-skill guy.
However, against armies that are made up of Onagers / Ballistas / Catapults or Warlocks, his skill Taunt does absolutely nothing.

You cannot afford to waste turns doing nothing, and unfortunately there are more machine armies than usual because of how cost-efficient they are.

Now if you do use him, you must adjust your formation based on opponent’s army formation.

It is best if you put him upfront against teams with at least 1 skill ATK user, and put him behind a defensive Hero (like Waxon) if you are facing a machine army with no skill ATK users.

His Taunt can do significant damage to multiple targets, so it is imperative that you give him a good Horse and level it up well (2-X or better).

He probably also works better with other skill users too.
A T-formation with Rojald, Whattoc, and Waxon in the middle line can give you a major advantage against most teams with skill ATK users.

Royvan – Light Infantry – Skill: Confuse
Str 58 Dex 70 Int 52
Royvan is probably the weakest starting hero.
His skill Confuse looks good on paper, but until you have an okay Horse (minimum level 12 shop, level 12 TC), but you will struggle in the early game.
Even with a good Horse, there are so many better skills out there that disabling 1 unit for 1 turn for mid-low damage isn’t good enough.
It’s definitely not recommended.

Trephics – Ballista – No Skill
Str 60 Dex 65 Int 55
Trephics is one of the best starting Heroes in the game.
His ability to do good damage to multiple targets in the game allows you to beat much stronger NPCs earlier than other players.

This is not trivial.

The earlier you can go thru the different Power Regions, the faster you can start farming Adament Armor (Blue armor that lasts for a long time) from Simonz or Red Snake from Yankin (Best weapon, yellow weapon lv 29 for a long time).

You can easily change your Heroes line-up later in the game, so this gives you time advantage over other players.  One thing to note, however, is as the game progresses pass Lloybuke PR, Ballistas cannot hit as hard as they used to.

Both NPCs and other players will also have much tougher DEF by this time.
Thus, you need to somehow get a fully upgraded Red Snake (2-X or better) to maintain the edge over your opponents.  Finally, high Parry and Dodge rates later in the game really hurt the effectiveness of Ballistas / Catapults.
Thus, in you need much higher ATK and DEF to compensate for it.