The Last Flame – Starter Guide (Heroes and Itemization)

Beginner’s Guide to Heroes

By SwapGo.

This game is an autobattler with an enormous roster of heroes and items, and with no traits or sets bonuses to at least form a starting point of reference, as such, there’s a bit of a learning curve to mastering its broad pool of options. As such, this is more of some fair tips to get you started, and to give you an idea of what you want your builds to look like, both at an individual and at a team-wide level.

Here’s some ground rules on how to use the Hero guide:

• The Hero guide is meant to be a quick reference in case you’re stuck in how to build a hero, or want some references on what kind of stats they prioritize.
• The listed items are NOT meant to be taken as a full build.
• The heirlooms listed are meant to illustrate a Hero’s desired stats, illustrateed in priority from left to right.
• The recipes listed are SOME of the hero’s functional items, and are not to be taken at face value. To illustrate the adaptability required to succeed in high difficulty runs, every single recommended recipe is different as a thought experiment.
• Each Hero has tags for whether they are good at doing ST (Single Target) or AoE (Area of Effect) Damage, and what kind of damage they dish out. This also applies for Status that they apply (If they’re good at it).
• Heroes can have a Tank or Offtank tag. Typically, Tanks are meant to take in the brunt of the enemies and lean towards full defense, while Offtanks take a smaller chunks and have balanced stats. Most succesful teams have one of each.
• Some Heroes have the Anchor tag. This means that this Hero requires extensive investment to perform at its full potential, be it through items or through team assistance, most of them want Omnicrit. You don’t need an Anchor for a succesful run, but try not too have more than one.

Naka

• Offtank ST-Damage
• (Physical)

Naka is a melee bruiser with great bases and an inbuilt way of getting a sizable chunk of AS, quickly bootstrapping his DPS. While his cast doesn’t slow him down a lot as it scales with his attack speed, it is not great at doing damage, applying status, or shielding him, although at least it does all three. A good mix of bulk an AD, plus an item that gives Shield in small chunks, such as Viking Shield or Shielding Dagger, are an excellent way of quickly getting Naka to become both durable and damaging.

Arya

• Status (Frost)
• Stun

While Arya’s profile suggests using her as your damage dealers, she lacks the damage scaling potential of other archers, however, her spell is efficient at both stunning enemies and applying freeze, and she has an inbuilt mean of gaining AS. She makes a great fill in for caster heavy Frost and Shock teams which might not otherwise have a ton of use for Attack Speed or Crit Chance items, as she will perform fine as a damage dealer in a pinch.

Jalen

• Shielding
• Offtank

Jalen’s stubby arms hardly do any damage, but he swings them very fast. Brawler’s Rage is the only ability that gives AS%, he heals off of attacking, and his cast speed scales with AS, so a build path is clear. Jalen can be built as a tank under certain circumstances, but it’s best to focus on a mix of SP and AS so that his shileding actually has some kick, and given his very high base mana, he lends himself to Max Mana items and some more unusual SP items like Pharaoh’s Garments or Equinox.

Kris

• Healer
• ST Damage (Magic/Ethereal)

Between a passive that scales off of SP, and a spell that doesn’t really care about being cast fast, but cast as big as possible, building Kris should feel straightforward: A pile of SP and healing synergies that deprioritizes casting speed, however, Kris bizarro spell also counts as attacks, and 2 different kinds of damage. His stat spread is surprisingly aggressive, which makes it possible to instead blend attack triggers with healing.

James

• Healer
• Anchor
• Status (Frost)

James is a complex hero to build, as he requires not only good Critical Damage, but also essentially every stat in the game. SP improves his healing, AD improves his healing, AS improves his healing, he scales off of everything and is at its best when he CAN have everything. Find ways to cover for whatever you can’t afford to itemize him for via Origins or Relics, and get Omnicrit on him at all costs. He is underwhelming as a frost applier, though, its best to work in service towards the damage healing and dealing engine he can become.

Alec

• AoE Damage (Magic)
• Status (Bleed)

Alec is caster with a clear build path in Max Mana, SP, and a healthy mix of AS and/or additional ways to cheat his casting cost. He has an additional teambuilding requirement in that he wants as much of the rest of his team to be melee to maximize the his damage and reach. Due to his long time between casts, he is unreliable as a status effect applier, though he can put large swaths of stacks on bosses and single-target fights.

Nalua

• Status (Bleed)
• AoE Damage (Magic)

Nalua’s decent starting MR, relatively low mana, and 4 Bleed per casts makes her a well suited candidate to apply a large amount of status effects to most, if not all enemies in the fight. Her cast drops her health if its too high, and her passive gives her sustain if it’s too low, which makes her health fluctuate quite a bit, which is great if you have effects that rely on hitting certain health thresholds, opening up otherwise risky or difficult to access synergies.

Elriel

• Healer
• AoE Damage (Magic)

Elriel helps your team in many small, different ways. She provides healing to your frontline, some AS to your damage dealers, and peppers in a bit of damage, but doesn’t excel at any of them. She has low mana and a very high crit chance for a caster, both things that can be itemized around to make up for this lack of impact, specially thanks to her very quick cast point which lends itself to using AS as opposed to MR for mana. She benefits from incidental AD well thanks to these traits, and can be your SP user in an otherwise physical build.

Atreos

• Tank
• Status (Burn)

Atreos’ spell gives him a staggering amount of defense which makes him quite durable upfront, however, it has low uptime and he has no in-built means of sustaining himself. As such, it’s best to focus on raising his HP and MR first, and a way to heal him, be it via items or by a teammate. His AoE and damage are both too small for damage to ever be a consideration, but 3 Burn is serviceable, it will just not be hitting very many enemies at a time, line up your Ethereal attackers with Atreos’ target.

Ola

• ST-Damage (Physical)

Ola is a physical damage dealer that leverages Max Mana, gaining both MR and permanent %AD every time she casts. As such, she is interested in raw AD in order to scale. She is a very narrow, selfish hero that provides almost no utility, and has competition as far as Max Mana AD heroes go, but she has positive interactions with certain Mana Regen items and can actually do AoE damage, even if in a short area, which gives her some points.

Magmis

• Status (Burn)
• AoE Damage (Magic)
• Ethereal Attacker

Magmis is a caster that’s at odds with himself, someone that’s excellent at applying Burn with his cast thanks to his base MR and great AoE, but also wants to get in on the action since he gains AS and has a good base AS to go with. His cast point is what gets in the way, however, as it takes quite a bit to go off. Ways of getting bonus attacks might alleviate this, but in general, you don’t have to itemize him too much if all you want out of it is for the world to burn.

Pyro

• AoE Damage (Magic)
• Anchor

All Pyro cares about is casting, and the opponents being on fire. Flat SP goes to waste on him given the speed at which he produces SP when supported, so just get him to cast as fast as possible (an easy task, thanks to every 4th cast being free). Find SP% and SP payoffs for best results. His AoE might look small, but it is sufficient against perilous enemies, and he can kick off with as little support as a Burn Orb if given enough time.

Ripley

• ST-Damage (Physical)
• Anchor

Another graciously straightforward attacker with a clear build path: Get flat AD and as many critters on your team as possible. Sky Edge (its default cast) is not very good even when optimized, while Companion Vigor is a stacking AD% buff that needs no other scaling but the rest of your team equipping items and passives, leaving all this room for activities. Something else of note is that Ripley has the highest base Defense in the game, which makes the first few HP items great at raising its bulk to prevent it from being sniped.

Khiro

• ST-Damage (Physical/Ethereal)
• Status (Bleed)

Khiro’s main attraction is his passive, which allows him to turn his full AD into an AoE attack with fixed speed, regardless of his AS, and adding bleed to boot. This makes him an easy pick for -AS payoffs and other items that just rewards having a bunch of AD. His cast is serviceable, although hard to optimize for due to its narrow range and dependance on Bleed. Even with a Bleed engine on lock, you still want AD and Ethereal Amp as it also has an independent AD scaling component.

Emily

• ST-Damage (Ethereal)
• AoE Damage (Magic)

Emily leverages SP to deal a hefty amount of Ethereal damage to one enemy and an alright amount of magic to all the others. Her spell animation scales with AS and also makes instant attacks, which coupled with her low mana cost, makes for multiple possible build paths: Going for low mana and mana regen to attack via casts, or going for chonky amounts of SP + Ethereal Amp and simply attack with large amounts of SP, whatever the item rolls decide.

XZ-09

• Tank
• Anchor

XZ-09 is a tank whose sustain is entirely dependent on its ability to do damage. It has a bit of a slow start, but with the right set up, it will only attack faster and faster while recuperating more and more health. This machine requires a ball of stats to get rolling, so a good balanced approach of either scaling bulk + flat offense, or scaling offense + flat bulk tends to be the best way to lift this juggernaut from the ground. Do not give it more mana, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Zanmar

• ST-Damage (Ethereal)
• Anchor

As long as your team can deliver a large amount of Shock, Zanmar brings in the thunder. His cast scales off of SP, Shocks on the target, and Ethereal Amplification, and thus can get staggering numbers as all off these things piggyback off of each other. You want to maximize that as opposed to getting several different Ethereal sources, which often requires assistance from his team providing the status effect, as well as some additional stats.

Joanna

• Status (Frost)
• AoE Damage (Magic)
• Summons

Joanna’s spell has a huge AoE and self-scales, as it applies frost to enemies, as such, it’s best to go for mana regen and then add a bit of SP, or add scaling SP so that she keeps up ramping in utility. Her cast point makes it not as bad to sacrifice AS, although her base AS makes it hard to go for -AS synergies without dedicated items. Having Joanna also adds summons to your team, making Drake passives and other similar effects more attractive.

Dagon

• Summons
• Healing

Despite his bulky appearance, Dagon is not a tank, and instead wants to preserve his shield so that all summons can benefit from a hefty boost in AS. While his elementals scale off of his AD and AS, they don’t do so in a significant enough way to justify building over his poor bases, so it’s best to raise their stats through specialized items so that they can continuously top up your team and maybe even part of the DPS charts at times.

Kara

• ST-Damage (Physical)
• Offtank

Easily the most confusing character as it is the only hero with a movement ability, the important part about Kara’s kit are: She gains 100% crit chance for free, and she can disengage, usually once, ever, good for tagging out into your scaling tank. Mana Regen is pretty good as she will have to cover distance, but if you give her too much she will not attack and repeatedly vanish, if I ever lab the “optimal” amount I’ll update this. Max Range and Omnicrit are both very funny on Kara for different reasons.

Terros

• AoE Damage (Magic)
• Offtank

Terros has the lowest base AS and the higher base Crit in the game, and also wants SP and Defense, puzzling. He is in dire need of MR to patch his mana gain from his atrocious animation, and from there you have two choices: While he is incentivized from defending, he cannot sustain himself, Magic Steal will make him get chunks of health from ripping through enemies. Alternatively, find ways to share his Defense or Crit Chance from the backlines and let him focus on damage.

Ohkar

• Summons
• Anchor

Inside Ohkar there are two wolves, one is a boring tank that you have to itemize heavily so that he can crit to maybe heal himself a bit, and the other is when you funnel AD and SP directly into his veins to repeatedly buff his wolves into engines of destruction. The hard part of all of this is making sure he does not die in the fray, while his base bulk is fine, his method of healing isn’t. A smidgen of defense, or even getting him additional range, can help inmensely here.

Ziko

• ST-Damage (Physical)
• Offtank

Scratch another “Melee hero with self sustain that has AD% so wants flat AD and a bit of bulk” for the list. Sarcasm aside, Ziko does have a surprisingly low mana, which opens up a different avenue to focus on casts. His cast does NOT scale with AS, which means that it is possible to use -AS items to give him enormous chunks of AD and permacast with a healthy dose of Mana Regen, which will chunk enemies while slowly raising his damage.

Layla

• Tank
• Summons

Layla and Teddy have a cavalcade of silly interactions. She is an engine which lets you add summon effects and heals to a hero. Her Shield is not reduced unless attacked directly (which can cause Teddy to perish and her to remain), and has a handful of other item specific interactions like Golden Phalanx. She can be build as a caster with Mana Regen as she heals a good chunk, but her passive and stats sharing lend her more towards being built as a brawler.

Gerald

• Buffs

Gerald is essentially the equivalent of playing 1 less hero for the benefit of having 100% critical chance of all of your characters. He can hold some AS/crit items early to get some spare change while you build up the necessary casting power, but make sure not to neglect your overall team strength and chase synergistic Origins. His cast is incompatible with long range, so you still have to find some ways to make sure he doesn’t perish in the middle of the action.

Elios

• Buffs
• Offtank

Quite similar in function to Gerald, though with a striking advantage in survivability and scalability. Elios is an engine by which your team becomes unkillable. Since the buff stacks, getting Elios to perma-cast with a decent chunk of SP can eschew the need of actual tanks, though positioning for him might be difficult for a few bosses. His passive is bait, though at least he makes decent use of incidental AD and self-sustains himself just a smidgen.

Kasara

• ST-Damage (Magic)
• Stun

Kasara might be the most consistent and inconsistent way to stun a single enemy, with very low mana and cast time allowing her to generate a ton of mitigation in Shock teams. She gets some SP for free, so it’s best to start with -Mana and MR, but do not neglect her damage potential. Positioning her is tricky, and often she doesn’t do exactly what you want her to do in chaotic fights, but the ability to place stuns where you need them, or close enough, comes with a bit of practice.

Leuko

• Buffs
• Status (Frost)

Leuko has Omnicrit as his passive, arguiably the most breakable ability in the game, and yet is saddled with being incentivized to not use it for himself. The AD buff he gives to his team is quite sizeable, and he isn’t as proficient at applying Frost, but does it well enough. He gets more mileage out of certain flat sources of damage that scale with things that aren’t stats, which support his DPS and makes him a possible damage dealer, but his slow-ish cast point and small AoE makes it tricky to push the damage of his own cast.

Rose

• Healer

Rose is the easiest way to sustain an entire team that’s under fire, and has the unique property of being able to heal Summons, which interacts incredibly well with a handful of heroes. Her Max Mana is too high to bother trying to reduce, but her cast uptime is too important for Max Mana synergies, so get a good mix of MR and SP, and make sure to position your team so that no one that can’t afford to be left out is.

Zotz

• ST-Damage (Physical)
• Status (Shock)

Zotz is a caster and autoattacker with good bases that self-scales, but having no AS scaling on his cast, and getting a pitance of flat-scaling doesn’t help his case. His passive caps out pretty early, but 60% AS is nothing to scoff at and is well worth building towards. There’s some unusual items and passives that turn SP into AD which makes it a better place to start when trying to hit the 180 Bonus stats on both, or at least close enough to let his casts get the last few points. Shock is also in demand for certain teams.

Cora

• Healer
• Offtank

Cora is a bit of a headscratcher, her self sustain and high AS implies a brawler, but her cast is meant to support her team, and it is often inconsistent due to requiring multiple enemies to surround her. At the very least, Bullet Storm provides a bit of a buffer in certain tricky fights and is a way to scale healing off of frost, shielding items can also be used if your team has access to summons, past that, invest a bit in survivability that can leverage her high AS and maybe a bit of cast efficiency to pad a more melee oriented team.

Rinji

• ST-Damage (Ethereal)
• Status (Yes)
• Anchor

Rinji likes it when the enemies have numbers on them, but he is also really good at putting numbers on enemies, so you’re faced with a conundrum on whether you want him to do the damaging (Ethereal Amp, more Ethereal sources that scale off stats), or the number adding (cast triggers, on hit/crit effects). He has decent base crit, and his cast works with Crit Damage multiplier for some absurd numbers if you can find Omnicrit for this fun guy.

Eagar

• ST-Damage (Physical)
• Status (Burn)

Eagar is a supporting brawler that applies status effects with a couple of non-evident failpoints. His cast deals huge base damage and scales off of Burn, Frost, AND SP, but has a small AoE and a hideous cast point, making it difficult to optimize for. His self-sustain from Ice and Fire is actually quite decent, but Ice and Fire alone doesn’t provide enough Frost to sustain him, so an ideal team would contain a second source of Frost, and someone who can profit off of burns more consistently than he can.

Marco

• ST-Damage (Physical/Magic)
• Status (Bleed)

Marco has best in class base AD and an ability to gain chunks of crit by just playing for himself, which can be amplified with range items. Other physical damage dealers can profit FROM Bleed better than he can, but he can apply bleed consistently while simultaneously putting out decent numbers, which compresses slots in your team. His cast has high base damage but is narrow and slow, but it might come up if your team really doubles down on bleed, enabling you to go for shield payoffs with a bit of elbow grease.

Vinrak

• ST-Damage (Ethereal)
• Anchor

Vinrak is a chainsaw, he takes a few seconds to rev up, and then shreds through the enemy team wtih one cast as he converts a pile of SP into both AS and Eth Amp. Given AS caps out quite quickly and he converts a single Enchanted Improvised Staff into almost 40% of it, you don’t need to itemize as much for AS, and should instead look for the strongest sources of Ethereal damage possible. He is less punished for going for Max Mana, but definitely don’t neglect ALL of AS when your cast bar is 30 pips long, or he might not even get one cast off.

Zephyr

• Summons
• Tank

Zephyr is the glue holding together most Summon-based teams as a tank with fast attacking adds created purely by autoattacking. He self-sustains quite well if he can constantly keep 3 Elementals around, but if you want to actually keep them around rather than rotate them, his passive is cast against you, which would require more items or heroes to back up. In spite of this, his bases and ability to get 3 summons means he sticks around quite often.

Azura

• AoE Damage (Magic)
• Anchor

Azura is a self-sustaining electric engine, since she turns casts into health, and health into both damage and SP (which is damage). Much like Pyro, you’re interested in maximizing casting speed, and have the rest of the team do all the heavy lifting when it comes to status. Despite her constantly pumping her HP, Azura isn’t the best a tanking without a really strong status engine and some items or magic steal, don’t treat it like an offtank in the early game.

Ryu

• AoE Damage (Magic)
• Offtank
• ST-Damage (Physical)

Ryu’s cast provides the only decaying shield in the game, which does count for a number of things that want you to simply have or make a lot of it. he self-sustains well with the staggering amount of Life/Magic Steal he gets handed on a platter, but it only works for a limited time, which does give him time to get certain scaling items to kick in. You can focus more on his cast or on his auto attacks, but even when you don’t care about his cast, get about 40 SP to optimize his ability to trigger his passive.

Azar

• Aoe Damage (Magic)

Azar has the strangest targetting in the game, and offers zero utility to his team whatsoever, however, funny 400 AoE damage cast with low cast time is funny. What separates Azar from other shield payoffs is that he doesn’t really mind having a ton of health for his shield, just that his entire life-bar is white, so you don’t need to focus on getting his max health up. A character cannot die while they still have at least 1 shield, so you can max out on self-damage effects quite well.

Eslo

• Aoe Damage (Magic)
• Anchor

Elso’s cast is custom made to maximize damage, as SP, Frost, and his own Frost scaling all scale multiplicatively. In addition to that, adding health gives him more room for shield, which turns into more SP, which turns into more damage. His targetting is awkward, but his AoE is huge to make up for it and his base mana can reach minimum in a jiffy, just make sure you can really apply Frost to watch some frost orbs go through enemies like a landmower.

Nox

• ST-Damage (Physical)
• Status (Bleed)

Nox is the only hero in the game allowed to have 2 mana, and has AS scaling on his cast which guarantees criticals attacks, ensuring all manner of triggers are going off at all time. He has synergies with bleed teams, though shouldn’t be your main source unless you have items that enable it like Kara’s Amulet or Conjured Arbalest. Nox is very small, don’t neglect his durability, he can’t top the DPS chart while dead.

Zogg

• Status (Shock)
• AoE Damage (Magic)
• Shielding

Zogg is a shock supplier with additional utility in slowly adding Mana Regen to his team. He also generally has a smidgen of Shield going for any synergies that might care about it, and is great with other heroes that are using their shields for not just damage mitigation. Getting permacasting is difficult due to his high max mana, but his passive can profit from just having an idle pile of SP, so its not too bad to mix in some of it with your MR.

Flynn

• Stun
• Status (Shock)

Perhaps the best payoff for shock teams, even if not the best Shock applier himself. Flynn is an extra layer of mitigation for your tank while also killing enemies by staring them down (This is Spell Damage, which synergizes with Frost!). His cast damage is…alright, but given his cast animation, its literally best for you to max Mana and all kind of mana related triggers. Be very careful about WHO is getting targetted by his cast at any given time, specially around Azura.

Eva

• Tank

Eva is a scaling tank that reaches quite high numbers of defense, yet feels lackluster on any warm afternoon. She doesn’t self-sustain, doesn’t do a whole lot of upfront damage, and doesn’t scale at all unless you have Frost, which makes her a lot harder to add to a team early. Her passive does give her a good chunk of upfront defense if you position aggressively, and she has decent synergy with Summons which will also improve this number.

Ruhn

• Tank
• Status (Shock)

Ruhn enjoys large doses of health and small doses of shield, long walks on the beach are up for debate. His cast is most efficient in problematic fights, but getting it to scale is kind of difficult thanks to its miserable base damage, getting 32% extra damage off of a single tank enchanted heirloom sounds exciting until you realize its 32% of 40. Regardless, his self healing when shielded should be incentive enough to give him oodles of HP to waltz into danger with.

Orion

• Status (Shock)
• Tank

Orion is a very similar shock tank as the above, though instead of focusing entirely on being big and bulking up, he can serve a much better role at supporting his team by adding a lot of shock and being able to stun by himself. His statline lets him profit more from AS and -Mana, and even has a very juicy, if quite unreliable, payoff for running very efficiently by allowing him to Shield your team, though I’d hardly see that as a main plan unless you can put a disgusting amount of SP on him.

Blake

• ST-Damage (Physical)
• Status (Burn)
• AoE Damage (Magical)

Blake is a generalist damage dealer with a very comfortable cast and passive. Nothing jumps out of him as incredible, but everything is good, so just slap some AD items on him and watch him go. The combination of AS based casting and low mana makes his cast very comfortable to spam, which secreltly lends him to be a decent characters in Frost teams so that you don’t have to constantly reroll every AD item you run into. He applies Burn on the side as well.

Zoe

• AoE Damage (Magic)
• Status (Frost)

Zoe is an omnicrit caster that takes quite a bit to kick into high gear. Much like Alec, she profits the best from a highly melee team to maximize the damage of her cast, which can both shred and flash-freeze single target fights. She takes quite a bit to set up unlike other omnicritters, so plan A tends to be to leverage her ability to apply frost while plan B comes in the lategame where you can get SP on her without sacrificing velocity.

Leeam

• ST Damage (Physical)
• Anchor

Leeam’s spell is essentially a way to turn every crit into a double attack, without the whole critting aspect. As such, he is less interested in getting high crit damage ratios and more in having things happen when he attacks (Though if Omnicrit is on the table, go crazy). Leeam self-ramps his crit chance, so get a good dose of it and let it snowball from there, best if you can add some Drakes into the mushroom stew.

Karina

• Anchor
• ST Damage (Physical)
• AoE Damage (Magical)

Karina is privileged with being the leanest damage oriented character with both AS based casting and Omnicrit, and gaining critical chance from shielding almost begs you to funnel all your team around helping her. There is essentially no wrong combination of items you can put on her, but special mention goes to those that turn offensive stats such as AD/SP into Ethereal damage, as she is able to get them to critical as well with no outside assistance.

Savos

• Summons

Savos is paradoxically a carry support, a hero that requires a ton of investment to then reinvest that on his team. He asks you to pick a lane between AD/SP/AS and get a pile of that, and generally, the easier way to get a lot of a stat is to dump the rest of them, which means it’s often the right choice to side in a -AS or Max Mana synergy along the way. Look out for the, like, 3 ways to keep bots alive, it increases is efficiency to an absurd degree.

Giachi

• Tank
• Anchor

Giachi is, also paradoxically, a carry tank, he is very slow at doing his thing and requires set-up to get both the mana to cast constantly, and the shield to give bite to his cast, however, if he gets his groove on, he is a damage reflecting goliath. He gets zero mileage off traditional offensive stats, just give him a bit of bulk and a bit of outside healing/shielding so that his first cast has some kick, and make sure he has at least a bit of sustain so that his health never drops low enough for his shield to be chipped at.

Silas

• Status (Bleed)
• Offtank

Silas is a self-sustaining vampire with a bit of an identity crisis, not really having a ton of base bulk or a ton of base damage to excel at either, but having some of the highest AS available in town. Getting synergies by leeching health from your team is a bit fiddly, but generally, a good approach is to leverage the high AS for some good triggers and get good chunks of defense to make the most of all the life he drains for being very unimpressive.

Ralf

• AoE Damage (Magic)

Ralf is a melee hero whose basic attacks deal magic damage instead of physical, and also hit in an area. This means that he benefits from Magic Steal and Frost instead of Life Steal and Bleed. He does not benefit from SP AT ALL and his cast is almost all downside (ATK loss and time spent not DPSing in exchange for a pitance of Frost), so he is built to both be a dump for all the -AS items in the game, and an outlet for AD items in Frost teams.

Alaric

• ST Damage (Magic)
• Energy

Alaric is a mage with astounding bases, but saddled with the most awkward spell in the videogame (that you’re meant to like to cast). Both his passive and his cast time incentivize for going for a Very Big Cast, which is gonna take a while to build back up from 0 mana, so your best interest is to have your SP be doing work for you while you load your second big cast, such as Healer’s Cloak or Darko’s Bow, which lends itself well to Max Mana synergies that either enable, or reward, having a big pile of SP lying around.

Elora

• ST Damage (Ethereal)

Elora has inbuilt Ethereal Infused Attacks which opens up all manners of ways to optimize both her damage and sustainability. The most important interaction is that Ethereal Amplification becomes another axis through which to increase her DPS, raising her potential quite high, and she gets a bit of a kick from any Energy producing items. Her cast gets better the longer you go without it, so its fine to leave cast speed a bit on the wayside, and is another multiplier when you go from Burn to Frost.

Celeste

• Energy

Celeste is perhaps the most laser-focused hero in the game, and is also a commitment to have 1 less hero through act 1. She is an investment that turns Mana Regen items for one hero into Mana Regen items for the many, which means your team will now essentially be perma-casting after you reach Surge 12. There is not much else to say, except to be on the lookout for the Origins that make her quickly pivot from fiddly to exceptional.

Nylea

• Tank
• Anchor

Nylea is perhaps the closest thing in this game to Exodia, not in the sense that there aren’t other characters that can solo a run, but that she requires the most specific items to do so. Her endgame goal is to become a pile of stats, and then somehow stat-check mobs into submission. If you manage to get Omnicrit on her, she can Surge double digit amounts of times per cast, at which points you will be seeing Endless tier stats in a regular run.

Solorath

• Anchor
• ST-Damage (Ethereal)
• Healer

Solorath functions a bit like Leeam in that he compresses a lot of on hit effects in a very short amount of time, although he is less oriented on scaling like crazy and more on getting a lot of work done. He has active synergies with Max Mana, but most max mana heirlooms (and even most recipes) aren’t super great on him, so be on the lookout for the few that you can leverage. He is lacking in basically every stat early on, get any source of Ethereal damage on him so that he can at least heal, then worry about finding the outstanding recipes for him.

Shrop

• ST Damage (Physical)
• Status (Bleed)

Shrop doesn’t always top the DPS charts, but he sure tops the Single Damage Per Hit chart quite consistently. He provides a slow tap of bleed and after which he follows with the most devastating single target attack in the game, which can pick off problematic fights with ease. Because of the way his cast works, do not bother with %AD, and instead focus on crit multipliers and raw numbers, and maybe even some -%AD just to laugh at it.