The #1 most popular question for Valiant Force seems to be “here’s all the heroes I have ...dump... so what team should I build?”

Unfortunately this is not a very useful question because this is a tactical game and many battles require different tactics. For example,

• abilities and tactics that work very well in arena, like position swapping, may not work at all in raid
• fantastic defensive abilities will not help at all in the Gold Mine where the enemy does no damage at all
• on any given week, different heroes get bonus stats, and these are potentially massive bonuses of 100% or more

In other words there is no one “best” team for everything.

On the other hand, building characters is expensive. Getting to +2 max level is only the beginning; then there’s gear and runes and talent points to worry about, not to mention limit breaks. It’s hard to imagine gearing up 20 or 30 heroes especially when you’re just starting out.

So, here’s my suggestion for a long term strategy: build a modular team. Start building up a core hero or three that will practically always be on the team, and a few other positions that you can swap for alternates as needed.

Core team

The heroes you will nearly always want on a team are:

• 1 or 2 damage-oriented melee heroes (most champions or shadows)
• 1 or 2 damage-oriented range heroes (most archers, some healers)

By "damage-oriented" I'm looking for stats that lean heavily towards attack, and skills like:

• triggers that cause hero to attack extra times
• active skills that increase hero's attack or deal impressive damage
• extra mobility for reaching targets quickly

Note that while generally these roles are filled by champions, shadows, and archers, specific classes and specific heroes vary. For example, warlords are champions but often have skills that are more oriented around support, while witch doctors and spirit walkers are often built to attack even though they are healers.

Mystics are at this time not recommended for PVE teams in general. They tend to have long cooldowns, which means most of the time they are attacking. Like all heroes, their basic attack damage is calculated from their attack stat, but their real value is usually in their skills, which are based on the magic stat. Cooldowns pass quickly in the Arena, however, and mystics can be quite effective there.

Strong candidates for core damage dealers include:

• Rhea Gladiator (Ares)
• Kane Grand Ranger (Hera/Ares)
• Lancelot Berserker (Ares)
• Shizu Assassin (Ares)
• Gwen Gunslinger (Hera/Ares)
• Cybella Gunslinger (Hera/Ares)
• Kira Assassin (Ares)

Optimal faiths are shown in parentheses but aren't necessary. You can always fix faith later.

While these are top choices, they are not the only ones. Keep in mind that the amount of investment into a hero has more effect than raw potential until they are maxed out. A mediocre champion with max limit break, great gear and runes, and full talent points will absolutely crush a newly leveled Rhea Gladiator.

Focus on equipment and runes as you level up. These are easily transferred to a new hero if you change your mind about your core team.

Supporting cast

Around your core damage team you can add:

• more damage dealers for daily events and fragile bosses
• extra hit triggers to get more damage out of your core team
• stun, disable, delay, and silence to buy time
• healing to avoid attrition in longer battles
• damage mitigation, absorption, or shielding to keep your heroes alive until they can be healed
• a way to remove hero debuffs so stuns don't leave you helpless

The more damage dealers you have on a team, the more valuable it is to have heroes that can boost attacks or debuff defenses with their skills or auras.

You should also consider rotating in event heroes during event battles; the stat bonuses vary by event but are often massive, more than making up for weaker skills or talents than your regular choices.

There are many good choices to fill these roles; most heroes in the game have at least one situation where they can shine. But some of the most popular/flexible ones would be:

• Faye Holy Defender or Paladin (HP shields, remove enemy buffs)
• Arthur Holy Defender (damage mitigation)
• Lucille Inquisitor (full team immunity to damage)
• Matilda Spirit Walker (remove enemy buffs, remove hero debuffs, summon, major damage with talent investment)
• Freya Warlord (attack buff, attack triggers)
• Shizu Assassin (turn reset, stun)
• Shizu Samurai (attack triggers, defense debuff)
• Vincent Berserker (damage dealer, attack buff)

Flex formation

Because auras are powerful, it’s likely you’re going to want a formation that includes a square. That leaves these formation choices (you can flip them vertically if you want):

B 2 - B 2 C - 2 C

1 3 - 1 3 - 1 3 D

A - - - - - - - -

Because melee classes (shadow, guardian, champion) are sturdier and just overall better on average, I favor the first formation. But notice if you replace unit "A" with a ranged unit, you can have a whole new formation without breaking the aura square, and by replacing unit "B" you can move to a ranged square formation.

I'm not saying you always want to change formation when you swap units. Often I drop a replacement right into the same spot as the hero she/he is replacing. I'm just pointing out how flexible a team can be by just replacing one or two units.

Hero “tiers”

Although every hero/class combination is different and most have a unique combination of abilities that might complete a perfect team, the fact is that some just work better than others most of the time. Here’s a quick rundown on some commonly encountered heroes in the early game:

Starter heroes

Leon: Take this guy up the Zealot and Blood Knight path. His aura is very useful for triggering auras that depend on healing, and with 15 talent points for Weapon Mastery he is a powerful attacker. Ares faith is preferred. Raise duplicates to 5 stars and fuse with him to gain 4 talent points each. As a Paladin, he is outclassed by similar heroes.

Theia: Her 5-star active skill is an awkward combination of party and single-target protection and the 5 turn cooldown is too long for protecting single targets. Her passive skill only has a 45% chance to trigger which is too low to rely on. I don’t recommend raising her to 5 stars.

Leandra: She’s interesting in that she’s not a “Summoner” but can summon. Her ability to delay skills for all enemies is a little rare and can be powerful, but doesn’t happen soon enough to make her all that useful. I don’t recommend raising her to 5 stars either.

Valiants

Kane: The maximum crit rate in the game is 75% meaning his Grand Ranger aura can trigger after 71% of attacks, which is massively powerful. He’s often paired or squared with other archers with similar auras like Cybella Gunslinger, Cybella Grand Ranger, and Gwen Gunslinger. Unfortunately it takes an immense amount of resources to reach that crit rate on one hero, much less multiple heroes. His other classes aren’t bad but Grand Ranger is the one to “shoot” for. If you have the starting Valiant selector, Kane with Hera or Ares faith is the top pick for late game power.

Shizu: Her Assassin class has a powerful turn reset ability, tied again to that difficult crit stat, while Samurai is fairly easy to build and also has a very useful aura. The Magebane and Ninja classes aren’t nearly as popular but are also strong in certain situations. Shizu Ares is not a bad choice with the Valiant selector, if you don’t mind leaving Kane to the luck of the draw.

Freya: She is pretty useful in all forms, but Warlord seems to be the most popular. She’s powerful but tends to be overshadowed by some of the newer champions like Rhea and Sven. Still, she is probably the best Valiant to select if you want a powerful damage dealer to carry you through the early game.

Lucille: She’s pretty powerful in most forms but Inquisitor is the stand-out choice, giving two turns of complete damage immunity to the whole team. Still, this has a long cooldown, and won’t see a lot of use in the short early-game battles.

Darrion: He’s potentially better than Leon as a Blood Knight damage dealer but since he’s so much harder to find than Leon, it’s hard to get the multiple copies you need to make that potential a reality. He’s better than Leon Paladin in his defensive roles too. However, there are other good choices like the much more common Faye. Not recommended as a Valiant selector pick.

Kiera: Good in arena and not much else, will be redesigned soon (30-Nov-2017). Not recommended as a Valiant selector pick until then.

Famous teams

There are some teams that work famously well and have earned names and a lot of discussion.

“SDD” or “Single Damage Dealer”

This team revolves around the idea of building one high attack hero and auras around him (at this time it's always "him") to take an infinite number of turns. New players reading forum discussions seem to have two big misconceptions about this team:

• “It beats everything.” Actually these days the game is designed to counter it in multiple ways. Many enemies will react to being hit more than 15 times in a turn with powerful “I win” abilities like stunning your entire team and teleporting them randomly all over the field. Other enemies disrupt formations or auras in various ways that break this team. In short it’s rarely useful outside Raid 1. My guild finishes raid in 2 days and the other 12 days until reset, my SDD team sits on a shelf.

• “I want to make an SDD team with Zedd.” It was once possible to build SDD with a lot of different options, but these days both Matilda WD and Kahuna SW are required and there are only a few viable options for the other slots. Some people still call other formations "SDD" but in my book it doesn't count unless it's capable of infinite hits.

My take: you’re going to need to build this team for Raid 1, eventually, probably. But this is not at all a priority for new and newish players.

See Xinhuan’s FAQ for more details on SDD; it also has a lot of other good information on the game in general.

“Archer Square” or “Ranger Trigger”

This team puts Kane Grand Ranger and 3 other heroes with auras that read "when hero performs a critical hit, there is a 95% chance to trigger allies in aura to attack" in a square formation with their auras pointing at each other.

Current heroes with this trigger:

• Kane Grand Ranger (triggers 80% attack plus stun)
• Cybella Gunslinger (triggers 100% attack)
• Gwen Gunslinger (triggers 85% attack and includes pet)
• Cybella Grand Ranger (triggers 70% attack plus knockback)
• Vivi, Gatling Girl (triggers 80% attack plus silence)
• Kira Assassin (not ranged, triggers 100% attack)
• Lancelot Berserker (not ranged, triggers 80% attack plus stun)
• Luna Marksman (4-star, triggers 70% attack)
• Aaron Marksman (4-star, 90% chance to trigger stun but not attacks)

The max crit rate in the game is 75% and since they trigger on 95% of critical hits this means they trigger on about 71% of attacks. Needless to say this can mean a lot of powerful hits in just one turn. However, unlike SDD, this team will end up passing the turn which is why Kane or Lancelot is a key ingredient. Their aura also stuns enemies which is vital because this team is extremely fragile particularly in a 4-archer version and won’t last long against an enemy that can’t be controlled.

Note that sometimes the team can potentially trigger bosses with 15-hit defenses (they'll show a red percentage which climbs as they get hit) which can end badly. Swapping out an archer is a relatively straightforward solution to this problem though, unlike the SDD team which really breaks down if it’s not set up for infinite hits.

Unlike SDD this team works pretty well for most purposes, but the catch is that a 75% crit rate is easier said than done. It will take months to build 4 heroes to that level. (Keep in mind that with a strike tower you really only need to get to 73-ish%.) The general consensus is that it starts to be effective when all four archers exceed 50% crit rate. Still, it is not likely that this team will be the first or the only team you want to build.