A Guide to Heroes
by smattymatty
I made a youtube video on this exact topic a few days ago that can be found here
I’m personally more of a visual/audio learner, but I understand that a lot of people prefer text for their information so I’ve decided to put all of this information into a forum post to accompany the video. This is really my first attempt at making a text guide on a forum, so let me know if you have any criticisms!
What are heroes?
Hero monsters are strong and unique versions of monsters you can find in the game. You can spot a hero by noticing the yellow star over it’s head. Heroes will be noticeably stronger than any other monsters you fight except for bosses with their higher health pools, unique skill-sets and higher resists. They are also much more resistant to crowd control and percentage of life attacks.
As your character gets stronger and stronger, heroes become much less of a problem and can be dealt with easliy, but even once you get to that point the right combinations of heroes in the right area can still be very deadly.
When comparing to other action RPGs such as path of exile or Diablo, Heroes would be the equivalent to yellow monsters but much more in-depth and all unique.
Every hero in the game is based on a base monster and will have the same base skills as that monster. Upon killing a hero, you will be rewarded with bonus XP, bonus faction points and a loot orb that you can destroy for a pile of loot!
There are hundreds of heroes in the game spread out between all of the factions, many with their own unique skill-set and others falling into a hero “archetype”.
Hero archetypes
An “archetype” is a pre-set passive that a hero has and you can see their archetype as a suffix to their name. Like I said, not all heroes fall under these archetypes and will have their own unique skill set, but many heroes that you’ll encounter do fall under an archetype so we will go over each of them. All of the stats shown on screen during this segment will be of level 100 versions of these monsters on ultimate difficulty.
Bruiser-
The Bruiser archetype gives the hero a hefty increase to damage, armor and resists, and also a 20% chance to stun on hit for half a second. This is one of the more dangerous archetypes, and you’re going to want to be weary of Bruisers especially when playing in hardcore since they can catch you off-guard especially if your resists aren’t capped and if you have low stun resist.
Burning -
Burning Heroes will deal extra burning damage on attacks, have increased fire resistance, and a chance at retaliating with fire damage when hit. Burning heroes also have an additional skills with a 12 second cooldown that deals fire damage in an area around them for 6 seconds. Burning heroes are easily dealt with as long as you are capped on your fire resist. As a fire build the extra resist can be annoying, but that is why resist shredding is so important.
Charger -
Charger heroes will occasionally charge at you from a distance. This charge can be used every 5-6 seconds, and it will deal some heavy physical damage and stun you for up to 1.5 seconds. With low armor the damage can be dangerous, and the stun and mobility chargers can use can synergise with their other abilities to quickly kill you, so watch out for chargers.
Corrupted -
Courrupted heroes will spawn an aether bomb around them every once in a while, and comes with a buff that gives them extra aether damage on hit and extra aether resist. You only have to worry about corrupted heroes if you are low on aether resist.
Defender -
Defenders will spawn with a 10 meter aura that will reduce damage taken by 25%, increase damage by 10% and give 100 defensive ability. They also come with a small chance to stun and deal extra damage on hit. Defenders can make large packs of monsters very tanky so it’s best to focus them down as soon as you can, especially when paired with other heroes with stacking buffs.
Diseased -
Diseased heroes have increased poison & acis resist and will spawn with a small aura that will deal poison damage and apply chance to miss attacks. They also come with a long ranged projectile attack that leaves a poisoned ground which deals poison damage, reduces your offensive ability and also gives you a big 50% chance of impaired aim. Diseased monsters can be really annoying with all of the chance to miss they apply with reduced offensive ability and chance to fumble, but not too dangerous especially with capped acid resist.
Electrified -
Electrified heroes have increased lightning resist, lightning retaliation and a chance to deal extra lightning damage plus stun on hit. They also have an extra skill that shoots out a ton of projectiles in a nova that deal lightning damage. These projectiles can shotgun so be careful about getting too close to electrified heroes.
Frozen -
Frozen heroes spawn with an aura that will buff it’s allies with damage absorption, cold resist, and extra cold damage. They also have a long-ranged projectile skill that will deal cold damage and freeze for almost 2 seconds on hit. Watch out for the freezing projectile, since the freeze duration is much longer than some other crowd controls in the game.
Reflective -
Reflective heroes will occasionally reflect 33% of damage taken back to he player. It’s important to note that the reflective buff is only temporary, lasting 6 seconds and having a 14 second cooldown. You can tell if the hero has the reflective buff on it by noticing the big orange spikey shield around them.
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