Heroes, characters, whatever you may call them, are the backbone of your gameplay in Valiant Force. Heroes are split into valiants and non-valiants, on top of that, they are also split into 5 different classes. Here are some things you may or may not know about them:
- #-star. All heroes have a maximum star potential. This ranges from 3-5 stars (not considering monsters). Star potential is not the hero's current star value. For example, you may draw Rin, Luna, Claude or Victoria at 3-star, but they have a capability to be upgraded to 4, 4, 4 and 5 stars respectively. Yes, this means that some heroes will never get to 4-stars or 5-stars, at least until the devs release new content. For this reason you might believe that only 5-star potential heroes are ever useful, but I will talk more about this below.
- #-star+1/2. All heroes have a current star value. This can be anything from 3-5 stars (not considering monsters). In between each star value there is also a "+1 stage" and and "+2 stage". Thus, we can see that the possible states of a 5-star potential hero is: 3-star, 3-star+1, 3-star+2, 4-star, 4-star+1......5-star+1, 5-star+2. Once a hero hits their maximum star+2 stage, they can then be limit broken 5 times to increase their max level by 5. Together, star values and +1/2 stages dictate the base stats of this character. Base stats means stats outside of levels, equipment, buffs, auras or skills. So while low star values does mean lower stats, do keep in mind that star value does not affect skill damage or effects at all, skills are entirely separate (although many skills utilize a percentage of some stat to be their base damage). Also, no equipment in this game has a stat or level requisite to equip, so it is very possible and very wise to make up for a char's low star value with high power equipment.
- What are Valiants? Out of all 5-star potential heroes in the game, there are a specific 6 of them known as Valiants. These Valiants differ from their non-valiant counterparts in that 1) they are hard as hell to draw and 2) their base stats are slightly higher than their non-valiant counterparts. Hence you can consider them as extremely powerful units that deserve lots of investment since they promise great returns. Since Valiants merely have better raw stats, do realize that in some scenarios raw stats cannot help you as much as other options. So don't completely neglect the non-valiants as each hero is truly unique in VF and thus many can actually do things Valiants cannot. We shall talk more about that in a bit.
- Faith and re-rolling. In VF, each hero's stats are further semi-randomized with the help of faiths. Faiths alter your character's (non-equipment) stats by a fixed distribution format unique to each faith, but note that in spite of what the in-game hints say, faith does not affect stat growth, but rather stat distribution itself. This means that any faith changes will impact every stat point the hero has, not just those gained after the faith change. So go forth and re-roll faiths to your heart's (or wallet's) desire. Do however, note the one thing not commonly known about faith re-rolling: that the hero to be sacrificed in faith re-rolling is always based on the target hero's POTENTIAL star value and not current star value. This is somewhat confusing because there is also another re-rolling in the game, which is for aura direction. This re-rolling is, in contrast, based on the target hero's CURRENT star value. Do note that, for this aura direction re-rolling, a +1 will bring the sacrifice requisite up to the next star level. Example: 3-star Vincent only needs to sacrifice another 3-star hero to re-roll aura direction, but a 3-star+1 Vincent would need to sacrifice a 4-star hero instead. Upgrade wisely.
- Gallery is your (best)friend. In VF, there are many factors influencing your plan for utilizing any character. These are generally either faith or advancement-related (skills/stats/auras). Here, a commonly ignored but ridiculously useful tool is the in-game gallery. There, you can see the stat distributions, skills and auras of any character in the game. You are also able to adjust the faith and +1/+2 of that character to show you what their stats and skills would be like in those situations. Do note that the stat numbers shown in the gallery are 1) 100% accurate, and 2) Not inclusive of buffs or equips, but inclusive of faith and considers only max-level situations.
P.S. The gallery can be accessed through Hero>Gallery on your toolbar. Valiants and the recently added 5-star monsters are found under the "Special" tab.
- Much ado about classes. Classes in this game work very differently from other games, mainly because of how the characters also work differently. In other games, one would assume that classes dictate the stat growth/distribution as well as active and passive skills available to the hero. So this would mean that all Slayers, Magebanes, Galdiators, Rune Maguses, etc should have the same abilities, but nothing could be further from the truth. In VF, classes ONLY dictate the character's stat growth/distribution and their regular attack pattern. They do not affect skills or more importantly, auras in any way. Instead, each VF character/hero is unique even within their own class. This means that the skill/aura of each character of a certain class may very well only be available to that hero in that class only. Nevertheless, there are exceptions: some auras are commonly-held. One such example is "Assault Deathblow", which is an aura held commonly between Invoker Isabella, Gunslinger Luna and Kensei Rin. There are also several similar skills that are almost the same, the biggest example here would be all the poison-inflicting skills, which different heroes have almost the same skill, but the poison damage is based on a different stat for different heroes. All in all, this means that each hero is truly unique as compared to other characters and offers a different set of gameplay options.
- Skills vs Stats. The interesting and rather unintuitive thing about VF regarding skills is that, all skills deal the same type of damage, namely, magic damage. Each hero's skill usually deals damage based on some stat of the hero, but the damage itself is always done as magic damage. This includes skills of clearly non-magic classes such as warriors/champions and archers. Now, if you would refer to the description of each stat in the game's tutorial, you would find that the MAG stat increase both magic attack and magic defense. If this is true, it would imply that two heroes with the exact same skill, same skill level and same stats that provide the skill damage but different MAG should deal different amounts of damage with their skill, with the one higher in MAG dealing more damage. Also, note the only stats that provide magic defense: DEF and MAG. What this means is that, using skills on mages would deal much less damage while using skills on low MAG and DEF heroes would be much more effective. This also means that having higher MAG on a class that seemingly has nothing to do with MAG can mean an edge when using skills. On the other hand, this also implies that all regular attacks deal damage via the ATK stat, so while it makes sense for a mage character to stack MAG, do note that it doesn't help improve his regular attack strength at all.
- Skills have cooldowns. Skills in VF don't cost mana or anything like that, they operate on a turn-cooldown basis. Each time you enter a new battle, this turn-cooldown is set to its maximum, where it slowly decreases one per turn, until you are finally able to use the skill. Most of the time, skill cooldowns are anywhere between 4 and 7 turns inclusive. This means that: 1) Not all heroes in a squad necessarily have their skills ready on the same turn, and 2) For short fights or fights that you cannot afford to drag out, you can mostly ignore skill and focus on regular attacks.
- Are skills just more damage? The answer to that is just: no. Skills serve an additional purpose of controlling the battlefield with non-damage effects. These effects include: shielding ally, silencing enemy, reducing enemy DEF, stunning enemy and even charming enemy to fight for you instead. Protip: silences and stuns work extremely well against bosses and in PvP scenarios. In fact, sometimes skills may even deal less damage to a target than a regular physical attack. This usually happens when the target has incredibly high MAG. So while a hero might have only 4 potential stars or an inappropriate faith, but the effect of their skills can make them an indispensable part of a powerful team. Do note that some skills have non-damage effects that scale with the level of the skill. Another thing to note is that unlike hero level, skill level is not needed to max out a character for upgrading or +1/+2.
- [NEWLY ADDED] Now to address the elephant in the room. How should you choose the overall strategy for your squad, which heroes to keep/use and which to sacrifice? Generally speaking, when you have only just started on VF, any 5-star potential heroes should be utilized as much as possible, regardless of faith or class. As time goes on, you will amass more and more heroes, so the general rule-of-thumb is obviously to focus on developing those 5-star potential heroes or valiants that you may draw. However once you get to a point where you can pick and choose among them (because you bought gems to speed up progress or got lucky with draws), what then would be your choice determiner? Here is rough step-by-step guide.
- Pick out those heroes with faiths clearly in-line with their class role. Examples are Hera Cybella, Athena Kiera, etc. For more information of what faiths are clearly in-line with their class role, you can check out Break's Simple beginners guide. These heroes will form your squad's "core".
- Once you have identified the above heroes, you would what what I call the "core" of a squad. With this "core" you can determine your squad's core strategy. A core strategy is some kind of plan you have for getting the most out of your squad. This is usually mechanic-based, utilizing auras or skills/attack formations to gain bonuses. The general idea behind a core strategy is that it makes your squad of 5 heroes have a total combat power of more than their individual combat powers added together. In short, 5>1+1+1+1+1. Try to incorporate your core heroes into your core strats as much as you can since they will likely be the strongest individual characters in the 5-man squad. Once you have your core strategy, you can then start incoporating some of your Heroes who have rather weird faiths for their class. Such Heroes may be things like Ares Luthor, Athena Cybella, Kratos Shizu, Hera Darrion and so on. You may find that, after designating a specific squad strategy, faiths previously thought of as bad or unusable can actually work out in your favor. Remember to check the gallery for numbers and stats that can support your ideas. Now you have a team! Any heroes still not utilized at this point can be used for rerolling faiths or getting better aura directions for the Heroes utilized in the squad. Or even better, make another squad and try to make use of them over there! There's always some strategy out there that can utilize some weird hero-faith combination!
- To help everyone out, here are some (rather straight-forward) examples of core strategies:
These example core strategies are very simple and have quite strict Hero requirements. Real core strategies used by players such as you and I can be much more complex and needs to be designed to meet the resources you and I have at hand. So don't worry if your core strategy looks nothing like these! As long as you have a plan, you can work towards fulfilling it. As always, be sure to check the gallery to confirm your theories.
- Healing Poison strat utilizes the combo of any AoE healer (mainly Inquisitor/Archbishop Theresa or Archbishop Luthor, but things like Victoria/Darrion Blood Knight or even Crusader Natalia can work to an extent) with the aura effect of most Witch Doctors, causing massive DoT damage while keeping the team alive and well.
- The Trigger Happy strat utilizes the "x% chance to trigger others in aura to attack with y% of their ATK" auras. The triggering mechanics are usually either "When Hero attacks" (Warlords), "When others in aura attack" (Kensei), "When hero lands a critical attack" (Marksman) or "When Hero defeats an enemy". When such heroes are placed together in overlapping aura formations, they can attack almost endlessly each turn. This strat is also one of the best for clearing the daily Gold Mine event.
- The Stunlock strat utilizes aura stunners such as Dragoon Vincent/Freya, Slayer Fiona, Marksman Aaron, Zealot Natalia to keep stunning the enemy team non-stop. This is a team that does not innately require any healer since stuns are equivalent to healing the same damage the enemy will deal if he had not been stunned. This strat can be used in combination with Silencer strat or Sleepknock strat.
- The Silencer strat utilizes heroes with silence/skill counter increasing skills such as Kensei/Magebanes, Mind Warders and certain archers with silence/skill counter increasing skills. This sort of team focuses on preventing the enemy from using their key skills in combat, and are most effective in Arena, Boss maps or the daily Capitol's Last Stand event. Can be used in conjunction with all other strats.
- Sleepknock strat is kind of like the stunlock strat, except that sleep and knockback effects are used instead. Thus, these teams are almost always predominantly ranged regular attackers with no splash damage (because splash damage or multi-hits will wake up sleeping enemies). The idea behind this strat is to "divide and conquer", removing more difficult enemies and cutting the enemy team down starting from their weakest member. This strat usually also incorporates some attack triggering elements and is rather heavy on ranged physical single-target damage, making a point to focus-fire enemies to death one-by-one.
- Stonewall strat utilizes Holy Defenders or Paladins, at least 2 of them or more, sometimes also with a MAG-buffing Mystic char. The idea is simply to out-tank the enemy as DEF and MAG ratings are raised to insane levels, preventing all if not most of incoming damage. Usually requires a strong healer to complete the line-up.
- Desolator strat utilizes DEF-reducing abilities, mainly found on Champions and Shadows, combined with strong cleaving and multi-hitting regular attacks to form a quick rushdown type of strategy that can quickly devastate enemy teams with close-knit formations. Usually has no healer or tank so as to maximize damage output, using instead a CRT or ATK buffing archer.
This marks the end of the first "Did you know" guide. Please let me know in the comments how useful this information has been for you or something you wish to be improved on. Thank you!
P.S. Apologies for the bad formatting, I'm still trying to figure things out here.
