Saturday, January 8, 2022

14.71m damage on Hydra Hard with WEAK STATS: SPD from 157, HP from 33k, 2x 5* champs, DEF from 1945

In this blog post I share my success of 14.71m damage on Hard Hydra Clan Boss with a team with very weak/mediocre stats. Update: I also added stats, masteries and lots of explanation.

  • Speeds from as low as 157 
  • HP from as low as 33k
  • 2 champions at level 50
  • DEF from as low as 1945
  • Few masteries on Kimi 
  • Some on Umbral
  • Arbiter in Arena set (Defense/Support), i.e. no Warmaster.
  • Umbral's Block Buffs totally unbooked, so she failed a lot (I will consider to book her during next CvC, she just takes too many books so I have to think) - I might have performed better if she didn't fail. Picture at the bottom.

Picture 1 of 3 - the battle result:

This team composition strategy focuses the entire team to do nothing else than support Geomancer. As you can see from the picture Geomancer and Shamael did all of the damage.

Picture 2 of 3 - the stats:

  • Geomancer is my Clan Boss champion (tuned team) - not changed for Hydra
  • Aox was my old Clan Boss champion (untuned team) - not changed for Hydra
  • Arbiter is my Arena lead - not changed for Hydra
  • Umbral has been a secondary champ, used in niche cases where I needed Provoke. Not planning to 6 star her yet - lower priority. But I will maybe book her during the next CvC because she keeps failing Block Buffs when unbooked.
  • Kimi I did not invest in because there is no Shadowkin Faction War yet (so I invest in other factions), but I will definitely 6 star her among the next ones.
  • Shamael is my Doom Tower sniper - not changed for Hydra.

Update: Picture 3 of 3 - Masteries:

Here also picture of the masteries for reference - there is room for improvement.

Reference: Umbral skills:

Update: some battle concepts:

The first priority was to take out the Head of Blight as I didn't have anything to deal with all its poisons. I only had mediocre healing from Aox and the near-dead healing from Arbiter.

All supporting champions tried to attack Head of Torment to give boosts to Geomancer or Arbiter when Geo was dead. For this it is important you put Arbiter in the 2nd position so she becomes the leader during all those times when Geo is killed.

If it is possible to let your champion with Mark of the Hydra die - do that. That's much easier than trying to recover them. That means having some difficult moments of not healing and letting Hydra kill it off. It is not always possible, but sometimes it certainly is.

Try not to kill Head of Torment. Any stronger attacks should be directed elsewhere such as the A2 of Shamael. He will still die, I had 2-3 Torments during my battle including 2 rotations without Torment.

When Head of Decay comes focus all efforts to kill it. That's the most dangerous Head of Hydra. However, make sure at all times that another Head has lower HP otherwise Decay will shield himself and we don't want that.

When Head of Suffering appeared I was happy. Even though he reduces damage and can be annoying he is not dangerous and he is slow. Completely ignore Head of Suffering as a low threat.

Head of Wrath must be watched carefully. He has the potential to wipe the entire team. For this reason you should have 1-2 very tanky champions allowing you to replay the battle if needed. In my case Aox and to a lesser degree the Arbiter were my tough cookies. Multiple times it happened that everyone died except those 2 and Arbiter brought everyone back followed by Aox's healing above the 50% after Arbiter's healing.

Head of Mischief is almost in the same category as Head of Suffering but he is more dangerous because he is much faster and if he eats one of your champions it's hard to target him. So after putting HP Burn on Head of Blight then I targeted Head of Mischief.

I did not use Arbiter's boost/heal as soon as she has it. I had to make a decision if my team will die then I should keep it to use it after Revive. Otherwise I only used it when the team was in acceptable health and Head of Wrath was not near 15 counter.

Most of the time I did not use Speedup of Kimi and used only the slow. This is because often Block Buffs failed on Mischief (as I mentioned my Umbral is not booked in that). I only actively started using Speedup after Head of Mischief was dead and I was fighting different configurations of other Heads.

I also did not use Aox's heal immediately. I wanted to make sure it comes after Arbiter's heal and also after debuffs are placed for maximum effectiveness (his heal depends on the number of debuffs).

Umbral did absolutely nothing other than trying to put Block Buffs and doing A1 on Head of Torment or whatever Head when Torment was missing. My Umbral does no damage at all so I don't care what she attacks.

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This turned out to be a pretty long blog post (please like/share if you liked it), so I hope it helps other RAID Shadow Legends players who are struggling with the Hydra.