Here I share with you my new record achieving 69 million damage on Hydra Hard and provide you with all the pictures, stats, masteries and tips to hopefully help you as well.
Let's start with the victory screens summarizing the team and the damage output:
Hydra Hard 69 million damage - Victory Screen 1 of 2 + Time issues
The battle took a very long time, over 1 hour. RAID has a visual bug where it shows 09:34 instead of 69:34. It's an old bug they never bothered to fix.
Before this battle I had several other failed attempts trying out different champions, so it actually took me over 3 hours to use this 1 key. Such problems in RAID are widespread and Plarium refuses to address these issues. Because of this many players just waste their keys on auto-battles with low damage results. And I am definitely not planning to spend the same time in the future; this was a one-off run for a possible record.
Victory Screen 2 of 2 + Equipment Tips
This is from the Clan view which also shows the equipped sets:
Here you can already see that the only "interesting" set is the Provoke set on my Nekmo Thaar. I think it's a great option for him due to his AOE attacks. I did the same for my Geomancer who is in another team.
For all others I don't care about sets - just trying to get the best stats I can manage. There is a Regeneration set on Godseeker Aniri but this is only because she is helping run my Bommal team. The Immortal sets on Raglin is only because I searched to get high HP on him to survive Arena attacks.
I would like to ideally have 2 champions in Provoke set in the future, because 1 champion does not manage to control the Head of Decay always. But that would mean changing the team which I cannot at present.
Hydra Hard 69 million damage - Last Turns - Picture 1 of 2
Near the end, before the team is eaten, I decided to take this screenshot. This is another proof of the "over 1 hour" time and at this moment shows 64.7 mil damage and 226 turns.
I also already know I cannot keep up with RAID's cheating (the Heads start eating every turn) and the battle will end very soon.
Last Turns - Picture 2 of 2
This is the last picture before death. Turn count = 250 turns!
You can see that 3 champions are being digested at the same time and the last 2 will be grabbed immediately. This has nothing to do with skill or strategy - it is designed to make you lose at this point by consuming champions every turn. This is not a criticism, just a statement of fact.
Hydra Hard 69 million damage - Team Stats
Below are the summary showing all the champion stats and gear from RSL view. As noted the stats are good but definitely not great. Top players have significantly better stats than this.
Tips / stat targets:
- Nekmo - I only need him to go as fast as he can and apply the debuffs. While I don't care about his damage output I did give him Warmaster since all his attacks are AOE, so that adds up but his own damage is irrelevant for me.
- Ninja - Main damage dealer 1 of 2 - mine is in a very old Clan Boss build where I needed him to have 256 speed. I never bothered to change his build, so he is very squishy but fast. His main job is to do HP Burn / damage.
- Raglin & Godskeer - They act as the revivers for the team, usually picking up the dead damage dealers. I usually prefer multi-reviver like Arbiter but mine is in another team so I ended up using these single-revivers for this team. They just have to be fast and tanky to do their job. Raglin's high RES is not for Hydra but was made for Arena.
- Uugo - helped my team a lot. Block Buffs, DEF down and the Leech, although chance based, did help a lot with the healing. Here again fast and tanky is the aim.
- Sicia - Main damage dealer 2 of 2 - unfortunately she failed putting the HP Burn on all enemies very often, but despite that her explosion was very helpful in freeing champions, especially when Ninja was eaten.
Champion details:
Below you can see all the equipment details and champion masteries. You can see that a lot of the equipment can be improved significantly. This is why I said good stats but not great.
Uugo detailed equipment and masteries
Godseeker Aniri detailed equipment and masteries
Sicia Flametongue detailed equipment and masteries
Nekmo Thaar detailed equipment and masteries
Ninja detailed equipment and masteries
Raglin detailed equipment and masteries
Tips & Other:
(in no particular order)
- For reference: the starting Hydra Heads for this rotation were Decay, Mischief, Blight and Wrath.
- For Nekmo I think it is important to first cast the Slow and only then go for the Speed which will allow rotation into Slow much faster. Doing Speed then Slow applies the buffs immediately but results in a longer cooldown to re-apply Slow. Given the different affinities and him failing to apply the debuff to all the Heads I think it's better to cycle Slow faster.
- I think all champions on this team are replaceable with Nekmo being the least due to all the benefits he brings, but still:
- Nekmo could be replaced by Kimi for example.
- Revivers by other revivers.
- Uugo by another Block Buffs champion.
- And damage dealers by any other equally strong Hydra-specific damage dealers, which could be HP Burn based like these or Max HP based like Royal Guard (which also brings slow) or Husk (which also brings Provoke).
- That said one must always consider the entire team when making replacements because you might have the case that you don't have a replacement for 1 champion but if you change 3 then you do because your other 3 might together bring the same benefits which 1 alone cannot bring.
Tips continued:
- If you can get your champion to die instead of being eaten that's much better. You can on purpose not heal and even provoke the super-attack of the Wrath just to kill one of your champions. This is because freeing champions is very dangerous the further you get especially if they are eaten by Mischief or the Fat Head (Suffering).
- If you had Hex from Mithrala then Mischief becomes a lot less of an issue. My Mithrala is in another team so this team always failed attacking Mischief and I could get him only via the HP Burn hits and explosions.
- While the Fat Head has both too much HP and, if you are unlucky, he can go 2 times in a row.
- Otherwise, if you cannot get the champion killed off then prepare your big attacks to be used immediately upon digestion. This means not using your main skills for possible several turns.
- Managing Blight with Decay is extremely important. If you fail the Provoke and Blight gets off the poison cloud and, at the same time, one of your champions is eaten before you managed to at least get HP Burns then it's game over.
- So watch carefully the cooldown of Blight's poison cloud. Slow/Provoke Decay. Target them and take one of them down if possible. Blight is actually relatively easy to kill. Decay is tougher.
- When you get the ATK down and Block Buffs on Wrath he basically becomes not important. Still, use the opportunity to attack him when he is outside his counters. And only if there are no other higher priorities.
- Try to kill 1 Head at a time to allow you to "farm" damage on Decapitated Heads. Have a sort of a staircase approach and a plan which ones you are taking down and in which order.
- Do pile into a Decapitated Heads but only if it will produce good damage. Attacking opposite affinity is not a good idea even if it is a Decapitated Head. Attacking Decapitated Heads of certain Hydra Heads (tough ones) is not a good idea because you will do less damage. Fat Head (Suffering) being the worst.
- If you are unsure, hit it a couple of times and see. You want to aim for minimum 100k damage per attack, but damage dealers should bring 200k or more per attack.
- If you are waiting for the cooldown of Decrease Defense then I believe it is better to attack an Active Hydra Head with DEF down instead of attacking a Decapitated Head without DEF down.
- DEF down and Weaken are very significant for boosting damage output.
- If Mischief is up (in a team like this without Hex) then most attacks should go for Mischief when the Wrath Head is in crazy-mode. This is because this is the only time you can safely attack Mischief and not increase the cooldown of Wrath. If you can bring Hex then ignore this point as Hex will allow you to target Mischief safely.
- Torment is one of the most dangerous Heads for this team as neither Shamael is here nor there is any Veil. My approach to Torment was to completely ignore him. Still, this resulted in my Fears and I just brute-forced through the Fear. This immediately dropped the success rate of Provoke on Decay, so Torment in combination with a Champion being eaten was very dangerous. I usually softened Torment down via HP Burn attacks/explosions and then jumped on him to finish him when his HP was low.
- It is also important to choose if you should heal or revive. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Healing lets the champion remain on the field, but, for example, a Godseeker revive would allow damage dealers to immediately use their powerful skill again. Still, that said using revives as an offensive tool is dangerous since the skill will go on cooldown and if something bad happens it won't be ready. It is a consideration to make which you get better with the more comfortable you are with your team.
- Apart from eating Champions I did not care about Mischief at all in this team. This is because this team has no buffs at all. Only 1 actually from Nekmo (SPD). So most of the time Mischief attacked and stole nothing. Other times I had Block Buffs on him or if it was not on him (he is very fast and cleans it quickly) then on the other Heads which prevented him from sharing the buff. I think in the entire battle only 1-2 times their team managed to get the Speed buff, but it didn't really make a big difference in the battle as I kept Slow on them most of the time or killed them off.
- Other teams handle Mischief by using a high RES bait champion. That is a very valid strategy also. Others use Hex to be able to just kill him off (as he is the weakest).
- I almost never paid any attention to the Head of Suffering. Although few times he managed to get his Ally Protect through which did make freeing champions more difficult. Still, I think he is the lowest priority Head both because he is so slow giving you lots of time to take action and because he is so fat that he does not allow you to "farm" damage (+ his Decapitated Head is much harder to damage). He only becomes extremely dangerous further down the road when there is very little time to free champions. So you must watch his Turn Meter and try to count which Head will eat the champion. If you anticipate that he will eat and you will only have 1-2 turns to free the champion then this becomes a high risk situation. Also then watch when his Extra turn skill is coming.
Hope my RAID blog post was useful to you - best of luck with breaking your Hydra records.