Hi everyone, lemmingllama here.
Idle Heroes is a game about luck and about understanding how to work with what you get to defeat your opponents. Sometimes we won’t get all the top tier heroes, or players will still get all the top tier heroes and still lose because someone else had a team they couldn’t handle.
This is what this guide is about, making the best use of what you have to win battles. Finding the ways to combine the heroes you are given and creating the most effective composition is essential if you want to be successful.
Hero Synergies
To start off, I want to touch on the individual hero synergies.
Some heroes are fine on their own, and some benefit from being with other heroes to maximize their potential.
Adding in some of these synergies can boost the effectiveness of weaker heroes to be more viable (Corpsedemon + Iceblink combo) or strengthen already strong heroes (Faith Blade one-shotting people to trigger Mihm’s damage over time).
Heroes don’t need to be with their synergistic heroes to be effective, but using these combinations can maximize their effectiveness.
Example Synergies
Hero Name | Synergy Explanation | Synergistic Heroes |
![]() | Benefits when team dies. Works well with weaker heroes, heroes who give bonuses when they die, and heroes who can die twice | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Deals bonus damage to bleeding heroes. Works well with bleed heroes | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Gains energy when heroes use skills. Benefits from heroes that gain energy faster than normal, and fast heroes with an energy artifact. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Heals when an ally criticals. Works well with any hero who can hit critical hits (all of them) or boost critical chance | ![]() |
![]() | Benefits from enemy heroes dying, so any hero with a lot of damage synergizes | ![]() |
![]() | Deals bonus damage to stunned heroes. Works well with stunning heroes | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Benefits when team dies. Works well with weaker heroes, heroes who give bonuses when they die, and heroes who can die twice. In addition, Flame Strike benefits from enemy heroes dying, so any hero with a lot of damage synergizes. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Heals when hits a critical hit. Works well with heroes who increase critical chance | ![]() |
![]() | Deals bonus damage to frozen heroes. Works well with freezing heroes | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Deals bonus damage to petrified heroes. Works well with petrifying heroes | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Deals bonus damage to stunned heroes. Works well with stunning heroes | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Deals bonus damage to poisoned heroes. Works well with poison heroes | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Stuns poisoned heroes. Works well with poison heroes | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Benefits when team dies. Works well with weaker heroes, heroes who give bonuses when they die, and heroes who can die twice. In addition, Mihm benefits from enemy heroes dying, so any hero with a lot of damage synergizes. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Heals when blocks. Works well with heroes who boost block or reduce enemy precision | ![]() |
![]() | Deals bonus damage to burning heroes. Works well with burning heroes | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Gives a bonus attack when heroes use skills. Benefits from heroes that gain energy faster than normal | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Deals bonus damage to poisoned heroes. Works well with poison heroes | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Self buffs when blocks. Works well with heroes who boost block or reduce enemy precision | ![]() |
Team Synergies
In addition to having specific hero synergies, we can also build teams around a specific theme.
Many of these are partly based on the hero synergies, but it also includes hero types and roles that work well together.
To start off with, let’s define the standard slots that a team will be comprised of.
When reading the slot positions, slot 1 is the slot at the bottom of your screen and closest to the enemy team. Slot 2 is the slot above it, and slots 3-6 are the backline from bottom to top. It’s the same order as if you were creating your team from left to right before a battle.
Slot Definitions
Slot | Slot Explanation | Example Heroes |
1 | Slot 1 is your tank slot. This is the hero that has the most health or damage reduction or self sustain, and will be soaking up the majority of the enemies basic attacks. Slot 1 will also be the slot that gets off the most active skills, because their energy bar will be filled quickly from all the basic attacks. Heroes that go well in this slot will have a lot of basic health, armor, and damage reduction, or benefit from being hit (self buff, self heal, counterattacks, enemy debuff) | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
2 | Slot 2 is your safe slot. This is where you want to put your lowest health hero, or the hero who you want to be CC’ed the least. Typically people will put their strongest damage or CC hero in slot 2. Heroes that also take a long time to ramp up their damage can be well placed here. If the hero has some built in sustain options or CC immunity, it can be preferable to place them in another slot. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
3 | Slot 3 is your off-tank slot. This is the slot that you want to survive for as long as possible if your backline is otherwise being wiped, because then enemy backline attacks will continue to hit your off-tank rather than your protected slot 2 hero. Typically heroes with some form of protection that also bring utility or damage are the best in this slot. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
4-5 | Slots 4-5 are your less protected safe slots. CC and damage dealing heroes should go here, but the ones that are more likely to survive or less important than your slot 2. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
6 | Due to a bug with Valentino’s RNG, slot 6 tends to get hit by more CC on average than other slots. As such, slot 6 is like slots 4-5, but you want a hero with some form of CC immunity to negate more CC than they otherwise would in other slots. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
General Composition
Other than your slots, you also want to understand what a basic team needs.
Typically a team will want to follow these guidelines unless you are running some sort of synergy or cheese strategy that requires you to deviate.
When looking at these numbers, remember that one hero can serve two or more roles. This is what makes heroes like Michelle so strong, they can fit into multiple roles and thus are very flexible when building your team.
Hero Type | Number in a Team | Explanation | Example Heroes |
CC | 2-4 | Crowd control abilities are fantastic for stopping your enemy from performing their game plan. It can be good to have different types of crowd control so that after one times out, another can still be applied. Unless you are trying to benefit from a particular synergy like Iceblink’s freeze damage, it can be good to have a balance of freeze, petrify, silence, and stun. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
DPS | 2-4 | Damage dealing heroes are essential to defeat the enemy team. Typically, it’s good to have at least one area of effect DPS and one burst damage DPS. This way you can both handle large teams to reduce their health, and kill tanks that just don’t want to die. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Healer | 0-2 | Healers are units that heal your other heroes, giving them additional hit points to survive and keep on doing what they are doing. Healers are slightly less relevant when you can get your heroes to E3 or if you use Deer as your pet. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Support | 0-1 | Support heroes don’t always heal, but they still buff your allies or debuff your enemies. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Tank | 1 | Tanks stay alive and protect your heroes. See the slot 1 explanation. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Auras
Auras boost up your heroes. If you can, aim for an aura.
However, you can choose to go with no aura if it means you can use stronger heroes or more synergistic heroes.
Do what benefits your team the most.
Synergistic Teams
Now, back to our main programming for today! All example teams provided are solely for demonstration of a concept; they may not be fully meta.
Round 15 Teams
Round 15 teams are defensive teams that have a single goal: don’t die.
You want your heroes to be as tanky as possible, and to have 1-2 heroes who can heal up your team. You want to simply take all the CC the enemy team gives out, live through it, then slowly grind their team into dust.
Typically you want one strong tank in slot 1 that simply will never die. Heroes like Corpsedemon,
Groo,
Honor Guard,
Michelle, and
Sleepless are fantastic for this role.
Next, you want 1-2 healers in slots 2 and slot 4-5 if you have multiples. Heroes like Belrain,
Kroos, and
Vesa who can heal and give benefits even if they are CCed or killed are ideal for this kind of composition.
Finally, you want to flesh out your other slots with off-tanks that can survive and have some damage/CC capabilities. Heroes that weaken the enemy like Dark Arthinodal and
Iceblink, heroes that heal themselves like
Dragon Slayer and
Valkyrie, and heroes that have built in damage reduction and can deal damage like
Asmodel and
Skerei work wonders.
This Old Enemy team has the freeze synergy with Corpsedemon, Dominator, Iceblink, added CC with the introduction of Kamath, healing with Ormus, and tanky damage with Sigmund.
While this team might not win many offensive matches, defensively it will sustain through a lot and come out relatively unscathed.
To make it a bit more offensive, we could shift to a Rainbow team:
This has the healing from Belrain, the freeze synergy, DA’s extra CC, and damage coming from Barea and Valkyrie.
Assassin Teams
Assassin teams are based on using a bunch of heroes who target the weakest hero and systematically wipe them out.
These are pure damage compositions that are designed to cripple an enemy team before they can beat your assassins.
This concept can be extended out to using heroes who target specific slots as well, such as using multiple Kamaths to target the backline.
This Rainbow team has five heroes that target the weakest hero, and killing a hero will trigger Faith Blade’s and Mihm’s passive bonuses to kill them even more. Meanwhile, we can rely on Lutz’s passive to heal him and keep him alive long enough to wipe out the enemy team. Even if some of our assassins die, it simply helps feed Mihm’s damage so our remaining assassins can clean up.
Death Cheese Teams
Cheese teams are designed to have the majority of your team die, and then have one extremely strong hero who can wipe out the entire opposing team.
You want your carry hero to be a high level, and your weak heroes to be a low level so they can quickly die.
Carry heroes should benefit from heroes dying, or otherwise be able to sustain themselves and deal enough area of effect damage to wipe the enemy team. Heroes like Aidan,
Flame Strike,
Mihm, and
Skerei are strong contenders that can do this.
Filler heroes should give some sort of bonus for taking damage or dying. Heroes like Destroyer,
Emily,
Kroos, and
Rosa are great for this.
If your carry hero benefits from death by itself, using heroes like Michelle and
Sleepless can also give additional death triggers. Typically, you want these heroes to be six star or nine star so they get the full benefits of their passives. However, leave them at level 100 so they will die sooner. You can also unequip these heroes so they die sooner.
This Bound Soul team will boost Flame Strike’s attack by a lot when they die, and Kroos will provide a quick stun to allow Flame Strike to use her active skill.
Other Generic Synergies
I’m mostly keeping this in because these are the catch-alls for generic strategy.
- Healers + People who have health = living allies
- Heroes who target specific slots + more heroes who target those slots = dead enemies
- Debuff heroes + heroes who hit debuffed targets = dead enemies
- Buff heroes + heroes who aren’t dead = living allies
- Lots of CC + Lots of CC = enemies who rage at being unable to do anything
Pets/Monsters
Pets boost your heroes and have great active effects. Choose a pet type that benefits your main strategy.
There are already some great pet guides out there, so I’ll be focusing mainly on the synergy aspects of things.
Pet | Pet Explanation | Example Heroes |
Deer | Deer works best with high health heroes and heroes who benefit from the increased Armor and Block. Additionally, heroes who have built in damage reduction will benefit more from healing. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Dragon | Dragon works best with heroes who benefit from criticals or rely on critical hits to deal damage. Also, use Dragon if you are running some Stun synergy heroes. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Fox | Fox works best with CC heroes who can use the energy boost to continue chain CCing the enemy team, and heroes who can gain energy faster than normal and will benefit from the additional active skills. | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Golem | Golem works best with heroes who benefit from armor and heroes with a high base critical chance. Also, use Golem if you are running some Petrify synergy heroes. | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Griffon | Griffon is a pure offense pet. Use it with heroes that benefit from extra attack and holy damage. Typically, these are damage over time heroes. | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Snake | Snake is an offensive and defensive pet. Use it with heroes that benefit from extra Block. Also, use Snake if you are running some Poison synergy heroes. | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Snow | Snow is only useful for the Freeze synergy. | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Wolf | Wolf is a pure offense pet. Use it with heroes that benefit from extra attack and armor break. Typically, these are damage over time heroes. Also, use Wolf if you are running some Bleed synergy heroes. | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Meta Composition Analysis
Now, let’s look at a meta team based around some top tier heroes. This won’t necessarily be as cool and synergistic as some of the other compositions I’ve mentioned, but it has its own synergy. The majority of it is about filling in all the team roles, keeping a balance of CC, damage, and survivability.
This team has most of our roles filled out nicely. Every hero has a large base health pool or some form of damage reduction to sustain through CC and damage, and our backline has lots of CC immunity and on hit abilities.
We have CC from Valentino, Michelle, Mihm, and Kamath to protect our team. Skerei will run Fearless Armor to be extremely tanky and apply on hit effects to the entire front line.
Also, being in slot 1 means Skerei will get a lot of energy to deal damage.
Mihm and Valkyrie will work on reducing health bars enough to allow Skerei to wipe them all, and Valentino’s passive will contribute to the damage. Finally, Michelle’s healing will keep everyone topped up and ready for action.
Each hero is strong and fits multiple roles, and when joined together they can be even stronger than each hero individually.
Heroes like Skerei need to be CCed to be dealt with, but most of our team has some form of CC immunity to make CC less relevant.
Overall, each part of the team can do it’s part to helping you win the fight.
Guide shared by lemmingllama.
6 Comments
Wow! Thank you for this work!
You are very welcome buddy!
This is amazing guys! WOW!!!
Thank you very much!
Is the 6th slot describtion still accurate with the Valentino bug?
Great Guide!
Yes buddy and thank you a lot xD