th, 2018, the 2018 Anniversary Hall of Heroes was announced! This Hall of Heroes is different from the rest, because we can actually revisit five previous Hall of Heroes monsters, and pick one for that account. Our choice this year is Surtr (Fire Barbaric King), Ryan (Water Neostone Fighter), Cichlid (Wind Mermaid), Brig (Light Pirate Captain) and Lanett (Dark Magic Knight). Because I want to make sure I can give you advice no matter which Hall of Heroes you picked, I decided I would use my main account and four alternate accounts, all of which chose a different Hall of Heroes. Each of the different Hall of Heroes monsters will get an article of its own. This account is my main account, and here I picked Lanett. This will be pretty much the only article in the five where my team matters. Before we begin, Hall of Heroes is a lot like Trial of Ascension, so that means you can use Trial of Ascension strategy and monsters (e.g. attack bar pushbacks, stuns and continuous damage are king). I strongly advise bringing your regular Trial of Ascension team. In my case, I’m using Baretta (L), Belladeon, Frigate, Veromos, and Charlotte. Let’s cut the chatter and get on with it!

Is Lanett Usable?

Yes, actually! Lanett is probably the best of the five Hall of Heroes choices we have this year. (I could just be biased, though, since I remember Lanett being the first HoH monster I really wanted but couldn’t get…) Around half a year ago, she and her sisters got buffed. Now, Lanett has a 50% chance to land Continuous Damage for a turn with each hit. Couple this with her speed lead, possibly four-target defense break, and massive AoE heal, and you’ve got the second best Magic Knight on your hands, next to Iris. You can actually rune Lanett with a bunch of different rune sets. Personally, I’m going to use her in NB10, so if you’re going to do the same as me, I’d go with Violent + Revenge, SPD/CRIT DMG%/ATK%. Make sure she has 45% Accuracy to land her DoTs. She’s also pretty good in ToA, so if you decide to use her for that, go Despair + Revenge, SPD/CRIT DMG%/ATK%.

Stage 1

Someone told me “Sara, calm down, the monsters aren’t going to change this Hall of Heroes from what they were when Lanett was really here.” As you can see, they were wrong. Soha, Leon! The joke’s on you! Here, we have three Lupinus’ (wind Magic Knights) and two Sohas (water Nine-tailed Foxes) The Threat: I’d say that neither of the two kinds of monsters has the ability to one-shot kill you. However, they’re pretty annoying. I actually use Lupinus in my NB10 team; on Violent and Revenge. I built her tanky because her base attack, even when maxed out, is abysmal. I really only use Lupinus for the multihits on the boss’s shield; she usually goes second so that there are less hits on the shield. However, her third skill, Tempest Sword, is like her first skill where she attacks one enemy twice and everyone else once, but will decrease the attack bar of people she hits by 30%. Magic Surge also hits three times and Silences the enemy she hits for two turns. Although it’s not in her skill description, if she hits an enemy with no beneficial effects with this skill, she’ll deal 30% more damage to them than if she were to hit someone with, say, attack buff. Soha is not an attack bar decreaser, but she and Aquila are the only four-star monsters who have an AoE strip. Magic Surge deals 30% more damage to monsters without beneficial effects. I think you can see where I’m going here. As you may know, Soha and nearly every other monster in existence are faster than Lapis, Lupinus and Lanett. This means she’ll be Cleansing everyone before Lupinus gets her turn, meaning that once Soha uses her third skill and successfully strips buffs off of all your monsters, if Lupinus uses Magic Surge you’re pretty much dead meat. The Solution: Lupinus is really slow. Why I’m throwing this out in the open is because if you bring an AoE speed decreaser, you could easily make sure that Lupinus never gets a turn while you work at chipping away Soha’s HP. Soha herself is pretty squishy, even though her base stats are going to increase drastically during the higher levels of this Hall of Heroes. Her second skill, Soul Snatcher, will heal her based on the damage she does to an enemy, and the excess HP will be stored as a two-turn shield. This is why you should keep Soha stunlocked as you kill her. Lupinus won’t be much of a threat as long as you keep slowing her down and decreasing her attack bar.

Stage 2

Hey now, you’re an Astar, get your game on, go play! This stage consists of three Astars (fire Magic Knights) and two Aquilas (wind Brownie Magicians) The Threat: I’d say that the biggest threat here would be Aquila, honestly. It sounds strange, yes, but hear me out. Aquila and Soha are the only two four-star monsters who have an AoE cleanser, as I’ve mentioned. As the Hall of Heroes floors continue to become higher levels, the base stats of every enemy monster are going to increase. That also means that Aquila is going to get faster, and it’ll get harder to outspeed him yourself. Aquila, like Korona, has Fever Time as a second skill, where he buffs the attack power and Critical Rate of all of his allies. This wouldn’t be so bad of a problem if it weren’t for Astar’s passive skill, called Vengeful Fire. It states that as her HP status decreases, her attack speed increases, and she’ll deal 50% more damage if the enemy has more HP than she has. In other words, the harder you hit her, the quicker she could potentially one-shot one of your monsters in the higher floors. It doesn’t help that Astar’s awakening bonus is an additional 15 speed, meaning she’s one of the two Magic Knights who aren’t slower than a sloth. If you’re unlucky, you’re going to end up being dead as one Aquila somehow removes the beneficial effects off of all your monsters, another Aquila buffs Fever Time onto everyone, and then Astar uses Magic Surge. That happened to me once and it was very annoying. The Solution: Bring either your own Bernard or an AoE speed debuffer; preferably an Occult Girl with Toy Knight or, for a more acquirable monster, Shannon (the wind Pixie). Bernard is a monster nearly everyone has – not only is he farmable, you’re literally given a free Bernard with Reina’s new missions. The idea here is to try and outspeed the enemies so that you can use Tailwind yourself and possibly be able to nuke the monsters before they ever get a turn. If you’re unlucky to a point where you’re not fast enough, that’s where your speed debuffer comes in. As stated, Astar’s passive increases her speed as her HP gets lower. However, if you put the speed debuff on her, that’s a 30% decrease in speed, meaning that it’ll take her longer to be able to kill you. Shannon would work wonders for this stage, because not only does she has the speed decrease, but she also has an AoE buff that raises the defense and attack power of all her allies, meaning that the lack of beneficial effects part of Magic Surge wouldn’t take place.

Stage 3

Hopefully you didn’t almost die in the second stage and kill the last monster in the Nicki of time. That would not be good. Here, we have one Nicki (dark Occult Girl) as the miniboss and her lackeys are two Tosis (light Samurai) The Threat: Did you know I’m writing a Doki Doki Literature Club and Summoner’s War crossover where Nicki becomes sentient? That’s how she earned my nickname for her called “the mindscrew cinnamon roll.” Anyway, Nicki is actually a really dangerous threat. She’s the only one of the Occult Girls whose third skill, Dark Guardian Angel, attacks five times instead of three. On top of that, she’ll buff all her allies’ attack power for three turns and will leave a healblock on all enemies for three turns, meaning that monsters like Belladeon can’t heal until someone like Veromos. Tosi, while not nearly as dangerous as Nicki, does have a pretty deadly third skill if used on a dark monster. His third skill, “Light Slash,” will attack all enemies. It’ll be a guaranteed Critical Hit against dark monsters, and has a 50% chance to activate the Sword of the Supreme Sky Wolf skill; which attacks all enemies and ignores any damage reduction effects (e.g. Chloe’s Invincibility) Like Anavel, Nicki also has Girl’s Prayer instead of Toy Knight as her second skill. This skill will cleanse all harmful effects off of her allies (including sleep, stun and freeze) and then heal everyone based on her attack power. This means that if you don’t kill Nicki quickly, she could potentially wipe part of your progress against her HP bar. The Solution: Bring a cleanser like Veromos as part of your Hall of Heroes team. He’ll be able to cleanse the healblock off of your monsters should you be unlucky enough to have Nicki get a turn before you do and she unleashes Dark Guardian Angel. Luckily, Com2uS now no longer requires you to kill the lackeys of the miniboss/actual boss of Hall of Heroes. This means that you can just kill Nicki without having to worry about killing either Tosi. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should just completely ignore them. At the very least, make sure you keep them stunned throughout your battle with Nicki. When you have the mindscrew cinnamon roll down, you can move on to stage 4. Bye, Nicki!

Stage 4

I think I can make a joke about Steven Universe here, but I dunno, I’ve never watched it. This stage consists of three Lapises (water Magic Knights) and two Hong Huas (fire Kung Fu Girls). The Threat: As mentioned in “Is Lanett Usable?” Lapis, Lanett and Lupinus got a buff so that their first skill adds a debuff with each hit. In Lapis’s case, she can decrease the attack bar of everyone she hits by 25%. On top of that, her third skill Retrieve Magic will steal 25% of the attack bars from everyone she attacks. Keep in mind that the Magic Knights are the only monsters with an AoE first skill, and Retrieve Magic attacks everyone. Let’s also mention that Lapis will heal herself by 50% of the damage dealt. Something you also want to remember about Lapis is that although she’s slow, both her second and third skill has a frighteningly low cooldown. Both skills only need three turns before they can be reusable again. That means if you’re not paying attention, she could end up using her skills once, and then what feels like a few seconds later she’ll use them again. While I’m ranting about Lapis, don’t think that Hong Hua herself isn’t much a threat. People usually underestimate her in favor of her water and dark sisters, Xiao Lin and Fei. Hong Hua can be quite an annoyance, however, because of her third skill, Fire Dragon attack, which can elongate harmful effects on the enemies that she hits: turning that two-turn defense break into a three-turn defense break. The Solution:  Use attack speed or attack bar decreasers. Both are the bane of Lapis’s existence because of her low base speed and the fact she steals attack bar from everyone. Of course, Charlotte not only has an elemental advantage against Lapis; she also decreases everyone’s attack speed and everyone’s attack bar by up to 90%, but I don’t expect you to have a Charlotte. If you do or have a Charlotte mentor/rep, you can take her because overall Charlotte is pretty much the best gurl in ToA, meaning that she also shines in HoH. Hong Hua’s a lot faster than Lapis is, so being able to outspeed her will be a lot harder than outspeeding Lapis. However, she doesn’t have any attack bar increasers, and the only thing I would consider a threat here would be her counterattack mechanic and her third skill itself. Overall I would rank killing Hong Hua less of a priority than making sure Lapis is dead/never gets a turn. I’d say make sure you try and keep Hong Hua stunlocked as you work on killing Lapis first. When you’re done with Lapis, then Hong Hua will go down pretty easily, and then you can work on stage 5.

Stage 5

You’re the apple of my iris; so much, in fact, that I’m going to make sure that you get to at least B4 of this Hall of Heroes! We’re almost at the boss stage now! Here, you’ll find three Iris’ (light Magic Knights) and two Lunas (dark Pierrets) The Threat: Although Iris got nerfed so that her chance of stripping a beneficial effect has gone down from 100% to a measly 60%, she’s still dangerous. Why, you ask? Because not only is she a passive healer, she still has a chance of stripping said beneficial effects. Just because her chances were lowered doesn’t mean they were altogether removed, and Iris is still a strong unit on her own. Luna was the first ever Hall of Heroes monster to ever exist in Summoner’s War; she was a Hall of Heroes monster only in the Korea server, though. This was back when Com2uS didn’t give us absolute trash for Hall of Heroes material. Her third skill is where she really shines. Her third skill, Dark Force, will attack one enemy and put them on lockdown with the power of darkness, decreasing their attack bar by 50%. As multipliers show, she also deals damage based on the target’s Max HP. When she uses Dark Force with full HP, she’ll recover 100% of her attack bar when she uses Dark Force (because the Pierrets’ gimmick is that they do stuff when their third skill is used with full HP) The Solution: Screw Luna. Screw Luna. I really hate Luna, I cannot stress that enough.  However, there’s an easy solution to both Luna and Iris: Heal-blocks. Iris is a passive healer, and Luna does stuff when her third skill is used with full HP. The solution here to take someone with AoE attacks and AoE healblock, so this way the Pierrets are no longer at full HP and Iris can’t heal people. Thankfully, there are no cleansers in this stage, so you can easily move on to the boss stage.

Stage 6

This stage of Hall of Heroes, like always, has the most variety out of all of the stages. Though Lanett herself will always be the boss, her lackeys will differ for each stage. As you can see here, for example, her lackeys here are Astar and Lupinus. The Threat: The threat varies based on what the lackeys are. In this case, I’d say Lanett is the biggest threat, and I’m glad that we don’t have to kill the lackeys too in order to progress. The Solution: Kill whoever’s the biggest threat. Like I said, I’d just go straight for Lanett in this case. However, if someone like Iris were one of the lackeys, I’d say kill her first and then work on the second most troublesome, such as the other lackey or you can just target Lanett. I hope you enjoy this anniversary Hall of Heroes, because I enjoyed it too! I’m Sara Ann, and I’ll see you in my next four or so articles that are getting released today because I still have four more choices to cover.  ]]>