#12 – Louis (Light Phantom Thief) [February] No, not the wind Paladin, Louise. She’s pretty good (and a nat5 that I have, yay) actually. No, the Louis we’re talking about is the light Phantom Thief, who is just…bad. You can’t even use him for skillups really, because the whole Phantom Thief family is mediocre. Now, Louis’s third skill Illusion Magic will even out his HP ratio and his target ally, and then the two of them will become Invincible for 2 turns. The cooldown of Illusion Magic will also be decreased by 3 turns if his HP is 50% or lower after balancing. Number one, the cooldown decrease part of Illusion Magic wasn’t in his passive by the HoH. They actually had to buff him, like, a couple of months ago, I don’t remember how long. Secondly, he can actually decide to just use his third skill on himself. Like, hello, you wanna share your Invincibility, Louis? It’s really dumb that a third skill that revolves around protecting another ally can also just be used on himself. I haven’t had time or the will to try it out, but I do wonder what would happen with the HP balancing part of his skill if he were to use it on himself.

#11 – Duamutef (Fire Horus) [November]

Weirdly enough, Duamutef is the only mon in this list who didn’t get an HoH article. At least Duamutef can be used as skillups for his far superior brothers, including Imesety, Qebehseshialebouf, Amduat, and Wedjat. Duamutef is the dud in the family of Horuses, because his third skill is just…well, underwhelming. His third skill Strategic Prevention attacks an enemy based off his defense, absorbs 30% of their attack bar, and has a 70% chance to stun them. No one really knows where to use this guy, and to be honest I don’t blame them. I don’t really know where to use him either.

#10 – Arnold (Fire Death Knight) [January]

Oh, Arnold, Arnold, Arnold. I wasn’t around for this part of SW, but in the earliest days of the game when you could rocket yourself into G1 with only five six-stars at the most, Arnold was SUPER meta. Everyone wanted an Arnold. In fact, Double Arnold was something to be feared in AOs and Ads. Nowadays, he’s just…fallen out of use, I guess. We have better monsters who do the job better than he does, like Mo Long. (Off-topic, but I actually got an Icares from my ToAH90 scroll and Mo Long from my ToAH Legendary Scroll!) Aaaaanyway, Arnold’s third skill Extortion will drain life from a targeted enemy – as in, he’ll deal damage and heal himself for that amount of damage. However, the amount of damage he deals is equivalent to 30% of his Max HP. Recently (as in two-three months ago) he got buffed to also block healing for 2 turns with Extortion. If this HoH had been released back in 2014, everyone would be going absolutely bonkers over this, but sadly, the meta has shifted away from using Arnold, and instead towards monsters like Mo Long, whose Reckless Assault deals 70% of the target’s Max HP as damage, with the cost of dealing that same damage to himself. It’s kinda sad, too, seeing how far the mighty has fallen.

#9 – Korona (Dark Brownie Magician) [August]

Korona’s… a bit of a weird case, kit-wise. He can be used as skillups for his more cancerous brothers, Gemini and Orion, but some people have tried to use Korona on his own. They’ve failed. Anyway, he’s mainly considered weird and worthless for his third skill, Kindness Gone Wrong. He’ll attack all enemies based off his Max HP and has a 50% chance to remove all beneficial and harmful effects on them. That’s right, folks, he can remove all the DoTs your Diana placed on the enemies! However, he does put all the enemies to sleep. The number of turns the sleep is is equivalent to the number of effects removed (A DEF Break and an ATK buff removed is equal to a 2-turn sleep) This harmful effect remover is mainly why people don’t use him, and possibly also why his third is called Kindness Gone Wrong.

#8 – Kamiya (Dark Nine-Tailed Fox) [March]

Kamiya’s actually a pretty fun nuker toy to play around with! Her third skill Nightmare will attack an enemy (with a whopping 800% multiplier to boot!) and guarantees to stun the target if it lands as a critical hit. However, it’ll also guarantee to land as a critical hit if the target she attacks is asleep. Keep in mind that her second skill Enchant will put an enemy to sleep for 2 turns and she’ll instantly gain another turn when she uses this skill. I’ve actually messed around with my own Kamiya a bit, and she’s done some really nice damage before. I haven’t found it in me to six-star her yet, but for this end-game players who have already six-starred their HoH Isabelle and want another fun toy to play with, why not use Kamiya?

#7 – Orochi (Wind Ninja) [April]

Orochi, like Arnold, was another one of those monsters who was really good back in the earliest days of SW, but has now fallen out of use. Orochi, however, was mainly used for GB10 because, not only was he wind, but he also had a kit that worked really well with starter GB10. You see, starter GB10 mainly focuses around DoTs, defense breaks, and cleansing debuffs that the boss gives you. Orochi gives the DoTs part of start GB10. His first skill brings a DoT, and his second skill decreases an enemy’s attack bar by 50%. However, his main focus, Storm and Gale, is what set him apart from the others for the longest time. He’ll attack an enemy six times, and inflicts a DoT for one turn if he gets a critical hit. Now, obviously, new people who got him runed him up with as much Crit Rate as they could get, slapped him into GB10, and watched as the boss melted away. However, he’d fallen out of use for a long time, because of how stat hungry he is, and now with people able to get a working and quick GB10 team with F2P mons like Loren, Sigmarus, and Lulu, we can officially declare the days of Orochi GB10 dead.

#6 – Liu Mei (Light Kung-Fu Girl) [July]

Liu Mei is around mid-tier in the Kung Fu Girl family, with top-tier being Fei or Xiao Lin and the lowest being Ling Ling. She’s still a good damage dealer, though, and what sets her apart from her sisters is the condition of Light Dragon Attack. The Kung Fu Girls are very similar form each other, with the exception of their [xyz] Dragon Attack skills. For example, Fei ignores defense, Hong Hua increases debuff times, and more. Liu Mei attacks random enemies four times, and each hit absorbs 25% of their attack bar into Liu Mei. This makes her great for crowd control and damage against Khi’zar Kha’jul. I actually have mine built and six-starred, but lately she’s sort of fallen out of use for me.

#5 – Morris (Wind Dice Magician) [September]

Morris is like a budget Amarna, in that he can revive all his teammates. However, he and all the other Dice Magicians (with the exception of Tablo) are way too RNG-focused in order for him to be properly usable. His passive To Live or To Die will have him roll 2 dice at the start of each turn if an ally’s dead. If both dice get the same number, he’ll revive all allies. At the sum of the number increases, he’ll revive the allies with more and more HP.

#4 – Chilling (Water Jack-o-Lantern) [October]

Chilling is actually really good now, especially in DB10 and in the pesky Guillaume stages of ToAH. His passive, The Cunning, allows him to steal a beneficial effect from an enemy with each attack and plants it on himself. His attack speed increases per buff on himself. Some people may ask, “Why use him when we can use Elsharion?” Well, it sorta turns out that Elsharion isn’t nearly as good as we were promised. Yes, he does steal buffs and applies them to everyone, but remember that, despite his passive not saying any percentages (meaning it’d be assumed that he’s guaranteed to steal it), sometimes he doesn’t steal buffs at all and the enemy can resist it. With Chilling, though, he hits 3 times on his first, meaning he has three chances to steal buffs. It’s basically guaranteed he’ll get it.

#3 – Deva (Light Chakram Dancer) [December]

Deva is currently the only Boom/Chak who has a HoH, and when she was first released, it’s not hard to see why. Her passive Silver Chakram used to be called Golden Opportunity, and she had a 25% chance to ignore defense on enemies who were under inability effects. However, then the Shaina nerf came along – I’m almost over the death of Shaina I swear – Deva got buffed so that Golden Opportunity was now Silver Chakram and did damage based off an enemy’s Max HP, and her HoH actually got rereleased the weekend of the BoomChak annihilation. I know it was necessary if over half the playerbase relied on two monsters specifically for their teams, but it still hurts. Did I mention I’m totally and completely okay with the death of Shaina, despite the fact that it completely destroyed my DB10, NB10, and my ToAH team? I’m not okay with it still-

#2 – Antares (Fire Lich) [June]

Yeah, I don’t think even I expected myself to rank Antares so high up. The truth is that, during 2018, he was brushed off as a mediocre monster who could only be used for skillups for his light brother, Halphas. And then Diana came into the picture in RTA, a few buffs happened, and suddenly Antares was found to be a great counter against Diana, the wind Unicorn. This is mostly because of his passive Transcendence. Before we go on, though, we need to talk about why Diana is so cancerous in RTA. In her human form, her passive states that she’ll gain 25% attack bar for herself with each critical hit that she lands, and her second skill Inevitable Wound hits an enemy four times, which removes a buff off of them with each hit and replaces it with a DoT. Her unicorn passive Messenger of the Wind also increases her attack bar by 15% each time an ally gets hit. Basically, she can cycle through the one-additional-turn-per-monster rule of RTA because of her attack bar increasing skills. Now let’s talk about Antares’s passive, Transcendence. Whenever an enemy’s turn ends, he starts with a 15% chance to gain an additional turn. However, if the effect doesn’t activate, his chance of gaining additional turns will increase until he does get the turn, and then it’ll reset. Also, his attack power and crit rate will be increased for one turn when Transcendence activates. In other words, he can cut into Diana’s infinite procs and go ham on her and her allies.

#1 – Mihyang (Water Sky Dancer) [May]

I will never stop rambling about the Mihyang HoH, and how good it is. Because of this HoH, I actually had a working R4 team for the longest time before I got Amarna. Then again, Amarna is just great and is, like, the Raids cleanser. I’m very lucky to have my Amarna I love him so much aaaa- ANYway, Mihyang’s third skill, Dance of Mirage, will decrease the cooltime of debuffs on her allies for 1 turn while increasing the buffs on her allies by 1 turn as well. It’s not a complete cleanse, but it works quite well, not to mention how nice the buff increase is. Plus her base stats are higher than Konamiya’s, which makes her overall way better as a person’s starting cleanser. I hope you all enjoyed this article! Who was your favorite of the 2018 Hall of Heroes? Make sure to tell me in the comments down below, and in the meantime, I’m Sara Ann, and I’ll see you in the next article!]]>