When I started this challenge I had no idea it was going to consume the next seven and a half months of my life. Still, I'm glad to have done it, and I feel I can confidently label myself as a master Kingdom Rush Origins player now. We've got a lot to talk about to wrap up this series, so buckle up for my longest blog post yet.
Let's start with our final grades. With 66 maps worth of grades under my belt I can now definitively rank all 16 heroes from best to worst. So with that, let's get to them! Instead of listing all grades at once I'm going to discuss each hero as we go, sharing what I've learned about them and what makes them good or bad.
Final Rankings
Phoenix - 3.98 - The best all-around hero in the game
Phoenix is our undisputed valedictorian. It was the closest of close - literally 0.01 separated her from Wilbur and Faustus - but she does take the top spot uncontested. All through this series the three of them have been neck and neck at the top, earning 'A's with ease. Even when we had to give them 'B's for the first time ever on Mactan's Retreat iron they all took one together. The difference proved to be Beheader's Seat iron - without a doubt the most infamous map in this challenge. While Wilbur and Faustus earned 'B's again, Phoenix earned not only an 'A' but the Best Choice award. With that momentum she never faltered down the home stretch, not just earning straight 'A's the rest of the way but most of the Best Choice awards as well.
What makes her the best hero? First is her normal attack. Now her nominal DPS is good but not amazing just in terms of the number. However, what make it so effective are two factors - it does true damage and it's an area attack. If she's hitting at least three mobs her DPS starts rivaling Wilbur's, and as you know, your chokepoint is almost always hosting multiple visitors at once.
Next are her abilities. All of them do true damage like her basic attack, which means she has no weaknesses against certain types of foes. Purification and Blazing Offspring are always either helping you catch leaks or softening up mobs approaching your chokepoint, while Ring of Fire just increases the massive AoE Phoenix is already doing.
But it's Immolate and her hero spell Ember Field that really put her over the top, because they subvert your normal expectations for using a hero. Immolate is not just a great way to clear out a chokepoint that's become too crowded - it turns the tables on enemies with ranged attacks. Twilight Harassers are just signing their own death warrant attacking her. You actually want her to die as much as possible, because her DPS increases during her death / burn the ground / resurrect cycle. And as for Ember Field, while the damage is good but not amazing, it has a short cooldown and there's no reason not to use it immediately every time it comes off cooldown.
Bottom line, you simply can't go wrong with Phoenix. Even on maps that value high single-target DPS she's still a solid choice. The only time we had to give her a 'B' was simply because her performance - while great - simply couldn't compare to a couple of other heroes whose strengths were perfectly designed for the map.
Wilbur - 3.97 - Ludicrous DPS
Coming in by the slimmest of margins behind Phoenix, Wilbur is another amazing hero. While his abilities - including his hero spell - are merely good but not amazing, what sets him apart is his truly ludicrous DPS. Wilbur does three to four times more DPS than most other heroes in the game. Not just that, but he does true damage with his basic attack, which just ups the discrepancy even more when facing enemies with high armor or magic resistance. Park him right behind your blockers at your chokepoint and he can basically mow down enemies as fast as they appear. As mentioned, it was only the extreme case of Beheader's Seat iron that cost Wilbur the top spot. Otherwise you're never going to regret choosing him as your hero.
Faustus - 3.97 - Always a good choice, never the best choice
That really sums up what Faustus is all about. Even though he matched Wilbur grade for grade throughout the entire series, he never once took a Best Choice award. He does the second highest DPS in the game (with true damage) and has a very balanced kit. He has good both AoE and single target damage through Dragon Lance, Liquid Fire, and Dragon Rage (all of them also true damage), and some great utility for difficult mobs in Teleport Rune and Enervation. So he can handle virtually any situation, but you're never going to finish a map with that feeling that he absolutely tore it up like you do when using Phoenix.
Vez'nan - 3.89 - Master of magic (but not magic resistance)
Vez'nan's GPA did not change at all from the last report card, reflecting that he performs well even on the toughest maps. Between having great DPS, being able to teleport, having an insta-kill, and having the second best hero spell in the game, he is a powerhouse of a hero. The only reason he comes in fourth is because his basic attack and Arcane Nova both do magic damage, so maps with lots of magic resistant enemies (think spiders) are his Achilles heel. He still does okay on them, but they are where he earned the 'B's that dropped his GPA below our top three heroes who all do true damage. Still, you're rarely going to go wrong using him and he is one of the most fun characters to use.
Durax - 3.74 - Carpal tunnel-inducing crystal assassin
Durax and Bravebark have been neck and neck this entire series and were tied as of the last report card. But while Durax's GPA has dropped a little since then, Bravebark's dropped even more, so Durax takes the #5 spot by himself.
Micro isn't usually super important in the Kingdom Rush series - although I will say I feel it has been more important in Origins than either of the previous two games. However, Durax by nature needs a lot of micromanagement (hence the carpal tunnel joke). After all, you do have two clones of him to manage. And it's not just effectively managing three heroes at once - he's a bit of a glass cannon, so you're constantly needing to move him (and his clones) in and out of combat. My best day during this series was when I discovered I could select the clones using the '6' key.
Durax is definitely best used as an "assassin" hero. Keep him and his clones behind your chokepoint with all their abilities off cooldown. Then, when a major threat appears, send them all in at the same time to drop Armblade, Lethal Prism, and Shard Lance all at once, doing massive amounts of damage, then retreat them behind your blockers again before they take too much damage.
Reg'son - 3.71 - A massively underrated death-dealer
Reg'son is definitely the comeback story of this whole series. After the first report card he was in third-to-last place with a dismal 3.39, but since then he has rocketed up the rankings, finishing in a tie for 6th with Bravebark.
The reasons why he started so low are obvious now - his skillset is simply wasted on gnolls and hyenas. He really started to come into his own during the Enchanted Forest section of the campaign, where his ability to body-block Boomshrooms and insta-kill Bandersnatches was priceless. Things only continued to get better as we got into harder maps and Vindicator proved even more useful, trivializing waves by instantly eliminating Twilight Golems, Twilight Heretics, Shadow Champions, and more.
But what I pleasantly discovered during this series is that Reg'son is more than just Vindicator. While his damage seems pitifully low, he has a fast attack rate and does true damage, both of which make for an actually very respectable DPS. Eldritch Blade is an extremely powerful ability, doing 700 damage if you get all 10 hits in, which virtually doubles his overall DPS (keep in mind that Lynn's hero spell does 700 damage). Then add in the fact that Eldritch Heal gives him virtually limitless survivability as long as things are dying around him and you have a very solid hero all around.
Bravebark - 3.71 - A reliable tank with a reliable kill
Bravebark is in many ways the complement of Vez'nan. Both can teleport and both have an insta-kill, but Bravebark does physical damage as opposed to Veznan's magical damage. And while Vez'nan's place is doing damage from behind blockers, Bravebark's role is to tank your toughest opponents. However, Bravebark's kit is slightly less powerful than Vez'nan's, and unfortunately for him armor is just more common than magic resistance. It was that prevalence of high armor enemies in the elite levels that dropped his GPA into a tie for 6th.
Lilith - 3.56 - A little RNG short of greatness
Lilith is a solid character - her GPA has barely changed throughout all the report cards - but as the title implies there's too much RNG with her for her to truly be great. What I found in using her is that I spend my entire time with her hoping - hoping to get the insta-kill with Reaper's Harvest, hoping to get a Resurrection proc, hoping she doesn't absorb a weak mob with Soul Eater, and hoping to get the meteors instead of the fallen angels on her hero spell. If the proc chance on Reaper's Harvest and Resurrection were 50%, Soul Eater only worked on mobs she killed herself (so you could target it better), and Heavenly Chaos was only the meteors, I would be willing to bet she'd be competing with the likes of Vez'nan.
Lynn - 3.42 - A great concept, but leaves you wanting more
As we get into the bottom half of our heroes you'll notice the GPAs start dropping precipitously, as evidenced by how far we've dropped now in only two spots. The elite mini-campaigns really exposed the weaknesses of the lower-tier heroes, and Lynn is no exception. She started out in our first report card with an awful 3.39 (because like Reg'son, gnolls and hyenas just aren't her thing), managed to raise it to a respectable 3.55 after the Enchanted Forest, but has since fallen back to nearly that original grade. It's a shame because I really love Lynn as a character. I like the curse-based concept of her kit and it's very useful, but while she performs adequately well, I just wish she were a little bit more powerful.
Xin - 3.24 - A big lump of meh
While Xin's GPA was consistently in the 3.44 - 3.48 range for previous report cards, you can see that he really took a tumble from the elite mini-campaigns (as did most of the bottom-half heroes, as mentioned). They exposed his kit as just being very bland and weak. Pandamonium is actually a fairly good hero spell - as long as you can isolate an enemy so that all hits land on them - but the physical DPS on his basic attack and the rest of his kit just don't bring nearly enough to the table.
Bruce - 3.24 - A paper tiger (or lion, in this case)
Bruce is without a doubt my biggest disappointment in this whole series. While he started out in the first report card with a sad 3.39, I attributed this to the nature of his kit being mismatched with gnolls and hyenas, as I did with Reg'son and Lynn. I really expected him to rise in the rankings as we got into harder territory. But while Reg'son did that in spades, it never worked out for him.
His kit seems really good when you read it - with a large health pool, 50% armor, and tremendous DPS on his basic attack boosted by abilities like Sharp Claws and Grievous Bites, he seems like the ultimate duelist, going toe to toe with powerful enemies and DPSing them down. But sadly it just rarely pans out in practice. Sharp Claws is a fantastic ability, but it only has a 10% proc chance. That means on average he's going to have to make 10 attacks (10 seconds in this case) before it kicks in. But after 10 attacks a normal mob is probably already dead, and facing a more powerful foe like a Twilight Avenger his health is going to be looking pretty rough, 50% armor or no. If he gets lucky and gets a Sharp Claws proc in the first or second hit, yes, he can put out some tremendous damage, but it just rarely happens. Unfortunately the rest of his kit is very underwhelming. King's Roar is nice, but Guardian Lions is one of the worst hero spells in the game.
Prince Denas - 3.18 - Great blocking, but nothing more
When it's blocking you need, you call on Prince Denas. He is the ultimate tank - better than any other hero by far - and can use Sworn Defenders when numbers are what you need. The only problem is that this is all he has to offer. Despite Mighty and Avenger trying to give him more tools, his DPS is simply terrible. It's not just enough to tank an enemy indefinitely - you need to be able to burn them down as well. You can always build Bladesingers to meet your tanking needs, but Denas will make you appreciate just how much of your overall DPS you expect to come from your hero. This is evidenced by his performance in the elite levels. There are lots of powerful mobs that need to be taken down, and Denas just isn't up to the job. He had been consistently maintaining a GPA in the 3.5 range all series long, but he plummeted from a 3.51 at the last report card to finish at 3.18 due to a large number of 'C's.
Arivan - 3.14 - Not bad for a "free" hero
It shouldn't be surprising to find the first three heroes - the ones that are free on the mobile version - at the bottom of the barrel. After all, if you're going to pay for heroes, you expect them to be better than what you get for free. Arivan is the best of the bunch, which isn't saying a lot, but he does distinguish himself from them primarily through his true damage basic attack. His GPA did take a beating from the elite levels, but it's not surprising that he's not cut out for the hardest challenges in the game.
Catha - 3.02 - Stall harder
Catha is not a great hero, of course, being third from last, but there are some times when it's actually not bad to use her. She excels at stalling enemies, so on maps where you can build a chokepoint with decent DPS she can do a good job of giving you time to burn everything down. It's on challenges like heroic modes where resources are limited and you have to lean much harder on your hero that her poor DPS comes into focus. Like Prince Denas, it's not enough to stall enemies indefinitely - eventually you have to kill them in a reasonable time.
Eridan - 3.00 - Sometimes versatile isn't good
There are two main problems with Eridan that lead to him taking next to last in our rankings. The first is that his kit is split between ranged and melee abilities. That may sound like a good thing by making him versatile. The problem is at any given time he can only fight in either ranged or melee, meaning he's effectively always operating with only half a kit. Contrast this to a kit like Faustus' which has a variety of tools, but all of which can be used at any time.
The other problem with Eridan is on the other end of the spectrum, with him being too specialized. All of Eridan's abilities only do physical damage. Every other hero has at least one ability that deals true damage, or damage of the opposite type from their basic attack. This was what really tripped him up in the elite levels with their many high armor enemies. His DPS isn't great to begin with, but up against high armor he starts to have Prince Denas-like difficulties - but unlike Denas he doesn't have the same survivability.
Razz and Rags - 2.76 - <Sigh>
Let me start by saying I like the character concept for Razz and feel there is a lot of squandered opportunity here. I pity those people on mobile who were intrigued by his concept and were suckered into paying for him. It's an indictment against Ironhide Games that a paid hero is worse than all the free heroes by such a wide margin.
There are multiple factors to Razz finding his way to the bottom of the rankings. Low DPS in general is a main one. It also doesn't help that he's the slowest character in the game. But the primary factor is that he has the worst hero spell in the game. I'm going to leave it until my hero spell ranking to explain why, but just know that it's significantly worse than even the second-worst spell, and combined with his already underwhelming abilities I struggled to complete most maps with him. This was doubly true in the elite levels, because, you know, elite.
Best Choice Award Summary
Along with assigning grades to every hero on each map, I also decided to list which hero I thought was the best choice to take on that particular map. Long time readers will know that it's a short list of heroes who consistently took home this award. Let's break down how many wins each hero got:
- Phoenix - 26 (12 solo, 14 joint)
- Wilbur - 25 (15 solo, 10 joint)
- Reg'son - 13 (6 solo, 7 joint)
- Vez'nan - 6 (all joint)
- Bravebark - 4 (all joint)
- Durax - 3 (1 solo, 2 joint)
It should be no surprise that these six heroes also finished at the top of our GPA rankings. The only real surprise is that through the entire series I never once felt Faustus was deserving of Best Choice - even though he finished a close second in GPA!
It also shouldn't be surprising that Phoenix and Wilbur both got as many awards as all the other winners combined. It's a testament to how powerful they truly are. And Reg'son coming in third with 13 awards is a testament to just how powerful and what a gamechanger Vindicator is.
Hero Spell Rankings
So we've handed out our final grades, but as I mentioned in a post a while back, ranking hero spells is a different matter altogether. Having used each of them a few hundred times, it's now time to definitively rank them in terms of power.
1. Vindicator (Reg'son)
There was never any doubt about the number one spot. Vindicator is what led Reg'son to tying for 6th in our GPA rankings and garnering 13 Best Choice awards along the way. There are many maps that this power truly trivializes - Mactans' Retreat iron perhaps being the best example.
2. Dark Pact (Vez'nan)
Where to even begin with how amazing Vez'nan's demon is? First, when it appears it stuns nearby enemies for 5 seconds. Second, it has an enormous health pool (pretty much only a Twilight Golem has a chance of killing it, and even then it still lasts for most of its duration). Third, it has both a melee and an AoE ranged attack, both of which do ludicrous true damage. Fourth, it lasts for a whopping 30 seconds! It just doesn't get much better than that (Vindicator being the only thing that is, in fact, better than that).
3. Ember Field (Phoenix)
While the damage each egg does is good if not amazing, the fact that it has such a short cooldown coupled with the fact that there's no reason not to use it as soon as it's off cooldown means it's a huge overall DPS boost. Best of all, because of their long duration you can set them not just offensively, but defensively behind your blockers to catch leaks as well.
4. Heavenly Chaos (Lilith)
You'll quickly learn to hope that you get the meteors instead of the angels every time you use this ability. If it were just the meteors this ability would definitely take the number 3 spot, but as it is it's still a great ability.
5. Sapphire Fangs (Durax)
A straightfoward ability, it has great versatility in being able to deal both a lot of damage to a single enemy or moderate damage to multiple enemies.
6. Pewpew Drones (Wilbur)
On the one hand, you don't have to aim them, meaning you never have to worry about wasted damage. On the other hand, you can't aim them, and sometimes they'll go after an enemy other than the one you were hoping for. This skill is very similar to Phoenix's in that it's basically just an overall DPS increase rather than a game changing bomb to drop.
7. Sealed Fate (Lynn)
A reasonably short cooldown coupled with good versatility make this a solid hero spell. You can either do a lot of damage to a single target, or you can choose a target with 700 or less health for the guaranteed kill and another 300 damage to nearby enemies.
8. Faery Dust (Catha)
For being a terrible hero she has a great hero spell. It has a very generous area of effect, and with its short cooldown you can basically keep enemies stunned 25% of the time.
9. Dragon Rage (Faustus)
The damage is just okay, but the wonky way it works is why the hero spell of the hero who finished second in our GPA rankings is in the bottom half of the hero spell rankings. Maps with largely vertical lanes can make this very hard to use, and Faustus has a bad habit of using Teleport Rune at the worst time to teleport enemies out of the damage.
10. Pandamonium (Xin)
This theoretically should be very comparable to Durax's Sapphire Fangs - do either a lot of damage to a single target or moderate damage to multiple targets - but for some reason it just doesn't work nearly as well.
11. Elemental Storm (Arivan)
The AoE damage and stuns are great, but the cooldown is unreasonably long. Cut it in half and this spell would probably be competing for the 5th or 6th top spot.
12. Nature's Wrath (Bravebark)
Every time I use this ability I feel like I'm just tickling the enemy. Definitely underpowered for how great a hero Bravebark is.
13. Sworn Defenders (Prince Denas)
It's hard to get excited about summoning blocking fodder.
14. Arrow Storm (Eridan)
If this did true damage it would be so much more useful. As it is, it's largely limited to helping with swarms of low-powered enemies.
15. Guardian Lions (Bruce)
It's helpful to compare Bruce to Vez'nan to get perspective on why this hero spell is so bad. Guardian Lions stuns five enemies for three seconds. Vez'nan's demon stuns all nearby enemies for five seconds when it appears. Each lion does 240 true damage, for a maximum possible 1,200 damage. Vez'nan's demon does an average of 105 true damage per attack. I don't know exactly what it's attack speed is, but it's melee attack looks to be no worse than 1 second. So over the course of its 30 second duration it will deal 3,150 damage - and that's assuming it doesn't use its ranged AoE attack. Guardian Lions is more comparable to Vez'nan's Magic Shackles, which isn't even a hero spell. It stuns six enemies to the lions' five for the same duration. It only does 36 damage to each enemy, but is 204 more damage worthy of a hero spell? Of course there's going to be discrepancy in the power of hero spells, but I feel there shouldn't be this much discrepancy.
16. Changeling (Razz and Rags)
Even Guardian Lions seems spectacular compared to Razz's stinker of a hero spell. Changeling is one of those abilities that sounds awesome, but in practice is absolutely awful. First of all, there aren't nearly as many good opportunities to use it as you might think. How often do you see 8 enemies tightly grouped together coming down a path, with either 8 more enemies (or at least a few much bigger enemies) right on their heels? You might have a vision of transforming a group of enemies right in front of a Twilight Golem, then having the Golem obliterate them all, but I can tell you in practice it just never happens.
The second issue is that the duration just isn't long enough to do much good. While it sounds like you're going to set a group of enemies fighting amongst themselves, either killing or severely wounding each other, again, it just doesn't really happen. After you transform a few enemies you'll probably have to wait a precious second or two (out of ten total) before they engage other enemies (the ragdolls' aggro radius is stupidly small). The limited time the ragdolls fight other enemies just isn't enough for either side to do significant damage to the other. Thus this ability largely is only good for stalling enemies - except unlike Catha's Faery Dust, you can't attack the enemies while they're being stalled. Couple all this with an unreasonably long cooldown and you have an awful hero spell. Oh, you'll use it alright - you'll have to use it to stall enemies at your chokepoint while you wait for your barracks units to respawn because Razz doesn't have enough DPS to burn them down.
Other Stats
A few more interesting stats before we wrap up:
There were a total of 13 maps that ended up being trivial (i.e., every hero earned an 'A'). The latest one was Arcane Quarters campaign.
The hardest map ended up being Beheader's Seat iron, with an average grade of 2.19. There were only 5 other maps where the average dropped below a 'B' - Royal Gardens iron at 2.75, The Unseelie Court heroic at 2.88, The Ascent iron at 2.88, Mactans' Retreat at 2.88, and Blood Quarry heroic at 2.94.
As I mentioned in the previous blog post I'm very proud that I was able to complete every map with every hero and never had to hand out any 'F's. I did however end up giving out a total of 16 'D's. Razz and Rags had the most with 6 (surprising no one), and Beheader's Seat iron saw the most for a single map with 6.
Epilogue
I had a lot of fun with this challenge and it ended up driving a lot of new viewers to my YouTube channel, so I'm glad that I did it despite having misgivings when I first started. The timing worked out perfectly too - I'm going on vacation next week, and I'm happy to wrap it all up before leaving. And as if it were a sign, Kingdom Rush Vengeance went on sale on Steam this week. I've already bought and installed it, and as soon as I get back from vacation I'm going to dive right in. I'll do a veteran difficulty campaign walkthrough as before, then start right back up with an impossible hero challenge for it! I hope you've enjoyed this journey with me and will join me for Kingdom Rush Vengeance!
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