Sorry it took so long to get this out, but here we are at last with our third Impossible Hero Challenge completed. While the original Kingdom Rush game was in fact the motivator for me to start my YouTube channel, I never in a million years would have guessed then that I would be devoting hundreds of hours of video to the series like I have. I have no regrets though - I've thoroughly enjoyed doing all of it. Except for the very end of my Vengeance challenge when I had to hand out my first ever 'F', amazingly at no point in the two and a half years since I first published the Gray Ravens Campaign playlist for Origins has completing these challenges turned into a tedious slog I had to force myself to finish. It's a testament to how good the franchise is, and why it's hailed as one of the premiere franchises in the tower defense genre.
Still, I have to admit that the reason this report card is delayed is because I was lacking motivation to get it done. And that's not because I didn't enjoy doing this challenge, but rather just because it has made me realize what kind of game Frontiers is and how it differs from the rest of the series. The bottom line is that Frontiers is just heavily balanced around the towers instead of your hero. There's nothing wrong with that, and you could even argue that's how it should be in a tower defense game, since, you know, towers is right there in the name.
The place of heroes in Kingdom Rush games has been evolving throughout the series. In the first game heroes were fairly minor. They did not have permanent levels outside of maps, but leveled up from 1 to 10 during a map. The also only had two special abilities that they automatically gained while leveling up. They were a nice addition, but rarely was your choice of hero crucial. Only on the hardest maps on Veteran difficulty did you need to optimize your hero choice, such as using Oni for the demon levels. Most of the time you could finish a level without any hero at all.
Frontiers introduced the idea of heroes having permanent levels that they had to gain via experience, as well as now five abilities you could upgrade as they leveled up. It was a great leap forward for them, but you can tell Ironhide was hesitant to go all-in on making them a central part of the strategy. This is evidenced by the huge number of maps where I ended up giving all heroes 'A's, because it really didn't matter which one you chose. There were only five maps during the main campaign where we actually had grades, and all of them were heroic or iron modes. We still had a number of all-'A' maps in the elite campaigns, but the irony there was that in several cases it had nothing to do with the map being easy. In fact some of those maps were quite difficult, but the difficulty was all about getting the build just right.
I'm not sure what the technical explanation is. I'd have to do a deep dive on the numbers, seeing how hero DPS compares to tower DPS in this game versus others, but for whatever reason heroes just don't contribute as much to the overall solution as they do in Origins and Vengeance. Of course part of this can be explained by the addition of hero spells in Origins, which gives you a cooldown on par with Rain of Fire / Thunderbolt in terms of it's power, but I know there's more to it as well. Ultimately in those somewhat uncommon instances where we handed out grades, we didn't hand out any 'D's in the entire series, and honestly precious few 'C's, which should indicate that your choice of hero just isn't that important. So if you like Mirage, by all means play with Mirage regardless of what anyone else says. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself there, so let's go ahead and finally get to the final hero rankings.
1. Bonehart - 4.00 - Death From Above
There was never any doubt who the top hero was going to be. I knew from my previous experience with the game that Bonehart is just in a different class from the rest of the heroes. He ends up as the only hero to earn straight 'A's for this series, and he's the reason I didn't even bother doing a Best Choice award like I did in my Origins series. Just like Eiskalt in Vengeance, Bonehart puts things on easy mode.
While the DPS of his basic attack and abilities are great, it's really his Unstable Disease ability that puts him over the top. Making enemies explode for 90 damage in an area - then infect the damaged enemies - is really just overpowered. Frontiers likes to try to overwhelm you with numbers a lot, but Bonehart just laughs at large groups of enemies. He can easily get a chain reaction of explosions going, or he can explode a large number of enemies at once to do a lot of damage to a powerful enemy. Let's say a Gorillon is coming down the path, but he's surrounded by half a dozen Savages. If you can infect and kill the Savages all at once, that's 540 damage you're hitting the Gorillon with, besides infecting him as well.
Spine Rain, Plague Carrier, and Disease Nova are all high DPS, fantastic AoE attacks enormously complementing Unstable Disease, then his final ability, Bone Golem, shores up his only weakness, which is his inability to block. All in all he's a fantastic hero whom you'll never go wrong with.
2. Alric - 3.88 - Master of All Trades
We have a four-way tie for second place, and it shouldn't be terribly surprising that the first of that four is Alric. Ironhide really made a mistake and gave away the store with him. They learned their lesson in Origins and Vengeance, and the free-on-mobile heroes there are generally bottom tier. Why is he so good? Well, the main reason is he can do everything.
Flurry may not seem like that great of an ability - just letting him use his basic attack six times in quick succession - but the extremely short cooldown coupled with his Swordsmanship ability mean that Alric can actually dish out some good damage. As if those weren't enough, he ups the ante further with Spiked Armor, making him deadly against high damage mobs, who start playing a game of "stop hitting yourself" when attacking him. He's no glass cannon either, and can stand up to those mobs for a decent amount of time with 65% armor at level 10 and his health boosted by Toughness. And then to truly make things unfair, his Sand Warriors ability lets him summon additional blocking fodder. The Sand Warriors aren't anything impressive, but in most cases all you need from blockers is just to stall the enemy for a little bit while your towers work on them.
So Alric checks the DPS, tanking, and stalling boxes in this game hardcore, which is just about everything you can ask from a hero. Well, technically you could also ask for a ranged attack, as well as some sort of magical or true damage attack to balance him out, but at that point he would be beyond OP. And the thing is, two of his abilities are wasted on stat boosters. I'll have a lot more to say about this later on, but I can't even imagine how powerful he would be if they were replaced by actual abilities.
2. Bruxa - 3.88 - Crazy Good DPS
That's really Bruxa in a nutshell. She has a ranged magical attack with great DPS, and then her DPS is further enhanced by her skull abilities. Laughing Skulls, Skull Sacrifice, and Bone Dance simply all enhance her skull mechanic to boost its DPS considerably.
As for her other abilities, Voodoo Doll is nice but not game changing. Dread Aura is unfortunately too weak. The radius is very small, and the literal 1 DPS it does to enemies in range is completely negligible. The slow is nice, but with such a small radius it forces her to be uncomfortably close to mobs.
I will say one thing - I feel Bruxa is sometimes overhyped by the Kingdom Rush community. You see a lot of people talking about how absurd her DPS is, but they're always calculating it when she has five skulls up and running at once. But what I experienced over the course of this series is that it's actually somewhat uncommon for Bruxa to keep five skull up consistently. Your only hope of doing it is a steady stream of weak mobs that are constantly dying near her, and even then the skulls get depleted so quickly it's hard to maintain five. And then of course if she's having to go up against a solo large mob like a Gorillon the skulls get used up virtually instantly and she has only her base DPS to fall back on. Three is a much more reasonable number when calculating her average DPS. Make no mistake, it's still great, but just not as great as you might be lead to believe.
2. Sha'tra - 3.88 - One Trick Pony Extraordinaire
I'm not dogging on Sha'tra by calling him a one trick pony - you don't get 2nd place in the rankings without being good - but what makes him so good is just his Abduction ability. Sha'tra is the Reg'son of Frontiers (well, really Reg'son is the Sha'tra of Origins since Frontiers came first, but you know what I mean). The ability to insta-kill a single enemy every 25 seconds is huge, and it's another instance where the developers accidentally gave away too much. You can see that in the fact that in Origins, Reg'son's Vindicator ability still has a 50 second cooldown after being fully upgraded.
Besides Abduction he's merely okay. Vibro Blades, Energy Glaive, and Purification Protocol are all just DPS enhancers, but even with them his DPS is just so-so. So is his survivability, despite having decent HP and armor. But his last ability is wasted on an on-death ability, and this is a lesson Ironhide has struggled to learn. On-death abilities are pretty much never worth it, as the ability's effect is never as good as just having your hero alive during the respawn time - even if they have to be retreated to heal for a while instead. The only time they got this right was with Phoenix in Origins, where her DPS while dead is actually comparable to that while she's alive.
Because of all these factors, Sha'tra is a very situational hero. I know I said Bonehart would always win the Best Choice award had I done it for this series, but there are actually some maps where Sha'tra would take it, as his constant stream of Abductions trivialize waves of the larger mobs.
2. Dante - 3.88 - The Ying to Bruxa's Yang
Dante really is kind of a counterpart to Bruxa. He's a high DPS hero like her, but he does largely physical instead of magical damage. His DPS isn't quite as good as hers, but in return he's also not a glass cannon and can tank for a modest period of time.
Besides his great basic DPS - both melee and ranged - he has Akimbo Style and Silver Bullet to drastically increase his damage output. His Holy Grenade and Relic of Power abilities are good support abilities, but not as game changing as they might sound. After all, what's the good in silencing and removing the armor from a single Vampiresa when there are ten on the board currently? No, it's his DPS that moves him to the top of the leaderboard.
Speaking of DPS, his last ability, Beacon of Light, is a mixed bag. You usually aren't building melee units for their DPS, so 50% more meh is generally still meh. As for the fact that it can still apply while he's dead, see my comments above for how I feel about on-death abilities.
6. Ashbite - 3.82 - One Hit Short of a Wonder
Having already done Origins and Vengeance, it was a bit of a shock to come back to Frontiers and find out a dragon hero was not top-tier. Don't get me wrong, Ashbite is great, but he falls short of greatness.
Ashbite has an AoE true damage attack, and normally those words are enough to make any Kingdom Rush player's heart flutter. Four of Ashbite's abilities are simply geared towards increasing his DPS - Blazing Breath, Feast, Wildfire Barrage, and Reign of Fire. Feast also has an insta-kill chance, which is nice, but it's not reliable. His last ability, Fiery Mist, just slows down enemies to group them up better for his AoE capabilities. However, despite all these positives, his DPS ultimately is just not good enough to counter his weaknesses.
If you're going to design a hero that can't block and has no other utility besides DPS, then that DPS needs to be tremendous. However, Ashbite falls short on that. Part of the problem is the area on his basic attack and Blazing Breath is just too small. Blazing Breath also deals too little damage at only 56 per target. The net effect is that while he's great against hordes of small mobs, against larger targets he just doesn't have enough output. There were several maps where his inability to provide blocking was highly detrimental as well. It's a shame, but at least Ironhide learned their lesson - in both Origins and Vengeance the dragons are always at the top of the hero charts.
7. Karkinos - 3.71 - [checks notes] Wait, what?
I was a little flabbergasted to tally the final grades and find Karkinos this high. I would never have pegged him to make the top 50%. He's not bad, of course, but he's not great either. He's just a very meh hero, and I can't say when I was doing a map I ever looked forward to getting to him.
His abilities certainly don't leap off the page. Despite Iron Pincer increasing his damage by 20, it never felt like he had that great of a DPS output. And while Pincer Attack does sort-of-AoE true damage, again, it never felt like a game changer. And Shoulder Cannon? I should make a montage video of all the time Karkinos wasted his time with a Shoulder Cannon shot that completely missed the mobs. I know this is a product of the targeting not taking into account mobs being blocked, but still it feels like such a waste.
Battle Hardened and Burrow are his really good abilities. Battle Hardened can keep him alive a shocking amount of time against high damage enemies, and Burrow makes him great at lane dancing or just moving to hotspots on the battlefield.
I'm not sure how the big K grabs the #7 spot overall, but I trust my grades (and I double-checked them). We'll give him the Most Surprising award of this series.
8. Captain Blackthorne - 3.65 - Beyond the Dreams of Avarice
I'm a bit surprised to see Cap'n this low on the list, but looking back at the grades, the 'C' he took on The Sunken Citadel campaign mode really hurt his average. Still, he's a great hero, and it all revolves around his Looting ability.
When Ironhide is designing these maps, you can be sure that they're building them with a certain economy in mind. It starts with how much gold you're given at the beginning, and it influences the wave compositions that are sent at you based on how much gold they will give. For instance, there are certain waves on certain maps that really aren't that hard, and you know they are the "money wave" - there just to give you a gold boost in preparation for harder waves to come. Those harder waves are in turn designed around an assumption of what kind of defense you'll have in place at that time based on how much total gold has been made available in previous waves.
Well what if you had a hero that could just break that economy altogether? That's what Looting does. At 30% extra gold per kill, Blackthorne supercharges your build plan, getting you way ahead of where you would be with another hero. This in turn gives you a serious cushion to your defense - it can mean the difference between having a level 3 artillery versus a Mecha with Wasp Missiles when the hard wave hits.
This is another instance of Ironhide accidentally giving away too much here, and they dialed way back in future games. In Vengeance, Dianyun and Beresad only give 1 or 2 extra gold per kill, and it's still a pretty significant deal.
Still, there are some maps where getting the build out faster just doesn't have as much impact, and that's where the 'B's and one 'C' came in to drop him down this far. When gold isn't enough, his other abilities are pretty run of the mill, befitting a mid-tier hero ranking.
8. Grawl - 3.65 - Tank Par Excellence
Tying for 8th place is the Grawl the Stone Giant. Interesting fact, I don't think I realized until writing this entry and referencing material on the wiki that he was a stone giant. I thought he was supposed to be an earth elemental like the ones summoned by Sorcerers in Kingdom Rush. Not that it makes a difference in gameplay, but interesting nonetheless.
As we get to the middle of the rankings we get to heroes who are good in certain circumstances but not others, and that describes Grawl. He's great against waves of smaller mobs, and goodness knows there's plenty of that in Frontiers. Boulder Throw and Stomp give him excellent AoE capabilities, and I can't tell you how many times the stun on Stomp saved the day when things were about to go bad at a chokepoint.
Besides large groups, he also has the capability to tank single large mobs, especially with his 50% armor and 900 HP from Hard Rock. It's not needed in Frontiers as much as other games - an issue we'll discuss when we get to Dierdre - but it is there when you do.
Shard Punch is a nice little DPS enhancer, but the conditions on the insta-kill make it largely worthless - at best he can insta-kill a mob with no more than 300 health, and 300-health mobs just don't need insta-kills in the first place.
Finally his Bastion ability is actually a part of why he's not more generally useful. It gives him good DPS when staying put, but it covers up the fact that his base DPS is actually pretty low. Coupled with his extremely slow speed, it means he's rubbish when needing to cover multiple lanes, and that is something that's needed a lot in Frontiers. In the Shadowmoon campaign especially he got hit with several 'B's over this issue, and that's why he's in the middle of the rankings.
10. Saitam - 3.59 - Proto-Lynn
To me Saitam is the Lynn of Frontiers (well actually Lynn is the...dang it, you know what I'm getting at). Like her he has a great kit, but he's held back by just a single problem - his DPS is just too low.
Spinning Pole and Tetsubo Storm give him good single target and AoE damage abilities, but the problem is the damage on his basic attack is just too low. You feel it every time you use him - it just takes forever for him to kill a single enemy. It's such a shame, because the rest of his kit is great.
Divine Nature gives him surprising survivability beyond what his HP and armor would suggest, and of course Angry God is fantastic when it times right and you can use it in conjunction with a Rain of Fire (it's only drawback being he stops blocking while using it). Monkey Palm is great for dealing with those large or dangerous magic using enemies, but kind of like Grawl the use cases are somewhat limited in this game.
It's really a shame. If you just added maybe 15 points to his base damage he probably would be up there tying everyone else for the #2 spot. As it is, he's firmly mid-tier at best.
11. Cronan - 3.41 - Meh
I don't mean to be mean to Cronan, but there's not as much to say about the middle of the pack usually. You can talk about why the good heroes are good and why the bad heroes are bad, but in the middle are some heroes who are just of middling power and not very interesting.
Cronan's DPS is on the lowish side, although Deep Lashes helps a bit. Falconer is one of those unfortunate abilities that just add a flat amount to his overall DPS (10.3 to be exact). I've mentioned this before, but let's take a moment to talk about this issue. I like abilities that actually do something, as opposed to ones that just boost a hero's base stats like health or damage. With Deep Lashes you can control where it's applied to get the most effect out of the true damage, but don't make me invest in abilities that just get a hero's stat to a decent place. That's the problem with some of the heroes, especially towards the bottom - they're held back by abilities being wasted on just getting their stats to where they should have been in the first place, and it really diminishes their overall power. Alric is a remarkable exception in having two abilities wasted on stat-boosting, yet still being a terrific hero.
As for the rest of Cronan's abilities, the damage on Stampede is largely negligible, but it's ability to stun multiple enemies is quite useful. And finally Regeneration means Cronan can tank for longer than you would assume. All in all, he can get the job done, but you're never going to be eager to use him.
11. Nivus - 3.41 - Surprised to See Him Tying with 'Meh'
We have a three-way tie for 11th, and I'm honestly surprised to see Nivus making it this high. The problem with Nivus is he brings very little to the table. As a wizard he of course is squishy and worthless for blocking. That's not surprising as most wizard-type characters are meant to be glass cannons, but Nivus is more like a glass pop-gun.
The game has this bizarre way of calculating Nivus' damage that means it can end up doing way lower than his stated damage range. I won't bother explaining it here - you can read about it on the wiki - but ultimately it means his damage is largely garbage. As a result one ability - Chain Spell - is wasted on making his basic hit up to four enemies, but four times trash is still trash. Arcane Reach and Arcane Focus are two disappointing abilities like I discussed with Cronan that are simple stat boosts. And finally Magic Missiles has better damage, but nothing impressive.
Really the only good things about Nivus are his ability to teleport and Disintegrate. He does well on maps that require a lot of mobility, and every now and then Disintegrate can really pull a clutch play. But ultimately it's not enough to make him a worthwhile hero overall.
11. Kutsao - 3.41 - The Ultimate Uninteresting Character
Finally in our 11th-place trio we have Kutsao. Really the only interesting thing I can say about him is that he is the character I used when testing out builds for maps. He's not quite the weakest character, but he's the least game changing. Mirage may be weak, but she has an insta-kill that can skew your perception of how well a build is doing. Dierdre is likewise weaker, but her ability to buff towers again skews the build performance. Kutsao though has very run-of-the-mill abilities - a couple of AoEs, a couple of single target attacks, and a survivability enhancer.
Kutsao's not bad, he's just underpowered. His damage and survivability are on the lower end of the spectrum, and thus here he sits towards the bottom of the rankings. Xin from Origins is clearly a rehash of Kutsao, but they didn't really do anything to make him better there either.
14. Kahz - 3.29 - SMH
The irony with Kahz is that he probably would rank a few spots higher if you didn't put any points in his Daedalus' Maze and Bull Rush abilities. Ironhide really screwed the pooch here with giving him abilities that are - at least the vast majority of the time - actively detrimental. Let's take a deep dive on why these abilities are bad.
Daedalus' Maze is meant - I assume, at least - to give Kahz the ability to catch leaks by teleporting them to himself. The problem here is that there's no check on the ability that prevents it from teleporting enemies closer to the exit. The first time he teleports a Saurian Brute straight to your chokepoint you'll understand first hand how awful this ability is. You can prevent it from happening by trying to keep him further up the path, but 1) this puts him constantly in harm's way, generally preventing you from retreating him to heal, so he's going to die a lot, and 2) because of Bull Rush, trying to keep Kahz in a specific place is an exercise in futility anyway.
There are two scenarios in particular you'll commonly encounter that make this ability so very frustrating. The first is Kahz using the ability to make an enemy switch lanes. Often in Frontiers maps that have two exit lanes the enemy composition between them will vary greatly. One path may have large enemies that need high single-target damage to take them down, while the other has large numbers of mobs needing an AoE solution. Or one may have enemies with high armor needing magical damage, while the other has high magic resistance needing physical damage. Kahz can teleport an enemy from one lane to another, putting it on a lane whose build is non-optimal for taking it down and making your life a lot harder.
The other scenario is when the cooldowns for Maze and Bull Rush line up so that Kahz teleports an enemy to himself, then immediately rushes off to the other side of the map, not even having the decency to deal with the enemy he just teleported. It's usually not as bad as the first scenario in terms of handling it, but it is really annoying.
Now let's talk about Bull Rush. The only good thing that can be said about it is that every now and then Kahz hits a line of enemies just right and gets a massive stun with it. Those instances, however, are few and far between, and most of the time Bull Rush just makes your life harder.
My personal experience is that in Frontiers heroes mostly serve as chokepoint support. They're not as powerful as in later games, so it's usually less beneficial to send them off by themselves on some special mission elsewhere on the map. And since Frontiers is largely balanced around your build and not your hero, there are many maps where chokepoint support is absolutely essential. Bull Rush is Kahz's way of thumbing his nose at doing what you want him to do. Nothing is more frustrating than when you desperately need him to hold the line at your chokepoint against some Saurian Myrmidons or Vampiresas, but he goes charging off to some minor mob on the other side of the map you don't even care about. When you get in those intense situations you'll feel like the ability has a three second cooldown and that he has the slowest walking speed of any hero in the game as you desperately try to get him back in position.
The only reason Kahz doesn't come in at the bottom is that, besides these two abilities, he's a decent hero. Many players prefer to put no points in them, at which point he becomes more of a mid-tier character - decent survivability and DPS, with solid single-target and multi-target abilities plus a really nice tower boost. As it is though, he easily takes third from last in the rankings.
15. Dierdre - 3.24 - Decent Hero in the Wrong Game
Dierdre gets a lot of flak in the Kingdom Rush community, but I feel a lot of it is misdirected. Really the main issue with her is that her DPS is garbage. Above I talked about Nivus' damage being garbage, but Nivus' damage is fantastic compared to Dierdre.
The problem is that damage (or the lack thereof) is usually the easiest thing to notice about a hero. But that overlooks Dierdre's strength, which is that she's the strongest tank in the game. Fully upgraded she has 540 health and 75% armor, and that gives her an EHP of 2,160, which is even more than Grawl's 1,800.
But there's the problem that I've talked about elsewhere in this blog - this just isn't the kind of game where hardcore hero tanking is really needed. If Dierdre were in Origins she would have been a much more useful, even with her damage issues, being able to tank Ogres, Twilight Avengers, and the like.
Dierdre also provides super solid chokepoint support. Holy Light not only heals units, but can also raise fallen barracks units, keeping your blockers going even through heavy damage. Not only that, but Wings of Light can grant blockers an armor bonus as well, further enhancing their survivability. Now linking it to her teleporting ability makes it a little hokey to use, but it's still very valuable. Finally Consecrate helps make up in overall DPS what she is personally lacking, as she's able to boost two towers by 25% with almost 100% uptime.
Sadly her other two abilities are disappointingly stat boosters, which I've already shared my disdain for. While they give her the amazing survivability I raved about, as mentioned it's also largely not needed for this game. If they were replaced with two actual abilities I think Dierdre would easily move up to mid-tier status at least.
16. Mirage - 3.00 - Somebody Has to be Last
Dierdre may get a lot of flak, but nobody gets more so than Mirage. Some players disdain to even level her up to 10 because of her general uselessness. But somebody has to be the weakest, and Mirage is it.
It isn't necessarily that she's badly designed, she's just very under-tuned. Sadly two of her abilities - Precision and Swiftness - are just stat boosters, and as we've discussed, stat boosters are just never as good as actual abilities that do something. Unfortunately her other abilities aren't much better.
Shadow Dodge is largely a waste of an ability. Like other ranged heroes like Bruxa an Nivus, Mirage should never be blocking in the first place, so giving her a survivability-enhancer when blocking is largely useless. Shadow Dance is a decent ability, giving her a multi-target true damage attack, but unfortunately the damage is low. Finally Lethal Strike is actually a great ability - 270 true damage with a 25% insta-kill chance on a 16 second cooldown? Yes, please! However, her other awful abilities coupled with the low DPS on her basic attack mean she just struggles to ever get the job done.
Conclusion
So the only thing left to discuss really is my initial predictions. You may (probably not) recall that in the very first entry I put together a preliminary ranking of how I thought the final rankings would shake out based on my initial impressions and the vague memories I had from playing the game in years prior. Let's take a look and see how I did:
- Bonehart
- Ashbite
- Alric
- Saitam
- Bruxa
- Dante
- Grawl
- Sha'tra
- Khaz
- Karkinos
- Kutsao
- Captain Blackthorne
- Nivus
- Mirage
- Cronan
- Dierdre
Yeah, not so great. I obviously overrated Ashbite because of dragon bias from the other games, but I really overrated Saitam, who was a massive disappointment. And I guess I just didn't have enough experience with Kahz back in the day to understand how awful his abilities made him. Still, aside from Saitam and Grawl I did at least sort the heroes into the proper top or bottom 50% - not that that's that hard, though, once you've used these heroes a few times.
I'm happy to be done with Frontiers now. I'm in the process of finishing up the latest Vengeance DLC, and then I'll have to force myself to replay the entire game with Grosh again unfortunately. Thanks for coming along with me on this challenge.
