Heroes vs. Hordes is a wildly popular survival roguelike game for the iOS and Android platforms. You can pick from one of many heroes, do battle against hundreds and even thousands of enemies, along with tougher and tougher bosses, pick from your range of equipment, and try to get through as many chapters as possible.
Unlike many other games of this type, there are multiple heroes, each with not only their own primary weapon, but their own secondary stats, such as speed and health. You start off with only one of the heroes unlocked, but using various means, you can unlock all of the rest of them.
Some of the heroes in this game can be unlocked by spending coins or gems. Some of the other heroes can only be unlocked by participating in, and scoring well in, special events. Still more heroes can only be unlocked by completing an in-app purchase within the game.
Read on for a list of the best heroes, a guide on how to get them and how to use them in Heroes vs. Hordes!
To start, go through the list of heroes, and you will notice that each one of them is ranked from easy to hard. You can completely ignore these rankings and throw them out the window, because all that these rankings refer to is the length of time that it takes to get used to a hero. Easy and medium heroes are all generally fairly easy to get used to, and even the hard ones take only a little bit longer than the rest of them.
As an example, we are going to give our ranking for the worst hero to the very first hero that you start with in the game, which is the Arcane mage. There is not much learning curve for using the mage, and your attack is fairly long range, but because it automatically aims, there is absolutely no shot at aiming the projectile where you want it to go during regular mob play. This makes it rather difficult to deal with mobs, although it’s advantageous for dealing with bosses other than the giant spider.
The Arcane Mage starts with 101 health, which is around the middle of the pack, and is much better than some other characters, such as the dark ranger. Because you use this character before any other character, there is also a chance that it already has the advantage of being upgraded multiple times, if you did that already.
The second worst hero in the game is the Fire Wizard. While the projectiles that the Fire Wizard shoot out are more controllable than the ones that the Arcane Mage shoot out, the Fire Wizard has the dubious distinction of being a second worst because it’s health is so insanely low.
The health of the Fire Wizard is only 51 when you start the game with it. Additionally, these projectiles have no to limited piercing ability, so they are not very good for mobs. They are decent for bosses, other than the giant spider, but you’re going to have to use your active skills in order to make up for the lack of area of affect ability.
The Dark Ranger is the third worst fighter in the entire game. Just like the Fire Wizard, you can control the direction of the projectiles, and unlike the Fire Wizard, these projectiles have unlimited piercing ability, which makes them great for dealing with mobs.
Other than that, the dark ranger is the same as the fire wizard. They are both glass cannons with 51 base health, so, while its attack is extremely effective, you have to avoid getting hit at all costs, and there is very little room for error.
The third worst hero in the game is the Crazy Tinkerer. This hero has almost the opposite problem as the last two; its starting health is 201, which is the highest starting health in the entire game. That means that the Tinkerer can absorb a ton of attacks before losing the round.
The problem with the Tinkerer is that its main attack is landmines, which are almost completely useless. They have no damage advantage over anybody else’s attack, they have a small blast radius, there are placed randomly, and the rate of placement is almost completely unpredictable. Once you really spend time getting the hang of them, they can be useful, but it’s arguably not worth the effort.
Getting to the upper half of this list, the sixth best hero is the Frost Wizard. The Frost Wizard starts with 101 hit points, which is right in the middle, making it a very strong contender.
The attack used by the Frost Wizard is a set of waves that push out to the left and right. The frost wizard does not attack in front, but on the sides, and these attacks are excellent for dealing with mobs, but are less than ideal for dealing with bosses. Considering that mobs are typically much tougher than bosses, though, this is fine.
The Reaper is somewhere in the middle. The reason that the reaper is ranked so low despite having an average health and strong attacks, as well as a lot of speed, is that the attack, while fully surrounding the reaper, takes a long time to repeat. This can make things extremely dicey when you get into later stages of the game with faster enemies.
After the Reaper is the Monk. He has 101 health, and uses Quarterstaff attacks that send out waves of energy that do a lot of damage, and are good for bosses and average to good for mobs. There isn’t much to write home about with the Monk.
The seventh best hero in the game is the Blademaster. This one also has 101 starting health, making it right around the middle of the pack.
Where it sets itself apart is with its attack, which consists of swinging two very long katanas forward. These do large amount of damage to both mobs and bosses, and are excellent for dealing with large crowds of characters, especially as you continue to upgrade the duplicator tome.
The sixth best hero in the game is the Paladin, which is also the most recent addition to the game. Just like the Blademaster, the Paladin starts with 101 health, which is right in the middle of the pack.
What sets the Paladin apart is the holy hammer, which the Paladin hits the ground with, doing a large amount of area damage to a fairly large area. The reason the paladin is only third place is that the frequency of attack is very slow; if the attack speed was higher, then the paladin would rank higher, potentially first place.
The fifth best hero in the game is the Pirate Queen. The pirate queen has average health and speed, making her unremarkable if you take the weapon out of account.
The weapon is where she really shines, though. She fires off two guns, and the bullets that are fired out of her guns ricochet from enemy to enemy, causing absolutely catastrophic damage.
The fourth best hero in the game is the Big Game Hunter. His weapon is a shotgun that fires off a ranged blast with a very wide area of a fact, allowing you to cut huge sloths through the enemy and making it very easy to deal with large hordes.
Additionally, his health number is very high, making it easy to last for a long time in battle even if you don’t have the rest of the rare equipment. The high range damage, and the high area of a fact, combined with the high amount of health, make him one of the best all-around characters. His only weakness is that he’s slow.
The third best hero in the game is the Knight, which is actually the first and cheapest available unlock in the game. The knight has multiple areas of advantage, starting with the fact that it starts with 151 health, putting it close to the top of the pack and allowing it to take more damage.
Its attack consists of swinging a sword in an arc, which is reminiscent of the baseball bat from Survivor!.io. This attack is excellent for dealing with mobs, and it can be heavily upgraded both in terms of area and in damage. The only area where the night is lacking is in speed, because it walks far slower than most other heroes.
The second best hero in the game is the Spirit Shaman. The health is 101, which is in the middle, but the attack is where it truly sets itself apart.
Instead of having a traditional attack, the Spirit Shaman summons three beasts, which wander around the level, knocking out enemies, and automatically picking up experience. Instead of doing any direct attacks yourself, you walk around healing your creatures. Your goal is to make sure that none of your creatures get knocked off, because they can be attacked by enemies just like you can.
The best hero is one of the newest ones, the Clockwork Mage. She has 151 health points and attacks using Chrono Discs, which launch out and then return like a boomerang, they go through any enemy that they hit regardless of strength, and they do a huge amount of damage. This makes her extremely effective against both mobs and bosses, which is a very rare combination.
That concludes our ranking of every single hero in Heroes vs. Hordes, from worst to best. Some of our ranking is definitely do two opinion, considering that there is no given hero rarity, even though there are some heroes that are more expensive than others. You don’t necessarily have to believe us; test out the heroes before you buy them and see which ones you like the best.
Additionally, be sure to keep an eye on this article, because new heroes are constantly being added to Heroes vs. Hordes. As new heroes get added to the game, we will test them and add them to the rankings wherever we see fit.
The spirit shaman is garbage compared to the reaper and the knight.