Towards Lava Isle 3

My guild is easily doing Mesa4s each night in between bosses.  We've talked about trying to move up to Lava Isles, and a few of the guys have tried it.  They've gotten crushed hard.  (Having looked at it a little, I told them that would happen...)

(BTW my guild is Acadian Clashers -- drop a line if you're looking for a solid guild and you're on iOS; most of us in Eastern timezone; we do bosses at 20:00 and 20:30 server time.)

Before I started writing this, it was not clear to me which Lava Isle to aim for.  So I asked about that on reddit, and got a pretty helpful answer: "Lava 1 rewards are worse than mesa 4, for lava 2 you need minos so harder to find partner for it. Lava 3 can be done with f2p setup as well, and of course means best rewards. We farm it with 95%+ and only use one spirit mage, no other p2p heroes, and no event heroes."  I know my guild has some Minos, but on the other hand rewards for Lava 3 are better, and since everyone can do it... I think that's what we should aim for.

I have looked around, and found a lot of different ways of dealing with Lava3.  However, I like this one best, since it is detailed, and built around using FtP heroes.  That allows everyone to join, at least eventually (high levels and skills are necessary).  It also promotes the development of heroes that everyone should be developing anyway.  Also, using FtP heroes also means that we would have a lot more flexibility in assembling teams, depending on who is around.   Guys cannot always attend every night, and it would be preferable to be able to do Lavas in spite of missing that one guy with Arctica.

Generally, the meta for lava isle 3 appears to be as follows.  First, you have to survive the really immense initial damage incoming.  Generally, revite Ghoulems with very high skills are needed for this, as well as high level, evolved or d'evo'ed heroes.  Also you need a very fast amp-up from PDs: three are used for this, and also Cupids. Second, you've got to avoid or stop the procs of the bosses.  This is generally done by killing them remotely; the teams use Phantom King, Santa, and Grizzly Reaper to inflict massive remote damage.  For the bosses you fight hand-to-hand, it is done by constantly silencing them, using one Aries, and 4x Garutas and Aviars (the pet).  Finally, you need to output a large amount of damage in general, subject to a cap of 60000 damage.  The 60000 cap obviously requires at least one Pumpkin Duke, but we already have three for the ramp-up.  We will use for DPS the heroes that do lots of hits and which proc remotely: PK in particular, as well as SB and GR.

Anyway, here's an adapted version of the teams in the link.

Team 1:
SK (skill 8/10+), Cupid, Ghoulem (skill 9/10+)
2x remote damage heroes (in order, PK, GR, SB)

Team 2
Ghoulem, PD
2x remote damage heroes
1x utility - 1 Aries (skill 8/10+)

Team 4 is the same as team 2, except instead of Aries, it has:
1x utility - 1 Cupid

Team 3:
PD
3x remote damage heroes

1x utility: Treantar (skill 8/10+)

Levels:
All heroes should be evo 160+
Ghoulems should be evo 180+

Minimum Skill Levels:
Ghoulem: 8/10
GR: 7/10
PK: 1/10
PD: 9/10
Cupid: 9/10

Talents/Crests:
PDs should have Revite 3+
Ghoulems should have Revite 4+
Cupids need Revite 4+; 5 preferred
All remote damage heroes should have Revive, level doesn't matter.

Artifacts:
all artifacts should be level 5.
PDs should have Blitz scroll for fastest ramp-up.
One hero in each team should have Garuda, and this should not be a remote damage hero (i.e. not PK, SB, GR, or Aries).
Others should have Victors Emblem, for defense.

Pets:
All can be used except: no Celestis in teams 2, 3, and 4.

Substitutions:
Spirit Mage can be subbed for any remote damage hero.