How to Cheese in Castle Clash

[Update, 4/15: here's a reddit link including a good video on cheesing, by reddit CCer brahvmaga.  This is like a TLDR of this post.  I leave it here anyway for people who like to read.  And here's a second reddit thread from the same guy, with a video covering more advanced cheesing techniques.]

"Cheesing" is an attack strategy in Castle Clash whereby you attempt to avoid engagement with all enemy heroes except one.  That one you construct a deadlocked fight with, a fight that neither side will win before the attack times out.  You use procs from engaged heroes to destroy the other enemy heroes, or the enemy buildings.

Here's a cheese in progress, about to end.  You can see the purple tones of two Ghoulems going at it in the top of the screenshot.  Additionally I have Treantar in there, with Doom Balloon.  In the middle are the enemy heroes, standing on nothing since all their pads have been blown up underneath them.  All the buildings are gone except for that one nearly-dead camp at the bottom.

A classic "X" base goes down to the cheese.

Subgames

Cheesing can be used in any anti-base mode.  Indeed, it could theoretically be used in any mode where the enemy heroes are range-restricted by hero bases, and in which victory is determined by destroying all of the enemy buildings.

I started doing it in Guild Wars (GW) to try to hit higher bases than I could do effectively with snipers.   (Here's my "how to snipe" article.)  GW is still the main place I do it, because that's still true.  My sniping has gotten no more powerful than it was six months ago.  But sniping is getting harder as pets heal and protect more and more, and as more people have one or more of the newer heroes that make sniping more difficult.

I have found cheesing surprisingly useful in expeditions.  Mostly in expeditions I snipe, but sometimes I stupidly take risks and lose my better snipers.  (Aries is particularly painful to lose.)  Then sniping gets much more difficult; some bases you can still snipe, but some you can't.  Rather than using up a pass, or trying brute force, or taking a one or two star win, you can sometimes cheese a base.  Having additional strategies in your toolkit that use a different set of heroes from sniping is quite useful.

Generally, nobody attempts to cheese on normal raids.  With spells to help you it just isn't necessary.  However, you can use normal raids as a good way of testing it out and refining your technique to some extent.  Of course in this case you cannot tweak your lineup, nor your lineup's crests and pets to try to exactly counter a particular base.  But it still can be a good learning experience, and doesn't cost you much when you fail.


Strategy and Variations

Cheesing is pretty simple conceptually.  You drop a "tank" hero with the intent of drawing out the enemy "anchor" for a 1 on 1 fight that you hope is a deadlock.  (See below for these terms.)  Neither hero can kill the other.  Then you optionally add one or more heroes to pile onto the anchor, again watching carefully to make sure it is still a deadlock.

There are two ways to win a cheese, and thus two substrategies.  The first I'll refer to as a "sniper cheese".  Here you use the deadlocked fight to generate sniper damage, that is, damage which targets enemy heroes and not buildings.  If there is enough of this damage (and not enough healing), you can kill all the enemy heroes except the anchor.  Then you can break the deadlock by adding more heroes; your heroes are now free to wipe the base.  (Keep PD in reserve; he will certainly break any deadlock.)

Sniper-cheesing is relatively rare for two reasons.  First, because snipers also hit the anchor, it is relatively hard to get enough sniper damage without risking killing the anchor prematurely.  Second, because via pets there is now defensive healing that you normally face.  An opposing Bubblow and Mini Angi can heal a lot, requiring several snipers to overcome.  Usually an anchor can only handle one or two snipers.

The more common strategy is usually just called a "cheese" ("normal cheese" if it must be distinguished).  Between your tank and its support heroes, you clear the base by killing all the buildings using proc and/or pet damage.  Usually in this case you win the fight with 3 stars without killing a single enemy hero; this is why it is named "cheesing" since it's rather a cheesy to win this way.

Hero Roles: Enemy

On the enemy side, things are simple.  You want to pick a single hero to isolate and beat on for your cheese.  I call this enemy hero the "anchor".  In theory you could choose any hero for the anchor; if it has enough healing and/or damage protection it can work.  In practice, there are only two heroes that will do: Ghoulem and DD.  Both of them have procs that make them uniquely tanky.  (I call these two heroes, as well as SK, "supertanks".)

Practically, I doubt that SK can be used as an anchor.  The problem is his offense is huge compared to his defense, so he'll kill your tank.  Theoretically he could be debuffed enough to be anchored on, but this is rather hard to do at best.

I have successfully cheesed anchoring off of both DD and Ghoulem.  DD is preferable, because it allows you to use either your own DD or Ghoulem as a tank.  Because Ghoulem is ranged, if you are going to use an enemy Ghoulem as anchor you can only tank with your own Ghoulem; DD will close to melee range with it, which will almost certainly get him attacked by multiple other enemies.

The enemy's heroes other than the tank don't matter much except insofar as they force you to engage the anchor outside of their range.  Heroes with autoproc can make cheesing harder, particularly if you are attacking with DD as one of your heroes.  Other than that, though, they make little difference.

The enemy's pets matter.  For sniper cheesing, if they have good healing and defensive pets, doing a sniper cheese is likely to be risky or just not possible.  On the other hand, those same pets make it easier to do a normal cheese, since they do a lot to sustain the anchor.


Hero Roles: Friendly

There are two main roles for offensive heroes in a cheese.  The first is your tank hero, the one that gets the cheese going by pulling the enemy anchor, and tanks most of the damage.  Some tanks can cheese a base solo, but I find that's rare.  Usually you'll also want other "support" heroes, whose job is (a) to keep the tank alive, and/or (b) to smash the base or enemy heroes.  I'll discuss both roles.

The tank is the key to a cheese.  He is must be a formidable tank; he needs to be able to withstand the damage dished out by the anchor.  Currently I feel only two heroes can do it: Ghoulem and DD.  No surprise that it's the supertanks again, except SK, and for the same reason.  Normal 1 on 1 hero fights don't deadlock.  It is only when both heroes have a substantial defensive boost from procs that it happens.

For support heroes, you generally want heroes that (a) don't cause problems offensively, and (b) add something to the attack, either survivability for friendly heroes, or damage to enemy heroes or buildings.

For your tank in particular, you want at least an evolved hero and better, double evoed.  This is less important for support heroes (but still a good idea).  Evolution (devo) increases hitpoints by about double (triple) that of non-evo; however it increases attack by only a factor of 1.5 (2).  Thus, the ratio of attack to defense goes down for evos and devoes.  This helps you cheese by giving you the hitpoint pool to survive, while not giving you such high offense that you kill the anchor.

Tactics

Getting a cheese set up is often fussy.  The first problem is "pulling" the anchor.  In general you want the anchor and only the anchor to come from all the other heroes and engage your tank, which means only a few locations where you can possibly approach the base successfully.  In a typical 2x3 rectangle of hero pads, look for supertanks on the corners.  If there is, that's a potential anchor.  See if you can drop one of your supertanks in on that side, just close enough to pull the anchor out but not close enough to pull any other enemy.

Usually you cannot drop anywhere that would immediately pull out an anchor.  You have to drop further out, then let the tank work its way in through a few buildings, to the point where the anchor will be triggered.  You want your tank to be paused on a building at this point.

Often a setup won't allow you to use HtH tanks; most "X" bases are like this.  If you can, though, experiment with it.  Generally, it is preferable to use DD as your tank if you can, because with Ghoulem supporting him up he can withstand almost any enemy hero one on one, and his bombs make killing even a pretty high level base go much faster.  (In the pre-pet era, cheesing was the specialty of DD alone, since he is by far the most damaging hero in the game to buildings.)

People sometimes use bait troops to lure with; I have not done this and so cannot say a lot about it.   I would think you'd want the tankier troops to withstand arrow/magic fire for a while, and probably a variety of troops with different ranges.  It should be possible, using bait troops, to lure out an anchor and then engage it with your tank even when there are no buildings at all in the proper place.

If you do pull 2+  heroes it is usually best to quit immediately and retry.  In GW, though, you can let it go and see if your hero(es) can kill the non-anchor(s).  If you die, you don't lose anything; try again.

Generally, if an approach to a pull seems at all likely it usually is possible -- with enough tries.  If one drop location fails a few times, try slightly different positions.  There is a lot of randomness.  I've tried 50 times on a GW base when I had the time to do that.  Don't try to do cheesing if you have limited time.

Once you have a successful pull and the fight begins, watch it attentively for as long as you can without going to close to 50%.  (And also, in expeditions, be careful of dying.)  You want to make sure that it's a solid deadlock.  That is, that (a) your hero(es) are not dying and not even getting close, and (b) the anchor isn't either.  If either side is in danger of dying, cheesing is a very risky strategy.  This risk doesn't matter much in expeditions (especially if it is the enemy dying; you can quit out if that happens with 1 or 2 stars and lose honor badges), but in GW it matters more.

If your tank can't tank it but is fairly close, then consider adding support heroes to help him out.  Ghoulem is the most obvious support hero (if not serving as the tank).  However there are other heroes that make good support; see the section below.

If attempting a normal cheese, do not put Doom Balloon on your heroes while testing the pull and the deadlock.  Leave one hero without any pet.  Once you've established that a pull is possible and the deadlock is stable using a particular tank and helpers, then you quit, add Doom Balloon to your chosen hero and retry.  Doom Balloon is your attempt at 3-star.

You will need to experiment with which heroes you use to tank with and support, which pets they have, and perhaps even their crests.  For ideas on this, read on.


Support and Pet-holding Heroes

There are two kinds of support you can bring by using additional heroes.  One is a hero whose proc adds something to the attack, or to the collective team defense.  The other is a hero -- any hero -- used as a placeholder for a pet.

Here are some support heroes I've tried, and the idea behind using them.

• Aries: used against DD only, the idea is to stop the proccing at least part of the time.  Also used for damage in a snipe-cheese.
• DD: as building damage in a normal cheese, supporting Ghoulem. 
• Ghoulem: for healing and defensive shielding.
• Grizzly Reaper, for dealing uniform damage to most or all enemy heroes in a snipe-cheese.
• Treantar: Tre's proc shields his allies for 5 seconds out of ~10.5, or as low as 6 if you use Valentina to boost his energy, which is very helpful in staying alive.  Also he can maybe revive members of your team if you skate over the edge of "too little defense".  (Of course if they die once, they will often die twice.)  And also, Tre has piss-poor offense relative to his defense.  His proc doesn't affect enemies and his hit speed is just 1500.  He's a great place to put Doom Balloon.
• Valentina adds energy to your team without amping them up offensively like Cupid.  This can be useful in getting slow-hitting heroes to proc more often.

And some I have not tried, because don't have or too expensive.  But seems like they could work too:

• Minotaur Lord: hits lots of buildings.  Most people use him to do "mino-smash": single or double-shot a whole base, after carefully deploying Cupid, Druid and/or PD to get him amped.  If there are no places to deploy the support heroes for mino-smash, though, then maybe a cheese could work.
• Spirit Mage: targets everything, lots of missiles.  Similar to DD except about double the damage and no stun.  Downside is no defensive advantages and weak hitpoints, so you'll have to be careful about making sure he can survive.

Placeholder heroes should only be used if you can't get enough pets in the battle on the support heroes you're using.  You want these placeholders to have low damage, high hitpoints, and no nasty proc effects that would screw up the attack.

• Atlanticore is a decent placeholder.  I have an evo'ed AC (evolved because I was using him way back when in LBF) that I have used from time to time.  He adds very little damage against the anchor while providing pretty good hitpoints, including a fraction of the time invulnerable.
• Although I have not tried it, Paladin would also make a pretty great placeholder.  He's almost all defense, perfect for those high-level GW attacks.  But you'd have to evo him.  Kind of expensive.  Still, his evo'ed appearance is pretty cool.

Pets

Proper pet selection can really help a cheese succeed.  Pets can heal your heroes (Bubblow, Angi), protect them (Angi, Yule), debuff the anchor (Auroria, Lil Havoc).   But as previously mentioned, Doom Balloon almost by himself can win the battle for you.

If you are serious about cheesing, skill up your Doom Balloon to the max.  (Yes, it costs a lot of shards.  Worth it.)  The minimum cheese attempt is a solo tank with Doom Balloon.  Doom Balloon is necessary for almost all normal cheese attempts, unless you happen to have nearly maxxed out Dread Drake.  My DD is 199ee, but lacks any offensive talent/crest; he cannot kill a high level base on his own.

The second most important pet is, in my opinion, Angi.  Your tank needs to withstand the beating from the anchor as well as towers and possibly autoproccers.  Angi helps with this a lot, both in protecting your tank and healing him.

Auroria is particularly useful against an enemy DD; she will keep it stunned about a third of the time.  This reduces damage against your team quite a bit.  Auroria is riskier used against other anchors because they don't autoproc, and therefore may be stunned just when their proc protection has dropped, leading to them getting killed.

Finix is a good pet to add for a normal cheese, but be careful.  He does not hit only buildings (like Doomie), so he will hit the enemy heroes from time to time, which may result in them proccing if they autoproc.  You need to be able to easily tank that, or don't use him.

Crests and Talents

I hate switching crests, and rarely do except for significant payoff.  However, if you're willing to do it, there are probably some optimizations you can make to increase the odds of a cheese attempt working.

Generally, you want your heroes to have less offense and more defense.  So, defensive crests and talents are of more value than offensive ones when cheesing.  

Definitely avoid the talents that do extra damage only to the target of auto attacks: these are slowdown, heavy blow, and deadly strike.  These talents risk killing the anchor while adding nothing to the cheese damage.  

Similarly, avoid scatter.  The anchor needs its procs to survive; don't take those from it.

Some offensive talents may be good on certain heroes but not others.  In particular, increasing Dread Drake's offense (with bulwark and/or war god) will increase his proc damage, which is good.  Be aware that this also increases his auto attack damage, thus possibly destabilizing the deadlock.

For most heroes, defensive talents/crests are best.  Revive is probably the best, since they have a huge hitpoint bonus relative to their offense bonus.  Also, you should be collecting them anyway for other uses, and the revive offers some insurance against low-odds deaths.  However, other defensive talents can also help.  Lifedrain, for example, tends to stabilize any hero.

Artifacts

As with crests, you want defensive artifacts for your cheese team, and you want to avoid the offensive ones.  The best defensive artifacts are the Victor's Emblem and the Goblet of Life.  Also Lightning Rock is mildly defensive, and even Garuda (it will slow down the anchor's proc).

Artifacts all have RNG-based effects in them, and this is something that you generally want to avoid when cheesing.  So, the artifact I like the most for cheesing is Victor's.  Its damage reduction is not RNG based, and it helps the entire cheese team by debuffing the anchor.  By contrast, the Goblet is very powerful when it works, but if you get a bad run of RNGs you can die before it activates.  And it does not help the team, other than the hero it's on.

Generally, avoid the Axe of Strife and the Blitz Scroll.

[Updated: added para on possible support heroes I have not tried.]
[Updated: removed discussion of SK as likely anchor or tank.]
[Updated: added section on artifacts.]

Druid Amping at High Speed

Someone had a question about the last bit of my post yesterday: where did you get the numbers for the boost to damage that a Druid gets when hitting at maximum speed?  This is fairly easily computed, but it relies on information about the game that not everyone knows.  So I thought I'd show the work.

Druid's boosts per proc at various skill levels can be seen in game (look in the Hero Compendium) or at the wiki.  That's the easy part.  The harder part is understanding how speed boosts work in conjunction with energy and the proc system.

Heroes accumulate 15 energy per hit.  Thus, absent any outside energy source, and assuming that they are immobile hitting as often as they can, heroes proc every 7 hits  (7*15 = 105, 105>100 and extra energy is discarded).  Castle Clash has quantized time steps of 200ms.  7 hits at max speed is thus 1.4 seconds.

The stack of procs that a hero can create is a function of his proc's duration and his skill cooldown.  Most heroes have a cooldown that is longer than their proc's duration.  So they don't stack at all.  Druid, however, has no cooldown.  His proc lasts 5 seconds.  1.4 divides 5 into 3 plus a remainder of .8 seconds; that .8 second is 8/14 of the 1.4 seconds between procs.  Thus, we find that Druid will stack 3 times about 43% of the time (.43 = 6/14), and he will stack 4 times about 57% of the time (.57 = 8/14).

To compute the average boost we get from Druid, therefore, we need to average the effects of a stack of three of his boosts and a stack of four of his boosts.  (To be more precise, we don't literally average them but compute a weighted average with ~.43 weight on 3 stacks, and ~.57 on 4 stacks.)

Here's a table showing the net damage boost Druid gets at maximum speed.  The "Weighted Average" column is the multiplier.  For example, my Druid has skill 7, so once spooled up he creates a team multiplier of 2.5.

Druid Attack Boost, Max Speed

In practice, if you have a Valentina and/or Cupid you will do somewhat better than the attack boost computed above, since your Druid will proc somewhat more often.  Druid by himself generates 375 energy over 5 seconds.  Cupid (skill 9) adds 0 to 55 to that, every 6 seconds; so Druid should be getting closer to 4 procs continually.

An Archdemon Highscore

Castle Crisis is on, and as usual the iOS server did the first three subgames on the third day (and not long into it, either).  Fortunately for me, I am usually up at midnight when the tries-per-day is reset for Castle Crisis.  So I always do well on the lucky imp, and I can always get the full set of crest rewards from the Avaricifer.

Now it's archdemon time.  I used to get great scores against the one that could be beaten with a custom Atlanticore and Death Knight.  Then they stopped sending any archdemon except the latest one.  (I spend a lot of shards getting that DK's skill to level 9!)

The current archdemon is very hard to deal with, since it is immune to stunning, scatter, and silence.  It is not immune to slowing, but slowing it doesn't help much since it will switch targets from time to time (not sure how this works).  This will mean that it will target your PD, who is always close, and then, unless you can tank the damage, you lose.

If you can tank the damage with PD anyway, you might as well forget about slow locking and tank the damage.

The only way I am aware of to deal with it is a combination of massive hitpoints, lots of healing, and protection for your heroes.  Unfortunately for me, I have no Ghoulem.  So I am lacking both the massive healing and the group protection that he supplies.   I can get in the 10 million range just by brute force: lots of revive crests, Tre, and luck.  That's about a much as I thought I will ever get unless they change the archdemon, or I roll Ghoulem.

Today another thread about the archdemon came up on reddit, and after reading shlam16's comments I decided to have another shot at it.  One interesting thing I learned is that this archdemon has a high crit rate, which accounts for a lot of his instakills.  Makes sense.  Valentina can protect somewhat against crits; otherwise it's a vulnerability that you cannot fully address.  You mitigate it by having revive crests or talent on every hero, and Treantar to revive them a third time.

I don't have Ghoulem or Valentina, so I used the core team suggested by shlam, but putting in Medusa and Cupid.  Medusa is great for getting rid of the eye-catchers, which is another thing Ghoulem does if you have him.  Cupid amps damage and adds energy, like Valentina.

For those curious, my lineup is: PD/DD/Druid/Cupid/Medusa/Tre.  The first four are double evoed; Medusa and Tre are single evo.  I crested them all with Revive of various levels (4/4/4/3/1), except Tre who has Revive 5 for his talent.  PD has Berserk 8 and the Blitz Scroll 5, so he amps up fast.

My first run didn't work very well.  I didn't exceed the 17.3 million I got yesterday.  I was close, though -- 17.1m -- so I felt positive about the second run.  Obviously there is a lot of luck involved with the archdemon; you have to try a strategy a few times to have a decent sample of what it's capable of.  (Indeed part of what is hard about archdemon is that you only get two tries per day, so it's hard to experiment.)

The second run, things just went much better.  Here it is after two minutes...

Beating on the archdemon.

You can see PD, Druid, and Cupid have all been revived by Tre.  This means they are on their final life.  No permadeaths yet though.  Eventually, though, the archdemon killed PD one more time:

PD down for the last time.

And after that it goes downhill rapidly.  With PD gone, his stacks unwind over 8 seconds and then the eyecatchers can't be killed fast by Medusa, and they amp up the demon.  Meanwhile, Druid stops his heals every 1.4 seconds, and Tre's shield is no longer providing nearly fulltime coverage.

The end is nigh.

Then a rapid end, with about 26 seconds left.

183m is currently good enough for 382nd place, which would give 1200 fame if archdemon ended today.  My old highscore, 17m, was around 4100th place with a reward of 700 fame.  500 fame is worth working for!

To improve my reward, I would need to place above 200th, which currently requires at least 326m damage.  That seems quite unlikely.  Even if I can get luckier and go the full 3 minutes, it would only increase my score by around 30%, to around 237m.

One easy thing I could do to improve my score is beef up my Druid's skill, currently at level 7.  This won't get more than about 5-10% though.  Not enough to matter, rewardwise.

Other than that, I can't think of any cheap way to get more.

Out of Eggs

It finally happened: I ran dry on pet eggs.

Empty nest.

This was predictable, and I knew it was coming, but still kind of interesting.

Does it change anything?  Well, not really.  However, there is one thing that I should have mentioned as soon as the pet-egg-hatch-time boost appeared.  We now expect, over the long run, to have lots of spare hatching time.  (This will be true for everyone unless they either spend money to buy pet eggs -- and I am not sure you can keep pace even then -- or unless IGG creates new ways to get them.)

Given that there is now excess hatching capacity, this means that obtaining eggs is now important, whereas (pre-Yulephant), it wasn't.  Back then, getting extra eggs would help you only if the extra egg was blue or purple.  They'd give you slightly better chances at rare pets.  So, even then, the benefit of extra eggs was marginal.  As such, it was never worthwhile to do anything to obtain that extra egg.  It just didn't matter, so there was no reason to change what you did.

But now, any extra egg can be hatched.  The benefit from the marginal egg is a full egg's worth of pet dupes.  That's a lot more than it used to be.  As such, it may be worthwhile now to change how you play to get those extra eggs.  Everyone should be getting the 2 daily eggs, and the 2 bonus eggs for doing quests.  But now there is the question of should you spend gems to get the 3 bonus eggs you get via gem spending.

For a gemmer, it seems pretty obvious that you should now do a handful of gem rolls every day, just enough to bring your daily spending of gems up to 900.

I don't think FtP players can do that; we don't get enough gems for it.  (Here's my earlier article on gem spending strategy.)

Generally, I think that FtP players should not worry about pets much.  The marginal value you are getting from a pet egg is quite small.  I don't have any characterization for it in terms of gems. But just intuitively, getting a few more pet dupes is not going to make much difference.  (By comparison, gems cash out as either chances at new heroes or crests; both can have dramatic impact on your game.)

By comparison, the gem bonus you get from doing "Spend Gems and Win" at the 2500 level is, in effect, at least 36%; and usually it is higher than 36% since it is very rare that you have spent zero gem over two days.  (My record spending before topping off during two days of SG&W was 1310 gems.)  So, you should definitely save for that.  

Now we do find a small difference that pets make.  When a SG&W is on, you should spend gems on both days, not just the second.  On the first day spend gems to get to 900 to get the extra eggs.  Second day spend so as to hit 2500 as normal, again (probably) getting extra eggs.

What about extra gems beyond those needed for SG&W?  IGG doesn't run SG&W that often.  With my gem income, SG&W does not consume all my gems.  What's next in terms of value?  Well, the other kind of event for gem spending is "Uncover the Treasure".  Usually this runs two days, sometimes one day.  My feeling is that you should continue to do these also, to help consume extra gems.  Soulstones are not worth that much, but they are still better than pet eggs.

Again, there is a small difference if the event is running over two day.  Spend at the end of day 1 to hit 900 and get those extra eggs.

I'll have to see if the two spending events can use up all my gems.  If they don't, then that's when I will want to consider doing daily spending to round up my gems-spent to the next 300.  Obviously, the most efficient way to do this is one hero roll on a day when you are at 150/450/750.

Pet Strategy January 2017

Pets were introduced in the fall of 2016.  At the time, I wrote a strategy guide to pets in CC which is still by far the most popular thing I have posted here.  By now there have been some important changes to the game, and I'd like to revisit what I wrote then and add some additional discussion.  First I'll lay out the changes to pets, then I'll look at some of the ramifications for a few aspects of CC play.

Changes Since Introduction

There have been several changes to the situation since pets were introduced.  Let's review.

The first thing is the addition of Yulephant, which happened in the December update.

Yulephant

Yulephant has a purely defensive talent: it shields two heroes against stun and fear, and gives them +30% dodge.   Yulephant is ideal for a hand-to-hand based attack, which often has to deal with stuns coming from magic towers.  For sniping attacks, he's less important, though still 30% dodge is nothing to sneeze at.  Give him to your third sniper if you snipe, or any hero in a HtH team.

The second change worth discussing is that we've had several months to get eggs and open them, so everyone should be getting the pets to medium levels.

My pets are now level 14 (one is level 15), with the rares being level 8 and 9, except Yulephant (the new one in the Christmas update) being level 4.  Unless you've slacked on opening eggs, or started the game after pets came in, you should have about the same.  You might have higher levels if you've been spending gems to open eggs.  Though I would not recommend that for most players.

(If you do plan to pay substantial gems to open eggs, there's an event which drastically reduces the price when you spend at least 24000 gems opening eggs.  It is called "Egg Hatch-A-Thon"; one is going on as I post this.  If it's over by the time you read this, I'd suggest waiting for it to come around again; there have been three so far.  Accumulate your eggs and wait for it.)

Egg Hatch-A-Thon rewards

With increasing pet levels come increasing pet skill maximums.    My average pets have max skill level of 6, while rares have 5.

The final big change to pets was a boost to their attack based on a fraction of the attack of the hero they are assigned to.  This attack boost happened in the December update.  Note that the hero's attack is his "base" attack stat, which is shown on the "Attributes" page for him when you look at him in the heroes altar.  This is determined by his level, his inscriptions and the attack boost of his crests.  War God and Bulwark do not affect it as a talent; as a crest you get each crest's attack bonus but not the bonus for a set.

It's a pretty big increase.  Just looking at my pets, most of them have gotten at least a 50% boost to their attack, and it is nearly 100% for my Aviar (assigned to my 199ee PD).  Does it matter?  We'll consider that...

Pet Offense Still No Big Deal

First off, let's discuss pet attacks as damage producers.  Even with the attack increase they get from their assisted hero, this is still a fairly minor effect.  My Little Havoc, for example, gets 2754 attack on his own, adding 1994 from my Druid (16% of the 8044+4421 shown on his Attributes).  He does 350% of this when he attacks.  So his total attack is 16618, and it has a cooldown of 4.6s.  Since he attacks only with his hero, and it goes 60% of the time, it will usually take him a couple tries to proc.  So, he might average one attack every 6 seconds or so.  Total DPS: ~2800.

By comparison, my Druid (181ee and inscription 90, berserk 5 talent) does 12465 every 0.8 seconds, so total DPS is 15581.  The pet is at least in the ballpark, and it will continue to increase whereas Druid has only a small amount of improvement possible.  But still, at least for now, the pet damage is a fraction of hero damage.  And note that pet damage does not get amplified by Cupid/PD/Druid effects.  Thus, compared to the effects of the pet skills, pet damage is still not worth worrying about much.  So, as in 2016, I am going to continue to ignore pet damage to heroes.

I do predict that as pet levels improve further, eventually I will want to revisit pet damage.

Pet Healing Is Getting Important

Now let's discuss pet healing.  Previously I felt it only really mattered for snipers.  But now I am beginning to notice its effects in several places.

Pets -- Angi and Bubblow -- are starting to make sniping attacks harder.

Bubblow in particular is starting to degrade my sniping attacks, particularly in guild wars.  A modern Bubblow should have around 2500 attack on its own; you can probably assign it to at least an evo1 hero for another 1500 or so.  At skill 6, it restores 390% hitpoints of the three allied heroes with lowest HP every 4.5s.  The total heal can be up to 45000 hitpoints; the total HPS (heal per second) can get up to 10000.  That's... a lot.

10000 HPS is not going to be enough to drastically change a hand-to-hand fight involving many high level heroes on both sides.  My Druid has 15500 DPS of melee damage.  A team of six heroes, many of them with offensive procs, will do many times that.  (Never mind adding a PD/Druid/Cupid boost.)

However, in combat involving only a few heroes, 10000 HPS is a lot.  It will matter when sniping in many modes.  It will also appear in limited contexts such as Torch Battle guards.

As an example, I often snipe with the combo of Warlock and Aries.  Both of mine are level 195e; both of their attacks are right around 11200, although Warlock gets another 25% from his War God crests.  When sniping, Aries procs about every 9 seconds; this does 33600 to five heroes.  So his DPS is 18666.  Warlock procs every 8.4 seconds, doing ~64400 to three heroes.  So his DPS is 23000.  Total DPS for the two of them is around 40000.  So, you can see that even a lone Bubblow is going to make sniping considerably harder: you need 25% more buildings.   Give Bubblow to an evo2 hero, especially one with high level offensive crests (War God, Berserk).  That will make any base very hard to snipe, at least for me.  Even a base with an "easy" sniping layout.

Snipers need to up their damage rate, which did not matter much before.  (See my sniping guide for the reasoning.)  So, evolve your snipers if you have not already.  If you have evo1 snipers, think about how you can go to evo2.  Also consider offensive crests and talents.  Before it did not matter if you had Tenacity or Wargod on your sniper; increasingly it does.

You can also counter defensive healing to some degree by adding more snipers, so as to increase their net remote DPS.  For example, I might add my Griz into a sniping attack.  He is evo2 199, and War God 6, for total offense of 23100 DPS; added to the 40000 DPS of Warlock and Aries he makes it harder for Bubblow and Angi to keep up.

One more place where pet healing is starting to be effective is in many-vs-one fights, aka boss battles.  I discovered this accidentally.  I have my Team Dungeons team set up for Lava3, using a team with no healer in it.  But I missed some Lavas for various reasons, and needed to use up my tries in Mesa4.  I used my unmodified team without thinking.  The Mesa started and I realized what happened, but then I was amazed to see that all the damage I was taking was being healed.  It was all the Bubblows and Angis.  I have used it several times hence, mostly in pickup Mesa4, and I have never lost a hero.

It is tempting to try Wretched Gorge 3 without my Druid.  There are DPS heroes I could put in instead... but I have not tried this yet.

I have also noticed some fails in Wretched Gorge 3 that I suspect are related to pet healing.  The final demon does a fair amount of damage, but I think with an Angi or two heal/guarding a hero and several Bubblows healing it, many heroes can take the damage.  Eventually we are going to have to reconsider what sort of teams to have and where heroes go.

Pet Skills

Finally, let's discuss spending on pet skills.  Last year I advised everyone to max all the skills! they're cheap!  That was true enough.  But now, at level 5->6, skills cost 75000 skill experience, which means 3750 shards.  That's still not a huge amount, but it's significant.  So, while I generally stand by the advice I gave last year, there are a few pets who you might be able to scrimp on.

Finix with skill 5

First is Finix.  His attack slows the enemy.  Generally it is never going to make or break any slowdown team to have this.  So you can leave it low to save shards.

Second, Doom Balloon.  DB only affects buildings, so unless killing buildings is important to you, you can leave his skill low.  If you are doing the "DD cheese" attack for GW/raiding, then you can use Doom Balloon effectively and may want to max his skill.  Otherwise, it is not important and you can leave it at a low level.  (Mine has level 3.)  You might want to put a little into it if you are pushing dungeons.

Creating Contention at Battle Altars

Almost daily, players list their heroes on reddit.  I am often surprised by how low their crest sets are relative to their might.  (Here's a recent example.  90000 might; a handful of level 3 crest sets, mostly level 2s, and even some 1s.)  I guess people don't take the Lost Realm very seriously.

I've always pounded the Realm as hard as I could subject to FtP limits.  So by now I have all six battle altars (and indeed I have had them for months).  And for all six, I contended for them either once or at most only a few times when they were new.

It would be nice to have contention for my altars, since the more they change hands, the more blue crystal they create.

For a while I had two teams: one scatter team for facing demons, and the other stun-heavy team for fighting the normal monster groups.  But then I got Aries, and gave him my Revite 4 crest set.  Now I just have one team.  It could certainly be better, but it's pretty strong for my 97000 might.

About two weeks ago, I realized that my problem with getting fights in my battle altars might be that I am just too strong.  Perhaps the code works like this: when you first expand the size of the Realm to include a battle altar, the program assigns you a similar-might player to be the other contestant for that altar.  And perhaps that assignment never changes.  (If you have some notion of how the Lost Realm works, please drop a line.)

If my conjectured functionality is so, then it would explain why I don't get fights at altars.  Because I have not puffed up my might artificially, and because I have excellent crests (which don't count as might), my opponents may not be able to beat my team even trying multiple times.  Also, I am pretty hardcore about always doing all the subgames every day; this means I am increasing in my "true" might about as fast as can be done absent spending money.  As a result of that, any other average player is never going to get stronger than me, and in fact will be slowly left behind unless he is similarly hardcore.  (Or spends.  Or gets lucky rolling heroes that I don't have.)

Anyway, I decided to try an experiment.  I set up a team with just a level 60 angel in it.  For the past weeks I have been leaving this team as my team whenever I exit the realm.  My hope was that my opponents, whoever they are, would eventually think to re-try their battle altar and be pleasantly surprised.  Then, assuming I can take the altar back (almost certain), if I keep doing it, perhaps they'll keep beating my angel and I can get my altars leveling up.  More blue crystal!

So I have now been weak for weeks.  Nothing changed.  Not until yesterday, that is.  I entered the realm to see this:

First battle altar contention in months!

Excellent!  Of course I retook it.  Hasn't changed since... but I am hopeful.  Meanwhile, a second altar got taken by someone else!  Go, go, whoever you guys are.  Maybe I can get all six into contention!

Incidentally, if you are inspired to try something like this, please first consider its effect on your guild.  If you are one of the 10 or so highest might guys in your guild, then you probably have guildmembers who are used to using your team as the other half of their Lost Realm demon killing.  And in that case, it's probably a bad idea to do this.

Pet Strategy

[UPDATE January 2017: the information here is still basically pretty good, but there have been enough changes to pets that I wrote a new article to discuss them.]

With the advent of pets in Castle Clash, there's a new aspect of strategy to think about.  That is how to manage pets -- where to put them, what to give them resource-wise, etc.

Resource Allocation

There are two aspects of resource allocation that are related to pets.  One is, spending to get them.  Then once you have them, spending resources on them.

I assume that anyone reading this is going to do at least two quests per day, and log in every day to get the two free eggs.  If you aren't, then you're not playing CC that seriously.  But what about spending gems?  I'd say for sure if you manage to spend nearly 300/600/900 gems you should find a way to spend the last few to get it over.  If you are around 150/450/750, obviously a gem roll is the best way to get the other 150.  If you are very close (I was at 285 the first day of pets), you might buy something from a merchant that you wouldn't otherwise, like red crystal.  Or perhaps you have a building that is almost done.

What about allocation of resources to pets?  It is clear that leveling pets is going to be slow enough that this won't become a problem, at least for a while and probably not ever.  Also it seems that all pet skills will be worth leveling as fast as you can (which isn't that fast).  Leveling the pets themselves should be done ASAP, since this increases their "Compendium" boosts.


Pet Assignment Strategy

The main aspect of pet strategy is where to place pets.  Which pets are best placed with which heroes?  Of course, this depends almost entirely on which heroes you have, and how you use them.  If you have a SK but never use him for some strange reason, don't give him a pet.

At least at their current low levels and low skills, I don't think the damage that pets do is significant enough to make much difference.  This is because pet damage, unlike hero damage, is not affected by any existing hero.  That is, your PD stack doesn't help them.  So, I am ignoring pet damage pretty much, and when describing their skills I say they do "some damage".  Their healing is similarly low, but especially for snipers (who should be self-healing with Lifedrain), sometimes even a small amount matters.  So I feel the healing is a bigger deal.

But the most important aspect of pets is their "other", non-damage and non-healing abilities.  Pets with these are going to be the important ones.  I have bolded the "other" stuff below, to keep the focus on it.

Anyway, I'll list each pet and which sort of hero I would want to give him to.  Also, I'll also say which hero I gave my pet to.  Bear in mind that I mostly do raids/expeditions/GW using sniper strategy (see my guide), because I do not have either of the super tanky heroes (SK and DD) needed to charge in for hand to hand.  (Update: just rolled DD!  He's not evolved yet, though, so not really a player in most modes.)

Aviar -- skill has a 65% chance to deal some damage to a random nearby enemy hero and silence it for a few seconds when its hero is attacked.

Silence!  Wow!  Any "when its hero is attacked" pet is only good if its hero is attacked (duh).  So you want to put Aviar with a brawler.  SK and DD are the main guys for this.  Aviar will be most useful in game modes which include hand-to-hand fighting: Boss fights, LBF, Arena, and HTH raiding.  If you snipe for raids, as I do, then he is not that important.

I put my Aviar with my new DD.

[UPDATE: In fact Aviar procs when its hero attacks.  Not when hero is attacked.  I've posted about this separately.]

Bubblow -- skill restores some HP of 3 allied heroes with the lowest HP and increases their MOV SPD somewhat.  So far as I know, Bubblow auto-procs every N seconds; it does not key off its hero attacking or being attacked.

On the attack, restoring HP is nice, especially for snipers.  Perhaps it will be a lot at high levels, but right now my bubblow is level 2 with a level 2 skill, which means he restores 1827 HP (times 3) every 5.5 s.  That is underwhelming in pretty much any situation.  As I suggested earlier, I do think that even a small amount of healing can make a difference occasionally when sniping.  This is because snipers tend to be in combat for long periods of time.

Defensively, it doesn't matter who you put him with, but this is a pet you'll want standing around for GW defense.  Once it levels up, it's going to make sniping a tougher proposition.

I put my Bubblow with my Warlock.


Celestin -- skill has a chance to deal damage to a nearby enemy hero when its hero attacks. Also removes the target's buffs.

Holy cow!  Removes the targets buffs?  This guy is a tank killer, if you can put him on a hero that will go up against a tank.  Its hero needs to attack, and it has to be "nearby", whatever that means.  You want this guy on a brawler -- SK or DD.

I put mine on my Pumpkin Duke, to make sure he'll be in every boss battle, etc.  If I had a SK, that's where I'd put it.  I may end up putting it on my new DD, but not yet, because I am not using him that much.


Doom Balloon -- skill deals damage to 5 nearby enemy Buildings. Also increases the DMG they take for 3s.  Autoprocs.  The skill description says "nearby", but I have not found that to be true.  It appears to be buildings anywhere on the map.

Generally, a weak hero, since he affects buildings and they are relatively unimportant.  Obviously you don't want to give this guy to any sniper, since he'll consume building HPs for nothing.  He's good, though, for cleanup or for times when you want to kill buildings without concern for heroes.   Dungeons is the main example.  You'll want to give to a hero that you use in dungeons and/or for cleanup.  Santa is the most obvious place, or Mino.

I gave Santa my Doom Balloon.


Drako -- skill has a chance to deal damage to a random nearby enemy hero and targets around it when its Hero attacks.  Reduces energy of targeted heroes.

This guy screams "scatter team".  Any time you're trying to scatter -- one of your teams in LBF, bosses -- you want this guy in the lineup somewhere.

I gave mine to my Cupid, since he's a member of every scatter team.


Finix -- skill has a chance to set an enemy hero's location on fire when its hero attacks. Damages targets within the area over 3s.  Also reduces their MOV SPD.

This is your guy for a slowdown team.  Appears that the damage might help a sniper (need to test this).  I don't have a functioning slowdown team right now.  So Finix is just a bit of extra damage to dish while sniping.

I gave it to my Grizzly Reaper, who's my third sniper.  I might give him to Harpy Queen if I start using slowdown on a boss.


Little Havoc -- skill has a chance to deal damage to a nearby enemy hero with the lowest HP when its Hero attacks. Also reduces target's ATK and ATK SPD.

This guy is a debuffer.  Put him with any hero that you want to use on tough bosses where you'll need debuffing.

I gave mine to my Druid, who is always present in boss fights.  (I don't have Ghoulem.)


Mini Angi -- skill reduces DMG taken by allied Hero with the lowest HP by a substantial amount.

This is like a mini Treantar, except Angi autoprocs.  Great for HtH fights, great for snipers if they are dealing with arrow towers.  Also could be very useful in boss fights if you are not easily tanking a boss.  (This is still the case for me with the Rage Goblin.)

I gave mine to my Aries, since he does both HtH and sniping.

Maxxing Damage on an Archdemon

The last post raised an interesting question: which hero is better against an Archdemon (damage cap: 500000)?  Succubus, or Phantom King?

Succubus procs every 7 hits, getting the full 500000 damage in her proc.  PK procs every hit, with proc damage similar to his normal hit damage.  Thus, the damage multiplier is going to determine the difference.

When PD is at max speed and being hit by the Archdemon, he procs roughly every 1.2 seconds.  He'll proc a little more often, actually, because of energy that Cupid adds.  But let's ignore that.  PD's proc lasts 8 seconds.  So, we'll have a sustained stack of 6 or 7 procs.

Let's assume 6 procs for now.  My PD has max skill, so +55% bonus per proc.  So we compute the net multiplier for PD as 1.55^6, which is 13.86.

(Incidentally, note that the speedup with 6 procs is also 13.86.  This is how we know that all heroes, even Atlanticore, are hitting every 200 ms.)

Druid also amps team damage, though less.  He procs every 1.4 seconds, with procs lasting 5 seconds.  That's 3 or 4 procs.  My Druid has skill level 7, so he gets +29% per proc.  Assuming 3, we get a net multiplier of 1.29^3, which is 2.14.

Finally, Cupid is always active, adding +45%, or 1.45.  He doesn't stack but his cooldown and proc effect are the same.

So, we find a net team multiplier of 43.1.  This means that any hit that is at least 11589 will end up as a maximum hit.  The multiplier can go considerably higher, if both PD and Druid are on the higher number of procs they can do.

Returning to the original question, I find my Succubus hits for 10828.  (She is evo 2.)  So, she is doing near max hits each hit.  Thus her total damage per 1.4 seconds is 40,000,000.

Now we compute PK's damage and compare... but wait just a second!

Succubus does 40m damage?  That makes no sense!  If she gets 40m damage per 1.4 seconds, over a full three minutes she should get 5 billion damage.  And yet the #1 player in the world got about 1.1 billion for his whole team.

Obviously something about the whole calculation above is off.  Way off.

It's obvious in retrospect.  The Archdemon dodges.  You can see it happening in any video of the Archdemon (check youtube).   For the damage reduction implied by the amount I actually scored, he must dodge a lot.  Yet I don't see that in videos... do you?  It's a mystery.

Well, I went to reddit and asked about it.  More than one guy there told me that the dodge rate is fairly low, but in addition there is some sort of stone-skin like damage reduction.  After looking at videos some more, I agree.  The dodging rate you can see is low.  You just don't see a lot of MISS notifications compared to hits.

So, my best guess at this point is that the Archdemon dodges about 10%, with a mysterious damage reduction of about 90% (!).

Returning to the original question... well, let's un-ask that.  We know that practically all hits that we're doing are not in fact capped, and indeed nowhere near capped.  (The only hits that might hit the cap are Deadly Strike hits and (maybe?) critical hits.)  So, amping up damage more is the name of the game.  There are two heroes that can do that: Siren and Beast Tamer.  Beast Tamer adds another whole hero to the lineup, and so is worth roughly +16% just for that.  At low level, somewhat less... call it +10%.  Then on top of that, at skill 7 he adds +22% damage for 9 seconds out of 12.  Siren, also at skill 7, adds +23% damage all the time.  So obviously Beast Tamer is the one to go with.

Hmm.  I already have my Siren at level 120, whereas I still have Beast Tamer as a card because I have never found any use for him.  Ah well... I need the might.

Come out, beasty boy

What's his talent?

Baby Beast Tamer 

Deadly strike!  It's not useless in this application.  I'll put on Slowdown crests once I level him up.

Theorycrafting Slowdown Teams

I've been trying to figure out how to get high damage on the Archdemon.  Pursuing that, I was watching some youtube vids and I saw some guy do a great trick with a slowdown team.  It's worth mentioning, since I am sure I will need that eventually.

The problem I have had with slowdown (besides the fact that I don't want the crests on most of my heroes most of the time) is that I cannot get a boss slowed down enough to stop him from getting to his first target.  I have tried with Warlock/Revite 3 and Harpy Queen -- still not enough.  And that stopped me.

But this guy I saw was using just about the same trick I use against the Rage Goblin and Centaur Ruler -- which you can find elsewhere at this blog.  The trick is this: you put in a hero with Revive for the boss's initial target.  Then you pour in the rest of your heroes and hit Invincible.  (This guy didn't even do that, but he was facing an Archdemon and they don't do that much damage.  Also he probably had max this and that, which I don't.)  After the Invincible ends, of course the boss kills the initial target -- but then that target revives.  Meanwhile the boss has targeted some other hero, but he's been slowed to zero with 10 seconds of full amped up Slowdown hits and various slowing procs.  So he can't move at all.  Then you pound away for the remaining ~168 seconds, completely safe.

This won't actually work on the iOS Archdemon because he autoprocs (so far we've only seen the one which stuns).  But it would work on any other single boss.

How to Snipe in Castle Clash

What is Sniping in Castle Clash?

"Sniping" is shooting at someone doesn't know you're there -- and thus, someone who cannot shoot back.  In Castle Clash, most hero-on-hero attacks happen in the range of the target hero, so that the defending hero can either hit back simultaneously or at least move to close the range so as to hit.  (Rarely you'll get a situation where a hero is near the edge of his range and is targeted; in this case, he'll retreat to his hero base drawing the enemy within targeting range.)  Put generally: a hero's target can always hit back.  However, that is not true of procs -- many heroes have the ability to do proc damage at range, and defensive enemy heroes in many of CC's subgames will never attack unless their hero base is within a certain range of an attacking hero.  So it is possible to snipe them.  That's the general idea for sniping: you find something safe to beat on -- typically, not a hero -- which will generate lots of procs, and you use those procs to remotely kill the enemy heroes.

Why Snipe?

Why is sniping useful?  It's useful because it allows you to take on heroes (and thus, bases) which you could never beat in any other way.

For example, consider the 2nd most overpowered hero in the game: Skull Knight (SK).  SK has among the highest hitpoints per level in the game, and his proc -- which lasts 10 seconds out of 12 -- caps the damage you can do to him.  Also his proc boosts his damage to stratospheric levels.  Any competent player will have lifedrain 4+ on his SK, so that even purely alone, he is nearly impossible to kill in a toe to toe fight with any normal hero or group of heroes.  He attacks faster, hits ridiculously hard, and heals himself fully in every hit.  If you get anywhere near him, he'll attack and proc, and then it's game over for you.

Beating a high level SK toe to toe is very hard.  It's also not super easy by sniping, because of SK's monstrous hitpoints.  (I didn't yet mention his inherent Revive 8.)  But it's often at least possible, and when possible, it's very low risk.  When you're sniping, all you need is enough buildings, walls, and/or troops that are out of his range.  So long as you can grind through hitpoints out of his range, you can keep damaging him without his retaliation.  He never procs to cap the damage.  He never hits you to stop the damage.  And he never hits to heal himself.  Eventually, when you've ground enough hitpoints, he dies without ever attacking even once.

So, one answer to "why snipe" is: to beat those pesky Skull Knights.

More generally, sniping is a method to beat heroes that you cannot beat safely, or beat at all, in other ways.  Beyond that, another answer to "why snipe" is to keep the risk of attack low.  If you are attacking a base which you don't know you can beat, sniping usually allows you to abort the attack without losing heroes if it doesn't work as you thought.  This allows you to raid without waiting for heroes to revive, or to do expeditions and guild wars battles more safely.  (I review the particular twists of each subgame below.)

Which Heroes Can Snipe?

Many heroes have procs that do no damage at all, or whose procs are not long range; obviously they cannot snipe.

Of those heroes who proc with a ranged attack, most will target any non-wall enemy thing: heroes, troops, and buildings.  These heroes also are not good for sniping, because there are a lot of buildings, and few heroes.  These heroes will mostly hit buildings with their procs, which is doubly bad.  It's bad because they are "wasting" procs on a non-threat; and it's bad because buildings are the source of the hitpoints you're using to snipe with.  If you eliminate the available hitpoints that are out of range of enemy heroes, you will move in and come into contact with the enemy heroes before the enemy heroes are dead.

Note that a similar logic applies for heroes that target troops.  However, at least at present (September 2016) defending bases rarely have troops, and when they do, you can usually use a different sniper.

So, in general to be a decent sniper a hero must have a long range proc that does not target buildings.  We'll look at the specific heroes who can snipe below.

It is occasionally possible to snipe with a general remote damage hero like Santa, but typically only if you can find a situation where you can path him to beat through a thick wall for a while.  This is rare.  Also, it is not good in game modes where you are trying for 100% wins, because the damage is quite random.

Sniping Theory

When sniping, your goal is to turn hitpoints of things that you can safely attack into procs that kill heroes you cannot safely attack.  When thinking about it, I like to keep in mind a concept I call "sniping efficiency" (also "sniper" or just "snipe" efficiency), which is the ratio between a sniper's attack damage, and the proc damage he produces.  Since every hero's proc damage is based on his attack damage, the ratio is largely determined by the hero's particular skill, and the skill level.

One interesting thing that thinking about snipe efficiency implies is that your hero's attack number and attack speed are relatively unimportant.  To see this, consider a hypothetical sniper with attack 5000, hitting a building with 70000 HP.  Every seven hits, he procs.  So, after 14 hits, the building is down and he has procced twice.  Each proc has 5000 HP as the base for computing proc damage.  Assume that the proc gets 200% attack against one enemy hero (no actual hero does this).  Then he will do 20000 damage remotely.  70000 building HP have been consumed, yielding 20000 HP of sniping.

Note that the attacker's attack speed has no effect on this conversion at all, other than how long it takes.  If his attack speed is 1000ms, it takes 14 seconds.  If his attack speed is 1500ms, it is 21 seconds.

Less obvious is that the sniper's attack number also has no effect on the snipe efficiency.  It affects only how long it takes.  To see this, consider what happens when we evolve the hero, and get his damage up to 10000.  Now he kills the building in 7 hits, and accordingly procs one time only.  This proc does 20000 damage: 200% of the 10000.  So, 70000 to 20000.  The sniper has the exact same efficiency. What this means is: don't worry too much about evolving your snipers or getting their levels really high.  I find evo1 180 is fine, and indeed I did pretty well even with level 160-180 non-evo'ed snipers.  What matters most for sniping is the snipers' skill level.  Get those skill levels up!

Now let me back off of that somewhat.  For one thing, evolving your snipers is good because it allows them to have an artifact, which can be helpful in ways outside of damage production.  Also, higher level snipers have more hitpoints, which allows them to deal better with damage from towers, autoproccing enemy heroes, and other sources.

Another reason for higher level snipers is that higher attack can actually increase sniper efficiency; this happens when an attack kills a thing and there is overkill.  You get energy per blow regardless of damage done, and proc damage is not based on the damage that the triggering blow dealt, but on the sniper's attack stat.  Overkill effects are most relevant when you are using a sniper and he wades into a group of troops.  Most kinds of troops he will easily one-shot; his procs still do full damage.  Here, you want the highest attack possible for your sniper.

(Note that overkill on proc attacks works the other way, lowering efficiency.  But since overkilling heroes is not possible without killing them, and killing them is what you're trying to do, it's usually not a problem.  Also, there are far fewer hero targets than buildings plus (maybe) troops and walls... so in general, high levels benefits the sniper.)

Also, while attack and attack speed are not that important, you do want enough of them so that your primary sniper can go through most of a high-level base in about 2 to 2.5 minutes.  Since you have three minutes per attack, this leaves 30 to 60 seconds for cleanup, which is usually plenty.  (Sometimes a nest of highly garrisoned magic towers can take quite a while to break.)  If you find that you're running out of time in an average sniping attack, you should work on getting your snipers' levels up.

Snipers Reviewed

Since sniping can only work when there are non-hero hitpoints of some sort to chew on, there are only a handful of heroes that have restricted enough targeting so as to be useful for sniping.  These heroes are summarized in the following spreadsheet; I'll discuss each individually.  (Note that Triton is not listed, but he can snipe, albeit far more weakly than any legendary hero.  If you are just starting, you might find a Triton useful.  But please buy TG and Griz ASAP.)
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 CC Snipers

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#5: Pixie

Pixie

Pixie can snipe, but she's a weak sniper for the most part.  She has a number of problems.  Foremost is her weak sniper efficiency: she simply isn't great at converting hitpoints into proc damage.  It is true, though, that her efficiency is not as bad as the spreadsheet makes it look, because it factors in her 3 target limit.  Since sniping when there are 1-3 targets left is important, she's not as weak as the spreadsheet makes her look.

Another problem is that Pixie flies.  Fliers never target walls, so there are a fair number of bases that other heroes can snipe that she can't.  This matters when raiding in particular, because you cannot choose which heroes to bring to a raid on a per-base basis.  However, it also matters (albeit less) in any mode, simply because your resources are finite.  Experience and hero shards are finite.  Every experience point or skillpoint that you spend to develop Pixie can't be given to any other hero.  And while you can in theory swap around crests and artifacts on the fly, doing so is a pain in the ass.

On the plus side, Pixie targets only heroes, which is the best target setting for a sniper.  Also, she is at least partially self-healing, which is a useful thing.  Her skill is also useful when sniping with multiple snipers against an enemy Dread Drake.  DDs tend be hard to kill with mass snipers because they autoproc and their proc protects them.  Pixie will strip that away.

#4 Thunder God

Thunder God

Thunder God is an often overlooked sniper.  I know I stopped using mine for a long time; indeed it is only writing this article that I seriously started using him.  The problem is, of course, that his proc is at least somewhat unpredictable; it can hit anything.  But it's not nearly as random as you might think, and its randomness does not always matter.  I love my TG now.

TG's sniper efficiency can be huge due to the large amount of damage his procs do and their area effect.  But even when 6 heroes are present it won't necessarily hit all of them, or even any of them!  TG loves to proc on the enemy townhall, and if within range (seems to be about 1/3 of the playfield edge) will usually choose to hit it.  So he's often unusable in the sense that he expends way too many of the hitpoints he is consuming to nuke the townhall.

However, if you can arrange to drop him and keep him far from the townhall, or else to take down the townhall first (with some other sniper, or sometimes TG himself), then he can be excellent.  In my experience, if the townhall is not available he'll often target troops.  But after that, he prefers heroes.  He does this often enough to use in any game mode.  In a raid, if he doesn't do what you expect, you can always take the loss.  In Expeditions and in Guild Wars, you can keep restarting until he does open up on enemy heroes.  Once he starts hitting them, he tends to keep doing so.  From observation, I think that once TG selects a target for his proc, he'll keep hitting it until it dies.  Only then does he retarget the proc.

Unlike any other sniper, TG is a melee-ranged attacker.  This is both a strength and a weakness.  It is bad in the sense that in general TG cannot snipe for as long as other snipers can before being engaged by the enemy, because he has to go closer to any given building.  However, it can be a real strength in giving TG a path that a longer-range hero won't take.  Often people put buildings along a both sides of wall around their base.  Because TG must be right next to a building to hit it, when he kills it often the next building on the outside will be his next target.  By comparison, a ranged hero hitting the same building is much further from it, and to the ranged hero a building on the other side of the wall is closer.  The ranged hero will fly over the wall, or run around it, and end up engaging enemy heroes sooner.

One other important way that TG is great, is that he can be obtained for shards.  You don't have to wait months to roll him.  Every single sniper team, IMO, should have a TG (and a Griz; read on).

Finally, TG's proc has the side effect of stunning.  This is, of course, almost useless unless confronting enemy heroes.  But if you have to fight, it can occasionally be very helpful.

#3 Grizzly Reaper

Grizzly Reaper

Grizzly Reaper (aka Griz) has his weaknesses as a sniper.  One is that he flies.  Just as with Pixie, flying is mostly a weakness because it precludes the ability to pound walls.  This doesn't always matter, but when it does, you'll wish for a different hero.

Also, Griz's proc targets both troops and heroes.  Troops in defending bases are relatively rare in CC, at least at present (September 2016).  But when they are there, they can be a huge boon for a sniper -- but only if using a hero whose proc targets only heroes.  Troops protect against Griz: he'll spend most of his procs snuffing them until they are all gone.  Only then will he focus on the heroes.

Apart from his weaknesses, though, Griz is among the better snipers.  He does very good damage, and with high skill can affect every defending hero at once (which makes him more predictable).  Also, like TG he is available to buy with shards.  He should be the second hero you buy with shards, after TG.  Finally, Griz's proc has the useful side-effect of self-healing, albeit a modest amount.  You'll still want Lifedrain on him, but his self-healing means he can get away with a bit less of it than other snipers.

#2: Aries

Aries

Aries is dominant in many game modes due his nasty ability to silence enemy heroes via his Calamity skill.  He's also a good sniper.

Aries really only has one downside as a sniper: for some reason he gains only 12 energy per attack, not 15 like other heroes.  Thus it takes him 2 extra hits to proc.  This reduces his sniping efficiency.  However, it is quite good to begin with.  It is competitive when there are 5 or 6 enemy heroes alive, but then it declines when you've killed the easier ones.

On the plus side, like Pixie, Aries only targets heroes.  Unlike Pixie, Aries is ground-based so you can get him to beat on walls.  Also he has fairly long range, which is generally helpful.  And if you are willing to risk confronting enemy heroes, Calamity is about the best skill there is.  

Aries has several other less obvious advantages.  

First, because Aries is so dominant in so many subgames, you should level him rapidly, evo him ASAP, and get his skill to 9+.  As such, you might as well put him in the sniper team.  Even if you don't give him lifedrain, he can snipe in certain circumstances and help clean up.

Second, Aries can be useful as a solo sniper against bases which have really strong autoproccing defenders.  Aries removes energy with each proc; no enemy hero can ever autoproc against only Aries.  If you put in Aries with another hero, it's kind of unpredictable what happens.  Depending on how they synchronize, Aries may shut down enemy autoprocs, or he may not.  

But the most powerful thing about Aries is that Silence disables not only skills but also many talents.  This includes Revive.  That is, if you kill a hero with Revive while he is Silent, he doesn't revive.  This is generally not that important, because most Revive talents are coming from crests and only revive with 15% or 20% hitpoints.  Usually if you can snipe a hero at all, getting another 20% is also doable.  However, Skull Knight has Revive 8 -- he revives with 100% hitpoints.  Without being Silenced, he's almost always the last enemy hero to go down, and often his sheer hitpoints (along with his unbeatable toe-to-toe abilities) are the reason why a sniping attack fails or has to be aborted without three stars. So, it's a big deal to have a way to kill SK on the cheap. 

Note that Calamity does not impose Silence (and thus disable Revive) until after the damage associated with that Calamity.  In other words, by himself and using only procs, Aries cannot kill heroes without them reviving.  He can only do it if accompanying some other sniper, or in toe-to-toe combat.  The way I use him is to put in my primary sniper (Warlock) first.  Then I watch the enemy SK and put in Aries when the SK is nearing dead.  It doesn't always work, but when it does, it's awesome.  You can often try to kill SK this way repeatedly in Guild Wars or an Expedition, quitting and restarting until you succeed.

#1 Warlock

Warlock

I am embarrassed to recall it, but when I first rolled my Warlock I left him as a level 1 nobody for several months.  I just didn't understand his utility.  I was sniping already then, using Griz mostly.  But once I started really thinking about sniping, and about how I always seemed to end up with a few of the same heroes living longer than all others, I looked at this guy's stats again... and wow!  Best sniper.

If you look at the spreadsheet, Warlock doesn't really jump out until you imagine the effect he has after the enemy is down to three heroes or less.  And here, Warlock shines.  Only TG can approach his sniping efficiency, and that's only if TG is hitting all remaining heroes.  Whereas Warlock never targets anything but heroes.  Unlike TG, Warlock's normal attack is ranged, which is usually superior for most sniping.

Unlike Griz, Warlock moves on the ground.  So you can sometimes find bases where you can get him to beat on a wall.  And also unlike Griz, he targets only heroes.  This means you can use enemy troops as snipe-fodder.

One other nice thing about Warlock is the effect on himself of his Fire Shield.  It helps protect against damage from arrow towers, enemy procs, etc.  Think of it this way: deflecting 40% of damage for 5 seconds out of 7 gives roughly the same protection as a Flame Guard 7/8.  So Warlock is your best bet as a "tank sniper".  This is particularly important in Guild Wars, where you will often find bases with max level, highly garrisoned arrow towers.

Other Considerations for Snipers

Talents and Crests

It is highly helpful for a sniper to have lifedrain.  In fact, I'd say it's mandatory.  Although it is possible to snipe a few relatively common base designs without healing, most enemy bases have bombs and towers that you need to tank; also there are some defending heroes that can proc defensively.  Even level 2 lifedrain makes a big difference, but I would want at least lifedrain 4 on my primary sniper, and even then there are bases that put out unsustainable damage.  I have level 6 lifedrain on my Warlock (evo 1 189), and he still occasionally runs into bases sporting massed high-level and highly garrisoned arrow towers that are simply too hot for him to handle.  It's rare, but it happens, particularly in Guild Wars.

Excepting lifedrain, other talents are not that important.  You definitely do not want Slow Down, Heavy Blow, or Deadly Strike.  These crests get extra damage against their possessor's main target, but no extra procs or extra proc damage; that means they decrease your sniper efficiency.

Generally, I would recommend using your other talent/crest to optimize the hero's utility in game mode(s) other than the sniping modes.

Most talents that are pretty nice in other game modes are not that important for a sniper, because you generally have time and are not expecting to die ever.  Thus, for example, Revitalize is the equivalent of a building or two.  Or consider Revive: if you died once, you're almost certainly going to die twice.  Still, Revive can be nice in giving you time to notice and quit the attack.

A lot of talents have effect only on the immediate target or vicinity, but do not have any effect on sniper efficiency.  These include Scatter, Condemnation, Corrode, etc.  You might want these if you are going to risk letting your sniper confront enemy heroes one on one.  Otherwise, something else might be better.  There is no harm in them, at least.

In general, the offensive crests (War God, Bulwark) may be helpful on increasing the effective attack speed of lower level snipers.  But since they have the same effect as raising hero level, you won't need them forever.  Apply them with crests, then level up and use something else once you are wiping bases out fast enough.  Or just leave them; they don't hurt.  They do marginally increase sniping efficiency via overkill.

Berserk can speed up some of the slower snipers nicely.  Do stay aware of a sniper's cooldown, if he has it, and don't speed your sniper so fast that he wastes attacks with a full energy bar.

The defensive crests (Flame Guard, Scorch, Stone Skin, etc.) are similar to the offensive in the sense that getting up hero level does roughly the same thing.  I rate them less important since a lot of the time your snipers won't be taking any fire at all. However, they are more useful at times since there is always a tougher base out there that needs more defense.

Artifacts

No artifact has any direct effect on sniper efficiency.  So it doesn't matter much which you use, other than that the Goblet of Life is a poor-man's lifedrain, and can be helpful in keeping a sniper alive.  Other artifacts can boost defense (Victor's Emblem, Lightning Rock) or offense (Axe of Strife, Blitz Scroll).  The Blitz Scroll acts like a Berserk crest: speeds up attack but can reduce sniper efficiency if the hero has a cooldown.

I use the Axe of Strife on my snipers, since it does marginally increase sniper efficiency via overkill.  

Bases to Avoid and Bases to Hit

Many bases in CC are unique, and must be judged individually.  However, there are a number of common base patterns, which are helpful to learn for the purpose of sniping.  Some common bases are usually snipeable; others are usually not.

HBM Bases - Snipeable

The general idea in most HBM bases is to put most buildings outside of the walls, using walls to funnel monsters in to where the heroes can hit them while they stupidly/helplessly walk by. 

HBM base

These bases may be be great for stopping waves of heroes and monsters, but they are bad against snipers.  A sniper (sometimes two are needed, as in the case above) can hit the buildings outside of the main base.

Anti Guild Wars Bases -- not snipeable

Since the advent of the Guild Wars subgame, people have started hardening bases a lot.  Anti-sniping is a key element of this.  Most of the common designs you'll find in Guild Wars cannot be easily sniped.  Increasingly, Guild Wars anti-snipe bases are appearing in other modes too, as people use the same base for all modes.

Here are some examples of "Guild Wars" bases; all of these examples are not easily sniped, if snipeable at all.  If they have low-level heroes (level 180 or lower, not evolved), maybe.  If they have lots of troops, maybe.

You should become familiar with these kinds of bases to the point where you can detect one that is weak.  A weak base will have some flaw in it that allows you to snipe.  Most common are "V" bases where they did not make the walls thick enough at the point; this permits you to beat on a thick wall using one, or sometime two, snipers.  Sometimes you'll see "brackets" bases with too thin walls; here you may get a sniper on either wall beating on it.  "X" bases don't tend to have any obvious and common failure modes beyond low-level heroes and troops.

The "X" base (four short wall sections with four gaps):

"X" base

The "brackets" base (two long walls with two gaps):

"Brackets" base

The "V" base (one large walled side):

"V" base

Four Corners Base -- often Snipeable

Before Guild Wars, probably the most common base you'd see was the "Four Corners" base.  

"Four Corners" base

"Four Corners" is still fairly common.  It has centralized heroes and a surrounding wall with openings on two sides, but the key feature is four clumps of buildings in the corners.  This is a moderately effective anti-sniping defense; a single sniper obviously cannot do it alone.  But four snipers -- or three, and a Cupid or Druid to amp them -- often can.  This depends on the defending hero levels: if they are non-evo 180 or lower, it will probably work.  Above that, maybe or maybe not.  If they have troops and you have at least two of Pixie/Aries/Warlock, it will probably work.

Also, look for insufficiently thick walls on the two closed sides, where you may be able to get a hero to beat the wall.  (The base pictured above is certainly weak on the north side and probably on the south also.)  That hero may be a sniper (TG is often good), or -- after a delay to let the snipers work on the corner buildings -- a cleanup hero like PD or Santa.

Game Modes Discussed

There are three CC game modes where sniping is useful: raids, expeditions, and guild wars.  They have a lot of similarities, but there are also important differences.  I discuss each mode here.

Raiding

Raiding has one downside the other two modes don't have: you cannot see a base before choosing the heroes you are going to attack with.  This is not a serious handicap, but it is a handicap of sorts. 

There are several ways in which raiding is a lot easier than the other two modes.

First... did I mention that you can quit out at any time during a raid, and lose only a handful of honor badges?  No, I don't think I did say that.  Well: you can quit out at any time during any raid, and lose only a handful of honor badges!  Yes.  It's true.  Use it.  It's slightly better to get at least one star, and that's often doable.  Then you gain an honor badge or two!  But you can quit with no stars and nothing really bad happens.

Second, when you raid you can use spells.  This is nice; spells allow you to deal with an enemy in toe-to-toe combat.  Snipe away, then when you get close, if you've got a decent chance to prevail, help out your sniper with a healing (for lesser enemies) or invulnerability (for nastier enemies) -- or both -- and see what happens.  Often the sniper will prevail.

You can also snipe for as long as possible, hoping to weaken or kill as many enemy heroes as you can, and then -- when the sniper is soon to be engaged anyway -- dump in a full-scale assault (all your heroes and spells as needed).

You can always quit if the toe-to-toe isn't going well.  Well, you can usually quit in time.  Even losing one hero to, for example, an unexpected Atlanticore Hero Totem is annoying, because it means you have to wait to raid, or else raid without the most desirable lineup.  So pay attention. 

Oh, and one other thing... you can quit out at any time during any raid, and take only a tiny little penalty of a handful of honor badges.  It's really quite handy, that.

Expeditions

Expeditions are similar to raids, with two main exceptions.  First, you can use any of your heroes, and you get to use up to 10 of them at a time.  (The actual number depends on your nobility.)  Second, if you quit out of an expedition attack before getting any stars, it doesn't count, and you can try again.  You do lose any heroes that died for the remainder of that expedition.  (This is one reason sniping is very helpful in expeditions.  It's probably the mode where sniping is most important for doing well.)

One other mild difference is that Expedition bases tend to be chosen to be fairly attackable; that is, at least early in the expedition they tend to be easier than the average base you see on a raid.

In general, you can three-star many bases on an expedition that you could not in a raid, simply because you can "zero-star quit".  That is, you can quite and restart as many times as needed to get a relatively rare event.  For example, having your Warlock hit an enemy SK with each of his first three procs is pretty rare.  (Assuming 6 enemy heroes, it's about 1 in 8.)  But if you need it, and you have the time to play, you can keep trying until it happens.  Similarly, if you need a sniper to path just so in order to get him to beat a wall, you can keep trying slightly different drop spots until he does.

You can also use the zero-star quit in order to scout a base for hidden or non-obvious things.  Hidden things include locations of hero traps and hero totems.  Non-obvious things include pathing (particularly seeing if you can path a hero through a wall), and the potency of enemy towers.

You get to pass on up to 5 bases during an expedition; don't waste these.  Often I will accept an easy two-star win if a three-star win is not available, rather than use up a pass.  This is particularly true early in the expedition.  Note that even using non-snipers, it is often possible to get 1 or 2 stars from a "Four Corners" style base.

One trick I have for sniping on expeditions is that I have a level 1 Cupid that I occasionally use.  (I call him miniCupid.)  The idea is that a level 1 hero does very little damage, and therefore will practically never manage to kill even a single building; so he costs almost nothing in terms of using up building hitpoints.  But Cupid's skill effect does not depend on his level.  So you can get Cupid-injected energy without losing building hitpoints.  I boosted miniCupid's skill to level 2, so that he gives 15 energy and +15% damage when he procs.  Note that his +15% damage does not increase sniper efficiency (just speed), but his +15 energy does boost efficiency.  I use miniCupid occasionally when I am facing a base where I try a few times but I find myself falling just short of a safe win using my main sniper(s).  Just be careful.  You can't place miniCupid in the range of any tower except cannon towers (which can't target flyers).  Also, any defensive hero who can auto-proc will kill miniCupid in one shot.  Before using a miniCupid, carefully scan the enemy hero lineup to make sure there are no autoproccers.  (Heroes that autoproc: Warlock, Dread Drake, Harpy Queen, Phantom King.)  Even when there is an enemy autoproc, sometimes you can snipe for a while with your main sniper, then when the enemy autoproccers are all dead, put in miniCupid in a corner.

There is no other hero that in miniHero form will increase sniper efficiency.  There are several heroes that might have marginal benefit as miniHeroes.  For example, a miniAries could be nice in dealing with enemy Skull Knights and other heroes with Revive.  I have not tried that, though; perhaps if you have a lot of extra Arieses you might.  One other thing you might try is a highly skilled miniCupid.  Upping Cupid's skill won't help, beyond a point, for the heroes with cooldowns.  However, for TG and Griz, who lack cooldowns, any amount of extra energy injection will help.  There are also a number of heroes that in miniHero form might be useful to aid toe-to-toe fighting... but since this is a sniper guide, I'll leave that to you.

Guild Wars

Guild Wars is a cross between raids and expeditions, though with its own twists.  Like expeditions, if you fail to get a star the attack doesn't count.  Unlike expeditions, if you lose a hero and/or troops in an zero-star attack it also doesn't count.  Also, if you do lose a hero in a raid that does count, it works like a raid.  You get the hero back after a while.  (Troops lost in a 1+ star attack are just gone, and must be rebuilt.)

Guild Wars bases range from very hard down to very easy, since you can attack any base in the enemy guilds.  But in general you'll want to attack the hard ones, since they give more points.  As such, Guild Wars bases tend to be much harder than expeditions and harder than raids.  You'll often run into maxxed out towers with full level 7 garrisons, in a base with full level 200 evo2 heroes including SK, Ghoulem, and Dread Drake.  These can be challenging even when they not well designed.

As with expeditions, because a zero-star quit doesn't count, you can scout out an enemy base. In fact in a Guild War attack you can scout even further, since you can get all your heroes and troops killed without losing them (so long as you don't get 50%).

As with raids, you can afford to go "all in" in a guild war attack. You may lose the use of heroes for 15 minutes, but that's usually worth it if it gets you three stars.