Introduction to Arena of Valor’s Heroes
Arena of Valor (AoV) is one of the most popular mobile multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games, with over 200 million registered players globally. The game Arena of Valor’s heroes currently exceeds 100 options and still expanding regularly through new releases and updates.
These heroes form the core foundation of Arena of Valor, playing different specialized roles within a 5v5 team composition. Players must select and master certain heroes that match their personal playstyle preferences and complement their allies’ choices. But with so many distinct heroes boasting unique abilities, attributes, and play patterns, it can feel overwhelming for newcomers to parse the entire roster available to them.
This comprehensive guide aims to help both beginners and veterans better understand Arena of Valor’s hero catalog. I’ll be covering all about hero classes, stats, skills, skins, difficulty, counters, and more! Let’s break down the key knowledge needed to effectively pilot your champion selections in AoV.
Hero Classes and Team Roles
Arena of Valor organizes its heroes into these 7 class archetypes that generally align with MOBA conventions:
Tanks – Tough front liners that can absorb tons of damage with their high health and defenses. They initiate fights and disrupt enemies. Examples: Maloch, Thane
Warriors – Fighter hybrids with a blend of offense and defense. They thrive in extended melee skirmishes. Examples: Airi, Lu Bu
Assassins – Agile damage dealers that quickly take out squishy targets. They excel at ganks and flanking. Examples: Butterfly, Zephys
Mages – Ranged magic damage dealers with high burst potential, but vulnerable defensively. Examples: D’arcy, Tulen
Marksmen – Ranged physical damage dealers who serve as the main late-game carriers. They rely on critical strike chance and attack speed. Examples: Capheny, Laville
Supports – Provide healing, shields, speed boosts, and other utilities to aid allies. They enable teammates to succeed. Examples: Annette, Krizzix
Hero classes give a general sense of their gameplay focus, but there’s plenty of variation within each category. Heroes like Enzo blend warrior defense with assassin mobility. Elsu is a marksman who plays more like a sniper. Grakk is a tank that excels at singling out targets with his hook rather than soaking up damage. So don’t just judge a book by its cover when selecting it!
Attributes – What Stats Mean for Heroes
All heroes in Arena of Valor come bundled with an array of stats that determine their functionality and optimal builds:
Health – Determines total HP pool and bulk. Important for tanks.
Attack Damage – Improves basic attack and physical skill damage, key for marksmen.
Ability Power – Boosts magical skill damage, essential for mages.
Armor – Reduces incoming physical damage taken. Counters marksmen.
Magic Defense – Mitigates magical damage taken. Counters mages.
Movement Speed – Improves mobility for dodging, chasing, or retreating.
Critical Chance – Chance to critically strike for bonus damage, crucial for marksmen builds.
Attributes align closely with hero classes and intended roles. Tanks sport tons of health and defense. Marksmen rely on attack damage and critical chance. Knowing what stats a hero requires helps guide proper itemization choices during matches.
Breaking Down Hero Abilities
All heroes in Arena of Valor come equipped with 3 core abilities, plus a passive:
Passives – Innate bonuses that provide persistent effects automatically. These may enhance damage, defense, movement speed or even grant special attacks.
First Ability – These activate by tapping the icon and tend to have shorter cooldowns, allowing frequent use. They cover offensive attacks, mobility maneuvers, crowd control effects, shields, heals, and more.
Second Ability – The medium cooldown move that forms a core part of a hero’s skill rotation during combat or jungling/wave clearing.
Ultimate – The powerful third ability with lengthy cooldowns, reserved for key moments like initiating team fights, bursting down opponents, or even saving yourself. These have huge playmaking potential.
Understanding every arena of Valor’s heroes full kit is crucial to mastering them and countering enemy abilities. For example, recalling Butterfly has an ult that makes her unachievable helps you anticipate how to react when she disappears mid-fight.
Show Off With Skins and Masteries
Beyond default looks, Arena of Valor allows players to unlock hero mastery levels and flashy skins to show off success and dedication with certain champions:
Hero Masteries – As you play PvP matches with heroes and gain experience points, you raise their mastery level depicted by badges on the loading screen. This unlocks special rewards like trial cards, gold, gems, and poses to flex expertise.
Skins – Cosmetic outfits offering alternative models, animations, visual effects, sound effects, and voice lines. Skins range from Common (recolors), Rare, and Elite (new models), up to expensive pinnacle Special and Codex skins boasting custom spell effects and kill announcements. Popular skins for beloved heroes like Yena’s Sanguine Rose or Preyta’s Joker equivalent feel essential for mains to acquire!
Difficulty – Easy to Hard arena of valor’s heroes for Beginners
With such a massive and diverse arena of valor’s heroes roster available, certain champions prove more mechanically intensive and challenging to play effectively, especially for newcomers:
Very Hard – High-skill cap carries as marksmen Laville and Capheny rely heavily on consistent accuracy and positioning for success. Certain mages like D’arcy and Lauriel have unforgiving cooldown windows and require quick fingers to maximize short damage bursts. Master assassins like Keera and Aoi demand strong map awareness, precision engages and quick reflexes to utilize brief stealth windows for picks. Enzo mixes multiple phases with stance dancing akin to fighting game inputs.
Hard – Other marksmen like Violet demand elite stutter stepping movement to kite perfectly. Assassins like Nakroth and Butterfly rely on slick combat maneuvering to dip in and out of skirmishes using well-timed invincibility frames. Mages like Ignis and Lorion juggle multiple phases and situational abilities that get punished heavily for misuse. Tanks like Maloch need to judge initiations and protect teammates reliably.
Easy – In contrast, beginner-friendly heroes offer more forgiving mechanics and simpler execution needed to contribute. Valhein is a straightforward marksman who primarily right-clicks his foes. Mages like Aleister and Natalya feature easier skill shots plus durable itemization. Durable fighters like Airi, Wonder Woman, and Lu Bu can sustain in combat even if you misuse certain combos. Tanks like Cresht focus on disruption over playmaking. Supports like Annette offer reliable buffs rather than complex play.
Countering the Competition – Hero Matchups
A key to success in MOBAs involves counter-picking enemies by selecting heroes that naturally prevail in matchups against certain opponents. Below I’ve listed some of the top hero counters within each class:
| Tank Counters | Mage Counters | Marksmen Counters | Assassin Counters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tanks | Maloch’s % piercing damage ignores armor. Max’s % damage scales with health. Payma’s % health damage burns through hp pools. | Tulen’s mobility dodges disruption while burning them down. Dirak % health damage cleaves thick teams. | Laville % armor pierce melts defenses. Moren % health damage shreds hp bars. | Zephys becomes immune to control effects, perfect for fighting crowd control heavy tanks. Butterfly blinks past frontlines to reach backlines. |
| Mages | Cresht can gap close bursty immobile backliners with his charge. Chaugnar boasts magic defense to withstand bursts while silencing combos. | Maganga reflects magical damage back at its casters. Sephera cleanses control combos and heals up poke harass with ease. | Zephys becomes immune to control effects, perfect for fighting crowd-control heavy tanks. Butterfly blinks past frontlines to reach backlines. | Quillen ambushes backline mages globally, bypassing frontlines entirely. Enzo splits pressure across the map forcing mages to overextend. |
| Marksmen | Baldum drags vulnerable ranged carries out of safety. Thane shields allies to block critical damage dealers. | Dirak’s massive AoE zones control areas that marksmen want to kite in. Lorion displaced helpless marksmen with ease. | Cresht point-blank subdues evasive melee threats who want to dip into safety. Mina roots frustrating elusive enemies. | Elsu pickoffs marksmen instantly from extreme range before they can even react. Aoi chunks marksmen and prevents healing sustains. |
| Assassins | Peura can slow-diving assassins enabling allies to finish them off. | Aleister contains and bursts down mobile threats who overextend with his ultimate. | Yorn can root mages in place from long-range to set up kills for teammates. | Wukong snares lockdown threats in place for his team to collapse on kills. |
Notice how certain heroes naturally counter specific opponents – Cresht punishes squishy immobile backliners, Baldum displaces vulnerable ranged marksmen out of safety, while Sephora cleanses herself from control combos.
Heroes Counter
You’ll also observe how multiple options exist to counter each class. Supports like Annette enable allies to kite scary assassins. Tanks like Thane physically shields teammates from fatal marksman crits. Enzo splits pressure on slippery heroes that keep escaping when focused.
Always study all heroes on both teams during drafts to create beneficial matchups for your composition while selecting viable counters against enemy win conditions. One wrong pick can throw a counter matchup greatly in their favor instead. Master this drafting mind game to skillfully outmaneuver the competition!
The depth of counters grows incredibly nuanced at high elo – an Elandorr might require specifically Aleister to lock him down whereas Quillen counters most squishies. But simply distinguishing options naturally strong into each class as depicted above will already boost your win rate substantially. Counter knowledge ultimately comes from lots of matchup experience across hundreds of matches seeing heroes piloted by talented mains.
Most Popular and Highest Win Rate Heroes
While tier lists help gauge heroes perceived as strongest in the current meta, popularity, and success rates reveal what AoV players actually choose and thrive within ranked matches.
As of recent patch data, consistently popular heroes selected include:
- Lubu – Easy to play warrior bruiser
- Annette – Strong magic support enabler
- Keera – Snowballing assassin mage
Highest win rate heroes who dominate games often include:
- Wukong – Difficult but devastating skill shot marksman
- Aleister – Beginner-friendly control mage
- Aya – Fighter/assassin hybrid pub stomper
Evaluate both factors when selecting mains – it helps to choose options you personally enjoy that can also influence matches with smart drafts.
Advanced Tactics to Step Up Your Game
Once comfortable piloting arena of Valor’s heroes and familiar with opponents, high-level Arena of Valor gameplay introduces advanced mechanics that separate average players from elite:
- Animation Canceling – Input buffering abilities and movement commands between attack animations for faster bursts.
- Skill Combos – Chaining abilities in optimal order for maximum damage.
- Terrain Exploits – Using walls, ledges, and environments to block skill shots cleverly.
- Split Pushing – Applying side lane pressure to divide and conquer opposing teams.
- Flanking – Circumventing enemy frontlines by taking an unexpected path to reach a vulnerable backline.
Mastering these elements of surprise and unconventional play creates opportunities to outsmart less creative opponents.
Conclusion – Select Your Champion Wisely
Arena of Valor’s 100+ hero roster provides staggering diversity in aesthetics, attributes, and playstyles. Hopefully, this guide has broken down key knowledge like classes and abilities to help newcomers select their champions confidently while illustrating higher-level tactics for veterans.
At higher tiers, counter matchups and team synergy grow incredibly nuanced – but the basics like targeting squishies as assassins remain consistent. Experiment with free weekly hero rotations, study top player mains for inspiration, and play who genuinely clicks with your preferences. Most importantly – have fun conquering Athanor!