Foreword
In this guide, we’ll go over some factors of building a late-game team. We’ll focus on PVP, and by extension PVE, as we already have guides specific to Dream Realm.
If you're looking for beginner teams, check our other guide:
PVE team or PVP team?
Generally speaking, there is no clear distinction between the two. A team that is good in PVP, will also be good in PVE, unless you are tackling extreme deficit stages. At which point the standard high damage teams fail to kill enemies fast enough and we require sturdier stall units such as
Standard Team Setup
Even though there are many possible teams in this game, more often than not, they will follow the same style of building when deciding between which characters to use.
- Pick a Tank. Tanks are the key figures in a team, even if their presence doesn’t often decide the other characters that will make up the team. Tanks have an exceedingly small roster, so be careful with who you pick to build around the faction bonus.
- Pick 2x DPS. At the time of writing this, there is no real reason to run just 1 DPS. There aren't enough characters that can support that kind of playstyle, so most teams opt to run at least 2 DPS.
- Pick a Support Supports are often the backbone of a team. Though most Supports (depending on the character) can provide enough sustain on their own, sometimes their kits trade raw healing output for things like buffs or debuffs.
- Flex spot. Pick a Specialist, a second Support
- Specialists are either characters with quirky kits, or characters that focus on multiple roles at the same time. A key observation you may have is that the “good” Specialists often provide something in terms of buffs, debuffs or enhancements for your other characters. Due to this, there’s also the option of running a second Support.
But we are in the late game now, which opens up new and exciting options! Below we’ll briefly describe some prominent archetypes. Keep in mind that all those teams require characters ascended to at least Mythic+ as their EX weapons often are core for the team to work.
Advanced team - Eironn Nuke Team
In this team, your strategy is to kill the enemy before they kill you, through overwhelming burst damage potential.
- Bring Eironn. He is the character who comes to mind when we think about who enables the very idea of a “Nuke Team”. But only strictly necessary in the Eironn variant.
- Pick 2+ DPS. Pick characters with high burst damage potential, as many as you can get away with.
- And that’s it! Other than these, all other roles are optional:
- Pick a Tank. Or don’t. This role is optional, if running Eironn as your Specialist he can be used as a Tank so you can bring more DPS carries.
- Pick a Support. Or don’t. This role is optional, if running a more aggressive variant, we can ditch our support role entirely, but this is risky, because if the enemy Hewynn manages to get their ult out before dying, you are very likely to lose the match, so make sure your burst damage is up to the task.
- Pick a Celestial/Hypogean. Or don’t. This role is optional. A Celestial/Hypogean character (or Celehypo, as we’ll start calling them for brevity.) can help deal more damage, or offer sustain. In the late game we should have at least one of these to work with so might be worth slotting them into the team.
Comments: This is THE meta team you will see everywhere in the endgame. Everyone builds around Eironn, and countering Eironn. The overwhelming burst damage wins fights right from the start.
Information about the team
- This team composition functions and is viable in PVE and PVP as soon as Eironn reaches Mythic+, becoming stronger as Eironn and the damage dealers paired up with him gain EX weapon levels.
- Eironn is the main enabler of the “Nuke Team” archetype, and the rest of the team is built around him. His ability to cast his ultimate at the start of the battle at mythic+ synergizes well with Arden, Carolina, and even Thoran, as he often gets to use his counter against a tightly packed group of enemies. His EX +10 is a big upgrade as it increases the duration of his CC.
- Arden is usually the first damage dealer you’ll think of when building the Eironn Nuke Team. He charges his ult rapidly when the enemy team gets hit by Eironn’s ultimate and then deals massive AOE damage and CC.
- Lily May counters enemy Eironn teams, and other ultimate-reliant teams in general while dealing high damage, taking advantage of eironn’s magic DEF debuff and being hard to kill, she is our first choice of second dps carry.Carolina capitalizes even further on Eironn and Arden’s CC attacks with her snowballs, and is the another choice for the second DPS carry.Parisa also functions in this slot by taking full advantage of Eironn’s ultimate grouping up enemies to deal massive damage, though she does not particularly synergize with the rest of the team’s CC the way Carolina does. All these damage dealers are at their best potential at Mythic+ and EX weapon upgraded as high as you can go.
- For the flex slots there are many choices, but ideally we want to bring a Wilder, Graveborn or Celehypo hero for faction bonus purposes.
- If running a healer, our first pick would be Damian at mythic+ EX +5, as it allows him to start healing shortly after the start of the battle while also providing haste.
- If running a dedicated tank, Thoran will be our first pick due to his resilience and high damage potential with his Counter. Mythic+ helps protect one of your damage dealers while also allowing Thoran to survive longer.
- If running an additional damage dealer, Silvina will be our first pick, as a situational assassin option in case the enemy has a high priority backline character she can quickly eliminate. At Mythic+ EX +10 Silvina gains the ability to inflict the Fear debuff on kill, same as Berial, which is very strong against a packed enemy team. Use the Enlightening Spell artifact if running her.
- If running a Celehypo, Scarlita will be our first choice since she helps shield our frontliner long enough for the backline to kill the enemy. At Mythic+ +10 Scarlita starts to really “pop off” by unlocking her instakill ability.Reinier is a good option that works at low dupes, and can help disrupt the enemy.
Other picks
- Tank: Granny Dahnie - We can replace Thoran with Granny in a pinch for her tankiness and CC potential, but watch out for Odie! A highly invested Odie will absolutely chew through Granny’s health bar.
- Flex Position: Hewynn - We can also run Hewynn as a second healer option in one of the flex slots to help increase the team’s sustain potential.
- Flex Position: Mikola -Mikola is another great option for a secondary healer with great buffs, especially if the enemy does not have thoran.
- Damage Dealer: Florabelle - Flora can be worth running in this team, especially for the more sustain-heavy variant running Scarlita, a tank and a support. Her ultimate offers great synergy with Scarlita’s slam, as long as you can survive enough to see it happen.
Advanced team - Mauler Rush
An Anti-Eironn team, taking advantage of the faction bonus to survive long enough to kill the Wilder units in the enemy team.
- Bring Shakir. Shakir is the biggest enabler of mauler melee teams, being tanky enough to fight in the front lines as long as he can stay alive long enough to pop his ult, and providing powerful buffs to the team.
- Pick 2 DPS. Preferably Mauler faction heroes, but you can experiment with melee characters from other factions too.
- Pick a Tank. Mauler has resilient tanks who can keep the rest of the team alive long enough for Shakir to get his ult out, but you can also experiment with other faction tanks.
- Pick a Support or Specialist. Someone to keep this team going just long enough to rush the enemy. You don’t necessarily need a dedicated healer, as some Specialists can also provide shields or healing.
Comments: Anti-Eironn team. Might be harder to build due to Maulers having many priority units and the average player not raising all of them. Will perform well as long as Shakir survives long enough to get his ult out.
Information about the team
- This team is build to survive against Eironn’s initial burst of damage and push ahead with self heal and damage resistance, taking advantage of their faction advantage. Assume everyone is at least mythic+ rarity.
- Shakir can be seen as a core unit in any melee-based team, as he provides powerful defensive and offensive buffs, as well as being quite tanky himself if he survives long enough to get his ult out. You’ll want to get his EX weapon to +10 so he can share Lupine Aura with the rest of the team.
- As for the tanks, our first pick would be Brutus, for his invulnerability which guarantees that he will at least survive against the initial burst from Eironn and maybe heal himself back up.Thoran also provides a powerful counter attack, along with his survivability, but his faction is not ideal for mauler teams.Antandra can also be used for her sheer defensive potential, to hold the line long enough for Shakir to get his ult out.
- Odie, especially with his EX weapon unlocked, is an absolute menace and will absolutely melt any wilders unit he comes across, as long as he survives long enough to build up his damage. A popular resource management strategy is to pour most of your weapon upgrade resources into Odie to help with both Dream Realm and pvp.
- Satrana andSeth are both good choices of melee damage carry, with great sustain mechanics. Seth can very easily snowball out of the enemy’s control, but that requires getting kills.Alsa is a more control-oriented option that helps isolate enemies and score kills.
- For our support flex slot, Koko is a great option for sustain seeing as her kit is tailored specifically for supporting melee teams. The same can be said ofMikola, who offers powerful buffs and healing, and her arena remains after death.Scarlita remains an universal support option who also offers high damage.
Other picks
- Tank: Phraesto Great option to run with Mikola to win her Arena bonus, while also providing extra energy.
- Tank: Granny Dahnie - If running Kafra, it might be worth considering running Granny here to help close out the faction bonus, and her CC can also be useful.
- Flex Support: Smokey & Meerky - You might have problems with your characters running out of Smokey’s healing cloud, but if they manage to stay with him he will provide great healing while also contributing to the Mauler faction bonus.
- Flex Support: Kafra - Kafra is a damage dealer/healer/debuffer hybrid who heals allies around him on kill, and can rush down enemy supports.
- Flex Support: Hewynn orDamian. Both offer great healing and haste buffs, good options if you seek a team with more sustain.
Advanced team - Dionel Hypercarry
This is technically another type of nuke team, if your Dionel is invested enough, that is.
- Bring Dionel. Dionel is best used as a build-around unit, being the most straightforward of the Celehypos, he just deals damage, so we’ll focus on amplifying that even further.
- Pick 3 Supports. More specifically, “buffers”. We want three support characters offering different Stat-boosting buffs to feed Dionel’s Intoxication stacks. Typically that means ATK, Haste and ATK SPD, but all stat-boosting buffs work.
- Pick a Tank/DPS/Celehypo. This is our flex slot, we can bring pretty much anyone, either to increase the team’s damage output, or survivability.
Comments: Very high burst damage potential, can survive Eironn’s nuke as long as you use the ATK SPD artifact to keep Dionel safe. This team is sometimes used by whales who had the spare resources to invest in Dionel rather than the more utility-focused Celehypos. Requires very high investment on Dionel to be competitive with other meta teams.
Support
Information about the team
- This team is built around Dionel, providing enough buffs to quickly get his intoxication stacks up so he can destroy the enemy team. Reasonably tanky team thanks to multiple supports, but requires high investment on Dionel, at least Mythic+ and EX +10.
- Lyca is used for her ATK SPD buff at the start of the battle.
- Smokey & Meerky is used for his ATK buff and healing. His haste only comes online after channeling for a while.
- Damian is used for his HASTE buff and healing, completing the 3 required buffs for Dionel to reach his maximum potential.
- For our tank, we can run Granny Dahnie orBrutus for the faction bonus, orThoran because he’s just that good.
- Granny is good due to her tankiness and CC potential.
- Brutus is actually viable here since Dionel Hypercarry fights tend to be on the shorter end.
- Thoran, despite not contributing to the faction bonus, remains a solid choice due to his revival mechanic.
Other picks
- Support: You can mix and match supports as long as you can guarantee Dionel gets 3 buffs. Anyone who can provide a stat-boosting buff, be it an offensive buff or defensive buff.
Advanced team - Heal Stall Team
A powerful stall team that can also work on attack. Defense focused.
- Bring Scarlita or DPS. Scarlita ends up being the main source of damage on this team, as well as making the frontline tankier, and she is what allows the team to get kills at all by using her instakill mechanic. But you can also just run your best dps carry in this slot.
- Pick a Tank. This is a stall team so bringing a tank goes without saying.
- Pick 3 Supports. We want our supports to provide a constant flow of healing to keep the team going as long as possible.
Comments: This is the best defense team in arena, often beating people above its power level by killing their units with Scarlita or just waiting out the timer. Can also work in attack if the enemy happens to have low sustain so you dont run out of time
Support
Specialist
Information about the team
- The traditional stall team, an impenetrable wall. This team is unique in its gameplan, as it is primarily tailored to waste the enemy team’s timer, rather than outright kill them, but it is still perfectly capable of doing that, should it be used in an attack formation, as long as the enemy team doesn’t also have high sustain. Not ideal for story pushing, as you might run out of time yourself in high deficit stages.
- Thoran andGranny Dahnie are the tanks of choice, with pros and cons to each.
- Thoran offers higher damage due to his counter, but using him can also be risky if the enemy happens to also have Thoran, because your counter might be reflected right back and deal enough damage to kill your tank before you can heal them.
- Granny Dahnie, on the other hand, is actually tankier than Thoran in a stall team, as she offers a slightly higher team bonus due to her faction, and has powerful CC and defensive tools built into her kit, and she would be the perfect choice, that is, if Odie didn’t exist. If the enemy happens to have a highly invested Odie (Let’s say, EX +15), his massive single target damage combined with faction advantage will absolutely shred through Granny’s health faster than our supports can heal.
- For our supports, Damian andHewynn offer consistent, CC-resistant healing, as well as haste buffs. Hewynn also provides damage resistance to the team while healing to boost our survivability even further.
- In the third support slot, Rowan is the first pick, since he allows our other supports to get their ultimates out faster, but he is also squishy and vulnerable to graveborn damage dealers such as Carolina, Viperian and Silvina. Since we don’t particularly care about faction for this last slot, we can also runSmokey & Meerky, for his continuous healing and offensive buffs, orKoko for her jack-of-all-trades kit of defensive and offensive buffs, and as a bonus, being of the mauler faction, they are resistant to Wilder damage dealers.
- For our flex slot, the best unit you can run is a highly invested Scarlita, as she offers extra sustain while also single-handedly solo-ing the entire enemy team with her powerful attacks and instakill abilities. But realistically you can run pretty much anyone here, preferably someone with significant damage potential, who also completes our faction bonus. We’ll go through some of the options below.
Other picks
- Damage Dealer: Lily May - A powerful variant of this defense team with more damage potential, counters Eironn attacker teams.
- Flex Position: Eironn - His ultimate can group up the enemy team to possibly set up a team wipe when combined with Thoran’s counter.
- Flex Position: Reinier - His ultimate can disrupt the enemy team enough to stop them from ever having enough damage to finish your tank off, by teleporting one of their damage dealers away, or remove their support.
- Flex Position: CarolinaArden - Both benefit greatly from crowd control, and fit perfectly in the Granny variant of the team.
- Flex Position: Viperian - Known for his great burst damage potential, he can help thoran finish off low health enemies after a counter.
- Flex Position: CeciaFlorabelle - Both have great solo carry potential, as long as they have enough time to let their summons do their job, which our stall team should offer plenty of.
- Flex Position: Berial - Berial can pick off isolated enemies, and leave the enemy team in low enough health to perish at the hands of Thoran, if they didn’t bring enough sustain to heal back up. His summons also divert some of the enemy team’s damage buying us extra time to outlast the timer.
Advanced team - Graveborn Stall Team
Another option for stall teams, focusing on abusing graveborn immortality. Defense focused.
- Bring Thoran,Igor andNiru. These three form the backbone of this team, with all three being able to cheat death somehow, they can keep themselves alive while also dealing damage.
- Pick a Support. The immortality gimmick alone is not enough, we still need to bring some form of healing to make any stall strategy work.
- Pick a unit for the Flex slot. If we want to deal more damage with this team, we can bring a dps carry. If we want to lean entirely on the stall aspect for defense purposes, we can bring another Support. Or we can bring a Celehypo.
Information about the team
- This variant focuses on abusing immortality mechanics, rather than raw healing numbers, while offering slightly higher damage potential than the Heal variant.
- Thoran,Igor andNiru are the core of the Graveborn variant of the stall team.
- Thoran can revive twice, while also protecting one other character.
- Niru can cast his ultimate right away, giving either Thoran or Igor another life, and the ghosts stay as long as your allies don’t die. Requires Mythic+.
- Igor completes the trio, being nigh-unkillable through his tombstones, often the last to die, allowing Niru’s ghosts to stay active for the duration of the fight.
- Even though we rely on the immortality gimmicks, this is still a stall team, so we’ll want a support or two to give us some extra breathing room. Hewynn orDamian are the first picks if we want consistent healing and haste.Ludovic can be used to increase our faction bonus at the cost of offering little other than healing.
- Scarlita gives the team extra sustain and has great damage potential, but generally speaking, we want someone to guarantee a faction bonus. We can use the same options recommended for the Heal Stall Team.
- For arena defense, you can bring an extra support in the Flex Position.
Advanced team - Flora Zoo Team
A team based around taking advantage of Flora’s skill that grants allied summons a sizable shield.
- Bring Florabelle,Berial andCecia. These three form our zoo archetype, based around overwhelming the enemy with summons, and offering plenty of tanky targets for the enemy to waste damage on.
- Pick a Tank. We need to hold the line just long enough for our backline to get their summons out, so bring a tank.
- Pick a Support. Someone to keep our frontline alive and heal our summons. Healing is more valuable than shields here, as we’ll have time to heal since the summons get a shield.
Information about the team
- The Zoo Team. Here we take advantage of Florabelle ability to grant allied summons sizable shields, allowing us to overwhelm the enemy with summons, and offering plenty of tanky targets for the enemy to waste damage on.
- Florabelle is the one who enables the archetype.
- Berial is constantly summoning shadows, which all get Florabelle’s shields, allowing them to survive longer to deal more damage, and absorb more hits.
- Cecia ultimate, Mr. Carlye, also benefits from the shields, doing his job as a secondary tank.
- Thoran andGranny Dahnie remain our first picks for both being top tier tanks, and also helping us gain the Graveborn/Wilder faction bonus.Phraesto is a powerful, but more expensive, addition to the zoo archetype due to deploying as two copies of the same character.
- For our support slot, we’ll want Mikola for her EX ability, which grants a damaging aura to allies. We can also opt for someone who offers a lot of healing while also contributing to our faction bonus.
- Hewynn is the first pick here for her map-wide healing ultimate, which allows us to heal all our summons at the same time.
- Damian is another viable option, being able to provide his AOE healing sooner than Hewynn, with the tradeoff of having a relatively small AOE for his heals.
Other picks
- Support: Smokey & Meerky - Provides great sustained healing and offensive buffs, might clash with our faction bonus.
- Support: Extra Healer - A more sustain-oriented variant can trade Cecia for an extra healer, helping with this team’s survival.
Advanced team - Talene Hypercarry
A team based on keeping Talene’s ultimate going for as long as possible, relying on her to do most of the damage.
- Bring Talene.Talene is best used as a build-around unit, we’ll take advantage of her revival gimmick and continuous ultimate, and try to keep her going until the enemy team is dead
- Pick 3 Supports. We want as much healing and defensive buffs as possible to feed Talene’s ultimate
- Pick a Specialist/Tank/DPS. This is our flex slot, we can bring pretty much anyone, either to increase the team’s damage output, or survivability
Information about the team
- This team is built aroundTalene, providing as much healing as possible to keep her ultimate going. Reasonably tanky team thanks to multiple supports, but requires high investment on Talene, at least Supreme and EX +15. Her EX +15 ability is very important for keeping our frontline alive.
- Kokois used for her powerful array of defensive and offensive buffs tied to her ultimate, along with some extra healing ability.
- Ludovic is used for his consistent healing.
- Damian is used for his HASTE buff and healing.
- For our flex slot, we have several options:
Other picks
- Support - You can mix and match supports as long as you can guarantee Talene gets enough healing.