Choose your leader

Choose your leader

There are many theories about which hero to select as your leader. Here is an effective one.

Squads

In a battle, troops are organised into squads: groups of troops of the same type. There will be maximum 4 squads for each type, so let's say you send troops of all available types, you will end up with 16 squads:

You can see them in the animation of a battle, available in the battle report. Formations allow rearranging those squads.

Heroes leading squads

Heroes all belong to a type, just like troops: either INF, CAV, RNG or SGE. When a hero is sent into battle, they will lead a squad matching their type. Each time a squad is led by a hero, the squad will receive a boost: "Squad ATK as DMG" (the first skill of the 4 battle skills each hero has).

However, if a hero is sent but no troops of their type are sent, then the hero will have no squad to lead. This is visible in the animation of the battles: such a hero will not fight, they will just stay idle.

Let's imagine we attack full CAV, we'll end up with 4 CAV squads: we need to select 4 CAV heroes, so that all squads have that boost.

Choosing the heroes

Some heroes of a same type are better to be sent into battle than others. This is driven by the 3 remaining battle skills the heroes have.

Let's compare 2 CAV heroes:

When attacking, we want to maximse our ATK and our HP (in this example, CAV ATK and CAV HP).

Sage of Storms only brings CAV DEF (4th battle skill), and DEF is globally useless in Lords Mobile (even when defending, HP should rather be maximised in this case).

Child of Light though, brings CAV HP (3rd battle skill) and CAV ATK (4th battle skill), which makes them a great CAV hero!

As a side note, you'll hear a lot of theories about those battle skills. The truth is, the first battle skill is the only one that only applies when the hero leads a squad. The other ones, i.e. the 2nd, 3rd and 4th ones, apply even if the hero doesn't lead a squad.

The 5th hero

So, we're attacking full CAV, we selected 4 CAV heroes to maximise our CAV ATK and CAV HP. Which 5th hero to select?

We don't necessarily need the 5th hero to be of CAV type, because we won't have a 5th CAV squad to lead anyway (maximum 4 squads per type). We can still select one though, if it allows increasing our CAV ATK and CAV HP, as those battle skills don't need the hero to lead a squad to be applied. In the F2P world though, you won't find a 5th CAV hero with such battle skills.

ARMY ATK

This is where ARMY ATK comes into play. Some heros bring ARMY ATK, even in the F2P world, especially:

ARMY ATK applies to all troop types. For example, if you have 80% INF ATK, 80% CAV ATK, 80% RNG ATK, and 20% ARMY ATK, it's as if you had 100% INF ATK, 100% CAV ATK and 100% RNG ATK.

Those heroes are therefore good candidates for the 5th hero.

Example

So, we're going full CAV, the best hero team to send is:

Conclusion

If you apply this logic to all troop types, you'll notice Rose Knight (or Bombin' Goblin) end up in all teams.

The leader's purpose is to be sent into battle, otherwise, your gear and talents won't apply, meaning you'll lose precious ATK and HP.

So, either you switch your leader each time you attack (to make sure they're in your hero team), or you select one you find in all hero teams: