How to Counter Every Hero to Build Custom Dominant Teams

There are heroes that you want to "watch out" for in Hero Wars, especially in the arena. Knowing what heroes and teams, can make a difference in your game. 

Recently Charlie from HWC posted Top 5 Counters for every Hero here. I am going to make a list of heroes first, that you should watch out for and how to counter them. Next, we'll take notes about overcoming all the other heroes in the game. Every hero is valuable in their own way. But those listed in the second list don't cause me (most of the time) to alter the team I'm already using and can be overcome with a variety of different teams and synergies. Those listed in the first list are heroes that may be key to overcoming to be able to win, and therefore may always or sometimes cause you to change heroes out, or switch teams completely. 

Here's a guide for countering heroes on Hero Wars Alliance by Alexandregames.com, which usually applies to heroes in Dominion also. Note that there are Factions (and sets) for heroes in the Alliance mobile game of Hero Wars. This greatly impacts team building. Additionally, there are unique heroes in each of the games, and there is not always a direct crossover in abilities because of these mentioned differences. 

Watch Out 

Amira - Amira counters/punishes critical hits, dodges, and tanks with her unique skills.

• Isaac absorbs magic damage, 
• Use Axel as a patron pet
• Uses silence 
• Direct area damage to the center of the enemy team 

Arachne - She stuns and deals pure damage.

• Stealing energy with Jorgen, Astaroth or Nebula. 
• Use Isaac to absorb incoming magic damage. 
• Use Axel as a patron pet to reduce harsh damage impacts. 
• Use control heroes with silence, stun, or charm to disable her ability to use ultimate skills against you.

Augustus - high pure and magic damage dealer (like Aurora, Amira).

• Use Rufus or Isaac to absorb magic damage. 
• Use Axel as a patron pet to reduce harsh damage impacts. 
• Use control heroes with silence, stun, or charm to disable her ability to use ultimate skills against you.
• If he is with Lars or Maya, these heroes will bring you close together making Augustus deal more damage to you more often. Therefore, using Andvari can highly reduce the induced movement by the enemy, keeping you safer and inflicting much less damage to your heroes. 

Aurora - Tank that deals heavy magical damage to the midline.

• Use stun or silence (Thea, Arachne). 
• Rufus or Isaac can absorb magic damage, 
• Corvus's totem to punish when magic damage is dealt by her. 
• Lyria is to reduce her dodge and therefore increase the damage dealt to her. 

Celeste - She punishes healing and heals her party.

• Punish her with Celeste, Amira or Iris. 
• Use Jet or Jasmine to punish her healing without healing themselves, which could be punished...
• Silence or stun her to reduce her skill switching (not as effective as others because she skills at half energy bar).  

Galahad - is a tank 

• Can be reduced greatly by Qing Mao. 
• Stealing his energy to reduce his ultimate is key, do so with Astaroth, Nebula and/or Jorgen.
• Stunning him is usually not enough to reduce his skills due to him being a frontline attacker with vampirism. 
• If he is with a healer, you can use Celeste to reduce and punish his ability to heal. 
• Yasmine can also overcome him and stop his vampirism, he is often the target of her assassination attempts do to the high rate of his attacks on her in the frontline. 

Heidi - Can dodge and deal massive pure damage over time. 

• You'll want to use Lyria to reduce this guys changes, and FAST. He has several skills that deliver pure damage over time and you really need to not let him drain the life bar of your entire team and wait for heavy damage to come from Orion or Galahad. No. You need to target the center line, reduce magic/intelligence and stop dodge abilities for the team he's with. 
• He is often paired with other dodgers, so using Lyria and Kiera with high penetration is wise. Silence can stop his skill function, and any energy drainers can work if they are faster/higher power than he is... 

Iris - One of the best mages in the game, who punishes those who leave marks on targets. So... 

• Don't use Satori, Kayla, Aiden, Yasmine or any heroes that leave a mark against Iris
• Silence and stun her often. 

Ishmael - can stun and deliver critical hits, when placed with Jet and/or Fafnir he can be a stunning issue to behold. 

• You need to destroy the buffer in the backline to defeat Ishmael himself between his rages. 
• You'll need a strategy to defeat him, with Kayla or Luther or Cleaver and a way to protect your own damage dealers in the meantime. 
• Seriously, this hero can become invisible - the key is to defeat the buffing hero before Ishmael one-on-ones every member of your lineup. He targets one hero at a time. Make sure your high-damage dealer is in the back and will hit accurately (such as Kiera). 

Jorgen - steals energy, protects allies, and deals magic damage as a strength hero (!) in the mid/back line. 

• You'll need to account for a loss of energy and ensure you have high damage dealers that DON'T rely on their ultimate to do so. 

Yasmine - Deals damage to whoever last dealt her damage (know who she's most likely to target, hopefully it's a tank).

• Using a more powerful Yasmine can counter lesser-Yasmine. 
• Stun can delay the assassination and give you enough time to kill her first. 
• Iris will punish her marks left by Yasmine, 
• Jorgen, Astaroth and Nebula can disrupt her ability to gain energy, which she needs to use her ability to assassinate. 
• Use Heidi as a sacrifice by ensuring she does a lot of pure damage to Yasmine before she assassinates her, giving a mass damage dealer the chance to FINISH her off! 
• Helios will punish critical hits dealt by Yasmine 

How to Counter These Heroes 

Aiden - stun or silence him, target the back row, negate healing.
Iris for increased damage due to the mark left by Aiden 

Alvanor - silence, negate healing with Celeste/Buscuit 

Artimus

• Use good physical protection with shields (Fafnir, Astaroth, Judge, Julius) and high armor heroes.
• Include Sebastian to protect against her stun.
• Helios can punish critical hits dealt by her. 

Astaroth - overwhelm him with Morrigan, Qing Mao, and/or Mushy

Chabba 

• Cleaver can be used to temp him will be dealing pure damage by proximity.
• Any hero (tank) that can heal from his bite as well as anyone with vampirism (Galahad, Ishmael, etc) is a good option for temporary displacement by Chabba.
• Qing Mao or Jhu can overcome most tanks due to their high health and damage dealt by high-health enemies such as tanks. 

Cleaver 

• Cleaver does proximity pure damage to the enemy frontline, so you'll need to remove him quickly with Qing Mao, who deals damage according to remaining health, the more the better!
• Build up a good backline of heroes when facing Cleaver such as Fox, prepare a strong front line who can take a hit while dealing strikes that remove him quickly, target him with Phobos (for example) due to his high strength.
• Martha and Jorgen can both resist the pull if they have a high armor and defense rating. All other healers/shielders that live in the backline are at risk of being pulled into the frontline! 
• Stun can delay him from pulling your backline heroes out of position.
• Qing Mao can overcome most tanks due to their high health. 

Cornellius - He gives his team magic defense buffs and deals high magic damage to your mages.

• Use Silence to keep him from using magic, do not put high-level mages in your lineup against him as he targets his attack according to who has the most intelligence and deals damage according to that amount, target the mid/backline in which he resides.
• Use Cornellius to counter Cornellius. Kayla and Luther will jump into the backline to make quick work of this hero.

Corvus - Unless he is with the rest of his undead allies, you shouldn't worry. There's not a lot that you can do about his totem; it exists. (See counters for each Undead ally individually to understand their strengths/weaknesses.)

• His high physical damage on the front line can be countered with Qing Mao, Jhu, or heavy hitters that target the front line, such as Fox or Ishmael, to remove him before his totem can punish your team. 

Dante 

• Use Amira and/or Heidi or other pure/magic damage dealers. 
• Stun him often or steal his energy. 
• Use Lyria and the Undead to overcome his dodge skill and allow more damage to be directed at him.  

Daredevil 

• You'll want to combat her effects with Sebastian or Iris, and prepare for battle with high physical/magic penetration heroes.
• When facing a critical hit team, use Amira or Helios to punish critical hits made against you.

Darkstar 

• Keep your team safe with Korus (pet)
• Keep them clean of control effects with Nebula, Iris, or Sebastian. 
• This is a dodge hero so using Lyria or Amira can help significantly to remove her, especially when she is paired with Polaris and/or Mara (pet). 

Dorian - Gives his team vampiric healing capacity. 

• Target the backline, silence/stun, or pull him out of line with Cleaver to disrupt his healing and vampirism buffs of those nearest to him. Depending on who he is paired with you may want to consider the entire backline of vampire attackers rather than focus on countering Dorian himself, as he typically only provides support and healing and is not a main damage dealer.
• Kayla and Luther will jump into the backline to make quick work of this hero. 
• Cleaver can pull him forward to become vulnerable to your frontline 
• Targeting this hero MAY HELP YOU criple the ENTIRE team he is on if he is the only healer/support 

Faceless - is often underestimated, and is a high magic dealer who gives magic defense to the team.

• This hero can copy abilities and cause a lot of chaotic outcomes; therefore should be targeted with Cornellius and/or silenced often to reduce that chaos and control the outcome. 
• Playing in manual mode against Faceless can increase your ability to be aware of which skill they will copy (the most recent ultimate skill used is copied) to time strikes against them.

Fafnir - Lives in the backline, not doing damage but increasing damage and shielding enemies. The longer he and his allies are alive the better the buffs get for his allies. 

• Better to target the backline immediately, which Jorgen and others, and if paired with many stunners to kick his ultimate, you'll really need a good setup of tanks to take the damage his buddies will do to you. 
• Have a strong lineup of mages like Orion/Augustus to overcome the team with pure and magic damage.
• Use Sebastian to protect yourself from stuns. 

Folio - He lives in the center, reducing and stealing magic and intelligence. 

• However, he is weak against physical teams
• His ink blot can still deliver MASS damage to your team, so use Rufus, Axel or Rufus to increase your survival chances. 

Fox - Is going to deliver heavy crits to your frontline. She lives in the bac,k however, and can highly benefit tanks on her team you'll want to defeat to get to her in most lineups. She is often paired with Isaac who will be able to absorb magic damage. So she is often very well protected.

• Best to include Helios against Fox to punish critical hits. 
• Corvus and Amira are also good counter-punishing options for her also. 
• Target the backline, with heroes such as Jorgen. 
• Kayla can wreck her

Helios - is a magic dealer and is the counter to critical hitters. As long as you don't have critical hitters on your lineup when he is against you, your fine. He can easily (usually) be defeated by physical or magic teams.
Kayla can destroy him, and Cleaver can pull him to the front.

Isaac - Absorbs incoming magic damage and delivers stuns. She can be defeated more easily by physical damage dealers.
Sebastian can protect you from most of her abilities. 

Jet - use Helios to punish the entire team he gives crit hit bonuses to 

Jhu - use a control team to ensure that he cannot revive 

Don't Worry About Them

Andvari - control and silence can overcome him. Qing Mao can overcome most tanks due to their high health. 

Astrid and Lucus - treat Lucas as a tank and remove Astrid from the backline. Jorgen works well for that. Qing Mao can overcome most tanks due to their high health. 

Elmir - You can overwhelm him like you do Morrigan. He increases his teams armor penetration (such as Kiera) so you'll need to counter high physical damage with Julius, Astaroth or Alvanor and be able to fully heal. 

(THIS IS A DRAFT CHECK BACK FOR UPDATES - LAST UPDATED 5/16/25 )