Heroes... Figuring out your hammers from your dummies.

Not all heroes are created equal in CoR. We find out which heroes are best by calculating their base Talent Points. The easiest way to figure this out is go over to HumanGirl's Ceasary blog at guides.questunlock.com/ceasary , then under the calculators dropdown menu choose Hero Base Point.

If you have no problem doing your own math, then the formula for finding the base points of a NON-POT hero is (hero lvl * 3)-(Sway+Bravery+Parry). Any hero above 45 is ok to keep, less than that you can toss. Heroes with 50 base points and up are your best. For POT heroes, you'd just figure out how many extra talent points it has earned and subtract those. They get the extra points every 10 levels, so if a POT 3 is lvl 30 it has earned 9 extra points(3 points every 10 levels). So, ((30*3)-(sway+bravery+parry))-9

Now, non-POT heroes are not worth it to level up. However, buy up all of the lvl 1-4's and use these guys for dummies. Then level your POT hero(es). At the start of a server, yea ok, level a few of those non-POTs to help your wilds/lux hunting until you do get a few POT heroes. And the nonPOTs that did get leveled, well since they can hold more troops now they can make good anvil heroes (more than a dummy, it is meant to counter or soften up the enemey, not just absorb damage).

** A trick to getting dummy heroes, is siezing and releasing lvl 1 wilds. You will capture low lvl heroes this way. And guess what? They are free! Yes I know when you click "Retain", it says it's going to cost you some sestreces(the recruitment fee), but it doesn't(you still pay the retainer of course). **

I house about 50+ dummy heroes in each city. Why?!, you ask. So I don't run out of physical! When a dummy hero runs out of physical, you just use a fresh one. No wasting bread for dummies, that is for your hammer heroes.(One lvl 50 hero cost as much as 50 lvl 1 heroes to retain). Also, when you hit AoI, all these dummies will come in handy. You'll want 10 sets of at least 10 dummies per set.. so 100 dummy heroes.

Now, your POT heroes are what you level up, so how do you spend all those talent points? Sway is what you spend the most points in. More sway = more faculty, which means more troops you can carry. In the early levels, parry is your best stat, because low level wilds are easy to kill without any techs so your defense saves you some troops. Don't bother spending more than 30 points in parry, though. You'll want bravery to reach around 150 as soon as you can. This is so you can kill thing quick (mostly AoI, but also high lvl RC's(35-50) and other players. When I get 150 bravery, I start adding to my parry (that I left sitting at 30 all this time).

It's also not a bad idea to make a few of your lesser POT heroes defensive, by spending your points in parry more than in bravery. The idea for these heroes is to mitigate damage done to your troops, while your big bravery hero deals the damage.

There's also the Educate feature. Trade medals in for a chance to get extra talent points. You can boost each trait this way by a max of 10 extra points. There is, however, a chance that a failed educate will subtract from any of these extra points you've earned, but you cannot loose any of the normal talent points your hero has gained. i.e.: You've got 100 sway from normaly leveling your hero, and you've gained an extra two from the educate feature. Your next attempt at an educate may fail and you loose those two extra points, but you cannot loose any of the initial 100 you started with.

So after grinding Front Squads for a little while, and probably moving up to FD, you've probably built a hero (or a few of them) up. You've gotten 150 bravery, so now you work on adding to parry.

Parry is your defensive stat, this will cut your losses. As far as hitting NPC's go, well the smaller ones at least, bravery is only going to do so much for you. Their numbers and stats don't change(AoI/RCs/Carthage Rebels); so when one stack of ponies kills the NPC in three rounds, or three stacks does it in one round, adding more bravery won't help you. Add to parry.

(Remember, this whole time you are still adding to sway, as well. Sway is your biggest number, and always the sum of your parry and bravery.**there is an exception to that rule too**)

I bring parry up equal to bravery, 150, and start adding to bravery again. At this point, I add to whichever stat think the hero needs. This depends on what the hero is used for, what the battle report says, and what I want it to say. Again, this is for fighting NPC's. When the fight is lasting more rounds than the bare minimum, I want bravery for more damage(..or more troops if the hero can hold it). When I can take the opponent in the least amount of rounds, then I add to bravery to shave losses.

When your heroes are max at lvl 255, you can load up your hero with as many troops as it can hold, then reset the talent points. Now you can add to parry and bravery and not worry about sway. Of course you can do this at any level, but maxed at 255 you know you don't have to change it really until you need to put more troops on it(this is the exception to the sway being biggest number rule).

So, what about when we fight players? Well, this is where you employ a bit more strategy. You want some heroes who are stacked in bravery and you want some stacked in parry. Can't give you set numbers here, you have to play around and learn what works for you.

You could have your biggest hero the one that deals the damage, it is a bravery stacked hero. This could be that he has all bravery and the least possible parry, or just mostly bravery with a moderate amount of parry. Your next two biggest heroes might be all or mostly parry. These two heroes are acting as anvils, to take a beating but still do damage to the enemy hero.

You can just as well use all bravery heroes to try an' pound the opponent to a pulp with overwhelming numbers. Some people like there bravery and parry equal. Then there's gear, some gear is defensive and some is offensively biassed, and some is more balanced. So different combos can boost one stat or the other, or can be used to balance out your hero. Say, were you to have an all bravery hero, maybe you gear it with defensive gear to help it live longer or cut losses, to help balance it.

am i correct in assuming POT 8 is the highest possible?

yes POT 8 is your highest possible POT hero