AFK Arena Best Heroes Guide: A List of the Best Units (Tier List)

There are a lot of heroes in AFK Arena, and while most of them are at least usable, some of them are ahead of the pack, and you should put extra resources into getting them and nurturing them. Different heroes are good at different stages of the game because of the progression system: a hero’s maximum level is based on their level of ascension, and some heroes reach a higher-level cap than others, which makes them more suited to the later stages of the game. Other things to consider, especially when building a team in the early to mid-stages of the game (up to hero level 160) how easy they are to obtain. If you are looking for tips and strategies on how to play the game, you can take a look at our AFK Arena beginner guide, or at our advanced guide. We have also shared numerous tips and tricks on how to advance through stages as fast as possible.

Another factor to consider when building your team is how you plan your composition to work. You will have a frontline and a backline, on the frontline you will want at least one tank, possibly two, although some Agility heroes are fine to put in the frontline as well, thanks to their high mobility and ability to dodge a lot of attacks. In your backline you will want a support, very important because of their heals and CC (Crowd Control) abilities, and then your damage dealers.

In this AFK Arena guide, we will analyze the best heroes in each role, and explain why they are so good.

UPDATE: We have published a fresh tier list of the best characters in AFK Arena, that you can check out at this link!

Best Overall Hero – Brutus

 

 

Brutus is universally agreed upon to be the absolute best hero in AFK Arena, and for good reasons. He has good bulk thanks to being a strength hero, he deals an insane amount of damage, and his skillset is amazing. The combination of Last Gasp and Brutal Defiance is the most powerful combination of spells in the game, making sure Brutus deals twice as much damage while granting him amazing survival. Brutus is great at all stages of the game, and he is able to reach the absolute maximum level cap of 240. The downside? His rarity. Luckily, events can fix that, by allowing you to get an extra copy of Brutus every now and then.

Best Supports – Nemora & Tasi

 

 

Nemora is an amazing support hero. The amount of sustain she provides is great in the continuous game modes like the Labyrinth and the Twin Peaks, and it’s great in regular battles too. Then you have Beguile, an ability that gets better the stronger your enemies are, and becomes insane at level 4, which you unlock at level 181, allowing the charmed enemies to cast their ultimates against their own teammates. Another plus of running Nemora is that she’s purchasable in the Labyrinth store, which means that you will be able to acquire more copies of her, so you will always be able to ascend her.

Tasi is more offensively oriented, she can banish an enemy for 4 seconds, making them disappear from the battlefield, she can teleport around the battlefield buffing allies or dealing damage, and her ultimate puts all of her enemies to sleep, dealing extra damage to them when they wake up. A terrific addition to every lineup.

Best Mages – Shemira & Belinda

 

 

Shemira is a crazy powerful mage, capable of winning fights on her own, thanks to her ability to heal herself, while making enemy spellcasters useless, her ultimate, Tortured Souls, allows her to clutch games in the most desperate of situations, especially at level 3. Another factor to consider is how easy she is to ascend, just like Nemora, due to the fact you can simply purchase her at the Labyrinth store.

Belinda is all about dishing out damage, she has very high chance of striking for a critical hit, thanks to Brilliance and Blessing, while her other two spells deal massive damage in an area around her target. Compared to Shemira, she absolutely needs protection, as she can’t sustain herself, so play her with more defensive compositions.

Best Tanks – Lucius & Seirus

 

 

Lucius is the best pure tank in AFK Arena. He’s all about surviving as long as possible, and he is very good at it! He can heal his injured teammates, he can conjure a shield to make himself even more survivable for a brief period of time, has access to a nice CC spell in Divine Strike, and his ultimate, Heaven’s Protection, is the best defensive spell in the game, allowing Lucius to protect all of his teammates by any kind of damage. Lucius is your best choice if you are looking for a sturdy frontline hero who is great at protecting your backline.

Seirus is also amazing at protecting your frailest heroes, mainly thanks to his ultimate, Abhorrent Torrent, which pushes away all those enemies whose main objective is to teleport behind your backline to directly deal with them while avoiding your frontline, like Athalia and Silvina.

Best Damage Dealer – Athalia & Lyca

 

 

When speaking about purely offensive heroes, Athalia is hands down the best choice. All of her abilities are about dealing crazy amounts of damage. She can also stun her target, and her ultimate allows her to deal damage to multiple enemies at once. Being a Celestial hero, she also counts as a hero of any faction when calculating Faction buffs, which is always nice! Unfortunately, she is incredibly rare to find, so making her ascend is quite challenging, but it is absolutely worth it.

Lyca is another great damage dealer, able to shreds her target’s defense, and buffing her allies’ attack speed. The issue with Lyca is how weak she is early game, so if you find her early you will struggle a bit to get her to the higher levels, but don’t worry, as soon as she starts hitting the mid-game (level 81+) she becomes a beast.

Related: AFK Arena Team Guide: Best Teams to Dominate the Game Per Tier (Level Bracket)

These are the best heroes in the game, and while it might seem daunting at first to actually manage to get your hands on them, since they are very rare, don’t worry, there’s plenty more heroes that are very good, especially earlier in the game, where it’s better to use lower rarity heroes, as it is easier to make them ascend due to them being more common.

Supports – Ferael, Arden, Raine

 

 

The only reason Ferael isn’t with Nemora and Tasi is that he’s pretty bad early game, he needs levels to become any useful, but he becomes very strong when he reaches level 101+. He is all about summoning spirits to haunt enemies, and he can stun multiple targets, that alone makes him scary, then you add in the fact that level 4 Accursed Arrow can stop enemies from attacking for long periods of time, and you get a monstrous support.

Arden is a bit of an outlier compared to every other hero, despite his maximum level being 160, he is still useful even in the latest stages of the game, thanks to how ridiculously powerful his Entangling Roots are. No other hero whose maximum level is 160 is particularly viable late into the game, but Arden still manages to be insanely good then. This goes to show how powerful CC can be.

Raine isn’t a traditional support, in fact she’s a bit of a damage dealer. But then you read her Exploit and Cripple, and realize how powerful her debuffs are. She amplifies the damage her teammates and herself do by so much that she made it to this list.

Mages – Mirael & Isabelle

 

 

Honestly most offensive mages not named Shemira are pretty bad. Even Belinda, whom we placed among the best, is a bit lackluster come late-game, so finding fitting heroes for this section proved to be a challenge. Mirael isn’t that bad early game, she’s a guaranteed reward from doing the tutorial, she is reasonably easy to upgrade, and she offers some utility with her Flame Shield, but you will notice how weak she becomes around level 100.

Isabelle can reach level 240, and she’s passable for the entire game. She is very much decent, but she has a huge drawback: her Soul Power ability is detrimental to her teammates, which is why she’s so far down the list.

Tanks – Hogan, Grezhul, Thoran

 

 

Most tanks do their job extremely well, and I wouldn’t really have any issue with putting Grezhul and Thoran among the best, they just so happen to be slightly worse than Lucius and Seirus, but they are still great on the frontline. Hogan is amazing early and mid-game, and you get an extra Elite copy of him just by logging in for 6 days in a row, which is what makes him so good. You can easily get a Legendary+ Hogan reasonably early in the game, making your job of building your team early game so much easier. He provides good CC, too, it’s a shame he caps at level 160.

Grezhul’s biggest problem is that it takes some time for him to ramp up, he isn’t very good early game, and will need to have all of his abilities unlocked before being good enough as a tank. That said, he is very good late game, so if you are planning for the long haul, by all means keep him around, you won’t be disappointed. Thoran is best described with one word: stable. He is consistently decent at all stages of the game. Resurrection sounds insane on paper but in practice it’s rather disappointing since even if you resurrect yourself, your enemies will have already switched target to who is behind Thoran, making the resurrection rather futile. He is very dangerous vs high damage compositions though, thanks to Retaliation and Taint.

Damage Dealers – Saveas, Vedan, Silvina, Ira, Khasos

 

 

The first four are amazing damage dealer up to level 160, they are easy to find and ascend, and they provide your team with very high amount of damage, their problem is being unable to go past level 160, unlike the higher tier heroes. Saveas works best with a healer, as his damage is based upon his current health, and his damage output is very high. Ira is very good early game, but comes mid-game she starts falling off hard, she’s still ok until her level cap, but the fact she becomes progressively worse means you shouldn’t spend too many resources on her past level 81.

Vedan is particularly apt at winning fights if his level is higher than his enemies’, thanks to his very high sustain and his ultimate that makes him immune to everything. Khasos is still good even later in the game and he can reach level 240, his only problem that Brutus exists.

This is the end to our AFK Arena guide to what in our opinion are the best heroes in the game. Keep in mind that not being on the list does not mean the hero isn’t good and can’t work, they are just generally inferior to their counterparts on the list, but every hero is perfectly viable, and you shouldn’t worry too much about what heroes you get from your summons, the better heroes will eventually appear over time. Also, certain heroes work better in combination with others, and better against others, depending on multiple factors in battle, like the Faction bonus, or the Faction strengths and weaknesses, or even by the simple fact that certain heroes are better when paired with heals, or certain kinds of buffs.

Do you agree with this list? Do you think there are other heroes that should be here? Make sure to let us know in the comments!