Puzzles & Survival Battle Mechanics guide by zReal v0.8 PART 1

Before you proceed:

• License note
• How to support the Author
• Version changes

Disclaimer: This guide was published in 2022, so it doesn't cover some mechanics such as *Revenge*, Fighter Bash, etc.

Navigation: the Guide consists of three Parts (telegra.ph pages) and some additional pages. Each Part has its Table of Contents and several Sections/Subsections. Click the titles of Parts/Sections/Subsections in Table of Contents to proceed to them. Click the titles of Sections/Subsections below in order to return back to Table of Contents of a particular Part. Happy reading!

Table of Contents

PART1 PART2>> PART3>> Advanced Examples

• Intro
• Glossary
• Section 1. Basics
• Subsection 1.1. Configuring Hall-of-War and the Wall. Boosts.
• Subsection 1.2. Battle animation and battle logs.
• Section 2. Heroes
• Subsection 2.1. Hero types and boosts
• Subsection 2.2. Tactical skill
• Subsection 2.3. Troop hero setup examples
• Section 3. Casualties priority. Formations.

Intro

Welcome to Puzzles & Survival Battle Mechanics guide by zReal.

The guide is based on player testing done by me and my team from state S122, as well as my friends from S5, S8, S245 and many other states. It took a while to accumulate the knowledge and to write this guide, so the guide is issued way later than it was initially planned. Work on the guide was started long ago, and all major features were described before October 2022, so if the guide has slightly old screenshots don't worry: all listed in the guide should be up to date.

The purpose of the guide:

• To make you strong. You can become stronger in battles and save more money by avoiding common mistakes that most players do.
• To save your money. If you play without cash, it's crucial to know how game works in order to be able to compete with cash players (yes, it's absolutely doable).
• To make you competitive at your level. Even if min/max problems don't affect you much, as you can afford to max everything in this game with cash, then this guide is still useful for you due to the following reason: when you encounter other maxed players/teams, you can only beat them by using a pure knowledge, as stats are the same. It does not apply to Puzzles & Survival only, but in general it applies to the vast majority of pay-to-win MMO games: knowledge is still crucial no matter how much you pay.
• To help your people. Leaders of the clans can use this guide to train their guilds in order to reach better synergy in team Player versus Player matches and beat their opponents.

Why can I trust this guide?

• This guide is written by a power-gamer with a master degree in applied mathematics and around ten years experience in software development, five of them being QC (test automation). So the author knows how to develop software and how to test it properly.
• Additional info shared here is mostly provided by a power-gaming type players, who enjoy exploring the game mechanics in order to reach maximum potential of their setups. Such type of players test things in depth either than just blindly accepting somebody's advice and sharing unverified info. They can provide high-quality tests to prove their point of view how this or that works. Not to mention that all that is written here is verified by author.
• However, I do not encourage you to blindly trust everything written in this guide. This guide purpose is to save your time by helping to understand certain features, and to guide you in proper direction. I still encourage you to do your own tests in order to make sure that all written here is correct and up to date.
• Feedback and support. Either than sharing tests, I share verified results mostly, as it's already a huge guide, and publishing tests here would have made this guide even more huge and cumbersome. If you are interested to understand how this or that feature was tested, you can send me an email, and I will answer you as soon as possible.

Scope of the guide: Hero challenges and events are not covered in this guide, all written in this guide only affects troop battles.

What about other sources of information about the game?

• Being a Chinese MMORPG Puzzles & Survival has no wiki, and many feature descriptions in game are either poor or misleading. PnS approach actually pushes you to 'guess' the mechanics on your own, by doing mistakes and fixing them. When you iterate through this process you often spend extra money, so the game producer benefits from that, but not you, as player, as you lose money.
• Sadly, community help in this game is not a very reliable source of info as well. Why does it happen? - Because the playerbase of this game is formed mostly by casual players, either than gamers. Many people download this game to play puzzles. Later many players who downloaded that to play focus more on the social aspect rather than game itself considering the game a replacement of social network/dating app.
• Many players who try to answer your questions actually don't understand how this or that works. They don't test features in depth, because they don't know how to test properly or because they just don't have time to do that. Whatever you read in global PnS discord as well as in any guide including this one, you should actually verify by doing tests on your own.
• PnS mods as often mentioned by PnS modes themselves are just regular players who play this game, they get info from other players, they also get info from PnS CS. PnS CS omits providing precise answers to many technical questions. It's understandable and common for all software producers actually, not only game producers. They avoid answering directly because of the risk of leaking proprietary data to players. Sometimes they simply don't know the answer, which is also absolutely normal, as they can have no access to project documentation that is used for inner design and development purposes purely. However, some PnS mods and CS provide accurate info.

To sum up this section: both for free-to-play and cash players of any level this guide can provide a knowledge on what to focus on in order to become more competitive in PnS battles. You can plan your budget and spend less to get stronger. You can become in general better player by understanding how game mechanics works. You can also teach people which you play with in order to make your team stronger.

Glossary

Before we dive into exploring the key features of battle mechanics let's first look at the terms and common gaming slang that is used in this guide. Look through this section if you don't understand a certain abbreviation or word used in the guide.

PnS - Puzzles & Survival game/development team. Quite obvious.

MMO/MMORPG - Massively multiplayer online (game)/massively multiplayer online role-playing game. This is the type of the game which Puzzles & Survival belongs to. Puzzles & Survival has elements of strategy, match-three puzzles and base building, as well as some typical RPG elements, such as boosts/stats (ATK %, ATK % Up, DEF, etc), which form implicit classes (shooter, fighter and rider) and builds (tank with high DEF/HP or damage dealer with balanced ATK/DEF/HP, or pure support (high ATK), etc).

OP/imba - overpovered/imbalanced: refers to a feature, class or an aspect of a game mechanics that provides overwhelming performance for the investment of time/ game points/levels or money. Example: certain (not all) Apex (red) nano-weapons in PnS are OP, as they provide significantly better outcome for the investment. Riders are considered OP due to their speed and amazing performance in Lairs. Riders are often considered imbalanced. However, the margin between imbalanced and balanced can be pretty narrow in MMO games: for example, one player can consider the feature imbalanced, but another more experienced player as well as a game developer can see them as balanced. For example, Riders are balanced, as Shooters actually kill them. making Rider shelter tough to burn is harder than making Shooter shelter tough (at same level of stats/troops, of course).

PVE/PVP - Player versus Environment/Player versus Player content/mode/game. Typical examples: Zombie Lairs and Campaign are PVE content, Reservoir War and Puzzle Duel are PVP content. There is also a mix of PVP and PVE content, such as Arena (when you attack some player's defense lineup, you fight versus the autobot, not versus that actual player himself, however, you fight versus the lineup provided by that player to the autobot).

F2P - free to play game/game content/game playing mode/game playing type/feature.

P2W - pay to win game/game content/game playing mode/game playing type/feature. In PnS you can get most items by just playing the game. However, some items you cannot get without spending money, and some other items you cannot get fast without spending money.

L2P - learn to play (issue). Can be used both as an insult to address particular player incompetence, or to highlight that a feature of the game requires deep understanding. Almost all content in PnS, be it battles, hero challenges, event rotations and strategies is hard L2P, which many starter players do not understand. Mistakes are often costy in terms of time/money. PnS at first looks easy to a new player, later most players realize how hard and grindy it can be with unpredictable for them failures in events, Zombie Lairs, unpredictable wipes in PVP, etc. This guide goal is to fix such issues.

Game mechanics - in general it's a set of algorithms/rules that define a game, or just a single particular algorithm or a rule. Example: in PnS shooters have advantage over riders, which is an aspect of Unit Advantage mechanics applied to Troop Battles mechanics. Battle mechanics in general affects Troop Battles, and doesn't affect Hero Challenges. Example: Leah boost for the troop size doesn't affect Puzzles. Vise versa, hero particular abilities are parts of Hero/Puzzle mechanics and they don't affect battles. Example: Leah inability to get rage after her hero ability cast in Arena doesn't affect Troop Battles in any case. Hero color doesn't affect troop battles, whereas hero type (shooter/rider/fighter/economy) doesn't affect hero challenges.

Build - considering this guide this term has nothing in common with construction of the buildings in your shelter. In common gaming slang 'build' is often used to describe a complete combination of particular features and stats pushed to a certain level ( maximum) by a player at a cost of losing other features or stats having them at minimum level. Generic example: High ATK/ATK Up and big Troop Size Rider build absolutely shines in Zombie Lairs when you do them solo (people who join bring 1 soldier or full taxi). However, that build is very weak vs any shooters, as well as riders who have good DEF/HP/Dmg down and even fighters, who have Ulrich Apex. That build is good for mass burning weak shelters during Valiant Conquest, but cannot deal with tough shelters at all, as too many of your riders die when you attack those shelters. Tough shooters with high DEF/HP/Dmg down are very good as captains in super rallies, but they are very weak in solo Lairs, they are not very good for Valiant also. There are different combo builds, such as 'rider with boosted fighters' and 'fighter with shooter support', etc. There are also different builds for shelter defense, such as fighter with a ton of T1 shooters, fighter with a ton of T1 riders, fighter with a ton of taxi and... fighter with a ton of T1 fighters: they all can be viable for particular cases (yes, even the last one can be). Build in a team PvP MMO is not the top priority thing, however, it's still a very important thing.

Main - there are no classes in puzzles & survival, such as mage, healer, tank, warrior, ranged, rogue, etc. However, there are three types of soldiers: fighter, rider and shooter, which that can be significantly boosted by raising their stats. When people say 'shooter main/primary/strong' they often mean that that player chose to boost mostly shooters and doesn't focus so much on riders/fighters. shooter main still can have very strong riders or fighters, still if he's shooter main, then his shooters will have the best stats, not riders or fighters.

Section 1. Basics

Many people download PnS to play match-3 puzzles. Soon they realize that PnS is rather cruel but fun PVP game, where puzzles are just one of the aspects of the game. Don't get me wrong, puzzles are very important, just it's a common thing for many players who enjoy this game to actually hate puzzles and to play puzzles only for the sake of getting certain rewards in order to boost their troops.

When people start exploring PnS, especially those people who have no experience playing typical PC RPG/MMORPG games, they can be overwhelmed by stats, boosts and the quantity of numbers in logs. The necessity to carry out a playable build is that thing that make many players discouraged at some point, they can feel 'weak' and 'useless' at their level, even if they spend cash. Fun thing is that players who L2P normally don't feel 'weak' and 'useless', and people who combine L2P and P2W will normally win vs higher P2W.

There are many distractions, such as different events, which also require lots of L2P to understand optimal rotations and to optimize acquisition of particular items from particular sources at particular time. Events also require certain quantity of time to grind. So the person who decides to understand battle mechanics on his own pace may be simply overwhelmed and distracted by everything from actual testing. Moreover testing in terms of time and game currency is expensive in PnS. So the purpose of this guide is to save some of your time. Let's have a look at key point features that should be in your focus if you want to be good in battles. Let's start from the very basics.

When you launch the game you get into the Shelter View, and you can see different buildings of your shelter. The most important buildings that always should be in your focus are Hall-of-War and the Wall. By clicking on those buildings you can get access to their controls. Study those controls in depth.

Subsection 1.1. Configuring Hall-of-War and the Wall. Boosts.

Wall Defense setup is accessible via the Wall building of your Shelter. Pay close attention to heroes, boosts and formation choice. Proper selection of heroes is crucial, as well as formation selection. We will talk about proper hero selection and proper formation selection in separate sections. Hero sets are not available on the Wall, so you'll have to select heroes manually. When you select heroes, you can also choose to push this button:

My advice is to never push this button, as you cannot trust its choice. Auto-selection favors only stars and hero enhancement levels, it doesn't pick proper heroes for your Build, therefore selection is often harmful for your shelter defense. Example: if you are a shooter main, and you have Ephraim/Requiem/Fox/Meyers/Ulrich all +8, whereas Phoenix is still +7 and Nam Hayul is still +7, when you push 'Rcmd Hero' button, then it will pick Ephraim/Requiem/Fox/Meyers/Ulrich and put them on the wall. Whereas in fact as a shooter main you want to have 4 shooter heroes here all +5 or above (with rare exclusion, when you need other heroes here for some specific encounters).

Attack setups are specified via the Hall of War building. Here you can define Formation Sets (up to 5 of them, at VIP 14 level):

Effective combat is impossible without properly configured formation sets. When you need to quickly dispatch a troop, there's no time to manually pick heroes and select units. As was mentioned before, the choice of 'recommended' button is often bad, so if you don't configure formation sets you will be slow in combat. So, you should configure formation sets as soon as possible, if you haven't done that yet. It's easy and helpful. Moreover, it's normal to reconfigure those sets for particular goals, as there are not so many sets, as needed for all possible encounters. While playing PnS, I was normally reconfiguring formation sets and Wall setup for each PvP event (such as Nuka, RW, WK, VC) depending on toughness of opponents.

Formation set allows you to specify heroes (1) and soldiers (2) that present in the troop. You can also replace classic (fighter) formation (3), when you have other formations unlocked via Formation research branch in your Research Center. At (4) you can see total troop size available at current moment (with all troop size boosts active at current moment).

Page boost details (5) gives you a list of all your troop stats (boosts) for the selected formation set with respect to selected heroes and all temporary boosts active at the current moment. In general any good player is supposed to remember all his stats approximately, also it's not bad to know approximate stats of people whom you are playing with. Good for team PVP. And obviously it's good to understand how this or that stat affects troop battles. We will dive into those details in other sections.

Commander Info/Boost Info is a very important page also. Here you can see additional info about boosts such as Rally Size (excluding own troop size), march speed, troop load, and raw troop boosts (without extra boosts from heroes, etc).

Subsection 1.2. Battle animation and battle logs.

When you attack somebody in your state, or in Nuka, or during Valiant/Zenith, or when you attack a Zombie Lair, then an email is generated, and drops to your mailbox. That email contains a log of the battle. My advice is to never skip battle logs, including Lair logs. There are many other important numbers there except for 'kill %'. In general all of those numbers were added to a log for a reason, so all of them are important. Make sure to study those numbers in depth. I recommend you to save the most important logs. It's also worth to make screenshots of them, because mailbox records are trimmed, so you can lose useful data.

Battle animation in the log is a very important feature. You can open it by pushing a big yellow 'Play' button in the log. If you have trouble understanding, why a particular battle has a specific result, why this or that thing happens during battle, you should start from studying the battle animation of that battle. Don't skip it in Ruins and Lair logs. Moreover, I advice you to never skip it when you have time to watch it, at least till you start to understand in depth without watching it why this or that thing happens. Many players don't pay attention to this feature at all, even though you cannot skip Battle Animation in Ruins till you reach floor 10! And as a result of skipping it, such players often fail to understand why their Lair runs are painful, why their progress in Ruins is slow, why their riders are killed by fighters with similar stats, why rally launched on enemy Zenith hub failed, etc.

Battle animation page consists of 3 main zones:

• your troop status: on the bottom of the screen you can observe your Avatar, alive troops quantity, Morale bar and Hero cast bar.
• your opponent troop status: on the top of the screen you can observe the same for your opponent troop
• battlefield zone: between those statuses you can observe soldiers, their HP bars, Hero cast effect animations, soldiers run animations, soldier dealing damage animations, soldier taking damage animations, soldiers death animations and troop specific skill animations (Shooter Dodge/Rider Charge/Fighter Bash) and traps dealing damage animations.

Notice that Battle Animation has certain bugs, you shouldn't trust it 100% always, just be wise to use it as an important tool. Examples of the bugs:

• sometimes taking damage animation can interfere with dealing damage animation, for example when you attack a full squad of cars with a full squad of not-only-cars. enemy cars will stand still and blink red only, whereas in fact they are also dealing damage which can be observed by monitoring your alive troops quantity: their quantity will slightly diminish during the battle.
• In Commander Duel after Rider Charge battle animation can stuck.
• In Commander Duel if you select new troops and open old battle animation in journal, then you will see a nonsense: for example, if you had shooters in older battle, then selected riders and opened the old battle animation, it will show riders.

There's a common question asked on forums after people watch Battle Animation of a failed Lair: 'Animation says that I won the battle, why is the lair failed then, is that a bug?' Nope, it's not a bug: 'to win a battle' and 'to kill 50% enemy units' are just different things:

• To win a battle you need to drop enemy morale troop to zero faster than it drops your troop morale to zero.
• Whereas, to win a lair you must kill 50% of units in that lair, which means that you can lose a lair, even though you win the battle in the lair itself (you normally win that battle because troop stats of the Lair troops are low)

If you haven't understood this explanation yet, don't worry, just continue to read, you'll get a grip on that feature later, we will further discuss different aspects of Battle Animation in depth.

I encourage you to pay close attention to your teammates stats (boosts). You can understand why this or that member outperforms/underperforms you if you compare his stats to your own stats. In the Lair log you can push green link text 'Compare' to see your teammate and your stats applicable for this Lair run. Notice that those numbers can differ from those stats that you see in a Hall-of-War because certain stats work only in a Rally. In PVP logs you can also Compare the stats of your teammates and your opponents to your own stats.

Section 2. Heroes

Subsection 2.1. Hero types and boosts

All heroes in Puzzles and Survival are divided into two big categories:

• battle heroes (Ephraim, Meyers, etc)
• economic heroes (Lady M, Leah, etc)

Both are important for troop battles, as they give boosts to troops.

There are three types of battle heroes corresponding to their supported soldier type:

• fighter
• rider
• shooter

There are no vehicle-specific heroes (yet).

Color of the hero doesn't matter for the troop battles at all.

Hero level can partially affect a battle due to various bugs and features, but in general there should be no huge difference. 5 star hero gives same boosts at lvl 131 - 210, as well as lvl 211-309, etc. Levels increase hero own stats and hero might. Hero own stats only affect hero challenges. Hero own might may affect Tactical Skill cast sequence ((see later, it's a bug) and quick selection of heroes, but in general you can consider hero level to be almost irrelevant for troop battles. There are certain levels, which allow to unlock particular boosts and equip Nano or add Specialty. All levels that lie between those ones are not very important.

On this screenshot the features of heroes relevant to troop battles are marked and enumerated:

1. This icon indicates hero category (battle or economic). Also shows the type of battle hero: fighter, shooter or rider.
2. This one shows the total value of Tactical Skill. Very important one - we will dive in depth of that feature soon. Tactical Skill is only important for battle heroes, for economic type heroes it's displayed but doesn't work (there's no 'economic' soldier type).
3. This one shows active boosts that battle hero gives to troop, when that battle hero presents in the troop. Those ones are quite straightforward additions to troop stats (boosts) ATK/DEF/HP.
4. These are passive boosts. It's enough to have those features unlocked in order to have those boosts. For example, Lady M Rally ATK works always, no matter if she presents in a troop or not. Same for her Troop Size and Gathering Speed boosts. Same applies to Hero Speciality feature - that feature also gives passive boosts. Same applies to nano-weapons: it's enough to equip a weapon in order to get a corresponding boost - most players misunderstand that, and as a result their nano-weapons are leveled in a wrong way, so they have less stats then they could have had. Typical example is having a main weapon (e.g. Power Fist) raised to double red star+15, and having some green radar on another hero which is not used in Puzzles or in a troop still 4 star +1 or not having it equipped at all. All heroes should have nano-weapons equipped and nano-weapons on all heroes should have the same or similar level of promotion/enhancement in order to get maximum stats. If specific hero nano is not yet obtained, then radar should be equipped and enhanced to the same level as main nanos. Each level of enhancement and promotion has worse return of % per points/money invested than that's very important to have all nano even or close to even. On the screenshot below the idea is to raise all nano to +13 and single red star before going further to double red and +14.

In the vast majority of cases you don't want economic heroes to present in a troop. Only makes sense to have them in a troop, if you want to pull those economic heroes out of shelter. Why would anyone even want something like that? - here is the example: Advanced example of pulling economic heroes.

Considering passive boosts: some battle heroes, such as Atropos or Levina, give passive boosts. Are they useless in troop than? - No, because those heroes also apply tactical skill when they present in troop. They can be used in tertiary or in 4th formation set. They can be used on the Wall also in specific cases.

Subsection 2.2. Tactical skill

Tactical Skill description is one of the worst descriptions in game. It's not possible to understand how it works by just checking that description, which only denotes that at certain level of enhancement it gives '%' of something, maximum to be 500% which is reached at hero +5 level and doesn't increase with further hero enhancement, if applicable.

Tests show that what Tactical Skill actually does is absolutely not related to Troop ATK stat (given by nano-weapons, refinement, troop chip). There's no clear understanding what this 'Troop ATK' in Tactical Skill description actually is. What actually Tactical Skill does can be observed in any animation of any battle, when hero presents in a troop, be it a duel in the Pit, a shelter attack, a challenge in Ruins, a Lair rally, etc.

1. On the picture above you can observe that when Fox tactical skill is charged, then animation of Fox casting her tactical skill appears.
2. When Fox casts her Tactical Skill, then a corresponding animation appears on the battlefield. Some of the enemy soldiers get red blink animation, which denotes that they getting damage: their HP decreases, as can be observed by checking their red health-bars above their heads. Some soldiers die (their HP reached zero).
3. Immediately after the cast there's a spike decrease of enemy soldiers quantity and Morale (in most cases).
4. Here you can observe another hero charging his tactical skill. When that hero tactical skill is charged, it will fire, rinse repeat 1-4.

So according to animation of the battle, hero tactical skill is basically a charge-cast mechanic which damages and kills enemy troop with a spike damage. That spike damage is huge in comparison to normal soldiers attack, so it's important to focus on pushing that spike damage to maximum by using proper heroes. When you select a set of heroes for a single soldier type troop, pick those heroes that give maximum Tactical Skill to that troop.

What is definitely known is that tactical skill damage depends on a corresponding troop size. Probably it also depends on all stats of a corresponding troop (including soldier tier). Tactical skill is triggered when a corresponding soldier type presents in battle only, so the idea to trigger tactical skill by adding a small and weak troop can be a bad idea.

The fact to consider is that maximum 4 heroes of the same type (shooter, fighter or rider) can cast tactical skill in a battle. If you form a shooter troop with 5 shooter heroes, only 4 of them cast tactical skill. Notice: it doesn't mean that having 5 shooter heroes in a troop is always a bad idea, here's the Advanced example of cancelling specific tactical skill.

Another thing to consider is a selection of heroes to cast tactical skill. Casting order is arranged by Star level, not by the total value of Tactical Skill. If you pick Amber +5, Malcolm +5, Bard +5, Griffin +5 and Phoenix +3 for shooter troop, then Amber will not cast at all, but Phoenix +3 will cast, and that will eat your overall damage. Ideally you want to have heroes in the troop that cast maximum Tactical Skill, because damage from Tactical Skill is way greater than damage from troop boosts that heroes give. Tests show that even a small account with very low stats benefits more from tactical skill casts then from troop boosts. So ideally all heroes in the troop should be +5 and above, you can still use +4 and below in additional marches but better never use them in your main march. Newbie mistake is to add heroes to troop that give good stats but bad value of tactical skill (Phoenix +3, Obsidian +4, etc, instead of Amber +5, Bard +5, etc). However, it's okay to use non-troop heroes of any stats. Example: Lora and Jessie +4 gives stats to Riders, it's okay to use it in Rider march, as it will not eat rider tactical. At +5 can move it to shooter march.

The last thing to consider: when you enter a rally started by another person or if you reinforce a building or HQ, etc, then tactical skill of your heroes doesn't matter at all, as only captain heroes will be the ones that cast tactical skill. When you reinforce, then only stats of heroes matter, so aim to get maximum stats. Notice that in any normal rally (for example, Lair run) participants stats are accounted separately, so if you want to reach maximum as reinforcement, then bring those heroes that give the best stats. In a super rally stats of participants are overridden by a host, so when you join something that has a mark of 'super rally/reinforcement' or 'commander boosts apply', just leave heroes at home, as they will add neither tactical, nor stats.

Example:

• when I start a rally as shooter, I will use Ephraim +8/Requiem +8/Phoenix +6/Nam Hayul +6/Meyers +8.
• however, when I join somebody's normal rally (non-super!) as shooter, if I have Mars +8, then I will use Ephraim +8/Requiem +8/Phoenix +6/Mars +8/Meyers +8, so my tactical skill will drop by 1/4, but I don't care, as tactical from the captain troop applies.
• when I join somebody's super rally, I will send just soldiers without heroes in most cases, but I may send Ephraim +8/Requiem +8/Phoenix +6/Nam Hayul +6/Meyers +8 in case there's a chance that I will have to replace the current captain.

Subsection 2.3. Troop hero setup examples

Let's have a look at some examples.

Here are two setups, both are shooters:

Malcolm +5 gives 30% shooter stats, Phoenix +3 gives 48% shooter stats.
Malcolm +5 gives 500% Tactical Skill (max) Phoenix +3 gives 200% tactical skill.

When you start a rally on Lair or hit somebody in PVP, which setup should you use in most cases? - If you were reading carefully, then you must answer easily that 1st setup should be used, as it gives max tactical skill.

What if you join somebody's rally or reinforce a tower or a HQ? - Obviously 2nd setup, as it gives more stats, when you join, your tactical skill doesn't matter.

Now let's have a look at 2 more setups:

If you attack somebody or start a rally, better to use 1st setup either than 2nd setup, because 2nd setup you will provide less damage. Why? - Because the game engine will select Phoenix +3 to cast tactical skill either than Malcolm +5, as Phoenix is a 5 star hero, and Malcolm is a 3 star hero. When you join somebody's rally, vice versa, 2nd setup is better because gives more stats, tactical won't work when you join.

To nail it up check the following picture:

1. Host shooter heroes: 4x heroes, provide maximum shooter Tactical Skill when shooter soldiers present.
2. Host rider hero: just one, gives Tactical Skill when riders present
3. Participant heroes: their tactical doesn't matter, any heroes can be used that give the best stats to participants.

More advanced example: Advanced example of starting a rally for another person.

When you reinforce a shelter (for example during Dead Rising or PVP fights in Valiant) then that shelter owner hero selection on the Wall will affect your damage and casualties. If that shelter owner didn't bother himself with proper hero selection that can hurt.

Important: hero tactical skill doesn't matter for Speaker Trap. Hero stats matter.

The last important fact: although for all heroes enhanced to +5 and above should provide the same value of Tactical Skill, as noted by a tooltip (500% value), so logically they should apply exactly the same damage, it can actually happen, that they don't apply the same damage, which is most likely a bug.

There was a test where Requiem +7 lvl 310 was used in shooter troop with other 3 shooter heroes, and raising Requiem to lvl 350 caused a slight kills drop in a Lair with absolutely the same setup and participants. It was checked that the order of Tactical Skill casts during the run was changed after Requiem was raised to lvl 350. Raising Requiem to lvl 350 caused her to cast her skill first, and that affected kills in the Lair.

That's a proof of that heroes actually can have different values of Tactical Skill. So cast sequence of heroes in the troop can also depend on hero level, and some heroes can have lower Tactical Skill, which is not working as intended as by description. Good thing is that you actually don't need to worry about that in most cases, but still good to be aware.

To sum up this section:

1. Heroes are very important for the troop battles.
2. Tactical skill of Battle Heroes is very important for the troop battles.
3. Learn to select proper heroes for the proper cases, if you want to maximize performance of your troops and reach better battle results.

Section 3. Casualties priority. Formations.

The vast majority of people who play this game have close to zero understanding how formations actually work. This is most likely the result of a very misleading game description of Casualties Priority feature.

You should consider two separate aspects of Casualties Priority feature:

1. Order of soldier types getting to Infirmary (after battle)
2. Order of soldier types taking damage (during battle).

The tooltip 'fighter > rider > shooter > vehicle' actually has nothing to do with (1), it describes the order of taking damage by a troop during a battle(2). The result of taking damage is either death or Morale drop. You can understand that better if you open any Lair log and check battle animation, or check battle animation in Ruins, or check Formations Preview in the Hall-of-War building in your shelter. I will not discuss order of soldier types getting to Infirmary first, because I never studied that aspect in depth. In the vast majority of cases it's not crucial, unless you participate in state wars in a no-NAP state. Let's focus on order of soldier types taking damage.

Let's first have a look at Classic (fighter) formation.

For the fighter formation fighters are the soldiers that take damage first. When all your fighters are killed by an opponent troop during a battle, then your riders start taking damage. When all your riders are killed, then shooters start taking damage. When all shooters are killed then vehicles start taking damage. It's easy to understand what is going on by checking any battle animation (for example in Ruins challenges). Notice, that all is taking place during the battle, not after the battle. After the battle casualties are averaged among all participating troops, so if all your fighters were killed during the battle, it doesn't mean that all your fighters will all be wounded/dead after the battle.

Let's call this feature 'casualties priority by type'. So, for the classic formation casualties priority by type is fighter > rider > shooter > vehicle.

Now consider that there's also 'casualties priority by tier': lower tier always takes damage first. For example, if it's a mix of T7 and T10 shooters, then T7 shooters take damage first, till they all die, and only after that T10 shooters start taking damage. That drastically affects Lair runs in marginal cases (at 49%), when one low tier low stats unit brought by a novice player can spoil the Lair run. Check Advanced Lair tanking example.

Let's have a look at generic scenarios:

1. Strong fighter main started a Lair 45 with his T11 fighters. He uses classic formation, and he can presumably win that lair alone at 51% kills with a total of 5k wounded troops (before Nova revitalization). Experienced players send him T1 vehicles to spread casualties. Person who just started to play the game and has no idea how battles work sees that people join the rally with full troops and also brings his full troop: let's say a mix of T7 fighters 50k, T7 riders 50k and T7 shooters 50k. What happens during the battle is as follows: strong mobs in 45 lair kill weak 50k T7 fighters of a newbie player first. Only after all those 50k T7 are killed, mobs in 45 Lair start attacking T11 fighters. Let's say mobs killed 4500 T11 fighters. T7 riders and T7 shooters of a newbie players stay behind strong T11 fighters of the fighter main, so they are protected and don't take damage. Lair is won, but casualties are 54500. It's almost 11x more than that fighter main has alone.
2. Strong fighter main has such huge fighter stats that his T6 fighters feel good in Lair 45. Let's say he has same 6k wounded when he runs lair 45 with T6. Let's suppose he starts a Lair using 7k T6 and fills the rest with T11 fighters (he runs with a mix of T6 and T11 in his troop, yes). Let's suppose he can win that lair alone at 50% kills in that scenario. So if newbie player brings a mix of T7 fighters 50k, T7 riders 50k and T7 shooters 50k, that Lair will not hurt. Why? - Because strong T6 will be taking damage first. The battle will finish before 6k of them die, 1k extra T6 fighters will provide some extra protection against casualties fluctuations that can happen depending on troops of other participants, so weak T7 fighters of a newbie player won't be taking damage, and casualties will be as low as usual.
3. Let's say that the same fighter main runs with T11 fighters only and another person joins him, who also has T11 fighters, but his fighter DEF and HP is much lower than the host. Let's consider for simplicity that all other stats of those fighters are the same. What happens in the battle is as follows: both strong and weak T11 are targeted, and casualties increase. They won't be that high as if 2nd player started Lair 45 alone, but they will be definitely higher than if 1st player was using only his strong T11 fighters, and second player would have brought riders or shooters.
4. Super Rally is started by a rider main on some objective in Reservoir War. That rider has only rider stats (boosts) high, fighter and shooter stats are very weak. Let's suppose that his rally can accept 1.5m riders, whereas all people have only 1m riders available. In that case the participants should bring 1m of riders and fill the rest with shooters. If they add fighters, those fighters will increase casualties, because those fighters have weak fighter stats from a captain of that rally. Weak shooter stats won't play a significant role, because shooters will be protected by riders.
5. Super Rally is started by a rider main on some objective in Reservoir War. That rider has rider stats (boosts) high, his shooter stats are very weak, his fighter stats are somewhere in the middle. Let's suppose he wants to attack the weaker shooter tower (captain of that tower shooter stats are weaker than that rider, and the whole tower is filled with shooters and super reinforcement is on). Let's suppose that his rally can accept 1.5m troops. In that case it makes sense to ask people to bring around 200-500k fighters to that rally. While fighters slowly die from shooters attacks, riders can safely deal damage to those shooters. Of course, the result greatly depends on difference between fighter, rider and shooter stats in that battle.
6. T12 fighter with stats at 10k% took Hospital in Reservoir War. He forgot to switch on Super Reinforcement, people to fill the Hospital with fighters without heroes. There are many weak fighters of different tiers: T7 to T11. In that case a player who has main at 6k%, even shooter main, can attack that objective with a super rally and win. Moreover, in case fighters that fill objective have very weak stats, then he will be able to win solo with several subsequent hits. Why does it happen? Because rally or solo attacker hits weaker fighters first. In case too many of them die, objective will be lost. The captain will also lose many fighters.

Shooter and rider formations are unlocked via research. You should check Formations Preview in the Hall-of-War building in order to see what changes in comparison to fighter formation, if you haven't yet done that.

You'll see that for a shooter formation shooters come to the 1st row, and so they become the first line of defense. That means that in shooter formation shooters will be taking damage first. When the shooter formation is used, having weak shooters in a troop will increase casualties. Fighters will be in the middle, riders will be in the third row.

You will also see that for a rider formation riders come to the 1st row, so they become the first line of defense. That means that in rider formation riders will be taking damage first. When rider formation is used having weak riders in that troop will increase casualties. Shooters will be in the middle, fighters will be in the third row.

Very important is to understand that using shooter and rider formations can drastically change your game experience, for example different formations perform differently in Lairs: for the same host and troop composition they return different kills % for the same Lair level. The theory which was not tested enough in depth is that in first row soldiers do more damage and take more damage, in the last row soldiers do less damage and take less damage, in the middle row they deal and take some medium damage. However, it can be more complicated, adjusted by PnS team, etc. So I recommend to stick to the following simple concept:

• use formation that is appropriate for a particular group content and helps your team. For example if your shooters T10 can have low casualties in Lair 45, use shooter formation and accept weaker rider/fighter or T11 shooter members. In PVP absolutely the same, if no super rally. However, in PVP you will most likely have a super rally.
• use formation that corresponds to your class as default with one exception: solo PVP (e.g. Pit, Commander Duel and Nuka) when a battle is even (win/loss depends on miserable buff). In that case you can try to switch formation and try to win.

If you understood all above you can check this useful Advanced morale trick for close one-on-one PVP battle.

To sum up this section:

1. It's important to understand the order of soldier types taking damage. For different formations order is different.
2. Casualties priority by type and by tier are both important aspects of game mechanics. Without understanding those features you will never be able to fight effectively in this game versus any somehow serious opponent of your level (similar stat/boost values). However, if you understand this feature perfectly you will be able to exploit weaknesses of your opponents especially in reinforcement/rally.

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