Which Boosts Should I Use?

I always have an 'Attack Boost' on while doing my 'Offensive Defense' strategy. My rationale for this is, you're trying to bait in attacks that you can win - this is the hard part. Once you bait these attacks in you want to do as much damage as possible (i.e. kill as many of their troops). With a 'Defensive Boost' you'll have 20% less troops hospitalized, however, with an 'Attack Boost' you'll kill 20% more of their troops - you're doing this to maximize kills rather then minimize hospitalized troops so the 'Attack Boost' makes much more sense. Similarly, you won't want to have an 'Anti-Scout' or a 'Fake Army' as both of these boosts are counter intuitive with regards to the 'Offensive Defensive' strategy.

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How Do I Optimize My Hero's Stats?

In many games (MOBAs, RPGs, etc.) it is important to balance your Defense and Health to maximize EHP (effective HP). You can look in your 'Hero Boosts' tab to see what percentage boost your troop Defense and Health have. From this, you can make decisions on how to most effectively itemize, gem socket, and skill your hero. I will give you an example of how to calculate your EHP.

Let's give your hero's hp a value of 1 (the value of this number if irrelevant as it is a constant, 1 is just easy to work with).

If you have 120% troop defense bonus and 240% troop health bonus that means that your troops defense is 220% of its normal value, and your troops health is 340% of its normal value (I added 100% to each of these values as the normal value starts at 100%). You could calculate your EHP through the equation:

 1 * (Defense Bonus) * (Health bonus) = 1 * 2.20 * 3.40 =  7.48

Your troops have an EHP of 7.48 times the original EHP with no boosts.

Now lets say you balanced your troop defense and health bonuses, but still had an equivalent additive amount of bonuses to these two stats. Your troops stats would be 180% defense and health bonus which is 280% of your troops health and defense normal values. Your EHP would be.

1* (Defensive Bonus) * (Health Bonus) = 1 * 2.8 * 2.8 = 7.84


Its amazing how much stronger troops can get with multiplicative bonuses!

With that said, there are times when you may have a higher EHP from skilling or itemizing your hero in a certain way that isn't as 'balanced' as another option. Use this equation to help you make the correct mathematical decision if you're on the fence.
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How Do I Properly Skill My Hero?

Most people in Game of War don't optimally skill their heroes. With the assumption that your hero is level 46 or higher you should skill the least amount in each skill on left hand side of your skill tree in order to work your way down to 'Troop Defense II' and 'Troop Health II'. Skills are exponential in the fact that the more points you put in them, the higher then reward for the next point. This is why it is important to max out these very beneficial skills to 50/50. The only exception is the very first skill, 'Troop Attack', which you should max out (5/5), without going into too much rationale I can say that it pays off.

After this, you'll be working your way back down the skill tree. There are two different routes you may go, depending on the make-up of your troops.

The first possible route is for people who train '1 or 2 troops' (not including Siege, as Siege is horrible). You should max out the skills for '*Troop Type* Attack II' for the troop(s) you're training. After you max out these skill(s) you'll want to max out 'Troop Defense' and 'Troop Health', remember to max these two stats out in the appropriate order to maximize your troops EHP.

The second route is for people who train 3 troops (I'm not going to say 4 troops because I don't count siege as a troop, they're crap). Due to the fact that your troops are more spread out, it is important to max out 'Troop Defense' and 'Troop Health'. After this, you'll have more points to spend... Use these remaining points on the troop type(s) that you have the most of.

Without going too in depth on itemizing and socketing your hero. You should always create equipment that correlates to your troop type(s) with the knowledge that defense and health bonuses are incredibly efficient (especially in balanced armies) as they effect all of your troops.