Foster Your Roster

But what is the difference between a good roster and a good hero? A good hero is one that has all the tools they need to perform what they want to do. Proper equipment, skills, etc. A good roster is one that has a good balance of heroes with good elemental coverage as well as archetype coverage to build teams for any content in the game.

But let me start by explaining what a roster is and what a hero is. If you already know what those are, then you can skip this section. When we refer to heroes, we are talking about the individual hero themselves. But when we talk about rosters, we are talking about a collection of heroes as a whole. Sounds confusing? Here are some examples for what a roster is!

Example 1

Example 1:
– A roster of 5 heroes
– It doesn’t matter that they’re all the same class, it is still considered one roster of 5 heroes.
– If we talk about heroes, then it will be very specific as to which heroes we are talking about. For example, specifically singling out Dark Knight 3 would be talking about that one hero.

Example 2:

Example 2:
– A roster of 3 heroes
– Doesn’t matter that it’s only 3 heroes, if that’s all the heroes they have in their account, it is one roster of 3 heroes.
– If I say things such as “That mage is good and should be promoted” then that is referring to that one hero only.

Example 3:

Example 3:
– A roster of 18 heroes
– There are 18 heroes here but they’re all in the same account, so we say that it’s one roster of 18 heroes.

When building rosters, there are two major rules to follow:
– Rule 1: Three or more Heroes per Element
– Rule 2: Two or three Archetypes per Element
These two rules are rather complex which is why they will get their own dedicated section to explain each.

Rule 2: Two or more Archetypes per Element

One thing to note is that you may want to consider having at least two archetypes per element. However it is crucial to understand that this is something to consider in the long term, not an immediate concern. This mainly affects tower of titans on terror difficulty which unlocks at ML67+

What this means

This means that for each element that you have, you should have at least two heroes from different archetypes to cover that element.

Examples that follow the rule:

Example 1: Musketeer + Musketeer + Berserker
– We have two fire type rogues and one fire type fighter.
– Fire is being covered by both Fighter/Rogue archetypes (Red/Green)

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Example 2: Knight + Knight + Cleric
– We have two light type fighters and one light type spellcaster.
– Light is being covered by both Fighter/Spellcaster archetypes (Red/Blue)

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Example 3: Dancer + Dancer + Ranger
– We have two air type rogues and one air type fighter.
– Air is being covered by both Fighter/Rogue archetypes (Red/Green)

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Example 4: Soldier + Wanderer + Druid
– We have one earth type fighter, one earth type rogue, and one earth type spellcaster.
– Earth is being covered by all three archetypes (Red/Green/Blue)

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Example 5:
– A great example roster that takes everything I said into account built into one single roster of 18 heroes that accounts for both major rules.
– Extra note that you should not be following this roster exactly. If you happen to get a few heroes that are really strong that are not the classes shown, keep them. This roster only covers 18 heroes, and you can have up to 33 hero slots.

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Examples that do NOT follow the rule

Example 1: Three Geomancers

– Although we have three heroes for water, it is only being covered by the Spellcaster archetype (Blue type) because the only water heroes are all geomancers which are all spellcasters

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Example 2: Three Knights
– Although we have three heroes for water light, it is only being covered by the Spellcaster Fighter archetype (Blue Red type) because the only water light heroes are all geomancers knights which are all spellcasters fighters

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Example 3: Three Ninjas

– Although we have three heroes for water dark, it is only being covered by the Spellcaster Rogue archetype (Blue Green type) because the only water dark heroes are all geomancers ninjas which are all spellcasters rogues

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Example 4: One barbarian and two Berserkers
– This time, we have two different classes which are the T2 Barbarian and the T6 Berserker. Although they are different classes, they are both still the same archetype which is Fighter (Red type). Which means that we are NOT following the rule of two archetypes per element.

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Example 5:
– This is a roster of 18 heroes with not a single element having at least two heroes from different archetypes. They are all covered by heroes in the same archetype.

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Why Does this Matter?

This mostly matters for the month-long event Tower of Titans but specifically, the Terror difficulty which is available to players at merchant level 67 and above.

For every 3 floors you ascend on terror difficulty, you will meet mini bosses which requires you to have enough elements to break their barrier while also having special affixes that will usually debuff your heroes in a very specific way. Those debuffs might make it unviable for you to bring certain heroes to the party.

Although, if your heroes are exceptionally strong, you can ignore the debuffs entirely and just brute force your way through. At the time of writing this article, terror tower is the last tower difficulty (It was released around T13) and current tier content is T15 with Ancient Jungle as the hardest content in the game.

But even so, it is still important to diversify your roster in preparation for a rumored update to the tower of titans. This paragraph also only applies if you are able to do this in the first place, which is a smaller portion of the people reading this. I just wanted to leave this in so you can see the whole picture.

As an example, let’s assume the roster I had when I was ML67 which is the one below.

Notice how for water element, I have three heroes for water but all three of them are spellcasters?

If I encounter a floor 27 water barrier mini boss with the following attributes
– Magic Devourer (More likely to attack Spellcasters. Takes less damage from them too)
– Powerful (Enemy has bonus stats, likely increased HP/ATK/EVA

I will likely struggle quite a bit when I want to build a team to tackle this mini-boss. I would be forced to bring a geomancer into the party and if my Lilu/Polonia isn’t high ranked enough to get enough water element for the barrier, I might even be forced to bring in two geomancers. Doing that will only leave me with two slots to work with which will be a champion + fighter or champion + rogue DPS.

But if I had built a Samurai/Monk instead, then I can bring in either one of those (or even both) and only bring in one geomancer to get enough elements for the barrier.

I believe in practicality over theoretical studies, so I will be providing a real roster that I found from someone and I will analyze the roster then break it down.

After that, I’ll provide three example rosters for YOU to try to analyze and break it down yourself! My answers would be right below the roster if you don’t feel like doing it or if you want to cross-check your answer with mine!

Example 1:

The first thing I do whenever I see a roster, is to apply rule 1 to the roster to see if it passes the first rule, before checking for rule 2. I would also check for the guidelines afterwards but those aren’t as mandatory which is why I’ll skip the guidelines and only focus on the two rules.

Rule 1: Three heroes per element

• 3 Water
• 3 Earth
• 3 Fire
• 4 Air
• 3 Light
• 3 Dark

This roster meets the first rule for elemental coverage! Time to check for the second rule, does every element have at least two heroes from different archetypes?

Rule 2: Two archetypes per element

• Water (No, only spellcasters)
• Earth (Yes, spellcasters + rogues)
• Fire (No, only fighters)
• Air (Yes, rogues + fighters)
• Light (No, only fighters)
• Dark (Yes, spellcaster + rogues)

So, now that we’ve applied both rule 1 & 2, what are the things missing to make this a great roster? This roster meets rule 1 completely but doesn’t have different archetypes for water, fire, light.

Solution:
– Fire some heroes to make room for archetype coverage? Not necessary, there are 33 hero slots in total and this roster only has 19 heroes with only a few additions to “fix” the errors. We still have 14 hero slots to work with. But firing heroes to make room is definitely something we have to consider if the roster has too many heroes from the same class or if certain heroes are too weak & needs to be replaced anyways.
– The answer here is to hire heroes for archetype diversity with the next few hero slots! What heroes? We need a non-fighter fire hero, so either a musketeer or mage. We need a non-fighter light hero, so either a velite or a cleric. We need a non-spellcaster water hero, so either a monk or a samurai.

Example 2:

Try to analyze this roster yourself before looking at my solution for it! Remember rule 1 & rule 2! Once you’re done with those, ask yourself if this is a good roster. If not, what can this person do to improve their roster!

Solution:

Rule 1:
– 2 Water
– 3 Earth
– 3 Fire
– 4 Air
– 3 Light
– 3 Dark

Rule 2:
– Water (No, only spellcasters)
– Earth (No, only rogues)
– Fire (Yes, fighter + rogue)
– Air (Yes, fighter + rogue)
– Light (No, only fighter)
– Dark (Yes, rogue + spellcaster)

Suggestion:
– No firing needed because the roster is well balanced
– Hire one water type hero to complete rule 1, preferably rogue/fighter for rule 2 (Samurai/Monk). Hire a non-rogue earth hero (Soldier/Druid). Hire a non-fighter light hero (Velite/Cleric)

Example 3:

Special note for this case specifically: This person is merchant level 55, so they have 17 unlockable hero slots, but they only have 15 heroes! Keep this in mind when you’re trying to think of a suggestion for this person!

As always, please give it your best shot before looking at my solution!

Solution:

Round 1 Analysis: First Look

Rule 1:
– 1 Water
– 6 Earth
– 1 Fire
– 3 Air
– 3 Light
– 1 Dark

Rule 2:
– Water (No, only spellcasters)
– Earth (Yes, all three archetypes)
– Fire (No, only spellcasters)
– Air (No, only rogues)
– Light (No, only fighter)
– Dark (No, only spellcasters)

Special Note: It is never recommended to fire more than 3 heroes at a time and if you have missing heroes, then it’s always better to fill out your missing hero slots before firing any heroes. But because this is all “theoretical”, I will be ignoring this entirely and suggest firing heroes even when not all hero slots are filled up. Just know that this is NOT what you should be doing with your actual heroes.

Suggestion:
– For this one, I would actually suggest firing the weakest druid. It’s not that you can’t have 6 heroes per element, you can have up to 33 hero slots in total which allows for 5 heroes per element + 3 extra. But because this is really early on, having three druid + two wanderers + one soldier is a bit too much for one single element, especially when the other elements need work too!
– The least amount of hero hires needed to fix both rule 1 and 2 is eight heroes to hire. How did I get this number? 2 water, 2 fire, 2 dark, 1 light, 1 air. Light and air meet Rule 1 but fail for Rule 2. They currently have 15 heroes so adding that will get us 23 hero slots which is at merchant level 80. Most players won’t be able to level up to this level within a reasonable time frame, which is why it’s recommended to fire a few heroes to make room.
– Firing just 1 hero will let us achieve that at 22 hero slots instead of 23 hero slots, which is at merchant level 76. Firing a second hero gets us to 21 hero slots, which is at merchant level 72. Firing a third hero gets us to 20 hero slots, which is at merchant level 68.
– Okay that’s great and all, but which two/three heroes should we fire? Since we have most heroes in Earth element, I will take a look at all six earth heroes and decide which ones are not worth keeping. The first one I would look at is the soldier because they’re a T1 class. If their S1 and S2 are not good enough to warrant a promotion, they’ll be the first to go but if it is good enough to warrant a promotion, do NOT fire the soldier and instead look for another hero to fire instead.
– The next I would look at are the three druids. I will look for the weakest link and cut them off and then decide if the other two are also worth keeping. But if all three are too good to fire? Then we’ll have to move onto the wanderers. If even both wanderers are too good to be fired, then we’ll have to either just leave them as they are and work around it by looking at the other elements instead or make the tough decision to fire great heroes.
– Assuming that we hadn’t fired anyone yet and want to ignore earth, we can shift our focus to Air element instead. Air is currently covered by three heroes which meets rule 1 but all three heroes are rogues with two of them being thieves specifically. Take a look at the thieves and decide if they’re worth promoting, we want to try and see we can justify removing one of them for a ranger/chronomancer to achieve rule 2. If we can fire even one of them, that will bring the level requirement down from 80 to 76.
– We can also apply the same logic to the knights to see if any of them are worth firing for a velite/cleric. But something important to note is that you should not force it! If you can’t find a way forward, you can always seek for advice in ST Central’s discord server.
– But let’s proceed forwarding assuming that we can fire one soldier, one druid, and one thief. That will mean that we can have up to 17 hero slots with 12 current heroes. Redo rule 1 & 2 but with the new roster after firing those three heroes!

Round 2 Analysis: After Firing Three Heroes

Rule 1:
– 1 Water
– 4 Earth
– 1 Fire
– 2 Air
– 3 Light
– 1 Dark

Rule 2:
– Water (No, only spellcasters)
– Earth (Yes, rogues + spellcasters)
– Fire (No, only spellcasters)
– Air (No, only rogues)
– Light (No, only fighter)
– Dark (No, only spellcasters)

New Suggestions:
– 5 hero slots to work with. Hire one ranger, one sorcerer, one ninja, one berserker, one geomancer.
– Ranger will be for three air heroes + archetype coverage
– Sorcerer and Ninja will be for three dark heroes + archetype coverage
– One berserker for two fire heroes + archetype coverage (Berserkers are also generally more recommended to players around merchant level 53)
– One geomancer for two water heroes but no archetype coverage yet, we’re getting a geomancer because they’re the go-to recommendation for merchant level 53 players as they are very strong without going through a lot of hassle

Round 3 Analysis: After Hiring Five New Heroes

Rule 1:
– 2 Water
– 4 Earth
– 2 Fire
– 3 Air
– 3 Light
– 3 Dark

Rule 2:
– Water (No, only spellcasters)
– Earth (Yes, rogues + spellcasters)
– Fire (Yes, fighters + spellcasters)
– Air (Yes, fighters + rogues)
– Light (No, only fighter)
– Dark (Yes, rogues + spellcasters)

Suggestions:
– We still need to hire one water and one fire hero to complete rule 1. Fire can be any hero from any archetype since we’ve already fulfilled rule 2 for fire, but for water we want to hire a non-spellcaster water hero which will be either a monk or a samurai.
– The next two hero hires would be any fire hero (Probably berserker) and a samurai/monk
– Finally, for our third hero hire we will want to complete light by hiring a non-fighter light hero which will be a velite/cleric
– Doing the analysis three rounds is long and tedious, but very simple and rather straight-forward once you get the hang of it!
– If we didn’t fire any heroes and only hired heroes with new hero slots, it would’ve us up until merchant level 80 to clear both rule 1 & 2. But after firing those three heroes, this roster will meet rule 1 & 2 at merchant level 64!

Example 4:

Special note for this case too: This person is merchant level 66, so they have 19 unlockable hero slots, but they only have 17 heroes! Keep this in mind when you’re trying to think of a suggestion for this person!

You know the drill by now! If you’re curious if this is a real roster, this is in fact, a real roster that someone had sent! But we’re NOT here to make fun of them! We’re using this as a learning experience! Focus on the things you’ve learnt and if you can “fix” this roster, you’ll move on to the graduation test.

Solution:

Round 1 Analysis: First look

Rule 1:
– 0 Water
– 1 Earth
– 7 Fire
– 0 Air
– 4 Light
– 5 Dark

Rule 2:
– Water (No, no water heroes)
– Earth (No, only spellcasters)
– Fire (No, only rogues)
– Air (No, no air heroes)
– Light (No, only fighters)
– Dark (Yes, rogue + spellcaster)

Special Note: It is never recommended to fire more than 3 heroes at a time and if you have missing heroes, then it’s always better to fill out your missing hero slots before firing any heroes. But because this is all “theoretical”, I will be ignoring this entirely and suggest firing heroes even when not all hero slots are filled up. Just know that this is NOT what you should be doing with your actual heroes.

Suggestion:
– Fire four musketeers, one sorcerer, and one knight. This will free up eight hero slots to work with. Explanations for this can be found in example 3.

Round 2 Analysis: After Firing Five Heroes

Rule 1:
– 0 Water
– 1 Earth
– 3 Fire
– 0 Air
– 3 Light
– 4 Dark

Rule 2:
– Water (No, no water heroes)
– Earth (No, only spellcasters)
– Fire (No, only rogues)
– Air (No, no air heroes)
– Light (No, only fighters)
– Dark (Yes, rogue + spellcaster)

Suggestions:
– Eight hero slots to work with, so we will be hiring two geomancers and one samurai for water. Two wanderers for earth. Two dancers and one ranger for air.
– I specifically specified Samurai here because they need more fighters. You could also go for monks instead!

Round 3 Analysis: After Hiring Seven Heroes

Rule 1:
– 3 Water
– 3 Earth
– 3 Fire
– 3 Air
– 3 Light
– 4 Dark

Rule 2:
– Water (Yes, fighters + spellcasters)
– Earth (Yes, rogues + spellcasters)
– Fire (No, only rogues)
– Air (Yes, fighters + rogues)
– Light (No, only fighters)
– Dark (Yes, rogue + spellcaster)

Suggestions:
– We’ve completed rule 1! So, all we need to do now are to complete rule 2 by hiring a non-rogue fire hero and a non-fighter light hero.
– The choices will be between a barbarian/berserker/mage and either a velite/cleric

Example 5: Graduation Test

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! For your graduation test, I want you to go over to YOUR heroes and do the analysis on your own roster! If you’ve been following along the examples, you should be able to do it now! Good luck and you can do this!

If you do want me or anyone else to check your workings, please head on over to the ST Central’s discord server and feel free to tag me at @yukiilai in #heroes-and-quests channel and I will respond once I see your message!

P.S. Make sure to send your roster along with your answer when you @ me and not wait until I respond before sending your answer.

There are also other guidelines but they’re not as important as the two rules mentioned earlier. You can skip these entirely too.
– Guideline 1: As many fighters (Red-type heroes) as your number of questing slots
– Guideline 2: Balanced number of heroes for rogues and spellcasters
– Guideline 3: If you’re not done with Rule 1, do not touch T1/T2/T7/Spellblades/Samurai. If you want to work on Rule 2, then you need to pick between Cleric/Velite for light and Monk/Samurai for water.
– Guideline 4: Done with everything else? Have fun!
– Guideline 5: Do not let Reiga convince you to get 33 spellblades
Rei Note: Don’t listen to this. Embrace the spellknight.

Guideline 1: Fighters == Quest Slots

This guideline is set so that for every quest that you do, you will be able to send one fighter for that party. It is certainly not “mandatory” to have a fighter in every party but it will make things a lot easier for the rest of your heroes.

You can send parties without a red-type fighter in them, but it’s usually recommended to pair those parties with a fighter champion. Fighter champions are Argon, Ashley, Bjorn, and Rudo.

Guideline 2: Green == Blue

I recommend trying to keep a balanced number of heroes for both rogues and spellcasters. This is more so to keep your roster relatively balanced. Both archetypes have their advantages and disadvantages, becoming overly reliant on one over the other may result in future content rendering your roster a lot harder to build teams for.

Guideline 3: Ignore certain classes (For now)

The classes you should ignore until you have a solid core roster are the T1/T2/T7 classes, spellblades, and samurai. Come back to these classes later once your core roster is built out.

Reminder that all classes are viable in the end game. A bishop (Promoted cleric) will perform better than a Geomancer and just as good as an astramancer (Promoted geomancer) in the same team I tested in full flawless gear.

T1/T2 classes can only see 2 skills without being promoted and have much lower base stats than the other classes unpromoted. They basically require the titan soul to be usable. But being able to see only 2 skills means that you’re very likely going to have to reroll two other skills with die/Roland.

T7 classes are the dark knights, velites, and chronomancers. They’re generally not recommended due to them being very expensive to hire and generally being weaker than their T6 counterparts. Earlier on, it is most certainly not worth spending the gold to try and get decent T7 heroes, especially when gold is still pretty valuable.

Samurais are not recommended because they are pretty difficult to get right. They suffer from having only four skill slots to work with while needing a little bit of everything. They are a fighter class, so they have higher threat than the other archetypes which means you want to build them to have enough defensive stats. But they are also an attacking class because of how their innate works so building them for pure tank would be a waste since you can do the same with any other hero. You’ll want a weapon skill and bonus attack skill because of the attacker rule, preferably one or even two defensive skills to keep them alive too.

Last but not least, the spellblade. They are extremely tricky to get right for one reason. They have a massive pool of skills/equipment to choose from. Having a lot of equipment choices is great, can’t say the same about skills. It sounds great on paper, having access to more skills which leads to a more flexible hero that can change and adapt to situations! But the problem is that there are more “bad” skills than there are good ones. Most players also don’t know what they need to look out for (Which is totally fine) but getting a spellblade with no coherent skills is worse than other classes because they’re much harder to reroll to get the right skills for. Especially if you’re looking for a specific skill.

But if you try to follow rule 1 & 2, then you’ll see that you can’t get a water/light hero without picking up either the Samurai/Monk for water and Velite/Cleric for light. When you do want to work on two archetypes per element, then you’ll just have to pick which ones you want.

As for which to get, it depends on whether you have the titan soul to spare. If you do, then you can consider monk/cleric but if you can’t spare the titan soul for them, then you’ll have to pick Velite/Samurai. If you have the titan soul but don’t want to get monk/cleric then just pick up the velite/samurai.

Guideline 4: Have fun!

Congratulations! You’ve made it! Hire any heroes you find fun or want to try out. Don’t let anyone stop you from enjoying the game!