Advanced Hero Arena X has less heroes than many other Hero Arena maps, but this is intentional. Rather than a large number of quickly concieved choices, each Hero in AHAX has been carefully crafted and meticulously balanced to offer a unique role on a team, a wide variety of tactical options, and to appeal to different playstyles. Listed here are each of the Heroes that can be chosen and information about them.

Defensive

Innate Ability: Protect
Learned Abilities: Defend, Frost Armor, Divine Shield, Parry
Ultimate Ability: Justice
Primary Attribute: Strength

The Knight is easily the most difficult Hero to kill. Parry increases his Armor and damages anyone who hits him. Frost Armor gives him and his allies very high bonus armor as well as slowing down attackers. Defend heavily reduces magic and piercing damage against him, but slows him down, and Divine Shield makes him invulnerable for a while. He also has a fairly large amount of hitpoints and decent movement speed. All these combine to make the Knight the best survivor.

What he lacks is offensive power. His hits do mediocre damage at mediocre speed and he has no good offensive abilities to help him kill something faster (like War Stomp, Storm Bolt, Power Shot, and so on). His only offensive skill is his Ultimate (Justice), which temporarily gives him a ranged attack with increased damage and speed. The rest of the time he must depend on outliving his opponent in order to win battles.

The Protect ability allows the Knight to teleport to the location of an injured ally, and makes the target invulnerable for a few seconds while the Knight himself becomes more vulnerable and the target of nearby enemy attacks. The duration of the effect is longer if the targeted ally is very close to death, making it best used to save teammates. This ability combined with Frost Armor makes him an excellent team member since he helps his whole team survive longer.

Offensive Melee

Innate Ability: Battle Roar
Learned Abilities: Bash, Storm Bolt, Thunder Clap, Warrior Spirit
Ultimate Ability: Avatar
Primary Attribute: Strength

The Warrior is a force to be reckoned with once he closes in on an enemy (and the stunning effect of Storm Bolt makes it much easier to do just that). He is one of the slowest characters in both movement and attack speed but with his stun abilities he can sometimes kill an enemy before they even get a chance to fight back. Warrior Spirit and Battle Roar add to the damage of his attacks, and his allies'. Thunder Clap gives him a quick way to damage all nearby opponents and slows them down as well.

The Warrior's Avatar ability is a very powerful Ultimate. It not only increases his already high damage and hit points but makes him completely immune to magic. Wizards, Enchanters, and Necromancers are practically helpless against him when he is in this state.

The downsides to the Warrior are his slow speed and lack of defensive abilities. His Storm Bolt doesn't last very long and with his slow movement speed he has a hard time getting close enough to his targets to hit them. He also is unlikely to survive if he attempts to retreat.

Strong-but-Slow

Innate Ability: Taunt
Learned Abilities: Crushing Blow, War Stomp, Cleaving Attack, Howl of Terror
Ultimate Ability: Giant Rampage
Primary Attribute: Strength

The Giant is the largest character, as well as the slowest and the most damaging (in terms of damage per hit). In one-on-one close range combat, the Giant is almost guaranteed to win. He may seem overpowered at first, especially if you just walk up and fight him at melee range. However, you will soon find that his lack of speed and tactical options limits his power.

Once a Giant gets near an enemy (or uses Taunt to get them to come to him), he can use War Stomp and Crushing Blow to stun them and Howl of Terror to lower their damage. Each hit from him does massive damage, and with Cleaving Attack will damage all nearby enemies as well. However, he has an extremely slow attack speed, almost twice as slow as the Warrior. This combined with his slow movement speed and lack of defensive abilities make him very vulnerable to hit-and-run tactics from ranged attackers. He also has no ranged abilities at all and unlike the Warrior has no way to stop an enemy to move in on them (although he can use Taunt if they aren't paying attention).

Once he gets his Ultimate, the Giant can use Giant Rampage to eliminate his one great weakness - speed. This ability temporarily makes him as fast as any other Hero but maintains his high per-hit damage, making him extremely deadly.

The Giant has the most hit points of all characters which makes him fairly hard to kill, and he is one of the few characters that can take on two opponents at once (if they are in melee range). He also is a benefit to his team since often enemies will concentrate their attacks on him (since he makes such a large and scary target) while the rest of the team gets them from behind or at range.

Versatile Melee

Innate Ability: Purge
Learned Abilities: Fan of Knives, Heal, Banish, Immolation
Ultimate Ability: Inferno
Primary Attribute: Strength

With a skill for every situation, the Bounty Hunter is a good addition to any team. While not the best in any one category, her range of skill types make her quite effective. Fan of Knives is an excellent damage attack, and Heal can be used to increase her survivability or save injured teammates. Banish has many uses, such as enhancing the effect of Heal and Fan of Knives, stopping enemy melee fighters from being able to attack, or even saving an ally from enemy melee units. Note that spell casting classes (Wizard, Enchanter, Druid, and Necromancer) use a magic attack type and thus can still hit Banished enemies even with their normal attacks. Immolation adds to her damage potential and allows her to damage other nearby enemies besides the one she is currently attacking directly.

The Purge ability should not be underestimated. It not only dispels buffs and debuffs (without negatively affecting her allies) but it damages summoned units and severely slows down an enemy for a while. This makes it useful to catch running opponents. Her Ultimate skill summons a powerful Infernal and can also be used to stun enemies, which is useful for stopping channeling spells.

Although her varied abilities are effective, the Bounty Hunter is not particularly skilled in any one area. Other Heroes are better at healing, damaging, stunning, using pets, dispelling, and stopping enemies than she is, they just can't normally use as many different types of skills as she can.

Stealth

Innate Ability: Invisibility
Learned Abilities: Wind Walk, Slow Poison, Sixth Sense, Mirror Image
Ultimate Ability: Bladestorm
Primary Attribute: Agility

The Ninja is weaker in stats compared to the Strength-based melee heroes, but is blessed with more tactical options and higher movement speed. Sixth Sense provides critical strikes for more damage and evasion for better defense. Slow Poison is great for keeping an enemy from running away, as well as slowing down their hit speed.

The biggest strength of the Ninja is his stealth tactics. Wind Walk allows him to escape fights before death or sneak attack an enemy for bonus damage. Mirror Image creates a decoy copy of him to confuse enemies, but the copy dies much faster and only does a tiny amount of damage. Bladestorm is a very powerful Ultimate and combined with Wind Walk can get a kill before the enemy knows what hit them. He also can cast Invisibility on allies to save them from death or in an effort to do a combined team stealth attack. Few things are scarier than having the entire opposing team suddenly vanish and have no idea where they will appear next!

The Ninja has low hit points for a melee fighter, and he is very dependant on critical hits for his damage output since his attacks are weaker and just as slow as a Knight's. Against a Strength based melee Hero he has a tough time, and he will die fairly easily to a team using teamwork. Also, if an enemy Druid uses Serpent Ward or the enemy makes use of Sentry Wards, Dust of Appearance, or a Gem of Seeing than his power to escape and sneak attack is removed, making him much less useful.

Fast Melee

Innate Ability: Healing Wards
Learned Abilities: Beserk, Critical Strike, Evasion, Energy Boost
Ultimate Ability: Call Brethren
Primary Attribute: Agility

A master of hand to hand combat, the Monk has only a small claw for a weapon and thus does very little damage per hit, although his attack speed is very high. He has the highest number of passive skills of any Hero, making him quite powerful at the higher levels. He is also one of the easier characters to play since you have less active skills to concentrate on.

Beserk offers a large boost to attack and movement speed (at the cost to defense) and combined with the additional speed from Energy Boost and his already high natural speed, the Monk can hit very fast. This means Critical Strike happens pretty frequently, making the Monk's damage output very high despite his low per-hit damage. Energy Boost and Beserk also increase his movement speed giving him good manueverability.

The Monk's Call Brethren Ultimate calls forth 5 "Monk Brethren" to assist the Monk. This ability is expensive to use and has a long cooldown time. It also is limited in that the summoned Monk Brethren can be dispelled easily, and die if the Monk dies. It's pretty useful to use as part of a surprise rush attack or to surround an enemy so they can't escape.

The downside to the Monk is his low hit points and low damage output early on. He's one of the weaker level 1 characters because his speed isn't high yet and he can't do much damage. He must wait until he gets into the higher levels and learns his passive skills before he really comes into power. Of course even then he has pretty low defense and tends to die often.

Ranged

Innate Ability: Abolish Magic
Learned Abilities: Power Shot, Frost Arrows, Stealth, Trueshot Aura
Ultimate Ability: Starfall
Primary Attribute: Agility

The Archer is the master of ranged combat with the highest attack range of all Heroes, plus a really high movement speed. Her arrows can be enhanced using Frost Arrows and Trueshot Aura to do extra damage. Frost Arrows also slow down her opponents, making it difficult for them to catch up to her. Power Shot provides an excellent auxillary ranged attack that greatly damages multiple enemies if they are bunched together. Her Ultimate, Starfall, causes damaging bolts to fall very quickly on all nearby enemies. It's a high-damage Ultimate and can destroy an enemy team very quickly if they don't run away or stun her.

The Archer excels at hit and run tactics when using Stealth, which makes her invisible and increases movement speed. She can escape bad situations and go and heal up, or double back for a sneak attack. With her fast run speed and Stealth the Archer is hard to catch. This is made worse by her Abolish Magic skill which can eliminate things like Envenom and Entangle. This highly useful ability can also be used against wards and summoned creatures.

The downside to the Archer is her low damage and that she dies quickly when caught, and the fact that she is often made a primary target from enemy Heros. Once an enemy has ways to detect invisibility the Archer will often find herself constantly under attack. People find her hit and run tactics annoying and will go out of their way to kill her. Also, her attacks do Piercing damage which does reduced damage against Hero armor and against the Knight's Defend skill. This makes her base damage pretty low - she is highly dependant on her mana reserves in order to do damage with Power Shot and Frost Arrows.

Anti-Magic

Innate Ability: Dispel
Learned Abilities: Silence, Aria of Discord, Anthem of Haste, Blink
Ultimate Ability: Forceful Bellow
Primary Attribute: Agility

The Bard is an excellent team player and is particularly adept at disabling enemy spell casters. He uses a ranged attack but does not have as much range or speed as the Archer. Anthem of Haste helps by improving his attack and move speed as well as his allies'. Aria of Discord adds extra damage to his attacks and drains his opponent's mana. Silence stops any enemies caught in its range from using any abilities for a while. This very powerful ability can be devestating if used properly, and is the cornerstone of his repetoire. In addition, he can use Dispel to quickly remove enemy buffs and destroy pets and wards. Silence, Aria of Discord, and Dispel combine to make him a feared opponent for enemies that depend heavily on spells or pets.

The addition of Blink gives the Bard unmatched manuevarability in the battlefield, allowing him to quickly warp in and out of fights and get into good positions to use his Ultimate. Forceful Bellow is a unique Ultimate that damages all nearby enemies and pushes them away from the Bard. He can use this to stop channeling spells and to scatter and disorient enemies. He can also use it to push them away as a defensive manuever or to save an ally that's surrounded. It is also unique in that it works even on magic immune or invulnerable enemies (use it to push away a Bladestorm'ing Ninja for example). However, it can't actually kill anyone, at most it will leave them with only a thread of life remaining. The damage it does varies depending on how far away enemies are from him when it is used and whether or not they run into any walls when being pushed away.

The downside to a Bard is that other than his Ultimate he has no real damaging abilities and his base attack damage is not that great. His combat stats are pretty average in general. In combat his abilities don't stand out as being powerful (except v.s. casters); he is more discreet in his contributions to the team.

Offensive Magic

Innate Ability: Manafont
Learned Abilities: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Earth
Ultimate Ability: Wind
Primary Attribute: Intelligence

The Wizard is a powerful offensive spell caster utilizing elemental damage spells. The Wizard has really poor combat stats and is totally dependant on his mana to cast his powerful spells. Fortunately, his Manafont ability can give him extra mana when he needs it.

Although starting out nearly defenseless, a high level Wizard can kill any enemy extremely fast if given the chance and enough mana. Each of his elemental damage spells have unique properties for different situations, although most of the time he will just use all of them in a row to do the most damage in the shortest time. His Fire spell is weakest in damage, but does equal damage to all nearby targets and is faster casting and cheaper mana then his other spells. Lightning is more powerful than Fire and has a very long range, but costs more mana and has a longer cooldown. Ice deals good damage and slows down the target, but has a very small radius and is expensive in mana and time. It also does less damage on targets after the first one. Finally Earth is very expensive in mana and does little damage, however it can stun enemies and has enough range to sometimes stun an entire enemy team!

The Wizard's Ultimate, Wind, summons a controllable tornado that damages and slows all nearby enemies and randomly tosses some into the air. The tornado itself is invulnerable and can be very destructive to an enemy team. However, it is technically a channeling spell so if the Wizard moves or is stunned then the tornado will dissipate instantly.

The downside to the Wizard is that after his spells he is horribly weak, and not particularly fast either. It's not hard to catch up to him if he doesn't have his spells and a couple hits will kill him. Since even his normal attack is considered magic, he is completely useless when faced with a magically immune enemy such as a Warrior using Avatar.

Team Enhancer

Innate Ability: Ray of Disruption
Learned Abilities: Envenom, Hex, Siphon Mana, Bloodlust
Ultimate Ability: Manipulation
Primary Attribute: Intelligence

The Enchanter is an excellent addition to any team, and the master of buffing teammates and debuffing enemies. Bloodlust is one of the best buffs in the game and greatly increases the move and run speed of allies it is cast on. This increased attack rate is a huge benefit to melee Heroes, allowing them to rip through enemies very quickly. Against enemies, Hex is one of the worst things you can do to someone. It completely disables them, turning them into a slow moving harmless animal. It is great for using on a strong opponent while your team is busy finishing off their weaker teammates. He can also use it on an enemy chasing him in order to prevent them from attacking him and get away safely. It doesn't help him kill anything though, it's really Envenom that is the main source of the Enchanter's damage. Not only is Envenom a decent damage spell, it also poisons the enemy, slowly draining more life from them and at the same time slowing their movement and attacks.

When he gets low on Mana from using Envenom, Hex, and Bloodlust the Enchanter can drain more mana away from an enemy. This not only refills his own supply but helps prevent the enemy from being able to use their spells and abilities.

Ray of Disruption is another very useful skill that dispels magic on a target then bounces around a few times dispelling other nearby targets. It works similar to a Bard's dispel and can be used to dispel buffs from enemies and debuffs from his allies.

The Enchanter's Ultimate, Manipulation, has a different effect depending on which enemy Hero it is used on. It will drain the target of some mana and then use that mana to cast one of the target's own buff or debuff spells on every ally or enemy nearby (thus using their own magic against them). Here is a list of the effect of casting Manipulation on each Hero:

• Knight: Frost Armor cast on all nearby allies.
• Warrior: Battle Roar cast on all nearby allies.
• Giant: Howl of Terror cast on all nearby enemies.
• Bounty Hunter: Heal cast on all nearby allies.
• Ninja: Invisibility cast on all nearby allies.
• Monk: Beserk cast on all nearby allies.
• Archer: Invisibility cast on all nearby allies.
• Bard: Silence cast on all nearby enemies.
• Wizard: Clarity (mana regen buff) cast on all nearby allies.
• Enchanter: Cripple (speed debuff) cast on all nearby enemies.
• Druid: Inner Fire cast on all nearby allies.
• Necromancer: Curse cast on all nearby enemies.

Versatile Magic

Innate Ability: Inner Fire
Learned Abilities: Summon Beast, Serpent Ward, Healing Wave, Entangling Roots
Ultimate Ability: Stampede
Primary Attribute: Intelligence

One with nature, the Druid can gain aid from summoned creatures with Summon Beast and Serpent Wards, and heal his allies with Healing Wave. He can also stop enemies in their tracks with Entangling Roots. Not only does this prevent them from moving, but it disables their attacks while they are trapped. It is useful for stopping enemies from running away or prevent them from getting too close. He can only have one summoned beast at a time, but they are quite powerful especially when combined with his ability to heal them with Healing Wave. He can have as many Serpent Wards as he can place, and they have the unique ability to detect invisible units as well as attack nearby enemies. This makes the Druid the only Hero that can detect invisible units without needing to buy an item.

The Druid's Ultimate, Stampede, is a very powerful area of effect attack that causes thunder lizards to come rampaging over the area, running into enemies and exploding to damage them. As long as it is not stopped by him being stunned or otherwise interrupted, an entire enemy team can be quickly wiped out in seconds with this spell. It's best to use it when the enemy is busy fighting already so they will be too slow to react and try to stop it before they are dead.

Similar to other casters, the Druid's weaknesses are his dependancy on mana and spells and being easy to kill, especially at lower levels before getting all his spells. With the ability to heal himself he is a bit harder to kill than the other casters, however. Unfortunately he also has very little in the way of attacks other than his Ultimate, instead depending on the damage done by his summoned helpers and on healing and buffing his allies to win. He also is the only caster with no ability to restore his own mana like the Wizard's Manafont, Enchanter's Siphon Mana, or Necromancer's Dark Ritual so managing mana is very important for him.

Summoner

Innate Ability: Curse
Learned Abilities: Drain Life, Raise Skeleton, Dark Ritual, Death Coil
Ultimate Ability: Locust Swarm
Primary Attribute: Intelligence

Master of the undead, the Necromancer can summon skeletons using Raise Skeleton. He can have multiple skeletons at once, limited only by his mana and the cooldown time of the spell. These skeletons are the center of most of his abilities. They add to his damage and can protect the Necromancer from enemies by using slowing cold attacks. He can heal them with Death Coil (or just use it as a ranged attack spell). They also can potentially give him infinite mana reserves when combined with Dark Ritual, which destroys one of his pets but gives mana in return. At higher levels of Raise Skeleton and Dark Ritual, he can get back much more mana than it took to summon the skeleton in the first place and use this method to increase his mana supply (at the cost of an extra pet).

In addition to his skeleton-related skills, the Necromancer has a deadly Drain Life ability that damages a target while healing himself. This is a channeling ability and can be interrupted, or his target can move out of range. This spell is quite powerful and makes the Necromancer very difficult to kill since he can heal himself and damage an enemy at the same time. In addition his Ultimate, Locust Swarm, can be thought of as a larger version of Drain Life that works on any enemies in the area, draining their life and giving it to him. Finally he has Curse, which causes his target to start missing their attacks often. The combined effect of Locust Swarm, Drain Life, and Curse can sometimes make the Necromancer even harder to kill than a Strength-based Hero.

The Necromancer's weakness is his dependancy on mana, spells, and pets and the fact that at lower levels before he gets many spells he is very weak. Like other casters, he can die pretty easily if caught without any mana, although his abilities make him much less vulnerable than other casters when he does have mana in reserve. His pets can be destroyed easily by dispel abilities or Wands of Negation, or they can be ignored while the Necromancer himself is targeted (since once he dies his pets die too). He has no where near the damage capacity of a Wizard, and doesn't have the useful team-bolstering abilities of the Enchanter and Druid, so he has to depend on his pets and Drain Life to be effective. He has few options when faced with a magic immune unit, although he can at least have his pets attack it.