Formations has been added to the game recently: you can configure your raid defense team formation in Hero Academy among four available options:
-Standard
-Reverse
-Double
-Reverse double
The feature is relatively new and I’ve been testing and analyzing these formations in the past 2 days. There is one obvious winner choice in my opinion where other 3 fall short for good reasons.
“TL;DR” version: go with “Reverse” for defense team formation. Detailed analysis and recommended hero positions see below.
Let’s refer to all 5 positions from left to right as A to E for simplicity. In different formations the name of the positions don’t change. The tile board is a 5 (rows) by 7 (columns) grid, and similarly we’ll refer to columns from left to right as c1 to c7, rows from top to bottom as r1 to r5.
Standard
This is the formation that has been used since day 0 of raid is introduced. In this formation, tiles on c1 hits A, c2 hits B, c3-c5 hits C, c6 hits D and c7 hits E.
Position C hero will be your traditional tank hero where in the beginning of the game, will likely take heavy tile damage (3 out of 7 columns).
Once this hero is killed, tiles matched on column4 will generate double mana, making offense much easier. Most likely, offense team has to kill the tank hero first, and then get to the flank and wing heroes.
Reverse
In this formation, tiles on c1c2 hits A, c3 hits B, c4 hits C, c5 hits D and c6c7 hits E. Compared to the standard formation, you have 2 tanks positioned at A and E, each take 2 / 7 columns of tiles. Statistically this is more stable compared to standard formation.
Even if the tank heroes on position A or E is taken down, matching tiles on column c1 or c7 is harder than c4: c1 and c7 are the boundary of the grid so match can only be made from 3 directions instead of 4.
Tanks in position A or E are 1/3 likely to be taken down compared to the same tank positioned at C in standard formation, and given the same board, mana generation is a bit slower compared to standard formation.
For the reasons above, this is the winner choice of formation in my opinion.
Double & Reverse Double
The tile coverage for double and reverse double are better than standard, but they both have a deal breaker issue: spells casted on position C hero, if affect “nearby” units, will affect all heroes.
You may argue that this may benefit defensive heroes (e.g. Guinevere or Zulag) by benefiting the entire team with their spells. But keep in mind this is in raid where offense player have options to choose their team lineup and defense player don’t.
Offense team can easily stack a few heroes with fast (if not very fast) spelling hitting 3 targets, and against such formation they all become fast AOE heroes, amplifying offensive damage significantly. For example, Grave Maker, Drake Fong, Clarissa, Master Lepus etc.
Because of this one reason alone, these 2 formations are ruled out.
Recommended heroes for Reverse formation:
2 tank heroes on position A and E: Telluria, Black Knight, Heimdall, Bera, Alfrike, Freya, etc.
3 fast AOE heroes on position B,C,D: Vela, Crystalis, Finley, Frigg, Odin, Grave Maker, Killhare, Drake Frong, White Rabbit, Costume Marjana, etc.
