Guide How To Do Moderately Well At Claim To Heroism

Claim to Heroism is not the most popular festival minigame; that's Banish the Beyond. But it's the one I like the most. I play it a lot. I'm not top of the line, but I'm fairly good, and I get Hero quite often. So here is my simplified strategy:

1. Ignore the Totems of the Outlands and proceed immediately to the inner ring. Most people get distracted punching them, but what you really need at the start is Talespun Essence, the most basic material - this is actually the main roadblock for basically everything. Ideally, you should return to your castle with at least 18 Talespun Essence.
2. Once you have finished your first Talespun run - or died - kill a Totem of the Outlands, then run back.
3. The first thing you buy should be a weapon. I use the spear, Anagnorisis, because of its charge - it makes you hard to hit in PVP, and, more importantly, it makes you faster moving around the map. Claim to Heroism is a game of speed, so this is important. The wand is not fast, but it can get a lot of cheap shots on other players and on bosses using its meteor special, which is entertaining. (The meteor special also has a finicky unique cooldown which means, if you're up for the complexity, that you can shoot a meteor and then immediately switch back to your main weapon, only using the wand when its meteor cooldown is up.) The bow and the dagger are not very good, in my opinion. The bow's role is range, but it doesn't actually have much range, and it's finicky to aim. (Furthermore, the spear and wand are arguably better at range due to their special attacks.) The dagger attacks in an area around you, but not a big one, and its special ability eats weapon charges to a frankly absurd degree.
4. However, these are not good at default. One level of song 2 is crucial. I try to get two levels of song 1 early and not level song 1 further; the bonus speed is very important. Once you have two of song 1 and one of song 2, you should push song 2 to level 3; this gets you 20 weapon charges and an extra hit point, giving you a significant edge in PVP. After this you can kind of pick whatever, although I lean into song 3; song 1 is quite costly to get to another speed level, song 2's max ability isn't very useful before Hero Phase, and song 4 is a lot of expensive gimmicks that aren't super useful.
5. Once you have your initial song loadout, you can fight more freely. You should continue to collect Talespun Essence whenever possible, but you'll need to kill multiple bosses of each type. I prefer to save the cyan boss for after the 10-minute mark; its high health and central location mean that you're fairly likely to be swarmed by other players trying to claim it, unless the center is devoid of any, but if you wait to kill it, you'll get 3 Ruptured Time instead of 2, which is enough to hit the requirement on its own without requiring another kill. It's also important to note that you need six player kills to make Hero. This part is more skill than knowing a guide; you just have to get a feel for when to strike. (For instance, if there's two players close together fighting, it's not a good idea to jump in; you'll probably die.)

If you don't make Hero, that's fine, but you're not super likely to win. In most of the rounds I observe, the Hero wins; you need all the other players to be good (not reliable in a pfinder group) to be able to beat them, and Heroes are usually competent because they were competent enough to deal with Resource Phase. You don't really have time to consider upgrades during Hero Phase, and absolutely don't have time to kill mobs and collect resources (unless it's really useful, and convenient), but if you can, try to get song 2 to rank 4, as this makes you respawn faster, and you will die very often during Hero Phase. You can also, if the stars align, pick up the wand as a second weapon if it wasn't your first. Meteors are great at harassing Heroes.

If you do make Hero:

• Tisaun is in the middle of the road. He has a wider attack than the other two, but it takes longer to charge. His special ability gives him invincibility and attack reflection, but it has a short duration and a long cooldown, requiring delicate timing (note that reflecting a Meteor saves you three HP and instantly kills the person who it hit). Notably, as he loses health, his attack cooldown reduces and range increases.
• Lari, unexpectedly, is the tank; she has 20% regen on damage, which means that as long as her health isn't swarmed quickly, she effectively has an extra 9 health. Her main attack is pretty good - it's longer-range, piercing, fast, has a chance to instantly recharge - but her special attack isn't, I think, and it's also bugged. I haven't played her much.
• Siegfried is a trickster. His attack is short-range, but it moves him when he uses it, making it harder to target him and reducing the vulnerable chase period between castles. He has less health overall than the other two heroes, but it's portioned out with many phases of invincibility (with accompanying boosted health and damage) and he can do a fairly good AoE attack which slows people it hits.

And one last note: this year, Claim to Heroism has had connection issues, and if people disconnect during the round, it often causes Ruinous Defenders, the red bosses, to disappear, and never spawn again. This case can't be planned for, and if it occurs, you're kneecapped if you hadn't already collected all your red, since almost every upgrade requires it. (Collecting red early isn't my strategy, since Ruinous Defenders are fairly tanky, and they're likely to be contested.) There is one out - you can start running around the outer ring of the arena, hunting down the red variants of Graphomaniacs. This is slow, unless there's only 5 minutes on the clock; however, it's possible that the other players won't know to do this, or even notice the red bosses stopped spawning, meaning that if none of them hit their red targets you might have a free win. For best effect, do this with the spear (although you can't buy a second weapon without red), and with all four levels of the first song (none of them cost red, although the final level with the second speed level costs Ruptured Time, the cyan resource). You can also use this method to try to catch up if you found yourself getting beaten severely in PVP and losing progress; people don't hunt in the outer ring, usually, so as long as you don't happen to run into someone while they're going home (which is, admittedly, fairly common), you should be safe. (The spear will help you escape if you aren't. You can only be chased if the other person has a spear, and they'll tread water if your speed levels are equal. You'll probably spend most of the time in the lead, assuming you charged and they took a second to charge after you, and they essentially cannot hit you, since they'll be on cooldown from charging, and if they do a regular attack instead of charging you get away, unless you were on one HP, and even then only if you're hit.)

 

thank you for the guide but I'm still not gonna play
my main issue is that I'm not good enough to ever get hero, so I never win and also CtH is so laggy for me that if someone uses the dagger my game effectively crashes.

 

Lag's been a trouble. Scaling down your render distance can help; you don't really need that much in CtH, since the arena is fairly small and you have limited range on seeing other players anyway.

It's still fun to try for Hero even if I don't get it.