This guide is meant to give a rough outline of characters post 2.3 patch so you don't go spending your hard earned skulls on someone you won't like or who won't pair well with how your friends build or who they play. I'll outline each character's strengths and weaknesses, play style, and who I think they pair well with. This is just a rough guide since I only recently got to rift lord status, and if anyone has anything they'd like added, just tell me in the comments.

Max is a good all rounder who is easy to pick up for starting players. His basic attack is decent at knocking out hordes of small minions, his stunning bolt gives him decent CC, can't touch this is a good damage mitigator for gnolls and other hero seeking minions, and his in your faces is great for target damage. Because of your basic attack's spread it isn't a great idea to sit back and snipe like ivy would, Max is much more close range than a lot of other ranged heros, which is why youll need can't touch this if things start getting out of hand. With calculated use of all his well rounded abilities, its fairly easy to get through most matches, although his damage seemed to fall off compared to other heroes. Max is a good choice for people just trying to find what they like to play or people who need to fill one or two roles your team may not have.

Pairs well with: Midnight

Midnight players will likely appreciate Max's Stunning bolt for some extra damage, and being more mobile, will find his passive much more useful for killing more enemies at the choke point she'll need to fall back to after she needs health and mana.

Does not pair well with: Dobbin

Dobbin makes a ton of money, and Max spends less than anyone else on traps, with two people competing for trap slots, it could get rather irritating for both players to try to race to see who can get more traps out, only to hit trap cap way too early in the match, to pair well using them, you really need to talk out your traps and have a good mix of cheap and very expensive ones to upgrade your trap boxes later on.

Gabriella is a decent damage ranged arcane user. Most of her abilities involve battlefield control, and because of her kinetic blast, she'll need to stay near her traps to get the most out of the ability. Setting up narrow, destructive chokepoints is a must for Gabby, and the use of barricades is strongly encouraged (although, personally I couldn't imagine not having barricades for any hero). her mana pool is dreadfully low so packing mana regen items is very useful. You'll want to be sure to save kinetic blast for large hordes as it has a long cooldown timer, luckily you can layer enemies together with your allure ability and then make your blast much more effective. blink also gives you an escape option if you need to bail on a fight thats too much.

Pairs with: Stinkeye and Oziel

Stinkeye and Oz also do arcane damage, meaning you can stack an enemies debuff to it and dish out serious damage, Stinkeye's slow totem and Oz's jar also give you the chance to slow enemies since tar traps won't be as effective for Gabby as ones that deal damage or at least have a reset timer like concussive pounder.

Doesn't pair well with: Smolder

Gabby's allure becomes useless if smolder sets eveyone on fire. The fire DOT will knock enemies out of the trance almost immediately. For these two to work together well it takes a lot of communication as to when smolder is out of mana or when Gabby is going to allure.

Blackpaw is your starting melee hero, his mana and health are both fairly high, and his damage isn't too shabby either. He's a pretty effective tank with the regen of his go for the throat, especially combined with his wound the prey ability. Your call from beyond is also good for when there's a large group of enemies and pounce is great for getting out of a fight thats too much or for catching up to those pesky kobolds.

Pairs well with: Control heroes

Having no control abilities himself, you really need a solid controlling hero to support him, tundra and hogarth are my personal picks since they can easily throw ice debuffs and you wont block their shots like you would ranged heroes. Although really any hero with a slowing or stunning ability is a good pick here.

Doesn't pair well with: Healers

Healers are great and all, but since you can heal yourself they likely wont do much to help you out, and they won't be supporting you to their full potential.

Hogarth is by far the tankiest hero, with a lot of control due to his ice typing and aggro draw. (he seems to be glitched at the moment as more minions will attack him than any other hero, an upgrade that seems to always trigger even without getting it.) his catch ability can do pretty hefty target damage and ambush is ideal for getting rid of archers or getting out of battle once your health is too low. His shield also gives him even more tankiness. His passive was recently reworked so that now hitting enemies makes his damage increase, a welcome change since it used to be when you were hit but freezing enemies makes you get hit less.

Pairs well with: healers

Healers can really help Hog out when he's throwing down with a bunch of enemies, and if you have Cy or Ivy with mana heal, it's even better since Hog's mana pool is pretty lousy.

Doesn't pair well with: Tundra

You'd think having more ice debuffs would be great, but in practice, it doesn't quite work out that way, with both of you tanking and ice debuffing, Tundra wont pick up his double freeze duration as much and youll have to rely on a lot of strategic damage traps to actually take out the minions, slowing them is helpful, but, at some point it's just prolonging the inevitable.

Skull cost: 6000

Worth it?
As one of the cheapest heroes, he's not bad, especially if you need someone stopping or slowing minions, but personally, I say no since I would much rather play Tundra even with the price difference.

Smolder is, as of this patch, the only hero that is fire type. (excluding Zoe obviously) Most of her abilities trade high point damage for DOT. Her basic attack is lackluster compared to other ranged heroes but her dragon's breath is pretty great. She really excels at throwing down against large hordes of minons and kobolds. Incinerate gives her a bigger chance of beating large enemies, and her revival passive makes up for her lack of escape methods even though heart of flame does give her a movement speed buff. With carefully constructed killboxes full of naptha and fire traps, ending in lightning traps for AOEs, smolder can decimate a lot of minions and even bosses (although you have to be lucky enough to pull those from chests)

Pairs well with: Good burst damage, Dobbin

Midnight and bionka do really well as clean up crews for the big enemies that can withstand smolder's trap setups, as does Oz and some other heroes. Dobbin paired with Smolder can generate tons of coin and unchained through combos.

Doesn't pair well with: Gabby

Gabby's allure is completely canceled by fire unless you have the lv 10 perk that makes it persist through damage, but during earlier waves it can limit how much control Gabby has.

Skull price: 6000

Worth it?

For the only fire type in the game, definitely, her trap setups can be incredible and she can do tons of damage if she has a decent build.

Cy is a good ranged hero who works best far away from the battlefield. His basic attack is fairly strong and super accurate, but it has a slow projectile speed and also costs mana. His lightning staff is great at dispatching kobolds and hitting a lot of enemies, and since it has no travel time, it's really easy to aim. Both of his other abilities are for setups, his pylon buffs traps in a small radius for a short time, and his rift heals health and mana. His rift also triggers the passive rift lord which doubles his damage output. Cy is a really good hero for providing cover fire for melee heroes while healing them and buffing traps. Cy is also my personal favorite support hero, but be sure to watch out when you're low on mana, which will likely happen often.

Works well with: heroes that need supporting

Dobbin is one of my favorite partners as Cy, dobbin lays down tons of traps that Cy buffs and he can heal Dobbin's health and mana, keeping him in the fight longer. Cy works well with most characters, as his rift gives heroes a point they can fall back to and heal up behind the more effective traps.

Doesn't work well with: Ivy and Blackpaw

Ivy already has a healing ability that can heal mana later on, so having them both on a team is a tad too much support, and Blackpaw can sometimes need supporting but usually he can do his own thing and won't need your rift.

Skull cost: 6000

Worth it?

I think so, he's the cheapest support character and is really good at it, and he gets even better with mana wells near his position, but if you play with Ivys a lot, you may want to consider someone else.

Stinkeye is a very complex arcane damage hero. His abilities focus around totems, one that buffs your speed and debuffs enemies speed, and another that is a turret. His last abiliy is a hefty damage arcane AOE that charges for a few seconds and then explodes. Since patch 1.8, Stinkeye was reworked significantly and his passive (the unique part of him that really made him a difficult character to play) has been changed. He now simply sets up totems at strategic points and is a much more straightforward hero. Be careful, after the rework his totems are a lot larger but his turret totem is now on a timer and it dispells after a few seconds.

Pairs well with: Gabriella and Oziel

Gabby and Oz will help him keep his totems and his own damage up by using arcane magic, and he can help them with speed boosts and speed traps for enemies.

Doesn't pair well with: Not sure

I haven't tested stinkeye out in a lot of multiplayer so I don't know who he doesn't go well with, and i cant really call it just looking at everyones abilities. if you have a suggestion for this leave me a tip.

Skull cost: 9000

Worth it?

He's a very stratigic hero who can benefit a lot from chokepoints and give a tiny bit of assistance in other lanes with his speed totem, I feel like his latest rework was a bit of a setback, but he's still enjoyable to play.

Bloodspike is a very complicated hero that requires careful use of skills to make the most out of. His abilities range from simple damage dealing swings to buffs and stuns. His basic attack has terrible cleave compared to other melee heroes but his secondary hits everything in a wide arc, and he gets stacks of bloodbath that increase his damage when he hits enemies with it. He also has an ase throw which hits everything in front of him at a short range. Bloodspike's passive gives enemies a chance to drop delicious meals which heal him. HIs last two abilities are enrage and execute. Enrage buffs Bloodspike's attack and movement speed, and also increases his health for a short duration. Execute is where his complexity really shines though. execute instantly kills a minion and leaves a delicious meal. It also stuns everything in a radius around the executed minion. Minions really become a resource for bloodspike as he needs one to be able to excecute to stun more dangerous things like bosses and mercenaries.

Pairs well with: not sure

Bloodspike is far from my main and I honestly am just not sure who he would work with, leave suggestions in the comments and I'll gladly test out some combos to see what clicks.

Doesn't pair well with: not sure



Skull cost: 9000

Worth it?

Bloodspike was recently nerfed (his execution used to work on everything but bosses, including enemy heroes and unstable rifts) but now he's not so broken and requires a lot more finesse to play effectively, He's not a bad hero though and if you want to put the time into learning him it'll probably be a lot more gratifying.

Midnight is a very mobile character, able to enter the fray just as quickly as she can leave. she has incredible burst damage and is best used as a hit and run hero. Her prowl makes her invisible and buffs her movement speed, and it also adds a stun effect to the next ability used. (which disables prowl) Her passive lets her do 50 percent more damage to stunned minions, so stunning a boss and swiping a couple times only to go into prowl again after the boss is no longer stunned. Her other abilities are a damaging dash and a flip that deals huge damage to a single minion. The dash can be used during prowl to stun a line of enemies. I recommend taking concussive pounders when playing midnight to maximize your passives usefulness.

Pairs well with: Maximillian, Bloodspike

Max and Bloodspike work well because the stunning bolt and stunning execution let midnight deal huge damage to even more minions. Other heroes working with midnight may want to take upgrades to stun minions.

Doesn't pair well with: Oziel

Midnight and Oz both are great at taking out high value targets, but until later levels, neither is particularly good at taking out hordes, and you really need to take out both.

Skull price: 9000

Worth it?

Her damage output is pretty great and she has good map presence with her speed, on later levels where you may have trouble with bosses, she could be a great teammate. I recommend her.

Dobbin has two things going for him, money, and map presence. Dobbins dust storm slows enemies and makes them lose a lot of physical armor. It also makes enemies have a chance of dropping bags worth 250 gold. (Dust storm seems to be bugged right now, supposed to drop coins on death but it drops coins when enemies are hit in its radius) His dynamite does damage in a radius and gives enemies a chance to drop bags of gold. and his shovel doesn't have a ton of damage but it cleaves through a lot. His last ability is mineshaft, which creates a tunnel from one point in the map to another, which gives you and your allies easy access to places you would normally have to walk all the way to.

Pairs well with: Cygnus, Bionka

Cy can capitalize on the many traps dobbin can place by upgrading them with his pylon, and Bionka's slow movement speed and awful map presence is aided a lot by dobbins mineshafts.

Doesn't pair well with: Maximillian

Max and Dobbin will compete for trap slots, and running out of trap slots early can cause an early loss too, especially on endless and later levels. Using more expensive traps can stop this problem from happening.

Skull price: 9000

Worth it?

If you like making tons of money and building up insane trap rooms, definitely go for dobbin, he's fairly easy to play too (cept mineshaft placement but you learn as you go)

Ivy is an accurate ranged support character boasting a lot of skills very useful for teammates. Her heal is usually a pretty big boon to anyone standing near you. She also has a root ability that stops enemies for a few seconds giving her a measure of control on the field, and her piercing shot gives some damage along with knockback for even more control (especially on endless since freezing and other control abilities fall off eventually). Ivy was buffed with patch 2.2 giving her more healing on allies, and more self healing as well if she's built for it. It also gives her a better penatrating shot upgrade (reduces mana cost by -20 instead of -15) but increased the reach of roots cooldown by 2 seconds.

Pairs well with: heroes that need supporting

There's a lot of melee heroes that find themselves needing health a lot, not to mention if they get past them your ranged heroes may need healing as well. Her control can help a lot of heroes like blackpaw and smolder who don't have stuns or slows.

Doesn't pair well with: other supports

If you have a Cy you don't particularly need an Ivy, and too much healing or control will actually stop your team from doing what you're supposed to, making orcs die.

Skull price: 9000

Worth it?

With the new buffs, if you really wanna go mostly support, Ivy is definitely a solid pick. If you plan on playing a lot of sabotage she's one of the best picks for it, the knockback on her penatrating shot can save a team during overtime.

Oz is a complicated hero for me. He was recently changed in patch 2.3. His passive now makes him get 5% bonus mana each level. His basic attack has lifesteal equal to 4% of his max health, and his wraith surge can deal massive amounts of damage after he has cast it a few times (the damage and mana cost go up each time it hits an enemy). His jar of souls is one of his most useful abilities as it gives him some CC and AOE damage over time. Haunting spirits is a very complicated ult though, it now has no cooldown time, but instead, you have to gather 75 souls to use it (you gather souls by standing near an enemy as it dies).

Pairs well with: Gabriella and Stinkeye

Arcane users always go well together, each sucessive hit on a target deals more damage for arcane users.

Doesn't pair well with: Midnight

Midnight and Oz both have really good damage output on single targets, but neither can really fight big hordes (midnight is better at it than Oz, but still not as good as other heroes)

Skull price: 12000

Worth it?

Only if your friends main gabby and stinkeye. Although i haven't played him enough post patch to judge very well.

Bionka is a BEAST. She has the highest damage of any hero in the game, and her basic attack has incredible cleave for good horde control. Her slam it down works very well on tougher enemies, bosses, and unstable rifts. Her bounce gives her a small measure of control and beat dem back is great for knockback and heavy damage to a line of enemies. Be aware of her very slow movement speed as she has very little map presence, and likely won't be able to catch up to kobolds if they slip past her. This can be countered with excessive use of tar traps though. Bionka's damage was dramatically nerfed in patch 1.7 (around 40% of her damage was taken away) BUT even with that dramatic damage debuff she's still a pretty incredible hero with a ton of damage.

Pairs well with: Bloodspike and Dobbin

Dobbin's mineshaft gives Bionka the map presence she really needs and bloodspike can easily take out heroes and unstable rifts, things that may take bionka a long time to walk over to.

Doesn't pair well with: multi-lane maps

If Bionka has to cover multiple lanes that can't be contained in a single chokepoint, she really suffers since the minions will have likely moved halfway to the rift by the time she gets there, it makes me think that she is more of an early game crutch than someone who you can use through the whole game. To nullify this, I recommend packing a lot of speed potions if you need to lane swap.

Skull price: 12000

Worth it?

Even after the large (and well deserved) debuff, she's still a beast who can lock down a lane from most enemies, I recommend her.

Tundra is a melee control hero with most of his abilities focusing around freezing. His basic attack is a large sweep making it easy to hit and freeze a lot of enemies and his secondary is 3 ice shards, giving him a ranged attack that can quickly freeze smaller enemies. He can also roll into a snowball giving him increased mobility and a good way to damage a line of enemies that may have made it past him. He can also instantly freeze all the enemies in a cone in front of him with his flash freeze. His passive also doubles his damage to frozen enemies and doubles the time that enemies are frozen. His last ability is a wall that blocks enemies paths. It's his most interesting ability since if you stack all the minions into one lane he can stop all of them while the wall is up.

Pairs well with: high damage heroes

Any high damage hero will greatly benefit from tundras ability to stack all the minions in one place with his wall, Gabby is also good since she can reactivate all the traps for the group.

Doesn't pair well with: Hogarth

The two of these make a lousy pair because hogarth will be freezing enemies too, making your passive a lot less useful, and the amount of control can't make up for the lack of damage.

Skull price: 12000

Worth it?

I like tundra a lot, his control is incredible, has good map presence, and has a good variety of skills, but, you may like to just kill stuff, and thats not really the point of Tundra.

Zoey is a fun hero that's all about the thrill of gambling. Her basic attack changes every time you use an ability that isn't feebee's Wrath (which does a lot of DOT in a big AOE). She swaps types between fire, ice, lightning, and arcane, and the only one that you can't swap to is the one you are. (you can't go into lightning type from lightning type) her passive is her pet feebee who will attack as a turret that is always next to Zoey using her current magic type. She has chaos blast which does damage in her current school of magic in a cone in front of her. Her book club does physical damage and knockback, and her trial and error gives her a random buff or debuff and changes her magic type. Each time you change types you get a power debuff but a large attack speed buff for 4 seconds. If luck is on your side she can be incredible, if it's not, well... she still won't do too bad, I guess.

Pairs well with: Control heroes

With no control of her own (save for book club's knockback) she can really use the help of someone holding minions back so she can get her buffs, change schools, or just kill those anoying kobolds.

Doesn't pair well with: trying to keep her a single type

That's just gonna get you in trouble, she's made to be a lot of damage types in one hero, although it may benefit her a lot to be arcane in some situations, but adaptability is key when using zoey, you gotta roll with what she gives you.

Skull price: 12000

Worth it?

I prefer more focused heroes, which Zoey definitely is not, but if you have fun rolling the dice, she's most definitely the hero for you.

Temper is a fairly complex hero requiring, well, anger management. His passive makes him never gain mana, instead, he gains rage when he attacks minions, the bigger the pool of anger he has the more damage he does. His abilities also use rage instead of mana. His basic attack is a 3 step combo of a jab, swipe, then uppercut, where the swipe has the best cleave and will usually generate the most rage. His secondary is a thrown hammer that expodes and knocks back enemies that are hit by it. He has a dash that also knocks back enemies in his path. His happy place ability heals him and grants a movement speed buff which is super useful for getting out of a tough fight (for a quicker getaway you can use his dash as well.) His final ability slams his hammers down for significant damage and lights an area on fire. All of his abilities have a fairly small cooldown timer but using them often and at the right moments is the key to success with Temper. If his rage meter maxes out, he detonates, dealing massive damage in a large radius but also losing all of his rage and lessening his damage until you can build it back up.

Works well with: Smolder, With his upgrade that resets traps and the fact that he can set enemies on fire, these two can pull of some good tricks together with solid communication about when smolder will incinerate.

Doesn't work well with: Mana healing heroes. Since he has no mana, he can't be affected by anyone who heals mana for him, so Cy and Ivy with her weaver upgrade aren't going to do much in the way of mana healing, he still needs health but he has a good ability for getting it so Temper doesn't particularly need heavy support. He also won't benefit from mages picnic either, or mana clover if you equip yourself with it.

Cost: 12000 skulls

Worth it?

His basic attack combo can be a little irritating at times with the really low damage on his first few swings, but he's a very fun hero to play. I mean, flailing your arms around with rainbows coming off of you charging into battle is probably one of the best things I've ever seen.

Deadeye is a quick firing ranged hero. She mostly focuses on basic attacks which is nice since theyre really accurate and fire very quickly, but all of her abilities have good synergy when used together. her bramble slows enemies and damages them, giving you a few extra shots on minions, it works especially well if you can be perpendicular to a funneling point since the bramble is placed in a straight line perpendicular to where you are facing. Her bouncing bomb is nice for taking out groups before you can trigger her passive infamous, which makes your arrows explode on impact after you get a certain number of kills, and later she can use it to stun enemies to give them more time in her line of fire. her dodge roll ability gives her extra damage on her primary for a few seconds after she rolls and its a good way of getting away if some gnolls get too close. Her last ability makes her take a knee and fire rapidly for high damage at enemies within her cone of fire.

Works well with: control heroes, Deadeye has a decent amount of control in her kit, but her basic attack doesnt have super high damage, having a group member with some CC will guarantee she can lay down as much fire as possible on her targets.

Doesn't work well with: Zoey, Zoey's role and deadeyes are very similar, and they both have low control, and they both have high attack speed as ranged heroes.

Cost: 12000 skulls

Worth it?

Shes one of my new favorites to play, with super quick attacks and AOE on her basic attacks, she can take out bosses easily with some time and small minions are no sweat for her.

I hope this guide may have helped you choose what hero you may want to pick up, and if not, let me know why, I'm thinking about adding in depth analysis of each heroes abilites or maybe adding my personal loadouts for them. Maybe even in another guide. I hope you enjoyed the first guide I've written, and I'll see you on the battlegrounds.

*images were used without permission from the official OMDU wiki*