Heroes
Many of the paid heroes are extremely powerful for what they do. Granted, the player needs to pay money to obtain them. Highlights include:
- When it comes to destroying enemy structures or capturing objectives without being detected, Fate shines like no other. With Chameleon Cloak, she becomes completely invisible to enemies, and with Demolition Expert she can plant an extremely powerful remote controlled bomb. She's Difficult, but Awesome to use, having a steep learning curve, but once the player knows how to, she can easily sneak into an area, plant a bomb, then get out of there easily. Furthermore, she's able to break certain levels with ease, such as Mission 3 (once the turret tutorial is over, get Fate towards the enemy base, cloak when she moves up the slope, bomb the base, drop a Dropgun on it and target it to finish off what remains of its health) and Mission 11 (she can be easily dropped at the other side of the ending area of the level allowing her to take it from behind).
- Dr. Graaff. His first ability switches him from assault to assist modes, and spawns drones that help him attack or heal with 4 maximum. In Assault mode, Graaff's normal attack hits for very huge damage per hit, busts structures easily, and his drones easily shred most enemies. In Assist mode, the drones heal him and his allies incredibly quickly. Graaff's other ability is to sacrifice a drone to cause extreme damage to a targetnote when fully leveled and on Normal difficulty, it's enough to two-shot the Heavily Armored Giant Mooks that are Hammergrubs, Nortrons and Surge Protectors (nearly destroying in the former's case), instakill Grimcrushers and Taskmasters, and off most structures in 1-4 shots which has near-instant recharge and can be used as long as he has drones, which are replenished quickly. Fully leveling him up allows him to spawn two drones at one go, have 5 drones out at maximum, and gives him a metric ton of health. His downsides are that he's the slowest hero in the game as well as having the shortest primary attack range.
- For a mid-priced hero, Trabuco surprisingly shines, especially after the Borealis update. Like Dr. Graaff, his first ability is switching between modes, which in his case, switching between shotgun and laser mode. His shotgun mode has decent range and hits for strong area damage, destroying weak swarms in 1-2 hits. His rifle mode has similar range to a sniper, deals far more damage than a sniper's non-instakill shot (he can instakill a Jackbot and 2-shot most Raad with it at maximum level), it has a comparably faster firing rate, pierces all armor and some shields like the Ion Troopers' thanks to being a laser, and doesn't get a damage reduction against structures making him an excellent Ranger/Sniper hybrid. Moreover, he has decent armor and fast-recharge healing ability, the latter which upgrades include giving you a damaging aura and a lobbing projectile. To top it off, he has a passive ability of randomly cheating death, and that's already on top of not taking extra melee damage and outright ignoring some damage for his passive upgrades. The only adversaries in the entire game that Trabuco fares badly against are Raad Portals, since they take 20 individual hits from any source to die and he has a slow fire rate.
- Mark X is the most expensive hero in the entire game, and is well worth it. On the whole, it's powerful, durable, and fast. With Daredevil Crew, it can put out an entire (temporary) squad of troopers that deal huge damage with their gauss shotguns and grenades. With Deadly Cloud, it can run around the enemies leaving behind a Deadly Gas cloud which drains enemy health while reducing their attack and armor making them easy pickings for the troops, and it also recharges relatively fast compared to most skills. Its passives allow it to move faster and permanently reduce enemy armor by one each time it hits them. Finally, it's also one of the very few units in the game that averts Do Not Run with a Gun, being able to move and use their normal attack at the same time. However, it costs twice the price of the game itself.
- Blue Dragon is just as expensive as Mark X and is also worth it. Thanks to piloting a Cool Starship, she flies extremely quickly as the fastest hero in the game. Melee enemies can't do jack to her and she can move over gaps and hazardous terrain to infiltrate and destroy key areas (the Fenrir lair supports in "33 Seconds" are an excellent example since the Alpha Fenrirs can't hit her). Ultrablast can be used even during recharge, is ridiculously painful even when not fully charged and has an up to 50% chance to One-Hit Kill an enemy. Techbot Copilot has a really short cooldown, heals 80% of her max HP over a short while and gives her protection. Her passive Iron Eagle provides her with Anti-Structure and Anti-Air capabilities. Finally, like Mark X and the dropgun with legs, she's also capable of attacking while on the move. In short, she's a Lightning Bruiser who's specialized in killing high HP mooks (especially Airborne Mooks) and structures very well and can avoid melee combat effectively. Her only weakness is that she lacks AoE and is therefore less effective against swarms.
Units
- Without upgrades, Diplomats can only cast shields on your allies and stun enemies. However, even without upgrades, they're crucial in keeping your squad alive. Their shield makes your allies completely invulnerable, while their stun ability can be used to stunlock enemies, including the Lightning Bruiser miniboss Fell Bishop. Their exclusive upgrades include longer shield duration and remote sentries that can attack and distract enemies. The only drawback is that they walk rather slowly compared to the footmen units.
- Guardians have decent speed and no armor, but they have a surprising amount of health and deal incredible damage to even the toughest of grounded mooks thanks to their psi blades bypassing armor and even shields, allowing them to slice apart things like Grimcrushers, Hammergrubs, Nortrons, Surge Protectors, Geon Enforcers and small groups in short order especially with Celerity. Ranged mooks are slaughtered even faster thanks to taking extra melee damage. Their high damage also makes them very good against structures. The Guardians' weakness is that they can't hit Airborne Mooks, but against grounded foes they're pretty much second to none when it comes to destroying them fast. Just make sure to keep them in good HP.
- Snipers. They provide just fine enough support during the first world but are vulnerable to melee hordes of Fell. However, they truly get to shine in the second world. Their upgrades include ignoring enemy armor and chance to instakill, and it just so happens that most of the enemies in the second world have armor. Furthermore, the Peripheroids don't swarm as much as the Fell do and only two of them use Melee attacks (Nortron and Inductor), meaning that the snipers are relatively safe. They may have no armor themselves and are extremely vulnerable to melee, but paired with Diplomats for defense and Engineers to remove the Taskmasters (which Snipers are highly ineffective against), and the second world becomes a cakewalk. Subverted in the third world, however, where Fenrirs will tear them to shreds thanks to their massive numbers, Grav Carriers will destroy them with their Area of Effect Damage Over Time attacks while Quantum Carriers will fire slow moving death balls, both of which will force you to move your Snipers and cancel their attack.
- If you want to utterly destroy Mr. Rob070 with ease, Channelers are your best bet. Just amass all Channelers as your units and the first two phases are downed very quickly thanks to their increasing damage over time when focused on a target, and the fact that Mr. Rob070 doesn't even move in those two phases. They also flat-out counter the Chasing Your Tail lasers in the third phase by virtue of being the fastest units in the game. You'll however want to pair them up with a healer character such as a maxed out Paragon or Dr. Graaff and use the Drop Turret to distract the flunkies, because they're also very fragile.
