If you have been playing Exos Heroes since launch, you probably already know some of the games most popular characters. However, there are loads of other strategies outside of Bathory and Zeon shields.

Here are some of our favorite characters with abilities that allow players to explore nuance battle strategies and, potentially, create hard-counters to raid encounters or certain PvP matchups.

Chati

[Nature – Defense – Physical]

Chati is an ideal choice for boss raids thanks to her high defense skills and supports abilities. Most players struggle during hard bosses due to not having enough support or barriers, but Chati can single-handedly make up for that lack. Chati's shields and her Dragon Scale of Order (Knight blessing) passive makes her a valuable character to support as she will almost always have a place in a raid composition.

She isn't popular because her damage is very low, but this drawback becomes less apparent when a team's primary damage-dealing characters become powerful on their own. In PvP, Chati can help your other team (who should be aiming at stuns and other forms of CC) avoid excessive AoE damage while gathering more mana. While Chati stalls, your other members can prepare to attack!

Emma

[Darkness – Support – Magical]

Emma is a support character, but she doesn't have any primary healing abilities. This makes her easy to use poorly as players may expect her to directly heal or support allies -- that isn't Emma's style. While Emma has access to Cleanse (useful!) her most powerful ability is Soul Capture.

Soul Capture does 375% damage to a single enemy. Soul Capture also decreases the targets attack by 58% of Emma's attack for 9 turns. This debuff means that Emma can effectively reduce damage from enemies while also focusing on dealing damage. Against single raid bosses that do large amounts of burst damage, Soul Capture can allow for fast DPS based strategies that still keep your core DPS characters alive.

Magi

[Fire – Attack – Magical]

Magi is already known as a decent AoE attack damage dealer and she gains mana efficiently and quickly. However, she doesn't dish out the same amount of raw damage as Bathory or Bernadette. Where Magi really excels, however, is breezing through the story mode content quickly.

Her AoE Abilities are cheap and essentially available every turn, meaning her pairing with other Fire elementals heroes can create quick turns that dish out tons of damage quickly to the swarms of enemies you usually face in filler story missions. Magi also has the ability  Head Dragon Knight, meaning she takes reduced damage from raid dragon breath attacks, which is also a bonus when trying to defeat phrase 3 of raid bosses.

Uloom

[Machine – Defense – Physical]

Uloom is a popular character (especially for high ranked PvP'ers), but mainly for his incredibly high defense stat (the highest in the game) and useful Machine elemental type. However, he has one of the lowest attack values in the game as well.

This is where abilities like Bathory's Tranquil Mark come in handy. Tranquil is a buff that various support heroes can provide. If Uloom has the Tranquil buff, both of his damaging abilities will randomly destroy 3 of the enemies' Guardian Stones. This means that Uloom, while not dealing tons of damage by himself, can play a vital role in tanking and subsequently setting up enemies for BREAK status and tons of damage by Uloom's DPS oriented allies.

Valentina

[Frost – Chaos – Magical]

Slots for Chaos characters are usually saved for either Jinai or Baileysh, but Valentina can do just as much damage as these other two characters if paired with Shufraken or any other character that can provide the Fear of the Abyss debuff to enemies. However, the damage Valentina deals is to the enemy's mana pool.

Both of her active skills Sharp Punishment and Cage of Despair burn 10 Mana to enemies affected by Fear of the Abyss -- this synergy must be utilized if you want to use Valentina to any sort of effectiveness.

Ramge

[Darkness – Support – Magical]

Ramge also benefits from the Fear of the Abyss debuff, but not in the most significant way. The debuff allows his active abilities to deal additional damage over time, but his real strength comes from his ability to completely nullify healing for 12 turns (it can't be removed).

Naturally, you want to have Ramge target enemy characters that rely on life steal or self-healing abilities. In addition, Ramge should also be focusing on whatever target the rest of your DPS is trying to take down, as negating healing on the target taking damage is much more useful than negating healing on a backline or auxiliary enemy.

What are your favorite Exos Heroes Characters?

Let us know about some of your favorite synergies or underutilized abilities in the comments section! For more Exos Heroes content, check out our official content portal here.