Although there are more than 30 heroes in Returners, some of them are not used as much. There may be a number of reasons behind it, but the biggest one is usually a disappointing skill set that doesn’t do much in battle.

The best example of these less popular heroes is Cheoyong. He is an AoE mage who inflicts terror upon enemies and possesses powerful CC that is very advantageous in battle. Terror is the longest-lasting CC and allows you to freely attack your enemies.

Even so, Cheoyong is not widely used in the game. That may seem unusual given how powerful his CC is; so why is he unpopular despite this?

Terror is a powerful CC skill to have, but players simply don’t like it that much

One of the biggest reasons why Cheoyong is not really favored is because many players don’t like terror in general.

Terror can incapacitate a target for a longer time than any other CC skills, but the target doesn’t stay in the same spot while under the effect of the skill. A terrorized target runs aimlessly around the battlefield, and if any ally heroes are targeting that enemy, they will follow the target; this can cause your team to be split up.

Furthermore, the core tactic of the popular wombo combo is to gather all enemies into one spot, and terror does the complete opposite. Even though it is effective for destroying the enemy formation, a broken enemy arrangement doesn’t really contribute to victory.

The fact that he possesses two terror skills, which are relatively inferior to other CC skills, is probably the biggest reason why he is not selected as often.

Disappointing DPS and skill set

His terror skills aren’t the only reason he is not favored. He was originally designed as an AoE mage who neutralizes targets with powerful CC and attacks. The problem is that this type of heroes lacks basic attack capabilities.

Cheoyong’s basic MAG ATK is ranked quite low, and his ATK SPD is 0.65, which is similar to most skill-based mages. Although his 70% Crit DMG is the highest alongside Dracula, his Crit Rate is 4%; this is the lowest among all mages, so you can’t expect much from his auto attacks.

His skill damage is not that great either. As an AoE mage, his ability to hit multiple targets leads to weaker skill scaling as his skills are upgraded. The main problem is that an AoE mage needs to hit multiple targets at once, but terrorized targets spread out; Cheoyong’s terror skills actually make his AoE skill less effective.

So whenever Cheoyong is on a team, the other heroes need to go after the terrorized target since Cheoyong himself cannot deal that much damage. However, this is not a viable option since it’d be more effective to just select a hero who can stun the target.

The son of the East Sea Dragon King; will his day ever come?

There are a number of proposed improvements for Cheoyong. One is to replace his second normal skill with a stun rather than terror since both the second skill and ultimate skill already have terror. Of course, this will reduce the duration of his CC, but will also prevent his first skill from being hindered by the terror and enable team members to make better use of Cheoyong’s skills.

However, if his image as a terror mage cannot be discarded because of his background, his other characteristics need to stand out more. Some examples would be: increasing the range of his first skill, increasing his firepower as an AoE mage by scaling up his skills or reducing the cooldowns of his terror skills.

The balance of all characters is interconnected, so one small change may possibly bring major consequences, and thus it is quite difficult to adjust them without thoroughly considering all other characters. If an unfavored hero, however, is modified to some extent, more diverse tactics and team compositions will become available.