Aphidus, Frolni and Mezomel BUFFS – Test Server Preview

In today’s article we are diving onto the official Raid: Shadow Legends test server to get an early look at how three of the former worst Mythical champions in the game–Aphidus the Hivelord, Frolni the Mechanist, and Mezomel Luperfang–are performing after their much needed buffs. We are expecting these buffs to hit the live servers within the next day or two… So let’s take a look to see how big these buffs are!

NOTE: As of time of writing, we do not have access to the exact multiplier changes for these champions. Stay tuned on our official champion pages for the accurate stats once the patch drops to live servers.

Aphidus is the biggest winner from this set of buffs and is now a top tier mythical for Hydra Clan Boss and possibly more!

Aphidus’ first form saw base damage boosts to all his attacks. On top of this, his A3 now does 25% more damage to targets under any debuffs and his A2 ignores 25% defence baseline, with an additional 25% ignore defence against enemies under HP Burn debuffs. His A1 attack now places Decrease Defence debuff on enemies and a Perfect Veil buff on Aphidus.

The 50% ignore defence on his A2 is actually not quite as good as it sounds for Hydra though… From my testing in Hydra I had:

1. 25% ignore defence from his A2 baseline.
2. 25% ignore defence from his A2 against HP Burn Debuffs.
3. 35% ignore defence from 6-piece Merciless set.
4. 5% ignore defence from 2-piece Cruel set.
5. 20% ignore defence from Hydra Area Bonuses.
6. 25% ignore defence 50% of the time from Helmsmasher.

As you can see, from gear and area bonuses alone I have a guaranteed 60% ignore defence, so the 50% from his A2 is already overcapping by 10%, even without a Helmsmasher proc. I think ideally you would swap the 2-piece Cruel set for a Zeal set, but even so you will still overcap. Dropping Helmsmasher is an option too, but it’s a massive damage boost to his A1 and A3 which have no ignore defence and the other options aren’t particularly strong.

In short, I found that if you have your Ignore Defence Area Bonus levelled up, then it doesn’t matter if enemies are under HP Burn or not; he will be maxing out his ignore defence stat regardless!

I’ve been testing several notable Hydra damage-dealers recently on the test server, using the same team composition and the same stats against 100 turns of Brutal difficulty. Here’s how Aphidus compared:

1. 5-star Aphidus as the solo burner – 251m
2. 5-star Aphidus as the duo burner – 198m
3. 0-star Thor – 188m
4. 0-star Aphidus as the duo burner – 149m
5. Rathalos Blademaster – 133m
6. Michinaki – 127m
7. Skorid – 117m

As you can see, at 0-stars, Thor was the clear winner.

HOWEVER, as you can also see, I neglected to test 0-star Aphidus in a “solo burn” composition and, given that the “solo burn” comp outperformed the “duo burn” comp by over 50m damage at 5-star, I am confident in saying that a 0-star Aphidus “solo burn” comp should rival a 0-star Thor for damage. (The duo burn comp included Skraank and prioritised Aphidus’ A2; the solo burn comp included Whisper instead and prioritised Aphidus’ A3.)

In short: Thor is one of the best damage-dealers in the entire game for Hydra Clan Boss, and Aphidus in a “solo burn” team should be equally as good, if not better.

Aphidus’ alternate form received several changes as well.

1. His A1 now places Increase ACC for 2 turns on the ally with the highest ACC and fills their turn meter by 10%. This is a small but nice change.
2. His A2 now always places two 15% Continuous Heal buffs on all allies for 2 turns, alongside the 100% AoE Stun.
3. His A3 now places a 25% Strengthen buff on all allies for 2 turns alongside a 60% Increase DEF buff and an AoE Provoke debuff.
4. Finally, his passive’s chance to stun increased by 5%.

Putting this together, Aphidus is quite a strong protection champion for his team, bringing high uptime on Strengthen, Increase Defence, and Continuous Heals. There’s a strong case to be made here for a 9-piece Protection set as well thanks to him bringing 4-5 reliable buffs for 20%-25% damage boosts for your team. I think the comparison to Frolni’s alternate form is appropriate and Aphidus wins this hands down.

This form has always been extremely strong at crowd control and this has slightly improved with the better chance to Stun with his passive. He does lack buff strips, unlike Komidus Darksmile or Starsage Galathir, but he brings a similar level of lockdown potential if enemies are not protected by Block Debuffs, Stoneskin, or Polymorph.

The main downside of his alternate form hasn’t changed: if you build him as a strong damage dealer in form 1, he can never have the ACC or HP/DEF you would want for form 2.

Nonetheless, I think Aphidus is actually looking fairly juicy for arena now for many players: he brings HP Burn in form 1 if enemies have stoneskin; a self-buffing Increase Attack ignore defence nuke; and he can swap to form 2 for immense CC if enemies aren’t protected. It’s not top-tier, but I can see a lot of players finding a lot of use for him that might not have before.

The changes to Frolni’s base form are very simple: more damage across the board. However, not all skills gained damage equally.

From our testing, Frolni has received a large damage increase to his single-target attacks, with both his A1 and A2 doing about 50% more damage than before, which is a gigantic damage increase!

His AoE A3 in contrast, was only doing about 10% more damage in our testing.

This, in my opinion, leaves Frolni in a weird spot. He now has a huge single target nuke on his A2, but his A3 damage remains lacklustre. These buffs push you to playing your Frolni differently and you will likely now prioritise his A2 over his A3. This very much sets him apart from the norm… But is this a good thing?

The big comparisons for me here are the two top non-Mythical HP nukers in the game: Taras the Fierce and Wight King Narses. Both have strong single target hits like Frolni, with Taras’ bringing a Stun and Narses’ bringing a Block Revive. However, the BIG PROBLEM is that both of those champions ALSO bring a huge AoE attack and Frolni… simply doesn’t.

It seems to me that the design for Frolni is to secure single target kills with his A2 to scale his passive, then finish off revived champions with his A3. It’s a decent playstyle, and it has a useful niche spot, particularly against teams with squishy damage dealers. Let’s be honest though: I’d much rather have a Taras or a Narses who can destroy teams with either single-target OR Aoe with minimal effort, not to mention other mythicals such as Gizmak or Alaz.

NOTE: One very useful piece of tech that Frolni has (and which is even more reliable now) is that he can kill pesky Siegfrunds with his A2, since the first hit can proc and steal Siegfrunds passive cheat-death/Block Damage and his second hit can then kill him.

The changes to Frolni’s alternate form were very minimal: his A2 now hits a little bit harder. Unfortunately, since Frolni scales off DEF in form 2 and HP in form 1—and since you are going to be building him for form 1—he simply doesn’t do that much damage in form 2 even after this buff.

On top of this, his form 2 skillset remains extremely underwhelming: his A3 is simply an Ally Protection buff on his team and an Unkillable buff on himself, with a conditional Shield which scales off his DEF if allies are below 50% HP. It would’ve been nice to see the shield scaling off his HP, not having a condition, or perhaps having a Counter-attack buff for Frolni as well to utilise his A1 scaling.

As it is, I have not spent any of my precious Mythical Skill Tomes on my 6-star Frolni’s alternate form before his buff, and I’m not going to spend any on it afterwards either.

(A good way to think about mythical forms is how good they would be if they were a standalone champion: Galathir form 2 is clearly absolutely OP; Arbais form 2 is strong in niche cases; Frolni form 2 would almost never be used.)

Mezomel has received a damage boost to all her attacks in both of her forms, with an additional 15% ignore defence on her big form 1 Block Revive attack.

Unfortunately, we did not have a Mezomel on the live game to make a direct comparison like we did with Frolni.

From our testing of Mezomel, her damage in both forms now feels very good. The damage boost on her Block Revive is noticeable, and she can secure kills with it much more reliably now. The big thing to watch out for is champions in Reaction accessories, since failing to crit on even one of the hits can mean being short on damage. We found that she could one-shot fairly tanky champions such as Duchess Lilitu or Pythion, but that she still struggled against extremely tanky champions such as Ultimate Deathknight.

Her Form 2 now does much more respectable damage and feels like a good use of your time after using up her base form attacks in the arena. This form also completely demolished Doom Tower waves in our testing. The 2-turn True Fear debuff she can land is nothing to scoff at, but it does mean that she is at her strongest against wave-based content in Doom Tower or the Cursed City and she is weaker against boss enemies such as Hydra who are immune to it.

We found that her 27% Crit Rate Aura is also quite good for making use of her alternate form in wave-based content, since you can build her with 73% crit rate in arena and use her form 1 Increase Crit Rate buff to boost her to 100%, then use her aura to boost her to 100% for form 2 in Faction Wars and Doom Tower etc.

In short, while Mezomel is certainly not a top-tier mythical like Siegfrund, she feels a lot stronger now. Her Block Revive niche is a useful tool to add to your arsenal, and her second form puts out respectable damage as well. She basically has the exact same strengths and weaknesses as before, but will be more consistent at achieving those strengths.