Best Ally Protection Champions in RAID: Shadow Legends
Discover the best Ally Protection champions in RAID: Shadow Legends. Learn which champions protect your team and help survive difficult boss fights.
What Ally Protection Does in Raid
How the Ally Protection Buff Works
Ally Protection redirects 25% or 50% of the damage a champion will take to the champion who placed the buff. This is one of the absolute strongest forms of damage mitigation in the entire game, with the tradeoff of drastically increasing the damage the protecting champion will take–particularly if they are protecting multiple allies at once and there is high incoming AoE damage.
One fun interaction is if Ally Protection is Stolen by an enemy: the buff still redirects damage to the champion who placed it, so now the original team will be hurting their own teammate when attacking that enemy. Watch out for this in Hydra or Chimera Clan Bosses, since the Head of Mischief and the Viper Form can Steal buffs and you will quickly end up with a dead champion!
The Strange Interaction with C.DMG%
The strangest thing about how Ally Protection works is that redirected critical damage will scale off the Ally Protectors C.DMG%, not the original damage dealer’s.
This means a couple of important things:
- Ally Protection will be more effective than expected against high C.DMG% enemies (realistically, this is only in PvP content).
- If you build C.DMG% on your protector, it will drastically increase the damage they take.
In short, avoid building any C.DMG% on your protector unless you have a very good reason to (e.g. they have Block Damage self-buffs; you need to hit a threshold for Chimera; etc.)
Why Ally Protection Champions Are Valuable
Surviving High Damage Attacks
Ally Protection is very valuable against high damage attacks where it is very difficult to keep squishy champions alive. In situations where your damage dealer might be outright killed, a 50% damage mitigation effect can be the difference between a failed run and a highly successful one.
Bosses and PvP
The best places for Ally Protection are boss fights and PvP–though it is much more challenging to use it in PvP. For most players, the three Clan Bosses (Demon Lord, Hydra, and Chimera) will be the places where this is most often used.
Faction Wars is another good area, since your roster might be limited and lacking a reviver, making it even more important that you keep everyone alive at all times.
Boss fights are more forgiving, since you can tailor your team to handle that particular boss. PvP is much harder, since you will fight a very diverse scope of enemies and Remove Buffs is common; you will likely need very specific champions (some listed below!) in Protection gear to make it work.
Tips for Using Ally Protection Champions
Protect the Ally Protector
There will be extremely high damage coming in at your protector but it is essential to keep them alive despite this. If your protector dies, the buff drops and your team is left vulnerable.
Combine With Healing and Shields
Shields are an excellent way to boost the Effective MAX HP of you protector, letting them absorb more hits before dying. A good source of Healing is also essential in the likely scenario that damage gets through to their HP bar.
You can also make use of buffs such as Block Damage or Unkillable if you’re able to get them, as these provide incredible defenses to your protector–albeit usually with low uptime, so make sure to heal them up with the reprieve or they will simply die as soon as these buffs expire.
Best Ally Protection Champions in Raid
Here we’ve listed 10 of the most best Ally Protection champions in RAID: Shadow Legends. This list is not exhaustive, but it should steer you in the right direction for knowing what makes these types of champions so powerful! Check out our Champion Tier List for more info.
Gladewulf
Gladewulf is an incredible rare who was recently added to the game, bringing Ally Protection to a new budget level. He brings the big version of the buff alongside a self-buff Counterattack and a big Decrease SPD A1. His A2 is a Provoke as well, and his passive provides survivability. His stats are a bit low, but he’s an amazing option for all wave-based content progression and is an MVP for Fire Knight normal.
Miscreated Monster
Skullcrusher
Skullcrusher is another OG champion, bringing a team Counterattack buff on his 3-turn cooldown Ally Protection move. His Unkillable self-buff lets him easily survive any of the redirected damage. He opens up some unique team builds for Demon Lord, so check out dedicated Skullcrusher guides if you’re lucky enough to pull him while progressing on that boss!
White Dryad Nia
Nia is an all-rounder: her Ally Protection capability A3 is decent; her AoE A1 Decrease SPD is very nice; but it’s her CD-reducing A2 that is her biggest selling point. Nia brings lots of support to any team in any content, but make sure you jump imn on manual to deliver that cooldown reduction to whoever needs it most: reset a damage dealer for more damage; a reviver if teammates are dead; or reset a champion like Yumeko for some crazy reset chains.
Toragi the Frog
Toragi the Frog is perhaps the most versatile epic here, bringing a nice team Shield and tons of self-healing on his Ally Protection A3, a fantastic AoE Provoke A2 for waves, a great Decrease ATK A1 for bosses, and lots of Poisons on his passive. He’s a fantastic accesible option for all content where you need to keep your team alive.
Sniktraak
Krisk the Ageless
Krisk is the OG legendary protector–HellHades almost had a mental breakdown when trying to win him from an insane multi-day Champion Training Tournament. He brings tons of buffs and debuffs, and has unique value in being fantastic Mischief Tank in Hydra due to all his self-buffs, drawing the attacks of Mischief with a high-RES build to prevent Buff Steals. He can Increase Buff Duration as well, making him an incredible addition to teams who rely on high buff uptime, such as Increase RES teams.
Nekhret the Great
Nekhret is very unique in two different ways: firstly, he is a single-target protection specialist, only buffing one ally per A3; secondly, he can place his buffs automatically on your damage dealer at the start of the fight. He’s famous for the second part in PvP, where very few champions can keep damage dealers alive like he can. He’s not to be underestimated in PvE either, where his Ally Attacks can add tons of boss damage on top of all the survivability he brings.
Niamhe, Spear of Nyresa
Niamhe is an absolutely dominant champion in the PvP meta thanks to placing Block Damage at the start of the fight, completly neutering many damage dealers until it runs out. This passive also enables her to build 9-piece Protection–an Ally Protector’s ideal PvP set–which makes her Ally Protection and Block Debuff buffs even more potent. A significant chunk of end-game teambuilding involves being able to counter this specific champion in Arena.
Gharol Bloodmaul
Gharol is very unique here thanks to her dual-role mythical Forms. Her Base Form is a brilliant Ally Protector after her buffs, soaking up damage for the team. Her true goal, however, is to swap into her Alternate Form, where she is a monstrously strong damage dealer. Her Alternate Form is more powerful the lower her HP is, making the redirected damage from Ally Protection in her Base Form a benefit, since it will turbocharge her whenever she swaps over!
How to Build Ally Protection Champions
Health and Defense Requirements
The most important thing with an Ally Protection champion is to build as much HP as possible–you’re going to need a massive HP pool to survive the incoming damage. Some DEF is nice as well to reduce directly incoming damage, but go for HP% instead whenever you have the chance.
Speed and ACC/RES Requirements
As you probably know already, SPD is the best stat in RAID: Shadow Legends. That being said, Ally Protectors are often some of the lower SPD builds in the game, since their other stat requirements are so high. If your ally protector is purely defensive, they can be lower SPD (aim to be faster than the enemy, and that’s enough); if your protector is a hybrid who has some crucial debuffs, they will need to be a bit faster.
For hybrids who have strong debuffs or negative effects, you will need enough ACC to land these. Check out our Raid Stages Tool to see the requirements for each stage.
Some protectors (e.g. Krisk) can also go for high-RES builds. These are usually very intensive to build and we recommend checking out our individual champion guides for more info.
Recommended Artifact Sets
Gear sets which improve survivability are gret choices early on:
- Regeneration is a classic option, giving healing per turn.
- Guardian set is a weaker heal but brings its own mini-Protection effect. Use it instead if you can survive with it on!
- Immortal is an accessible 2-piece filler set that provides healing too.
- Stalwart is a good mid-game set for mitigating incoming AoE attacks.
For more advanced players, you will likely be looking at 9-piece sets with powerful bonuses:
- Protection is incredible for buff-heavy champions, providing a 5% damage boost per buff to your team and Protecting your buffs from removals.
- Feral is a great choice for debuff-heavy champions, providing an equivalent 5% damage boost per debuff.