Best Increase Defence Champions in Raid Shadow Legends
In this guide, we explore the importance of Increase Defence champions in Raid Shadow Legends. We break down how the buff works, why it plays such a crucial role in your team’s survival, which champions apply it most effectively, and where you’ll get the most value from using it.
What Increase defence does in raid
How The Increase Defence Buff Works
Increase Defence is a buff that raises the Defence stat of allied champions, helping to reduce the amount of damage they take from incoming attacks. By increasing Defence, each hit is mitigated more effectively, making your team harder to kill and improving overall survivability. In addition, for champions whose damage scales from Defence, this buff also boosts their damage output, allowing them to hit harder while still benefiting from the added durability.
Why Increase Defence Is Important
Increase Defence helps teams survive strong enemy attacks by mitigating some of the damage taken from each hit, making powerful abilities less threatening. This added durability gives your team more time to heal, apply buffs, and stay in control of the fight, making battles much safer and more manageable overall.
Why Increase defence champions are valuable
Improving Team Survivability
Increase Defence helps teams withstand heavy damage by reducing the impact of high damage attacks, making big hits much easier to survive. This allows your team to stay healthier through sustained attacks, prevents sudden deaths, and gives your support abilities like healing and shields a better chance to keep everyone alive.
Essential For Long Boss Battles
Defensive buffs help teams survive longer fights by reducing the amount of damage taken over time, making it easier to handle sustained pressure from enemies and bosses. Buffs like Increase Defence, Strengthen, and Shields all work to limit incoming damage in different ways, which helps preserve your team’s HP and makes healing more effective.
Best areas to use Increase Defence champions
Demon Lord, Hydra & Chimera Clan Boss
Increase Defence helps teams survive powerful boss attacks in Chimera, Demon Lord, and Hydra by reducing the damage taken from their heavy hits, making each attack more manageable. These bosses deal consistent damage, so boosting your team’s Defence lowers the impact hits, helping prevent champions from being overwhelmed or killed too quickly.
Due to the nature of these fights, success is measured by how much damage you can deal before reaching the turn limit or your team is defeated, rather than how quickly you can finish the encounter. With key reward thresholds tied to higher damage, maximising your output is essential – this is where Increase Defence plays a key role, helping your team survive longer to reach those higher milestones.
Doom Tower, Cursed City, Grim Forest & Dungeons
Increase Defence buffs help teams complete difficult dungeon, Cursed City, and Grim Forest stages by reducing the amount of damage taken across both waves and boss fights, making encounters much more manageable. In these areas, enemies can hit hard or apply pressure over multiple turns, so having higher Defence allows your team to better withstand that damage and avoid being overwhelmed.
Arena
This buff helps teams in Arena by reducing incoming damage from enemy attacks, making it harder for opponents to quickly eliminate your champions. This is especially important against teams that rely on strong nukers, as the added Defence can prevent one shots and allow your team to survive the initial burst. At the same time, it also boosts the damage of Defence based damage dealers, allowing them to hit harder while benefiting from increased survivability.
Best Increase Defence champions in raid
Here we’ve highlighted some of the top Increase Defence champions in Raid: Shadow Legends, showcasing the different strengths they bring. While this list isn’t exhaustive, it should give you an understanding of what makes these champions so effective. For more options, be sure to check out our Champion Tier List.
Bayek
Bayek brings a strong mix of offensive and defensive support, alongside control. He provides Increase ACC, Perfect Veil, and Increase DEF for allies, while also applying Decrease ACC, Decrease RES, and Provoke to enemies, making him a well rounded option across most areas of the game. This is further enhanced by his ability to prevent enemies from landing critical hits if their ACC is equal to or lower than your allies’, synergising with his accuracy manipulation focused kit.
Mithrala
Mithrala is obtainable by gathering fragments from Hydra reward chests and is a powerful support option. She brings Increase DEF, Increase ATK, and Hex, while her A3 cleanses allies and applies Shields and Strengthen, offering both strong protection and offensive support across bosses and waves. She also provides Poison for encounters like Dragon, while enabling Petrification on enemies who attack allies under Hex, adding a layer of control to her kit.
Leonardo
Leonardo is a perfect example of a champion who blends strong damage with team support. He can apply Increase DEF and Ally Protection for the team, while placing Unkillable and Counterattack on himself to stay in the fight and deal consistent damage.
His A3 is where his power truly shines, once Unity is enabled alongside other Turtles, the skill scales significantly, can activate when allies drop below 50% HP, and increases in damage based on enemy buffs. If he secures a kill, he also removes those buffs, making him a powerful option for both damage and control.
Sepulcher Sentinel
Once properly tuned at a 4:3 ratio, Sepulcher Sentinel becomes a strong progression champion for Clan Boss. She can place both Increase DEF and Block Debuffs in the same turn, improving team survivability while preventing harmful effects. She also brings a chance to place Decrease ATK on her A1, helping to reduce incoming damage, and has a passive chance to block incoming damage when an ally is attacked. This combination makes her useful against debuff-heavy waves and bosses.
Dawncaller
Dawncaller is a simple yet effective option for progressing players. Her revive brings an ally back with 25% HP, but with 100% Turn Meter and Block Damage, allowing them to rejoin the fight and act faster. From there, they can be healed by allies or recover through effects like Leech. She also passively reduces the cooldown of one skill for revived allies by 1 turn. Alongside this, she provides both Increase DEF and Increase ATK, helping to support your team’s survivability and damage output.
Freyja
Freyja provides strong team protection by applying both Increase DEF and Shields to all allies, offering two powerful layers of defence. She also brings AoE Provoke on her A1 for control, helping manage enemies. Alongside this, she can cleanse allies, apply Block Debuffs, and provide Turn Meter boosts, making her especially effective against debuff-heavy encounters. Her passive enhances her DEF% while preventing your highest C.DMG ally from dying to a fatal hit.
Wixwell
Aside from enabling champions like Titus to deal incredible damage in the right setup, Wixwell is also a strong standalone protector. He brings AoE Decrease ATK, buff extension, and Shields that he can further enhance, alongside Increase DEF, Provoke, and Intercept for an ally. This combination makes him a versatile and valuable support option across a wide range of content.
Tuhanarak
Tuhanarak excels at speed manipulation and providing key buffs and debuffs to support your team. Her A3 places Increase DEF alongside Increase SPD, helping your team cycle turns faster and stay protected. Through her A2, she brings strong single target utility with Decrease ATK, Block Buffs, and the ability to spread two random debuffs to enemies.
This makes her effective in both single-target and AoE encounters like Hydra, while her passive adds consistent support by cleansing a random debuff from allies each turn – or two if they are under Continuous Heal.
Marius
Marius is known as one of the most powerful nukers in Raid, with the ability to unleash a triple hitting AoE enemy MAX HP attack while also decreasing the duration of enemy buffs. This, combined with his ability to place Increase ACC and Increase DEF, alongside stunning the enemy with the highest Turn Meter, gives him a strong blend of damage, support, and control.
He also brings Enfeeble to force weak hits from enemies, while being passively immune to Turn Meter reduction and Decrease SPD, making him both reliable and difficult to counter.
Siphi
Siphi offers exceptional support through her combination of Block Debuffs, Turn Meter boosts, Increase DEF, and Increase SPD all within a single ability, while also passively healing allies at the start of their turns. Her revive brings an ally back with 55% HP and full Turn Meter, allowing them to act instantly, while also granting offensive buffs to help them immediately contribute damage.
How to build Increase Defence Champions
Speed & Stat Requirements
Building Increase Defence champions effectively comes down to prioritising Speed and survivability stats like HP% and DEF%, while also including Crit Rate and C.DMG for those who contribute damage. In content such as Clan Boss, timing is key – ensuring Increase Defence is active before AoE attacks helps your team better withstand incoming damage, while buff extension can support champions with longer cooldowns.
Speed is important across all areas of the game, as faster champions take more turns, allowing them to cycle abilities more often and keep Increase Defence active before enemies use their strongest skills. This combination of high survivability and strong Speed ensures your Increase Defence champions can consistently protect and stabilise your team throughout fights.
Recommended Artifact Sets
Not many champions can place a protected Increase DEF buff, which makes sets like Protection extremely valuable. These help prevent your buffs from being removed or stolen, while also providing useful stats like HP%, RES, and Speed. Sets like Stoneskin, Defiant or Mercurial are also strong options, offering solid stats and Total Guard stacks to further protect your champion.
Some champions, such as Leonardo, combine both damage and protection, so blending sustain and speed-focused builds with offensive sets like Lethal, Savage, or Merciless can help maximise damage potential. Outside of this, prioritising Speed based sets to outpace enemies, or Accuracy sets like Feral or Perception for those who also apply debuffs, will help round out your builds.
Tips for using Increase Defence Champions
Using Increase DEF champions effectively comes down to timing, layering protection, and strong builds. You’ll want to apply Increase DEF before enemies take their turns – especially before big AoE attacks or boss abilities, to reduce incoming damage and keep your team stable.
Combining Increase DEF with other defensive buffs like Shields, Strengthen, Ally Protection, and healing greatly enhances your survivability. These effects work together to reduce damage taken, absorb hits, and recover lost HP, allowing your team to last much longer in difficult encounters.
Speed is also key, as faster champions can maintain higher uptime on Increase DEF and reapply it before it falls off. For champions who also deal damage, balancing DEF with offensive stats can further increase their value. When used correctly, Increase DEF becomes a core part of your team’s foundation, helping you withstand damage and perform more consistently across all content.