He-Man Spotlight

He-Man has arrived in Raid: Shadow Legends in a special collaboration with the nostalgic Masters of the Universe shows from the ’80s! In this guide we’ll be breaking down everything you need to know about He-Man: how his abilities work; how to build him; where to use him; and more.

Make sure to check out our dedicated He-Man champion page for detailed ratings and let us know if you think he’s worth the cost of the $40 Elite Pass in the comments section.

He-Man is a powerful damage dealer who ramps up when he receives buffs, and he’s also able to take more hits than your typical attack focused damage dealer thanks to his passive and his ability to boost his damage by building HP.

Let’s talk about He-Man’s dual-scaling for damage first. Unlike most characters who simply scale off a single stat (such as ATK or DEF), He-Man scales off of both ATK and HP–just like Rotos the Lost Groom. Unlike Rotos, who has such strong HP scaling that flat HP rings and banners are often optimal, He-Man benefits from ATK more than from HP. Nonetheless, any HP% substats are a nice increase to his damage and will help him survive to boot. We’ll discuss more details in the gearing section down below.

He-Man’s A3 is his hardest hitting attack by far. This can scale up to a whopping 500% bonus damage after 50 buffs have been applied to him (10% per buff). This will basically never happen in practice, so forget about the cap for all practical situations and simply treat every buff as a solid damage boost while using this attack as much as possible. This attack is very strong in the arena against enemies with Stoneskin or Block Damage buffs since you can prepare a massive A3 for when those buffs fall off.

His A2 is particularly nice in the arena with its ability to ignore Stoneskin (you won’t see that buff anywhere else in the game, currently). His ability to self-buff with Increase Attack is very valuable since it ensures he can do as much damage as possible without relying on another champion to provide it.

He-Man’s A1 is an average attack in general use, but becomes extremely strong when you trigger its double-hit effect against enemies from The Corrupted factions (Demonspawn, Undead Hordes, Dark Elves, Knights Revenant). This double-hit will actually hit harder than his A2 (but only if you have Increase ATK already).

His passive is a great increase to his survivability and damage. Don’t expect He-Man to be anywhere near as tanky as a Duchess Lilitu, but he will be noticeably easier to keep alive than other strong attack champions like Thor Faehammer or Georgid the Breaker.

Finally, his 28% Arena Speed aura is fantastic, equalling Sun Wukong‘s. Typically Speed Auras are the best choice for arena in 99% of fights in the current meta.

The most complex thing about building He-Man is his dual-scaling off both ATK and HP. Unlike Rotos the Lost Groom (who has similar scaling), He-Man benefits more from ATK:

If we take his A3 as an example, it’s damage multiplier is 3.5xATk and 0.2xHP (this is his best HP-scaling move).

• a 10% ATK substat would give him an extra 146.5 ATK, which is an extra 512.8 damage with the 3.5 multiplier.
• a 10% HP substat would give him an extra 1684.5 HP, which is an extra 336.9 damage with the 0.2 multiplier.
• Therefore, ATK is 1.5 times better for his A3.

If we compare this to his A2 which has a 5.5xATK and 0.15HP multiplier (this is his best ATK-scaling move).

• a 10% ATK substat would give him an extra 146.5 ATK, which is an extra 805.8 damage with the 5.5 multiplier.
• a 10% HP substat would give him an extra 1684.5 HP, which is an extra 252.7 damage with the 0.15 multiplier
• Therefore, ATK is 3.2 times better for his A2.

Finally for his A1, which has a 3xATK and a 0.12HP multiplier.

• a 10% ATK substat would give him an extra 146.5 ATK, which is an extra 439.5 damage with the 3 multiplier.
• a 10% HP substat would give him an extra 1684.5 HP, which is an extra 202.1 damage with the 0.12 multiplier
• Therefore, ATK is 2.2 times better for his A1.

One brilliant thing about this dual-scaling is that He-Man can make use of slightly different gear from a typical ATK nuker, allowing you to potentially gear him without taking gear away from your other builds. To keep things simple when looking for the perfect build for your He-Man, we HIGHLY RECOMMEND you use our free HellHades Optimiser to do the calculations for you.

The key stats to look for on He-Man are:

1. Crit rate to 100%
2. Crit damage
3. ATK
4. HP
5. Speed

100% Crit Rate, paired with as much Crit Damage, ATK and HP as possible will let He-Man do maximum damage. As discussed above, ATK% gives more than 2x the damage as HP% on average, but HP does have the benefit of boosting survivability. Use the Optimiser to work it out for you! Speed is always strong to help He-Man take as many turns as possible, particularly since he thrives in a fast team in the arena: aim for 170 minimum for early-game; 210+ for mid-game; 250+ for end-game.

The recommended sets for He-Man are:

1. Merciless
2. Lethal
3. Savage
4. Instinct
5. Cruel
6. Stoneskin

In general, we want He-Man to get as much ignore defence as possible, on top of any boosts to his preferred stats. Merciless set gives the best damage for his A2 which is ideal for many arena fights-there is a world of difference between killing a key enemy champion through Stoneskin or leaving them alive with 10% HP.

Stoneskin is a viable option as well (and is ideal to pair with Lethal or Savage), but for a speed team I think that going all-out in Merciless is the best choice (and his dual-scaling makes finding good Merciless pieces a bit easier).

He-Man’s strongest area is the arena, particularly Live Arena where having at least 2 Speed Auras in your draft is particularly valuable. He works best in a speed team which aims to go first and pick off a key enemy champion with his A2, then wipe out the rest of their team with his A3 on his next turn. Pair him with speed boosters with lots of buffs, such as Shu-Zhen the Valorous, and a lockout champion, such as Warlord, for maximum effect.

He-Man is also strong in Hydra or for any other fights where you want a good general damage dealer, such as Doom Tower waves, Cursed City, or Dungeons. Pair him up with buffing champions such as Mithrala Lifebane to boost his A3.

He-Man, sadly, is not a free champion. The key question is whether he’s worth the $40 price tag?

(Note that Plarium has teased the possibility of 10x or 15x events for He-Man at some point in the future. We’ll break down the value of those events when we actually see them in a future article here on the website.)

Firstly, let’s address the elephant in the room: I’ll leave the “real life” value of spending $40 on a video game character up to you–we’re a games website, not your priest!

However, in terms of “plarium value”, $40 could alternatively get you approximately ONE of these:

• 40 ancient shards ($1 each)
• 16 void shards ($2.5 each)
• 8 primal shards ($5 each)
• 2 sacred shards ($20 each)

While shards will help you complete summoning events and tournaments in game, you are very unlikely to get a legendary from these amounts (and it’s further unlikely that they will be more useful than He-Man for you), which means that He-Man’s pricing is quite decent if you consider “plarium value” pricing worth spending money on and if the champion will benefit your account or be fun to play with.