Hydra: Best Mischief Targets!
Having a “Mischief Target” is one of the best ways to deal with this super annoying head! It’s really hard to get an entire team to have enough resistance to avoid buffs getting stolen (500+ resist for Nightmare Hydra), but often focusing on 1 champion hitting the required stats who does one or multiple self-buffs isn’t too hard. To make this happen, you need to:
- Pick a champion that self-buffs. The target needs to be someone that will always have more buffs than the rest of your team. Just be sure that you’re not pairing them with people that use the same buffs on the team to all allies. For example, Lord Champfort always puts a Shield buff on himself every turn and makes a great Mischief target. However, if you use another champion that places Shield buffs on the team or Bloodshield accessories, you would negate his purpose.
- Build that champion with high resistance. Check out our Stages Tool to see the resistance required (vs the Head of Mischief specifically) for this based on the level of hydra you’re fighting.
- Make that champion go last (or extra fast!). Either make sure that the champion is the slowest on the team (but faster than the heads) or the fastest on the team to where it can go twice to 1 turn of the Head of Decay (which works great for someone like Skull Lord with a great cooldown. You want to make sure the extra buffs are staying on vs the rest of the team.
Skull Lord Var-Gall & Bivald the Thorn
Both of these champions make great “Mischief Targets” as they have an A2 that places Provoke and then puts a Strengthen buff on themselves. Be sure not to have another champion that places Strengthen in the team (Like Lydia, Ursala, etc). They also have great utility to handle the Head of Decay with that same skill. Also, they’re both particularly helpful when the Head of Wrath is around. Skull Lord brings a Decrease ATK on an AoE, a necessary buff to reduce the damage of those big slams. Bivald puts up a shield; another way to help soak up the damage from the Wrath slams.
Krisk the Ageless
He’s a hydra KING. For targeting, his A2 puts 2 Continuous Heal buffs on himself for 1 turn then extends all ally buffs for 1 turn. His A3 also places an Increase DEF buff on himself for 2 turns. The 2 skills combined make it easy for him to stay the target by always having the most buffs. Plus his additional utility brought makes him probably still the best champion for hydra in the game.
Oboro
Oboro has a really unique kit that includes of a lot of great utility for hydra. She has Decrease DEF, transfers & steals buffs and puts up a ton of buffs on herself. Her A3 and her Passive both add buffs to only her, making her a perfect candidate for Mischief targeting. She can be a bit hard to build because she needs high Resistance if built for this role plus she needs Accuracy to land Decrease DEF and she can actually hit quite hard so it’s smart to build her with some damage. Because of this, she’s the perfect candidate for the Heavencast Blessing. As long as more important Blessings are already covered by someone else in the team (like Cruelty), putting Heavencast on her can be a huge help to allow you to build her with much lower accuracy as it lowers the Resistance of the enemy.
Wuji
Wuji is another fun option as a target. She brings Block Buffs and Weaken to the mix as well. Her A3 is the skill that makes the targeting possible, placing a Perfect Veil and Counterattack buff on her for 2 turns. Keep in mind that she’s actually got very low base HP and can be hard to keep alive. Be sure to build her with some survivability as well or pair her with a team that often uses shield or block damage. It can be best to use her for lower levels of hydra because of how squishy she is and avoid using her when Wrath is in the starting rotation.
Jizoh
This one might surprise you as a top option but he actually can do something unique that most other champions cannot. He can choose who gets a couple of buffs. His A2 allows you to choose who to place a Shield and Counterattack buff on any champion. This can be great to put on another champion that might have higher base stats and is easier to build tanky or with high Resistance. Drexthar Bloodtwin makes a great pairing for this. Between the 2 of them, you have plenty of provoking for the Head of Decay, HP Burns and of course, the Mischief Target. You can also choose to have Jizoh put the buffs on himself and him as target given he also has an A3 that self-buffs.
There are many other champions that should be mentioned including:
huge! also duchess can work but need some proper setup so her a1 shield hit specific target and then both require high resist due to it being 50/50 who is gonna be targeted by mischief head, seems kinda overthinked but when u dont have better “target” then its stil a right option imo. UDK also should be included just bcs of his pasiv, right?
His passive is so inconsistent. 50/50 that Mischief targets him is decent if you’re struggling with Normal, but just adds even more rng. One main goal when building a Hydra team is to minimize rng, and UDK doubles it. And if you don’t have any shields on your team you can just use someone in Bloodshield.
I use Mashalled as mischief tank for my main NM hydra team. He works great! His A3 adds 2 continuous heals to himself. The extra turn he gets on his A2 can kind of throw things off but as long as you use the A2 just before the A3, he is fantastic! And he can bring some pretty good damage. Nemko, Sicia, Royal Guard, Mithrala, Uugo, and Mashalled. Best run so far is 109 mil on NM
I use ultimate deathknight as my resist tank so when mischief targets someone else, it hits ultimate deathknight instead