Our Favourite RAID: Shadow Legends Champions of 2026 So Far

2026 has already been a busy year for RAID: Shadow Legends. Between brand-new champions and major rebalances, there have been dozens of additions and updates to shake up team building across PvE and PvP.

This week, two of our RAID content writers, Nub Raids and YST, picked five of their favourite champions released or reworked during 2026 so far. These aren’t the strongest champions of the year; they’re the champions that have stood out because they’re fun, versatile, powerful, or simply much better after receiving a long-awaited rebalance.

From Mavara and Dorothy to several older champions enjoying a new lease of life, here are the standout picks.

There was one champion both Nub and YST expected to agree on immediately: Mavara the Web Diviner.

Her strength comes from just how much she can do for a team. Her kit brings Revive, Perfect Veil, self-Unkillable, HP Equalization, Strengthen and Increase RES, giving her an incredible collection of defensive tools.

She’s also particularly effective alongside some of 2026’s other accessible champions.

Pair Mavara’s Increase RES with Dorothy’s Decrease ACC, for example, and suddenly you’ve got the foundation of a Resistance-focused team capable of tackling difficult PvE content. She also has useful synergy with The Cowardly Lion due to her incredible A1 passive being activated by his Fervor buffs.

Perhaps more importantly, Mavara isn’t only an endgame champion.

YST has been using her on a fresh account without fully booking her skills, and she’s still performing well. Relentless gear can help compensate for those longer cooldowns early on by providing extra turns until you have the Legendary Books available.

Whether you’re tackling PvE or PvP, Mavara already looks like one of the defining champions of 2026.

Next comes Dorothy Gale, another champion who has quickly become one of the year’s standouts.

The big selling point here is versatility.

Dorothy brings:

• AoE Decrease DEF
• AoE Decrease ACC
• AoE Stun
• Aoe Steal Buffs
• Weaken
• A SPD in All Battles Aura
• Additional attacks through her passive

That’s an incredible toolkit for a champion players could obtain through a login event.

She’s especially good for progression accounts because Decrease ACC opens up Resistance-based strategies much earlier. Pair her with Mavara’s Increase RES and you’ve already got a powerful combination for dealing with debuff-heavy encounters.

Her crowd control and buff stealing should also remain useful well beyond the early game, including Doom Tower and other difficult wave content.

You can even experiment with damage-focused builds later, although her greatest strength remains the sheer amount of utility she brings to almost any team.

Not every standout champion on the list was released in 2026.

Cruetraxa earns her place thanks to her rebalance.

There’s also some nostalgia behind this pick for YST, as Cruetraxa was the first Legendary champion he ever pulled. After years of power creep, her updated kit finally gives this classic Void Legendary another chance to shine.

Her improvements significantly increased her offensive threat while maintaining the identity of a champion that’s extremely difficult to deal with in PvP.

With the right setup, she can start chaining attacks together at an impressive rate.

In a strong Merciless build, for example, she can sometimes cycle between her abilities repeatedly and tear through bosses with consecutive attacks.

If Cruetraxa has been sitting in your Vault for years, her rebalance makes her well worth another look.

If you like champions who can slot into almost any PvE team, Sydax Kingslayer is exactly that sort of champion.

His kit is packed.

He brings:

• Double-hit AoE Enemy MAX HP damage
• AoE Decrease DEF
• AoE Decrease SPD
• Team Increase DEF
• Team Increase SPD
• Team Ally Protection
• Decrease ATK
• Pain Link

That combination means Sydax can simultaneously contribute damage, debuffs, buffs and defensive support.

He’s especially appealing for content such as Hydra and Grim Forest, where fitting every mechanic you need into five or six champion slots can become difficult.

Instead of dedicating one champion to Decrease DEF, another to speed control and another to survivability, Psydax can cover several of those jobs himself.

He’s the kind of champion you pull and immediately start finding places to use.

YST’s next choice was Bayek from the Assassin’s Creed collaboration.

Much like Sydax, Bayek stands out because of how many roles he can cover.

His kit includes Increase ACC, Perfect Veil and Increase DEF alongside Provoke, Decrease ACC, Decrease RES and Leech. His passive is incredibly strong in PvP and often makes him a “must ban” champion for the enemy.

That makes him effective across both PvE and PvP.

For Hydra, a nine-piece Feral build can turn Bayek into a strong damage dealer while still allowing him to provide his extensive utility. He’s equally capable of helping in areas such as Faction Wars and boss encounters.

He’s also expected to become even more dangerous in PvP after this week when Provoke will become a powerful counter to Mercurial gear.

If the Assassin’s Creed collaboration ever returns, Bayek is certainly one champion worth watching for.

Nub’s next pick is another top-tier Void Legendary: Storm Herald Hekaton.

As the first Void Legendary from the Argonites faction, Hekaton needed to make an impression, and his combination of design and unusual mechanics certainly achieved that.

He’s the first champion to feature Stormcall as part of his kit. In PvE, it effectively allows the team to contribute additional Enemy MAX HP damage, and in PvP or against waves it can allow you to pump out tons of Stuns as well.

That gives Hekaton plenty of versatility across both PvE and PvP rather than locking him into a single area.

He’s powerful, unusual and visually fits the Argonites theme extremely well. Teasing Zeus as an upcoming champion, perhaps?!

Pelops the Victor might not initially look as flashy as some of the Void Legendaries on this list, but he’s become one of 2026’s biggest progression champions.

His Magma Shield mechanic is the obvious highlight, but there’s much more going on.

Pelops can bring:

• Magma Shields
• Taunt
• Passive HP Burn
• Petrification
• Decrease ATK
• Buff stealing

Those mechanics give him applications across Fire Knight, Spider, Demon Lord and plenty of other PvE encounters.

The real testament to Pelops is how players have responded to him.

He was initially viewed as a good defensive support, but player feedback consistently highlighted just how much progression he enabled across multiple areas of the game.

The comparison made in the discussion is particularly fitting: Pelops has a little of that Brogni-style progression champion feel. From early game through to endgame, it’s difficult not to find somewhere useful for him.

Polara Fireheart gets an honourable mention as another successful 2026 rebalance.

Her original design had plenty of potential, but the champion simply didn’t deliver enough to justify how difficult she was to obtain.

That’s changed.

Following her rebalance, Polara has become an extremely powerful damage dealer capable of putting out some huge numbers.

The biggest problem is accessibility.

She’s still difficult to obtain through Faction Wars Hard, so many players won’t have the opportunity to experiment with her yet.

If that content becomes more accessible, however, Polara looks much more deserving of the grind than she did before her update.

The final pick is Harvest Jack, one of RAID’s classic champions and another beneficiary of a major rebalance.

Harvest Jack always had a fantastic visual design and a clear Fear-focused identity. The problem was that as RAID evolved, his original kit simply fell behind.

His update brings him much closer to modern standards.

He can now Remove Buffs without the previous restrictions while applying Decrease ATK and Block Buffs, before gaining an Extra Turn and following up with True Fear and potentially Decrease SPD.

That’s a significant amount of disruption.

He’s particularly appealing for difficult wave content such as Faction Wars Hard, where stripping buffs and controlling enemies can completely change a fight.

There’s even some potential for specialised Deflection builds in high-end PvP, where the combination of his abilities can help strip away layers of Total Guard and then follow up with additional control.

He’s still not perfect. Making his Decrease SPD unconditional would have given him significantly more boss utility, particularly in Hydra.

Even so, this is exactly the sort of rebalance older champions need.

2026 has already delivered a strong collection of new champions and, perhaps more importantly, some genuinely successful rebalances.

Mavara and Dorothy stand out as particularly valuable accessible champions, offering the sort of versatility that can transform a newer account.

Sydax, Bayek and Hekaton demonstrate just how much utility can now be packed into a modern Legendary.

Meanwhile, Cruetraxa, Polara and Harvest Jack show the value of revisiting older champions and giving them the tools they need to compete in today’s game.

And then there’s Pelops, whose real value seems to become more obvious the longer players actually use him.

These aren’t necessarily the eight strongest champions of 2026. That wasn’t the point.

They’re champions that are fun to use, solve interesting problems and, in many cases, can slot into team after team without feeling out of place.

For a game with an increasingly enormous champion roster, those are often the champions worth getting excited about.