AFK Arena – Best Teams (September 2023) & Team Building Guide

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Building the ultimate team is the single most important task in AFK Arena, a task you’ll be undertaking throughout your entire journey.

With a total of 90 unique Legendary and Ascended heroes in the game, each with a unique set of skills, and many factors to consider, building the best team can quickly become a complex job.

To help you build your team in AFK Arena, we’ve created this guide giving you guidance on important factors to consider and the best team-building strategy for the early/mid, and late/end game.

Recommended Read: Best Way to Spend Diamonds in AFK Arena

Furthermore, we’ve gathered examples of real AFK Arena teams created by top players of the late/end game for both Guild Hunt, PvP, PvE; Campaign, Twisted Realm, and Abyssal Expedition.

Table of contents

• Best teams for Campaign & PvE
• Best teams for PvP
• Best teams for Guild Hunt
• Best teams for Twisted Realm
• Best teams for Abyssal Expedition
• Team building factors
• Early and mid game team building
• Late and end game team building

Best teams for Campaign & PvE

Here are the best teams for the Campaign and PvE (Labyrinth, King’s Tower, Peaks of Time, and Voyage of Wonders) in AFK Arena.

Team 1

• Talene (Top Frontline)
• Rowan (Bottom Frontline)
• Ezizh (Bottom Backline)
• Mehira (Middle Backline)
• Elijah & Lailah (Top Backline)

This late/end game team is the strongest version of the widely used god comp strategy.

What makes this team incredibly strong is the fast energy recharge from Rowan and Elijah & Lailah, which causes Ezizh to quickly cycle through his skills, silencing the enemy team from using ultimate abilities.

Furthermore, this team has plenty of health regeneration, which is boosted by the energy regeneration by Rowan and Elijah & Lailah.

Many top players of AFK Arena who’ve progressed far into the campaign use this team late/end game team.

Team 2

• Eirron (Top Frontline)
• Zolrath (Bottom Frontline)
• Lorsan (Bottom Backline)
• Lyca (Middle Backline)
• Gwyneth (Top Backline)

This burst team is also incredibly powerful for the late/end game campaign and the rest of PvE.

Unlike the god comp strategy, which relies on stalling the enemy and sustaining throughout a battle, the burst comp here aims to quickly burst down the enemy team.

Therefore, you see a lot of incredible burst heroes on this team like Eironn and Lorsan.

Furthermore, this team works well as the heroes complement each others’ active abilities. Both Eironn, Gwyneth, and Lyca can push or pool enemies close together, allowing all heroes on the team to deal more damage, as they all have AoE skills.

This team composition is also used often with Zaphrael instead of Gwyneth.

Team 3

• Elijah & Lailah (Top Frontline)
• Rowan (Bottom Frontline)
• Saurus (Bottom Backline)
• Tasi (Middle Backline)
• Lyca (Top Backline)

This entire late/end game team revolves around Saurus and getting him stacked up.

That’s the reason why this team has three support heroes – to help sustain Saurus, boosting him, and allowing him to get stacks so he can deal a ton of damage.

Lyca also deals a decent amount of damage as well as brings some useful buffs and defense reduction, but Saurus is the star of this team.

Best teams for PvP

Here are the best team for PvP in AFK Arena.

Team 1

• Elijah & Lailah (Top Frontline)
• Albedo (Bottom Frontline)
• Ainz Ooal Gown (Bottom Backline)
• Rowan (Middle Backline)
• Ezizh (Top Backline)

This late/end game PvP team is a variation of the powerful god comp that you see in PvE a lot.

What’s different in this setup is that a lot of the healing and crowd control has been replaced with damage in the form of Ainz Ooal Gown, one of the most powerful damage dealers in AFK Arena and Albedo.

Having Albedo on the team will further sustain Ainz as her shield prioritizes Ainz if he is on the field, making him the star of this team comp.

This PvP team is a great mixture of high damage output and crowd control/sustain.

Team 2

• Arthur (Top Frontline)
• Talene (Bottom Frontline)
• Ainz Ooal Gown (Bottom Backline)
• Mortas (Middle Backline)
• Albedo (Top Backline)

This late/end game PvP team also revolves around Ainz, which most late/end game PvP teams do.

The strategy of this team is to keep Mortas alive for long enough to use his buff, so Ainz’s damage output is heavily boosted.

For the rest of the match, the objective is to keep Ainz alive and support him with shields, healing, and damage negation.

Team 3

• Alna (Top Frontline)
• Ferael (Bottom Frontline)
• Lucretia (Bottom Backline)
• Silas (Middle Backline)
• Athalia (Top Backline)

This is a more balanced PvP team for late/end game, whose driving point is Athalia taking out enemy backline heroes.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team dishes out various support, including Alna’s haste boost and Silas’ healing.

Lucretia’s damage over time slowly deteriorates enemies while Ferael keeps enemies in check with lots of crowd control.

Overall a solid, well-balanced PvP team without any Dimensional heroes, so you can build it even if you don’t have Ainz Ooal Gown and Albedo.

Best teams for Guild Hunt

Here are the best teams for the bosses in the Guild Hunt in AFK Arena.

Team 1

• Belinda (Top Frontline)
• Saurus (Bottom Frontline)
• Elijah & Lailah (Bottom Backline)
• Rosaline (Middle Backline)
• Lorsan (Top Backline)

This Guild Hunt team is one of the strongest you can build in the game.

It revolves around Saurus, Belinda, and Rosaline dishing out the vast majority of the damage with support from Elijah & Lailah, and Rosaline.

Lorsan will also deal a great amount of damage but not as much as Belinda, Rosaline, and Saurus.

To make this team as effective as it can be, you need to have Belinda’s furniture that boosts the damage of her Divine Light skill by 30%.

Team 2

• Saurus (Top Frontline)
• Rosaline (Bottom Frontline)
• Elijah & Lailah (Bottom Backline)
• Mortas (Middle Backline)
• Raine (Top Backline)

This is another extremely powerful team for Guild Hunt, which is on par with the previous one.

It is similar to the previous team in that Saurus will be the main source of damage with the help of Rosaline while getting support from Elijah & Lailah.

In this team, however, the two damage dealers have been replaced by Mortas and Raine, who both give incredible buffs that boost Saurus’ and Rosaline’s damage output.

Best teams for Twisted Realm

Here are the best teams for the Twisted Realm in AFK Arena.

Team 1

• Saurus (Top Frontline)
• Grezhul (Bottom Frontline)
• Mehira (Bottom Backline)
• Daimon (Middle Backline)
• Elijah & Lailah (Top Backline)

This Twisted Realm is very effective against several of the bosses in the Twisted Realm, especially The Unhinged, Ice Shemeria, and Burning Brute.

Saurus will be the main source of damage on this team with the support of Elijah & Lailah as well as Mehira, while Grezhul and Daimon provide great utility, tankiness, and control.

Team 2

• Saurus (Top Frontline)
• Cecilia (Bottom Frontline)
• Elijah & Lailah (Bottom Backline)
• Warek (Middle Backline)
• Ezizh (Top Backline)

This Twisted Realm team composition is one that’s become popular among top players, even though you probably wouldn’t think of it yourself.

The core of this team is Saurus and Cecilia, with support from Elijah & Lailah.

What makes this team so special is the Warek pick, a hero not often used except for some bosses.

Specifically, it’s his skill Bonebreaker, which reduces the enemy’s defense rating, and later on, greatly reduces the enemy’s defense rating while also stunning them.

This defense reduction greatly increases the damage your heroes deal to the enemy, making it essentially a damage buff for your team.

Lastly, Ezizh is useful here because of his silence, which is almost essential to have against some bosses because of their powerful skills.

Best teams for Abyssal Expedition

Here are the best teams for the Abyssal Expedition in AFK Arena.

For the general battles against normal heroes, just use a team that is strong in PvE, like the ones shown earlier in this guide.

The following teams are for the bosses in the Abyssal Expedition.

Team 1

• Eironn (Top Frontline)
• Cecilia (Bottom Frontline)
• Elijah & Lailah (Bottom Backline)
• Rowan (Middle Backline)
• Lyca (Top Backline)

In this team, the core is Eironn and Cecilia, who brings a bunch of damage, while Elijah & Lailah, and Rowan spam energy regeneration.

Lyca will also deal a decent amount of damage but comes in handy with her utility, including buffing and lowering of the enemy’s defense.

This composition is an overall solid team against bosses in the Abyssal Expedition.

Team 2

• Saurus (Top Frontline)
• Eironn (Bottom Frontline)
• Warek (Bottom Backline)
• Elijah & Lailah (Middle Backline)
• Cecilia (Top Backline)

Another powerful team for the Abyssal Expedition is this, which uses Warek for his indirect damage buff for your team, as he greatly reduces the defense of the enemy.

In this team, we have even more damage by having both Saurus, Eironn, and Cecilia.

The last hero on the team is Elijah & Lailah, who is always a great pick because of their incredible support and energy regeneration boost.

Team building factors

When building a team in AFK Arena, there are several factors that affect how well that team will perform in the game.

Furthermore, a team that performs well in the campaign in the end game might not do as well in the Guild Hunt.

Therefore, most players build several teams later on in the game to optimize their gameplay for each part of the game.

Nonetheless, there are some overall factors that you should consider when building any team in the game.

These are the factors that affect how your team performs in AFK Arena:

• Individual power of heroes
• Faction advantages
• Balance of roles
• Synergy between heroes

It is important to consider these factors when building your team, but unlike some other RPG hero-collector mobile games, the individual power of heroes has a lot of influence on your team’s power in AFK Arena.

This doesn’t mean you can simply bring five top-tier attacker heroes.

But, in most cases, it will not be worth it to sacrifice having a top-tier hero like Rowan, Daimon, or Ainz on your team, just so you can reach a better balance of factions, etc.

Here is a short rundown of what the different factors are and how they affect your team’s power.

Individual power of heroes

The individual power of heroes in AFK Arena is a very important factor when choosing who to bring on your team.

You can easily find the individual power of a hero, how good they are, in each category of the game in our AFK Arena Tier List.

A hero’s individual power or potential is not determined purely by their damage out, but rather how well they perform in a specific part of the game.

For example, Rowan, who is one of the best heroes in AFK Arena, doesn’t have a great damage output himself, but his supportive abilities are so powerful and useful that he is S+ tier in every single category of the game.

In other words, Rowan increases your team’s chance of beating levels by so much that he deserves the title of being S+.

Other heroes that are among the best in the game include:

• Elijah & Lailah
• Talene
• Ainz Ooal Gown
• Daimon
• Eironn

When you are looking to fill a specific role or position on your team, we highly recommend you look for top-tier heroes that meet or are close to meeting the factors you are looking for, as this will most often result in the best team.

Faction advantages

In AFK Arena, all heroes belong to one of seven factions:

• Lightbearers
• Maulers
• Wilders
• Graveborns
• Celestials
• Hypogeans
• Dimensionals

The faction advantages system in AFK Arena has two buffs.

One is purely based on what factions fight each other while the second is dependent on the composition of factions on your team.

The first part of the faction advantages system makes most factions deal 25% extra damage to another faction while taking extra damage from a third faction.

There are also special factions that deal and take 25% extra damage from the same faction, while one doesn’t deal extra nor takes extra damage from any faction.

Here is a rundown of how each faction is affected by the faction advantage system.

• Lightbearers deal 25% extra damage to Maulers and take 25% extra damage from Graveborns.
• Maulers deal 25% extra damage to Wilders and take 25% extra damage from Lightbearers.
• Wilders deal 25% extra damage to Gravesborns and take 25% extra damage from Maulers.
• Graveborns deal 25% extra damage to Lightbearers and take 25% extra damage from Wilders.
• Celestials deal 25% extra damage to Hypogeans and take 25% extra damage from Hypogeans as well.
• Hypogeans deal 25% extra damage to Celestials and take 25% extra damage from Celestials as well.
• Dimensionals are unaffected by factions, which means that they don’t deal extra damage to any faction nor take extra damage from any faction.

The damage buff heroes get from this can be a deciding factor in battle, especially if you have a lot of heroes of, for example, the Lightbearers faction, and you face a team full of Graveborns.

Therefore, you should keep in mind the composition of factions on your team as well as on your enemies’ when creating your team.

We have observed some players having success with having a lot of heroes of the same faction, but it does come with an increased risk, of course.

The second part of the faction advantages system is the faction team buff.

If the number of heroes of the same faction on your team meets certain criteria, every single hero on your team gets a buff.

Here you can see the different compositions you need to unlock each buff.

• 3 Heroes of the same faction on your team gives +10% ATK and +10% HP.
• 3 Heroes of the same faction and 2 heroes of another faction on your team gives +15% ATK and +15% HP.
• 4 Heroes of the same faction on your team gives +15% ATK and +20% HP.
• 5 Heroes of the same faction on your team gives +25% ATK and +25% HP.
• Celestial heroes can count as either Graveborn, Lightbearer, Wilder, or Mauler.
• Hypogean heroes don’t affect the above-listed compositions. Instead they give buffs dependent on the number of Hypogeans on the team. (1+ = +30% Defense, 2+ = +25% Energy recovered when injured, 3+ = +15% Crit Rating, 4+ = +30% Critical Strike Damage, 5+ = +15 Haste)

As you can tell, you can get your team a quite useful buff by meeting the requirements of the buffs listed above.

However, as mentioned, in most cases, it’s not worth it to go for an extreme faction buff at the sacrifice of a top-tier hero.

Learn more about faction advantage in our AFK Arena Faction Advantages Guide.

Balance of roles

Considering the different roles of heroes is also important when building your team in AFK Arena.

There are three overall classes that players refer to:

• Attackers
• Tanks
• Support

The actual roles or classes of heroes in the game are:

• Tanks
• Warriors
• Rangers
• Support
• Mage

Rangers, Mages, and most Warriors are considered attackers, Support heroes support, and Tanks, of course, tanks.

You should make sure your team has a balance of the three overall roles, as a team consisting solely of support heroes will have a lot of utility but not enough damage output to ever take out most teams.

We’ve found that most top players use one support hero at the middle position on the backline, one tank hero on the frontline on any position, and then attacker heroes for the remaining three spots.

This is, of course, a very large generalization, as we’ve also observed a lot of amazing and successful teams utilizing more support heroes, no tank, etc.

Synergy between heroes

With so many unique heroes in the game, it’s no wonder that many interesting and powerful synergies between heroes have arisen.

Synergy is when two or more heroes on your team complement each other resulting in a powerful combo or a higher damage output.

To give you an idea of what these synergies can look like in the game, we’ve gathered some examples:

• Eironn using his active skill to pull enemies into Safiya’s barrier to reduce enemies’ haste and attack while increasing your own heroes’ attack.
• A hero like Hendrik to push enemy frontline heroes to the enemy backline for Gwyneth to also hit them with her backline-arrow attack.
• Ezizh using his skill Horrify to silence enemies from using their active skill with the help of energy-regening heroes like Elijah & Lailah, and Rowan.
• Life leeching heroes paired with Khasos, who boosts the life leeched by allies.

There are many other synergies in the game for you to explore.

If you choose to use a specific hero combo/synergy on your team, we recommend you build your team around that and not just plug it into an already existing team.

Many top players of AFK Arena try to find synergies in the game to counter specific popular team setups in the end game, showing how useful they can be.

Early and mid game team building

Unlike what you might expect, the most effective and most commonly used team-building strategy early game is to focus on one hero on your team.

This one hero that you’ll be focusing on will be the carry of your team and will deal almost all damage in battles throughout the early and mid game.

The rest of the heroes on your team are not unimportant but should be more focused on support, boosting, or helping your carry hero rather than being a carry themselves.

Though it might seem strange, it is no problem that you have a hero or two on your team early game that doesn’t do much in terms of damage or support.

You can easily and will have the easiest time progressing in the early and mid game by primarily focusing on one carry hero.

As you’ll be putting so much focus on only one hero, we strongly recommend choosing one that is extremely powerful early game and is thereby suitable to act as the carry.

Some of the best heroes to choose as the carry early and mid are the following:

• Saveas
• Shemira
• Saurus
• Brutus
• Daimon
• Athalia

Other heroes we’ve found are great carries early game include Wu Kong, Ainz, and Vedan.

You can find more heroes for the early and mid game in our AFK Arena Tier Lists.

So does focusing on a carry hero mean you shouldn’t level up your other heroes on your team? No, you should also level up those.

However, contrary to what most people would intuitively do, your carry hero should be fed most of your resources, and it’s no problem with them being 30 or more levels above the rest of your heroes.

Having a carry hero with self-healing abilities will make your time progressing through the early and mid game even easier.

It is not a requirement for carry heroes, though, in which case you would greatly benefit from having a support hero or two on your team with healing abilities.

Late and end game team building

As you reach the late and end game in AFK Arena, you can no longer rely on a single carry hero when building a team.

Because enemies become so strong in terms of power points compared to you, the farther into the game you progress, you have to have a very strong and optimized team to keep progressing.

For this to happen, you need to have a team consisting of top-tier heroes that complement each over well in terms of synergy and balance of roles, factions, etc.

Therefore, we recommend that you go about building your team for the end game in the following way.

Find two or more top-tier heroes of the game that synergies well with each other and that can act as the core of your team’s strategy.

Then, find other top-tier or close to top-tier heroes to add to the team depending on its current needs or shortcomings.

This part can be difficult and will require experimentation, which you can do by trying different setups.

Features such as the Resonating Crystal can help you try different heroes on your team without spending a ton of resources.

Some of the popular heroes and synergies you’ll often see people use late game include:

• Burst comp with Eirron and Lorsan
• God comps with Rowan, Elijah & Lailah, and Ezizh
• Setup for Saurus or Ainz comp

When you find a strong team composition that works, you might at one point experience that it stops being as effective, especially in PvP, and that is because the meta evolves.

In the end game, many teams are similar in composition and use a lot of the same heroes, which causes players to constantly look for counters to popular setups.

Therefore, you should expect other players to try to find weaknesses in your team, forcing you to continuously try to optimize and prepare for a new meta and new team compositions in AFK Arena.

That’s our take on a guide on the best teams in AFK Arena as well as how to build your team!

If you have any input for this guide, let us know in the comment section below.