Heroic Missions: The True PvE Challenge in Warcraft Rumble

As your main focus in Warcraft Rumble, you are blasting through the campaign levels and collecting Sigils, all while leveling up your Minis and honing your decks. However, once you have collected 50 Sigils, your gameplay will go through a drastic change as you unlock the Heroic Campaign!

In this article, we will take a look at the Heroic Campaign and the rewards you can earn by completing Heroic Missions, as well as information and tips that will help you advance through the levels! You will also learn why practicing and investing in all of the five Factions is crucial to your progress.

What Are the Heroic Missions?

The Basics

In the PvE Campaign, you clear missions by defeating the boss of each map, and by doing so, you are rewarded with 1 Sigil for every map you complete. Those Sigils are then used to unlock new areas on the map as well as other juicy rewards, such as free Leaders and Troops!

On the map there are 15 mission areas to unlock, each of them consisting of 5 different levels. With quick math we can count that after completing every single one of them, you will be sitting on a nice pile of 75 Sigils. At this point, however, a problem emerges: the last area on the map (which is the lair of the endgame boss Onyxia), requires 100 Sigils to unlock. This is where Heroic Missions come to play!

Heroic Missions allow you to go through all your previously completed campaign areas again for extra Sigils, which makes the total obtainable amount of Sigils in the game 150. You don't actually have to wait until you have completed all the normal missions before beginning your journey through the Heroic ones, as you actually unlock them at 50 Sigils. After reaching that point, all areas you have fully conquered will turn into Heroic areas which you can go through again for additional rewards, but there's a catch: they are now much harder.

Increased Difficulty

The main and most visible increases in difficulty that you will notice first are the area levels. As a fully completed area turns into a Heroic one, all the mission difficulty levels on that area go up by 10 levels! This means for example that your first mission against Goldtooth in Elwynn Forest that was previously on difficulty level 1 is now a level 11 mission instead. This increase goes through the whole map and the last mission - the battle against General Drakkisath in Blackrock Mountain - will be a level 26 mission. But wait, there's more!

Map Changes

The increased difficulty level is not the only new thing Heroic Missions have to offer. In addition to that, the maps and bosses on Heroic levels have new - and usually much more perilous - gimmicks that will challenge you on new levels and force you to think of a good strategy against each of them, all while bringing forth more of the joyful chaos this game is known for!

Remember your battle against King Mukla in Stranglethorn Vale and those bananas he threw that would level up your units if they picked them up? Well, now they will decrease the level of your units instead! And yes, they will still level up any enemy unit that picks them up, a small change that can quickly imbalance the scales against you if you are not careful.

Or what about your fight against Jaina Proudmoore in Dustwallow Marsh and those two Blizzard areas on the left and right side of the map? Double double, toil and trouble: there are now four of them, two on each side!

Since every map and/or boss has new tricks that will make things harder for you, it is clear that you will have to put in more and more effort while you are trying to complete these missions and advance through them all. But what do you gain for all this increased trouble? Let's take a look at the motivator next - it's time to talk about rewards!

Completion and Multiple Rewards

How to complete a Heroic Map

When you first open up a Heroic area, you will notice that for each mission, there are five seemingly empty slots that kinda look like shields.

This is another change from the regular missions, you see, completing Heroic Missions once will not be enough to clear them. In order to fully clear a Heroic Mission, you will have to defeat that level with a leader from all of the five different Factions. Once you complete the mission with any Faction for the first time, the previously empty shield looking slot representing that Factions color will become active, serving as a proof that you have beaten that level with a deck from that specific Faction.

After you have completed the mission five times, once per each Faction, all five slots will become active - marking the full completion of that mission.

Note: Just like in other game modes, only the Leader has to belong to the Faction you want to complete this content with. You are always free to use Minis from any Faction in your decks, so try to use that to your advantage when thinking of strategies against the bosses!

Rewards

Despite being difficult to conquer, Heroic Missions offer rewards that are definitely worth pursuing. Completing Heroic Missions reward you with different things:

• Experience Tomes x 5
• Gold x 200
• Sigil x 1
• Upgrade Core x 1

Every time you complete the level with any single Faction for the first time, you are rewarded with an Experience Tome for that Faction. This means you will be able to earn a total of  five Experience Tomes from each mission, greatly boosting your experience gain and helping you to level up your Troops and Leaders.

In addition to the Tomes, once you have fully completed a Heroic mission (with all five Factions), you will receive 200 Gold (300 Gold if you have purchased the Arclight Booster with real money) and 1 Sigil. So for each map area that you fully clear, you can earn 5 x 200 = 1.000 Gold (1.500 with the Booster) and 5 Sigils. This huge amount of Gold will greatly boost your capability of purchasing units and upgrades from the G.R.I.D, making completing the Heroic Missions a very desirable thing to do.

Once you fully conquer one area of Heroic Missions (= all 5 missions with all 5 Factions), You will also be able to claim 1 Upgrade Core that is used to upgrade the rarity tier of your Mini from Uncommon upwards.

How to Clear Heroic Missions Effectively

While each boss has different mechanics and will most likely require a slightly different approach, here are some things you should not overlook while focusing on beating the levels.

Levels and Army Upgrades

Since the Heroic Mission levels are increased by 10 compared to their regular counterparts, you will also need higher level units to be able to keep up with the increased difficulty. Remember that you can level up your Leaders' Army Upgrades by completing dungeons, and by doing so, increase the level of your units "for free". For more information about dungeons and Army Upgrades, check out my Dungeon article on the DotGG network!

Controlling the Board & Unbound Units

The common thing shared throughout all the levels is that being able to control the board is the key to victory. You will definitely want to be able to get your hands on as many chests and gold veins as you can, and even more importantly, you don't want to let the opponent get their hands on those. This is extremely important in completing the Heroic Missions and I really cannot stress this enough.

One of the best ways to stop your enemy from mining gold is to utilize different Unbound troops to quickly take out enemy Kobolds and Dark Iron Miners. Your deck should include at least some Unbound unit, here are some great examples you could use for that purpose:

Alternatively, you could use spells such as Chain Lightning to take out enemy Kobolds. Just be warned, if you allow the enemy to mine all the gold and you lose your access to chests, the enemy will be able to overpower you.

Initial Push

In many maps you will encounter a feature I would call the initial push. This means that as soon as the match begins, your base will be attacked by some sort of enemy unit. For example against Maiev Shadowsong in Ashenvale, you will be facing a group consisting of two stealthed Prowlers and a stealthed Huntress, a nasty combination for sure. Prowlers would be weak to flying units but Huntress will make short work of those, and on top of everything, they are all stealthed. Your best option here is to probably use strong melee type units such as Stonehoof Tauren that will take care of the threat, or drop a powerful spell on them to reveal the stealthed units allowing your other units to target them.

Either way, in many maps, much of the difficulty comes from surviving these initial pushes. If you can figure out a good combination of units that will neutralize the threat, you can most likely start building from there and eventually claim the upper hand. Don't be afraid to take a little Tower damage initially if that allows your units to emerge victorious against the enemies.

Talents

Once you are able to get 3 stars for your Unbound Mini, you can upgrade them to Uncommon and unlock the first Talent slot for them. This will increase the level of your unit and allow it to gain new abilities or enhance the existing ones. Especially once you start fighting your way through the Heroic Missions, you should focus on unlocking talents for your key units.

Here are few extremely useful talents for Minis that are valuable in multiple Heroic Campaign builds:

• S.A.F.E. Pilot : Gnomish Cloaking Device
• Whelp Eggs: Flame Burst
• Earth Elemental: Obsidian Shard
• Quilboar: Tunnel Vision
• Huntress: Elven Might
• Stonehoof Tauren: Momentum
• Harpies: Infectious Swipes

Writer Tips

Arclight Booster

Arclight Booster is purchased using real money and it gives a permanent boost to your Gold (+ 50%) and experience (+ 20%) incomes throughout the game. Buying it is not required to clear the game, but if you are planning to do just one purchase in the game, this is the best bang for your buck.

The reason I wanted to bring this up in the Heroic Mission article is that if you are planning to buy the booster, I would recommend doing so before you start completing the Heroic Missions. Like we just went through in the rewards section, you will be getting a huge bunch of Experience Tomes as you go through the missions, and while the Arclight Booster stores any extra Gold you would have gained before purchasing it, it does not do so for the experience. So if you want to get most out of those Experience Tomes and are willing to spend money in the game, get the booster.

I want to emphasize that the choice is ultimately yours. If you don't feel comfortable spending real money in the game, you will still be able to clear all content, only with a slightly slower pace.

Study Your Enemy

Remember that you can always tap any units on the board before starting the battle and also you can pause the match midgame and study the enemies and the board. With the increased difficulty level and new game mechanics Heroic Missions provide, I believe studying your opponent is more important than ever.

As you try to win the matches, try to learn from every encounter and think what you could do to counter the enemy mechanics and unit combinations. Does the enemy have a huge amount of strong melee units? Maybe you should include some flying units in your deck to take care of them. Or maybe the enemy has units that deal elemental damage? Remember that units with the Resistant trait take 50% less Elemental damage!

You will most likely have to modify your decks continuously as you go through these missions, so make sure to keep leveling up units that are not currently in your decks as well, who knows what missions they might turn out to be invaluable for you in.

Example Heroic Mission Deck

This deck is not really leader dependent, so you can use it with the leader of your choice (you need to complete the missions with all Factions anyway). You might want to switch the slots each Mini is in depending on the Army Upgrades your leader of choice has.

The basics of the build are following:

• Earth Elemental is used to draw the attention of enemy bosses and towers away from your other units. Drop this behind the enemy just before your other troops reach its range for maximum efficiency.
• S.A.F.E Pilot is used to take out enemy Kobolds and/or chests to deny your opponents access to that gold and if possible, to claim it for yourself. You should be ready to start with this as soon as the game begins as quite often the opponent will immediately deploy a Kobold or chase a chest - and it's up to this pilot to safely crash that party!
• Stonehoof Tauren and Ghoul are both excellent and cost effective tanks that can take out enemy ground units and halt enemy attacks. If your leader is also a tank like in this example, you could opt to swap out one of these in favor of another type unit, such as Harpies, who boast tremendous DPS capabilities.
• Pyromancer is used behind your tanks to provide huge AoE damage, especially with the Conflagrate talent, and is used to take out annoying group enemies, such as Chickens, Murlocs, Harpies etc.
• Whelp Eggs require Flame Burst talent to really shine in your builds. They can be used to snipe out enemy units by dropping them right at their feet or to quickly capture meeting stones -  and they can even provide some extra damage boost to your pushes. If the enemy deploys a single melee type unit such as Stonehoof Tauren or even a group of Footmen, these Whelps will take care of those for free.

Guide for First Heroic Mission

The first Heroic Mission is once more a battle against Goldtooth in Elwynn Forest. Both the map layout and objective are simple, but if you allow enemy Kobold to mine Gold, you will quickly find yourself in deep trouble. Enemy Kobolds start at level 21 and will gain 10 levels for each Gold they mine, meaning you will be facing level 51 - or even higher - Kobolds if you allow them to mine and believe me, you DO NOT want that to happen.

In order to counter this, your #1 priority is to prevent those Kobolds from mining any gold. Luckily for this purpose you have S.A.F.E Pilot in your deck, which you can use to crash the Kobold once the game begins. If the Kobold survives the initial crash, the follow up ranged attack will finish him off. Alternatively you could deploy Whelp Eggs there in case there are also other enemy troops near that Kobold that will attack the eggs and allow your Whelps to hatch.

Your secondary goal is to claim the tower on the right side, as that will give you quick access to the boss. Use your Tanks to take it down and support them with your Pyromancer and Whelp Eggs to take out enemy Chickens and other troops.

Remember to keep your focus on those enemy Kobolds and kill them whenever they spawn. Once you are ready to push for the boss, drop Earth Elemental behind it just before your other units reach it to distract it, and to prevent your other units from being blown apart by the dynamites. Try to deal as much damage to it as you can, and if you can't take him down with a single push, take a breath and prepare for another one. Eventually you will be able to wear him out with this strategy and claim victory.

This same strategy can be applied to the whole first area. Use S.A.F.E Pilot to prevent the enemy from gaining gold and slowly work your way up the map with your other troops. If you wish to, you can use other Unbound units for this purpose as well, such as Worgen or Quilboar.

Conclusion

Heroic Missions provide a great challenge, but completing them also rewards you bountifully. Be ready to adapt and fine tune your builds for different missions, and you will be able to fight your way through them with a steady pace. If your Minis' levels are not high enough for these missions, take a breath and focus on clearing other content while leveling them up, before eventually returning to tackle some more Heroic Missions.

Make sure to check out our Warcraft Rumble Decks for new deck ideas and stay tuned for more Warcraft Rumble content on the DotGG network!