On paper, the Hilt looks promising: combo-based stacks that ramp up damage by up to +15% at full stacks. But in practice, its real value depends entirely on commander’s abilities, timing, uptime, and how it interacts with rage generation and skill cycles — especially in open-field combat, where duration is limited.
⚙️ Methodology
To make this analysis reliable, we ran 10,000-runs simulations for each scenario, modeling every piece of rage and proc logic as in the live game.
We accounted for:
Theroretical Rage model : with a cap at 220 per turn (probably not 100% accurate but the most common used)
Rage Talents
Rage Requirement
Always attacking a target, but not being constantly targeted.
Combo Attacks mechanics
Non-talented Horn
Non-talented Hero’s Hilt: 50% chance to gain +3% combo damage per combo attack (stacking up to 5, lasting 5s).
Achilles and Hector Commanders‘ abilities : Combo attacks on active skills, conditional rage speed bonus, and additional combo attack
Considering the active skills are hitting the maximum targets possible (up to 5 for Achilles)
What is not modelled :
Rage from counter attack
External rage sources
External rage reduction/drain or silence effect
Tactical Behaviors (back and forth, breaking off, re targeting…)
Each pairing was tested in both 20s and 30s combat duration windows, providing a full picture of how quickly Hero’s Hilt builds and how often it aligns with damage peaks.
📊 Key Findings
🔸 Average Performance
Arthur / Achilles averaged around 10,4% combo damage bonus without Butterfly, climbing to about 11% with Butterfly.
Arthur / Hector don’t perform as good (due to Hector single target) — around 6–6.7% baseline, and 7,25% with Butterfly.
🔸 Stack Behavior
For Arthur/Hector, uptime hovered around 50–65% on 0–2 stacks, with only ~25-30% of turns at full stacks.
For Arthur/Achilles, the uptime at max stacks are a lot better — around 50%.
🔸 Alignment Matters
Even when Hero’s Hilt built strong stacks, the timing more rarely lined up perfectly with S1 (Arthur’s active skill).
S2 (the secondary’s active skill) aligned much more frequently with 4–5 stacks — around 30-40% .
💬 Discussion
Both Achilles and Hector bring solid synergy potential to Arthur’s kit, but they don’t offer the same efficiency to hero’s Hilt. Pairing with Achilles makes the accessory a lot better, than Hector
These simulations also don’t account for Achilles’s conditional ability to recast his active skill — because realistically, reaching the 2,500 damage factor reduction threshold is quite difficult to predict in open-field conditions. In short engagements, you could never trigger that recast.
For Hero’s Hilt to shine even more, you’d need longer sustained fights, where the stacking mechanic has enough time to ramp and maintain its bonuses.
These averages are interesting but we need to compare with the current best damage enhancer, the Ring of Doom.
On average, the Ring provides a higher all-damage increase — and its benefits scale even better with combo-heavy setups (and potentially the Butterfly Effect). On average, on the same simulation it reaches 11,7% average All Damage increased (and around 45% alignment with the secondary’s active skill, without Butterfly).
This needs to be confirmed by real in-game testings when commanders will be released.
🧩 Conclusion
Hero’s Hilt, in the open field, where uptime consistency and damage alignment matter most, starts to show its potential. On Arthur/Hector, it clearly doesn’t match the enhancement of a Ring. But, for Arthur/Achilles, the Hilt starts to compete. It will all rely on player’s preference, the Ring increasing all type of damage, but is a lot about good timing… whereas the Hilt increases only Combo damage, and for openfield, more frequently benefitting the combat from the secondary’s first active skill.
The release of new cavalry commanders in few months, potentially able to do multiple targets aoe combo attacks, could push the Hilt to the top accessories in the future.
☕ If you made it this far — thanks for reading. I hope this helps.
Mentions to Sakarsh and Bilegt to have pointed out some corrections for the simulation.
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