Arbiter Vildred

Arbiter Vildred is a Dark 5-star Thief built around a full-screen cleave and a self-revive engine. His main attack, Dark Blade, first raises his own Attack, then strikes every enemy and inflicts a miss-chance debuff that ignores Effect Resistance, and refreshes its own cooldown whenever it lands a kill so he can swing again and again. He runs on a Focus resource: a full Focus bar resets Dark Blade's cooldown at the start of his turn and is spent to deal bonus damage, and his Dark Contract passive revives him on death with a full Combat Readiness bar and full Focus. His basic Sweep hits two targets and offloads two of his own debuffs onto them.

Counters

• Wide, fragile teams — Dark Blade hits all enemies at once and Sweep hits two, so squads of low-defense or low-health units get cleared together; with the Attack self-buff and full Focus he can chain Dark Blade by resetting its cooldown on every kill.
• Evasion and dodge carries — His attacks ignore Effect Resistance and his kit is set up to land on slippery targets, so heroes that rely on dodging to survive can't rely on simply whiffing his hits to escape him.
• Opponents counting on the first kill — His Dark Contract passive revives him after death, then immediately gives him a full turn and full Focus, so a team that spends its opening burst to remove him often just hands him a free reset and a counterattack.
• Slow, blind-vulnerable lineups — He acts early and applies a miss-chance debuff across the enemy team, so attackers that need to land hits suddenly start missing, blunting their damage while he keeps swinging.

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Countered by

• Revive denial — His whole comeback plan is the death-revive on Dark Contract; an effect that blocks revives turns his one death into a clean removal with no second life or free turn.
• Immunity and cleansing — His only debuff is the miss-chance from Dark Blade, and it lands through Effect Resistance but not through immunity; pre-applied immunity stops it cold, and a cleanse wipes it right off, leaving his attacks doing damage only.
• Unhealable and buff removal — He leans on staying alive between turns; an unhealable debuff caps his recovery, while stripping, stealing, or shortening his Attack buff strips the bonus damage off his cleave before it goes out.
• His own pacing limits — Dark Blade and the cooldown-reset side of Dark Contract sit on five-turn cooldowns, and his chaining depends on scoring kills and on a full Focus bar; deny the kills or the Focus and his big swing falls back to a long wait, leaving him far less threatening.

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Who counters Arbiter Vildred? — full guide ›