Hello everyone!
As a Zootopia fan, I was happily surprised to see many of the characters in Disney Heroes: Battle Mode. As a result I’ve been working to accumulate a full Zootopia team and test how well they fare in the game itself. To grant myself some credibility; I’m currently level 60 and have all my Zootopia characters Purple at the time of this writing, and have been playing since the official release. Furthermore, we’ll scale some of their abilities with medals to indicate how well they do in that area compared to other characters in the game. From low to mid to high So, let’s begin.
Which Zootopia Characters Are Available?
Judy Hopps, Nick Wilde, Chief Bogo, Yax, Finnick
General Information
Judy Hopps
- Role: Support
- Position: Mid
- Trial Team: Yellow
- Health:
- Basic Damage:
- Skill Power:
- Energy Regen:
- Armor:
Overall, I find that Judy Hopps lacks a lot of things compared to other support characters. First of all, she’s very vulnerable to attacks, and this is only compensated by her purple skill which gives her a second life. This supports the fact that she will die easily, and it almost seems to be part of her kit. Her manual skill “Bunny Hop” is a very strong attack for a support which rivals Finnick’s 3rd skill “Jumbo Slam”. While her 2nd skill “Deputize” allows her to give a strong damage, attack speed, and damage boost to her group early in the fight, the rest of her kit does not do her justice.
She is built around buffing her party with the “Deputize” bonus, also using “Testify” to do a small heal and re-apply the “Deputize” bonus, but this only gets traction when enemies actually die. I see her more as an offensive support that needs to be protected to keep the buffs up, while she shouldn’t be the one that needs supporting.
Often she dies five seconds into the fight and she only served to apply that initial “Deputize” buff before she goes out. However, she does sync well with other heroes that focus on doing basic attack damage such as Jack Sparrow and Calhoun. By inspiring them at the start, and when she dies and resurrects (re-applying the buff again) it can help gather them quick energy.
Disk: Judy has two disks, but one stands out in particular; the one with Felix. This Disk called “Deputy Junior” boosts Judy her Deputize skills and gives the entire team a +100% basic attack damage boost from her inspire buff per support hero on her team. This means that if you have Judy and Violet and Yax on your team, Judy’s Deputize buff grants the entire team a +300% (!) basic attack damage boost for her entire team. This works great in sync with some basic damage focused heroes such as Jack Sparrow or Calhoun. With the future “Study” effect in mind which always grants basic damage crits just like Sulley’s scare effect, this can work very well.
Final Verdict: Judy has some trouble starting up, but once she reaches purple level her health and armor shoot up and once you have her Felix disk unlocked and in use, she can be a true menace to enemy teams. Partner her up with some basic attack damage heroes such as Dash, Calhoun or Jack Sparrow and you got yourself a dangerous Arena team.
Finnick
- Role: Control
- Position: Mid
- Trial Team: Yellow
- Health:
- Basic Damage:
- Skill Power:
- Energy Regen:
- Armor:
I really like Finnick and that’s because of several reasons. First of all, he has a very high armor count compared to other control heroes (However, this is lost at the higher levels but still remains high for a damage dealer), and almost rivals tanks like Bogo and even surpasses Ralph. Second, his energy regen is very high which allows him to use his pushback skill “Remote Controller” several times during a fight. This is useful, because it can push away in-your-face tanks like Mr. Incredible and in-your-face dps like Jessie. And finally, all of his attacks do AoE/Splash damage! This can be extremely useful once the tank is down and Finnick can reach the vulnerable back line.
At this point in time, I believe Finnick be one of the most useful heroes in the game due to his very strong attacks and AoE abilities. His purple skill “Sticky Situation” also lowers the attack speed and movement speed of his enemies by 30% everytime he hits with his “Pummel Pop” and “Jumbo Pop”. This works very well in sync with Judy Hopps her “Bunny Hop” which also reduces the enemies’ attack and movement by 20%. As well as Yax his purple skill “Chill Vibes” which reduces it by another 10%.
Finnick’s weakness is that if there is a very strong tank, and many back liners, his AoE is rendered useless as it only hits the tank. This is a dangerous situation for Finnick and reduces his overall damage output.
Disk: Finnick has a friendship disk with Nick and with Judy. The one with Nick boosts Finnick’s Remote Controller skill with damage and gives him +100 starting energy and +9% conservation at level 1. The one with Judy grants him +175 skill power and his basic attacks remove 25 energy from the enemy. I personally favor the disk from Nick as Finnick already charges his active skill very quickly, and teamed with the conservation and starting energy, Finnick can use his active Remote Controller skill up to three times during one fight.
Final Verdict: Finnick is one of the strongest damage dealers out there due to his splash damage and attack speed reduction, but a strong tank can severely reduce his ability to make a dent in the backline. Try pairing him up with Vanellope as her disk increases damage done to slowed enemies. EVE also makes a good partner.
Nick Wilde
- Role: Damage
- Position: Back
- Trial Team: Yellow
- Health:
- Basic Damage:
- Skill Power:
- Energy Regen:
- Reality:
Nick is often hailed in global chat as one of the strongest heroes out there, and this is true for some aspects of his kit. In classical RPG terms, Nick can be seen as the “mage”. His skillpower is off the charts and his manual skill “Lemming Rush” can ramp up to extreme damage. That is, if he stays alive that long to allow his lemmings to increase to 5. This attack also does Fantastic Damage, which is nice, as Reality is often lower than Armor with heroes.
His Purple skill “Proper Reinforcements” allows him to gain quite a lot of skillpower for every ally standing and his current lemmings he has accumulated. I absolutely love having Nick in my team during City Watch as his lemmings are carried over into every new region! That means he will start fights with 5 lemmings after a while. His weaknesses are that he has no armor, only reality. This makes him especially weak against Dash for example, as he can reach the backline easily with his physical damage attacks.
And, of course, Nick takes a while to accumulate his lemmings, this can be especially nailbiting when you do a single battle in Arena where Nick simply does not have enough time to do this. I often end fights while Nick is still busy with gathering energy for his 3rd lemming. But this is compensated by his “Charming Fox” ability which allows him to charm an enemy, taking him out of commission for 7 seconds(!) and increase the charmed target’s damage by a bit. This can be extremely useful in duels when your enemy focuses on glass-cannon (High damage, low health) heroes such as Jessie. If Nick charms her, she is unable to jump into your backline for 7 seconds while your team can focus on other duties such as taking her or others out.
Disk: Nick has friendship disks with Yax and Judy. The disk with Yax enhances his charm by making it last 6% longer and it grants a 6% shorter cooldown at level 1. It also enhances his skill power by +88. The one with Judy helps Nick to shield one of his allies for 12% of Nick’s HP. Additionally, he is granted +656 Max HP and +88 Skill Power at level 1. Personally, I prefer his shielding disk with Judy as Nick has a fairly high health count for a damage dealer, and allowing him to shield another ally can do wonders for the team.
Final Verdict: Nick is a great addition to any team, but he is vulnerable to backline attackers and his skills take some time to ramp up in damage. Take him with you on City Watch, but think twice in Arena battles.
Yax
- Role: Support
- Position: Back
- Trial Team: Yellow
- Health:
- Basic Damage:
- Skill Power:
- Energy Regen:
- Reality:
Yax is a classic support, weak in both attack and defense, but a game-changing AoE heal for the entire team. Even if I don’t play my standard full Zootopia team, Yax is always in the backline healing for me. Additionally, he also helps with his Purple skill “Chill Vibes” to bring down the movement speed and attack speed of your enemies by 10%. This syncs well with Finnick and Judy as written above.
His friendship bonuses are helping his character very well, giving his heal a damage buff to the entire team and he gains increased conservation (Reducing energy required to cast skills). Using his heal at the right time can turn the tide in a fight and help you win. He also has two skills that do quite some damage. His “Flower Power” and “Body Odor” can take down enemies on their own. I even had situations where Yax was up against two other heroes by himself and he managed to beat them! All in all, Yax is a great addition to the Zootopia team and syncs well with them.
Disk: Yax has friendship disks with Finnick and Frozone. The one with Finnick enhances his Chill Vibes by making it last 1.5 seconds longer and gets him extra skill power (+72). The one with Frozone I find more useful however and grants Yax +5% conservation, making him re-use his active healing skill more often but it also grants the entire team +175 basic damage every time he uses his healing ability and this keeps on stacking. This works great in sync with Judy’s disk mentioned before, and team both of them up with Calhoun or Dash can seriously wreck some fantastic damage based team like Sulley, Zurg, and Mike combos.
Final Verdict: Keep this amazing healer in your team, but compensate his weak defenses by having a controller or another support in your team to keep him out of harm’s way. Try using him in combination with Judy as their disks sync well, and partner them up with hard basic damage dealing heroes.
Chief Bogo
- Role: Tank
- Position: Front
- Trial Team: Yellow
- Health:
- Basic Damage:
- Skill Power:
- Energy Regen:
- Reality & Armor:
Let me just say that I think Bogo is a great tank but not the best. Yes, right now Sulley is possible the best tank at the current patch version, but Bogo can hold his own as well, both in Arena and City Watch/Surge. What Bogo lacks in health, he makes up for extreme armor and reality.
While Bogo doesn’t start out with any healing, his purple skill allows him to do so after all. His manual skill “Serve and Protect” gives him a strong shield, and in combination with his purple skill “Heal Up” he… well… actually heals up. Another strong ability from Bogo is his “Criminal Charge”, right off the bat, Bogo charges in during the 1st second of each fight and wave, and stuns the first enemy hero he hits in the frontline for 5 seconds! This is an amazing stun that is activated in the absolute first second of every fight. It opens up many opportunities and grants you the first strike most of the time.
Additionally, Bogo throws a flash grenade with “Blinding Justice” that blinds the entire enemy team for 5 seconds, making them miss all their physical attacks. I would say Bogo is a good mix of a Tank and Controller and subdues many heroes that come in contact with him while holding his own. He doesn’t need much support, but a heal from Yax is always welcome.
Another useful aspect is that his enhancements on his badges are geared towards Reality and HP, so he’s geared towards stopping heroes with strong skill-based attacks and fantastic damage. Timing his “Serve and Protect” at the right moment helps him to survive strong sudden nukes.
Disk: Bogo has two friendships with Mr. Incredible and Calhoun, and I would like to talk specifically about Calhoun’s disk as it is a great addition to Bogo’s skillset. This disk enhances Bogo’s criminal charge by making it a “splash” ability. The disk makes Criminal Charge hit multiple enemies now, knocking them back and also dealing +10% more damage, and on top of that, it increases Bogo’s basic damage a bit by +21.9. I find that Bogo’s criminal charge is what makes him so useful during fights as it immediately stuns an enemy at the start of the fight. Boosting that particular skill almost seems like common sense, and I highly advise it.
Final verdict: Bogo is a strong tank that currently is a better choice than Ralph, but loses the “Race of the Best Tank” to Sulley at this time of writing. However, his start-of-fight stun and aoe blinding attacks, plus his strong self sustain, make him a good addition to any team.
Conclusion
I hope you liked reading my Zootopia Strategy Guide and if there any additions you would like to make, I’ll gladly edit them in here. Also I’d like to add that this my personal view on the Zootopia characters and this is not written in stone. If you have a different opinion on them it is completely fine At the time of this writing, my current level, and current patch, the full Zootopia team can compete very well in Arena if managed well. However, I do still switch out Judy for Violet for some more stable support. But don’t forget that the Zootopia team is excellent in slowing the enemy’s attack speed and movement speed! Three of their heroes have attack speed reduction skills and are very effective when paired together.
PS. Characters I’d still like to see in Disney Heroes Battle Mode from the Zootopia Universe are of course Mr. Big, but I would also like to see Clawhauser and Flash in there some day.