What is the difference between normal and Hero mod

Shajirr

I could not find up to date information anywhere including the wiki which is mostly completely outdated.
The only thing I found is these lines from the Rise update:
- Only level 90 or higher characters can use Hero Mode, as the mode is balanced for level 90 or higher characters
- You can obtain "Heroes Item Box" with a certain probability by playing Hero Mode (excluding "Intruder of Rocheste")
- Items you can get from "Hero Item Box" : Paradise Enhancement Stone, Enhancement Elixir, Departure License, and other high-value items

hornywatermelon

You waste more time.

RiceMonster

Hero bosses will drop one extra core, take more hits to kill (not sure if they just more HP, DEF, or both), hit harder, and have more attack speed. Before Rise, the drop tables differed between hard and hero mode. I'm not sure if that's still the case, or if they both drop the same items; obviously the hero box only drops in hero mode. You get more AP too, and I think gold and EXP as well?

JessGame

I have not bothered to really check,but do we get seals on season 2 normal mode?

AngelYukki

Shajirr wrote: »

Paradise Enhancement Stone, Enhancement Elixir, Departure License,
high-value items

hahahaha
sobs

Shajirr

Does anyone have specific information?
Like by how much boss stats are increased?
By how much gold/exp is changed?
Is some kind of special elite mob appearing only on Hero diff still present or was that removed?

Rade

Hero mode is (at least currently) only available on fights that were previously raids, so as for the elite mobs, those are gone. The attack speed increase on bosses was also removed. Many of the mechanics that were dumbed down or removed for normal mode are present again when you run them on hero mode; for example, Cromm has his conflagration phase as well as the statue and clone summons. Not sure exactly how the stats are buffed up, but it's enough that it will be a reasonably long and moderately challenging battle with higher end 90-95 gear, as opposed to the 20 second annihilations they are on normal difficulty at that point.

The main benefit from hero mode (aside from having something to play that doesn't take 5 seconds to beat) is the hero boxes that drop. There's a chance of getting departure licenses from them, which let you do extra runs of battles past their usual limit, with no hard cap as far as I'm aware so long as you have more licenses to use. I haven't seen any evidence of having a chance at other more valuable drops when running on hero yet, so it seems like the drops are the same, but it's still a possibility. When you're at max level, you won't be able to run the older missions and get gold for them unless it's on hero because of the level penalty. On Havan, a normal run took me under a minute to solo and I got about 6 cores and no gold, while a hero run took me about 7 minutes to solo and I received 7 cores and 66k gold. A solo I did on my Lann using the freebie 90 gear took somewhere around 30 minutes, so it can go quickly with a high geared party, but will take a long while at entry 90 levels.

Basically, while the hero mode runs themselves are more time consuming, they're the only option for those runs to still give their raw gold (double the original value), and they give you the opportunity to rerun valuable limited battles like Dullahan and royal army raids if you're a bit lucky with the boxes. It's a bit situational, but there's certainly value to doing runs on hero mode over normal mode, and it's the only way to run pre-S3 content in a manner that gives a comparable challenge to its pre-Rise state now.

Shajirr

Hero mode however is listed under every single battle that exists.
Does that mean that it is essentially a lie since as you said it only exists for raids and not for regular battles?

Rade

It's not a selectable difficulty option for them; it's just listed in the records windows as part of the template. The ones that do have it available show it as a selectable difficulty regardless of whether or not you've got the level requirement for it. It's possible they'll start adding in more options for hero mode now, though, as Korea's already had hero mode added for the season 3 raids, and there's currently a few battles that should have hero mode but don't, for no obvious reason; Ingkells is the one example I can think of off the top of my head for that. In my opinion, the Rise update was very clearly about reworking what's present and creating a solid framework to be able to expand on over time - I expect hero mode and other challenges for high end 90-95 players to be a heavy focus for the future.