Basics & Items

Magic Attack Items for Burst Mages

Scepter of Reverberation：Grants magic attack and movement speed, and every time you land a skill an explosion triggers, dealing additional magic damage. It pairs well with burst mages who put out high spike damage, like Angela, Nuwa, and Mai Shiranui, with the extra explosion damage boosting their output even further.

Savant's Wrath：Grants magic attack and boosts it further with a passive. It works on all mages, but burst mages benefit especially.

Grand Staff：Has the highest magic attack and cooldown reduction, and raises damage by 12% per 100 magic attack (up to 12%). It's a late-game item for high-damage burst mages like Angela and Daji.

Penetration and Damage-Over-Time Items Effective Against Tanks

Mask of Agony：Grants magic attack, cooldown reduction, and max HP, and when you deal magic damage it applies a burn based on the target's current HP. It's near-essential for utility mages with modest damage, letting them deal reliable damage even to tanky heroes.

Twilight Stream：Grants magic attack, cooldown reduction, and max HP. Every time you deal magic damage, your magic penetration increases, stacking up to 10 times.

It's good for heroes who deal sustained damage with their ultimate—like Angela, Shangguan, and Erin—to grind down tanky opponents.

Void Staff：Has magic attack and max HP, and grants 45% magic penetration through its passive. It's a universal late-game item for all mages to cut through tanky heroes.

Magic Attack Items Focused on Survivability and Defense

Insatiable Tome：Grants magic attack, cooldown reduction, and max HP. Its passive gives a magic version of lifesteal.

It's good for mages who deal heavy AoE damage hitting multiple targets to boost their survivability.

Splendor：Grants magic attack and cooldown reduction. Its active makes you temporarily immune to all damage (you can't move during that time).

It's one of the best defensive items for saving a hero who is constantly targeted from a dire situation.

Enigma - Moon Goddess：Grants magic attack and cooldown reduction. It's an upgraded version of Splendor, available after 20 minutes or once you've used up your Sage's Sanctuary.

After the invulnerability ends, it additionally grants movement speed and HP regen.

Ardent Dominion：Grants magic attack, max mana, and mana regen. When your HP drops to 30%, it grants a shield and movement speed and cleanses all CC.

It's another defensive item for heroes who tend to get targeted.

Items That Fit Specific Heroes and Situations

Holy Grail：Grants magic attack, cooldown reduction, and max HP. It restores mana, and once your mana is full it switches to restoring HP.

It's for heroes who burn through mana and want to spam skills, like Dun.

Golden Blade：Grants attack speed, magic attack, and movement speed. It has two passives: your basic attacks deal bonus damage, and each basic attack raises your attack speed.

At full stacks, your basic attacks convert to magic damage. Currently the magic-damage marksman Erin benefits from it.

Mystic Page：Grants magic attack, max mana, max HP, and movement speed. It suits mages with a passive that empowers their next basic attack, like Mai Shiranui and Shi.

Nebulon Wood：Grants magic attack, max mana, and max HP. On level up it restores some HP, and it grants both physical defense and magic defense scaling with your magic attack.

It gives dive-type mages like Luna and Shangguan the durability to survive after they jump in.

Breakthrough Robe：Grants magic attack and max HP. Your magic attack scales with your bonus HP, and likewise your magic penetration scales with your bonus HP.

It's a defensive item for dive mages like Luna, Shangguan, and Flowborn (Mage).

Frozen Breath：Grants magic attack, cooldown reduction, and max HP. When your skills hit an enemy, they deal bonus damage and reduce movement speed.

It suits utility mages who want to strengthen their CC.

Venomous Staff：Grants magic attack, cooldown reduction, and movement speed. Landing basic attacks or skills reduces the target's healing and lifesteal.

It's a situational item that shines when the enemy has a lot of healing to rely on, cutting their sustain so they're easier to kill.

Item-building fundamentals

In Honor of Kings you only get six item slots, so the closer you get to the late game, the more it matters to pick the most efficient (highest-value) items for those limited slots.

Early on, don't force yourself to rush finished items — deliberately stopping at an intermediate component and fighting with that is a valid tactic. For example, grabbing a penetration component early lets you deal heavy damage to the enemy's squishy heroes right from the early game.

Mixing in a small lifesteal component early to sustain in lane (heal HP) and keep farming efficiently is another classic move. Honor of Kings is a contest of how efficiently you can farm within the time you're given, so the foundation of good play is staying aware of your resources gained per minute and continually returning to lane while you heal up.

Recommended physical items

Penetration and damage core：If the enemy stacks physical defense (roughly 500+ physical defense as a guideline), push through with percentage physical penetration items. Split your choices by hero type: ranged AoE marksmen want a penetration item with range, while more melee-oriented ones want flat penetration items.

If the enemy stacks HP, use a percentage-max-HP-damage item to chew through their thick health pools. When you want to burst someone down, a high-cost item that deals bonus damage to low-HP targets is the finisher.

Crit builds：Heroes built around crit typically stack crit rate and crit damage items together. Pairing that with an item that combines attack speed and crit lets types like Marco Polo or Luara — who empower their basic attacks with skills — scale up all at once.

On-hit and sustain：Items where casting a skill empowers your next basic attack pair well with heroes who cycle skills frequently. When the enemy has lots of assassins diving you, combining an item that slows targets with your basic attacks and an active item that grants a big emergency shield lets you survive far longer in teamfights.

Recommended magic items

In Honor of Kings physical defense is easy to stack, whereas magic defense rarely gets built until late. That makes magic damage easy to land and highly cost-efficient.

Mages that hit frequently in quick succession (types that pump out repeated damage instances) love items that stack magic penetration with each hit — combine that with a percentage penetration item and you can melt even tanky targets.

Conversely, burst-focused mages want to stack high-power magic-attack items to blow targets up in one go. For mana management, the more mana-hungry a hero is, the more they benefit from mana-regen and cooldown-reduction items.

If the enemy has lots of healers, it's effective for a mage to pick up the magic anti-heal (healing reduction) item early.

Consider defensive items on every role

It's worth considering at least one defensive item on any role. If the enemy has a high-burst assassin or mage, even a marksman or mage can dramatically raise their survivability by mixing in a single physical or magic defense item.

An active defense item that outright reduces physical damage is a versatile insurance pick when the enemy has heavy physical damage. Magic defense items come in two flavors — a shield type that soaks up poke and a type that boosts your healing — so choose based on how you're being targeted.

The trick with an active emergency-shield item is to use it after your HP has dropped; using it while you're still at high HP wastes its value. Grabbing a universal component (an intermediate piece that can build into any defensive item) first lets you look at the enemy's composition before deciding which finished item to commit to.

Boots and jungle-item tricks

You can swap boots for free every five minutes. Skilled players switch boots to the situation: physical-defense boots against a physical laner, CC-resist boots when teamfights are full of flying CC, and movement-speed boots when you prioritize escape and mobility.

As for jungle items, the standard play is not to complete them straight to the final tier — stop at an intermediate stage, finish your other core items first, and only finish the jungle item afterward.

The final tier is expensive but adds little on top, so with the same gold you're better off progressing a Meteor or Axe-line item for better damage efficiency.

Also note that early on (roughly before the 10-minute mark) the jungle item reduces your damage to minions by design, so during that window you need to be mindful of sharing resources with your team.

Anti-heal is the top priority

The most important thing about Season 13 items is learning how to stack anti-heal. Failing to prepare anti-heal early makes it easy to get out-traded in early teamfights.

The tools differ by role: mages use magic anti-heal, tanks use burn (ignite) effects that scorch on the clash lane, and physical carries use physical anti-heal.

Mages in particular are the role that can land anti-heal on enemies most efficiently, so once you see one or two healers on the enemy team, the standard play is to build it early as your first or second item.

Marksmen struggle to land it and tanks have to get close to apply it, so the mage is the default carrier. The roam (support slot) should generally skip it — by the time it matters on the board it's too late, so leave it to your mage.

Running two active items makes fighters strong

The headline of Season 13 is that clash-lane fighters and junglers can run two active items at once. This enables a two-stage plan: dive in and deal damage with your opening burst, then trigger an emergency-shield active once your HP drops to keep fighting.

For a hero that grabs and pulls, for instance, you combine an active that guarantees your combo lands with an AoE-stun active. Battle-tank types pick by purpose: a CC-lockdown type runs an AoE-CC active plus a shield active, while a lifesteal type runs a reflect-damage active plus a shield active — diving in to farm damage via reflect, then triggering the shield and rebuilding through lifesteal once low is strong.

The benefit of running two actives mainly applies to fighters; it matters little for farm, mid, or jungle.

Mid (mage) item choices

In the current meta, opening with the classic burst-power item is weak. If the enemy has healing, an anti-heal item that also grants cooldown reduction, magic attack, and even movement speed is better overall.

In a heal-heavy meta, stacking burst rarely lets you finish targets off. You should flow from anti-heal into an AoE-damage item, then into an item that stacks magic penetration through repeated hits, which also brings your cooldown reduction to a high level.

Burst-type mages are more flexible and can pick their first item to the situation. If you're unsure what to build, the quick move is to open the hero's recommended-build screen and reference the 'hot builds' that high-rank-server players are actually running.

Outside of heroes that need a slow to complete their own combo, slow-applying items are lower priority.

The rise of marksmen and on-hit builds

The Season 13 item rework let certain ultimates carry on-hit (triggers on basic attack) item effects. As a result, on-hit items that previously didn't apply to ultimates now do, buffing the marksmen who use them.

On-hit builds (the chip-damage type) spike hard in the early-to-mid game and also gain farm speed and movement speed, so they tend to shine around the 10-minute mark.

Crit builds have the strongest sustained DPS in the end, but they take time to come online, and once you die you fall behind on items, slow down, and become easy prey for assassins and mages.

In a premade, crit is plenty strong, but solo you'll be steadier with an easier-to-pilot on-hit build.

Clash fighters and roam (support slot)

Clash fighters increasingly open with an active defense item that's strong in 1v1s and grants defense and cooldown, in games where they can't one-shot the enemy. The old damage-first opener isn't wrong — you can now choose by purpose: damage first if you want to assassinate, defense first if you want to create space for your team.

Another option is a hunt-oriented defense item that reacts to area skills; this patch it triggers reliably on skills, not just basic attacks, so it pairs well with fighters and battle tanks that have AoE attacks.

There aren't many big changes on the roam side, but the key point is that roam active items can be swapped for free every five minutes. Switch to the optimal active for the situation — a team shield, area slow with vision, ally healing, an instant group teleport, and so on.

Picking a hero that fits you

Honor of Kings has over 100 heroes, each with a different feel and role. The best start is with an easy-to-play role.

There are six broad roles: Assassin (high mobility, quickly takes out priority targets), Marksman (deals sustained damage from range), Mage (a magic user spanning everything from CC to burst), Fighter (a well-rounded melee with balanced offense and defense), Tank (soaks damage and protects allies), and Support (backs up allies with heals and shields).

Beginners should start with a hero whose movement is easy to understand — like a Marksman or Fighter — and branch out to more complex heroes and roles once comfortable.

Mastering your skills

Every hero has a passive and three active skills. First, read the skill descriptions and understand their effects, damage, and cooldowns — this feeds your in-game decisions.

Many heroes have skills that synergize, so learn the combos that pair well to maximize your damage and ease of use. The most important thing is knowing when to engage and when to back off.

Once you understand your skills' range, cooldowns, and area of effect, you can judge when it's safe to press an advantage and when to retreat.

Teamwork and understanding roles

In a MOBA, coordination and executing the game plan decide wins and losses. Use voice chat and pings (signals) to relay key information to your team, like enemy positions and objective status.

Each hero has a role within the match, so understanding your own role and fulfilling that responsibility leads the team to victory. It's also important to adapt your play to the strengths and weaknesses of your team's composition.

Farming (resource gathering) basics

Farming gold and experience is the foundation, just like in other MOBAs. More resources means you level up, unlock skills, buy strong items, and gain the advantage.

There are three key tips. Minions give bonus gold on the killing blow (last hit), so prioritize landing the final hit.

Neutral jungle monsters give gold and experience and sometimes buffs, so coordinate with your team to secure them. And killing or assisting on enemy heroes gives gold and experience, so get actively involved in teamfights so you don't fall behind.

The importance of map awareness, vision, and objectives

Check the minimap frequently to track enemy movement, and use that to inform your positioning and objective decisions. If you can read enemy rotations (movement between lanes) from that information and preempt ambushes or respond ahead of time, your play improves a whole tier.

Finally, the importance of objectives: destroying a tower earns gold and map control and lets you pressure the enemy base. Killing powerful monsters like the Tyrant or Overlord grants strong buffs and bonus gold to the whole team.

And the ultimate objective is to destroy the enemy base crystal. Prioritizing the objectives that lead toward it is your path to victory.

Clash lane characteristics

Mainly handled by fighters and tanks. The terrain is rugged, so careful farming is required.

Early on you gain a lot of experience by killing the ranged minions, and you look for chances to coordinate with the jungler or mid laner to ambush enemies and attack from the flank.

Jungle characteristics

Mainly handled by assassins and fighters, this role excels at roaming and supporting teammates. Early on, kill lots of monsters to earn large amounts of gold and experience, leveling up faster than the other positions.

After leveling up quickly, work with allies to ambush enemies and strike from the flank.

Mid lane characteristics

The lane mainly handled by mages, and it has the shortest distance between minion waves. Minions have high physical defense, but mages can clear them efficiently with high magic damage.

After clearing minions quickly, it's recommended to rotate to other lanes to support your teammates.

Roam characteristics

Mainly handled by supports and tanks, with low gold needs and high survivability and support ability. Buying roam items doesn't affect your allies' experience or gold gains.

Early on, cooperate with the jungler and marksman, protecting them to enhance their offensive output.

Farm lane characteristics

The lane mainly handled by marksmen, and its relatively safe terrain makes it good for farming. Early on you can earn a lot of gold by killing the ranged minions.

After assembling two or three core items, roam to provide support and look for teamfight opportunities.

Classifying the game's phases

In Honor of Kings the game is divided into phases as it progresses. Official in-game information puts the game start at 0 minutes, the disappearance of tower shields and the appearance of the Overlord and Tyrant at 4 minutes, the empowerment of the Overlord and Tyrant plus the appearance of the cannon minion at 10 minutes, and the appearance of the Storm Dragon at 20 minutes.

However, as a strategy geared toward junglers, this video proposes its own phase classification: 0–8 minutes as the early game, 8–12 minutes as the mid game, and 12 minutes onward as the late game.

This classification is based on the team's gold and experience gains, along with combat frequency and item completion.

Early-game jungle strategy (0–8 min)

The early-game goal is to clear jungle monsters as efficiently and quickly as possible to earn experience and gold. Players with high farm ability can even reach level 15 by the 8-minute mark.

Actively invading the enemy jungle to disrupt their farm is also an important strategy. Killing monsters to earn gold and experience for the whole team is extremely helpful for building an early lead.

Mid- and late-game jungle strategy (8 min onward)

In the mid game (8–12 min), farming and fighting remain important. From this point the powerful shadow monsters (Shadow Overlord and Shadow Tyrant) appear, and securing them brings big buffs to the team.

Teams with strong early-game heroes aim to use the shadow monsters in this window to close out the game. In the late game (12 min onward), almost every hero (except supports) completes their final item build.

This is when late-game heroes shine, but early-game heroes need to be careful. They can contribute by split-pushing side lanes alone or by soloing epic monsters (except the Storm Dragon) to provide buffs to the team.

However, in late-game teamfights early-game heroes become very fragile, so careful play is required.

Heroes' power spikes by phase

Jungler heroes each have a phase they excel in. Strong early-game heroes include Athena, Butterfly, Han Xin, Musashi, and Sima Yi.

They deal high burst early and gain the upper hand while enemies lack defensive items. However, once enemy items come online in the late game their impact drops, and they get targeted in teamfights.

Kongming is cited as a strong late-game hero. Although a mage, he thrives in the jungle and can still deal high damage late, giving him better late-game scaling than Sima Yi.

Heroes like Li Bai, Wukong, Nakoruru, and Menki struggle to deal damage until certain items are complete, but once assembled they can hold their own even late.

Heroes like Luna, Zilong, Lam, Yang Jian, Arthur, Kaizer, Agudo, Dian Wei, Charlotte, Ata, and Li Xin are well-balanced and can contribute from early to late depending on the situation.

Towers and base

These are the points where heroes spawn at the start of the match and respawn after being defeated. The crystal in the base and each lane's towers (high-ground tower, inner tower, outer tower) have an active-defense feature: when attacking an enemy hero, damage increases with each hit (ignoring defense).

Destroying the enemy's high-ground tower replaces your team's melee minions with powerful super minions from the next wave onward.

Jungle objects and their effects

The jungle contains various objects, each with different strategic value.

Primal Portal (Magic Circle): Activates when you kill the Space Sprite that appears in the clash lane at 2 minutes, granting a teleport skill and experience.

It only appears once.

Inner-Tower Vision Sprite: Appears when a side lane's inner tower is destroyed and provides vision for 60 seconds (reappears after 120 seconds).

Jungle Sprite Protection: Early on, reduces the damage enemy heroes take within your team's jungle.

Healing Dew: Appears behind the outer tower at 1 minute; taking it restores HP and mana (reappears after 75 seconds).

Bush: When a hero enters a bush they become stealthed and lose vision from enemy heroes.

Regular monsters: Task Boar, Lizard, Spiketail Beast, Cheetah, Mountain Macaque, Fire Beak, and others — the main sources of experience and gold.

Azure Golem (blue buff): An important target for junglers. Killing it grants a buff that increases jungle speed, reduces skill cooldowns, and increases mana regen per second (lasts 70 seconds).

Crimson Golem (red buff): Useful for ambushes and jungling. Killing it grants a buff that adds a slow and extra true damage to your basic attacks, raising your ambush success rate (lasts 70 seconds).

Epic monsters

Powerful monsters that can greatly swing the course of a match.

Tyrant: When killed, its arrival (summon) slows enemies.

Shadow Overlord: When killed, it summons a Shadow Path that can temporarily freeze enemy heroes in the chosen lane. The summoned Shadow Vanguard has high attack speed and HP, and its basic attacks apply a slow.

Storm Dragon: When killed, the homing mark you gain slows enemies.

Minions and waves

Minions push down each lane and are an important source of experience and gold for heroes.

Melee minions: Minions with high HP and average attack, appearing two per wave.

Mage minions: Ranged minions with low HP and high attack. They appear two per wave and, from the start of the match until 4 minutes, provide extra experience and gold in the clash and farm lanes.

Ballista: A minion that appears from 4 minutes, far stronger than the ranged minions. It reduces damage taken from towers and is excellent at pushing the lane.

Cannon: Replaces the Ballista from 10 minutes and has higher attack and HP. It continuously attacks towers within range, making it a powerful tower-destroyer.

Super minion: Appears from the minion wave after the enemy's high-ground tower is destroyed, replacing all of that lane's friendly Ballistas and Cannons.

It has even higher attack and HP than the Cannon and is extremely effective at pushing the lane.