While it’s a little annoying that North America is so far behind the curve on Arena of Valor (Free) compared to Europe and Asia, the up-side of this is they can have a super fast-paced release cycle of new content that is already available in other regions. We’re seeing one new hero released every week, with this week’s newest addition to Arena of Valor being Kriknak, an assassin beetle-looking hero that plays a lot like League of Legends’ Kha’Zix. His abilities all are based on physical damage, but his core damage-dealing ability deals bonus percentage-based magic damage. If your opponents are stacking armor, the magic damage will rip them up, and vice versa.

Kriknak’s abilities are as follows:

• Passive – Bite: When Kriknak’s ability hits an enemy, the next normal attack is enchanced and deals an additional 250 physical damage.
• Ability 1 – Terrifying Plague: Kriknak summons a plague larvae that deals 250 +173 physical damage and inflicts the target with Mark of Horror. When Kriknak attacks marked enemies, they take additional magic damage equal to 10% of maximum HP, the cooldown of this ability is reduced by 3 seconds, and restores Kriknak’s mana.
• Ability 2 – Horn Rush: Kriknak lunges forward with his enormous horns, dealing 180 +173 physical damage to enemies in his path. Every enemy hero hit restores 150 +34 HP for Kriknak.
• Ultimate – Drone Drop: Kriknak takes to the skies, significantly increasing his movement speed for a brief period. When casting this ability white airborn, Kriknak attacks the target area and deals 350 +269 physical damage

As an assassin with loads of mobility, Kriknak belongs in the jungle. After clearing enough of the jungle to get to level 4, learn your ultimate ability and make the enemy team fear you. Kriknak’s passive is a lot like Wukong’s in that every time you use an ability your next physical attack will do loads of bonus damage. It’s very important you don’t let this go to waste. I know how appealing it is to just mash all of your abilities as soon as a fight starts, but you really want to pay attention to your auto-attack swings to make sure you use an ability, attack, use another ability, attack, etc. 250 damage bonus damage, particularly early in the game, is very substantial.

Like most assassins, Kriknak should be played by roaming and looking for people who are caught out. If the enemy mid laner extends too far or you catch someone alone in the jungle, you’ll easily be able to rip them to shreds. In team fights, you’ll want to look for mages and marksmen who are out of position to take them out and significantly reduce the damage potential of the enemy team. Depending on how much of a gap you need to close, you can either use your short rage charge that comes from Horn Rush, or take advantages of the movement speed bonus of Drone Drop. Just keep in mind that if you’re in a team fight situation, you’ll need to save one of those two abilities to get away.

Also, because of the cooldown reduction and damage bonus that comes from Terrifying Plague, you’ll want to stick on one target until they’re dead. Switching targets in the middle of the fight and needing to re-apply Mark of Horror will significantly decrease your damage as oppose to just continually spamming Terrifying Plague on someone, being sure to get auto-attacks in between abilities.

As far as equipment and Arcana are concerned, built Kriknak like any other assassin. Stack loads of attack damage and life steal for survivability. Don’t bother with defense items unless you’re in a situation where buying either armor or magic resist can successfully negate most of the enemy team’s damage (i.e. if you’re in a situation where they don’t have a mage, or something else dumb). The default item load out for Kriknak is surprisingly solid, and the Arcana build recommended in our guide also applies really well to him.