Battle intelligence
THP vs Strongest Hero Power: the number that decides PvP
Total Hero Power (THP) is the cleaner cousin of Total Power — it ignores the soldier-count noise and tracks hero investment specifically. But the playerbase already noticed that THP can be inflated without making a commander any more dangerous, which is why the game also exposes a second, much more honest ranking: Strongest Hero Power. This guide explains the difference and how the LastRank cross-server panel uses both.
What THP actually counts
THP is the sum of the 16 strongest heroes on the account. Each hero contributes its own power score — built from level, stars, equipment, skill ranks and any temporary buffs active when the score was read. Critically, the game does not care whether those 16 heroes are slotted into your active Squad or sitting idle: a player who has carefully levelled four full Squads will see the top 16 across all of them counted together. That choice makes THP a measure of how much hero investment lives on the account in total, which is closer to a player's spending and play time than Total Power is — but it also opens the door to inflation.
The Squad: 5 heroes (and a Gorilla after S4)
An active Squad in Last War carries five heroes: a front line that absorbs damage and a back line that deals it. From the back half of Season 4 onward, the Squad also gains a special slot for a Gorilla, which fights alongside the five and changes how some compositions play. Free-to-play accounts unlock three Squads; the monthly pack adds a fourth. None of that matters to the THP formula, though — it always reads the same 16 strongest heroes, regardless of which Squad they sit in or whether they are deployed at all. That's why a player who keeps levelling secondary heroes can climb the THP ranking even when none of those secondaries will ever be the one attacking your wall.
The counter system: Tank, Air, Missile
Heroes (and the troops behind them) belong to one of three types: Tank, Air and Missile. They form a strict rock-paper-scissors: Air counters Tank, Missile counters Air, Tank counters Missile, with a 20% damage bonus on the favoured side and a 20% reduction on the punished side. A Squad facing its counter loses fights it should mathematically win. The practical consequence for ranking-reading: a profile with high THP but only one type covered is a sleeper of a different kind — strong on the leaderboard, fragile against the right opponent. We deliberately don't list "top heroes by type" here because the meta rotates every season as new exclusive weapons unlock; for the current season's heroes-by-type picks, the canonical fan resource is cpt-hedge.com/guides.
How skins, frames and base effects inflate the number
A hero's score is not just level + stars + gear. Base skins that are equipped grant roughly 5% bonus attack to the hero. Base skins kept in storage (owned but not active) grant 5% HP and 5% defence instead. Profile frames add another 2% to 5% to attack, defence and HP, and many of them also raise Training Ground capacity by +50. Special base effects add 1.5% to 3% Skill Damage depending on which effect is active. None of these require levelling a hero — they require collecting cosmetics. Stack them and the same hero can read 10–15% higher than an otherwise identical account that hasn't paid for the skins. That is why two profiles with the same nominal THP can perform very differently in an actual fight.
The Strongest Hero Power ranking, and what it reveals
The game also publishes a separate leaderboard that lists the strongest single hero on each of the top 100 players — one entry per player, the best of their roster only. This is the cleanest possible PvP indicator: real duels are decided by the hero leading the charge, not by the bench. The pattern to watch on LastRank is the gap between a profile's THP rank and its Strongest Hero rank. A commander in the THP top 50 who sits outside the Strongest Hero top 200 is a diluted profile: they've levelled many heroes without making any single one dangerous. A profile in the Strongest Hero top 50 with only a middling THP is the opposite — a focused build, and exactly the kind of opponent rival alliances actually plan around.
How to grow THP that actually matters
If the goal is real strength and not vanity ranking, the advice consistently given by experienced players is to concentrate rather than spread. Pour hero shards and XP into a single primary Squad until those heroes are fully maxed before touching secondaries. Upgrade hero skills with medals, push gear to gold tier as soon as possible (prioritise attack over health and defence), and unlock the Special Forces research branch to reach T10 troops — that unlock is one of the largest single power spikes available. Drone chips matter too, and they need to match the Squad's type (Tank chips on a Tank Squad, etc.) to apply correctly. The specific heroes worth concentrating on rotate with each season's exclusive weapons; cpt-hedge.com is the place to confirm the current meta. Use the LastRank rankings to check whether your investment is showing up where it counts — the Strongest Hero board, not just the THP one.
Live example
Current global top of Hero Power (THP)
Live data from the public Last War leaderboards, refreshed daily. Useful to calibrate the scale of the numbers discussed above.
- #1LBJUSTIN[YXI]#263660.42M
- #2QATAR ᴼᴺᴱ[OcF]#327638.28M
- #3Goldenfighter[XFM]#532635.65M
- #4Ballź[v0iD]#285623.93M
- #5クワマソ[EdN]#565621.86M