Magic Hell Mode Build - SB6

This is a summary of the most popular hell mode meta build, the magic build.

The Mythics

Main

Tao - level 12/15
Watt - level 12
Kun - level 6 (early wave clear if first legendary is tiger)
Kitty - level 12
Lance - level 12
Frog - level doesn't matter

Optional

Dian - level 12
Drain - level 12
Meow V2 - mostly for gold gain, ideally level 12
Indy 12
Mono 12 (yes, optional. You can destroy later if reaper/magician appears)

Having exclusive treasures on the main mythics helps a bunch of course. Also, it's not reccomended to use Dragon, only Drain.

Gold

You're going to need a lot of gold to clear hell realistically. You'll want to learn to stack gold as aggressively as possible. Early eagles and frog can support your bandits for more gold gain. You don't really want to rely on frog as a wave clear because he's inconsistent in general. But if you happen to get a Dian after using Frog to boost your gold gain from Bandit, well that's awesome. Or you can keep frog to the end. Both can be good choices.

Wave Clearing

Tao 12 is the bread and butter of this build. He does really solid boss damage. His strongest move is not his ult, but his skill that has a % chance of happening every time you attack. Because of this, and Watt, building up attack speed is the core concept of this build. Watt will be covered in the boss section. Tao is extremely good at clearing waves though. Not only is he good at it, but he doesn't take up space on the frontline because of this huge range. This means he's popular even in physical/hybrid builds. You can just throw him down and forget and he'll clear waves for you.

Kun can clear waves as well. While Kun is weaker than Tao, he can be a good summon if you get Tiger early and can't summon Tao for a bit. He takes a bit of time to build up mana to to roll rage, but he's a solid unit.

Lancelot is also a good unit to use because while he's known more as a boss killer, with enough mp regen from Kitty Mage he can do really strong damage against waves as well, even at the lowest Safebox levels. Even at sb6 though, his contribution to wave clear is still very high.

Iron Meow V2 is really strong. Even when running a physical build Meow can be a good choice because of a couple reasons: he buffs mana regen, and he doesn't ever explode like Chu does. His damage is fairly similar to Chu's damage overall as well so he's well worth the summon. He synergizes well with Lazy Taoist as well because Tao's ultimate is more powerful against bosses than his normal whirlwing ability.

Drain is controversial. People are often on the fence because of the high cost to summon him. But if I were to point out his biggest Pros instead of his Cons, they look pretty good:

He summons using eagles - your most common support unit with the magic strategy.
He's the single most powerful unit in the game, with higher wave clear damage than Chu or Tao, and higher single target damage than Vayne.
Board space is limited in hell mode. It's usually worth the extra effort/wait to put a powerful unit in the few spots you do have.

You do have to wait for him to hatch, but since you're stacking eagles with this strategy anyways, you'll find that you have 6 eagles all the time. He might only come in on the later waves, but in hell it's often worth that wait.

The Cons are pretty rough though. The big one - Drain doesn't do much more damage than Tao does. Knowing that, Drain really becomes a luxury. If anything, Drain is more of a flex in the current state of the game rather than a legitimate strategy.

Frog 12 is a pretty solid unit as well. If you happen to get one from using frogs to get more econ/attack speed, not only does he do good damage, but he does more damage at level 12. Even though Dian has gotten less popular over time, he's still solid enough to consider bringing to level 12.

Beating the Bosses

While Tao benefits from attack speed, there's another unit that really benefits from attack speed more than any other stat, similar to Tao - Watt 12. Watt's playstyle is that his normal attacks, while very weak, have a chance to add +1 to his stack every time they hit an enemy. He gets really powerful when you pop his ult though. His attack speed doubles, and his attack increases by +5% for each stack he has.

This ability is extremely strong. Nothing in the game is as strong as a Watt that's been left to charge for half the game. Especially because the higher you boost attack speed, the faster he builds stacks, and the quicker he unleashes those stacks when using his ult. This is made even better because it synergizes with Taoist, who also improves more with attack speed than anything else, and you don't need any Defense Reduction for either of them leaving plenty of space for attack speed buffs like eagle and frog. Since your main wave clear mythic and your boss killer need the same things to succeed, it makes this a very easy and consistent playstyle.

Support

As mentioned above, the main support you're looking for is attack speed. This is great both early and late game. It's great for early game because gold stacks faster, and it's good for late game so you can more easily rely on Watt and Tao. You won't need any defense reduction for this build, so the next best thing after you top out on attack speed at 200% is mana regen. (Attack speed has no further effect once you get past 200% so if you do get it that high, you can stop building it up) Kitty Mage is usable here, especially if you're relying heavily on Lancelot. However, you can also considering running a Kitty-less build:

Dropping Mana Regen from the Strat

An interesting thing about this build, is you can completely drop magic regen (Kitty Mage) from it if you really lean into Watt and Tao. Taoist benefits very little from mana regen, and Watt gains nothing from mana regen. Since those are the main units, you can win easily without any dedicated mana regen. Iron Meow is still a good summon, he does solid damage. Kun is also good if you get Tiger early.

Summary

This build is a great build because you can essentially run it with only Tao and Watt 12, and Kun 6, making it extremely affordable and easy to get into. There are also all the other mythics mentioned above, which will greatly increase your clear rate and lower the reliance on RNG. You can run it with and without Kitty 12 and Lance 12, which if you followed the first unlock guide, you should have anyways so you can experiment with both as soon as you get Tao and Watt 12.

That's it for this build though. I hope you guys have fun building towards the higher difficulties. It takes time, but it's reallly satisfying to build towards it. Good luck on the grind!

-GhidWard