Our own combat guide names six team archetypes that recur in community discussion: Bleed, Burn, Shock, Aerial, Summon, and Defensive Control. That page describes them as a list; this page is the comparison table nobody on this site had built yet — what each archetype actually is, which heroes our other pages confirm belong to it, and which two of the six we cannot staff at all from sourced material. Nothing below is a new claim. It is six existing pages read side by side.
The six, compared
| Archetype | Core mechanic | Heroes our sources confirm | Sourcing strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aerial | Airborne-launching heroes chain into each other; the most self-sufficient of the six | Astria, Eileen, Aria (all apply Airborne per Heroes: All 19); Roxy's 3rd-Awakening repeatable Air Stomps also fit the archetype | Confirmed roster, multiple pages agree |
| Burn | Fire application into a Burn finisher | Kalsion, Aria, Kalien (per Kalsion build guide and Heroes: All 19); Reina named as a mixed-element partner | Best-documented of the six — Kalsion is S-tier on both tracked tier lists |
| Bleed | Bleed application and payoff | Theresia confirmed as the primary applier (Best Team Comps, Heroes: All 19); which heroes respond to her Bleed is explicitly unconfirmed | Partial — one applier named, no full lineup |
| Shock | Electrocution application, useful against element-gated enemies | Ornette (Electrocution, per Heroes: All 19); the incoming roadmap hero Ryza is described as shock-specialized on the patch notes and roadmap page but has not shipped | Partial — applier named, payoff hero not identified in any source we have |
| Summon | Built around a hero's summoned unit rather than a shared ailment | Not itemized anywhere on this site. Dana summons Chako (an ice golem) and Sion places a field Relic, per Heroes: All 19, but no source describes either as anchoring a "Summon team" specifically | Unverified as a lineup — named by our combat guide as a recurring archetype, with no hero list behind it |
| Defensive Control | Built around crowd control and survival rather than damage | Not itemized anywhere on this site | Unverified as a lineup — same caveat as Summon |
Why two of the six are blank
Our combat guide names Summon and Defensive Control as archetypes players discuss, and we are not dropping them from this table just because we cannot staff them — that would quietly imply they do not exist. What we will not do is guess which heroes belong in them. Dana and Sion are the two heroes on this site whose kits most resemble a "Summon" identity, but no source we have read frames either of them as the anchor of a dedicated Summon team the way Kalsion is framed for Burn. If you find a sourced breakdown of either archetype, that would fill a real gap on this page.
Where this table does not replace the pages it draws from
This comparison flattens six topics into one table on purpose, and that flattening loses detail worth reading in full elsewhere. The Best Team Comps guide is not organized by archetype at all — it documents three tested boss-fight rotations (Cerese/Othello/Dana, Charlotte/Johnny/Reina, and a Lute variant) that are about positioning in a specific fight rather than which ailment a team shares. Those rotations use heroes from more than one archetype above; a team can be built around Aerial or Burn coverage and still follow a Cerese/Othello/Dana-style rotation once it is in combat. Read this page to decide which ailment your team should share, and the Best Team Comps page for how to actually play the fight once you have chosen.
What situation points at which archetype
You are new and want a team that works the moment you unlock it. Aerial is the strongest starting pick our sources support: Astria, Eileen and Aria are all Exchange heroes, all three launch enemies, and our unlock planner page already names this trio as the most self-sufficient early chain on the roster.
You want the archetype with the most independent confirmation behind it. Burn. It is the only archetype where a dedicated build guide exists (the Kalsion build guide), where the anchor hero is S-tier on both tracked rankings with no split, and where team pairings are cross-referenced across two outlets.
You are fighting an element-gated enemy. Neither Bleed nor Aerial helps here. Shock (Ornette) and Burn (Kalien, Aria, Kalsion) are the two elements our combat guide and bosses page confirm actually bypass an immunity — Soulwarden Zemoor is the named example, and Kalien is called out specifically as the community's standard answer to undead enemies generally.
You already have Theresia built and want to keep using her. Bleed is your only sourced option, but go in aware that this site cannot tell you who her second and third teammates should be — that is a genuine gap, not an oversight, and treating any site's confident "Bleed team" list as settled fact would be the wrong move given what we could actually verify.
You are trying to build around Summon or Defensive Control specifically. There is nothing here to point you at yet. Read Heroes: All 19 for the full roster and build your own read of which heroes fit, the same way you would for any hero whose kit no primary source documents.
What we could not confirm
No source on this site or the outlets it draws from publishes a complete hero lineup for the Summon or Defensive Control archetypes, a ranked comparison of all six archetypes against each other, or numbers showing one archetype outperforms another in a specific fight. The tier list ranks individual heroes, not archetypes, and the two rankings it compares disagree with each other badly enough that we would not layer an archetype ranking on top of them. Everything in the table above is a hero already named on another page of this site, reorganized by the six-archetype framework our own combat guide sets out — nothing here was invented to fill a blank cell.
- Compiled from this site's own pages: /guides/status-ailments-and-signals/ (the six named archetypes), /guides/best-team-comps/, /heroes/kalsion-build/, /heroes/all-heroes/, /heroes/tier-list/, /guides/bosses/ — reorganized into a single comparison, no new hero data added