Congratulations that you pulled Madame Serris and Coldheart. You seem to overlook the latter. Coldheart is a fantastic champion for dungeons.

Fireknight - her A1 hits not only 3 times (like Athel or some others), but even 4 times, and as bonus it gives heal reduction (the Fireknight heals himself otherwise). And, after the shield is down, Coldhearts A3 can take down the turnmeter by 100%.

Spider - Coldhearts A3 can take down the turnmeter by 100%. Combine her with Armiger (or other champs that can reduce turnmeter) and the Spider will never get a turn - and therefore never heal. Only the little Spiderlings can attack your team.

Dragon - the Dragon has an enormous ammount of hp. Coldhearts A3 damage scales with enemy max hp. She can hit the dragon so damn hard, the dragon starts to tremble if Coldheart enters his dungeon.

Madame Serris is a really great champ as well. Def down and atk down for the hole enemie team, she overshadows Warmaiden a lot. You don't need Warmaiden anymore (exept for faction wars) if you have Madame Serris.

Do not upgrade weaker champs before Madame and Coldheart are at lvl 60.

Thank you, yes, I did overlook Coldheart. I used up all my void shards today and got those then. I don't know if I just missed checking her skills, but yeah, she sounds great for what I need. Fortunately, I've been leveling a lot of fodder up waiting for a decent hero to rank up, so I can probably get those to 60 relatively quickly. Got 6 5* fodder just waiting to be used. 

Serris is definitely your next 6*, but Coldheart is more of a question mark. She's great for Fire Knight and Spider at any level, but in other dungeons you need to be in the higher stages before she becomes very good (because only at high stages, the scaling off enemy max HP becomes stronger than regular damage). Moreover, CH is very squishy and you'd need strong enough support champions to keep her alive. The usual recommendation is to wait a bit to 6* Coldheart, until after you've got a base team at 60 that can progress on all dungeons in the middle stages. 

That being said, you don't have too many better options to 6* before her besides Serris. High Khatun indeed, but level 50 might be enough for HK. Coffin Smasher, I guess - important for Clan Boss and also usable in dungeons, thanks to his decrease attack on the A1, meaning he can keep it up permanently unlike Serris. 

Right now I can do stage 11 of the dragon and 9-10 at least on the other dungeons except spider and fire knight (7 and 5 respectively). I may be able to push it higher as well, I haven't done a lot of dungeons so the situation may be different now from when I last tried. I tried my luck in the doom tower recently and managed to do 5F + SR1, but I think that's my limit because there were some really close calls on the way up.

I'm sitting on 32 ancient shards, so hopefully there's a 2x event for those in the near future to get some new blood in. I'm not too bothered if I overlevel someone early on, as long as it's worth it in the long run. I'm much more worried about sinking resources, particularly skill books and masteries, into something that won't be useful later, although I suppose there's always the crypts where you need the extra bodies to fill up the team.

Thanks.

Coldheart is worth leveling to 50 already now and putting rare books into, once you're done with Athel's. Though you really only need Coldheart's A3 maxed, the other abilities aren't very relevant. Give Serris epic books until you max her A2 and A3 both. Both are worth full masteries (champions can get top tier scrolls at any rank, although they won't be able to actually unlock the masteries until they do reach 6*), along with Athel and Coffin Smasher if you use him for CB (any CB champion should be high on the masteries priority list, because of Warmaster/Giantslayer having such a huge impact on your total CB damage). 

And yes, you should try pushing further in the dungeons. Athel, Serris, Coffin Smasher, Spirithost and maybe Seducer? or another fifth, should be able to push a bit further on dragon, at least when Serris and CS are level 60. On FK and Spider, bring Coldheart in and you'll surely get a few stages further as well. 

Athel is already maxed out in terms of skills and I spent the gems to get full masteries for her (and yeah, giant slayer being able to proc for each of her 3 basic attacks made a pretty big difference on the clan boss). She's been working out pretty well so far, so even if it was sub-optimal I'm fairly happy with that decision. My biggest regret is probably sinking resources into Warpriest. I don't suppose there's a way to actually choose which skill to upgrade, is there? At least for me it seems to have been completely random.

I've been laying pretty low with the dungeons because I've pretty much had a double XP boost since I started playing due to all the missions and events, so most of my energy has gone into getting experience. I've even got 2x3 days XP boosts that I've avoided collecting, but this is the last day of double XP, then I'll try my hand at some more dungeons, maybe get some more potions for ascending. I feel like equipment should be my priority right now.

• there is no way to choose wich skill is upgraded by the book, totally random.
• even if you regret investing in Warpriest, don't feed her to anybody now. If you allready made a lvl 50 out of her, you can use her in the Sacred Order faction crypt. A lvl 50 healer and a lvl 60 damagedealer are a good start for a team doing some stages there.
• getting some potions for ascending in storage is quite good, due to the stupid decision of plarium to open the keeps only on certain days. It's just bad if you pull a great epic and than see: "Oh, I have to wait till friday until I can use him properly"

Yeah, I'll be keeping her in the vault along with the other rares that I don't have any immediate use for. The faction crypts are still pretty difficult, but I have the amibition to at least be able to do the first level of all of them on auto so I can get some basic material out of them each day. My strategy has been to use everything below rare as fodder and save the rares, using those duplicates for skill upgrades. I've actually managed to get a couple of levels past the first boss of the sacred order crypt (and wow, was that annoying with the permanent provoke debuffs and stalemate that followed if I didn't manage to take out the 2 supports first).

I'm a bit worried about that strategy though, since it seems that useless units in storage inflate your player power extremely disproportionately to what they actually can do, and that seems to influence arena matchmaking. I'm not sure that's the case, but I get that impression.

Do you manaully play Arena?

If the answer is yes, Madam Serris would be a very good choice to 6 star next.

If the answer is no, Warmaiden would be the better option to 6 star next.

The AI doesn't like to do the right move for Madam Serris on Auto.

The move you want Madam Serris to do is Remove enemy Buffs + AOE Def Down.

The game is suppose to fix it.

A few people told me it still isn't fixed. 

I don't own Madam Serris so I can't tell you if it is working right or not.

I can only tell you what others have told me.

Serris is not fixed in Arena,  AI is terrible

Spider AI is fixed, amazing in arena now :)

I play all my arena matches manually. I mostly get matched up against teams with far better heroes than me, so I need every strategic advantage I can get. My main problem right now is lack of speed and getting destroyed in the first turn If that doesn't happen, I can usually win, at least if I'm a bit careful with the fights I pick. No winning against teams 3x my power level though, matchmaking is really screwed up.

I auto with Serris now. She is working fine for me. She uses her a3 when I want her to. 

But I noticed on some weak opponents that she will use a2 first, so it does not really matter what she uses first on that situation. 

Once you get High Khatun, you can build the obvious team of HK (going first and speed boosting), Spirithost (going second to boost attack), Serris (removing any buffs and putting decrease attack/def), Athel (nuke). Then it becomes just a question of getting enough speed on all your champions, especially HK, but not so much that the gap becomes too big and her boost isn't sufficient to make the rest of the team follow her. 

Coffin Smasher for his A1 3 hitter for Fire Knight / with 2 Athels  once you hit that 10 spot Shield

Funny thing is a lvl 30 SKINNER has a 3 hit A1 put him into Lifesteal all HP/Def gear and he works good enough to start getting 5 star gear from ?? lvl 7 fire knight is it ? It is actually hilarious to watch