You  can  trust  me  OP.

I  wouldn't lead  you  astray!

Just  take  a  look  at  the  below  picture:

i

You  can  truly  see  the  honestly in  the  Eyes.

Their  not  my  eyes,  but  you  can  definitely   see  the  honestly  in  the  above  pictures.

Step  1  -  Make Warmaiden  lvl  60  for  your  Arena  Offense  team.

Step  2  -  Start  thinking  about  making  a  Go  2nd  Arena  team  for  your  Arena  Defense.

Interesting read and nice debate.

Ill put one vote into High Khatun is worth getting to 60, but the question is when.

Imo I would focus on getting a dragon team running. You really need to get a team that can get you 6-star gear. A good team could be Kael, Venom mage, Mausoleum mage, High Khatun, War maiden.

It will be difficult to get to stage 20 which should be the end goal before focusing on other dungeons.

The good thing is this team is a decent Clan boss team aswell. 

The team lack a reviver and Crowd control. Hopefully you can get a hand on that soon. These champions is worth getting to 60 for other content too even if you pull a replacement. If you struggle with crowd control I spot a red dot on gnarlhorn. He was MVP in my faction war team up til level 20.

I don't understand the fascination with Warmaiden here. She's almost certainly going to fall off in value in this account long term and can do her job just fine - if not perfectly - at 50. 

Venomage would be a better 60 than Warmaiden. 

Wow, I never expected such a serious debate, was hoping for a clear cut answer, lol ;-)  My main goal now is to get to dragon 20 because my gear sucks.  I have a few good pieces but not enough for a team of 5.

Here's a more basic question... am I better off getting a team of 50s or focus on one to 60 and leave the others at 40?  So Kael and MM at 60 plus a combo of Alek, Venom, WM, HK at 50 or one of those at 60 while others stay at 40?

The latter. One 60 is better than three 50s.

That's what I thought... hence my question.  Unfortunately it doesnt sound there's a clear cut answer as to which.  I'm almost thinking VM now as everyone seems to agree she is worthwhile.

Unfortunately your argument is flawed, similar to when you showed your f2p team to prove it was easy to win arena but didn't show any results of you actually winning. 

Aleksandrs ratings were red before anyone got him. The masses believe he is bad and refuse to use him, they give him bad ratings without knowing how well he does. I suggest you build him and try it for yourself like I have. Then come back here and give an informed opinion instead of your guess-work. 

I have used Aleksandr on my third account. 

He is not that bad. The decrease defense skill is fine if you dont have to reliably place it. his Aura is very strong especially for an early game account. His A3 removes buffs is actually quite good in potions keep for an early account. I would not suggest to prioritize him over the other champs for dragon team though. Put him in the sparring pit and watch him get to 50 and use him occasionally on potion keep is my suggestion.

The cons is really legendary books are quite hard to come by and so is potions for a legendary. So my suggestion is dont built him until you have scyl maxed out and notice how many magic champs you have already. You will probaly at that point want to built a spirit or force champ.

Surprises me about Venomage because when I looked her up on HH he had her rated fairly low... is that out of date?

Finally someone else who has used him. 

I agree with you on the books being an issue, i tried him with and without books and I tried him in what I judged to be mid game level gear and end game gear both before and after booking him. 

My main argument against Warmaiden in favor of him is just the fact that she falls off very quickly whereas Aleksandr can be turned into a nuker if someone has Tayrel, stag, serris etc. and can continue to be useful all the way to end game or until they get a more traditional nuker like big un or Trunda who have those sweet, massive, double hits.  

I primarily focused on his use in arena, but this weekend I will take him through dungeons  so that I may offer an informed opinion on those as well. 

In arena (Gold 4) I found him to not really need books to absolutely destroy people whether they had his debuff on them or not. 

Without books his A2 would (average) hit everyone around 50k - 60k and his A3 would (average)hit about 90k on someone with dec defense, and about 75k without it. 

When I put him in my end game gear he would A2 for about 100k and A3 for about 150k. I have a video posted in the forums somewhere where I hit a Brogni for 144k through his shield. 

Venomage is very strong, especially for clan boss. His A3 is a 4x PLUS two poisons guaranteed, which is *really* powerful.

I agree in so far, that the in-game ratings don't tell anything abouth the real strength of a champ.

I use Aleks as lvl 50 in FW, the revive and heal from Arbiter and Apo is good enough to keep everybody up, so my team can carry some lvl 50 champs to the goal at stage 21. I didn't make Aleks lvl 60, so for his full power I have to do a guess-work as well. But is that really a guess? The chance for decrease def, his atk at lvl 60 and the damage multipliers are no secrets. These numbers and some math give a quite good prediction what he will do at lvl 60.

The reason I don't use Aleks at lvl 60 are:

1. Legendary books are very scarce, my Arbiter, Rhazin and Lyssandra are not booked yet. Would you use your legendary books on Aleks with the named champs unbooked? 

2. For decrease def I have Uugo, Dhukk and Ghostborn, all of them outperform even an booked Aleks as debuffer: Uugo adds block buffs, Dhukk adds decrease atk, Ghostborn's debuff can't be resisted, what is totally bonkers vs. high res go second teams in arena. Beside the fact that I can't book Aleks right now (see no. 1), I just don't need him as debuffer.

3. For damage I have better options as well: Vlad has higher attack and a better multiplier on the AoE hit and as void he can't have weak hits. Beside Vlad I allready have Magnarr and Ruel. The latter is very conditional with Hex allready active, but 6 x atk multiplier with 1696 atk just stomps Aleksandr's 4.6 x atk with 1432 atk into the ground so hard, that Aleks may meet Professor Lidenbrock.

So is it fairly agreed apon VM is worth 60?  Also, I dont understand the '4x' ... where do you get that?

HK works just as well at 50, save your resources for something else.

Ayumilove (and other sites) (bold/underline on multiplier added by me for effect):

Venomage | Raid Shadow Legends - AyumiLove 

Fleshmelter Venom [ATK] (Cooldown: 4 turns)
Attacks all enemies. Has a 75% chance of placing a 100% [Heal Reduction] debuff for 3 turns. Also has a 75% chance of placing two 5% [Poison] debuffs for 2 turns.
Level 2: Damage + 10%
Level 3: Buff/Debuff chance +10%
Level 4: Buff/Debuff chance +15%
Level 5: Cooldown -1
Damage Multiplier: 4 ATK 

What it means is - the damage scaling is 4 times your attack value. The actual equation is quite complex, but suffice it to say, the bigger the better.

Thanks!  So is this site the only place to find multipliers?

Well, this and other sites, yes. The info is datamined. Hellhades, etc all have the same info.

Not sure about the rest of you but I stopped useing the in game rateing system about a month into the game, when almost every blue champ was listed as awesome I decided to get my info else where.

You're using him and you took into account more than just his in game ratings, that counts. I would never recommend him over already built debuffers and nukers unless they weren't end game viable. 

I am in team warmaiden i still use her. She does her job very well... It is ideal to get some champ with more debuffs alongside the def down like stag knight and dracomorph but lego books are very hard to come by. 

The main job is to get 100% chance to get def down and this sharpshooter cant do that and you dont want to waste superrare lego books on a very poor legendary unless you intend to spend a lot of money on books. If so sure pick Aleksandr. If not.. Go with warmaiden you dont even need to use books for her skills! 

High Khatun has to be 60ed cause you need the extra speed from stats AND banner for arena if you intend to build a speed team. That simple. I still dont have a better speed lead 210+ days in...

Who you do first depends on your priorities...