FenrirsFirstborn said:
I'm now into week 2 of playing. I went with Elhain to start and she is now 5*/50. I have 2 others at 5* so looking to hit her 6* in about a week.
I also summoned a decent selection of rares, including kael and Athel. I also got shaman as a freebie.
For my next step, should I look to develop individual toons that seem good or focus on a faction? I can make 4-5 toon squads from high elves, dark elves, barbarians, or sacred order. If I should build a faction, which one; or stick to mixed squads?
Never mind factions - faction wars are mostly endgame content, it won't become high on your priority list until many months down the road when you have a couple dozen level 60s and have finished basically all other content. So for the foreseeable future, stick to mixed squads.
Your next priority is indeed to get Elhain to 6*, but are those other 5*s rares/epics? Ideally you'd only use uncommons/commons as sacrifices in such cases, or maybe duplicate rares. Once she's at 6*, she should be capable of the standard farming approach: Elhain plus 3 ungeared 'food' champions running brutal 12.3 over and over and over, to level them up faster so you can bring other champions to 6*.
Shaman is pretty weak as epics go - you can take her to 5* and use her as long as she's useful, especially that resurrect may be handy, but I wouldn't bother bringing her to 6* and definitely don't waste epic books on her, those are pretty rare and you'll need them for stronger epics.