Aethelflaed is one of the best support commanders in the rise of kingdoms(ROK). Since you can get her commander sculptures from the expedition store, she is a great help for free-to-play(f2p) players.
In this guide You will find Aethelflaed Talent tree builds, the Best commanders pairings, the best equipments to use, the Formation Guide, and pretty much everything you need to know.
Is Aethelflaed Worth Investing?
You don’t really have to put your universal legendary commander sculptures into Aethelflaed. Her sculptures can be obtained by playing expedition mode and redeeming medals which you can earn in expedition mode.
There are also specific levels in the expedition that give you the Treasure of Warrior Queen. It’s a sort of reward box that will give you Aethelflaed sculptures.
Expedition mode is PVE game mode in the Rise of Kingdom which can give you lots of valuable rewards. You can use Medal store to redeem various items and Aethelflaed’s commander sculptures are one of them.
Aethelflaed is one of the strongest debuffers in the game, especially at an early stage of the game. So, you should try to play expedition mode every day and try to expertise her as soon as possible.
Once she is maxed out, you can still redeem her sculptures in the alliance store for alliance credit.
If you are wondering how she compares to other legendary leadership and support commanders, you can check out ROK commander Tier list.
Aethelflaed Skill Overview
Arrow of Iron (Active Skill)
Required Rage: 1000
Deals damage to up to 5 targets in a forward-facing fan-shaped area (Damage Factor 800), reducing their attack, defense, and health by 30% for the next 2 seconds.
Direct Damage Factor: 400 / 500 / 600 / 700 / 800
Attack, Defense, and Health Reduction: 10% / 15% / 20% / 25% / 30%
Thunderous Force (passive)
Troops led by this commander take 20% less counterattack damage. Their attacks have a 10% chance to inflict a Slow-down on the target, reducing its cavalry units’ march speed by 50% and other units’ march speed by 30% for 3 seconds.
Counterattack Damage Taken Reduction: 5% / 8% / 11% / 15% / 20%
Cavalry March Speed Reduction: 20% / 25% / 30% / 40% / 50%
Other Unit March Speed Reduction: 10% / 15% / 20% / 25% / 30%
Synergy (passive)
Troops led by this commander deal 35% increased damage to barbarians. Both commanders gain 35% increased experience.
Bonus Damage To Barbarians: 5% / 10% / 17% / 25%
Experience Bonus: 5% / 10% / 17% / 25% / 35%
Fortress of Mercia (passive)
When this commander leads a rally attack, the rallied troop capacity is increased by 10%. When troops led by this commander consist of 3 or more different unit types, troops gain a 20% increased attack.
Rallied Army Capacity Bonus: 2% / 4% / 6% / 8% / 10%
Attack Bonus: 5% / 8% / 11% / 15% / 20%
Warrior Queen (expertise)
Deals 20% increased damage to enemy troops when they are affected by Slow-down
Skill upgrade order
5-5-1-5
Aethelflaed’s active skill is the most powerful one and you should definitely max that out before anything else. It will apply a powerful debuff to the enemy, which can be very useful in open-field fights.
After that, you want to move to her second skill which will further debuff enemies by reducing their march speed and at the same time make you take less counterattack damage.
Her third skill is specially designed for barbarians, so you can skip that if you are looking to use her in the open field.
The fourth skill will give you a nice 20% attack boost, however, it will require you to use 3 different troop types. Aside from that this skill also boosts rally damage and troop counts, which can be great for barbs fort rallies, especially with her 3rd skill.
Aethelflaed’s expertise skill has a nice synergy with her second skill. She deals 20% more damage to slowed targets, which is exactly what her second skill does.
Pros
- Can be expertise for free
- Powerful debuffs
- AOE Damage
- Decent skill damage at early game
- Excellent for hunting barbarians and forts
- great canyons
Cons
- gets targeted a lot
- no defense
- expertise is wasted if you use single troop type
- Even Relic can’t keep up with SoC commanders.
What is Aethelflaed good at?
Aethelflaed is the best legendary commander for new F2P players. Her first skill reduces attack, defense, and health by 30%. At the same time, her second skill reduces march speed by 30% and 50% if the enemy troop type is cavalry.
Overall, she is a powerful debuffer but not only that she has fan-shaped AOE damage, meaning she can debuff 5 enemies at the same time. This tactic is not just great for the open field but also great for the canyons.
Aside from her ability to do crowd control in an open field, she is also good at hunting down barbs and forts. Aethelflaed is a great commander who can be obtained for free and there is no reason why you shouldn’t use her.
Aethelflaed Talent Tree builds
There are a bunch of ways you can use her. First for open-field fighting as damage, second for open-field fighting as support or as support in canyons, and third for barb hunting. Below, you will find a talent tree for all three situations.
Open field
This Aethelflaed talent tree is designed for open-field battles. It will provide you with troop buffs as well as support buffs.
Barbarians hunting
If you want to use Aethelflaed for multiple barbarian hunting at the same time, this talent tree will be very useful. It will provide sustainability and healing for continuously hunting barbs. You can also use this for fort rallies.
Barbarians hunting and Mobility
This is sort of a hybrid talent tree, it will be good for hunting barbs at the same time provide you march speed bonus. It will allow you to quickly move from one barbarian to another.
Canyons
For canyons, you can use this talent tree build. As you can see it’s pretty much the same as open field build however Cage of Thorns only has 1 point, That’s because march speed isn’t that big of a factor in canyon fights. So, more normal damage was picked in its place.
Aethelflaed commander pairings
Aethelflaed can be paired with quite a lot of commanders. She can work nicely with pretty much all support commanders, however, these particular commanders may give you more value when paired with her. Below you will find the best pairings for her for every Kvk.
Saladin (primary ) – Best support pairing
Saladin primary and Aethelflaed secondary are the tested and trusted march for a support role in the open field. It works really well during KvK 1 and KvK 2.
Both commanders also received relic buff meaning you may also be able to use them in SoC to some degree, however, it still won’t be anywhere near the top-tier pairings for SoC.
You can get Aethelflaed for free while Saladin can be used as 5/5/5/1 or 5/5/1/1 which is significantly less universal sculpture than expertise commander, almost half! It will be perfect for F2P players.
Speaking of synergy, The main thing that Saladin does is reduce the march speed of enemies by 50%, which makes it easier for Aethelflaed to apply debuff with her primary skill.
secondly, Aethelflaed does more damage to slow targets, and at the Saladin also got nice skill damage on his active skill. So, you not only help your ally by applying debuffs but also do lots of damage for yourself. it’s a win-win situation for you and your ally.
Furthermore, both commanders also have skills that make them take less counter damage, which is always a good thing.
The only drawback of this march is that Aethelflaed will lose a 20% attack boost from her expertise because all cavalry troops are on Saladin. However, Saladin’s cavalry talent tree combined with the support tree is a far better option than using Aethelflaed primary.
Sargon the Great (Primary)
Sargon is mainly being used for infantry pairing, however, if you are not the infantry main player and won’t create a sort of supportive march then Sargon and Aethelflaed aren’t a bad choice either.
Sargon’s Awed effect is quite a powerful debuff that causes the target to take more skill damage on top of that you have stats and march speed debuff from Aethelflaed herself.
The crazy thing is that Sargon’s Awwed effect can also be applied through Aethelflaed’s AOE damage. She is among a few commanders who have 5 target AOE damage.
Not only that her target area for AOE is also larger compared to some other commanders. Overall, she is perfect to spread around the Sargon Awed effect. The best part is you won’t need Sargon’s expertise for this pair either, you can just use him at 5/5/5/1, which can save you some legendary sculptures.
YSG (Secondary) – best damage pairing for KvK2
YSG is the king of AOE skill damage, he can hit 5 targets in a circular area. Aethelflaed also can hit 5 targets in a fan-shaped area.
Together they can do lots of skill damage. Aethelflaed will debuff targets as primary while YSG will land devastating skill damage as secondary.
Now, remember this pair is only good for early games, and primary Aethelflaed gets targeted a lot. So, you will need to be really careful with the positioning of your march.
Trajan (primary)
Trajan provides powerful buffs to your allies while being tanky. He is sort of Joan of Arc(epic) but with far more powerful debuff.
Aethelflaed on the other hand is queen of debuffs. So combine them together and you have a strong buff-debuff march, which will also last longer on an open field.
Sun Tzu (both)
At the early stage when you don’t have any other legendary commander, Sun Tzu will be a great pick for Aethelflaed.
As an epic commander, Sun Tzu is available for free and he is a powerful infantry commander at an early stage of the game. He also has AOE skill damage, something that epic commanders generally don’t have.
You can use Sun Tzu as the primary with all infantry for tankiness or Aethelflaed as the primary with mixed troops for a 20% extra attack boost. During KvK1 many players won’t have legendary commanders, so you might be able to use this safely and do lots of AOE damage.
Joan of Arc (secondary )
If Aethelflaed is a powerful debuffer then Joan of Arc is a powerful buffer. She provides valuable stats to your and your nearby ally’s march.
Joan of Arc is a sort of F2P version of Trajan. Before the release of legendary buff providers like Trajan, players used her a lot to boost their marches.
You can definitely use this march in Kvk 1 or even maybe KvK 2 and help your whale players secure victory for your kingdom.
Peacekeeper/Barbs pairings
This isn’t a very important aspect because hunting down barbs is very easy. You can pair Aethelflaed with any peacekeeper commander like Lohar, Boudica, and others and she will do great.
Additionally, you can use her to level up your other commanders. Her third skill gives you bonus experience from barbarians hunting, which applies to both the commanders paired together.
Don’t forget to check out this best commander pairing guide for 2023 to get the most out of your commanders.
Aethelflaed Best Equipements
Making the perfect equipment set for Aethelflaed is quite tricky because she will be using mixed troops as primary. However, she isn’t a commander on which you should use legendary Equipements. so, we have only two equipment sets for her.
Medium equipment set
Stat boost from the set:
- Weapon: Heart of the Saint
- Helm: Revival Helm
- Chest: Revival Plate
- Glove: Revival Gauntlets
- Legs: Revival Greaves
- Boots: Flame Treads
Stat boost from the set:
Archer Attack – 12%
Archer Defense – 15%
Archer Health – 11.5%
Infantry Attack – 3%
Infantry Defense – 5%
Infantry Health – 4%
Cavalry Attack – 11%
Cavalry Defense – 18%
Cavalry Health – 0%
All troops Defense – 3%
All troops Attack – 3%
F2P equipment set.
- Weapon: Vanguard Halberd
- Helm: Windswept War Helm
- Chest: Windswept Breastplate
- Glove: Windswept Bracers
- Legs: Vanguard Greaves
- Boots: Windswept Boots
Stat boost from the set:
Infantry Attack – 4.5%
Infantry Defense – 7%
Infantry Health – 4.5%
Cavalry Attack – 11.5%
Cavalry Defense – 9.5%
Cavalry Health – 10%
All troops Attack – 2%
March Speed – 12%
ROK – New Redeem Gift Codes List
Aethelflaed Best Formation
Aethelflaed will be used with a commander who provides buffs. So, the best formation for her would be Echelon Formation, which can boost buffs.
Alternatively, if you want more skill damage then Wedge Formation is also a good option.
