Pure faction run at 500 was super easy. I had 7 tier 7 potions (+49 stats), with level 100 hoard. I ran a straight team of 1x each troop in the following order: Lightborn Paladin, Umbral Portal, Void Wisp, and Darkborn Warlock.
In the last room, I lost Umbral Portal and Darkborn Warlock of course, and I had lost my Lightborn Paladin earlier in the run, but I summoned a second Void Wisp, so I had two Void Wisps and easily beat the AI. First thing you should target is probably their Darkborn Warlock, because its scatter damage will eventually kill you. Next get rid of its Umbral Portal so it can’t summon more troops.
Your primary damage comes from Void Wisp. Just kill casting.
I managed to end up 69 on the leaderboard when I stopped. For my pure faction run I did paladin, wisp, wisp, wisp. I had 7 potions, lvl 100 hoard and my nexus is not lvl 14.
All you have to do is keep the paladin alive until the final battle try and keep it up for awhile to soak hits from their wisp and build up the health and magic of your wisps. I just kept working at their paladin mostly and portal a bit until the paladin was dead (as it gains a lot of health and extends the battle much longer) and just kept draining mana where needed against the warlock to slow its damage potential. Once the paladin dies then all you have to do is hit the portal a few more times and it drops and unless you are very unlucky you should be able to also keep down its mana while doing so as it has been almost fully mana blocked on purple and yellow until the paladin is down. Then it is easy street just quickly drain the warlock and team up on the wisp.
Sometimes rather than casting you are better off filling up the mana of your lower wisps and trying to block them from mana on the board and try to heal up the wisps that need it the most. The paladin gets it’s chances to cast mostly when taking vertical 4 matches with a gem in the middle or when taking away skull dmg potential and getting some mana for your troops. When all they have left is a wisp and you have wisps left then you take all skulls to prevent the dmg because they hit harder than you. If you are lucky enough to still have your paladin at this point using its cast to destroy the skulls and heal itself to soak as many of those wisp hits as possible and extend the durability of your team.
Managed it first try no problem was easy and smooth.
lost paladin soon after battle started but it did its job.
Focused on paladin to get it down before it started healing much once in awhile going for portal Kept working at portal and every so often when portal is fully drained going for warlock to slow its damage.
