Eslabong: All 9 Roles and Beginner Tips

beginner By GuideLVL · Published August 27, 2026

Eslabong is meant to be hard, and most people lose their first run. Treat the first two campaigns as practice, play on normal, and drop a run before season 2 if it is going badly. This page covers how to spend those early runs, what each fighter role does and how many of each to field, and the club decisions that matter in your first season.

The short version:

• Do not start on hard mode. Expect to lose fights you thought you had.
• Run three campaigns. Restart early if season 1 goes badly. The third run is usually the one where it clicks.
• Safe opening lineups put a frontline in front of supports: two tanks with two healers and a ranged damage dealer, or four melee with a healer, or three melee with two supports.
• Keep at least one tank, and preferably two or three. Tanks are the one role you should not drop entirely.
• On day one, buy three or four promising fighters instead of one.
• Set targeting to assist focus. Build your tactic around the fighters you own, not the other way round.
• Level the time chamber before the barracks.

How to Approach Your First Campaigns

Almost everyone struggles the first time. If your first run went well, you do not need any of this.

The plan is three campaigns, and the first two are for learning:

1. Campaign 1: pick whichever starting lineup looks interesting and experiment with it.
2. If it went badly, drop it before season 2. You have already learned a lot.
3. Campaign 2: pick a different starting lineup. Build on what run 1 taught you and try something new.
4. If it still felt rough, that is normal. Drop it before season 2 again.
5. Campaign 3: pick the lineup you actually want to play. This is usually where it clicks.

Restarting campaign 3 or 4 early is fine too, and plenty of players do it. If season 1 is not going the way you want, start again rather than grinding out a run you are unhappy with. Once normal difficulty feels comfortable, hard mode is the next step.

Do not get attached to your three starting fighters either. Their rolls are usually poor enough that two of them are gone before mid-season.

How to Pick Your Lineup

Tactical variety in Eslabong comes from three places: fighters have their own personalities and traits, personal tactics can be customised in detail, and you set the starting grid and starting instructions.

One thing is worth knowing before you spend hours tuning any of it. Fighters have a mind of their own and will act on the battlefield situation. Personality still shows through even with tactics set.

Popular lineups put a strong frontline in front of supports:

• 3 melee, 2 supports
• 4 melee, 1 healer
• 2 tanks, 2 healers, 1 ranged DPS

These are a safe early-game bet because low-level melee fighters generally have an easier time than low-level ranged ones. Lineups like these play for sustain, control and wearing the opponent down. They are not unbeatable, and plenty of other compositions work if you have the right fighters for the job.

Fighters fall into three groups of three roles each. Some fighters, melee ones especially, can be built into two of these roles depending on which skills you take. The dominant theme of their kit usually tells you which one is the main fit. Here is the whole set, with how many of each to field. Each role has its own section below.

Tanks

Tanks survive. They are the reason the rest of your team does not melt within seconds.

• They can double as part-time supports.
• They are built to peel for your backline.
• Take crowd control on them whenever it is offered.

One tank is risky, but it can work with a good composition around it. Tanks are the one role you should not cut altogether.

Assassins

Assassins are fragile and hit hard, usually in bursts.

• High mobility.
• Built to jump the enemy backline.
• Forcing the enemy frontline to peel makes their whole formation fall apart.
• Set them to flank, and set their target to anything except tanks.

Take two if you want fights finished inside ten seconds, decided by whose fragile fighters melt first.

Roamers

Roamers wander the battlefield and damage whatever they can reach. They survive longer than assassins, but if you ask them to tank you will lose.

• Take crowd control on them where you can.
• Watch out for friendly fire.
• Pair them with dedicated tanks.

Two tanks and two roamers leave you very few lineup slots, so a roamer has to bring a lot of value to take one. Taking two roamers is also the best way to try getting away with a single tank.

Shooters

Shooters just shoot. Their abilities mostly make them shoot better and more often.

• They have a reputation as the weakest of the damage options.
• They can usually fit one good crowd control skill.

Ability Casters

Ability casters are the ranged damage dealers most people picture. Their kits are built around big-impact abilities. If you can keep one alive, they will do the most damage on your team.

• You can pick up one area-of-effect crowd control ability.
• They usually have access to one defensive ability, which is worth taking.
• Watch out for friendly fire.

Three is possible with two tanks diving the enemy backline before it reaches your casters, but that is a very aggressive setup.

CC Casters

CC casters are ability casters with more crowd control and less damage. The point of taking one is those strong area crowd control skills, and the more of them you land, the better.

• They usually have one defensive ability available, still worth considering, but less so than on the damage casters.
• Watch out for friendly fire.

There is no safe way to fit two, unless you run a single tank up front, which is very aggressive.

Healers

Healers heal and shield your team through the damage, and if someone does go down, they can revive them.

• A defensive skill is worth considering depending on your tactics.
• If a good crowd control skill is offered, take it.

As long as you can out-heal the damage coming in, run as many as you like. You can also play without healers at all.

Disruptors

Disruptors exist to mess with the opponent. If the enemy support is what keeps ruining your fights, this is the role that answers it.

• Their main job is landing crowd control, by whatever route their kit offers.
• Healing is on the menu.
• Buffs are too.
• Their defensive skill tends to be crowd control itself, so take it every time.

Three is very unlikely to win anything, because you would need two tanks alongside them just to stay alive past the opening seconds.

Specials

Specials are the supports that do not fit the other two support roles. Their abilities are hard to file as either crowd control or healing.

• They can usually still heal.
• They can usually still crowd control.
• They can sometimes buff.
• They have some form of defence worth considering.

Battle Tactics and Targeting

• Assist focus is the best targeting type available.
• If you want a specific fighter to start fights, set them to initiator. It is hard to tell how much difference this makes.
• Set tanks to intercepting. The same caveat applies.
• Personal tactics all matter, so use them, but do not overdo it. Set only the ones your gameplan actually needs.
• Build your tactic around the fighters you have rather than forcing a tactic onto fighters who cannot execute it.
• Use F1 to F4 during a fight to influence the battlefield. This matters most in the FFA arena.

Buying Fighters

• The market is rarely the right way to get a champion. Random drops and private offerings cover that.
• Some fighters are locked behind season or renown, so you cannot buy them. You can still get them as drops.
• Level is not everything. A decent fighter in a good plan beats a badly built level 30-plus bought off the market and shoehorned in.
• Low injury risk seems to be a rare trait, so hold on to good fighters who have it.
• Speculative buys are fine. If a fighter could slot into the team later, pick them up and watch how they grow.

Selling Fighters and Relics

• Selling fighters you are not going to use is never a bad call.
• Selling main roster fighters hurts, because levelling a replacement is slow.
• Selling relics is a strong source of early income.
• Keeping the good relics is also fine.

Skills, Rerolls and the Codex

Do not stress about rare and legendary skills. They are good, but a fighter usually brings more value keeping one or two of the less common options.

Reroll a disappointing skill offer or stat roll at level up, and respec a fighter outright when the build is not working. It is expensive, and it is generally worth it.

As of the launch build, keep 1500 gold spare for a skill reroll, which turns three skill choices into six. A random respec can save you 3500 gold compared with a specific one.

While you are building a fighter, open their codex. It lists the other skills that fighter can end up with. A champion’s codex also tells you which skills are guaranteed. Those cannot be rerolled, which is what makes the cheaper random respec worth using in some cases.

Facilities: Time Chamber and Barracks

Winning fights matters more than a few extra facility levels, so do not starve your roster to upgrade buildings.

When you do upgrade, the time chamber is stronger than the barracks, so level it first. The exception is that barracks level 3 unlocks intense training, as of the launch build.

Injuries

An injury always lasts at least one day. Once a fighter picks up a longer injury, that is the moment to upgrade the injury facility, because the upgrade applies to injuries that have already been suffered.

An injured fighter can be put on training duty. It does not appear to change much.

Tournament Center

The Iron Gate

How you use the iron gate depends on how your season is going.

If you are weak a few weeks in, go in and clear the first two waves. As of the launch build, that is enough of a boost to get the run moving again.

If you are strong early, you have two options. Hold the free entry back until late in the season and take on wave 5 with a stronger roster, or go in early and pay for a second run later. Wave 5 will usually beat you either way, and the attempt is still worth making.

FFA Arena and Iron Gate Lineups

Both the FFA arena and the iron gate lean on survivability more than your regular matches do. If your main lineup is very aggressive, build a dedicated healer for these two modes specifically.

Substitutes

When you prepare substitutes for your main lineup, you do not need a one-to-one replacement for each fighter. Several roles overlap enough that a different class can cover the same job.

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