Heroes - Archer Queen

     The Archer Queen can be acquired at TH-9 for 40,000 dark elixir (yes, that is a ton of dark elixir!).  Upon saving up the required dark elixir, you can build the altar and begin using the Archer Queen instantly.  She adds a whole new dimension to your collection of heroes, as the Queen has a very long attack range, high attack rate and high damage output.  She has to be better protected than the King however, since her hit points are much lower than the King. 
     Like the King, the Queen is immortal and can only be knocked out during battle, at which time she will rest until completely healed.  Also like the King, the amount of time it takes for her to heal is directly proportional to the amount of damage she receives in battle and also her level, taking anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour 48 minutes to completely regenerate (just like the King). 
     As with the King, you can use 10 gems to quadruple the Queen's recovery rate for 2 hours.  You could also just use a variable number of gems to instantly heal her and be able to use her.  Of these choices, it is usually of higher gem value to boost the recovery rate by 4x than to simply gem for an instant heal.  The amount of gems you must pay to instantly recover is dependent on how long the Queen (and King) has left to completely heal, and it will be cheaper on you (and you'll get more use out of it) if you just use 10 gems to boost the healing rate for 2 hours, because it can take multiple times that many to instantly heal her. 
     The Archer Queen has her own ability called Royal Cloak.  The Royal Cloak ability allows the Queen to become invisible and break all defenses from targeting her for a time.  During this time, her arrows become flaming arrows and do much higher damage, while she instantly heals for a moderate portion of health and summoning a number of archers to her side.  Unlike the King, the Queen's Royal Cloak ability does not have an effect on other troops; this ability only affects the Queen herself.  This ability is first gained at level 5 and can be upgraded every 5 levels just like the King's Iron Fist ability.  The Queen can be upgraded to level 30 at TH-9, and can reach level 40 at TH-10 (max level for both of the dark elixir heroes).
     The biggest difference between the King and Queen is that the Queen can attack air troops as well as ground troops, while the King can only attack ground troops.  Like the King, however, the Queen only targets 1 enemy or structure at a time, but she does have a much faster attack rate.  The fact that she can hit air troops makes her very useful against dragons, balloons, and other air troops that may be used to attack her village.  She is very useful as a base defender as well, because of her ability to attack air troops and her high attack speed. 


Here is a table including the Archer Queen's training cost, training time, damage per second and per hit, recovery time, and hit points for each level she is upgraded to: 

Level	Damage Per Second	Damage Per Hit	Hit Points	Regeneration Time	Royal Cloak Level	Training Cost (DE)	Training Time
1	160	120	725	30m	0	40,000	Instant
2	164	123	740	32m	-	22,500	12h
3	168	126	755	34m	-	25,000	1d
4	172	129	771	36m	-	27,500	1d 12h
5	176	132	787	38m	1	30,000	2d
6	181	135.75	804	40m	-	32,500	2d 12h
7	185	138.75	821	42m	-	35,000	3d
8	190	142.5	838	44m	-	40,000	3d 12h
9	194	145.5	856	46m	-	45,000	4d
10	199	149.25	874	48m	2	50,000	4d 12h
11	204	153	892	50m	-	55,000	5d
12	209	156.75	911	52m	-	60,000	5d 12h
13	215	161.25	930	54m	-	65,000	6d
14	220	165	949	56m	-	70,000	6d 12h
15	226	169.5	969	58m	3	75,000	7d
16	231	173.25	990	1h	-	80,000	-
17	237	177.75	1,010	1h 2m	-	85,000	-
18	243	182.25	1,032	1h 4m	-	90,000	-
19	249	186.75	1,053	1h 6m	-	95,000	-
20	255	191.25	1,076	1h 8m	4	100,000	-
21	262	196.5	1,098	1h 10m	-	105,000	-
22	268	201	1,121	1h 12m	-	110,000	-
23	275	206.25	1,145	1h 14m	-	115,000	-
24	282	211.5	1,169	1h 16m	-	120,000	-
25	289	216.75	1,193	1h 18m	5	125,000	-
26	296	222	1,218	1h 20m	-	130,000	-
27	304	228	1,244	1h 22m	-	135,000	-
28	311	233.25	1,270	1h 24m	-	140,000	-
29	319	239.25	1,297	1h 26m	-	145,000	-
30	327	245.25	1,324	1h 28m	6	150,000	-
31	335	251.25	1,352	1h 30m	-	155,000	-
32	344	258	1,380	1h 32m	-	160,000	-
33	352	264	1,409	1h 34m	-	165,000	-
34	361	270.75	1,439	1h 36m	-	170,000	-
35	370	277.5	1,469	1h 38m	7	175,000	-
36	379	284.25	1,500	1h 40m	-	180,000	-
37	389	291.75	1,532	1h 42m	-	185,000	-
38	398	298.5	1,564	1h 44m	-	190,000	-
39	408	306	1,597	1h 46m	-	195,000	-
40	419	314.25	1,630	1h 48m	8	200,000	-

* Notice some trends here; each level increases the amount of time to recover from a knock out by 2 minutes, the amount of dark elixir required to initially build the Queen's altar is 40,000 while the amount needed to upgrade to level 2 is only 22,500, at which point each level will cost an extra 2,500 dark elixir until the Queen reaches level 7, at this point the required DE increases in 5,000 increments. 
* Also note that the training time starts at 12 hours for level 2, then increases by 12 hours each level until level 15 when it reaches 7 days to train; after this point, every level upgrade afterwards will take 7 days and will no longer increase. 
* The Queen gets her looks upgraded as she gains levels as well, although this has no effect other than making her look cooler.  First her crown changes from grey to gold, then her crossbow changes from grey to gold metal.


Here is another table showing the stats for the Archer Queen's Royal Cloak ability at each ability level including duration, damage increase, healing, and number of summoned units:

Royal Cloak Level	Added Damage Per Second	Hit Points Recovered	Number of Summoned Units	Royal Cloak Duration
1	300	150	5	3.6s
2	355	175	6	3.8s
3	416	200	7	4.0s
4	483	225	8	4.2s
5	557	250	9	4.4s
6	638	275	10	4.6s
7	725	300	11	4.8s
8	819	325	12	5s

* Notice that the damage increase goes up by a greater and greater amount as the ability level increases, with an increase of only 55 DPS from level 1 to 2, to an increase of 94 from level 7 to 8.  The ability duration increases by 1.4 seconds from level 1 to maximum level, and she gets an extra 7 summoned units at level 8 for a total of 12 units compared to level 1 with only 5 units
* Each level increases the amount of healing provided by the Royal Cloak ability by 25 hit points, and this is always the amount it will increase by.  Unlike stats like the damage increase, the healing increases by a set amount and doesn't increase by greater amounts at higher levels.


Offensive Strategy

     The Archer Queen is deadly because she can stand back behind other troops and still be able to target buildings and units from a safe distance.  Her range is significantly further than normal archers (she can shoot from 5 tiles away while normal archers can only shoot from 3.5 tiles away), which allows her to stand further back allowing her to be one of the last units of your army to be targeted. 
     This also allows her to shoot at buildings that seem well protected and deep within the base.  She can shoot structures like this without having to destroy the walls to get inside, and she can sometimes clear out an entire enclosure before the other troops can even break through the wall to get to the structures inside. 
     Because of her larger range, the Archer Queen works really well when used with a group of meat shields in front of her such as giants, PEKKAs, golems, or the Barbarian King, then having archers behind the meat shields with the Queen mixed in with or behind those archers.  This allows her to do exactly what I mentioned a moment ago; she can shoot from behind the army and take out structures from a safe distance and even clear out enclosures allowing the other troops to move on to other areas of the base instead of getting stuck hitting the walls while they all get picked off.  Placing her behind the tanks/meat shields minimizes the damage she takes during the raid or even allow her to avoid being hit altogether.  Remember that her taking less damage results in being able to use her more often when attacking multiple times in quick succession (as when farming). 
     A common use for the Archer Queen in farming and wars is to clear out enough structures to reach 50% destruction of the base by deploying her after the rest of the army has been defeated.  This is very useful in trophy pushing because in many raids you may be able to destroy the TH but not get 50%, or just miss destroying the TH and having 48-49%, both of which result in a much smaller amount of trophies or even no trophies being awarded.  The Queen can then be deployed, and with her range can safely take out several buildings without being targeted by defenses or even be able to destroy the TH while remaining outside the range of the remaining defenses.  Needless to say, this can truly save botched attacks, transforming a busted 0-star attack into a 1-star or even 2-star victory!  Even if she begins to be targeted by defenses, you can pop her Royal Cloak ability to go invisible and also heal so she can still be immediately used in the next battle while also giving herself
enough time to finish off a few more buildings or the TH.
     When facing an enemy's Archer Queen in battle, don't waste a poison spell on her if you are planning to use it strictly for damage purposes.  For one thing, heroes are all but unaffected by the poison spell; it doesn't do nearly as much damage to heroes as it does to normal troops, and you will see this when it barely puts a scratch in her health.  Also, the heroes seem to instinctively move away from the poison spell once it has been dropped.  If at all possible they will avoid standing in the area affected by a poison spell, unless they are actively engaging troops. 
     There is however a use for poison with heroes in certain situations.  When your troops engage the Queen, you can then drop your poison on top of her in order to slow her down significantly.  While the damage part of the poison spell has almost no effect on heroes, the slowing effect on their attack and movement speed seems to work just fine.  This allows your troops to quickly deal with the Queen without suffering heavy losses.
    

Defensive Strategy

     The Archer Queeen can be just as deadly defensively as she is offensively.  She is much more suited to defending than the Barbarian King, with her long range and fast attack speed she can fire shot after shot from behind the walls and wipe out the toughest of troops in a matter of seconds.  Just as with the King, the Archer Queen cannot use her ability on defense. 
     Some players like to place the King and Queen near one another to pack a double whammy when enemy troops approach them, while other players prefer placing them in separate areas to force the enemy to face one of the heroes regardless of how they approach the base.  Placed together, it can work wonderfully because the King can tank for the Queen while she picks off troops attacking the King, but sometimes a good player can avoid the heroes completely while they take out the TH and some storages and face them after they have destroyed many of the defenses to make it a more even fight. 
     The benefit to having the King and Queen separated is that they can cover a very large portion of the base so that no matter how an opponent chooses to attack, they will have to face one or both heroes before getting into the heart of the base and getting the storages and TH.  The downside to this strategy is that enemies can focus on taking out one hero at a time and they do much less damage than when they are placed together; the Queen has no one to tank for her, and the King has no DPS to back him up.  However, it does seem that with this strategy, whichever hero the opponent avoids at first seems to always start targeting the enemy troops right at the time they reach the center, so that they get turned from attacking the TH to attack the hero instead while also getting hit by almost all the remaining defenses, since most defenses will be in range of enemy troops when the troops are in the center enclosure.  The most effective placement of your heroes will depend on the layout of your base.
     As with the Barbarian King, you can choose to have the Archer Queen defend the village or sleep.  If she is set to sleep, just like the King she will not appear on the village map when an opponent attacks and she will not defend your village, but she will always be available when you decide to attack.  I would definitely recommend having your Queen set to defend the village, as she is much more adept at defending than the King.  Sometimes just seeing the Queen patrolling can be enough to deter a potential attacker.  If however, you really need to have your Queen available for your attacks and don't want to have to wait for her to heal if you are attacked, you can set her to sleep so you will always have her available for attacking when you need her.
     It is even more important to have the Queen in a protected position than the King.  Place within range of the TH, even in the center enclosure if you have room for her altar there.  If not, just get her as close as you can.  It is also beneficial to have her placed so that she is also in range of the King, so you cover more ground while also having the heroes in position to help one another fend off attackers.