Worst Common Hero Equipment to Avoid Upgrading in Clash of Clans

To conserve your Shiny and Glowy Ores in Clash of Clans, stop upgrading the Barbarian Puppet, Archer Puppet, Earthquake Boots, Life Gem, and Royal Gem. These five common equipment pieces suffer from harsh stat limits, extreme vulnerability to high Town Hall splash defenses, or redundancy with standard army mechanics.

Reallocate your ore reserves into high-impact alternatives like the Rage Vial, Invisibility Vial, Healing Tome, and Haste Vial.

Barbarian King: Barbarian Puppet and Earthquake Boots

The Barbarian Puppet provides active health recovery and summons standard Barbarians. While serviceable at low Town Hall levels, tier-one summoned troops are instantly eliminated in higher Town Halls by Scattershots, Multi-Target Inferno Towers, Poison Spell Towers, and Town Hall death blasts. Instead of shielding the King, spawned Barbarians frequently detonate nearby Giant Bombs, causing collateral damage without absorbing sustained single-target fire. Upgrade the Rage Vial for burst damage and movement speed, or the Vampstache for reliable self-healing over extended flank paths.

Earthquake Boots trigger a localized ground shock that breaks walls and deals minor damage to nearby buildings. This utility is largely redundant in modern attacks:

• Root Riders trample wall segments automatically during their pathing.
• Siege Machines like the Log Launcher and Wall Wrecker carve direct paths through defensive compartments.
• Earthquake Spells and Jump Spells open pathing across wider sections of the base without consuming a hero equipment slot.

Because the damage dealt to defensive buildings by the boots is too low to remove key targets, running Earthquake Boots sacrifices the King’s damage output and survivability.

Archer Queen: Archer Puppet

The Archer Puppet grants an active heal and summons a small squad of standard Archers. Like the Barbarian Puppet, these summoned units lack the hit points to survive modern defensive splash damage. A single Mortar shell or Eagle Artillery blast routinely wipes out the summoned squad before they finish attacking their first target.

The Archer Queen depends on precise utility and survival, which competing gear provides far more effectively:

• Invisibility Vial: Drops defensive targeting while granting significant burst damage to clear core compartments.
• Giant Arrow: Destroys Air Defenses, Air Sweepers, and key defensive structures across the entire layout before troops deploy.
• Healer Puppet: Spawns resilient Healers to sustain a Queen Charge or Queen Walk without triggering ground Spring Traps.

Because the Archer Puppet's summons offer negligible distraction value, its modest health recovery stat does not justify spending upgrade ores.

Grand Warden: Life Gem

The Life Gem projects an aura that increases the maximum hit points of nearby friendly units. However, it features a strict maximum health cap per unit. While low-tier swarm troops receive a noticeable proportional boost, heavy units such as Root Riders, P.E.K.K.A.s, Golems, and Electro Dragons hit this ceiling immediately and gain almost no practical survival benefit.

The Grand Warden has access to the Eternal Tome, which remains essential across nearly all army compositions. Because players typically have only one flexible common slot remaining, running the Life Gem forces you to give up the Healing Tome or the Rage Gem:

• Healing Tome provides a large heal-over-time effect that scales universally across hybrid, smash, and air compositions.
• Rage Gem delivers a permanent damage aura to accelerate heavy push strategies through high-HP defensive cores.

Given the performance of the Healing Tome in sustaining troops through heavy fire, investing ores into the Life Gem yields an inferior return.

Royal Champion: Royal Gem

The Royal Champion relies on high movement speed and rapid single-target elimination. The Royal Gem provides a passive hit-point boost alongside a flat active heal.

While self-healing appears useful for a solo hero, a flat health injection does not protect the Royal Champion against high-damage threats like Monoliths and Single-Target Inferno Towers. Once focused by these defenses, the restored health is depleted in seconds.

Investing ores into speed and distraction equipment keeps the Royal Champion alive far longer:

• Haste Vial: Dramatically increases attack speed and movement speed, allowing her to destroy lethal defenses before they ramp up damage.
• Hog Rider Puppet: Spawns distraction units that stun targeted defenses and absorb high-damage strikes.

Leave the Royal Gem at its base level and direct your upgrade ores toward equipment that accelerates the Royal Champion's clearing pace.