How Useful Are Each of the Champion Abilities?
Mipha’s Grace is ready… to make you wait 24 minutes to use it again.
When the Champions’ ghosts lend Link a shiny glowing ball that is their magical ability, you scream for joy. And reasonably. This is a staple of Zelda games, for Link to receive multiple powerful magical items to aid him in his journey and the final boss fight. But how useful are they actually? Here is a ranking of each beautiful little blessing by usefulness.
4. Urbosa’s Fury Is Brute Force
| Divine Beast Prerequisite | Vah Naboris of the Gerudo Desert |
| Trigger | Hold down Y for charge attack |
| Power | Send out radius of damaging lightning to enemies around you |
| Cooldown Time (in real time) | 12 min (4 min in Hyrule Castle) |
Urbosa’s Fury is not something you need for your journey across Hyrule. Regardless of how awesome Urbosa is as an individual, and how cool she looks wielding it, her ability just isn’t that useful. Most experienced players, by the time they even get to Vah Naboris, can already take out their enemies with ease without the Fury, leaving it for only rare occurrences where they struggle. It’s more brute force that completely eliminates strategy, sending lightning down from the sky to erase health from your enemies just to speed up a fight.
3. Good Shields Outperform Daruk’s Protection
| Divine Beast Prerequisite | Vah Rudania of Death Mountain |
| Trigger | Hold down ZL to hold up shield |
| Power | Protect you from attacks on all sides |
| Cooldown Time (in real time) | 18 min (6 min in Hyrule Castle) |
Only exception: a billion Guardians aiming at you from all sides in the Forgotten Temple. But 99% of other times favor good shields (like the Hylian Shield) over Daruk’s Protection. It’s only really a necessity if you have trouble parrying; the red barrier automatically deflects attacks back to your enemies, but only three times. This means that it’ll quickly run out of uses if you really rely on it that much. However, I highly recommend you practice manual parrying instead with powerful shields: this is much more permanent and reliable. Plus, successful parries actually don’t damage your shield at all.
2. Mipha’s Grace Is Almost Perfect
| Divine Beast Prerequisite | Vah Ruta of Zora’s Domain |
| Trigger | Automatic when Link loses all health |
| Power | Restore all hearts + 5 yellow temporary bonus hearts |
| Cooldown Time (in real time) | 24 min (8 min in Hyrule Castle) |
Don’t get me wrong, Mipha’s Grace is awesome. It’s essentially a recharging fairy that will automatically refill all your hearts plus five temporary extra ones, which is downright useful. Well, almost. The only thing that makes this healing power not the #1 best ability is its extra-long cooldown. Once you use its single charge up, it won’t be ready for another 24 real minutes (1 in-game day), which is just not fun. None of the other abilities even come close to this long waiting period. This downside makes players purposely try not to use Mipha’s Grace, instead eating heart-restoring foods before all their health is lost and Mipha automatically heals Link.
1. Revali’s Gale Is Too Good To Be True
| Divine Beast Prerequisite | Vah Medoh of Rito Village |
| Trigger | Hold down X |
| Power | Create updraft for you to paraglide on |
| Cooldown Time (in real time) | 6 min (2 min in Hyrule Castle) |
It’s not my Rito bias working to this ability’s benefit here, and trust me. Revali’s Gale is too good to be true, regardless of whether you hate Revali or not. It creates an updraft out of nowhere for you to soar on, helping you greatly in long climbs and rainy weather, and boy, that cooldown. That cooldown. It has the shortest cooldown out of all of the Champion abilities – 6 real-time minutes, 2 with the Champions’ Ballad DLC or in Hyrule Castle – which is just awesome.
If there’s one ability that is both useful in battle and exploring the vast overworld, it’s Revali’s Gale. Need to get a bird’s-eye view of a complicated Korok puzzle? Boom. Revali’s Gale. Need to activate bullet-time aiming during a Lynel battle? Boom. Revali’s Gale. You can’t ignore how awesome this Champion ability is.
