Clicker Heroes is one of the most iconic idle incremental games ever made. It’s a simple idle RPG at first glance, but one that hides deep layers of strategy beneath its colorful interface.
Players defeat waves of monsters, earn gold, hire heroes, and scale endlessly higher through zones. Over time, Clicker Heroes gameplay evolves from frantic clicking to careful planning, and that’s where Clicker Heroes idle DPS comes in.
Idle DPS (Idle Damage Per Second) is the backbone of Clicker Heroes’ passive playstyle.
Instead of relying on clicks or active abilities, idle DPS lets your heroes automatically deal damage while you sit back and watch progress unfold.
The right setup can melt through zones without lifting a finger, but optimizing it requires understanding how the system truly works.
This Clicker Heroes guide is written for idle players, progression-focused adventurers, and DPS optimization enthusiasts who want to squeeze the most efficiency out of their runs.
Whether you’ve transcended dozens of times or are just starting to automate your first ascension, this guide will help you understand, calculate, and maximize your idle DPS.
Understanding Idle DPS in Clicker Heroes
Before you can optimize your setup or compare Clicker Heroes DPS calculator, it’s important to understand what idle DPS actually is and how it functions within the game’s layered progression system.
What Is Clicker Heroes Idle DPS?
In Clicker Heroes, idle DPS refers to the total damage your heroes deal without clicking. It’s the opposite of active DPS, which involves manual clicks or click-based skills (like Clickstorm).
Idle DPS activates when the idle game detects a period of inactivity, typically no clicks for at least 60 seconds.
During this state, certain ancients, relics, and hero abilities apply idle bonuses, multiplying your damage output significantly.
To maintain idle mode, avoid clicking the screen or using manual skills.
Auto-clickers and click-based abilities will immediately break idle status. Instead, let your heroes do the work and rely on the synergy between idle ancients and hero upgrades to keep the damage flowing.
How Idle DPS Works
Idle DPS isn’t just your total hero damage; it’s influenced by a layered set of multipliers. Here’s a simplified breakdown of the core mechanics.
Base Hero Damage
Each hero contributes a certain amount of DPS based on their level and upgrades. The sum of all heroes’ DPS forms your base damage.
Idle Multipliers
When idle mode is active, ancients like Siyalatas and Libertas apply their bonuses.
- Siyalatas: Provides a direct DPS boost while idle.
- Libertas: Increases gold gain while idle, indirectly accelerating progression.
Besides Ancients, each Hero Soul increases your global DPS by 10%, making them a crucial long-term source of exponential power.
The more Clicker Heroes Hero Soul DPS you earn through ascensions and primal bosses, the stronger your idle DPS becomes.
Skill and Equipment Effects
Some relics grant percentage boosts to idle DPS or specific ancients. These bonuses stack, making relic optimization a big factor for idle players.
DPS Calculation Formula (Simplified)
Total Idle DPS = (Sum of Hero DPS) × (1 + Siyalatas Bonus + Relic Bonuses) × Hero Soul Bonus × Other Multipliers
The actual in-game formula includes additive and multiplicative components, but this simplified version gives a practical view of how your idle strength scales.
Best Ancients for Clicker Heroes Idle DPS
Once you understand how idle DPS works, the next step is to identify which Ancients give you the biggest power boost while staying hands-off.
Idle damage builds rely heavily on a few key Ancients that multiply your idle damage and gold gain, while others enhance your overall efficiency through soul bonuses and primal boss rewards.
Core Idle Ancients
At the heart of every idle setup are Siyalatas and Libertas, the two pillars of idle play.
- Siyalatas directly boosts your idle DPS, multiplying your damage whenever you’re not clicking. This is the single most important Ancient for any true idle player.
- Libertas increases your idle gold gain, ensuring that your income scales naturally as you progress without clicks.
- Nogardnit serves as a hybrid option. While often considered more of an active-play Ancient due to his auto-clicker synergy, he helps bridge the gap for semi-idle players who want to keep progressing even with limited interaction.
These choices are often debated in community gaming discussions and gaming forums, where players share different efficiency ratios and gold-gain strategies.
Together, these Ancients form the foundation of any successful idle DPS build, providing both damage and gold generation without requiring constant attention.
Support Ancients for Gold and Souls
Beyond the core trio, several support Ancients amplify your long-term efficiency:
- Mammon and Mimzee enhance your gold income. Mammon boosts overall gold drops, while Mimzee focuses specifically on treasure chests. Both pair perfectly with Libertas to keep your gold flow steady.
- Atman increases the chance of encountering those valuable primal bosses, improving your overall soul farming efficiency.
These Ancients don’t directly raise your DPS, but they enhance progression speed and soul economy, which ultimately support stronger idle runs and more efficient transcensions.
How to Respec for Idle Builds
If you’ve been running an active or hybrid build, respeccing into an idle setup is straightforward but strategic.
The ideal time to respec is right after a transcension, when you can re-allocate your Hero Souls without penalty.
Focus your souls heavily on Siyalatas and Libertas first, then distribute the remainder among your gold and soul Ancients (Mammon, Mimzee, Atman).
For example, a balanced mid-game idle build might look like this:
- Siyalatas: ~35–40% of your souls
- Libertas: ~25–30%
- Mammon & Mimzee: ~15% combined
- Atman: ~15–20% combined
This ratio keeps your damage and economy in sync, allowing you to progress efficiently without ever needing to click.
Read More: Idle vs Activate Gaming: Which Playstyle is Best for You?
Best Heroes for Idle DPS Builds
Your heroes are the real engine behind your idle DPS; they’re the ones doing all the work while you sit back and watch the gold pour in.
Choosing the right heroes and managing your gilds properly can make or break an idle build, especially as you climb into higher zones.
Top Heroes to Focus On
Not all heroes scale equally, and some are far better suited for idle damage progression than others.
For idle builds, you’ll want to focus on heroes that offer high base DPS, consistent scaling, and idle-friendly upgrades.
- The Masked Samurai, Atlas, Terra, and Phthalo are among the most efficient idle heroes thanks to their strong DPS-per-cost ratios. They deliver significant power spikes without requiring active abilities.
- Brittany, Beach Princess and The Great Forest Seer are great early-game investments, offering affordable upgrades that help push through early walls.
- Pay attention to level breakpoints, especially those where upgrades provide large multipliers. Reaching these breakpoints before moving to the next hero keeps your idle damage scaling smoothly.
Once you reach late-game heroes, your idle DPS can snowball dramatically, letting you cruise through zones with minimal input.
Gilding Strategy for Idle Builds
Gilds are one of the most powerful long-term mechanics in Clicker Heroes. Each gild adds a 50% DPS boost to a specific hero, and stacking them strategically is essential for maximizing idle output.
Here’s how to handle gilds efficiently:
- Focus all your gilds on your current top DPS hero, typically the last hero you can afford to level significantly. This concentrates your damage output instead of spreading it thin across multiple heroes.
- As you progress and unlock stronger heroes, move your gilds using Hero Souls to transfer them to your new best DPS hero. This keeps your total damage curve efficient throughout your run.
- Avoid over-investing gilds into early heroes; while it’s tempting, those heroes quickly fall off as new, more powerful ones become available.
Pro tip: When running idle builds, your gilding efficiency directly affects how far your DPS multiplier can carry you between active sessions. Always check your highest affordable hero and make sure your gilds follow your gold curve.
Upgrades, Skills, and Auto-Clickers
Even the best idle builds rely on smart upgrade management and avoiding the wrong skills at the wrong time.
While Clicker Heroes rewards inactivity in idle mode, knowing when and what to upgrade, and how to use auto-clickers without breaking your setup, can make your hands-off progression far more efficient.
Upgrade Priorities
For idle players, your main goal is to boost passive DPS and gold gain without triggering active play mechanics.
Prioritize upgrades that increase hero DPS multipliers, gold production, or idle bonuses from ancients like Siyalatas and Libertas.
Avoid wasting gold on heroes you’ve outgrown. If you’re approaching a wall, it’s often smarter to save gold for the next hero rather than sinking resources into diminishing upgrades.
The right timing between upgrades and saving gold keeps your idle curve efficient without needing clicks.
Skills to Avoid (That Break Idle Mode)
Idle mode only works when no active-trigger skills are active and no manual clicks occur, so it’s crucial to avoid abilities that reset your idle timer.
Skills like Clickstorm are counted as active actions, so using it will disable your idle bonuses temporarily.
Instead, rely on passive buffs and DPS multipliers from ancients and hero upgrades. Think of idle mode as a pure automation state: if you need to press something to progress, it’s not truly idle.
A good habit is to leave your skill bar untouched during long idle runs. And activate abilities only when you plan a short active burst before transcending.
Using Auto-Clickers in Idle Mode
Auto-clickers can be tricky for idle builds. By default, clicking, even automated, breaks idle mode.
However, some setups and ancients (like Nogardnit) offer idle-compatible auto-clickers that don’t count as manual clicks but still provide benefits.
When using auto-clickers, place them on non-enemy targets (like ability icons except Clickstorm) to keep idle status intact.
Also, test your setup and see if your idle DPS bonus disappears, then adjust the auto-clicker accordingly.
Clicker Heroes Idle DPS Progression Strategy
Idle DPS builds shine at different points in your Clicker Heroes journey.
While you can technically go idle from the start, the most efficient players know when to switch from clicking to full idle and how to balance ancients, heroes, and transcendent power for long-term growth.
Early Game (Zones 1–100)
In the early zones, your focus should be on speeding through levels and unlocking key heroes. Pure idle isn’t optimal yet, as your bonuses are small, and early ancients like Siyalatas or Libertas aren’t available.
A hybrid approach works best here: start with manual clicking or auto-clickers to rush progress, then ease into idle play once you’ve unlocked a few ancients.
Once you get Libertas and Siyalatas, your idle DPS begins to take shape, allowing you to stop clicking and still progress efficiently.
Mid Game (Zones 100–300)
This is where idle builds truly come alive. By now, you’ll have a solid ancient foundation, including Siyalatas, Libertas, Mammon, and Mimzee.
Your idle bonuses multiply rapidly, letting you progress deep into zones without lifting a finger.
The key here is balancing ancients and heroes:
- Continue leveling heroes that scale best with your idle DPS setup.
- Invest in ancients that enhance gold gain and soul efficiency.
- Avoid wasting hero souls on ancients that only help active play.
If progression slows, perform a quick ascension. Your idle build scales better after each reset as ancients and souls multiply.
Late Game and Beyond (Post-Transcendence)
Once you’ve transcended, idle builds become even stronger.
Your Transcendent Power (TP) and Ancient Souls (AS) amplify idle bonuses through Outsiders like Borb and Phandoryss, letting your damage scale exponentially across runs.
At this stage:
- Focus on maintaining a balanced AS allocation using an Ancient Soul Calculator to maximize efficiency.
- Adjust your ancients and heroes as you push to higher zones, as idle bonuses scale differently as your base DPS grows.
- Don’t neglect auto-progression settings and gold-boosting ancients; they keep your runs smooth while you remain hands-off.
In late game, the idle path becomes the ultimate automation engine. Your heroes, ancients, and outsiders all work in sync while you sit back and watch your zone count skyrocket.
Common Mistakes in Idle DPS Builds
Even the most patient idle players can unknowingly limit their progress through a few common missteps.
One of the biggest mistakes is mixing idle and active ancients.
Idle-focused ancients like Siyalatas and Libertas thrive on doing nothing, while active ones such as Juggernaut or Fragsworth reward constant clicking.
Combining the two splits your bonuses and leads to underwhelming results. So, commit fully to the idle playstyle if that’s your goal.
Another frequent issue is forgetting to turn off auto skills.
Clickstorm counts as “active clicks”, which breaks idle mode and cancels your bonuses from idle ancients.
If you’re using automation scripts or hotkeys, double-check that these skills aren’t set to trigger automatically.
Players also often mismanage their gilds, spreading them too widely across multiple heroes instead of concentrating them on one primary DPS dealer.
Focusing gilds on a single top-tier hero ensures stronger scaling and faster zone progression. As you unlock better heroes, shift your gilds forward rather than leaving them behind on weaker ones.
Finally, over-investing in early heroes is another trap.
It might feel satisfying to max out characters like Treebeast or Ivan, but their efficiency drops off sharply compared to mid- and late-game heroes.
Once you reach higher zones, channel your gold into your strongest idle hero to keep your DPS competitive.
Example Idle DPS Build Table
| Zone Range | Suggested Heroes | Key Ancients | Gilding Focus | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1–100 | Treebeast, Ivan | Siyalatas, Libertas | Spread evenly | Hybrid possible |
| 100–300 | Brittany, Samurai | Siyalatas, Mammon, Mimzee | Focus highest DPS hero | Go full idle |
| 300+ | Atlas, Terra | All idle ancients, Atman | Consolidate gilds | Efficient idle farming |
| Post-Trans | Aphrodite, Shinatobe | Nogardnit, Atman, Ponyboy | Rotate as needed | Adjust for transcendent power |
Tips to Maximize Clicker Heroes Idle DPS Efficiency
Idle play is all about letting the game work while you don’t.
For players who enjoy casual gaming or chill games, idle builds are perfect; they deliver satisfying progress with minimal input while still rewarding smart gaming tips and setup tweaks.
To get the most out of it, AFK during long breaks, and your heroes will keep grinding, collecting gold, and even beating bosses while you’re away.
When you log back in after a few hours, you’ll often find a massive gold boost waiting to fuel your next upgrades or ascension.
To speed up your progress, combine idle ancients like Siyalatas and Libertas with gold boosters such as Mammon and Mimzee.
This synergy ensures that every idle kill generates both DPS and income growth over time.
Just remember to monitor your skill bar, as accidentally triggering active abilities like Clickstorm will break idle mode and reset your bonuses.
Small optimizations, like placing auto-clickers on non-damaging actions, spacing your upgrades efficiently, or timing ascensions wisely, can make a surprising difference in how quickly you climb through zones.
Final Thoughts
Building an idle DPS setup in Clicker Heroes is about efficiency, patience, and smart planning.
Once you understand how idle bonuses stack and which ancients or heroes to prioritize, your progress becomes nearly automatic.
This playstyle is perfect for casual or busy players who want steady advancement without constant interaction.
This playstyle is perfect for casual or busy players — the kind of gamers who love idle clickers and value progression over action.
Don’t hesitate to experiment with different ancient combinations and gild distributions. Sometimes, your ideal setup might look different from someone else’s.
Lastly, remember to track your growth after each ascension and respec your ancients when needed.
With the right setup and a bit of optimization, idle DPS can take you farther than you ever expected in this idle clicker games.
