Super comprehensive answer, +1 internets sir/madam! Paladins (unit) can be a huge help in conjunction with The Elite, and captains will also benefit. They run, stun, knockback and heal. Buffed by research and a captain or four they hit like trucks and are extremely tough to kill. Great for any armies backbone. Most of my successfully pushed are max Paladins and captains plus whatever cheddar I need for specific mobs.
I also found with my gun-focused dwarf that pathfinders are good for fog, in that you can focus on the target and fire away, even if you can't see the enemy yourself. I also try to stay as close to the banner men as possible to keep defending them. Maxed Heavy Shot is great for those big opponents like the spiders if you can get them lined up. Being followed by the mummies with the ranged attacks is just nasty though.
About two weeks since update was submitted.... So, another week? I sad that we may never get pistols but they were a pipe dream. Excited about Arena Mode! Also, M0R3 games N0wz Foursaken brothers! Or when they're done you guys have gotten quiet so that usually precedes an info dump woop!
The opposite, in fact. Armor is one of the rare stats that exhibits accelerating returns, where each point is actually more valuable than the point before. For the sake of illustration with nice round numbers... imagine you have zero armor and are standing in a pack of skeletons with 0 AP. The skeletons hit you 100% of the time and deal 100 damage per second. If you have 1000 hit points, you will survive for 10 seconds. Now, imagine you get up to 20 armor. Suddenly, the skeletons hit you 80% of the time, so you only take 80 damage per second. You now survive for 12.5 seconds. If you go up to 40 armor, the skeletons hit you 60% of the time, you take 60 damage per second, and you survive for 16.67 seconds. At 60 armor, the skeletons hit you 40% of the time, you take 40 DPS, and you survive for 25 seconds. At 80 armor, the skeletons hit you 20% of the time, you take 20 DPS, and you survive for 50 seconds. If it were possible to get to 100 armor, (you can't, it's capped at 95), then the skeletons would hit you 0% of the time, you would take 0 DPS, and you would survive for infinite seconds. Adding the first 20 armor increased your survivability by 2.5 seconds. The second 20 armor added another 4.17 seconds. The third 20 armor added 8.33 seconds. The fourth 20 armor added 25 seconds. The last 20 armor added infinitymillion seconds. Basically, against enemies with 0 AP, any time you get halfway between where you are and 100, you double your survivability. To double your survivability when you have 0 armor, you need to add 50 more points. To double your survivability from 90 armor, you only need to add 5 more points. (Putting it another way, the last 17 points of armor do about as much for your survivability as the first 78 points did- quite a bonus in efficiency!) The numbers are different and less dramatic when the enemy has AP, but the math is the same. The more armor you have, the more effective each additional point becomes. Or, alternately, the most efficient strategies regarding armor are probably either leaving it at zero or getting as much as you possibly can. A little bit of armor can still be helpful, but it's not really a stat that rewards half-measures. The same is true of dodge, by the way. The more of it you have, the more valuable each additional bit of it becomes. It's just a lot harder to really stack dodge to huge levels like you can with armor.
Yes, and it's actually even more effective than the simplified total damage over time vs total HP model suggests. In reality the gambler's ruin of death is triggered by discrete chunks of damage overflowing current life prior to a victory condition. If you make a damage event rare enough, the factor of healing, or evasive action, hiding in castle, etc, has the opportunity to change the survival outcome. Also, when lasting longer, mini or major victories may have time to occur. This is actually why it's easier for Foursaken to play balance the game by not having percentage or full heals *within* a battle (even your hero gets a full heal only afterwards)... the way they do it, total DPS averaged over time is a really useful approximation to what happens--but it still isn't "the Truth". For example, I love to have three Elven Healers at once, because many enemies disperse their attacks and possibly all their DPS is negated, when a brief focused attack on each Healer in turn is what is needed to crack my defense. So any slow down of a DPS vs anti-DPS tug-of-war might allow events to possibly save the day. [I recommend trying Waves while only allowing yourself to build: bannermen, torchbearers, dwarf/repairmen, and Elven Healers... many Waves you should then win easily with your hero--if not, try picking just *one* other unit type you allow yourself to build] Recently my Paladin, vs Wave 29, hid behind catapults, which took the blasts a bunch of Necros aimed at him. He shielded the catapults (skill) for long enough for them to destroy the enemy castle. When he (via catapults) won he was oom & surrounded by certain death--which didn't matter at all. High Armor is useful the same way. If HP is high enough to survive a hit, then high Armor possibly gives enough breathing room for an external event to squeeze in and alter destiny before the next, mortal, hit finally lands. Similarly, I aggro'ed an attacker off of my about-to-fall Wall--it took a little time to convince him to attack me instead--but he missed (the wall) in the meantime. By time the next attacker got through, the walls were repaired. So SSoG makes an important point... very high Armor is really quite a game changer, it's not linear!
While armor can be very useful, I wouldn't call it game changer at all. It depends on which enemies are you facing. In the hardest battles, which are endless/coop, you will face lots of enemies which ignore (or almost) armor. Such as trolls, catapults, rocketeers, wraiths, executioners... If you sacrifice health in favour of armor you might get 1-hit killed quite easy, thus reducing survabilty. Each race got better options than armor. For instance, dwarfs can get to have high Defense stats, which is the best survival attribute by far. Elves got dodge and blocking skills, although they have same problem than armor relying heroes (1 hit down). And Humans, regardless of permanent invincibility, got lots of health bonuses. With Knights Valor and Taunt you also take reduced damage (can be compared to Defense stat). The more health the harder to trigger Valor but the more health you'll have covered by that passive skill. My conclusion would be that armor is good but not at all costs. A certain amount of health is also needed (mainly in those legendary long battles) and damage reduction. As a side note too: in terms of intangible survability, if they can't get close to you, they won't deal any damage: mobility is also great and seems to be underrated.
"Can't hit me!" is often better than "Hah! Is that all you got?! I can take a punch!" Strafing instead of stationary among, side-stepping incoming missiles, back-stepping melee (practical when you use the longer reach melee weapons, such as staff, spear, scythe), hiding (behind walls, behind units) all can work better than risking taking a hit, when you don't know if that hit might lead to (your eventual death by) gambler's ruin. Even those don't touch the awesome power of the Juggernaut skill (invulnerability)... "geez, looks like I win within 20 seconds, unless I die, hmm, how about I just become invincible?"). Both Elf & Dwarf would love to have that, since they have means to personally take down castles, if they can survive a short time. In a game without percentage or full heals (the closest thing to an exception is that "mana save" teleport revive skill, iirc) one's "best" choices of behavior between risk and cowardice fundamentally boil down to whatever gets the job done for you. My behaviors skirt damage, and everything works well for me 90%+ of the time, so +HP is, at least for me, an unused waste. In HC2 I've avoided it in favor of attributes that help my style of play or cover up my flaws. Imagine offering a bag of gold to a famous person to whom everything is already being given for free... what's the point in +HP, unless you die? Now in a "hardcore" mode game, where death is a no-no-never because it's permanent, I would, of course, +HP. Rocketeers are one of the best arguments for +HP, but if one of them gets me, I just go: "Oh, what happened to distract me from my Tao of being in constant motion?", or, perhaps: "Doh! I should not run past a known juicy target in a scenario with AoE strong enough to 1hit me". So you make a truly excellent point--mobility is underrated! My play style does mean that I often, mid-game on, keep 85CP in reserve to summon a Priest, since that is somewhat of a limited-edition version of a full heal for me (since none of my characters have much HP). This is not needed very often. Incredibly rare for me to do it twice in one battle. (YMMV... I'm not playing co-op or PvP, just single player). If Vampiric %heal (or skills) existed, or even being able to suicide/force Priests to get more heals, then I'd favor +HP more. I suspect long block duration shields or use of the "Into the Fray" skill could work well as a play style, but I've not tried them. Similarly my endorsement of high armor is based on my current experience, but clearly is not the only option. I hardly use knockback in HC2--though you could make great use of it, I'm sure--just because I lazily prefer things to stay put. I always advocate doing what you find enjoyable, even if it doesn't work perfectly... doing things that don't naturally work well, but somehow making them work, can be really fun. I just won Wave 11 (memory) with a Dwarf hero and only bannermen and Elven Healers, until I had CP to summon an Elephant. I had dual ranged staffs, so my physical damage vs Cultists came only from my level 1 Mines skill. This actually worked just fine, because max'ed Counter Spell & Magic Channel meant Ghosts & Cultists didn't hurt me (only mummies could). It was weirdly fun (and pretty easy). FYI, I only had 40 Armor--and I believe it never mattered one way or the other. Sometime I'll probably get around to a no-Armor Dwarf build, and maybe +HP will be great for me with that (living at low % current HP vs max HP for the other bonuses). Great game, isn't it?
If you haven't tried it, I've had a lot of fun with dual-club characters. Load up on +ASPD and focus on proc skills. It's essentially the same build as a dual-dagger character, except the individual weapons swing slightly slower, but can hit multiple enemies per swing. If you can consistently get two guys per swing, it's the equivalent of doubling your attack speed. (You won't be able to consistently hit two, but you'll do it often enough to come out ahead in the long run. And then there are always those crazy times when you can hit upwards of 6 or 8 enemies at once.) I can't really stand knockback, either, but clubs and maces have pretty light knockback. It's enough to interrupt enemies as they try to attack you, which is incredibly useful. At the same time, the pushback is so small that if you press "forward" on the stick through the entire attack sequence, you'll take small steps between each swing that keep you right in melee range. It's really only annoying when you clump up a group nicely, stun them, and then the knockback starts scattering them apart again. No matter how often I theorycraft, whenever I take a build out into real-world testing, I find I always perform better with the clubs than the axes or scythes or swords or whatever else. The damage keeps pace nicely, and it's a lot more survivable. Maces also work well, but if you craft maces, there's a chance you'll get a 2-hander instead, (which swings slow and is therefore unsuitable for an +ASPD/proc build). Clubs give you one-handers all the time, so unless I'm using one of the paladin skills that specifically requires a mace or a hammer, I lean towards those. Plus I think they look nicer, especially on my back inside the castle, which is perhaps the most important requirement of all. (I also really like using 1-handed clubs with a +Melee shield. Similar damage to a 2-handed weapon, swings faster, and provides nice armor/blocking boosts to offset the loss of range. Really, I can't think of many times when I'd prefer a 2-hander to a 1-hander and shield.) Almost all of my characters right now are wielding club/shield, club/club, or dual ranged staves, (including a druid/ranger monster-slow hybrid who takes advantage of the fact that "Sharpened Arrows", for some reason, works with staves). I do have one crossbow user who just wants to be different. Edit to add- though I haven't really reached "end-game" yet. Most of my guys are in the level 30-50 range. Clubs might really be more of a early-to-mid-game weapon.
It's fascinating reading all the theorycrafting... I have always dismissed clubs, but haven't had an epic or better yet... especially when everything is super diffI cult it's tough to try uncommon and lower leveled builds. Check Foursakens twittering, gang.. should be seeing the update in a few days!
The reason I went with paladins is the stunning capacity - 3 mummy pharoahs are the opening monsters, the spiders rush and knockback and start in a group of five. Then the riders start coming. It was hard to see after that, since I was human and taunt-leading as much as I could away from the walls. I think siege mummies may have been involved. Something came in that was targeting bannermen directly though - they were dying instantly - and nothing but my paladins was staying upright. Still, trying giants might be an idea. I've only gotten one "attack has gotten stronger!" message since I first tried this battle, so it might be worth another shot before I let it be taken and just retake it.
Oooh, "attack stronger" means you're doing a "siege and defend"? I thought you were on just a fog defend? If you've got a siege, then a castle rush with masses of plainsman and dreadnaughts accompanied by a paladin human hero or Druid (bark armor, healing) human hero might well take them down before they take you down (remember that 50CP just before they break a wall brings all your walls back to full). There's the 100CP rune version of this, blitzkrieg, and the 200CP research version. If you've not cracked one enemy wall by 140 seconds in (80+60 researches) then you're probably doomed, either because you're not doing the best assault you can, or because their onslaught and defense are too awesome. On advantage of either rush method is that doing just one bannermen is usually correct, so the risk there is much lower. BTW, if you've never tried throwing a knight out the instant a battle starts, and waiting a few seconds before your bannerman, I recommend it as an educational experience. Naturally that pretty much requires a 100CP+? Rune. If you're being clever, Foursaken does advocate multiple heroes, so put such a rune on your lead, summoning hero, and get him usefully killed to make way for the castle assault hero. It does only cost 10 Crystals to make such a hero, and a little bit of play pays that back easily (especially the easy rewards for doing the three levels sans hero killing anything). Btw, I think everyone agrees with you that the new v1.1 Paladins are great, and fun to watch! But for knockback and survivability alone they're overpriced compared to Iron Helms. Their charging into battle and magic attack, enhanced over time by undead-ish kills, plus the Elite research, make them awesome, but if your immediate need is distraction and survival time-buying, they probably aren't the best choice. Bear in mind, anytime that torchbearers are useful at all, they are almost mandatory (soooo cheap!) and when they are mandatory, it almost always is best to get them out the gate, into the enemies attention span, *before* the bannerman. Ditto Dryads or Footman or Knight, for those scenarios in which you feel immediate need to distract and slow down the enemy.
Thanks for the news about the update soon! SSoG is totally right about the fun and effectiveness of clubs. Their short range and unfortunate knockback scatter is the only downside... if you play the dart in and out of gate method (wash aggro, slight heal), cleaning enemies up against the walls is very very effective with clubs. However the AoE procs for human/elf heroes are so good with long reach, fast melee weapons that clubs really can't compare. Naturally if Foursaken nerfs those, or buffs clubs, the story might be different. And there's nothing wrong with deciding a particular play style or equipment is overpowered/cheesy/boring and not for you. BTW, I don't mean to ever diss dwarf heroes... they aren't good at protecting and healing field units, nor do they have nice AoE procs, so it may seem sometimes that I neglect them in advice posts focusing on those techniques. What they do well is different, and awesome, but requires different thinking and talking about totally different techniques. For the record, I believe it's easier to (solo, bootstrap) power level Elf, next easiest Dwarf, lastly Human, solely because Wave levels 6, 15, 29 can be legitimately done very fast. Of course co-op XP twinking, and other exploit cheese is potentially even faster. The point I'm making, is that having a powerful/fast character also speeds up crystal acquisition which speeds up everything and gives you more options, including trying builds that might be nearly impossible, otherwise. When I lost all my characters (reset for testing, thinking I could reload iCloud save; oops), for example, I lost a +100CP/15%unit rune, which I only this week re-rolled, nearly 2 months later. That rune on a siege unit 25% discount skill Dwarf allows some crazy sh*t. I also have a 15%unit/35%Elephant rune--hilarious (mildly useful--put it on a tag-team hero!). Now if the Dwarf siege unit discount applied to Elephants, that would be something.
Totally wrong. Only human are better (if any) at protecting/healing our units. Steadfast Defense protection is awesome (catapult damage gets reduced to 1) and it has huge range (unlike Holy Shield). And you don't need to stay close to your units, you cast it and forget for a while. About healing, a Dwarf can be a great healer (Healing Rune), 80 hp restored after each kill. A fun combo would be sticking close to a War Elephant and let him take the hits while you support with heals (and damage bonus). How about AoE? Maxed Unstable powder gives 30% AoE chance to its owner (gunpowder weapons). Needless to say that Dwarf offensive support is just obscene. 100K + damages coming from somwhere...
Yes, and this is what I meant about Dwarf heroes are different, and need different discussion. Allow me to explain what I meant by "they aren't good at protecting and healing field units," since, for what I mean by "field unit", the awesome skill Steadfast Defense doesn't do "protecting"... First off, I don't consider any unit "stationed" at your back line (Wall or otherwise) to be acting as a field unit. I'm using the term to indicate a unit out in the field. If a Pathfinder, with decent range, is doing his job while staying put, then I'm not calling him a field unit. But if he wanders out into the field, perhaps to enhance his range to target or to get past an obstacle, then I'll refer to him as a field unit. Given that usage of terminology, and how the game usually plays, we know that "field units" will more commonly be melee units, as ranged units are less likely to wander (I've played early conquest skirmishes with lots of archers, many of whom became "field units" so I know there are exceptions... probably mages wandering into the field are the most important one, for this discussion). Steadfast Defense protects a melee unit only until they get off an attack, in the meantime they're a statue. This can be great, and in specific circumstances very protecting. But while they are statues they are (temporarily) not "field units", they are armored stationary bombs. If I am accompanying, and "protecting" a group of field units, successfully advancing, say, to the enemy castle (which was the topic of my recent post, concerning the hero helping this effort), that SD is a brief "protect", not a "protecting". Similarly the Dwarf heal-units-when-killing skill is not a skill I'm dissing, rather I'm just saying it is, in practice, not as "protecting" of units as the more convenient and typically more effective Human/Elf healing passive auras. One of the reasons I ranked Dwarf as better than Human at power leveling is how much earlier SD can be learned than Vengence Aura. SD is an amazing skill, worth a huge thread/FAQ just on it alone. [BTW, I may have mentioned previously that I'm a fan of SD for Captains and Paladins, because they need killing-blow credit to enhance their personal buff] Still, it isn't good at doing the protecting-field-units ongoing task that I was trying to outline. Regarding my saying: "nor do they have nice AoE procs", you have a point about the nice AoE L35req Unstable Powder skill. But it isn't a proc in the way it's implemented--it's a conversion, like "wide angle attack", it causes the attack to be replicated to more targets than normal. The AoE procs I'm referring to, for Human & Elf, spawn an additional effect. There are at least two reasons to pay attention to this potentially minor difference... first, a proc implementation may do double attacks on a single target (UP will not), and second, being a separate effect, the area affected, or chain reaction (especially for Elf skill, because more proc triggered by kill) of a proc can physically travel (eg I once took out dozens of attackers along my entire wall length with a single elf "normal" melee attack). You know the concentric constraints of UP, and so its AoE is point-of-impact defined in a way that procs, as an additional effect, often, usefully, are not. I'm saying Unstable Powder is AoE, is a great skill, but isn't a proc, in the meaningful sense in which I was using the term. Dwarf offensive support really is obscene, as you say. I like your idea of keeping him close to an Elephant, for heals (as his limited healing skill then will be usefully applied to that one, known nearby unit--very clever!) and because the Elephant attacks AoE, if you throw a Steadfast Defense when he's in a crowd, you'd get a nice Splat!
Well, I know your point, but you are a bit wrong again. SD not only protects units until they attack. It protects units for the duration of the spell, regardless of whether they attack or not. Once they attack, they can move again * It becomes more useful, that's right, with units that are ranged: they will attack immediately and still protected. It just happens that the best units are ranged (rifles, cannons...). If siege, a single catapult shot will destroy walls. * there are some oddities with SD. Paladins (unit) won't stop moving while buffed/protected, probably granting them an easy kill. Same for Red guards, whose damage can become insane. Incredibly useful for miners, as they burrow through the ground and 1-hit catapults. Wooden Elf will move when they charge, even buffed.
Does anybody else think that orc shamans are a bit overpowered? The scribe says that the best counters for them are shield knights and elf assassins. Mine are upgraded to the max but they always seem to die when facing orc shamans. Furthermore, shamans can silence heroes and have a poisonous, ranged, aoe attack. To me they are harder than wraith lords.#
It was fog defend. The "Attack on your outpost has gotten stronger!" came after I did a wave of Endless
"Does anybody else think that orc shamans are a bit overpowered? The scribe says that the best counters for them are shield knights and elf assassins. Mine are upgraded to the max but they always seem to die when facing orc shamans. Furthermore, shamans can silence heroes and have a poisonous, ranged, aoe attack. To me they are harder than wraith lords" Actually the mummy casters are what suck worst IMO - stun plus hinder is awful. Two of them can keep you stun locked forever (I've had two outpost defense-and-siege that had four of them out at once, I stayed stunned forever) and they have enough HPs that elf assassins really kinda bounce off them.
Co-op? So, how do you get a coop game going? Because the only message I ever seem to get is "automatching...no players over level 20...automatching...no players online..." ad infinitum.
Ah, cool, thanks, things I did not know, or had not thought to test! BTW, the targeting behavior of a unit under SD might change, since, eg, when I SD a dwarf canon that has been pounding an enemy castle wall, I have always seen it switch targets to enemy units instead (waiting, if it must). My testing has not figured out if SD simply nerfs the range of a ranged unit, or the difference in behavior is coded in another way. [V1.1 iOS] I also see this SD targeting change with catapults, FYI. I thought you mentioned that, like the description for Forge Master saying "nearby" (units buffed), SD saying nearby doesn't mean it? My casual testing hasn't shown [iOS v1.1] SD applying at a long distance upon casting. Since the pattern for moving violation seems to be: "SD = no walking; running, charging, warping all still fine" I must ask if you would test by co-op with an Elf hero player with max Wind Spirit, since my hypothesis is that when they spawn units, which will charge around for 45 seconds, your Dwarf hero SD will likely affect them ("allied units") without them stopping at all (like you say for paladin unit under SD). I'm stunned that the defense protection lasts! That's way overpowered, imho--for example, fully buffed by skill and research and Forge Master, Auto Turrets put out a lot of damage (which isn't nerfed vs castles!) and that's only "balanced" by them being immobile glass cannons (ie they die to even modest enemy attack)... with the SD +90 Def buff I see them take only 1hp damage from enemies that would easily 1hit them. I've tested this in Wave 11, verifying that a magic based enemy attack still has no trouble destroying them. I don't think the cool-down on SD is long enough, with the protection lasting 30 seconds. Bark Armor still protects vs magic (when the attack isn't high AP) so I would have to guess whether Elf or Dwarf is second best at protecting out in the field (vs Human at number one) is going to depend on the situational opposition. I tend to keep my dwarf near base, rather than out in the field, since he's slow (compared to my streaking Elf), and because his home-line nearby unit buff is, literally, killer. But at 95 armor, I can march him to the enemy castle, with some distracting wingmen (eg early summoned dwarf miners) and plop three turrets at the non-gate side of the enemy castle, throw an SD, watch the wall *poof* and the inner tower be pounded quickly to dust. TNT is fun here, but not required. This is actually faster to beat Waves 6/15/29 for XP than the artillery barrage M.O. (which is fast). My Elf does the same thing, only faster, and thus safer, personally wiping the wall and tower. [ditto faster re 6/15/29 than, say, Elven Arrows barrage M.O.] My Human can do this, safer, but so much slower [lower "personal" DPS vs Wall], that safety becomes an issue again. It's interesting, but requires paying attention, while a barrage does not [I'm talking power leveling sieges 6/15/29 still]. [again, I'm playing solo Waves and territories, not co-op or PvP... so caveat emptor, ymmv] Thanks again for mentioning the quirks I didn't know about... I'll be sure to use SD on early Paladin units sometime.
