tier list?

[Asmodeus]

Hi, is there any reliable tier list for all units/heroes that i can follow? the units are really extensive and im kind of getting lost with my unit management.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks

[Latency]

Fair enough. I haven't played on Ludicrous and Sentinel/Oracles have been working for me so far on lower difficulties as the bait squads. It appears that Oracle shields do not suffer from caster decay, is that accurate?

[Asmodeus]

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

Originally posted by Asmodeus:

I am hesitant to upgrade my fire and ice mages to necros. Should i?

They fill different roles.

Necromancers do have single target magic life drain attacks that damage enemies and heal themselves, undead units in the squad, and other living units in the squad. They also let you have 1 skeleton unit for free.

So if you build a squad of say, 2 necromancers and an oracle in the middle, 3 skeletons with shields in the front line, and 3 more damage dealing heavy infantry like Centurions or Champions in the back, you get an extremely tanky squad. Especially if you add the artifact that boosts undead energy generation (you can find it in legends 3A.) and the artifact that reduces damage to tier 1 units by 50%. (skeletons are tier 1.)

The skeletons may or may not die, but even if they do they just come back to life when you deal more damage with your necromancers and other units. This is by far the toughest squad I have found in the game.

As an added bonus, the skeletons attack after other heavy infantry, which means this squad does not suffer from the typical "All your guys gang up on 1-2 enemies and waste their attacks" problem heavy infantry squads often do.

But necromancers will not wipe out whole ranks like fire mages do, so they're not as useful to add to cavalry or dragon squads.

i did exactly this and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is it an OP squad. It's one of my favorites now

[MobyPhallus]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

F TIER :
Assassin ( the worst unit in the game i hate this unit. . rangers can do anything they can do, but better) (also the most annoying when the enemy uses them, because of how i have to approach them. i put the spectacles on diana's squad to make her immune to stealth strikes and have her draw these squads in to attack her).

Almost every other guide / tierlist I have seen ranks Assassin as S tier, one of the strongest unit types in the game.

[Latency]

Assassins do 2 things really well: Kill back lines and get you gold. If you don't need one (or either) of those things they end up being a fairly poor unit with low overall stats. They can evade attacks fairly well, but it usually takes just a couple failed dodges or aoe attacks to ruin them. I wouldn't say they're the worst unit in the game, but beyond their very specific role they aren't great imho.

[Jab]

Originally posted by Latency:

Assassins do 2 things really well: Kill back lines and get you gold. If you don't need one (or either) of those things they end up being a fairly poor unit with low overall stats. They can evade attacks fairly well, but it usually takes just a couple failed dodges or aoe attacks to ruin them. I wouldn't say they're the worst unit in the game, but beyond their very specific role they aren't great imho.

I haven't done the math yet because reverse engineering this game is really hard, but i'm starting to wonder if they're a net loss in gold. They often end up killing units that would have surrendered otherwise, which gives a fair amount of gold, and even more valuable, faction xp.

The ideal would be to somehow keep their damage low but their skill high, so they would net a ton of gold without killing the units in the backline. I can't think of any way to do that other than sin credo and pacificist.

[Icedfate]

the problem with putting an orace into a necromancer squad is the necromancer life drain does not heal the oracle.
healers can't heal undead units, necros can't heal living units, so mixing those together seems suboptimal.

i actually do have a squad that is 2 necro, 1 oracle, 6 skeletons and the oracle keeps getting damaged by aoe and ranged attacks and i keep needing to bring in another squad to heal the oracle.

i didn't think to mix in 3 living infatry in the back row. .
as for assassins, i think rangers do their job better. rangers have higher str and skill and still have the ability to target the back row and have a high crit rate, especially if you give them crit traits.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

the problem with putting an orace into a necromancer squad is the necromancer life drain does not heal the oracle.

Yes it does.

healers can't heal undead units, necros can't heal living units, so mixing those together seems suboptimal.

Healers can't heal undead, true. But Oracles CAN protect undead, and Necros CAN heal Oracles, so having an oracle there is a great idea.

[Icedfate]

i guess i didn't notice it then. my necro unit got attacked and the oracle got almost killed and then the necros countered , healed themselves and the undead, but the oracle still needed to be healed by someone else outside of combat. unless i did something wrong and maybe the necro healing failed or something. i'll have to try again, maybe.

right now, my necro squad is 3 necros and 6 skels.
definitely my second weakest sauad. . with raskuja being my weakest

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

It's question of priorities. The necromancers heal themselves first. Not entirely sure if they always heal skeletons second, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did. Everybody else is only healed if there was damage left over.

No different than if you had a normal healer who'd chosen not to heal your oracle. It happens.

Anyway, 6 skeletons does not seem like a great idea. That gives you the "everybody gangs up on 1 target" problem, as well as the "skeletons are pretty weak" problem. I'd swap half of them for tougher units.

[Icedfate]

okay, then, i thought necromancers only heal themselves or the undeads. it seemed pointless to put them into living squads, but okay, if they do heal the living, then maybe they aren't the second worst unit.

i have noticed the everybody gangs up problem.

in my warlord run, i had a squad of 9 hussars and they were pretty powerful, but they couldn't sweep a squad because turn 1 was spent ganging up on the front line, turn 2 was the midle and they always left the back untouched.

i noticed when you mix up different types of melees, they all attack at different times and it works out better.
also rangers don't interfere with front line attackers.
my best squad was stefan with a champion,zwei,paladin in front, 3 rangers in back and a healer and a swordswoman in the middle.
he had the skull of rowdain on him and he could sweep 5-7 squads on a single defense phase.
none of my other squads could do that and i tried it on every squad in the arena at chapter 30, nobody could sweep while wearing the skull of rowdain like he could, of which i assume it's also because he attacks the back row and doesn't interfere with my front liners. . which is ironic that i think stefan is the best, while assassins are the worst.

obviou diana is a better frontliner tank and namira is the best dodge tank, but nobody beats stefan for dps

[Hand of Gabriel]

Someone put war cats below S tier and I'm absolutely staggered.

[Icedfate]

because the cats are too fragile. swordswomen are more dodge tanky and don't require as much space.
this didn't stop me from putting 3 cats in raskuja's squad. . for the memes