Dragon Lord Ranking

[Nordos/atord]

So, what do you think is the best Dragon composition? I personally think there are too great disparities. Lets take a look what each start Affinity does:
besides choosing the element for your damage and resistance via draconic scales it also enables a unique aura. Which is IMO the most important aspect for mid to lategame. Buffs always also affects the Dragon itself.

- Astral: Bolsters resistance by 2 friendly units 1 Hex with the Dragon in the middle, sunders resistance of enemies by 2 around the Dragon
- Chaos has a 60% Chance to give a random negative status effect to enemies around it
- Materium: The same, but for physical
- Nature gives one stack of Regeneration to friendly units 1 Hex around the Dragon
- Order gives a stack of Rally, Fortune and Bolstered Resistance
- Shadow gives a stack of Misfortune to enemies around it

As a start Dragon, IMO, the best is in the following order:
- Nature hands down. Regen is such a powerful skill
- Order because you can get a LOT of crit (though its start breath is arguably the most useless)
- Materium/Astral, depending how you see it. Materium has the advantage that, if enemies are surrounding you, you tend to deal physical damage with the Tail, Astral has the advantage of increasing the chance to Stun/Freeze
- Shadow, mainly because its breath can actually freeze right from the start (the only breath with CC from the start) - even if the chance is pretty small. The Aura, though, is rarely useful since, lets face it, Misfortunes simply aren't that powerful. Debuffs are generally worse than buffs since buffs can not only affect your whole army (rarely debuffs affect all enemies), but also be active from round one and ramp up before you make contact
- Chaos. 60% Chance? Random Debuff? Yeah, no. I rather go into Astral or Materium to guarantee Debuffs that can't be resisted and synergizes with my army/Dragon that I built around it.

So, thats for my start Dragon. Sure, it can be affected by the scenario I am playing - I may not want to use something that my main opponents will be resistant against, but thats a minor concern for me.

So, onward to the next one. The first Affinity.
- Astral gives you 2 Resistance and 1 Stack Fortune whenever you cast a spell
- Chaos gives +10% damage (up to 30) for each negative effect, also +50% morale from all sources
- Materium gives flat +30% crit and 2 Defence (so, you need to cast 4 spells for Astral to be better, and thats if you didn't take an Order dragon)
- Nature gives +20 HP and +1 Retaliation
- Order gives faithful (10% upkeep reduction), 5 Status resistance, inflicts condemn (-3 Status Resistance)
- Shadow gives Soul Drain (-4 morale and inflicting Soulbound on attack), and +30% damage vs 'low' enemy morale

Here I find it not as clear cut as before, but my order would be:
- Order. A lot of Status resistance means less chance for your dragon to get stunned/frozen/... Inflicting condem,n increases YOUR chance to inflict stun/freeze/... Just really nice all around
- Materium. A lot of Crit. And a bit more Defence. Quite nice
- Astral. A weaker Materium, it still can be substantial
- Shadow. Reducing Morale can be very good, or be useless. If I know I am not facing Undeads or Horned Gods, it is pretty good - because it also gives +30% damage in the end. can be both stronger and weaker than Astral
- Chaos. More morale means more crit, but both Materium and Astral have that covered as well. the up to 30% damage is also situational. First of all, your Dragon itself will not be afflicting as many status effects (or they tend to be short lived), so you need support - and hope your enemies don't have Nymphs or a similar equivalent to dispell it. Or are immune to your brand of debuffs.

And finally the last one, the Breath improvement. What truly makes a Dragon powerful.
- Astral turns your dragon into Ethereal (immune to a whole slew of debuffs including frozen and immobilized, Pass Through (which is superflous), 2 spirit res and -4 lightning res.
Breath has 70% chance to stun, always electrifies
- Chaos turns your Dragon into Fiend, +2 Fire, -4 Spirit, -4 Cold resistance, Desolate Walk (wayne) and immune to burning.
The breath has two 60% chances to inflict a random negative status effects. Always inflicts burning
- Materium turns you into elemental. Makes you immune against a few debuffs (Bleeding/poisoned/decayed) and no Res penalities.
The Breath has a 70% chance to inflict Gilded (which stuns AND gives you gold post combat), and always inflicts bleeding (Ethereal and Elemental are immune against it)
- Nature turns you into a plant (+2 lightningt res, -2 poison, -4 fire)
Its breath, theoretically, gives 2 Regeneration to friendly units hit (currently bugged) and always inflicts decayed and poisoned.
- Order turns you into a celestial, making you immune to Berserk and Mind Control, as well as giving you +2 spirit, -4 poison, -4 cold.
Its breath gives friendly hit units 25 temp health and removes their negative status effects (kinda forces you to use comet so you can hit yourself). Hasd a 90% chance to inflict ... distracted.
- Shadow turns you undead, giving you +2 res vs posion and cold, -4 against spirit and fire. Also makes you immune to poison.
Its breath inflicts 2 Stack weakened, has a 70% chance to freeze, and gives it +5 temp health for every unit (not only enemy) hit.

So, here is a lot to unpack. First of all, the transformation can be really relevant, both the advantages and the disadvantages. Also, some can help your army more, while others are useful against the enemy due to a lot of CC. My ranking is a bit ... well, more a suggestion, since this really is dependant on the enemies (have a lot of ethereals? Freezing is useless.)
- Materium is IMO the best. Not only does the transformation only have strict positive effects, it also has the best stun variant - stun is already superior to freeze due to being able to hit ethereal - and the fewest being immune to it, it also gives you additional Gold income in battles!
- Astral and Shadow are tied. The advantage of Astral is, that you become immune to a lot of debuffs, and have a superior version of CC.
- Shadow on the other hand, makes you immune against moral loss, and gives you an additional source of sustain - both with the temp hitpoints and the infliction of weakened.
- Order has no CC, but the cleaning and 'healing' effect is pretty good. Distracted is pretty much uninteristing, though. The transformation is also, tied with fiend, the worst of the possibilities. I actually think it the weakest, since Burning is far more likely that ... berserk ... or mind control.
- Nature (considering its effect would not be bugged). If you have a Nature as your starting type, you already have enough Regeneration. It does not provide CC, and while decayed is interesting, too damn many things are immune to the debuffs. Poison? Resisted by Ethereal, elemental and undead. Diseased? Resisted by Ethereals and Elementals. It has the highest damage potential, at least.
- and, the sad state, Chaos is the last. Again. See, its transformation is pretty bad. It ha sno CC. It has no sustain. The Status effects only have 60% chance, compared to shadows 'always'. And they STILL are random, meaning, you can get stuff that simply doesn't matter. Sure, you can stun and gild and freeze, or you inflict one stack of misfortune, distracted, slow, immobilize while standing next to you, poison, bleeding, ........ It is not only chaotic, but on average also less effective.


So, thats my summary. I really hope they will improve the blance of these, and not by nerfing the good ones down to match the bad options. Maybe Nature IS too strong as a start element, but I still love it and it enables me to field my Dragon as a singular unit, taking down multiple contigents of enemies as it roams the Map.
And thats the thing. I have seen a lot of 'Dragons are weak/OP' all around, and I think most of it is because people tried the wrong affinities. 'how do I keep my Dragon alive to inflict debuffs with my aura?!' was one question, for example, that made it pretty obvious that the person used either shadow or chaos affinity as starting affinity. While another claims to have reached level 20 by turn 30 - I can believe it, if they choose Nature as the starting affinity.
What is your ranking? Do you think I misjudged some or are you in agreement with my assessment?

[Balekai]

That all sounds just about right to me. All the summaries are spot on for what the Dragon's provide and why they're more or less effective. Some dragon types are more prone to "multi affinity" during levelups than others.

The only "aspects" ( :p ) that you can't really rank for dragons but makes a difference, are the initial affinity bonuses, how one takes advantage of the bonus affinity and just how various affinity/tome builds actually work in conjunction with your dragon.

For example: A nature dragon + nature build planning on taking high tier nature tomes.

On the dragon I would definitely take something like Order Aspect instead of Nature Aspect because 20+ hp and an extra retaliation isn't going to hold up compared to stuff like Faithful (-10%upkeep), +5 status resist and Condemn (-3 status resist). Condemn being great for getting abilities like Nymph's Seduce to actually land with mind control effect, and not having to dip into zeal tome line for the extra status debuff.

Then I would also take Nature Transformation, even though on paper it's inferior to other transformations atm. The reason being that nature tomes have so much for plant, cavalry and animal specific subtypes. Making your Dragon a Plant will be a huge boon both offensively, defensively and sustaining it in combat. It may not be able to stun, but it will have so much sustain it won't matter along with the rest of your army.

[CrUsHeR]

- Shadow, mainly because its breath can actually freeze right from the start (the only breath with CC from the start) - even if the chance is pretty small. The Aura, though, is rarely useful since, lets face it, Misfortunes simply aren't that powerful. Debuffs are generally worse than buffs since buffs can not only affect your whole army (rarely debuffs affect all enemies), but also be active from round one and ramp up before you make contact

The fumble chance from Misfortune seems not very relevant, especially weird as Shadow Aura because it is a Chaos Tome mechanic.

What it really does: it instantly cancels any Fortune stacks. So you can't really ramp up Fortune with the aura around.


And it isn't really something optional; if you want the Shadow Dragon with the Freezing Breath, this is the only aura you get. Only question if it's worth 1 of your 19 skillpoints.

[Nordos/atord]

Originally posted by Balekai:

That all sounds just about right to me. All the summaries are spot on for what the Dragon's provide and why they're more or less effective. Some dragon types are more prone to "multi affinity" during levelups than others.

The only "aspects" ( :p ) that you can't really rank for dragons but makes a difference, are the initial affinity bonuses, how one takes advantage of the bonus affinity and just how various affinity/tome builds actually work in conjunction with your dragon.

[...]

Then I would also take Nature Transformation, even though on paper it's inferior to other transformations atm. The reason being that nature tomes have so much for plant, cavalry and animal specific subtypes. Making your Dragon a Plant will be a huge boon both offensively, defensively and sustaining it in combat. It may not be able to stun, but it will have so much sustain it won't matter along with the rest of your army.

Thats actually a fair point. But being a Plant type only really matters for combat spells, since it doesn't benefit from enchantments. As such I mainly discounted the sub-types outside of its immeadiate benefit. Otherwise, one could argue, that Undead can be useful in certain situations - but maybe I am heavily discounting stuff like the 'plant leader' skill that buffs plants in a 2 hex radius - after all, being a plant, would mean it would hit you too, right?

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

The fumble chance from Misfortune seems not very relevant, especially weird as Shadow Aura because it is a Chaos Tome mechanic.

What it really does: it instantly cancels any Fortune stacks. So you can't really ramp up Fortune with the aura around.


And it isn't really something optional; if you want the Shadow Dragon with the Freezing Breath, this is the only aura you get. Only question if it's worth 1 of your 19 skillpoints.

Well, true, you can remove Fortune stacks - but thats strictly against 'player' lead armies (be they human or AI), since neutral stacks don't use fortune for most parts (with some rare exception, but even there it often isn't critical to remove).
Also, what do you mean with 'want the freezing breath'? Just pick the last shadow transformation, regardless if you are base shadow or not, you get the freezing breath?

[Seswatha]

Aura is a master skill, so you'll actually get the aspect before the aura.

That been said I think it's highly dependent on the books you go for and your overall build.

For basic dragon "type" I agree that nature aura is probably the best in a vacuum, however going Industrious (best dragon culture) means that Astral, Materium and to lesser extent Order get some massive synergies with Steel Fury Chant and Steelshapers, since you can convert bolster into heals, Strengthen and Fortune. Materium also gets a generic resist buff, which I like more than extreme resistance vs a single element others get, unless it cancels a later transformation weakness or you have a good idea what you'll be up against. Lastly I'm not a huge fan of blight damage lots of resistances and even some immunities.

So for me if you go Industrious Materium, Nature and Astral are super close, with a slight edge to Materium. Order is close. Chaos is next, better than you rate it imo since it can proc hard CC with a good chance, and Shadow is last imo.

For Aspects, since I like stacking defensive stats and crit, Materium is again best. Astral is good too but problem is you have other sources to get Fortune from so it doesn't help reaching 100% crit. I think Chaos has its place if you try to max out breath damage, especially if you also go for the Chaos Eater build with your race. Shadow is good for Soul farming and morale nuking builds, Order if you have lots of units with Zeal and/or CC/Mind control. Nature is meh, since Dragons have repeated attacks and don't retaliate that hard. Overall I usually go Materium since I do 100% crit build but all of them are decent here, with Nature being the least useful imo (it's still not bad, it just doesn't serve as a basis for some strong strategy).

For transformations, one thing you overlook is that some unit types allow you to benefit from new spells, abilities and enchantments. E.g. elemental benefits from t5 Materium undying earth.

There are also 2 big clauses here: you do have 100% crit and Gilded Magic, or you don't. If you do, cc becomes irrelevant and the best breath is maybe Order or Shadow for self heal. However you'll most likely be lol 12 way before t4 tomes, so before that I agree with Materium being the best, Astral is not bad also.

[Nordos/atord]

Originally posted by Seswatha:

Aura is a master skill, so you'll actually get the aspect before the aura.

That been said I think it's highly dependent on the books you go for and your overall build.

For basic dragon "type" I agree that nature aura is probably the best in a vacuum, however going Industrious (best dragon culture) means that Astral, Materium and to lesser extent Order get some massive synergies with Steel Fury Chant and Steelshapers, since you can convert bolster into heals, Strengthen and Fortune. Materium also gets a generic resist buff, which I like more than extreme resistance vs a single element others get, unless it cancels a later transformation weakness or you have a good idea what you'll be up against. Lastly I'm not a huge fan of blight damage lots of resistances and even some immunities.

So for me if you go Industrious Materium, Nature and Astral are super close, with a slight edge to Materium. Order is close. Chaos is next, better than you rate it imo since it can proc hard CC with a good chance, and Shadow is last imo.

For Aspects, since I like stacking defensive stats and crit, Materium is again best. Astral is good too but problem is you have other sources to get Fortune from so it doesn't help reaching 100% crit. I think Chaos has its place if you try to max out breath damage, especially if you also go for the Chaos Eater build with your race. Shadow is good for Soul farming and morale nuking builds, Order if you have lots of units with Zeal and/or CC/Mind control. Nature is meh, since Dragons have repeated attacks and don't retaliate that hard. Overall I usually go Materium since I do 100% crit build but all of them are decent here, with Nature being the least useful imo (it's still not bad, it just doesn't serve as a basis for some strong strategy).

For transformations, one thing you overlook is that some unit types allow you to benefit from new spells, abilities and enchantments. E.g. elemental benefits from t5 Materium undying earth.

There are also 2 big clauses here: you do have 100% crit and Gilded Magic, or you don't. If you do, cc becomes irrelevant and the best breath is maybe Order or Shadow for self heal. However you'll most likely be lol 12 way before t4 tomes, so before that I agree with Materium being the best, Astral is not bad also.

1) yeah, you get the Aura skill at level 7, while the first Aspect at level 4, that is true.
I also noticed that I forgot to rank the first Nature aspect. It is IMO tied for Chaos, for the simple reason that it also gives 20 HP, but I suppose I can see it being last as well.
I dislike the Chaos Aura that it is only a 60% base chance, meaning, it can be resisted. No other Aura can be resisted, and if you fight against high tier units (which are the bigger problem to begin with), they do tend to have sufficient high Status Resistance to make it often fail. Though that said, the reason I ranked Shadow above Chaos was because the initial Shadow Breath had a 30% chance to freeze, which I deemed more useful than burn - since I skill neither aura to begin with.

Otherwise I actually do see a lot of your points. I discounted gilded Magic because I normally picked a CC Breath, but an Order/Materium could stack immense crit chance, making each breath stun by default. I will need to build that :D

2) Hmm. I was sure no Unit Enchantment would actually affect the Dragon, regardless of the Type, but I may be mistaken. I gotta test it a bit more, but generally these Spells are T5 tomes anyway. At that point, it generally doesn't make such a big difference anymore IMO.

[Teridax]

You know one thing which i found odd is the fact that the game penalises you to have a matching starting affinity and lvl 12 affinity transformation

At the beginning you get a weak dragon breath with a 60% chance of a matching proc like Chaos gives a fire breath with burning chance or Nature a blight breath with poison

Then you have the cone/comet/line upgrade which improves both damage and proc chance to a very reliable 90% or at least reliable against tier 1-2 units

Later on you get the lvl 12 transformations which provide plenty of buffs, including a guaranteed proc but said proc is the same one as the starting affinity procs

Like using Chaos again, both are fire procs or with Nature, both are poison

And since damage reduction is solely % based and in fact units have more weaknesses than resistances against specific elements, attacks dealing multiple damage types is beneficial too

But back the original point of this thread, i feel bad for Chaos

The classic fire dragon is once again the worst choice like in the previous game which had Gold Dragons completely outclass Fire Dragons except in very few cases of units resisting Spirit damage but not Fire

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by Nordos/atord:

Originally posted by Seswatha:

Aura is a master skill, so you'll actually get the aspect before the aura.

That been said I think it's highly dependent on the books you go for and your overall build.

For basic dragon "type" I agree that nature aura is probably the best in a vacuum, however going Industrious (best dragon culture) means that Astral, Materium and to lesser extent Order get some massive synergies with Steel Fury Chant and Steelshapers, since you can convert bolster into heals, Strengthen and Fortune. Materium also gets a generic resist buff, which I like more than extreme resistance vs a single element others get, unless it cancels a later transformation weakness or you have a good idea what you'll be up against. Lastly I'm not a huge fan of blight damage lots of resistances and even some immunities.

So for me if you go Industrious Materium, Nature and Astral are super close, with a slight edge to Materium. Order is close. Chaos is next, better than you rate it imo since it can proc hard CC with a good chance, and Shadow is last imo.

For Aspects, since I like stacking defensive stats and crit, Materium is again best. Astral is good too but problem is you have other sources to get Fortune from so it doesn't help reaching 100% crit. I think Chaos has its place if you try to max out breath damage, especially if you also go for the Chaos Eater build with your race. Shadow is good for Soul farming and morale nuking builds, Order if you have lots of units with Zeal and/or CC/Mind control. Nature is meh, since Dragons have repeated attacks and don't retaliate that hard. Overall I usually go Materium since I do 100% crit build but all of them are decent here, with Nature being the least useful imo (it's still not bad, it just doesn't serve as a basis for some strong strategy).

For transformations, one thing you overlook is that some unit types allow you to benefit from new spells, abilities and enchantments. E.g. elemental benefits from t5 Materium undying earth.

There are also 2 big clauses here: you do have 100% crit and Gilded Magic, or you don't. If you do, cc becomes irrelevant and the best breath is maybe Order or Shadow for self heal. However you'll most likely be lol 12 way before t4 tomes, so before that I agree with Materium being the best, Astral is not bad also.

1) yeah, you get the Aura skill at level 7, while the first Aspect at level 4, that is true.
I also noticed that I forgot to rank the first Nature aspect. It is IMO tied for Chaos, for the simple reason that it also gives 20 HP, but I suppose I can see it being last as well.
I dislike the Chaos Aura that it is only a 60% base chance, meaning, it can be resisted. No other Aura can be resisted, and if you fight against high tier units (which are the bigger problem to begin with), they do tend to have sufficient high Status Resistance to make it often fail. Though that said, the reason I ranked Shadow above Chaos was because the initial Shadow Breath had a 30% chance to freeze, which I deemed more useful than burn - since I skill neither aura to begin with.

Otherwise I actually do see a lot of your points. I discounted gilded Magic because I normally picked a CC Breath, but an Order/Materium could stack immense crit chance, making each breath stun by default. I will need to build that :D

2) Hmm. I was sure no Unit Enchantment would actually affect the Dragon, regardless of the Type, but I may be mistaken. I gotta test it a bit more, but generally these Spells are T5 tomes anyway. At that point, it generally doesn't make such a big difference anymore IMO.

Certain enchantments and abilities do work on dragons depending on the type:

Plant: Force of Nature, Mass Rejuvenation
Celestial: Mass Revive, counts for Shrine of Smiting damage stacking, although you can get Faithful with the Order Aspect too
Elemental: Undying Earth
Undead: Dark Rites (Reaper passive), Necromancer buff and revive abilities, Restore Undead, Battlefiield Reanimation

I could be missing some more.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Nordos/atord:

Also, what do you mean with 'want the freezing breath'? Just pick the last shadow transformation, regardless if you are base shadow or not, you get the freezing breath?

The Shadow Dragon gets it from lvl 1.

And TBH it is meme-ishly good if you start with 2-3 warlocks, the freeze chance is probably closer to 100% on most targets due to Sundering- and Baneful Curse.



PS - also anyone with Astral Blood or equivalent gets Fortune stacks from any spell being cast; example with a WK lord and Cryomancer Staff, i get to cast two spells in round 1 and two more in round 2, so normally that's 4 stacks of Astral Blood (and maxed Star Blades) even on generic marauders or free city defenders with those skills.

So any form of Misfortune instantly cancels these before you end your round.

[Regicida O Comedor de Irmãs]

Guys im a starting player in this new game and i saw this thread about the dragons. The faction matters at all in the choice for the dragonlord ? Im inclined to start with Nature element for the sustain. But about the tomes i use im still looking it up to see if i pick a nature tome first or start with the evolution tome. Whats a good skill set for lvls ups on the dragon hero ?
Also im have beinf taking a Huge beating on the scenario Map of Ashen War is there a way to make one of those backstabbing lizards one of your own so you can command it. Sorry for ghe long text.🙏🏻

[Furin]

Materium dragon plus materium tier5 spell 'eternal earth' equals dragon with resurgence? If so pretty neat.

[Dumah]

Originally posted by Furin:

Materium dragon plus materium tier5 spell 'eternal earth' equals dragon with resurgence? If so pretty neat.

- heroes/leaders arent affected by enchantments.

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by Dumah:

Originally posted by Furin:

Materium dragon plus materium tier5 spell 'eternal earth' equals dragon with resurgence? If so pretty neat.

- heroes/leaders arent affected by enchantments.

Incorrect, they are if the type matches. It's just that normally enchantments specify something like "ranged unit" or "battlemage" which is not a hero. But enchantments that specify smth like "plant" do work on heroes if the hero is a plant.

[Dumah]

Originally posted by Seswatha:

Incorrect, they are if the type matches. It's just that normally enchantments specify something like "ranged unit" or "battlemage" which is not a hero. But enchantments that specify smth like "plant" do work on heroes if the hero is a plant.

- interesting, than i stand corrected.

[El Rey de Pinguinos]

Originally posted by Furin:

Materium dragon plus materium tier5 spell 'eternal earth' equals dragon with resurgence? If so pretty neat.

I don't think it does, unless your dragon ends up an elemental somehow - but the tier 5 skill, 'Ancient of Earth', is all upside since its drawbacks already apply to dragonlords.

[Nordos/atord]

Originally posted by El Rey de Pinguinos:

I don't think it does, unless your dragon ends up an elemental somehow - but the tier 5 skill, 'Ancient of Earth', is all upside since its drawbacks already apply to dragonlords.

The last Materium Aspect turns the Dragon into an Elemental