How to counter shadow stalkers

[Sendos]

Ok magic, but seriously, they're immune to blight and frost and they have 60% physical resistance. They beat most physical damage enemies, beat most dragons hands down, are superb vanguard and tank units, are immune to mind control and have lots of HP. On top of that, they have a bunch of offensive and defensive frost bonuses which almost makes them a better frost elemental than frost elementals.

I see warlords and rogues getting owned by them, while sorcerers would be best counter with arcane binding and chain lightning to deal with multiple shadow stalkers.

Not to mention they have a short blink ability which enables them to be right in your face within the first turn of battle.

I only got the game recently through promo and it's a great game, but the balancing is so off. Then again, I am yet to experience all the races and classes and I only have base game.

[Stormwind]

Ok you are new, so first of all rogues wont be getting owned by shadow stalkers anytime soon, since the shadow stalker is a rogue summon.

Shadow stalkers are the rogue T3 unit. So the rogue T4 must be really awesome, right? Nope. Rogues, apart from every other class, dont get a T4, so the stalker is its high end unit. Thats it.

So when you say "balancing is so off", you really have to compare rogues as a class vs all the other classes, and this is best done by seeing how the best players fare against each other using the various classes. Somewhere there is a site, run by I think Hilliadan, that has actually kept track of these stats. I dont remember which class was (slightly) leading, but I am pretty sure it was not rogue.

Balancing is not off in this game at all. Balancing among so many class/race combinations (not to mention vs different map/start settings) is hard to do, but the devs spent a lot of time on that and its about as good as any game I have ever seen, given that its a near impossible task anyway.

Shadow stalkers are certainly an awesome unit. But they do not break the game balance at all. If they did, everyone would be playing rogue, and thats clearly not the case.

[Mazile]

Kill it with fire
In campaign on second mission they and succubuses were pain the ass, units with fire, shock or holy damage will easily obliterate them if are not killed first

[sandman25dcsss]

Shadow Stalker is not a summon, it is produced in cities. Also it can be upgraded (evolution) from scoundrels via lesser shadow stalker.

[sandman25dcsss]

Late game (with Dark Pact as in your game) Shadow Stalkers become really similar to tier 4 and it is very hard to kill them unless you have lots of fire/spirit/lightning damage.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Yeah, once Dark Pact comes into play and all rogue units get extra abilities (like that teleport for shadow stalkers) you really have to be at the top of your game. If you don't have your very best units yet at that point, it probably means you're losing.

That said, I do actually agree that Shadow Stalkers are one of the strongest spammable end-game units. They have no hard counters, and are pretty good at dealing with soft ones.

Some strategies that work include Hellfire (fire mastery spell that hits everything on the battlefield with massive fire damage, your side included) and Cardinal Culling. (A spell introduced by Eternal Lords that massively reduces physical resistance on all units of a given type. The anti-spam spell. A difficulty is that you need to maintain a neutral alignment if you want to make good use of that spell.)

What also really helps is having units with some source of elemental damage, such as Phalanxes with the Pillar of the Stylites upgrade (needs DLC) or Draconian warlord units.

Some classes are much better at dealing with them than Warlord, too. Theocrat's Shrines of Smiting can do a number on them.

That said, my favourite anti-rogue strategy is to squash them before the AI starts spamming shadow stalkers.

[Spartan Delta 27]

Originally posted by Mazile:

Kill it with fire
In campaign on second mission they and succubuses were pain the ass, units with fire, shock or holy damage will easily obliterate them if are not killed first

Shadow Stalkers terrify me. The Rogue is my favorite class outside of the Campaign and they can steamroll most opposition.

While fire might not always be an option, maybe spamming a few priests would be enough to stop their advance. Based on the Tomb of Wonders, they do not have immunity to Spirit Damage and the Priests could probably be useful as a counter

[Sendos]

I mention shadow stalkers and their strength because in the elf campaign, 2nd one not including the tutorial, when you play as the Draconians, the goblin rogue queen had some. Having checked a playthrough of that campaign, I realize that I did it horribly wrong by dithering about with establishing my cities and getting my econ and armies prepared and the whole idea is to rush the enemy as soon as possible, get the dragon and then defeat the goblins and the orcs, and then you have time to prepare to fight the humans. Because if you don't, the orc warlord gets tough melee units on the field and the goblin rogue queen gets its shadow stalkers. I thought the war between orcs/goblins and humans would keep them distracted but it doesn't.

Another reason is that I am doing a skirmish game as orc rogue and once I got an army of shadow stalkers, nothing could stop me.

[Mazile]

Originally posted by Sendos:

Having checked a playthrough of that campaign, I realize that I did it horribly wrong by dithering about with establishing my cities

I've made same mistake, was wasting time and trying to negotiate with them
And when i attacked hell was upon me
I smashed them only by massing larvas, firestartes, shamans and either of 2 flyers as frontline
But as soon as you capture any goblin town and get your hands on bugriders it becomes easier
Also against ai works spell that summons random beasts every turn, cos he likes to chase them down

[Spartan Delta 27]

Originally posted by Sendos:

I mention shadow stalkers and their strength because in the elf campaign, 2nd one not including the tutorial, when you play as the Draconians, the goblin rogue queen had some. Having checked a playthrough of that campaign, I realize that I did it horribly wrong by dithering about with establishing my cities and getting my econ and armies prepared and the whole idea is to rush the enemy as soon as possible, get the dragon and then defeat the goblins and the orcs, and then you have time to prepare to fight the humans. Because if you don't, the orc warlord gets tough melee units on the field and the goblin rogue queen gets its shadow stalkers. I thought the war between orcs/goblins and humans would keep them distracted but it doesn't.

Another reason is that I am doing a skirmish game as orc rogue and once I got an army of shadow stalkers, nothing could stop me.

I did the same thing while replaying the Mission after completing it. I was curious to see if turtling would work out in that map... It did not.

My advice for anyone playing that map is to build a stack of Draconian Flamers and then charge the Underground City (Access easily achieved through two entrances in that large barrens area after the start of the map). After that, charge the above ground city right there. Then on to the Orc town, then massacre the next city and then pick up the Dragon to help crush the Orc City and Goblin City.

As another note, there are four great spots for cities in the beginning of that map. The open barrens area behind the starting location, the rebuilt city that is an objective, a hex directly below the road in the large open barrens area and finally the hex next to the bridge at the bottom of the large barrens area. All great spots for cities, which helped me quickly build up a war economy during my first successful playthrough.

[Multifaced]

The key at that point is to have units that have high resistance and defence and sustain.

You can use tank units that have one or some of these abilities, Regrowth, Life Steal with High life pool and preferably one of either fire or lightning or spirit damage or multiple and cold resistance if possible, for example Earth Elementals

and support those with solid supports also levelled and with similar elemental damage types and resistances...and the fight isn't so hard. Especially if you have a Hero with Arcane Binding or have other sustain spells such as greater healing showers for example or any spell that significantly buff your Army such as Mass Bless or individually buff your units with extra defenses prior to engagement...Also train units in places that buff such things as your defenses for example Enchanted Armory from Crystal tree

Also visiting a place like a lucky clover field or Guardian Angel Structure before your encounter would help you immensely

Plus any Hero Upgrades that benefit the entire Army in cold protection for example

The main thing is to plan ahead, and scout ahead and be prepared for it.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Originally posted by Multifaced:

You can use tank units that have one or some of these abilities, Regrowth, Life Steal with High life pool and preferably one of either fire or lightning or spirit damage or multiple and cold resistance if possible, for example Earth Elementals

Life steal doesn't work against shadow stalkers.

But I can't believe I forgot about earth elementals. Did I say there is no hard counter to shadow stalkers? Well, there is. Earth elementals are it.

Shadow stalker deals physical and cold damage. Earth elemental resists physical, is immune to cold, and regenerates.

Earth elemental only deals physical damage, sure, but the shadow stalker can't kill it. And the elementals are tireless (at gold medal) and can petrify stalkers (at bronze medal) which is one of the very few disables the shadow stalker is NOT immune to.

A handful of elementals can crush stacks of stalkers. Just avoid all the blight damage the Rogue class also brings to bear, and you won't have any trouble.

Unfortunately, elementals are pretty rare, so unless you have earth mastery or get very lucky with a treasure site, you won't have any. Plus, you have to summon them, so you can't get as many as the enemy has stalkers.

[Multifaced]

Yeah Life Steal won't work directly if being purely engaged by units where life steal does not work. However if there are other units that can have their life stolen in the battle, that can be enough to make a big difference in the outcome. And more so if you have also tireless on that unit.

While earth Elementals are the perfect solution, you can make due with other tank units that have high defenses, resistances and highly buffed, ideally with regrowth, as that can negate a lot of the damage and give you superior sustain

[Sendos]

I have encountered an earth elemental once with the 2nd human campaign (far easier but way more annoying and time consuming than the 2nd elf mission). It was part of Werlac's ambush. I used arcane binding to get control of it. Its regrowth is definitely useful and it has more obvious counters than shadow stalker. I agree that seems like a hard counter to shadow stalker.

[Nefrogitis]

Shadow Stalkers have a 60 percent resistance to physical damage.

[sandman25dcsss]

I remember a game where I dominated the map and expected an easy win until I met a rogue with 4-6 Shadow Stalkers in many cities. They killed a few of my stacks and I had to wait for my theocrate hero with divine justice (and strong holy attack of course) to arrive, otherwise attacking cities was a suicide. So if you have no solution in your specialization, you still can use high level heroes like theocrate or sorcerer (chaos rift).