Favorite Class ( or Class & Race combination)

[Karol13]

Normally I would consider race as important as class, but class selection is not so dominant for long-term strategy. Even in Campaigns (with a bit effort) and definitely in skirmishes, one can select any race to play for and hero might lose only the effect of racial morale skill (hence I am not investing in it one single point)

Also, the special racial abilities were nerfed a lot and cost 500 crystal, so they are more like a funky addition. Not game changing attributes.

The minor part of class-based impact are perks, but those are usually pretty expensive (4, 5 or more skill points) and rarely are truly critical in average battle.
Well, I do consider some being cool, but again, as they are not free, it is not always given to go for them (Knights : +10% resistance to all damage types feels handy) but many of them are conditional, and such conditions often limit to the race (which is logical), but undesired when I consider playing other races, too.

Spell casters: now it is possible to find items that grant many peculiar spells, so I am not forced to choose a class just because of a spell or two. (spells I like to get from items: Summon Quasit, Fireball, Scry... or Heal, Cure... what I wanted to have from item: summon sprite, but I only found an item, that has "chance of casting", not "can cast Spell Summon Sprite +1"

Summoners: Here I consider following attributes (of summons):
- can float?
- can fly?
- can convert?
- can use skills?
- can be garrisoned?

Supporters: can such hero survive if his army is caught off guard by surprise?
Or just sitting in the safety of the base and helping economically?

Fighters: didn't really try fighters / shooters in 0.9.0

Magic supported were tweaked : not only most spells have short duration (30 seconds), also most of them are now in form of AURA - so units need to be in the radius of the caster. Before I used to cast several supporting spells on my army, and sent it towards my adversary, now I have to join them and risking being killed or playing defensively - a war of attrition.
But still Chronomancer, Great Oracle and such are pretty cools

Magic Damage dealers: mana is usually a problem, despite one does not need to invest into spells to get to higher casting levels, just into casting skill or INT. As for mana management, I mitigate it with items, that reduce spell cost (and upgrade them. So I usually achieve 2 rings, that both have basic bonus +5% spell cost discount, upgraded 10%, so you get 20% discount just form 2 rings (despite some also cool item sets require at least one ring slot, if not two), There is also a staff that has 5% spell cost reduction, so I can try upgrading that one (not every item can be upgraded, tho)
For lower levels of heroes, there are some cool spell regen perks or items, but for higher level spell casters, I especially like Fey's perk : getting 15% of your max mana instantly. Saved me several times already.

As for casting discount, Summon Pit Fiend cost drops from 75 down to 60 -> after 10 recasts, the difference in mana consumption is 750 - 600 = 150 -> more than 2 extra "free" pit fiends.

In previous build, I liked Merchant, now I really miss some benefits of spell casters. Despite Merchant can really improve the army quantity and also partially quality (+speed and combat in command radius), against King, Emperor, Demigod AIs Merchant is kind of lacking. Maybe if the Retinue is properly used, but only during favorable circumstances and circumstances may not always play into ones' hands.

Anyways, I started to be fond of Druid. Despite his ultimate spells is kind of broken, with Druid you can get a really unique combination:
Summon that gets stronger (+ 0.2 XP level / spell casting level) & getting extra summons.
So while he also can summon Fearies & Unicorns, those do not get XP, but Treant can get extra levels, and later also extra units / cast.
Treant is formidable fighter, but also builder, and eventually can turn into "Catapult" -> making him strategically not only versatile, but foremost deadly.
Now, even against flyers, as flyers need to dive in (fly down), and become attackable by "round units only" attacks.
While playing with races like High Elves, one also can achieve research = bonuses for Treant, but also for so helpful view range.
Downsides: economy -> investing into CHA is not totally aligned with "summoner build", especially as this build requires maxed "extra summon" skill.
Also, leaves the hero fragile and prone for unexpected assassinations.
But Treant is not the most expensive summon, so a bit later (level 30+), one can build a pretty good base defenses very fast.
Unless the map is small and Demigods (especially when allied) storm your base in first 5 minutes :( But that is a different story.

Also, there is one extra option to use Druid: Knights.
While Druid can bring many Fearies into the battle, they stay level 0 - rendering them useless. But with the Knights' KEEP upgrades, Sprites, who require minimum XP / level, can level up extremely fast, if you keep them alive a bit longer.
While missing view range research, high level Treants get good VIEW themselves, who can become your scouting "towers", add to the defense strategy anchored Ballistas, who get extreme range, and "free" walls - walls are quite a luxury lately, but still very important.
And if you survive just enough assaults, you can expect having pretty strong Fearies, with already strong Treants, and can turn defense into offense. And if enemy has formidable array of towers, Rooted Treants can break them without risking getting harmed.

[RustyRed]

I just use Dark Dwarf Tinker and turbo focus into golems, towers and spells that create golems.

Golems fix everything. That enemy town in the distance? Golems! That army? Golems! Your social life? Golems! The Dark Dwarven Economy? Driven entirely by Golems.

They have stupid amounts of HP, especially the stone Golem. A tier 2 unit with 300 base HP is honestly a steal. Sure it costs a little and the production time is kinda meh but it gets sooo many upgrades! Armoury II gives a extra +25% HP on top so that's 420 HP and then you got research that boosts their speed and combat by 2 and 3 respectfully.

And once you get Golem Lord with your hero? Oh boy, the fun begins. That, combined with a high INT makes your Golems at least level 4 or 5 on creation so they get even bigger.

Towers on the other hand are stupid good. Dark dwarves get a skill that boosts building HP and Damage. Stick a bunch of them together with a garrison and watch them tear apart anything that approaches them. The enemy try and siege them down? Flame cannons with siege mode have a range somewhere along the range of 30, and hit like a nuke.

[Fauxnel]

Fey Illusionist.

Your Fey can now assassinate units affected with awe with a t3 research. Your hero gets an awe aura and effectiveness of afflictions (such as awe)!

You're going to ask 'your hero is vulnerable in battle though'. Not quite, you can insta summon a ton of infantry and fall back. Awe is really cool!

[Karol13]

Gonna have to try those golems on my social life :D
And here I was, thinking it was hopeless. Then golems were introduced into my life.

[Karol13]

Originally posted by Fauxnel:

Fey Illusionist.

Your Fey can now assassinate units affected with awe with a t3 research. Your hero gets an awe aura and effectiveness of afflictions (such as awe)!

You're going to ask 'your hero is vulnerable in battle though'. Not quite, you can insta summon a ton of infantry and fall back. Awe is really cool!

"insta summon a ton of infantry" - spectral horde?

[Karol13]

Tried Dark Dwarf + Tinker >

The DMG of fire cannon is HUGE! So is the range.
It does cost 200 mana, but is vastly rewarding.
With test level 30 - I was able to get to spell level 31, hence for cheap I could get 6 stone golems
My Bronze Golem and War Machines started with level 8.

Funky is: that the best items I did get form Create Item were cursed (I have to update my cursed items list)

Just staying at my base, I was able to repel enemies (low-IQ single enemy AI).

Then sent like 30 golems + 1 bronzie(who casted HASTE) and their base was down in one swing

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3139581068

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3139593078

[Ryika]

Wood Elf High Druid probably.

Nature spells have a pretty interesting and varied package in general, but the class also perfectly covers the Wood Elves weak early game with Summon Sprite Spam (within somewhat casual settings). And the heals from the Unicorns are extremely good at keeping those chunky treants alive later.

Also very fitting in terms of flavor. Just a lot of fun overall.

[Karol13]

It is interesting to compare some of the builds, too.

For example Alchemy archetype with Nature archetype.

Bronze Golem can convert, while Treant cannot

Nature can create cheap walls, while Golems are also good walls if needed (just take army points and have to be set to "stand ground")

Nature has fast flyers (despite with mediocre view range, and low DMG)

Special spell of Nature (call the wild) seems to be useless (unless one plays Knights and farms XP)

While special spells of Alchemy is pretty neat:
Forge : enemy's items rendered useless, your items doubled (especially when fighting Demigod enemy, who always has a nasty set of items)

Create Item (some items I created were never seen before and I played lots of campaign maps and visited many shops, found loads of spoils of war)

Economy: adds Merchant Skill for 45 seconds
Economy 2: exchanges resources

Alchemy misses any kind of heal, while Nature has regenboost (cranberry) & unicorns (who sadly have +units / spell level, instead + XP/level)

Wood Elves vs Dark Dwarves both have some mana boost.
Out of +15% mana regen vs +3% spell discount / keep level, I prever the spell discount.

Both builds are good at defenses, both have slow tanks. But Elves can support tanks with low-HP flyers or with fast Horsebowmen. Dark Dwarves with cataputls & Hellbore (ballista and fire cannon are much better for defense, but also can join assault corps)

Both builds need a magical item, to get builders, but that applies basically for all classes, but summoner or necromancer.

While DDs seem to be better braced also from economy perspective, in long run WEs get quite a benefit from endless mana income -> getting an upper hand in complex warfare, by using skills (which consume crystal)

DDs have longer range (fire cannon -> 30), but WEs rooted Treant with range of 20 is still a formidable counterpart. So it all boils down to how well one leads his armies.
And probably also the view range, on fog-of-war: ON map, where WEs certainly have it much better.

While Alchemy si super versatile, it lacks damage spell, so Druid with Call Lightning can become deadly adversary.

Would both meet in a battle, Alchemyst would need to spend mana on Forge, to keep enemy Druid without artifacts, possibly making him a lot weaker.
But seeing huge army of golems clash with Treants, that might be a battle to behold.

[balmora pete]

I only play Archmage, all those spells are so fun to play with. Wood Elves went from being quite terrible in WBC3 to being quite great in this mod/game. Treants + Woodrider's attack speed buff is terrifying amounts of damage. Put your treants into root mode and they get a 16-range attack that wrecks a base very quickly.

But Gladewardens are no longer the best archers. Longbows and Dark Archers have the same range with all upgrades unlocked. It's kinda sad, because Wood Elves have lost their foremost specialty. This ties into the general design of the game being homogenization and destruction of identity.

I must say, that after playing for about 70 hours, the crystal cost on some unit spells is far too high. It feels like the game forces you to pump charisma or equip crystal generation items, which is anti-choice, no matter how you look at it.

[Karol13]

Looked at Archmage> and he can learn new spells as time passes on during every battle. Quite handy

[Karol13]

Trying Tinker.
My long lasting dream is to be able to build base defenses, that could outlast even crazy amount of enemies (which is normal when playing against above-Prince AI, especially when enemies are all allied)

Druid: Treants were a good base for this, but the final touch: repelling masses = Call Lightning, has somehow short range (instead my hero spell range, it considers quite short hard-set range). In addition, when Treants are expected to disable enemy's war machines (ballista, catapult), their to-hit ratio drops tremendously. Hitting an enemy that at range 15 or above, is like impossible :(

So Tinker it is:
Summon Balista is cheap, 35 mana, and I even seek out mana reducing spells (Wood elves offer a perk, 3% / Keep level, with Keep level 5 = 15%, and Dwarves Lay Lines -> if under range of 12 from any non-wall building: spells are 15% cheaper), but I tried Fey for some reason :D
Later, adding 2 or 3 Fire Cannons helps, despite being expensive.
Benefit or having Fey kicks in right here: They offer a perk, that makes abilities 20% cheaper. So balista can setup siege position for 80 mana, instead 100, and Fire cannot for 160, instead 200. When I want set like 10 war machines into siege positions, this saves a LOT of Crystals. (There is also the option of Deamons -> who innately can get to Gemcutting, but that is around level 20 :(, and it still needs more than 5 points, to really make a difference)

Fey also offer view enhancements -> So critical for short-sighted golems & war machines.
I was also considering Knights, due their Keep Research: +5 xp for each kill, but the lack of sight range scared me.

Back to Fey Tinker:
While I set up a base with solid defenses (if I am lucky, random map generator places my base in a corner), and I can setup an array of defensive lines. This will grant me enough time to build up my base fully, getting to the research, that boosts income, view, but also starting XP for Fey units. So while my war machines, defended with Golems, hold the line, I can slowly get to train an fast and effective army of FEY units, who at first only support the defense lines, but later can join the group of golems and storm enemy' bases.

Again, the ultimate risk here are not the quantities of enemies (Fire Canon eats them for breakfast), but sleazy war machines, who set up positions behind their own armies and terrorize my towers. In contrary to Treants, Fire Cannons have perfect aim + splash effect, so despite their slow fire rate, they can destroy 3-5 catapults in one shot.

Test playthrough, 3x Prince AI, all alied, I had 4 Fire Cannons, 3 Hellbores, 6 Balistas and Stone Golems were later replaced with Bronze Golems {due mana shortage} as static defenses, protecting war machines.
I lost circa 80 units (small portion during defenses, remainder when storming enemy's bases with Stone Golems as meat...ehm, stone shields)
And I killed nearly 1000 units.
Not a perfect ratio, but pretty good one nevertheless.

Seeing how my war machines hammer enemy's assault waves : priceless

[Karol13]

Against 3 King AIs (I left everything RANDOM - and by coincidence, all three were Defilers)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3140625520

This time I was positioned more in the middle-bottom part, and not even at the very bottom, so I could be assaulted from nearly any side, but SOUTH. Spreading my defenses into south-west and south-east, apart from North, East and West, weakened my firepower at each front.

Fire Cannon had issues assuming commands (when I wanted it to strike catapults), so I added few catapults of my own, to mitigate stubborn (slow) Fire Cannon. Balistas do great job with their carry-through projectiles.

Real problems were with Swarm, who somehow managed to shock my units without "touching" them.
Apart of Swarm, and MInotaur, the third were Dark Dwarves, who loved sending zounds of mines at me. Waves and Waves of mines, that managed to survive the hellfire from my war machines, and could wipe out my defensive lines. Luckily, cheap golems were just the perfect countermeasure: soaking tons of damage.
Finally, I won, but it is obvious - when the place you want to defend is not set in favorable environment, with the sheer power of war machines, the options are limited.
Especially when due income, I could not build up enough walls, to achieve good strategical choke points and force enemies to strike me in expected locations.

All and all, I was able to set up a solid defenses after reaching 85+ Army Points, split in between few towers, some Bronze Golems (as walls, with "Stand Ground") and plenty of war machines. This time I had not enough mana for Hellbores, who were missed, but the base line needed many (but cheap) balistas (The best countermeasure against flyers, especially dragons), Fire Cannons (area of effect -> mob control) and catapults (against enemy's catapults, because Balistas could easily snipe them, but could not kill them fast enough, and Fire Cannons could kill them with one shot, but issuing that one shot was sometimes nearly impossible)

[Morton Salt]

The Swarm Thief - Its all about aggression and swarming enemy and thief works well here as you can steal a lot of resources for all researches and tiering up without much of merchant skill.

I am able to have non-stop production from both hives tier 5 and rotting dragons with just base mines and thats also with merchant skill on 0 just set every waypoint at front and watch things getting swarmed while ur hero smacking everything and getting fat money.

Swarm Thief Hero has good starting Dexy and only need 20 dexy to reach max attack speed, at 19 attack speed is 4.012 (lol), he also a good hero killer with his crippling sting thing being able to stun locking and beating up poor dude, robbing of his equipment in the process.

Need a lot of STR and tanky armour to stay alive thu as well as nice life regen to keep pushing, life on attack is also good here.

[Karol13]

Originally posted by Morton Salt:

The Swarm Thief - Its all about aggression and swarming enemy and thief works well here as you can steal a lot of resources for all researches and tiering up without much of merchant skill.

I am able to have non-stop production from both hives tier 5 and rotting dragons with just base mines and thats also with merchant skill on 0 just set every waypoint at front and watch things getting swarmed while ur hero smacking everything and getting fat money.

Swarm Thief Hero has good starting Dexy and only need 20 dexy to reach max attack speed, at 19 attack speed is 4.012 (lol), he also a good hero killer with his crippling sting thing being able to stun locking and beating up poor dude, robbing of his equipment in the process.

Need a lot of STR and tanky armour to stay alive thu as well as nice life regen to keep pushing, life on attack is also good here.

The Vampire Set, that boosts life steal, would be nice, considering the attack speed can be maxed ( 1 attack every 0.4 seconds)

As for defensive items: I have seen many. Also some sets. One give huge Magic resistance, when completed (42% ?), the other gives huge Physical Armor bonus (34?), while each set has individual items, that each boosts one of following:
Resistance
Phys. Armor
Elem. Armor
Arrow dodging (reduced Combat of enemy shooters)
Spell DMG reduction

Armor is capped at 75% I guess. But still, getting only 1/4 of DMG can truly save life.

Stealing items: Oh, I had this hunch, of this being a thing. I sometimes did recon, that items got missing in some scenarios. (another reason to stay hikikomori, garrisoned in safest tower)
Also, some of the Hero's auras only work when NOT garrisoned :(
whether spell-based or perk/skill based. In such cases I try to encircle my hero with walls, with an option to hide in a tower, if needed.
During maps, where my base is large, I create an area, where my hero can move, to grant bonuses to all defenders. Usually a "pool" or just double-wall line. Is a lot of effort, but staying safe from everything-stealing thieves & assassins is well worth it.

Anyway, being fast on the battle map, but strong in combat, yet fixing any lack of economy boost by simply stealing resources, sounds very good.