Magic is Worthless Now

[Not Jim Sterling 💯]

I played WBC3 a long time ago and remember really having fun with my Pyro Summoner build because after all the hard work building it, but now it's just worthless.

It takes blood sweat and tears to build a mage that can even contribute to the battle much less one that can hold his own, and with the magic nerfs any school of magic that involves summoning is just garbage now, garbage. What's even the point of being a necromancer or a summoner anymore? Why would I even want to be a pyromancer anymore if the most costly spell in my spellbook can't even kill T3 units?

[Joe the Bartender]

I'd recommend grabbing either Ahatch's 1.03 exe, GoG's WBC3 1.03 or the Protectors.

[Aelies von Saladir]

Try to find a wat to downdate your game to the official version. I did.

[Not Jim Sterling 💯]

I just got the GoG version, wish I had checked the forums first.

[tapobu]

I really haven't had any trouble whatsoever with summoners. I've an alchemist who can pretty much base-rush anyone by popping up golems. If your strategy is "eheheh I'm going to sit in base and slowly summon demons til I'm OP" then mages aren't garbage. You are. Learn to play the game and you'll find mages are still quite fun. If you don't like them, make a fey bard and learn what difficult really feels like.

[Not Jim Sterling 💯]

Originally posted by tapobu:

I really haven't had any trouble whatsoever with summoners. I've an alchemist who can pretty much base-rush anyone by popping up golems. If your strategy is "eheheh I'm going to sit in base and slowly summon demons til I'm OP" then mages aren't garbage. You are. Learn to play the game and you'll find mages are still quite fun. If you don't like them, make a fey bard and learn what difficult really feels like.

Yeah problem is a melee hero can just rush up and gank your mage, you don't have unlimited mana to summon with, and it takes forever to regen, so you're basically a glorified building spawning a few high tier units HOPING that the enemy can't counter it, because if the enemy counters it you're completely screwed.

[tapobu]

i mean, your hero is supposed to be a super unit. if your hero exists to summon, then you've got a pretty poor hero. my alchemist (lv23~) has gone head to head with warriors and won just because she can negate his items, double hers, summon golems, etc. you've gotta think of your hero in terms of what they can provide to your side. they aren't meant to be a one-man wrecking crew even though that's about what they amounted to in WBC1 and 2. use your hero to take objectives around the map, and keep them with real units rather than summoned ones. use your summons to push objectives, take down enemy bases, etc, but don't depend on them to be your core forces.

like ok, your original question, e.g. why be pyro? there are great reasons.
1) you can literally set your weakest units on fire causing them to most likely double in combat at least.
2) you can give your melee units firebreath, suddenly making a puny little army of 10 crystal sylphs an insanely cheap ranged-unit wrecking crew.
3) you can boost your armies to be trained to WBC2 levels. 20xp units out the gate? yes please.

stop thinking about "what can my hero kill?????" and start thinking about "what can my hero offer to his side?"

hell, i have a wood elf pyro and let me tell you, 40exp gladewardens do quite a number on enemy armies. i love it. i guess 40exp ancient treants are also pretty nice, but i'd agree that the fire elementals aren't worth summoning and the top tier spells aren't worth using. but why would i use a one-ammo rocket launcher when i have so many other weapons at my disposal?

[Not Jim Sterling 💯]

Fire breath is a good spell, that's true. In WBC2 I used it a lot when playing as Fey, waaay better than just burning all your mana on single cast spells most of the time.

But a good melee wargod can still usually just rush in, gank mages, and break mines readily to get resources, and I feel that gimping mage spells in so many ways is the wrong kind of balance, it takes already EZ mode Warriors and makes them even easier by comparison.

[Not Jim Sterling 💯]

That and honestly, I think unit XP is overemphasized because even the most leveled up generals are susceptible to zergs, but that's just how I usually play. I rush in, break mines, see if there's a hero I can gank, if it's a warrior that could possibly take me I run off and amass an army with all the surplus resources I got from mine busting, if it's a mage I rush straight at him and hope for the best.

Like 9 times out of 10 the mage just ends up dead or so messed up and spent that the match is as good as over, I can just zerg rush his base and do the heavy hitting for my army. Usually if I died to a mage, it was a pyromancer, occasionally a chaos mage could really wreck me.

I don't think I've fought many alchemists though, so I have no clue how good they might be against a warrior.

[Chronie]

Simple answer for the weak character focus in pyromancy skill a lot more than summoning magic. (All pure mages should have at least 2 magics (1 from race and the other from class) and Arcane)

Summoning was more a fall back option for mages or a means to use excess mana. The only exception to this I would have to say is the Divination magic for summoned mage generals. Most mage heroes would have at least one powerful bodyguard in their retinue so they could be useful outside the base. Combine bodyguards with a few powerful but cheap magics (use the mana potions) and good equipment then a melee hero can usually be killed (if not past level 50). Summons have been nerfed yes but Nature got it the worst as it mainly consists on summoned armies and Divination has always had it fairly bad.
(Divination was still useful to get level 20 bodyguards by having them slay a hero with exp steal)

Nercomancy can be used with Chaos magic, Pyromancy or a few other spell sets to get a powerful swarm from a battlefield of corpses.This never required much of an investment.

Summoning Daemons have a similar horde possibility by using Succubi to feed Demons the souls of slain enemies in order to spawn Imps. Quasits are decent swarm units with poison used to cripple powerful targets like melee heroes. Home portal can then be used to get some distance so the poison from Quasits can take effect. Since we already had the circle of power giving the exp bonus on summons we focus more on the other magic you have.

Arcane magic is the key to any pure mage as unless you empower magic and extend the range the damage becomes weak later on. Combinining a high level empowered nuke with invisibility can destroy entire armies or bases without warning. High end magic can usually only be used once per combat so spaming weaker spells can be better. Duration enhancements have become so important to summoners that you cannot do without Arcane skill in order to make it effective.

Alchemists are a particularly nasty mage able to fight on par with most melee builds if they get both spellforge and disjunction active at the same time. Assuming you mean an Alchemist class they can have this combination available at the start of the game thanks to potion master skill. Personally I found them to be the nastiest mages to try and rush but leaving them till late game is just as bad. Equipment is the key to this class and takes ages to acquire.

Personally I hate summon timers but I have played both versions extensively even before it came out on steam. Summoning just isn't worth investing much in anymore and the timers make some stratrgies weak or useless. Mages are too much harder for most people, can die easily and are difficult to play when dealing with a powerful warrior. Good mages are never alone but melee focused heroes who go kamikaze rush usually are (even if you have to nuke their army).

The ring of the lich was the abuse item for summoning if you are interested as you generally died as soon as you were hit if using more than one of those rings. Personally I found it a terrrible item unless you had constitution for more health which only a few races could provide.

[tapobu]

it sounds like the way you usually play is use your hero to beat down a base without actually playing the game. if i come up against a hero that is too strong, i avoid them with my hero and chip away. i don't go ham and try to take it down in one round. cool thing about this game -- it's an RTS. you have lots of units, not just one hero. i can understand how you might think mages suck if you think they're your only unit.

i am curious though -- exactly what level are we talking about here? because at level 25~ my alchemist can regenerate mana exceedingly fast with the serpent set [which you can obtain through quests] and a few regen upgrades from base. maybe i am just having an easy time since i'm playing alchemist, which has always been overpowered since game one due to their ability to cast spells which almost affect the course of a game occasionally, or maybe it's just because i use my builders to build, my buildings to create an army, and my army to take down enemy bases instead of pressing f1 for demon.

[tapobu]

also, i noticed you referenced WBC2 and how your fey used firebreath there a lot. that's really interesting, but if you've played WBC2 as an archmage, you would understand just what an overpowered warrior class is actually like. maybe you were just citing that to bolster your claim that you know what you're talking about?

as a sidenote, i just completed an insane-level map by rushing enemy bases -- both demon. weirdly enough, not only did i have plenty of mana for the attack, but my mana kept regenerating and i was able to summon more high level units, almost as though all those points i'd put into INT mattered! i bet that's the problem. you didn't put points into int. that must be why you're having trouble with summoners. silly man, you can't pump charisma into a pyro summoner and expect it to be good! well, actually you can. maybe i'll try that. it could be challenging.

[Not Jim Sterling 💯]

My Barbarian Warrior was level 40ish and my Minotaur was level 32 (I just switched to the GoG version). My highest level was a level 50 undead deathknight but that was before Steam. I didn't even notice magic was messed up until I tried re-rolling my old deathknight build.

I do play more as my hero I guess, that's probably fairly typical of melee warrior types.

What I normally do is keep my hero on Stand Your Ground so that he never gets AI baited, then use him to beat down and dominate, and on the RTS side I focus on zerg tactics before ever worrying about graduating to more expensive and extravogant units, I never even reach T4 normally unless the battle drags out somehow.

If the enemy hero escapes, or is too powerful, unless they manage to kill or injure my hero so badly that I need to retreat and focus on the RTS side of things more, it won't help them to escape because I'll be wrecking up their mines and any buildings that stray from tower range then sending endless waves of harrass against them.

[Not Jim Sterling 💯]

Originally posted by tapobu:

if you've played WBC2 as an archmage, you would understand just what an overpowered warrior class is actually like.

Not sure I follow. In WBC2 Archmages got access to all schools of magic and could become quite powerful, but I chose to focus on Fire and Ice. I didn't know what I was doing at the time, and I'd never choose that build now, but pyromancy was actually rather useful.

However, warriors could always gank mages in PvP rather easily, unless the mage was exceptionally skilled or exceptionally lucky.

Originally posted by tapobu:

almost as though all those points i'd put into INT mattered!

Even with high int and building upgrades to bolster your mana regen speed, Daemons cost like 50 mana a pop, and that leaves your enemy with plenty of breathing room.

Also, all those points you put into int came at a cost, and as a result, your best survival strategy becomes hugging the towers because you're too slow to even run, the best you can do is blink away with a spell.

[tapobu]

If you want the era of the OP archmage, you'd have to play WBC1. In WBC2 they nerfed magic severely and as a result it was the era of the OP warrior. WBC3 warriors are incredibly weak by comparison.

You have, however, revealed your hand. You want to win by summoning demons. That's pretty damn weak, if you ask me. I mean, one high level demon vs 4 high level stone golems? I'd put my money on the golems every time. You seem to think the best way to win is spamming super strong monsters. Consider that your summoner can also summon multiple succubi for 35 mana, which after killing units [and a swarm of them easily will] will give your retinue summoners/demons [and you *should* have these, even if you can summon your own demons] mana to create more units. Consider your summoner can summon quasits, which can pack a mine full and build way faster than thralls. Consider that your summoner can do lots of other things than press f1 for demon. You also have the ability to up your combat and damage using skill points, yes? A few extra combat points will prevent enemy heroes from critting on you as often. The damage upgrade is a good deal less useful unless you intend to hit things until they die.

Let's talk about my hero for a second again. I've sunk I think 21 points into int, and that still gives me 10 into str and dex each, with some bonus points for charisma. That allows me to go 1v1 against anything but a warrior, and even then I can survive quite a few hits and get the possible assassination. I prefer to just summon a golem and step back as this causes warriors to reroute their attacks toward the golem generally speaking. I've also taken a retinue of units that can summon or do high damage. Dark cavalry is able to do 3x damage to those warriors, assassin can kill them outright, and spider priestess can summon queens which last forever AND make babies for me. With a warrior, your strategy is right click and hope for the best. Things going bad? Better hope you have a high speed stat or a few junk spells to throw out. Meanwhile my mage can transmute resources, collect resources with bronze golem, and -- yes -- summon demons. But why would I want to spend 50 mana when I could spend 60 mana and get a bronze golem that can go toe-to-toe with a demon and win, then collect resources from destroyed buildings? And even that is a spell I use maybe once every 3 or 4 games. Hell, most games go so fast I don't even get to base level 5.

I mean, at the end of the day, your summoner is probably a more effective fighter than my alchemist if I were to give the same items to it. Heck, your soulharvest spell can summon multiple succubi to my one golem. That's crazy powerful. But you're not using your build in an effective manner. If you have full 20 or so points in summoning, that's enough to go toe-to-toe with my alchemist and overwhelm her with sheer numbers, and I'd bet you have more than 20 points. If you want, you are more than welcome to upload your character file and send it to me. I can make a video showing just how powerful it is. My best guess is it's either laughably OP or poorly built.

tldr: if you want something to complain about, play a bard or a tinker.

[Chronie]

Originally posted by tapobu:

tldr: if you want something to complain about, play a bard or a tinker.

Bard has level 20 retinue units with a large army and Tinker is the master of base creeping with some alchemy to not be terrible at actual battles. Not useless classes but hard to play at times. Almost every class has a use except Dragonslayers those are useless in the extreme and I am stll looking for a good reason to play a Ranger.

Summoning is was just another method for supporting your army but doesn't scale well to anything but your mana regeneration. Without at least some magic all high level heroes were weak and even racial magic is usually enough to give some classes a chance. Since anyone can use magic even a warrior can ruin a mages day.

This is a fantasy game and magic is never explained properly but super powerful. Sci-fi games usually give poor logic to justify what is happening. Take your pick but the result is the same don't abide by the powers in the game world then you die.