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Fauch
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 22, 2011 04:24 PM |
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lol, I remember once, I had a huge stack of spectres and the enemy was a warlock. I casted antimagic on them and was like "try killing them now  "
and of course he did 
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SilverHawk
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 26, 2011 10:07 AM |
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pha12ge
Tavern Dweller
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posted March 16, 2011 05:21 AM |
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thanks a lot for this awesome and superb posting
its really amazing work done
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted March 16, 2011 10:19 AM |
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Glad to be of service 
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Map also hosted on Moddb
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted March 16, 2011 01:15 PM |
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My favorite for Haven:
Swift Mind -> Mass Haste -> Mass Slow -> Mass Righteous Might
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Azagal
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Smooth Snake
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posted March 16, 2011 01:44 PM |
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Edited by Azagal at 13:45, 16 Mar 2011.
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A pretty schizophrenic build. Going both dark and Light is very risky and only rarely feesable. Almost every faction will have PoS or Light themselves and those that don't don't really care all that much if their troops are slowed. Not to mention that depending on who you're facing thorwing an endurance in there as the first or second spell usually makes more sense than the early speed. Especially if you're facing off against a Dark user.
Don't get me wrong swift mind + any mass buff/debuff or well placed puppet/frenzy is a good combo but it hardly ever works out as flawlessly as you describe there lol.
Not to mention that you'll be lacking in the might department with a second school which you seldom have the mana to support.
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"All I can see is what's in front of me. And all I can do is keep moving forward" - The Heir Wielder of Names, Seeker of Thrones, King of Swords, Breaker of Infinities, Wheel Smashing Lord
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted March 16, 2011 01:48 PM |
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In short that's an AI killer but that's about it
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Map also hosted on Moddb
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Azagal
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Smooth Snake
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posted March 16, 2011 01:50 PM |
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Yeah but that statment doesn't help him understand why .
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"All I can see is what's in front of me. And all I can do is keep moving forward" - The Heir Wielder of Names, Seeker of Thrones, King of Swords, Breaker of Infinities, Wheel Smashing Lord
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted March 16, 2011 01:55 PM |
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Why would I attempt to elaborate after your magnificent display of H5 online experience?
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Map also hosted on Moddb
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Azagal
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Smooth Snake
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posted March 16, 2011 02:09 PM |
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You know just what to say...
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"All I can see is what's in front of me. And all I can do is keep moving forward" - The Heir Wielder of Names, Seeker of Thrones, King of Swords, Breaker of Infinities, Wheel Smashing Lord
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scythesong
Adventuring Hero
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posted March 17, 2011 05:34 AM |
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Azagal's post should be saved somewhere. It took me what, a year I think? to figure out how to level up that way. When I first started I was all "oooh Logistics!" or "Luck! I needed that..." instead of actually aiming for specific perks or combinations which would have made everything (from creeping to the final battle) easier.
Oh the days I spent cursing the game for all those useless logistics perks that kept popping up instead of Empathy...
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted March 17, 2011 08:03 AM |
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Quote:
My favorite for Haven:
Swift Mind -> Mass Haste -> Mass Slow -> Mass Righteous Might
I hear you Azagal and Elvin, but I am talking about Haven only here....they aleady have high attack and defense compared to most factions so if you have the initiative waxed then you are looking good.....and you have to get haste and slow....but hey, I was just saying that this is my favorite combo and not the one that beats all....
My favorite for Demon Lord:
Triple Ballista & Flaming Arrows (to take care of tier 7's) and if you're Deleb it's just fun!
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted March 26, 2011 10:41 AM |
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Random hints.
- Ballista builds suck if you do not have enough knowledge & attack.
- Master of fire is good. But cannot compare with a good array of mass buffs/curses.
- Tactics can be a great way to reach the opponent faster. Or allow the opponent to attack you first, a weakness that aura of swiftness lacks.
- Armoured ability works both against charging attacks and master of fire armour-breaking effect.
- Ignite is not magical damage, if a unit has been hit by fire the ignite damage won't go away by magic immunity.
- Dungeon's might can surpass their magic potential given the right setup and timing.
- Not gating against fortress is a tactical mistake, chances are you will run out of steam long before the dwarves do.
- Magic alone is not enough versus orcs unless maybe you are a wizard.
____________
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Azagal
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Smooth Snake
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posted March 26, 2011 07:16 PM |
bonus applied by Elvin on 26 Mar 2011. |
Edited by Azagal at 19:24, 26 Mar 2011.
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Quote:
Not gating against fortress is a tactical mistake, chances are you will run out of steam long before the dwarves do.
On that subject... so I've found it exceedingly difficult to beat Inferno with Fortress on the Duel Map. Inferno has a particularily powerful racial in order to make up for their difficult creeping but on a duel map where armies are of equal strength by default it can really give them an edge that should not be underestimated.
Now other factions have some ways of handling that but I'm talking about Fortress here because they can't handle with Inferno efficiently by default.
Let's talk about the Runemage first
Skill distribution:
30% Defense and SP
20% Attack and Knowledge
Now as far as stat distribution goes the Runemage is the indeceisive pubescent boy that's not sure whether he can make the jump or not. Any other Hero class has a clear primary and secondary stat with the gap between primary/secondary and tertiary/4th stats being sufficiently big to ensure a relatively stable stat growth.
Now what does that mean for your leveling? Most of the time people build a hero in such a way that they play to his strengths. A Heros strengths are determined by their stats. So with a Warlock you'll go for Destro or something Rush orientated knowing you'll have the SP and Attack to back your decision up just like you won't go for Destro or Summoning or Sorcery with a Knight because you know that you don't have the Mana or SP to make efficient use of it (unless you're radar lol). You get the idea.
So how do you go about leveling a runemage? How do you play to his strengths with such a profileless statbasis? You can't be sure whether Destro is a good choice since your SP growth is suboptimal (Mark of Fire goes some way to make up for that you need Fireball in the guild to make any use of it which is a 1/3 chance...) and for going Might your defense is okay. So might is usually the safer choice with Runemages.
Skillwise the Runemage is a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none although he's might oriented. Which means you can do quite a few things with him but he doesn't truely excell at any of them. Everything he does can be done better by another class except for turteling. In order to make up for that he gets runes but we'll talk about those later.
Now keep in mind that we're talking about an Inferno matchup.
Let's clear the Magic approach first since it's the shortest one:
Destructive Magic:
The goal of the build:
With this build would be to take advantage of the fact that your units are durable and can take quite the beating. Your units ball up giving the enemy the smallest possible surface to attack from while you surive long enough for your hero to rain fiery destruction unto the the stacks that pose the biggest threat to your tanking units that protect the more squishy parts of your army. You need High Defense to last as long as possible so your hero gets to cast as much as he can and SP in order for your fireballs to cook the Demons alive.
How to get there:
To best make use of this build you'll need Expert Destro (preferably with Ignite in order to squeeze every drop of damage out of the build that you can), atleast Advanced Runemage with Fine and Greater Rune, Expert Defense with PoE and Defensive Formation, obviously Expert Enlightenment (remember your statgrowth is a fickle mistress so every bit you can help it is obligatory! And you can boost your weak Knowledge with Intelligence or Tap Runes which you will desperately need whether your opponent gets Vermin or Imps) and Fireball in your guild. It's the only spell that you can really do any noteworthy damage with considering the tsunumani of units you have to go through. Implo isn't an option since the mana/damage ratio will bend you over backwards and punish your sorry a$$, Deep Freeze is nice but Nuking 1 stack out of 14 isn't helping you lol and Ring of Frost splits the stun effect between all effected targets and doesn't take advantage of "Mark of Fire" thusly it doesn't do enough damage.
Pro:
-Your opponent might start smacking his head into the nearest hard object since your units can take a hard beating with Endurance, Rune of Ressurection/Etherealness,Thunderclap and Defensive Formation
-Master of Fire can help you destroying his powerstacks if he's careless enough to move it into a bad position
Weaknesses
-Unreliable SP growth
-If you don't get Fireball you might just aswell not even try
-If the terrain isn't favourable you don't have the space to minimize attack paths and he'll be able to use his gates to full effect
-You don't have the skillpoints to support Empathy and Sorcery isn't an option with 2% so you'll be slow to cast
-You're helpless against dark unless you get rune of Excorcism
-With gating he can make it stupidly difficult for you to reach his powerstacks and trap you behind cannon fodder
-Your units don't do much damage on their own
-You're forced to take care of the Stallions/Nightmares relatively fast because he/she will have Soldiers Luck and a fear can really ruin your formation
Final Thoughts: It's not really worth it. It's not worth to risk doing this build that's already hard to pull off if you have good SP without being able to be sure that you'll have good SP. There are simply too many units for you to do anything about with your Heros slow casting.
Summoning and Dark are options but it's the same as saying winning the lottery is an option to cover your debts. They're not reliable.
The Mightapproach subblemented by Light Magic:
The Goal:
You build a solid ball of tiny bearded men that look mean and take less damage than a Sumo Ringer being hit by a Butterfly. Screw Mohammed Alis "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" why do you think they call you FORTRESS? Defend like a quadriplegic Turtle and hit like a Truck. You're the rock against which the infernal tides breaks. While he keeps hitting you you wittle him down step by step you take losses but his are higher with Rune of the Berserker, Rune of Battle Rage, Rune Etherealness and you can replenish your numbers more easily with Rune of Ressurection and casting Ressurection. So you need High SP and Defense in order to have a powerful Resurrection/Regen spell and take as little damage as possible while you're at it.
How to get there:
You need Expert Defense with Defensive Formation and PoE if you don't get Endurance in the guild (which will hurt you since in this build you're hard pressed for skillpoints), Expert Enlightenment preferably with Tap Runes (a lot safer) or Intelleigence if you have really high Knowledge. Remember you want to outlast a gating Demonlord you'll need a $#!%ton of mana to do that. Expert Light with Master of Wrath if you have Haste or RM and Master of Abjuration if you have Endurace (or you might want to go PoE afterall it makes no difference skillpointwise whether you get PoE or Master Abjuration because you need Expert Defense eitherway), atleast Advanced Runelore eventhough Expert is preferrable (Rune of Dragonform really helps your Thanes stay alive) unless you can drop Rune of Dragonform for Basic Luck with Soldiers Luck. Soldiers Luck is only available if you either go for Intelligence (without tap runes) or you don't have Haste or RM in your guild and therefore don't need Master of Wrath. Get Soldiers Luck you'll need your bears to fear and your brawlers to stun like no tomorrow. Get +Luck items if you can! Your units are your main dmg source so do what you can to buff them.
Pro:
-The build plays as much to the strengths of the Runemage as possible under the circumstances. While defense is preferable to SP you don't have to rely on one getting significantly higher than the other since you can use both to great advantage
-Your units take little damage but hit relatively hard (if any buff from Master of Wrath is available)
-Your units have 2 stuns one of which can stun multiple targets without rune of Battlerage the build helps you utilize them more (if you get haste)
-If you managed to somehow get mass cleanse your thight formation will maximize its effectiveness
Weakness:
-Without favourable Terrain the Demonlord gets to bring his full armada to bear against you. Your units may be though but all the Regen, Ressurection, Etherealness and Rune of Ressurection can't save you if a Tsunami of Demons comes crashing down
-Highly static army. You have next to no mobility because any unit that leaves (or gets feared out of -_-) the safety of your defensive ball gets surrounded and massacred which in turn leaves your opponent with the iniative and all the time in the world to set up his army
-While you get extra surviveability from perks he can do the same while at the same time having gated stacks that can steal retal from your Powerstacks which leaves them vulerable to being focused down by a ton of other stacks
-Once you've had to ressurect a stack too often the rest of the Inferno army will easily be able to blast it into oblivion again since the stacking health debuff starts to severely cripple you
Final Thoughts: This is the sturdiest approach there is. You'll never be thougher than you are with this build but even then you don't have the capacity to outlast a gating Demonlord. You may be though as nails but that's still not enough to outlast 14 stacks of Demons. Not to mention that your main damage source are your units and once their power steps below a certain treshold your simply holding on but you've lost all hope of being able to tip the scales back in your favour. Keeping your stacks at a level that still ensures that they do decent damage requires a lot of good movement and even then if you play a good Demonlord you'll only have a limited amount of time in which you can inflict any significant damage before his forces manage to overwhelm you.
Another build I've tried is Runic Warmarchines but even with Runic Warmachines and Crown of the Dragon your ballista only has an iniative of 14. While that may be good it simply does even less damage than your fireballing Runemage and it leaves you completely vulerable to dark.
Why it's so hard
The core problem of the matchup is that Fortress is a slow faction both speed and iniativewise which plays right into the Demonlords hands. Inferno is a timebomb once the game starts you have a pretty small window of time to close the distance and pray that you can dish out the most absurd ammounts of damage before the gates arrive. Other factions have ways of exploiting that timeframe but Fortress doesn't. You have 1 stack (ONE?!) that can reach turn 1 and the dude can be blocked easily. 2 if you get Tactics and the enemy doesn't have it but the bears can be blocked easily too. Iniative simply isn't on your side. And if you chose to charge with those 2 stacks a good demonlord can easily minimize the damage he takes from the charge AND he'll have 2 stacks to destroy while the rest of your slow army tries to catch up and once they've arrived they're greeted by the bones of their overzealous friends. Once the game starts it's the Fortress players game to lose if the Demonlord went for Defense and Gating if you can't do damage fast enough (which you most likely won't be able to).
That's the state of things as I see them right now. Or am I missing anything?
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"All I can see is what's in front of me. And all I can do is keep moving forward" - The Heir Wielder of Names, Seeker of Thrones, King of Swords, Breaker of Infinities, Wheel Smashing Lord
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted March 26, 2011 07:24 PM |
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 ARMAGEDDON
Quote:
Any other Hero class has a clear primary and secondary stat with the gap between primary/secondary and tertiary/4th stats being sufficiently big to ensure a relatively stable stat growth.
LOL!
Spoken like a truly lucky player, wanna see my 8 SP warlocks? So totally having the SP needed for nuking. 
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Azagal
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Smooth Snake
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posted March 26, 2011 07:29 PM |
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Edited by Azagal at 19:32, 26 Mar 2011.
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Armaggedon is indeed a solution to the problem but a)it's a cowards way out and b)it's banned on any serious map.
Quote:
Spoken like a truly lucky player
Bull$hit Joonas. And continue to read I've got that scenario covered . Even if you have 8 SP you'll have >15 attack so it's not as disastrous as for a Dwarf. The whole stat system is luck based (which is bad enough as it is) but some have better (=more reliable) odds to get stuff. A Warlock has a 45% SP growth rate so your 8SP warlock isn't a rule of thumb he's an exception.
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"All I can see is what's in front of me. And all I can do is keep moving forward" - The Heir Wielder of Names, Seeker of Thrones, King of Swords, Breaker of Infinities, Wheel Smashing Lord
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted March 26, 2011 07:40 PM |
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More or less. I do not favour a destructive build for obvious reasons which makes me wonder if I should give these guys some elemental arties - after all they rarely get sorcery. A typical light/might build is always reliable but against susceptible to random stats growth.
Of course inferno has its issues too. For instance an early firebolt + firewall combo can be nasty. Firehounds may or not attack the right spot which can potentially make the unit next to useless. You do not know what to start with. Mass endurance? Dwarves may steal it. Mass confusion? Dwarves may exorcise it. Seducers can be unreliable even though they add to fortress pressure.
I'll agree that inferno can be a tough cookie but I'm not convinced that things are easier for them. Either way too much depends on the early lucky shots, runes, hero atb and whether the demonlord has mark of the damned or not. I would never consider not getting expert runelore btw.
So, wanna try your luck?
____________
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Map also hosted on Moddb
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted March 26, 2011 07:43 PM |
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But armageddon is jut so much fun! 
Yes, I am well aware that I get lousy odds. Just pointing out that it's not something you can count on. Of course this is even more visible on duels than normal games because in duels you have to take all the levels at once and you can't see your stats in between.
And no, I don't get 15 att when I get 8 sp. It's usually 8,5,8,6 or so, that's with the library on elvin's duel map and the knowledge building from the town.
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Azagal
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Smooth Snake
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posted March 26, 2011 07:53 PM |
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Edited by Azagal at 19:56, 26 Mar 2011.
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Elvin I don't quite share your optimism lol...
Quote:
For instance an early firebolt + firewall combo can be nasty.
Have you actually tried that? It takes Succubi down to about 20 and that's it and that's IF your Rune guys play before the succubi which isn't granted...it's a good combo but nothing that can cripple Inferno severely. Any good player will have the Spawns next to the succubi so the rest of the firewall/ball damage is practically lost.
Also it's not unlikely that your succubi get to play before your hero so you can check the runes he has which will let you know exactly what he has. Even if you don't and your hero plays first starting with Endurance is never bad since using rune of magic controle is a turn he can't spend on berserker, rune of battle rage, etherealness, thunderclap or ressurection. Not to mention that it'll take a while before he even gets close enough to steal it. And even then you have the mana to inceasantly recast it. Same goes for excorism. You don't even have to go Dark with Luck your might advantage is so overwhelming it's not even funny.
And about the Hellhounds they iniative is so high it doesn't matter if they have to spend 1 turn rearranging themselves since the fortress player can't send anything to pick them off. And I'll gladly trade any 1 stack of fortress for him hunting my little assault dogs.
Not to mention that Fortress really needs good spells and runes. That are way too many "if"s for any reliable strategy if you ask me. Now don't get me wrong I love your map you know that but saying that things aren't easier for Inferno... not sure whether that's logical.
Oh and the Demonlord can easily spare a skillpoint to get Mark of the Damned.
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"All I can see is what's in front of me. And all I can do is keep moving forward" - The Heir Wielder of Names, Seeker of Thrones, King of Swords, Breaker of Infinities, Wheel Smashing Lord
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Azagal
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Smooth Snake
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posted March 26, 2011 07:55 PM |
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Quote:
Just pointing out that it's not something you can count on
Well if it's that bad for you on a Warlock who has one of the best primary stat growths it only helps to point out the mess a Runemage is in. I'm not saying it's a reliable system anything chance based isn't but compared to the Runemage a Warlock is a lot more stable.
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"All I can see is what's in front of me. And all I can do is keep moving forward" - The Heir Wielder of Names, Seeker of Thrones, King of Swords, Breaker of Infinities, Wheel Smashing Lord
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This thread is pages long: 
