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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 02, 2012 03:09 PM |
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I'm sure you have no problem finding Cerberi with the No Enemy Retaliation trait somewhere in the Twilight Zone so you can prove how superior they are to the actual ones.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted February 02, 2012 03:12 PM |
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 02, 2012 03:33 PM |
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WHAT do I accept or not? What do you want to prove?
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KaynaCrous
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 02, 2012 03:53 PM |
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I play inferno a lot. Tons. on hard difficulties, and in duels too... I agree that dogs are lost wayyy too easily. I miss the no retaliate from the Homm 5. They kind of suck as they are now... your only hope is if your opponent is newb enough to leave a weak stack next to another stack, so you can attack the weak stack with your dogs, hitting the big stack next to it, and taking little retaliation.
Smart players wont allow that to happen...
As for the creep in game, well... as inferno, its best to avoid kappa shoyas, undeads and shooters with high initiative... air elementals on hard... holy shyt!
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KaynaCrous
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 02, 2012 05:32 PM |
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Quote:
Unlimited Retaliation DOES. NOT. HELP. you when the stack is dead or nearly dead.
Sadly...and they re freaking 2x2 units. Meeting cerberus is like meeting a 6 foot 6 guy, 260 pounds of muscle, that you can two punch ko. WTF?
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted February 03, 2012 02:29 AM |
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Creeping is a huge deal for Inferno. Weak shooters, no healing, and low HP means that they are nearly guaranteed to loose a few units every battle. Giving them 10% more hp vs creeps and 10% less hp versus players would be worth it on some maps, just because of how important creeping is. Not to say that I think they should have that change.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 03, 2012 03:20 AM |
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Quote:
Creeping is a huge deal for Inferno. Weak shooters, no healing, and low HP means that they are nearly guaranteed to loose a few units every battle. Giving them 10% more hp vs creeps and 10% less hp versus players would be worth it on some maps, just because of how important creeping is. Not to say that I think they should have that change.
More reliable gating would do a lot to solve that problem. Imagine if, like Haven, they could build something in their town that allowed them to use their racial in the first round. The gated unit can then be used in a variety of strategic ways, much like in HOMM V: block archers, block your troops from 2x2 enemies, soak up enemy retaliation, etc.
I've been able to creep more or less without losses fairly successfully in the Inferno campaign. The Succubi actually aren't that weak (and the Lilim's Enthrall is excellent). Additionally, Regeneration and Life Drain can go a long way, especially the latter.
However, as Kayna said above, you have to avoid Necro units and high-Ini shooters as much as possible. Inferno desperately needs Life Drain, and they also need to be able to get in the faces of a large stack of shooters before they can send out the first volley.
To return to something that JJ pointed out in the original post, it isn't just the dogs who have growth problems. Both upgraded melee Elites (Lacerator and Ravager) are 2 of the 5 Elite units in the game that Black Hole apparently deemed so powerful as to warrant only receiving 4 of them (base) per week (along with Centaur Marauders, Imperial Griffins, and Yuki-Onnas).
The Ravagers actually do have pretty top-notch stats on paper (damage, HP, intiative, movement, and defense ranges from good to excellent across the board), but not nearly to such an advantage as to merit losing one or more units per week in relation to only marginally weaker units in other factions (Kensei, Panther Warrior, Sun Crusader...). Moreover, I am completely baffled by the 4 Lacerators/week. (Compare to 7 Vampire Lords/week, which is just retarded). I see nothing about the Lacerators that puts them in this special power category.
Well, save for one slightly unusual observation in the excellent Fan Manual for MMH6. Can anyone familiar with it explain to me how they calculate the "Power" statistic below each unit in the Table of Creatures? It puts the Lacerators among the best Elites, and I'm not sure why. I actually do quite like them, but I don't get the 4/week.
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KaynaCrous
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 03, 2012 05:29 AM |
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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted February 03, 2012 09:20 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
Creeping is a huge deal for Inferno. Weak shooters, no healing, and low HP means that they are nearly guaranteed to loose a few units every battle. Giving them 10% more hp vs creeps and 10% less hp versus players would be worth it on some maps, just because of how important creeping is. Not to say that I think they should have that change.
More reliable gating would do a lot to solve that problem. Imagine if, like Haven, they could build something in their town that allowed them to use their racial in the first round. The gated unit can then be used in a variety of strategic ways, much like in HOMM V: block archers, block your troops from 2x2 enemies, soak up enemy retaliation, etc.
A special building to get gating up on the first turn would help, but by definition it would only help with later creeps. You aren't going to have any special buildings built before Week 2 or 3.
What they should really get is faster gating. If you use Gating to pull in a lower tier creature than you could, that should be instant. Gating 2 should get instant cores, gating 3 should get instant elites, gating 4 gets instant champions.
Now that would still leave Inferno with the worst early game creeping, since they still wouldn't be able to get instant access to anything at low level when they are stuck with Gating 1. And they are still in the weird position of having to upgrade their troops before they get their abilities. I mean, you don't have to upgrade Ghosts, Priestesses, or Pearl Maidens to get healing, but for some reason you have to upgrade Succubi to get Enthrall. And Enthrall got nerfed in the move to 1.2 because apparently someone somewhere thought Inferno was too good.
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Well, save for one slightly unusual observation in the excellent Fan Manual for MMH6. Can anyone familiar with it explain to me how they calculate the "Power" statistic below each unit in the Table of Creatures? It puts the Lacerators among the best Elites, and I'm not sure why. I actually do quite like them, but I don't get the 4/week.
I actually have no idea. Personally, I find the Lacerators to be completely useless, and I've already said why. Their classification as being nearly overpowered just strikes me as cluelessness on the part of the designers. Any numeric system that tells me that I'd rather have 86 Lacerators than 100 Archliches is just factually wrong.
Of course, the really weird part is that the power stat goes out to 3 decimal places, which tells me that it has to be based on a mathematical formula from the creature stats somehow. There is absolutely no way that you'd ever get three significant figures on empirical testing of any kind.
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted February 03, 2012 09:27 AM |
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Its likely something like attack*dmg+defense*hp or something that completely disregards abilities.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 03, 2012 09:52 AM |
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The actual trouble with creeping is, that the best tactic to conserve Inferno troops is at the same time the worst possible tactic to make use of the racial ability and vice versa.
Splitting stacks, especially Succubi, is the best way to trigger Luck - and to lose units, since a dead stack is a dead stack. In theory, if you split, your 9 Succubi 2-2-2-2-1 and 4 Hounds 2-2, you hope to score enough lucky hits to fill the gauge for a Hell Hound gating, to block the way an appear early turn 2, and another early go in round two, to have another portal for the second Hound stack and a complete block.
In practise, however, the flaws are:
1) Portals are not blocking enemy shooters in any way, they are not even reducing their effectiveness.
2) With racial depending on random Luck triggers, you may just end without portals or without enough portals for a complete block, making your unts rather vulnerable and dead stack is dead stack.
Conversely, if you go with ONE stack only into battle your chances ot to lose anything are WAY better, but your racial is basically lost for you.
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted February 03, 2012 11:42 AM |
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Quote:
Can anyone familiar with it explain to me how they calculate the "Power" statistic below each unit in the Table of Creatures? It puts the Lacerators among the best Elites, and I'm not sure why. I actually do quite like them, but I don't get the 4/week.
I think power is suposed to be experience points (i.e. how much experience you get for killing 1 troop).
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KaynaCrous
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 03, 2012 04:33 PM |
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most inferno might players gate pit lords first, but lacerators is really what you should gate in first. That and the 5x5 spike hero specialisation is THE most damaging combo in game
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 03, 2012 08:26 PM |
bonus applied by alcibiades on 04 Feb 2012. |
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Quote:
The actual trouble with creeping is, that the best tactic to conserve Inferno troops is at the same time the worst possible tactic to make use of the racial ability and vice versa.
Splitting stacks, especially Succubi, is the best way to trigger Luck - and to lose units, since a dead stack is a dead stack. In theory, if you split, your 9 Succubi 2-2-2-2-1 and 4 Hounds 2-2, you hope to score enough lucky hits to fill the gauge for a Hell Hound gating, to block the way an appear early turn 2, and another early go in round two, to have another portal for the second Hound stack and a complete block.
In practise, however, the flaws are:
1) Portals are not blocking enemy shooters in any way, they are not even reducing their effectiveness.
2) With racial depending on random Luck triggers, you may just end without portals or without enough portals for a complete block, making your unts rather vulnerable and dead stack is dead stack.
Conversely, if you go with ONE stack only into battle your chances ot to lose anything are WAY better, but your racial is basically lost for you.
What's worse, portals in front of enemy shooters appear to give them a cover bonus.
For early game creeping with Inferno, I rely much more heavily on Regen/Life Drain than their racial in order to preserve units. It really isn't too bad as long as there aren't too many Necro stacks lying around.
Late game creeping with a Might hero (and probably Magic too, but I wouldn't be speaking from experience) is a cakewalk, because you have so many powerful options - Tactics 2, Intimidation, Cleave, Reinforcements 3, Heroic Charge, Pressed Attack, etc.
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I think power is suposed to be experience points (i.e. how much experience you get for killing 1 troop).
Just tested this, and it's not it, at least not directly. Neutral stack of 110 Sisters (5.427 each), 15 Sun Riders (22.350), and 16 Griffins (26.850) should, according to the above proposal, have yielded ~1400 points, but actually yielded closer to 4x that - ~5400 points.
Additionally, "power" cannot be a calculation based simply on some combination of damage/def/HP/etc. either; the unupgraded Juggernaut has better stats than the Lacerator pretty much across-the-board, but has a significantly lower "power" rating.
This means that "power" must somehow take the special abilities into account as well, but that makes the 3 decimal places especially bizarre, because how can special abilities be factored in with mathematical precision?
It is a thoroughly baffling stat. (Incidentally, it has the Cerberi as the strongest Cores in the game).
Edit: here's another interesting comparison: Ravagers vs. Imperial Griffins.
Ravagers have markedly better stats in every single category except movement (equal) and morale (2 points lower), but the Imperial Griffin is actually given a minutely higher "power" rating.
This means that special abilities and other "intangibles" (like flying instead of walking?) are factored into this equation, which somehow has the precision of 3 decimal places.
It is probably worth noting that there is an extremely high correspondence between this "power" rating and cost/growth of the unit, suggesting that it must be close to whatever formula that Black Hole used to determine these.
However, there are at least a few very notable exceptions even to this: Vampire Lords have higher "power" than Putrid Lamasus and Dreamreavers, but you get 7 instead of 6; Kensei are actually the highest-rated Elite, but you get 5 instead of 4 (like C. Marauders, Rav, Lac, Im. Grif., and Yuki). Yuki-Onnas are in the ~28 "power" range, which in all other cases yields 5 per week, but they only get 4.
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most inferno might players gate pit lords first, but lacerators is really what you should gate in first. That and the 5x5 spike hero specialisation is THE most damaging combo in game
Amen. Especially once you have access to the later gating abilities, you can deliver a significant stack of Lacerators directly into the enemy lines, who can then cut loose with their +25% damage spikes immediately. It's a beautiful thing. I'm not sure why Hobo has such a beef. 
Ravagers also make an excellent gating choice, since their special ability effectively forces the nearby enemies to focus all of their fire on that stack, or waste a turn moving out of the way.
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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted February 03, 2012 10:38 PM |
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Quote:
Amen. Especially once you have access to the later gating abilities, you can deliver a significant stack of Lacerators directly into the enemy lines, who can then cut loose with their +25% damage spikes immediately. It's a beautiful thing. I'm not sure why Hobo has such a beef.
Ravagers also make an excellent gating choice, since their special ability effectively forces the nearby enemies to focus all of their fire on that stack, or waste a turn moving out of the way.
Ravagers are a substantially better choice for gating. For several reasons. Firstly, you don't need Gating IV to get them out and get their super attack going, because Ravagers can move and still do their no-retaliation damage to multiple targets and Lacerators can't. Second, Ravager Flame Bait ability ensures that they use up enemy actions (either attacking them or moving away), and that keeps your other units alive. Even better, it means that the gated ravagers usually die, which lets you gate in more Ravagers the next time your gating option comes up.
And for those times when you do want to gate them in with Gating 2 or Gating 3 and you want to do no-retaliation damage to archers that you want to tie down in melee and don't want to give them cover, you can put the gate off to the side or even in front of your own troops (giving your own troops cover) until the Ravagers show up.
Ravagers aren't a great unit. They are one more unit in the roster that doesn't heal, doesn't have a ranged attack, and doesn't fly. But unlike Lacerators they really do have abilities that genuinely help with loss prevention (albeit in a weird way), and they synergize very well with Gating in a manner that doesn't render the main stack a questionable asset in creeps. Ravagers, while definitely on the low end of build priority, are still a net asset in your army. Lacerators can't even say that.
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 04, 2012 12:12 AM |
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Ravagers are a substantially better choice for gating.
I think that's at least somewhat dependent on the situation. Especially with the 5x5 Spike Hero Special, the Lacerator may well be a better choice in certain circumstances. They take more punishment than the Ravagers, but they also dish out more (with the Spike damage boost), their AoE is much more reliable and easy to use, and their aggro is high enough that many of the (AI-controlled) enemy stacks may well target them anyway (as with the Ravager special). The Ravager buys your army more time, but that's not always as valuable for the Inferno as doing more damage quickly.
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Ravagers, while definitely on the low end of build priority, are still a net asset in your army. Lacerators can't even say that.
I just find this such a bizarre thing to say, because it is so contrary to my own playing experience (which, admittedly, is thus far not terribly diverse). The Lacerators have been the most consistently damaging force in my Inferno melee lineup. No joke. 
As I mentioned earlier, a terrific way to use their special (if you're trying to preserve units) is to tell them to wait in the first round, move up to the enemy at the end of the first round, and activate your spikes at the beginning of the second (since they have pretty good initiative). Good maneuvering can allow the Ravagers to do something similar, but it is much more difficult to do without harming your own units (their 2x2 size coupled with BF obstacles also makes precise maneuvering for their AoE more difficult).
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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted February 04, 2012 03:47 PM |
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Quote:
I just find this such a bizarre thing to say, because it is so contrary to my own playing experience (which, admittedly, is thus far not terribly diverse). The Lacerators have been the most consistently damaging force in my Inferno melee lineup. No joke.
Maybe true. Who cares?
The game isn't about doing damage, it's about not taking damage. How do the lacerators help you with that?
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted February 04, 2012 10:03 PM |
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Kill them before they can hurt you. That is the definition of Inferno.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 04, 2012 10:29 PM |
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Quote:
Kill them before they can hurt you. That is the definition of Inferno.
Exactly.
An enemy stack that is dead or crippled cannot damage you.
A large enough stack of Lacerators can easily cripple several enemy stacks with one burst (I mean, it's a +25% damage AoE modifying top-notch base damage).
They can't take hits very well with their 85 HP and mediocre defense, so their timing and maneuvering requires care and precision.
If you can get a Ravager up to the front lines at the same time, they make an excellent combo.
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 04, 2012 11:04 PM |
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Some random stat-related Necro complaining:
Q: Which Elite has the best HP/Def combo in the game?
A: Vampire Lord! 95/20/15
(Sun Crusader and Kensei come somewhat close)
Q: Which Elite has the best growth in the game?
A: Vampire Lord! 7
(WTF? -and for good measure, throw in 20% Life Drain and a defend that causes first enemy attack to fail)
Q: Which Champion has the best damage in the game?
A: Fate Weaver! 60-67 (And it's RANGED. And MAGIC.)
Q: OK then, which Elite has the best ranged damage in the game?
A: Archlich! 18-22 (Also MAGIC. In fact, only 1 minimum base damage point away from having the highest damage of any Elite unit - Kensei is 19-22).
Q: Which is the most damaging Core archer (looking at growth x average damage)?
A: Skeletal Spearman! 4-7 damage, 14/week (growth 2nd only to Praetorians at 15/week)
Really, the only Necro unit that doesn't stand out for its excellence or utility is the Lamasu. The Ravenous Ghouls are very solid Core melee units (excellent balance of damage/HP/might Def/movement from special) and the Specters make very useful healers.
The Lamasus have good debuffs, but their stats are so-so at best.
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