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| Thread: Stone Skin vs Shield |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 · NEXT» |
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wiski
Tavern Dweller
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posted August 27, 2002 06:35 PM |
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Stone Skin vs Shield
In HoMM3, which is better: stone skin or shield? Unskilled, basic, advanced and expert - is one of them _always_ better?
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wiski
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pig
Disgraceful
Known Hero
unstopable
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posted August 27, 2002 07:09 PM |
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stone skin adds +5 defense, shield reduces damage by 25% if i am not wrong.. so shield acts like +12 defense imho
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sos
Known Hero
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posted August 27, 2002 07:47 PM |
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Good question
First, shield works only in melee, stone skin works in both melee and ranged attacks.
Expert shield will reduce damage by 30%, expert stone skin will increase the defense with 6. Lets compare.
base damage = 100.
A/D | normal damage | shield damage | stone skin damage
----------------------------------------------------------
+20 200 140 170
+6 130 91 100
0 100 70 85
-20 50 35 35
Stone skin has no effect if A/D is too big or small (not sure about numbers here).
Hope this helps
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Frank
Promising
Known Hero
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posted August 28, 2002 06:02 AM |
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Edited By: Frank on 28 Aug 2002
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But what you have to know is a lvl 20 armorer specialist gains absolutely no extra defense from casting shield expert. Somehow, % of damage taken off is limited to a specific number. So once you reach 30%, forget about shield.
- Frank
PS Before argueing... test it for yourselves ! 
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Frank
Promising
Known Hero
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posted August 28, 2002 06:11 AM |
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oh and 2nd thing is, expert shield is 15%, not 30% as mentionned in the HOMM3 guide book. 
If you understand how damage calculation works, you`ll see that +15 defense to you attacker`s att rating will give you the max damage reduction you can gain from your defence rating. Max is 30% there too (surely not a coincidence, read above posting from me). So if you already have +15 defence towards your attacker`s att and you also have expert armorer, cast something else than shield or stone skin for both spells are totally useless than.
Note that if your opponent has offense it complicates things a great deal and so consider all I said true for combats involving none offense skills benificiary monsters.
- Frank
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RedSoxFan3
Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
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posted August 28, 2002 06:01 PM |
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One more thing, shield is way better against behemoths.
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Go Red Sox!
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Commando
Known Hero
Unleasher of the Bloodthirsty
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posted August 28, 2002 09:55 PM |
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Quote:
PS Before argueing... test it for yourselves !
I knew this wasn't right out of sheer experience but tested it anyway... here are the results:
Test #1
Human: Wystan, Expert Bless, 600 Chaos Hydrae, insignificant secondary skills, Attack 79, all 3 speed artifacts (for first strike!), level 59
Comp: Bron, Expert Shield, 600 Ancients, insignificant secondary skills, Defense 81, level 59
First try: Bless Hydrae, attack Ancients: 22286 damage
Second try: Bless Hydrae, wait, comp casts Expert Shield, attack Ancients: 15600 damage
Test #2
Human: Wystan, Expert Bless, 600 Chaos Hydrae, insignificant secondary skills, Attack 79 all 3 speed artifacts, level 59
Comp: Tazar, Expert Shield, 600 Ancients, Armourer + 7 insignificant secondary skills, Defense 79, level 59
First try: Bless Hydrae, attack Ancients: 11246 damage
Second try: Bless Hydrae, wait, comp casts Expert Shield, attack Ancients: 7872 damage
That looks like a bit more than a 30% reduction 
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Wub
Responsible
Famous Hero
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posted August 29, 2002 01:35 AM |
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Edited By: Wub on 28 Aug 2002
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Damage calculation
Even though I have uninstalled Heroes 3 and was determined not to make any Heroes 3 posts, I had to react on this. First a note: I only have Restoration of Erathia so if there are any differences in damage calculation between expansions I obviously don't know about this (but I will assume that this is not the case).
All right, let's draw the conclusions from Commando's post: Expert shield DOES give 30% damage reduction.
Expert shield DOES reduce the damage for a high level hero with armorer specialty. Btw, why is the defense of the comp in the first example 81 and in the second 79?
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If you understand how damage calculation works, you`ll see that +15 defense to you attacker`s att rating will give you the max damage reduction you can gain from your defence rating. Max is 30% there too
I think there is a misunderstanding about the limit to which damage can be reduced. The rule is that an attack will never be reduced to less than 30% from the value that you would expect when comparing attack defense difference.
For example: a unit has an attack of 2 and does 100 base damage; defender has defense of 30. Attack/defense difference=28. For every point of difference between attack and defense, the damage is reduced by 2.5%. Not 2%, test it yourself! (or is this dependent on game version?). This means that damage reduction is 70%, which is exactly the maximum. Now if a unit with an attack of 2, attacks a unit with a defense of 40, the damage done is still the same.
And to answer the question which is better, stone skin or shield: it depends. First I'd like to refer to sos' post which is completely true. The conclusion should be that stone skin protects better from melee attacks when the defense is for example 21 or 22 higher than the attack. This is a very theoretical situation, so you can say that it is (almost always) better to cast shield to protect from melee attacks. On the other hand: when you primarily want to protect from ranged attacks, choose for stone skin. But then, what's new???
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Commando
Known Hero
Unleasher of the Bloodthirsty
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posted August 29, 2002 01:52 AM |
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Quote:
Btw, why is the defense of the comp in the first example 81 and in the second 79?
Good question. Unfortunately the stats were beyond my control - I set them all to 60 and gave both heroes maximum experience (99999999, I think - give or take a 9 ). I should try again so that all stats are 99. By the way, my test was carried out with SoD.
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Wub
Responsible
Famous Hero
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posted August 29, 2002 02:06 AM |
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I should try again so that all stats are 99.
You could do that, but it would only serve to show how many percent the armourer specialty on level 59 reduces the damage. The effect of shield is not a factor anymore. No, the test is great as you did it now and it proves that your 'sheer experience' was right. By the way, do you know out of the same 'sheer experience' if shield also reduces damage when there's an attack/defense difference bigger than 28?
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Commando
Known Hero
Unleasher of the Bloodthirsty
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posted August 29, 2002 02:18 AM |
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This is something I haven't tried yet but a pen-pal of mine - outstanding player - tells me that the maximum damage reduction possible is 96%. I will paste his words since they explain things quite well:
"Armourer at Expert level with the Armourer special at level 88 confers 81%
resistance as you have correctly calculated. However Expert Shield is
factored in as a multiplier instead of being added in.
So maxed Armourer and its special gives a 0.19 multiplier and Expert Shield gives a 0.7 multiplier
Combined, their effects would amount to 0.19 * 0.7 which is about 0.13 of
the prior unmodified damage.
Defense over attack which is 28 and above, will further yield a maximum
lowering modifier of 0.3 which means the minimum damage an enemy stack can
inflict is about (0.19)(0.7)(0.3) = 0.04 of the enemy's stack unmodified
damage, without factoring in Expert Curse."
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Wub
Responsible
Famous Hero
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posted August 29, 2002 02:43 AM |
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Quote:
Combined, their effects would amount to 0.19 * 0.7 which is about 0.13 of
the prior unmodified damage.
Defense over attack which is 28 and above, will further yield a maximum
lowering modifier of 0.3 which means the minimum damage an enemy stack can
inflict is about (0.19)(0.7)(0.3) = 0.04 of the enemy's stack unmodified
damage, without factoring in Expert Curse."
Funny stuff and it even seems to be true as well. I immediately believe he is an outstanding player. I only doubt if it is possible to get a level 88 hero. I once had the idea to make a map in which the end fight was against a level 114 Tazar (in that case your units can never do more than 1 damage, whatever their number). But I noticed that after level 59 (I guess) your hero became a level 0 hero when he visited a tree of knowldge. So I'm not sure if you get the armor bonus after that level. Anyway, I also didn't know that you couldn't place 55 trees of knowledge on the map and since I don't know the maximum number, I don't know if level 88 is reachable.
But let's say it is. Let's also assume that you cast expert curse on a stack of air elementals. Every air elemental has a base damage of 1 then, while it normally would have 5. In that case, the maximum damage reduction would be (0.19)(0.7)(0.3)(0.2)=99,99202%. The stack does only 0,008% damage it would normally do! In that case you can even beat a opponent who cheats by placing a pandora's box with 99 of each primary skill
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Commando
Known Hero
Unleasher of the Bloodthirsty
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posted August 29, 2002 03:05 AM |
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A level-88 hero is possible on several user-made maps, via experience (99999999 is only the customisable upper limit, not the actual game limit) and Trees of Knowledge. Usually, once you reach level 74 (or 75 - can't remember) the game automatically takes you up to level 88 (interesting bug ). If you visit another tree of knowledge your hero rolls over and you find yourself with a level-0 hero - ouch
Quote:
But let's say it is. Let's also assume that you cast expert curse on a stack of air elementals. Every air elemental has a base damage of 1 then, while it normally would have 5. In that case, the maximum damage reduction would be (0.19)(0.7)(0.3)(0.2)=99,99202%. The stack does only 0,008% damage it would normally do!
Interesting - I'll have to try that out and maybe implement it in my next map!
Quote:
In that case you can even beat a opponent who cheats by placing a pandora's box with 99 of each primary skill
ROFL!
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Wub
Responsible
Famous Hero
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posted August 29, 2002 03:47 AM |
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Quote:
Interesting - I'll have to try that out and maybe implement it in my next map!
LOL!! That would be real funny. But I forgot to tell that it would even be funnier if you would be able to equip the orb of invulnerability and cast advanced blind on the air elementals (that can be done, right?) Stack retaliates at 1/4 of its capability. That would let it do (0.19)(0.3)(0.7)(0.2)(0.25)=0.001995% damage of what it would have done normally. That is normal damage divided by 501,2!!
But let's make it even more interesting. Correct me if I'm wrong on this because my knowledge from heroes 3 has become a bit hazy since heroes 4. But let's assume we have a level 88 hero with offense specialty . This specialty will multiply the damage done by his creatures by 2,62. Also, the attack/defense difference is maxed out, so damage will be multiplied by 7 (that's right, isn't it?. Furthermore, the stack that does an attack gets a luck bonus (I vaguely remember a bug that luck does not multiply the damage by 2, but let's assume it does). Also our level 88 hero, has an imp stack which, when blessed on expert level, does double damage. Let's multiply all these numbers. (2,62)(7)(2)(2)=73,36. The imps do 73,36 times the damage they would normally do.
And now the big final. A level 88 Neela faces a stack of air elementals with a stack of imps. You might ask why I dumped Tazar, but that loser can't learn fire magic. . All right, level 88 Neela casts expert shield, advanced curse, expert bless, expert fortune and she also has expert offense. With the orb of invulnerability equipped she can cast advanced blind on the air elementals. Of course, she has supreme attack and defense skills. In this case, the damage done by the air elementals is divided by 1/((0.19)(0.7)(0.3)(0.2)(0.25))=501,2. Also, the damage that the imps do is multiplied by 7x2x2x1.3=36,4. All this draws us to the conclusion that the imps perform (36,4)(501,2)=18243,68 times better than they would normally do against the air elementals!!! And now what is the moral of this story?
Imps DESTROY!!! 
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Commando
Known Hero
Unleasher of the Bloodthirsty
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posted August 29, 2002 03:56 AM |
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Well, I'm not too sure about all the numbers and such (it's past 4 AM here) but ROFLMAO!
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Wub
Responsible
Famous Hero
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posted August 29, 2002 04:05 AM |
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Well, I'm not too sure about all the numbers and such (it's past 4 AM here) but ROFLMAO!
LOL !! And yes, it's also past 4 AM here, really inspiring as you see.
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Commando
Known Hero
Unleasher of the Bloodthirsty
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posted August 29, 2002 04:08 AM |
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At this point don't you think it would be worth reinstalling Heroes III? I'd guess you've missed out on quite a few interesting maps, which I shall refrain from mentioning here unless explicitely requested...
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Frank
Promising
Known Hero
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posted August 29, 2002 05:38 AM |
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Edited By: Frank on 28 Aug 2002
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commando, if you want to do serious testing use either naga or angels as the attacker. Fixed damaged ! of course your hydra can make it so it appears to be more than 30%, their damage range from 25 to 45 !!!!!! get it ? Anyhow I redid the test correctly and still, expert armorer specialist will take the same damage from an angel or naga attack with expert shield or without. Come with any other results and we should be looking at if you have 1.4 or some other weird version.
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Commando
Known Hero
Unleasher of the Bloodthirsty
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posted August 29, 2002 05:45 AM |
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Keep your hat on, Frank - nice hat, btw
Read carefully - the Hydrae were blessed before attacking. Repeating the fights yielded the same identical results every time. Happy?
Edit: No strange version - regular, legal copy of Heroes Complete
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Frank
Promising
Known Hero
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posted August 29, 2002 06:34 AM |
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Edited By: Frank on 29 Aug 2002
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well what is it you do wrong then? I`m just trying to help you out here. Oh btw, does Adela mean anything to you? Bless doesn`t yield the same damage everytime... If you aren`t here to toss, try explaing me why lvl 20`s unicorn get the same amount of damage from a fixed number of nagas with or without expert shield on the unicorns. The exact same damage each time.
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