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Heroes Community > Heroes 5 - Temple of Ashan > Thread: Duel Tactics
Thread: Duel Tactics This thread is 18 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 · «PREV / NEXT»
Deathy
Deathy


Known Hero
Angels Galore
posted June 02, 2011 10:42 PM bonus applied by Elvin on 09 Jun 2011.
Edited by Deathy at 22:53, 02 Jun 2011.

anyways, as SKPRIMUS said, i wanted to post my own massive summary of all the testing ive done alone and with primus so hopefully i can post alot of stuff to help people handle this matchup when playing haven.

HAVEN VS INFERNO

now first things first, i won't talk about stuff that because of luckyness or unluckyness, might instantly gives the match to the other. this means for example stat distribution during levelups and which spells you get for example. i also won't add enlightment to any of the builds for either faction, because 2% chance simply isn't reliable enough to come up every game no matter what.

now let's talk about unit choices for haven and how to prepare for inferno's unit choices.

haven tier 1: doesn't matter for haven, you won't use either ever.

haven tier 2: crossbowmen for sure. marksmen special simply isn't useful enough in this matchup. devils are pretty frail already, pit spawns rarely get close enough for the defense ignore to effect, horses die fast enough aswell.

haven tier 3: this is one of the biggest questions. bash would rarely trigger and shield allies is useless against inferno with lousy shooters. vindicators are superior when in attack, double attack almost always and can still take damage too most of the time. and you probably have battle frenzy boosting their damage anyway. however, if inferno gets lucky timing on things such as seduce,puppet master or frenzy, vindicators can cause serious damage against haven and outright a loss aswell. of course squire bashing one of your units could also be serious hinder, but rarely so bad that you would lose because of it. therefore squires are better as an anti-dark units but vindicators can be serious damage dealers after first two rounds if your willing to pull off the risk.

haven tier 4: always imperial griffins. battle dive is simply too important and diving griffins can be alive very long time if you get good morale not to mention their dive is important at beginning of battle. battle griffins only purpose would be to block inferno from getting to xbows but paladins serve that job better.

haven tier 5: zealots preferably. bloodlust replacing suffering is generally better or it gives you one chance to dispel something nasty.
also purge can remove stuff like vampirism or stoneskin/haste.

haven tier 6: not much to think about, immunity to frenzy and lay hands. champions are simply too vulnerable to dark magic.

haven tier 7: Archangels because resurrection is nice sometimes and they are immune to curse basically. seraphs need light magic to support themselves into huge damage machines. or atleast inquisitors.

and now, thoughts about inferno units and how to prepare for them.

inferno tier 1: familiars will always drain your mana. however, if you have enough mana to support magic so that familiars don't drain you empty, always try to kill the gated stack so that you don't get drained any further. Also it's good idea to weaken them early on, full stack of familiars can still do damage, especially with luck. If you face Vermin's however, you can relax. they have to choose between gating and draining at first round and they also drain less which means you have plenty of time to kill them before they drain too much. which is the reason no inferno goes for them.

inferno tier 2: keep your xbows well protected behind unit stacks, as grunts can leap into the smallest tiles and destroy the stack. even better if you can kill alot of grunts before they can gate, saves you alot of trouble later in fight. inferno almost never goes overseers, even with Elvin's buff, losing leaping ability means inferno has way worse harassing ability against xbows and a unit stack that gets into the battle slowly.

inferno tier 3: firehounds die from pretty much any stack hitting them once. just try to make sure you don't get your xbows lined up with them as lucky firebreath can cause serious damage on xbows early on. as for cerberus, just laugh as without breath they can't reach xbows and do pitiful damage against pretty much any other unit.

inferno tier 4: seducers die from one DG xbows or morale diving griffins. incase of mistresses you can relax alot more since you don't have to worry about seduce which allows xbows and griffins to generally focus on the deadlier units. Mistresses are pretty bad shooters and won't cause too much damage before you can kill them already.

inferno tier 5: hellmares cause big damage with their searing aura and fast initiative, try to weaken them early on so that their aura does little damage. nightmares can kill your retribution damage quite badly, so avoid getting close to them or try to kill them in initial charge as fast as possible. both units can be expected because both tier 5 units from inferno can suit against haven.

inferno tier 6: pit spawns are tanks of inferno, generally the last unit standing. keep your tier 4 and below away from them and hit hard with paladins and angels early on, or perhaps a dive from griffins. pitlords are slow, their magic damage is sad and as long as you keep angels away from them, you should have no problem handling them in battlefield. as they are nowhere near as durable as pit spawns.

inferno tier 7: archdevils do damage and summon pitlords but are quite fragile. one proper shot from xbows or charge from paladins kills them very effectively. Archdemons lose ability to summon pitlords but can harass your xbows with their pulling ability. try to kill them very quickly to prevent your xbows from getting in danger. and although archdemons get more HP and defense, they are still quite fragile and slower aswell.

Now i will tell about 2 good builds against inferno that i have noticed that works somewhat effectively.

Might with Light build:

Expert Light Magic(Master of Blessings,Master of Wrath)
Expert Attack(Battle Frenzy,Retribution)
Expert Defense(Vitality,Power of Endurance)
Expert Luck
Advanced Counterstrike(Benediction,Expert Trainer)

This is quite unique build, as it doesn't have leadership or DG at all. it instead gets Light Magic instead, buffing your already mighty might units further and countering any dark magic you get thrown at you. however it relies heavily on some things, first is getting a minimum of one morale artifact so you get 5 morale with benediction to make retribution strong. two morale artifacts would be better though. second is that it also relies on getting some knowledge artifacts and/or lucky with knowledge stat distribution.
also some ATB or morale luck is preferred, with either moraling griffins or good ATB placement for xbows. then there's the possible problem of hero going first and dark magic screwing your buffs up, you can somewhat counter it with by casting stoneskin first and haste second, if inferno hero casts anything other than stoneskin and slow, he will end up getting his own spells countered and you will still have the stoneskin and haste. if he does go stoneskin and slow, your units won't have suffering,weakness or forgetfullness, which helps boatloads already.
overall, this build unfortunately relies on chances but if you get it atleast partially right, it is very effective as your getting morale,luck,retribution and counter to dark magic all at same time. only bad side is lack of DG and empathy really. there's also couple of variations of this build, getting guardian angel and power of speed instead.

Pure Might build:

Expert Leadership(Recruitment,Divine Guidance,Empathy)
Expert Attack(Battle Frenzy,Retribution,Power of Speed)
Expert Defense
Expert Luck
Advanced Counterstrike(Retaliation Strike,Expert Trainer)

this build relies alot on the first round, destroying inferno units as much as possible. DGing your xbows or paladins is key, especially if they cannot get morale. splitted paladins should most of the time protect from frenzy and puppet, and killing seducers before they seduce is the best start. the more your paladins,xbows and griffins get morale, the better chances you have. lucky strikes are always good aswell of course and moraling angels.

now, as last thing, im trying to give as much battle tips during the fight as possible without relying on some chance happening of course.

-Protect your xbows!
the longer your xbows stay in battle, the better chance of them winning the battle for you. this means kill stuff that could harm them as fast as possible, such as firehounds,grunts and archdemons. also try to avoid lining xbows with firehounds or grunts, try to be unpredictable with your unit placement.

-Attack Pit Spawns first!
what most people seem to forget is that inferno relies heavily on pit spawns staying in battle for long and gating big stack of spawns aswell. killing the pit spawn stack almost completely or completely at first round is huge blow for inferno because after that they have no stacks for survival and have to outdamage you instead. even if archdevils would summon pit lords out of them, it will take forever before the pit lords will act. so taking out pit spawns first takes out any survivability and prevents them from gating with them too.
try to line up your paladins and angels with pit spawns if possible, if only one unit is lined, go for the hit nevertheless.

-Prevent Gating as much as possible!
by preventing units like horned grunts,pit spawns and seducers and such from gating or weakening their gating power, you will have ALOT less units to deal with later on in the fight.

-Treat Gated units as real ones!
don't try to ignore gated units, as that will just get you killed unless all your units get luck and morale.

-Take advantage of weaknesses of gating!
gating has one big weakness, it takes forever from gated units to get into the action, even the fastest of them like hellmares/nightmares.
so having gated stack of hellmares come out and then your paladins charge across field and kill most of them, you just made that gate useless as it had almost no units left to attack anymore. or perhaps none if the strike was lucky.

-Let Angels absorb damage!
the more angels take damage from inferno units, the less your paladins,xbows,vindicators/squires and griffins do. and angels can be very good at absorbing it and dealing it out too during first two rounds. only use resurrection if paladins or xbows get hit hard at beginning.

-Let Vindicators/Squires take care of dogs,grunts,familiars!
they can effectively kill them, especially Vindicators, no point wasting turn of paladins to kill them unless there is no other choice

-DG Paladins and Xbows like crazy!
shouldn't need explanation

-Lay Hands on xbows!
it's important to keep xbows from getting forgetfullness,weakness or suffering.

perfect start for might build haven against inferno would be:
paladins and angels charge to kill pit spawns,griffins dive onto horned grunts, xbows get DG and kill seducers.


and finally, there are few things even inferno can do to make things easier for haven. such as:
-split seducers into two stacks
-take vermins,cerberus,horned overseers or succubus mistresses
-use spells with pitlords(unless no other choice)
-don't take defense or dark magic as skill in leveling

phew. hopefully this gave alot of people more explanation of why's and how's. i tried to make sure my advices had as little to do with luck as possible so that everyone has some good things to do against inferno no matter how badly things go. unfortunately as Elvin and SKPRIMUS already said though, alot of things rely on luck in this(like all haven builds), as Heroes V has alot of chance relying in it.

EDIT: one thing i forgot to include, what could be done in Elvin's map for this matchup to be more balanced.
well my personal opinion is two things. first, give zealots expert dispel. their advanced dispel simply fails too much, expert would give much more reliable chance to get rid of bad dark magics. second is to allow haven to train 2 or 3 more paladins against inferno. it would make the paladin stack splitting easier, thus not making the smaller stack so vulnerable to lucky strikes.

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albolabris
albolabris


Known Hero
posted June 03, 2011 02:04 AM

Nothing about a Dark Magic build?
Master of curses with both spells makes inferno very weak and not dangerous anymore. Usually they don't have a counter for that. Yes, they usually have more mana and can cast more spells than you but their spell power is also low. Especially if you pick Shrug Darkness - that hurts them a lot.

Frenzy and Vampirism are also very good for Haven. Combine the first with swift mind or empathy and you will earn a lot. Vampirism on archangles is also nice.

There is a third way also. Go Light/Dark. Of course this demands quite a lot of knowledge but hey, you see your artifacts. Here is the advantage of the Arena map that i presented lately over the Duel map. You can have quite a lot of knowledge if you get a nice artifact area. Witch Hut can give you enlightenment, intelligence is then formality.

I remember a game with Natalka in the ToH Duel Tournament almost two years ago. Made that Light/Dark build + empathy and i almost won. Archangels with Vampirism, Haste and protected buy Retaliation Strike where fighting alone against the whole inferno army in the end, which took about 10 turns She was saved only buy Regeneration on Archdemons Shame i have no replay from that, it was quite memorable battle.

All in all dark is also good against inferno as well as light/dark combo.

Swift minded fireball with master of fire also once did the trick for me But you need boosters for init to have a chance of making it work.

Maximized balista with all units protecting it + mass endurance at least and benediction, 2x Palies, Battle Griffin, Marksmen can also work if the enemy doesn't have pit lords  or cold death. Won that way couple times.

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Deathy
Deathy


Known Hero
Angels Galore
posted June 03, 2011 03:53 AM
Edited by Deathy at 04:08, 03 Jun 2011.

i have tried dark but unfortunately it isn't as successful as one would initially think. mainly because of the lack of mana. not sure about the Arena map as i have never tested it but in duel map getting enough knowledge isn't as easy as it sounds as even in best scenarios i usually only ended up getting around 90-100 mana. when familiars drain around 37 of it atleast, and if they gate smartly, they can drain even more. after that your forced to cast the debuffs twice because if you don't, gated units will destroy you. which means having mana for frenzy or vampirism isn't easy to have. also inferno gives the same debuffs as you do and two stacks of paladins alone won't be enough to lay hands it all away, especially when smaller stack tends to die fast.
after all debuffs have been casted from both sides, inferno can usually pull it off with lucky strikes and more units in the field. vampirism on angels is good idea, although countered quite annoyingly by marked of the damned+vampirism on inferno's own units.
Also big weakness in haven going dark is if inferno goes for seal of darkness, you will have even bigger problems with mana.

light+dark im not sure because it would be impossible to have the mana for it in Elvin's duel map without having enlightment. but in theory it does sound good option, maybe it would work better in Arena since it apparently has good chance for high knowledge according to you?

i do still think you have point in your post, i once nearly pulled a win against primus with a dark build, but lost because i ran out of mana before i was able to debuff the gated stacks and because he focused on my vampirism angels, forcing me to lose the advantage of vampirism in it. but i just don't think dark magic is the thing removing inferno's advantage over haven.

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ebbafan
ebbafan


Promising
Famous Hero
posted June 03, 2011 05:02 PM

i personally love having the rogue demon lord to lead haven troops.

they can even up the buff/curse game that conventional haven uses rather ineffectively against inferno because they have the same knowledge and if you curse them, they will curse you back + they have dark countering units!

vampirism makes vinds/griffins/champions frightening and helps negate the morale deficiency/mind control dark/seducers

teleport assault on marksmen/champions(your main damage dealers) = 1 hit kill and nowhere to hide

the fight tends to end rather quickly...

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SKPRIMUS
SKPRIMUS


Promising
Supreme Hero
The One and the Prime
posted June 03, 2011 07:35 PM
Edited by SKPRIMUS at 19:28, 08 Jun 2011.

@Deathy:

I liked what you said about hitting pit spawns first up before they get to gate as they always devastate those low level units at the end...I like to also hit the hell stallions on first round since the searing aura & fear will make your power stacks lose numbers & miss crucial turns.

That dark game we had where you casted both mass suffering & mass weakness before my hero got to act was a surprise, but your hero only had 5 attack & no retribution & the seducers sadly did not get killed on the morale griffin dive...by coincidence MotD with suffering strike was painful on those vamped angels.

split seducers can occur when not enough gold after mentor/artis but can cause problems when haven plays without empathy

I forgot to add on previous page that morale dive by griffins killing seducers before demonlord hero and before any seduced unit can act can be part of the once in a blue moon happy time too

@albolabris: yes vampirism on AA's are a surprise when there are plenty of low level enemies & not so many high level enemies...it also cures cancer confusion but no more morales/retribution.

Empathy light/dark may just use up too much skill points, perhaps may prefer empathy/power of speed/dark as I really hate the experience of playing haven without retribution.
____________
Hope defeats despair - "a blatant clue"
too many idiots in VW
"to lose is to win, and he who wins shall lose"
bashing orcus

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Deathy
Deathy


Known Hero
Angels Galore
posted June 09, 2011 09:18 PM

i forgot one more tip for haven in my list btw.

if/when you have no spells to use that take mana or you get like 2 or 3 knowledge during levelups, haven players shouldn't visit mana well. that way inferno can't drain more than 10 mana max so incase they somehow get really bad knowledge(ive had inferno only get like 40-60 mana sometimes) they might actually run out eventually, especially in the case if demon lord doesn't have consume corpse.

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Elvin
Elvin


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
posted June 09, 2011 09:20 PM

I almost forgot about that, shiny awarded You have had considerable contribution not to mention a good grasp on tactics. May there be a lot more where that came from
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Map also hosted on Moddb

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Deathy
Deathy


Known Hero
Angels Galore
posted June 10, 2011 05:03 PM

thanks i have actually considered few times to write similar posts about other factions vs haven too, but it would require alot of time and preferably a partner to test stuff with aswell. testing builds against yourself is fine in theory but i don't want to call them valid until ive tested them against human players

although i wasn't able to test all the builds i wanted against inferno either haha.

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Fauch
Fauch


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
posted June 10, 2011 07:38 PM

hum I've never thought about playing against myself. though, from a strategic point of view it is weird that the 2 opponents know everything about each other

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Elvin
Elvin


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
posted June 11, 2011 12:38 AM

Not so much, I've had matches where I knew exactly what the opponent would do
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Fauch
Fauch


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
posted June 11, 2011 01:04 AM

you mean, which skills he would take, where he would go, etc, etc... ?

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Elvin
Elvin


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
posted June 11, 2011 01:09 AM

Was mostly referring to skill selection and what he will do in battle, if you play someone long enough times you'll get some insights.
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Fauch
Fauch


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
posted June 11, 2011 01:44 AM

I guess so.

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ebbafan
ebbafan


Promising
Famous Hero
posted June 11, 2011 09:09 PM

@fauch: yes, playing against yourself is odd and of limited use since, unless you have multiple personalities, you tend to think one way, but you can experiment a lot and learn a lot as well

of course it doesn't mirror reality, b/c in a real duel you try to get the enemy to know as little about you as possible(disequip your stat increasing arties, and get silent stalker w/ the intention of mentoring it out at the end, let the enemy develop strategies around false premises)

ot: funny thing is i was reading about siamese twins that were joined at the head; apparently they can feel and know exactly what the other is doing. how creepy is that?

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Elvin
Elvin


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
posted June 11, 2011 09:30 PM

Keeping the odd ace in your sleeve is always great to have but not a prerequisite for victory. If you make some optimal choices it matters little what your opponent does because they are always effective, a little more or a little less. Even if the opponent knows, it doesn't necessarily mean he can do much about it or that it will be easy to deal with them.
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ebbafan
ebbafan


Promising
Famous Hero
posted June 11, 2011 10:05 PM

that is a good point, but i would still like the enemy to underestimate me only to turn things around on them in a surprise

like having fire dragons: opponent not familar with fortress might think you didn't have enough money or time to upgrade tier 7, but actually you have rune of dragonform

or you have marksmen: opponent thinks thank god you don't have crossbowmen, then you TA them and one shot their pit spawns before they even get to go

or you have 101 peasants vs opponents' 100 peasants, not exactly a deciding factor but in the long run who wins?

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Deathy
Deathy


Known Hero
Angels Galore
posted June 11, 2011 10:53 PM

playing against yourself is mostly about testing, i simply test how often and realistic certain builds are and how much damage they are able to do generally to get somekind of feel if it can work against human players aswell. naturally the real effectiveness of builds is shown against human players, but it's good to know what your doing BEFORE the battle starts you know

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DoubleDeck
DoubleDeck


Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
posted June 15, 2011 09:24 AM

Phew, lately in duel battles I have been just going with Dark Magic and getting mass confusion and mass slow....it is so effective! Was a Wizard against Inferno and went expert dark, then haven against Necro and went expert dark with Sandro's cloak!

Dark Magic rocks!

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DoubleDeck
DoubleDeck


Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
posted July 04, 2012 02:55 PM

In reference to Elvin's ToH duel 1.2 map (duels):
I am finding it very difficult for Academy to beat Stronghold.
I mean if you have Orcs (esp. with tactics & aura of swiftness), your orc troops can get up there quickly and kill all your troops.

Is there a way for Wizard to combat Orcs and win here?

Expert defense and defense arties just can't stop the carnage and dark magic always seems too late to be effective.....

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Elvin
Elvin


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
posted July 04, 2012 03:04 PM
Edited by Elvin at 15:05, 04 Jul 2012.

Orcs have a real weakness against dark/summoning though. I always found it easier to win with academy, try to control enemy stacks first, then summon reinforcements. I have managed so even when the executioners cleaved my cats to death on their first action. Motw works wonders with blind/frenzy/wasp swarm or even arcane crystal. Once I'd blinded a unit and surrounded it with crystals(double casting with motw), then I hit one and caused a chain reaction that pretty much owned said unit If you have puppet it's even easier, despite your low spellpower. Of course the orcs can bypass puppet with fear my roar or sometimes slow from the shamans and blind is not always safe due to the chiefs and the warcry that hits orc units.

Thankfully in H6 dark isn't so overwhelmingly powerful, I really hope to see the duels return there.
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