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Heroes Community > Heroes 3.5 - WoG and Beyond > Thread: [Official Thread] HoMM 3: Horn of the Abyss - Ideas and Suggestions
Thread: [Official Thread] HoMM 3: Horn of the Abyss - Ideas and Suggestions This Popular Thread is 196 pages long: 1 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 ... 175 176 177 178 179 ... 180 196 · «PREV / NEXT»
Phoenix4ever
Phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted July 03, 2021 10:06 PM
Edited by Phoenix4ever at 22:11, 03 Jul 2021.

I agree with Nimo, fire is the worst school.
Besides extremely powerful Berserk and decent Curse, it only has very situational spells.
Arma and Blind are very powerful, but again you don't need Fire Magic for them.
Other Fire Damage spells are terrible, except Fire Wall with Luna.
Bloodlust is okay-ish, but does not affect Fire Immune creatures and not really ranged creatures either.

It helped I moved DD to Fire Magic at 1 cast per day, buffed the fire damage spells and made Slayer a mass spell at Expert Fire Magic.
After all that Fire sadly still seems like the worst school though...

Fire immunity should never have affected positive fire spells, that was a terrible design choice.

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Hourglass
Hourglass


Famous Hero
posted July 04, 2021 02:27 AM

Phoenix4ever said:
I agree with Nimo, fire is the worst school.
I think it's pretty fair from you to say that, likely because it's true in your case. If I'm not mistaken, your map had at least some water (sea)in it? If that's the case, then picking up and appreciating Water should be no surprise.

But hopefully you can see why someone else might think differently:

The reason the MP community favors Fire slightly over Water is because MP games are not played in water maps. Simply put, RMG is unable to create water maps that would be interesting to play with, and maybe the boat mechanics are generally not liked, idk.

Curse ends up being good spell in Jebus styled maps, as it's good against minor level creatures. And, of course, we all once again moving to your favorite subject, the creature banks: Griffins and Wolf Raiders are doing next to no damage, and it's especially effective against Dragon flies, who are not only doing a single point of damage per unit, but also as the spell is cast on them, there's nothing to Dispel.

And when it comes to Berserk, it's appreciated because you can softlock the other player out of the game, so there's a chance you can win a battle that "you really, really should have not been able to win." The artifact counter is actually being played, but
as the neck is one the most contested slots, you really would like to enable something else in it, and there's literally no way to tell if the other player is capable of casting (mass) Berserk at all. In general, it's a pesky spell to play against.

You are right that those are the main selling points of Fire, but I still add one honorable mention:

If you're going to burn everything down with Armageddon, I would personally want to build Fire magic. While the damage increase is not through the roof type of thing, it is dealing damage to every enemy stack, so the number can be multiplied with 7. Also, the casting cost is decreased, which is not an insignificant thing.

When it comes to Water, it's not useless or not even a bad secondary skill by any means, but in order to squeeze every bit out of your heroes, you're basically trying to live without water magic, just like you're doing with fire magic. While the pool of usable spells is certainly higher in water school, we're completely fine without most of them.(just like with Fire)
Bless, while being great spell, isn't required to be mastered in order for us to win. The most used buff and debuff are haste and slow, which we can counter with each other, therefore there's little need for AOE Cure/Dispel. Single target spells such as Blind we can either cure or "double counter" with Antimagic. So in the end, while there's probably only few things we would like from Fire in the late game, the amount of great spells from water school isn't that high either, therefore the field is more even than it may seem at first.

...but really, it should be clearly kept in mind that we're talking about which of the two are the 3rd best option - in reality you're not really going to see either school of magic being played. Earth is probably the best skill in the game, and you want the Air magic at some point as well. You really don't want to build a third magic school, mainly because the elemental skills really only bloom when you get them at expert, a thing you cannot guarantee achieving in the late stages of the game.

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Phoenix4ever
Phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted July 04, 2021 08:32 AM
Edited by Phoenix4ever at 08:36, 04 Jul 2021.

Good reasoning Hourglass.
My map is an island map, with very few creature banks, so that might have something to do with it yeah.
But look how AI likes to spam Blind, it is really nice to be able to Mass Cure/Dispel in that instance. Bless is also an awesome spell, for some weird reason it is even cheaper than Curse and affect more units.
Fire Magic also has the problem that the spells can sometimes be quite hard to learn. Arma can only be learned in 3 towns, Curse 4, Berserk 8.

Air Magic is good, but besides Haste, DD and Fly, it does not have anything mindblowing. It has Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning, but again they does'nt benefit much from magic school.
Disguise is the most useless spell in the game.

Earth Magic is definitely the best school.

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P4R4D0X0N
P4R4D0X0N


Famous Hero
posted July 04, 2021 08:25 PM
Edited by P4R4D0X0N at 20:36, 04 Jul 2021.

NimoStar said:
Again, the point was never that Water Walk is better than Dimension Door, but rather, that Fire Magic doesn't have *any* adventure mobility spells (or any adventure spells *at all*).

Though Dimension Door is known as extremely OP, Water Walk still is a great spell for its level. Crossing a water body of *any* lenght normally costs two full days - one for embarkingand another for disembarking, not to mention pay for the boat - while Water Walk can do it in a single day. This is also very useful to escape from anything that pursues you. It is also much cheaper in spell points.

Thus why it counts on why Water is better than Fire.

[...]



Water Walk is near to useless 'coz:
1. you dont see a position you may reach with it in one turn coz that hero lacks scouting or the map isn't discovered
2. even if you could reach it, you have most likely to wait another turn to get there (distance wise)
3. the distance is just too far anyway (common for water content in general) It's a niche when you may use the skill properly at all

Water is still too situational compared to the "must have" earth and the "should have" air... followed up with "could have" fire it's "could have" near to "won't have" according to "MoSCoW" classification.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUkih3eaHj8

I agree with the classification here... maybe with one or two exceptions. It's nothing more than "utility" tier... no "must have". Granted it has some niche spells that are useful, but most aren't.

I also recommended a "Lloyd's beacon" spell on fire some tiem ago. Where a player may set a portal (Inferno like) and may teleport back to that location with a hero. Fire for the reason inferno has a similar town function just that this version is mobile. While the name "Lloyd's beacon" is from M&M series anyway. So it would fit aswell. a Placed beacon should be revealed for all other players with 3 tiles view around it. Anyway, I guess the hardcode would prevent nything like that anyway.

fred79 said:
doesn't all the adv map movement buff spells use movement points, though?


They do, but DD consumes kinda nothing compared to the distance a hero may travel by it. Fly also has the ability to get over mountains and removes terrain penatly, it may be used as water walk aswell.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted July 04, 2021 11:58 PM

NimoStar said:
We can all alter everything but I thought the point was having a balance discussion. Saying fire is strong because it has a single, potentally extremely OP spell that *some* towns can use in *some* matchups isn't exactly balanced.


Nor it should be. No game has ever achieved "balance", and if it did - it was either a rock-paper-scissors kind of game (Like starcraft 2) or a "balance" achieved by making everything equally uninteresting and bland (see HoMM6). A kind of state where everything is so balanced that it no longer matters what strategy you use.

It's perfectly fine to have unequal skills, what's not fine is to have skills thought that are entirely trash or 100% must have (the kind of skill that you lose the game without).

Easiest way to solve the problem is to move the spells around, say, move Slow to Water magic (solves both Earth dominance and Water magic uselessness at the same time), make TP universal like MM - and you already pretty much fixed the magic in this game. Now a lot of level 3 spells could use individual buffs because they are almost notoriously terrible, and Water could also use a proper tier 5 spell (I suggest a 3x3 spell like inferno, with Meteor shower scaling, called "Blizzard" or whatever - fits in more way than one), and Fire could use a bit less terrible lineup so you're not as dependent on Berserk+Curse as you are now to squeeze the maximum out of this school, but we really don't need to go any further with this, least we turn it into another Homm6-type of failure.

As for the discussion about Prayer, I guess I have to repeat myself, because my points were kinda ignored and I don't know why - casting prayer is kinda nice, but in a typical "meta situation", it usually loses to casting something else. Thus, Prayer is not a must have, will most likely not win you a game and isn't even the optimal spell to cast a lot of the time. The investment in Water Magic just isn't worth the effect, because what would you rather cast:

Expert Prayer, or?
Expert DD?
Expert Slow+Rez+Implo+DD?
Expert Berserk?

I'd obviously take all the other spells over Prayer - those are gamechangers, and prayer is just another buff to cast. In case you guys missed it, casting buffs isn't really the meta anymore, it's not 2002

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Phoenix4ever
Phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted July 05, 2021 07:57 AM
Edited by Phoenix4ever at 08:02, 05 Jul 2021.

Doomforge said:
Expert Prayer, or?
Expert DD?
Expert Slow+Rez+Implo+DD?
Expert Berserk?

What?, this does'nt make sense, you are comparing a water spell to an air spell, to a fire spell, to 3 earth spells and an air spell?
Prayer is not the only spell in Water Magic and nobody said you should choose Water Magic as your only magic school.

Okay here is how it is:
You ALWAYS need Earth Magic, mainly because of Slow, Res, TP.
You are FORCED to pick Air Magic, if DD is allowed at more than 1 cast per day.
Since you already have Earth and Air Magic, based on the above information, there is sadly little room for Fire and Water Magic.

I DISLIKE how DD made Air Magic mandatory, so I am very happy about moving DD to Fire Magic at 1 cast per day.
This means your primary school is always Earth, but the second can be Air/Fire/Water depending on faction. This feels a lot better and balances the schools a bit better.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted July 05, 2021 10:11 AM
Edited by Doomforge at 10:12, 05 Jul 2021.

Phoenix4ever said:

What?, this does'nt make sense, you are comparing a water spell to an air spell, to a fire spell, to 3 earth spells and an air spell?


It makes perfect sense to compare the literal reasons to pick a skill to each other.

Phoenix4ever said:
Prayer is not the only spell in Water Magic and nobody said you should choose Water Magic as your only magic school.


The rest of water magic is mostly crap. You're always looking up to the best & most important spells obviously. For water, that would be prayer, which doesn't have the potential of the best spells of other schools.

Eovacius not included, of course.
____________
We reached to the stars and everything is now ours

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Phoenix4ever
Phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted July 05, 2021 11:18 AM
Edited by Phoenix4ever at 11:25, 05 Jul 2021.

Doomforge said:
The rest of water magic is mostly crap. You're always looking up to the best & most important spells obviously. For water, that would be prayer, which doesn't have the potential of the best spells of other schools.

Eovacius not included, of course.

My most used water spells are Summon Boat, Water Walk, Ice Bolt, Cure and Bless in that order, so I would'nt say Prayer is the most important water spell.
You also gotta look at availability, level 1 & 2 spells are a lot easier to learn and cheaper to cast, than level 4, therefore you will most likely use them more.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted July 05, 2021 02:52 PM

Phoenix4ever said:
My most used water spells are Summon Boat, Water Walk, Ice Bolt, Cure and Bless in that order, so I would'nt say Prayer is the most important water spell.


And you pick Water Magic for those spells in particular? Most of them will provide their intended functionality without Water Magic skill in the first place.
____________
We reached to the stars and everything is now ours

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Phoenix4ever
Phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted July 05, 2021 04:00 PM

Not only, but they are the ones I use most.
Water Walk becomes much better with Water Magic, Cure and Bless becomes mass.
I also use Frost Ring, (which I buffed) Teleport, Clone and Prayer a lot, actually I use all water spells.
The bottom 3 are Remove Obstacle, Protection From Water and Mirth, still better than Disguise though.

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P4R4D0X0N
P4R4D0X0N


Famous Hero
posted July 05, 2021 05:25 PM
Edited by P4R4D0X0N at 17:42, 05 Jul 2021.

@Phoenix
There is your rating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70tpwJEMrOY&t=1920s better watch the whole video for more clues since he explain that stuff kinda well. Anyway... I personally would have ranked it top "C" not "B" like him.

I agree on water walk aswell :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70tpwJEMrOY&t=2788s

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Phoenix4ever
Phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted July 05, 2021 05:42 PM

I already watched that video, but I don't agree with him.
Well he is allowed his opinion and he only plays JC and JO, that's not what I am playing.

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P4R4D0X0N
P4R4D0X0N


Famous Hero
posted July 05, 2021 05:47 PM

Yeah but as I said, vs AI don't need any balance, since it's kinda useless to try to balance a dumb AI anyway. And nobody would code an AI algorithm to learn from played games.

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Phoenix4ever
Phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted July 05, 2021 06:04 PM

Nobody was talking about changing anything.
I was just defending Water Magic, since some people seemed to think it sucks. (Including your famous Lexiav.)
I still think it's better than Fire Magic, actually better than Air Magic too, since I moved DD to Fire Magic, as I mentioned earlier.

With my map and my rules I would rate them:
1) Earth
2) Water
3) Air
4) Fire

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P4R4D0X0N
P4R4D0X0N


Famous Hero
posted July 05, 2021 06:10 PM

I still don't get why you rate magic schools on base of your own made changes/restrictions? As for vanilla HotA it's just bad... no question about that.

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Phoenix4ever
Phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted July 05, 2021 06:16 PM

I have'nt changed that much, the biggest change is probably moving DD from Air -> Fire.
The biggest factor is probably that it is an island map.

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Zaio-Baio
Zaio-Baio


Promising
Famous Hero
posted July 05, 2021 06:42 PM

Guys, in the current hota metagame earth and air magic are the best magic schools. Water and fire magic can be worth picking occasionally to surprise your opponent but thats about it.
Earth magic is the best magic school as it provides a very strong early game spell - mass slow - that dramatically improves your creeping speed. No other early game spell can give you that boost and for mass slow alone earth magic is worth picking. Later on you get resurrection + implosion that are both top tier spells. Town portal is actually an above top tier spell as its broken as hell. A hero with town portal can afford to creep the rich treasury zones without worrying about a surprising attack on any of his towns from his opponent. A hero without expert town portal is forced to stay close to his main town at all times, else he might lose it to a surprising attack from an enemy hero with DD/Fly. Town portal can also be used to swiftly collect army from all allied towns, visit dungeon town with mana vortex on day 1 of the week to get 2x mana, if an enemy hero is close to any of your towns you can town portal to them and force the final fight and so on. In its current form town portal is ridiculously strong.
Air magic - 2nd best magic school, mass haste does not provide as big creeping boost as mass slow, but is still very strong. Tactics + speed artifacts + mass haste can easily win you many final fights. The strongest spells of air magic school are dim door and fly, because they are very good for catching your opponent unprepared. You can teleport/fly over the zone border and take your opponents main town by surprise, or attack the enemy main hero when he has only fast units in his army and implode them for easy victory, or attack enemy secondary heroes when they are carrying troops to your opponents main hero and so on.
So earth and air magic are top priority, and once you have them you can pick water/fire magic every now and then to surprise your opponent. Usually i pick water/fire only when i have most/all spells from the school via magic tome or pandora's box.

About water magic - mass prayer is very nice in the final fights, but its not worth picking water magic just for it. Clone seems strong on paper, but the games rarely get to the point where clone can shine. The reason is that people play rich templates where they get high spell power and strong mobility spells (DD/Fly/Tp) early in the game and can force the final fight in month 1. And the armies are not very big in month 1. So casting a 30-40 sp implosion/chain lighting/meteor shower is a lot stronger than cloning your 10 archangels. Cloning 10 archangels will let you deal about 500 damage to your opponent's lvl 7 stack (killing only 2 units), while implosion will destroy them all.
Same thing with berserk - month 1 it just cant compete with high sp implosion/chain lightning/meteor shower. Another thing about berserk is that your opponent can reduce its effectiveness by having a balanced hero - with attack stats equal to defense stats so that the berserked units dont do too much damage. Also your opponent can place his strong stacks far from each other so they dont get berserked simultaneously.
But most important of all - a hero with earth + air magic is going to have a lot better game vs the map and will have a lot more army/relics/stats in the final fight compared to a hero with water + fire magic.

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P4R4D0X0N
P4R4D0X0N


Famous Hero
posted July 06, 2021 09:57 AM

Nothing more too add... It's all said imho, what this game is about.

On long term: HotA team should add some more spells and different mechanics to make other magic schools more attractive again. Since water and fire magic underperform everywhere... the games are won with 30+ ATT coz of angelic alliance artifacts so why waste energy on bless and other buff skills on water? It's just useless... Same for haste, in the end its cape of velocity that has a unremovable partial haste anyway.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted July 06, 2021 09:00 PM

Precisely. That being said, it's mostly an issue with JC meta, however - yes, HotA is being balanced mostly around such popular templates. This is why I am writing over and over again "guys, mind what HOTA creators are looking at". It's not single player performance vs. AI, that's why Phoenix4ever's ideas don't cut the mustard.

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Phoenix4ever
Phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted July 06, 2021 09:22 PM
Edited by Phoenix4ever at 21:23, 06 Jul 2021.

At least I can do what I want with HotA.
Too bad most of the HotA stuff is a bit hard to mod.

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