Purple Dragon

[rollems]

Purple Dragon. Do you use the ball of lightning ability ?
i picked this dragon and now stuck with it... i hope it was not a bad choice.

[DGDobrev]

Ball of Lightning is THE BEST pet dragon ability, but it takes some work to have it shine. It doesn't cost much rage when maxed, and kills a proportion of the squad, just like Reaper's ability in KBTL. Top it up with some gorguanas and Mark of Blood and you can kill up to 96% of the stack in one go.

However, at the start of the game, Ball of Lightning is somewhat weak, because the stacks are small and it won't do much on its own.

[rollems]

thanx also just saw some of ur screenshots.... what a relief. i am happy now :D

[dashcunning]

Don't forget it shoots 3 times per actual skill use. So in comparing it to the other damaging skills, it costs a third or does 3x as much damage, however you want to look at it. Furthermore, it generates rage for you, which the other 3 damaging skills do not. It does not however generate extra dragon experience, which the other 3 do.

[Zechnophobe]

Yeah, the harder the difficulty, the more valuable it is. Impossible paladin game I'm playing, and it was even useful against a stack of 900 peasants on Scarlet Wind. Did significantly more damage than crushing blow... (Not that I level up crushing blow anymore, it ends up the worsed use of your dragon levels in the long run).

[KongMysen]

Only real downside is the rest after each cast.

Late game is where the Orb really shines the most, but my Warrior starts with much more rage than 1 orb casting costs, and rage will be maxed before round 2. -which makes it even more annoying, that you cant use the dragon in that round.

I usually awake the dragon, when I use the Orb.

[DGDobrev]

Well, the tactic: Lightning + Awaken Dragon + Fiery Phantoms is quite a blast for a warrior, since if both abilities are well upgraded, the ball of lightning will have +1 rest (2 turns) and the phantoms will be at rest 1 (one turn). This allows you to cast a second ball of lightning on the second turn without worrying about the rest time afterwards (because the enemy stacks have seriously diminished already), which is great.

[fable]

I'm not upgrading ball lightning with my warrior to keep the 1 turn rest. For 30 rage, I get about 30% damage and 50% shock. I'm casting a lot of stone skins in the early turns, so no time for awake dragons. When I can afford the 2 turn rest, I rather lay a Mythic Egg.
With my mage, the 2 turn rest was not a problem, and Mythic Egg is much weaker.

[ender]

As a mage, if you have 105+ rage at start of battle, you can do some damage with 3 Lightning in first round (tried in Reha Arena battles).

[N3MES1S]

As far as i know, ball of lighting is based on the ammounth of hit points your enemy troop has. If u can combine ball of lightning + any spell that increase health (i think peacefulness cant remember well), u can kill 2/3 from a troop (or the entire troop on higher levels) of 1000-1500 units (and if u use , like DGDobrev said, the mark of blood u can see how the light shine -.-).. This means ball of lightining is "designed" for big numbers troops.

[Zechnophobe]

Not quite. If you increase their health, it does do more damage, but it won't kill more units, due to the increased health. Effects that increase magic damage however will help quite a bit. You may notice that Ball lightning is more effective against droids, due to their -50% magic resistance.

[DGDobrev]

Well explained :) In essence, using peacefulness in conjunction with mark of blood and ball of lightning is just for posterity.

It will be fun if anyone finds a really, really big stack of droids on impossible and does the trick you explaned, Zechno. The damage can be literally sky-high.

[Elias_Maluco]

Ball of lighting is really the best ability, late game.

At the beggining, it does not seems that effective. I just finished Paladin (hard), played with the Blue dragon. Now I restarted with Warrior, using Purple. I found lighting not being too useful in low level battles, most of the times.

And I really miss the extra initiative the Blue gave to my snakes and such. The +1 attack the Purple gives doest not makes much of a difference later on, and you will eventually get the ball anyway. But the +1 initiative to animals is useful through the whole game.

Thus, I think Blue is the best pet Dragon.

[pavned]

PErsonaly I think the best to start with is the Green one for the treasure finding ability. You can find some good stuff as early as the training drill.

But I do love the Ball of Lightning, especially on impossible where there's enormous stack of ennemies.

[Zechnophobe]

Well explained :) In essence, using peacefulness in conjunction with mark of blood and ball of lightning is just for posterity.

It will be fun if anyone finds a really, really big stack of droids on impossible and does the trick you explaned, Zechno. The damage can be literally sky-high.

That's an interesting point. You should be able to mark the droids, plus lightning them and do 120% of the stacks health in damage. Would be really funny if it worked.

[N3MES1S]

Not quite. If you increase their health, it does do more damage, but it won't kill more units, due to the increased health. Effects that increase magic damage however will help quite a bit. You may notice that Ball lightning is more effective against droids, due to their -50% magic resistance.

Ball of lightning is based on % of the troop health per unit, not on atk power (atk power on ball of lightning means that u can kill more % on 1 troop). So, if u raise the health of a entire troop, u kill more % on that troop. Almost thats the way it works for me -.-

[Zechnophobe]

Ah, you are incorrect. The damage number is equal to a percent of the total health of the stack. So by increasing the health by 30% you will increase the damage by 30%, but will not kill any more units, due to that health increase, it is a wash.

Keep an eye out for it, if you have a max ball lightning, and have it hit stacks with peacefulness on them, it still won't kill more than half the stack. (unless the stack has weakness to magic, like bots).

[Goekhan]

At first levels, Ball of Lightning will be somewhat useless. Low shock chance, low damage%. And since enemy total HP will be also low, Crushing Blow will defeat Ball of Lightning.

And N3M3S1S, you're totally incorrect. It's basic calculus for God's sake. Increasing health of a troop doesn't mean stack number grows bigger. Total stack hp gets bigger.

Use it when you face an enemy stack(s) with very high total hp.