Fool's Cap

[Jah]

I've purchased the Fool's Cap, which according to its description is supposed to give "+1 Morale to all troops". Yet when I equip it, none of my units (engineers, droids, cannoneers, royal snakes) gain any morale. Is the item bugged, or is there something wrong with the description?

[Zechnophobe]

I've purchased the Fool's Cap, which according to its description is supposed to give "+1 Morale to all troops". Yet when I equip it, none of my units (engineers, droids, cannoneers, royal snakes) gain any morale. Is the item bugged, or is there something wrong with the description?

I believe it is a description problem, though that is basically the same as a bug from our standpoint eh?

It gives +1 Morale to Humans. Yeah, not so impressive now is it? :(.

[ckdamascus]

What the... I already responded to this thread that it only works for Humans. :( I guess the web monsters lost it. Ugh.

Anyway, that isn't the only item that has this problem. Some "Army Drums" also only works on Humans too.

[Jah]

Argh. Time to find some new headwear, then. :( So much for the idea of trying out the Lucky Set, too - I already used up the charges on the Dice (there's no way to "reload" them, is there?) and I assume the Jolly Roger mainly gives some bonuses to pirates/sea dogs, which I don't need?

[Zechnophobe]

Argh. Time to find some new headwear, then. :( So much for the idea of trying out the Lucky Set, too - I already used up the charges on the Dice (there's no way to "reload" them, is there?) and I assume the Jolly Roger mainly gives some bonuses to pirates/sea dogs, which I don't need?

No, the jolly Roger is a weapon that gives +20% crit damage. It's really good actually. That set is bordering on awesome... but the lucky dice having no luck makes them pretty bad :(.

[ckdamascus]

No, the jolly Roger is a weapon that gives +20% crit damage. It's really good actually. That set is bordering on awesome... but the lucky dice having no luck makes them pretty bad :(.

Unless I am missing something, isn't +20% to crit damage the same as +20% to base damage?

So the +20% to crit damage is far worse, since you NEED to hit a crit to benefit.

[Zechnophobe]

Unless I am missing something, isn't +20% to crit damage the same as +20% to base damage?

So the +20% to crit damage is far worse, since you NEED to hit a crit to benefit.

Yes +20% damage would be better, but this is a single item we are talking about that effects all your units. How many items give +20% damage to an entire party? The Mechanist set (or whatever its called) gives +20% damage to engineers and droids, and is about as close as you can get.

Did you have a specific item in mind when you said 'far worse'?

[ckdamascus]

Yes +20% damage would be better, but this is a single item we are talking about that effects all your units. How many items give +20% damage to an entire party? The Mechanist set (or whatever its called) gives +20% damage to engineers and droids, and is about as close as you can get.

Did you have a specific item in mind when you said 'far worse'?

Dagger of Judgement. It affects all units.

Axe of Elements, Lightning Style.


While the Jolly Roger affects all the units, not all units are great critical hitters. It only triggers IF the critical hit occurs. You are better off raising your critical hit percentage since all criticals hit do maximum damage, so you get an implicit damage bonus anyway.

If I were melee specific, I would use the Drill or Battle Axe.

For low damage units, Whip of Fire or Assassin's Dagger.

There are a lot of bows that increase damage, but mostly for the bow units.

[Zechnophobe]

Dagger of Judgement. It affects all units.

Axe of Elements, Lightning Style.


While the Jolly Roger affects all the units, not all units are great critical hitters. It only triggers IF the critical hit occurs. You are better off raising your critical hit percentage since all criticals hit do maximum damage, so you get an implicit damage bonus anyway.

If I were melee specific, I would use the Drill or Battle Axe.

For low damage units, Whip of Fire or Assassin's Dagger.

There are a lot of bows that increase damage, but mostly for the bow units.

Yeah, those are a bit different though. Axe and Dagger are both awesome. Those aren't +20% damage though. The Drill or Battleaxe are of course very specific. The types of armies you use those with tend to be... not so great.

I would never equip the Jolly Roger over the Dagger of Judgement, and probably not the axe of lightning.

As for whip/dagger/astral bow and other +1 damage items, those are obviously REALLY awesome with level 1 units. The girl power army feuled with +2 damage is I think the highest damage army you can make! (Drool, and add in the dagger of judgement for a Warrior for truly epic crit chance too!).

[ckdamascus]

Yeah, those are a bit different though. Axe and Dagger are both awesome. Those aren't +20% damage though. The Drill or Battleaxe are of course very specific. The types of armies you use those with tend to be... not so great.

I would never equip the Jolly Roger over the Dagger of Judgement, and probably not the axe of lightning.

As for whip/dagger/astral bow and other +1 damage items, those are obviously REALLY awesome with level 1 units. The girl power army feuled with +2 damage is I think the highest damage army you can make! (Drool, and add in the dagger of judgement for a Warrior for truly epic crit chance too!).

Yeah, but neither does Jolly Roger. It only does +20% damage to all units SOMETIMES. Therefore, it is a fair comparison to use expected value. So, using the Paladin unit as an example,

He does 18 damage average, and I'll start with the base critical hit of 10%.

At 10%, the "effective value" of critical hit average is 19.2.

I calculate it as such
(Unit1MaxDamage*CriticalHitBonus*Unit1CriticalPerc entage) + (Unit1AverageDamage*(1-Unit1CriticalPercentage))

Give him the Axe of Lightning +10% critical which is always given in the game (unless you prefer the other items), at 20%, the critical hit average is
20.4

Jolly roger only works on criticals, so the formula is
(Unit2MaxDamage*CriticalHitBonus*Unit2CriticalPerc entage*1.2) + (Unit2AverageDamage*(1-Unit2CriticalPercentage))

19.8 for Jolly Roger.

As your critical hit percentage improves though, Jolly Roger closes the gap more. To be practical, critical hit percentage is higher on average due to Critical hit Mind Tree and Blind Rage, so Jolly Roger might actually be somewhat better on average. Hard to say though since Jolly is only +2 attack vs +5 attack of Axe.

Jolly Roger is clearly better if you have 100% criticals. I think it breaks even around 40% critical hit relative to the Dagger of Judgement.

100% criticals is most easily achieved with Ranged units and perhaps the Demons. Another option is to use Doom.

However, with Ranged Units, you almost need a lot of other items to get to the maximum critical point and there are tons of items like the yew bow, arbator, +damage items. Even if you had Trigger for +25%, there are a lot of items which help do more damage than +20% for the subset that would benefit the most.

Hey, I went with Drill. It does WONDERS with the Shrek build. I had two Battle Axe, but it turned out ultimately the +critical sort of builds ended up being better than the +damage builds. The Shrek Build did fantastic damage and was able to tank fairly hard (although was susceptible to poison and fire).

I guess the reason why I rag on it is because, it is semi-rare (at least for me) and the total set appears sort of weak. It has a totally disposable and non-rechargeable item (the dice!). I almost never want to use it since once it is used up, it is all gone. It is a pretty good item since some of the bonuses are pretty sick, albeit, random.

If the set gave you something ridiculous, I would be willing to put up with giving up the key slots. I guess joker's cap is OK. I just wish the dice was rechargable. Perhaps it would be too overpowered though. Hmmmm maybe this calls for another KB build that involves the Joker's Set.....

Maybe I was wrong, maybe the Joker's set is really well thought out. With the +20% critical base, +1 human morale,... the Jolly Roger would easily be superior to potentially the dagger of judgment if the Joker's set was complete.

The only problem with girl power is that it is verrry hard to achieve ~60 attack in the early rounds of battle (Frenzy is the only other way to get them really high up). Nevermind that even if you do hit 60 attack, you need the enemy to be darn close to 0 defense. :)

Because of that, it is not always easy for them to reach their maximum damage potential which can easily push probably 50-60K per hit.

I also hate how fragile they are. :( There was a lot of fun to the "beefy build" guys like the Shrek Build and Mega Summon build. Sure, I can only do like 10-19K/damage on average but they were nearly invincible and never lost damage potential by much.

The fairies are fast though and float! Ah... finally I can use traps with impunity. They are almost like the ranged armies.

Nothing quite beats the power of the little Goblin though. They can easily hit100% critical thanks to the Orc +10 morale bonus after the first kill, adrenaline lets them have a random chance to attack again, Zeroing In raises their attack every round... they can easily hit maximum damage so quickly.

[Zechnophobe]

Well, girl power doesn't really need to have the full 300% attack, since their base damage is so incredibly high compared to their leadership. Fairies are what... 1-2? 1-3? Don't have them in front of me, but I think it's something like 2 average damage and 7 leadership. +2 damage from whip and dagger = 4 on average. 4 damage per 7 leadership compared to a black dragon, for instance, doing 120 damage per 2500 leadership. Even the black dragon doing FULL DAMAGE with +60 attack over def, is still only 360 to 2500, much worse than the fairy.

Not that I actually use the girl power set, but it is hard to deny its awesomeness.

So Paladin is 16-20 right? So he crits for 30, making his average with 10% crit = 18.3, not 18.2 Increasing by another 10% would yield 18.6. (18 + 20% of 30). If you instead went with the jolly roger you'd get 36 crit damage, and so would do 18.36 damage, much worse than the axe of lightning. These two effects are multiplicative however. That is, the more CRIT chance you have, the more crit damage you want.

My most common way of playing is Dragons. For example Red Dragons have 25% crit chance. With +7% from Rage medal, +7% from Prayer you get 39%. With 2 morale from Voice that's 52%. Belt of chance is 65% Completing the Jolly Roger and Set would give you 91%. At that point... yeah hard to go against it. But that assumes you have the whole set, which is pretty darn rare. (I think they are all considered 'pirate' class items so you don't have many places to find them.

[ckdamascus]

Well, girl power doesn't really need to have the full 300% attack, since their base damage is so incredibly high compared to their leadership. Fairies are what... 1-2? 1-3? Don't have them in front of me, but I think it's something like 2 average damage and 7 leadership. +2 damage from whip and dagger = 4 on average. 4 damage per 7 leadership compared to a black dragon, for instance, doing 120 damage per 2500 leadership. Even the black dragon doing FULL DAMAGE with +60 attack over def, is still only 360 to 2500, much worse than the fairy.

Not that I actually use the girl power set, but it is hard to deny its awesomeness.


Well, all level 5s do really bad damage compared to the lower level ones if you can get the +60 attack bonus for the lower level units.

The big advantage is they tend to do stable damage over each round, since it is much harder to kill level 5 units, so the granular damage works against them.

Whereas, all it takes is one bad hit, and my fairies or ranged units do far less.

Anyway, the fairies seem to do SIMILAR damage to the goblin ranged army at times. On paper though they should be doing far more. It is the lack of Zeroing In. :( I guess not a big deal either way. :) I just really wanted to do 60K damage per hit, instead of like 18-25K damage per hit.

My Shrek army (I think it was the troll or possibly ogre) was doing maybe 12-18K damage consistently.


So Paladin is 16-20 right? So he crits for 30, making his average with 10% crit = 18.3, not 18.2 Increasing by another 10% would yield 18.6. (18 + 20% of 30). If you instead went with the jolly roger you'd get 36 crit damage, and so would do 18.36 damage, much worse than the axe of lightning. These two effects are multiplicative however. That is, the more CRIT chance you have, the more crit damage you want.

My most common way of playing is Dragons. For example Red Dragons have 25% crit chance. With +7% from Rage medal, +7% from Prayer you get 39%. With 2 morale from Voice that's 52%. Belt of chance is 65% Completing the Jolly Roger and Set would give you 91%. At that point... yeah hard to go against it. But that assumes you have the whole set, which is pretty darn rare. (I think they are all considered 'pirate' class items so you don't have many places to find them.

Hm, not sure how you are doing your calculations, I posted mine though. I am doing a weighted average of the damage based on probability of a critical hit. e.g. (average damage * prob of not doing critical) + (critical hit damage * prob of doing critical).

But, critical damage is a function of base damage. The more damage you do, the more damage criticals do. :) Maybe we are saying the same thing but using different terminology.

e.g. if you get the Drill item, you increase your "critical hit damage" by 25%. You also increase your base damage by 25%.

However, in the case of Jolly Roger, you ONLY do more damage IF you can score a critical hit.

Increasing your critical hit percentage increases your expected value damage since a critical hit natural does more damage (it maxes out), and is an implicit damage booster.

I do find it a little scary though that Jolly Roger actually does seem to improve expected value of damage fairly well. Not sure if it is enough for me to come out of "retirement" so to speak.

I love using dragons too. I rarely can spare the runes for Voice though.

[Zechnophobe]

I don't think we are really disagreeing anymore, heh. We both use Dagger of Judgement over it, and I rarely end the game with it. But I have used the complete set over the Axe of lightning. In my head I break it down as:

1) Set bonus by itself( +20% crit) is better than the +10% crit of the axe.
2) Jolly roger bonus if considered to be taking up the slot the dice takeup is pretty good on top of that.
3) Fools cap not completely terrible, if you have two hat slots.

As for crit calculations, the crit damage you deal is = 1.5*(Maxdamage) of a unit. So a 16 to 20 unit deals 30 on a crit. This means that the same average damage doesn't yield equal crit values. A unit that deals 14-22 damage also averages 18 (like 16-20 does) but crits for 33 instead of 30.

So, your average damage is that base value + chanceOfCrit * CritDamage. So 18 + .10*30 = 18.3. Paladin's do not crit parcitularly Well!

My calculations for crit numbers was also based on morale. +2 Morale grants 130% of CURRENT crit value, not base.

So if you start with 10, and have 30 from other sources, you get 40, and then you multiply that 40 by 1.3 and get 52. Morale on low level units basically just gives you more Crit chance, since the percent boost to their base stats isn't very useful. This is why Voice of The Dragon is such a must! Two morale on a black dragon gives it +14 attack and defense! (And of course 130% chance of critting)

[ckdamascus]

I don't think we are really disagreeing anymore, heh. We both use Dagger of Judgement over it, and I rarely end the game with it. But I have used the complete set over the Axe of lightning. In my head I break it down as:

1) Set bonus by itself( +20% crit) is better than the +10% crit of the axe.
2) Jolly roger bonus if considered to be taking up the slot the dice takeup is pretty good on top of that.
3) Fools cap not completely terrible, if you have two hat slots.

As for crit calculations, the crit damage you deal is = 1.5*(Maxdamage) of a unit. So a 16 to 20 unit deals 30 on a crit. This means that the same average damage doesn't yield equal crit values. A unit that deals 14-22 damage also averages 18 (like 16-20 does) but crits for 33 instead of 30.

So, your average damage is that base value + chanceOfCrit * CritDamage. So 18 + .10*30 = 18.3. Paladin's do not crit parcitularly Well!

My calculations for crit numbers was also based on morale. +2 Morale grants 130% of CURRENT crit value, not base.

So if you start with 10, and have 30 from other sources, you get 40, and then you multiply that 40 by 1.3 and get 52. Morale on low level units basically just gives you more Crit chance, since the percent boost to their base stats isn't very useful. This is why Voice of The Dragon is such a must! Two morale on a black dragon gives it +14 attack and defense! (And of course 130% chance of critting)

Actually, based on my math, I think Jolly Roger is better in a lot of practical cases, even though I would naturally pick Dagger of Judgement. However, I forgot to account for scaling critical bonuses due to morale.

I think the only hero that lets you get a hat is Trigger.

I'm fully aware of how morale works, if I didn't I would never have toted on the power of Goblins. They can reach 100% critical very easily due to +10 morale after first kill. It also makes all +crit items extremely powerful with high morale teams.

I don't agree with your average damage mathematics, and I believe mine makes more sense.

So, your average damage is that base value + chanceOfCrit * CritDamage. So 18 + .10*30 = 18.3. Paladin's do not crit parcitularly Well!

10% of 30 is 3, not 0.3, but nevermind that detail as something else is wrong.

So, if you had a 100% chance of doing a critical, using your formula, your average is 18+(1*30) or 48?

Your base formula is still clearly wrong since you can never do more than 30 damage per hit.

My method accounts for this.

At 10% critical
18*(1-0.1) + 30*(0.1) = 19.2
18*(0.9) + 3 = 19.2
16.2 + 3 = 19.2

At 100% critical
18*(1-1) + 30*(1) = 30.
18*(0) + 30 = 30
0 + 30 = 30

Back to voice,

Voice of the Dragon costs a LOT of runes, and as I have stated many times, Dragons just don't really do a lot of damage. They are very tanky though, have shoot-through no-retaliation hits, and some no-retaliations abilities, but all in all they just aren't crazy damage dealers compared to the other units I have access to.

I just find myself never having enough runes to get all the abilities I want and Voice of the Dragon. I suppose that is the ONE saving grace of being a Paladin Class, but I rarely play Paladins.

[Zechnophobe]

Bwah? Yeah I totally biffed the math there. I normally think of it as Base Damage + Bonus from crit * chance, so a paladin would do 18 base and 30 on crit, bonus of 12, so 10% of 12 is 1.2 = 19.2.

I'm not sure what happened up there.

I do disagree on damage of dragons though. Well, of Red, black, and Bone dragons at least (green are kinda more utility than anything else). The base damage isn't incredible, but:

1) Their normal attack lets them hit two targets, so that's a pseudo doubling.
2) All dragons have a special attack that lets them hit 3 or more targets fairly easily.
3) All but Green dragons have after effects that do nice percentage damage to stacks.

The all dragon army also has the huge advantage of not having any weak units to coddle. Just so long as you get target and Time back about 2/3rds of the way through the game so you can beat down enemies that can actually kill your dragons...

Edit: Oh yeah, and for Voice, I don't prioritize it over other things unless I'm using an all dragon lineup. Then it gives a large bonus to crit, stats, and heck, 6 rage, for basically my whole army (4 out of 5 stacks). It is a lot of runes but there are few other effects in the game stronger than it. Sure beats getting a few more attack, defense or Int.