Dragon arrows on Skel archers VS Hunters

[iregev]

Guys,
I am playing with Elves Hunters and skeleton archers. and I noticed that dragon arrow spell is the most effective on the skeleton.

the hunter without dragon arrow will kill 2 black dragons and with dragon arrows will kill 3.

Skeleton archers will kill 2 w/o spell and 8-10 with it
any thoughts why

[Koki]

Probably leadership to damage ratio is better for the skelies?

[Zonc]

Probably leadership to damage ratio is better for the skelies?

No it's not the thing (I mean not the ONLY thing). Both units were designed to have similar power without Dragon Arrows. Skellies have better leadership/dmg ratio, but Elves have no range penalty and better attack. Dragon Arrows change these two things, it turns off range penalty and blows through enemy's defence, meaning that skellies low attack isn't a factor anymore. That's why this spell is so awesome with low level archers (I use it with my Bowmen and it's always first spell in battle)

[Stepsongrapes]

No it's not the thing (I mean not the ONLY thing). Both units were designed to have similar power without Dragon Arrows. Skellies have better leadership/dmg ratio, but Elves have no range penalty and better attack. Dragon Arrows change these two things, it turns off range penalty and blows through enemy's defence, meaning that skellies low attack isn't a factor anymore. That's why this spell is so awesome with low level archers (I use it with my Bowmen and it's always first spell in battle)


OP's specific situation implies that he has a pretty high attack modifier. It sounds like the hunters are bumping up against the 3X damage cap at 30+ attack value on the hunter, but the skeletons are still under the cap. Essentially, the hunters aren't getting the full benefit of dragon arrows if your attack modifier to too high.

For players with a lower attack modifier, hunters tend to show more dramatic benefit from dragon arrows and closer parity to skeletons.

[iregev]

yes I have high attack modifier - playing warrior on impossible ~20 attack, and have the dwarven telescope. So If I was playing a mage would it been different.

[Stepsongrapes]

Yeah. Basically, if your archer unit (hunter or otherwise) has an attack value that stacks with your modifier to yield a modified attack that is over 30, you're losing the full affect of dragon arrows. The skeletons, having a lower unmodified attack avoid suffering from this or suffer from it less than a hunter.

Roughly speaking, each point of difference between defense and attack yields a 3.3% damage increase, capped at 300% (3X base damage). Dragon arrows drops the target's defense to zero leaving a higher chance that you will hit that cap.

EDIT: you can test it yourself by repeating your black dragon kill test with the hunters after shedding most of your +attack gear. Watch the damage numbers and you should see a bigger difference, with and without the dragon arrows.

[Johannes]

I started thinking I finaly needed a shooter stack, mainly to use with dragon arrows. Before replacement my stack was:
Lake Fairies
Sprites
Dryads
Demoness
Emerald dragons

Thinking I'll replace Demoness for most fights where the shooters are needed.
Now here's my point.

Thorn-Hunters:
leadership 8, damage 1-2, dmg/leadership 0,1875

with issharas whip and poision dagger which the rest of my army allready needs:
leadership 8, damage 3-4, dmg/leadership 0,4375 (hello double damage)

with crown of blackthorn which only benefits them but doesen't replace anything vital:
leadership 8, damage 4-6 dmg/leadership 0,625 (50% more). For the interested skeleton archers have 0.3214dmg/leadership which is very close to half. Elven hunters end up at 0.07dmg/leadership...

This is to be compared with what I allways thought was the undisputed dmg/leadership favorite lake fairies/sprites which both have 0.5. This is from a ranged stack.

If dragon arrows reduce defense to 0 then 1 in attack would be enough to hit the 300% cap. On paper it seems like by far the best chooice of all troops in the game but we'll see how it turns out in practice.

Oh and as a bonus the sprites provide +1morale for the thorns aswell, any other way to get the morale up?

[jwallstone]

What do you mean by "If dragon arrows reduce defense to 0 then 1 in attack would be enough to hit the 300% cap"?

If you are thinking that the damage of thorns with the whip, dagger, and crown is already 300% their damage without those items, that's not how Attack works. Attack is simply a multiplier on a unit's damage, and is capped to 300% of base damage (whether it is 1-2 dmg or 4-6 dmg). But since those items actually increase base damage, you still get benefits from additional attack. In other words, the 300% cap isn't on what the thorns would do without any items/enhancements, but on the base damage value, which would be 4-6 dmg with all those items.

@Stepsongrapes: If each point of attack higher than defense adds 3.3%, then 30 attack-defense would add 100%. You would need an additional 90 attack in order to get to a 300% bonus, not 30 attack. Actually, I think it might be that the damage of the troop is limited to 300% of base, which means only a 200% improvement is allowed (which is different than adding 300% to base, which would result in 400% of base). This means that an attack minus enemy defense of 60 would reach the 300% cap.

[Johannes]

I understand the difference between damage value and attack and wrote very specificly attack. My point was that your Attack value vs Oponents Defense value decides what % bonus you get to your Damage value. Since the relation between any positive value (like 1) vs 0 is infinity I asumed infinity would be enough to hit the 300% cap. I'm still not sure though if the damage will be 4-6 x 3 or 1-2 x 3 +3-4 (- is range not minus here).

Anyways, a picture says more than a thousen words and three pictures makes everything very clear:
http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/5526/thornhunter2.jpg
(dragon arrows don't work on thorn-hunters)

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/4673/thornhunter1.jpg
(the black dragon stack crit me for 16k and killed the entire stack before they got a chance to act in the first turn)

http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/5208/thornhunter3.jpg
(normal hit on the low side with lvl3 dragon slayer on, enough to devastate all dragon stacks)

In conclusion I think they'll be fine without dragon arrows which is nice but will probably need some babysitting.

[jwallstone]

It is not the ratio that matters, it is the difference. 1 Attack versus 0 defense gets you (1-0) * 3.3% = 3.3% bonus to damage. The formula is (attack - defense) * 3.3% = % bonus. You don't divide your attack by your opponents defense.

[Stepsongrapes]

It is not the ratio that matters, it is the difference. 1 Attack versus 0 defense gets you (1-0) * 3.3% = 3.3% bonus to damage. The formula is (attack - defense) * 3.3% = % bonus. You don't divide your attack by your opponents defense.

Jwall is correct- attack to defense is difference, not a ratio.

Dragon Arrows isn't THAT uber/busted.

FYI, whenever you use things like whip and dagger, the lower the based damage, the bigger the benefit, obviously.

So if you're going to tie-up your weapon slots with those, you definitely should go with the most weenie army you can find.