| DGDobrev |
07-09-2009 10:15 AM |
Dragons are good, especially if you manage to get the Voice of the Dragon skill (last tier skill in the paladin tree, requires a crapload of mind runes), but still, a high-morale party with good fire resistance makes a minced meat out of them, and even a mage can get it. The portrait of bill gilbert + royal griffins = +2 human morale very early in the game, meaning +20% atk/def and increased crit. Besides, you can't resurrect Black Dragons (unless you're playing Paladin and have ress skill lvl 3), which is a certain setback, because they do cost a lot and you usually have limited amounts of them.
Dragons do well for a mage because of their high HP's and initiative, allowing you to cast spells before the enemy starts advancing at you. As a mage, the only way you'll have to resurrect the Black dragons you lose is through Time Back, a spell which is usually available on the Rehau and Shetterra continents or Nameless island (haven't seen it anywhere else by now), both of which must be discovered first, and suffice to say, the maps are heavily guarded. In addition to that, with the new patches, map guards are immobile, so no map stealing anymore.
I do agree that dragons are good, but in higher difficulties (even in hard, late game, I can imagine what will be on impossible), they just don't cut it, because it's difficult and costly to resurrect them all the time. I'd rather go with a party with maximum paladins + inquisitors + ranged units with high morale + 2 more melee units in reserve (for the end-game boss Ctakhu and the last battle). Time back may restore dragons to a previous state, but it also restores the use of Paladin's unit Prayer skill, allowing you to resurrect all allies of lvl 1-4 around the paladin (it isn't hard to cast mass haste and get them around him in 1 turn, doesn't work on lvl 5 units) and hit the big resurrection button. Then hit time back and resurrect again. That usually is the best way to end the battle without any losses in the endgame. The only setback is that Prayer doesn't resurrect slain troops, but this is why you have Inquisitors. That's pretty much entire army ressed in 2 turns without even losing a sliver of mana - and it works on hard like a charm (99% of the time without the second ress, I personally only used it once in the battle with Ctakhu and once in the battle with Baal, which are the 2 toughest battles), so it will work on impossible as well. That allows your mage to cast offensive spells like crazy or your paladin or warrior to preserve their mana supply (which is usually small) for extra resurrections and buffs, since there is no gift spell anymore. We abused it enough in KBTL :)
EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I do agree dragons are good. I'm just biased and over-obsessed with high morale armies that have high chances to get a critical. As you know, a critical strike multiplies the damage by 1.5. So if you have a stack that, say, is worth 2000 leadership and crits 100% of the time, this means it's actual leadership is 3000 (because it acts as if you have 1.5x2000 units). If it crits 50% of the time, it's like you have a stack of 2500 leadership (1.25x2000 units).
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