[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Damage. I didn't think leadership was that important either, but it really is the pinnacle of everything. Units do FAR FAR FAR more damage, your units abilities gain far more, etc. Of course it is overpowered to have a warrior with too much mage power, and a mage with too much leadership. That's why one should strive for it.

Pop quiz, what is better? -20% leadership for paladins or +20% damage for paladins OR +20% critical for paladins?

+20% damage, IMHO. Critical is nice, but doesn't happen all the time. Btw, I think a high attack skill is more important then high leadership. Especially againts non-hero armies, even if they are much bigger, you'll have the advantage.

That's the problem. The mind tree is extremely good as support, but not very good otherwise. Morale boosts are great, but they can be eliminated by the enemy. Adrenaline is too luck based. With the ability to kite or outwit stronger enemies, learning isn't that wonderful (besides raising your final score).

How can Morale be eliminated? Apart from Necromancers...

So far the only ability I really want in mind tree is Level 3 critical hit.

Trust me, Resurrection is nifty too. It boosts not only the Paladin's Prayer, but the Rune Mage's Revive too. Unless it's bugged, of course - didn't get there to try it yet.

I agree there are some stupid skills like Diplomacy, but the makers made it sure even stuff like Neatness increases some other stat so it's not a waste of runes.

I mean, maybe if it was much easier to resurrect dragons. Paladins + Dragons + Rune Mages.... this MIGHT work. Hmmmmm.

Rune Mages can resurrect dragons, so yeah, that'd work well.

I hate royal griffins since they hate dragons. Eh, there are FAR FAR FAR cheaper ways to boost royal griffin's morale, and, morale can be diminished by negative status effects. Royal snakes are cool, but I don't like them either haha.

I found Dragons to be over-rated. In my Legend Walkthrough, my Blackies were my tanks, sure - but who did the most damage? Royal Snakes and Griffins. Simply, even with high Leadership, you will never get enough of them to do the same damage as a lower level unit with good attack and damage. Same thing happend with my Lizardmen army and I was using a Warrior - my Gorguls often did twice the damage then the Tirexes. The Level 5 units are very important as the damage-absorbers, though, and of course, Blackies can really wreak havoc on plants or if you cast Oily Cloud.

Well, the mana thing is mitigated by transmute and mana accelerator. Yeah, pure melee is a little tough. Looks like I am going with somewhat a hybrid build for now. I didn't realize just how AWESOME assassin's dagger is to synergize with goblins and assassins. Gross.

Indeed. You are using Furious Goblins, then?

Mostly because mages spells ... they sort of suck in Impossible mode. At last the pure damage ones. Black Hole sort of changed that a little bit, but oddly it falls into the SAME problem you described. You wont' have enough offense to win because you are out gunned.

I played Mage on Hard in Legend, and found the damage spells slightly waning in the last parts of the game, but never to a big extent. I had 2 Heart of Flame and very high Intellect, so any enemy fell to a Grease+Fire Rain combo after a while, until then, there is Slow. As for Dragons, I used Skeleton Archers with Dragon arrow, or summons.

Spells like pygmy, helplessness, Super Phantom raise a mages's damage level to somewhat similar levels as a warrior.

I think the new boosted summons like Phoenix, Infernal Dragon, Evil Book are pretty powerfull too - only saw the enemy cast them, but they are wastly more potent.

But a warrior with proper usage can still cast pygmy. But mages got the double cast, so they have more flexibility. Paladins? What do they have?

I'd like to see that Warrior... you have to sacrifice a lot of Warrior skills to get mana and intellect that high, or wear proper Mage gear.

Mage's biggest advantage is double cast. So, it isn't like the warrior can't use magic either. It is a bit harder at first for the warrior, until he gets order/distortion and transmute.

But he'll never get enough Intellect or Mana to make those spells count, that's my point. He can stick to low-mana spells like Slow or Stone Skin, but try casting Level III Hypnotize with a Warrior, first you will not be able to Hypnotize any troop, second, you'll be out of mana in one turn.

So, yeah if I go Paladins, basically I have to go dragons and rune mages. Not necessarily a bad thing, but if anything, that sounds like doing the "same thing" over and over again to me.

Again, why? I'll most likely replay the game on Hard with a Paladin, going with an all-elven army. It's not impossible.

Right now I'm still able to switch between melee and ranged as a warrior or a hybrid of both ranged/melee.

I thought you were doing an experiment on playing using only melee units... now I am confused.

[edit]
Sorry if I sounded so negative. I think I also got a bit off topic.

No problem. I am not debating whether any caste is better then the other, I'm just saying, I found playing a Paladin just as interesting as the other two castes, and not any harder.

I think another way the paladin could be more "useful" so to speak is he can clearly traverse deeper into the mage tree than the warrior can. I'm already able to hit level 3 distortion / level 3 order with the warrior at level 23?

I am on Level 11 and I could have already gotten Level 2 for both, but I am developing my pally to another direction first - warrior skills are more important right now, and I don't need Level III resurrection yet.

I suppose the paladin can trade away his mind runes to max out either warrior or mage tree. I'm not a big fan of trading though since it is still less efficient.

It'd be nice if the old Paladin Rune Stone skill would still be there, though yeah, the trading is an option. I forgot how the rates were, though.

So I need to find a mage skill that I wouldn't normally get as a warrior that the paladin can get, that has high utility.

I'm thinking, maybe level 3 magic light? Combined with the paladin's native resurrection skill, that should let me resurrect a lot of units, yeah? Sometimes it is more convenient than the turn back time combo + paladins.

Although, I hate how you need so much intellect to make spells useful. Bleh.

Magic Light only heals units, does not resurrect. It's a pretty useless spell, never used it with a Mage either, unless I wanted some enemy undead to move into a more favourable position for a Fire Rain.

Paladins can easily max out Healer and thus can increase the effect of God Armour, Heal and Resurrect ( the latter even further as they have another skill for it). I know, you say a Mage can do this - yep, but in Battle a Mage will be busy chucking damage spells at the enemy, or hypnotizing enemies and putting Sheep and Doom/Pygmy on them. What I was trying to say all along, the Palading gaming style is buff spells/support, he can do that better then the warrior due to higher intellect/mana, and he has better attack/defense and leadership then the mage. He is your typical Holy Warrior leader. Pretty much the same as the Paladin class was in the original King's Bounty, where it was my favourite too.