Tip: Dive Bomber Tactic

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by ganjatron

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I need some good tips on how to use Kamikaze. With the "Destroyer" mage skill, this has become hands-down the most damaging spell in my spell book and the mana efficiency is great.

Kamikaze 2165-4330 damage to all surrounding enemies for 15 mana! But the problem is getting the enemy to surround my suicide squad for maximum efficiency. By contrast, my often used damage spell is Fire Rain, and it does 2525-2885 damage in the same range (7-cell area) for 20 mana. That alone is awesome damage-to-cost ratio, but Kamikaze is way better... but too random.

So any kamikaze tacticians here want to lay out a good strategy? I also have Higher Magic x 3 so I can cast twice per battle. I usually create a phantom of my green dragon, and set kamikaze on it 1st round. Then send the dragon in (I pick the dragon because it is a unit in my army regardless of this strategy, and it has good enough speed to go plant itself right in front of the enemy army.) This works out ok, but I could easily just cast Fire Rain twice and have a better damage output. I've also tried demon portal x 2, then kamikaze x 2 in the second round. I might try out this griffin strategy, but is there any viable way to do this without wasting a spell, or wasting a slot with griffins?

Split one griffin, kamikaze on it, send it in, and kamikaze an enemy that may die for domino effect is something I may try today.

Basically, Kamikaze is great for Phantomed or summoned units, like the Dryad's Thorns for example. I would have thought the best way to get it surrounded is to Phantom a Griffin , which might give you 50-100 Phantomed Griffins later in the game if you have level 3 Phantom spell. So you send your original Griffin into the middle of the map, Phantom from it and send the phantomed Griffins straight into the enemy before they have a chance to move at all. If there are no ranged units in the enemy stacks, you might be completely surrounded. I have had some success with Kamikaze like this but ultimately I found it more straightforward to use Fire Rain.

Fire Rain - basic spell for massed forces. 2 per turn for 3 turns with Higher Magic x 3. 120 mana needed or even less if you have the mana regeneration thingy.

Ice Snake - for lone enemies or those resistant to fire (demons, dragons). Very useful spell.

Armageddon - especially against somewhat weaker stacks, but lots of them (say 8-10 stacks) and especially against large groups of Black and Red Dragons.

Ghost Blade - later in the fight or against creatures with good resistance (eg Cyclops). Only costs 10 mana.

I would rate all of these above Kamikaze.

EDIT: and I am wondering just how useful dragons are, especially Bone (useless) and Green (not the best). I think a Mage can use hordes of cheap stacks more efficiently. In the land of the dead, I had big stacks of undead spiders, skeleton soldiers and ghouls. I just spammed Armageddon and Fire Rain and cheaply filled up my stacks after the fight. You can't use Armageddon if you have expensive units like dragons.