best items for thorns

[Saiko Kila]

I don't know, but certainly the in-battle description of enemies doesn't reflect any changes in their physical defence. I was wandering about with this sword until it rebelled.

[Zechnophobe]

It is easy to check, just have a unit that can do physical damage in your party, like Archdemon. Save before battle, start battle, see how much damage it will deal to a specific stack.

Load, equip ghost blade, check again.

I am pretty sure this is what I did the first time, and that it very clearly did no more damage.

[Tianx]

Wow, if that's the case, then this will be the worst weapon of all, even more than the training sword lol

[onepiece]

I don't have it but maybe what is does is reduce resistance by half of units that have it? Like paladins and the like and not of units that don't like peasants?

[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by onepiece

Now that's going to get interesting: hunters and royal with faun and dryads could be very powerful and with that sword, they would rip through mages and the likes, although fire damage would also rip them XD.

I suppose you should get lot of fire resistance items and an archmage to cast shield on them plus divine armor would come in handy.

Quick question - I have not used Divine ARmor much yet (as it does not work on undead, whom I used in my last walkthrough of the Legend) - does it add to the negative resistance, thus reducing it, or does it increase it to 0 before further increasing it? (Same way Grease works).

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by onepiece

I don't have it but maybe what is does is reduce resistance by half of units that have it? Like paladins and the like and not of units that don't like peasants?

That is precisely what it does.

50% of 0 = 0 reduction
50% of 30% = 15% (paladin will only have 15% now, instead of 30%)

It only lowers the existing resistance by half, not the net amount by 50%.

So, it is indirectly capped at 0% and can never give negative resists.

Sort of a shame. It really should just do a flat -50% additively, not multiplicatively.

[onepiece]

So it will be useful against level 4-5 units (dragons(paladin/knight, etc.) but the problem for the thorns will still be their low attack (which would reduce their damage by 1/2 or 1/3 depending of the enemy defense, unless you played as a warrior )

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by onepiece

So it will be useful against level 4-5 units (dragons(paladin/knight, etc.) but the problem for the thorns will still be their low attack (which would reduce their damage by 1/2 or 1/3 depending of the enemy defense, unless you played as a warrior )

Well, marginally useful. There aren't too many heavily physical resistant enemies that are worth troubling yourself over with it.

I moronically purchased the Ghost Sword, but it was a very tough fight early in the game, so every bit helps.

I'm not sure if say a 10% reduction in physical resistance (if one were to use the sword against a black dragon) truly amounts to merely a 10% bonus in damage or a 11% bonus in damage. Either way, surely you can find a weapon that will have more utility.

Most of the human team and cyclops are the only worthy "physical resistant" enemies in my opinion.

And there are just so many better options to deal with them.

Yes, thorns have a very low attack rating. It seems very hard to raise it to the minimum "60" mark to converge to your optimal damage rating.

[atlatea]

I agree, to my experience, it's better to reduce their defense stat than to reduce their phys resistance with ghost sword as stated above.

Well, ghost sword only good againts ghost type units (ghost, ghost pirate, etc) and if you use physical dmg troops, for cyclops, knights, paladins, i'd rather decrease their defense than using ghost sword, unless you're planning to use the no retaliation set (which is very powerful if you use fast and damaging melee units, like horsemen and unicorn).

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by atlatea

I agree, to my experience, it's better to reduce their defense stat than to reduce their phys resistance with ghost sword as stated above.

Well, ghost sword only good againts ghost type units (ghost, ghost pirate, etc) and if you use physical dmg troops, for cyclops, knights, paladins, i'd rather decrease their defense than using ghost sword, unless you're planning to use the no retaliation set (which is very powerful if you use fast and damaging melee units, like horsemen and unicorn).

Right, anyone with a large amount of physical resistance is potentially worth while to use the ghost sword. Just do the math and away you go

Ah yeah, I forgot about them. Ghosts and the like have a whopping 50% physical resistance. So, reducing that by 25% is essentially increasing damage by 1/(1-0.25) = 33%

33% damage boost is finally worth it.

The game is just basic "best return on investment", so do the math and the path to victory is clear.

My problem with no retaliation is that, later in the game, you aren't necessarily likely to kill or cripple the stack enough to handle their normal counter attack. I think my opinion might change if I beef up stats like Caution, as I only had the full ghost set with my mage.