Are Lvl 5 Units viable anymore?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by namad

what you describe here is what's known as defensive yes! the dragons are likely to deal more damage because of their resilient nature, however if you were to measure purely their offensive output over the burst of a single turn it would be low. or at very least this is why people tend to refer to high level units as being defensive in nature.

Not dragons they aren't. At least not blackies. An example:

First turn, my blackies are first to go due to their high init. I press Wait, whittle down the mob on either edge with my shooters and prevent the enemy from advancing with Loki's touch, Ice Blades or various spawns. At the end of the first turn my blackies fly forward, hit the whittled down mob on the edge plus the one behind it. Right at the start of the second turn I cast greasy mist and my blackies do their fly'n'fire thing hitting often 4 or more stacks all at once due to them being still neatly lined up (the excellent Sabotage skill helps magnificently). Then it's just a matter of some planning to keep them out of harm's way for the rest of the fight while the other units easily mop up the thinned enemy ranks

That way the fight is decided at the beginning of the second turn, all thanks to black dragons. They're not front line shock troops but with the right tactics they're dps monsters. Throw in the crystal with decreased leadership requirement + higher morale, the 3rd level Oratory and the 3rd level Berserker skill and they're the highest dps dealing units in the game, easily.

True Red Dragons can be made tougher with Stone Skin and so on but they can burn only in a straight line which is much less usable than the blackies' zig-zag burning and frankly - you don't need dragons to be your front line tanks. There're much better units for that (Executioners, Demons, Griffins come to mind).