Dragon arrows on Skel archers VS Hunters

[Stepsongrapes]

Yeah. Basically, if your archer unit (hunter or otherwise) has an attack value that stacks with your modifier to yield a modified attack that is over 30, you're losing the full affect of dragon arrows. The skeletons, having a lower unmodified attack avoid suffering from this or suffer from it less than a hunter.

Roughly speaking, each point of difference between defense and attack yields a 3.3% damage increase, capped at 300% (3X base damage). Dragon arrows drops the target's defense to zero leaving a higher chance that you will hit that cap.

EDIT: you can test it yourself by repeating your black dragon kill test with the hunters after shedding most of your +attack gear. Watch the damage numbers and you should see a bigger difference, with and without the dragon arrows.

[Johannes]

I started thinking I finaly needed a shooter stack, mainly to use with dragon arrows. Before replacement my stack was:
Lake Fairies
Sprites
Dryads
Demoness
Emerald dragons

Thinking I'll replace Demoness for most fights where the shooters are needed.
Now here's my point.

Thorn-Hunters:
leadership 8, damage 1-2, dmg/leadership 0,1875

with issharas whip and poision dagger which the rest of my army allready needs:
leadership 8, damage 3-4, dmg/leadership 0,4375 (hello double damage)

with crown of blackthorn which only benefits them but doesen't replace anything vital:
leadership 8, damage 4-6 dmg/leadership 0,625 (50% more). For the interested skeleton archers have 0.3214dmg/leadership which is very close to half. Elven hunters end up at 0.07dmg/leadership...

This is to be compared with what I allways thought was the undisputed dmg/leadership favorite lake fairies/sprites which both have 0.5. This is from a ranged stack.

If dragon arrows reduce defense to 0 then 1 in attack would be enough to hit the 300% cap. On paper it seems like by far the best chooice of all troops in the game but we'll see how it turns out in practice.

Oh and as a bonus the sprites provide +1morale for the thorns aswell, any other way to get the morale up?

[jwallstone]

What do you mean by "If dragon arrows reduce defense to 0 then 1 in attack would be enough to hit the 300% cap"?

If you are thinking that the damage of thorns with the whip, dagger, and crown is already 300% their damage without those items, that's not how Attack works. Attack is simply a multiplier on a unit's damage, and is capped to 300% of base damage (whether it is 1-2 dmg or 4-6 dmg). But since those items actually increase base damage, you still get benefits from additional attack. In other words, the 300% cap isn't on what the thorns would do without any items/enhancements, but on the base damage value, which would be 4-6 dmg with all those items.

@Stepsongrapes: If each point of attack higher than defense adds 3.3%, then 30 attack-defense would add 100%. You would need an additional 90 attack in order to get to a 300% bonus, not 30 attack. Actually, I think it might be that the damage of the troop is limited to 300% of base, which means only a 200% improvement is allowed (which is different than adding 300% to base, which would result in 400% of base). This means that an attack minus enemy defense of 60 would reach the 300% cap.

[Johannes]

I understand the difference between damage value and attack and wrote very specificly attack. My point was that your Attack value vs Oponents Defense value decides what % bonus you get to your Damage value. Since the relation between any positive value (like 1) vs 0 is infinity I asumed infinity would be enough to hit the 300% cap. I'm still not sure though if the damage will be 4-6 x 3 or 1-2 x 3 +3-4 (- is range not minus here).

Anyways, a picture says more than a thousen words and three pictures makes everything very clear:

(dragon arrows don't work on thorn-hunters)


(the black dragon stack crit me for 16k and killed the entire stack before they got a chance to act in the first turn)


(normal hit on the low side with lvl3 dragon slayer on, enough to devastate all dragon stacks)

In conclusion I think they'll be fine without dragon arrows which is nice but will probably need some babysitting.

[jwallstone]

It is not the ratio that matters, it is the difference. 1 Attack versus 0 defense gets you (1-0) * 3.3% = 3.3% bonus to damage. The formula is (attack - defense) * 3.3% = % bonus. You don't divide your attack by your opponents defense.

[Stepsongrapes]

Originally Posted by jwallstone

It is not the ratio that matters, it is the difference. 1 Attack versus 0 defense gets you (1-0) * 3.3% = 3.3% bonus to damage. The formula is (attack - defense) * 3.3% = % bonus. You don't divide your attack by your opponents defense.

Jwall is correct- attack to defense is difference, not a ratio.

Dragon Arrows isn't THAT uber/busted.

FYI, whenever you use things like whip and dagger, the lower the based damage, the bigger the benefit, obviously.

So if you're going to tie-up your weapon slots with those, you definitely should go with the most weenie army you can find.