Who says ball of lightning isn't the best dragon ability?

[DGDobrev]

I have the dragon create it as close as possible to the stack I want it to hit. However, if nearby has a stack of similar health, which in AI's opinion can pose more threat, the lightning will attack it and not the stack you want. but, provided you have mana, you can spawn another ball of lightning and the second one in this case usually hits the stack you want.

It is a bit dodgy, but once you get to know the ability, it is very easy to control it. You should be aware of some restrictions:
The lightning has speed of 5 (I think)
After the lightning has attacked or moved, a charge is lost
A lightning can do only 2 actions (in the beginning) or 3 (at higher level)
Damage is really low against small stacks
If you have 2 or more balls of lightning, 2 cannot hit the same target in one turn

Once you get to know the ability, you're going to love it. I, personally, use it all the time, sometimes even twice (or even three times as a mage) in a round, especially if the enemy army comprises of severa stacks with 200+ units.

[Misery]

Ermm I understand that Peacefulness does improved the damage from lightning ball, but in the term of effectiveness isn't it the same as casting the lightning ball without it?(and perhaps it can be worse since the left over troops have overall more health than without Peacefulness being cast on)

Mark of Blood is the powerful tool indeed, too bad I can't find any of those lizards recruits yet and I was planning on dragon armies.

[DGDobrev]

Absolutely It was just a tool to up the damage - and to check out some of the game mechanics I was wondering about. In essence it was a simple test - I wasn't aware that the damage will jump that high, although I admit I was in total awe when it did.

However, even if the troop is left with more hp, it's also left with 30% less damage. That is serious as well.

[Zechnophobe]

A sorta funny combo, the mark + Ball Lightning. I guess the BL is a direct damage ability, but the damage is based on a percentage of total health, which is why it works.

[The Rock-man]

Really Peacefulness depends on the HP & damage of the target as to if it worth using on it or not. (It best used on High damage low health enemies and high health, low damage allies, for best effect.) It really a buff/debuff combo.

[Aster]

So, the peacefulness doesn't help killing, just for the record of the highest damage?

[DGDobrev]

Precisely. Ball of lightning will kill a % of the units - regardless of the fact if there are 1000 gorguls or 1000 dragons, and no matter the Health they got.

As I said before, Peacefulness is for posterity

[Goekhan]

I use Ball of Lightning when there are many stacks with over 300-400. And when I face fast enemies, shock is really nice (especially when multiple balls are flying around together)

[MaroonMaurader]

I'm suspicious that you can actually do even better than 134k... if you have sufficient patience. Resurrect 3, Mana Spring 3, Call of Nature 1, archdemons, and 1 gorguana... against skeleton archers and ghosts. Let the gorguana die; use the high initiative and speed of archdemons to keep them out of range of the ghosts. Whittle the skeleton archers down to just a few units, then use mana spring on your archdemons to restore mana indefinitely. Call of Nature to give the enemy ghosts a nice target to Soul Drain. You should be able to grow the enemy ghost stack to an arbitrarily large size. Then you kill off the enemy skeleton archers, resurrect your gorguana, use mark of blood + peacefulness, and follow up with Ball of Lightning.

I've never used ghosts, so I'm not certain that they drain summoned animals; that's the only point I can see where this could go wrong.

[DGDobrev]

Of course it can go a lot higher. I just gave an example of how to use it and what a wicked tool it is. I didn't do it to brag, nor did I do it to play the big guy. Everyone should be free to experiment. The game gives so many options - you simply need to utilize them