Worthless spells

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

As far as i know sacrifice is only way to restock your army without traveling between islands. I usually wait for 3-4 lvl worth of leadership and pick some easy fight, before finishing spend 5-6 turns sacrificing/resurrecting units.
Why would you want astral resistance ? You need to kill as much as possible to gain enough HP worth for new units.
For shamans i think your mistaken. They can get magic axes almost every turn thx to thirst for glory, and fighting spirit. Lets say you use magic axes to kill some enemy spent 8 adrenaline, then with other orc units kill and every orc get 4-12 more adrenaline (shaman even more because thirst for glory), it`s good chance that shamans will regain magic axes in next turn. Use them to heal any dmg made to your units for 8 adrenaline, and again next turn if some unit is killed by your orc units shamans get 4-12+ more adrenaline get over max and reset magic axes again . . . and so on, almost every turn magic axes available. If it doesnt happen cast some totem to force enemy to waste turn killing it, and save your melee units in enemy lines.
About Mage/Shrek team my bad, i somewhere read about double casting with Shrek team and made mistake here.
For spirit strike i think your wrong, since i just tried it. 27 chieftains inflict 1500-2000 dmg with spirit strike to swordsman, then i added 200 blood shamans in army, and they inflict 7000-8500 dmg. Still think it`s crappy? Every blood shaman give 1 astral dmg to spirit strike ability to chieftains, so around 100+ shamans it get quiet a punch (spirit STRIKE-punch get it ? ).
And ogre`s and chieftains dont give each other morale. but here i must say i would pick chieftains : ogre arent affected with Orc`s ear item (-10% leadership so ogre 1000, chieftains 1080), ogre 680 hp - chieftains 850 and higher resistances, ogre dmg 50-60 - chieftains 65-91 that`s 50% more, drain is imba ability - sneer much weaker, but chieftains have aoe spirit strike. So in my opinion chieftain is better.
But as for me i cant use neither since i still cant find error with onslaught skill and adrenaline distribution to orcs in 1 round of battle. I tried to use Toadstool item to give my orcs 5-7 adrenaline in first round and it`s not working either Try to figure this out : i have shamans, ogre, chieftan, veteran orc, and blood shaman on start of battle no adrenaline for my army. Dismiss ogres and take catapults and on start of battle all my units have 5-10 adrenaline !!! WTF is wrong with that skill ?

Look at my old thread regarding Sacrifice and Astral Resistance. In the current patch, you absolutely want to have as high Astral Resistance as possible. Sacrifice will still give you the FULL benefits of the restoration, but the Astral resistance will REDUCE the damage you take.

So, I can sacrifice and restore whatever, 800 HP worth of units, while ONLY taking like 100 damage. You can look at my thread for more detailed examples, but I just want to give you a quick idea. You really want to use Sacrifice with astral resistance.

Sacrifice then Heal. Very nice deal. Much much much better than Sacrifice and Phantom (or the inferior Resurrection).

Healing doesn't matter if the Shaman die. Every other round is still wasteful, so I would need to resurrect. Every round I do not have a counter-attack giant is potentially 30-40K less damage aggregate PER GIANT against the enemy.

*yawns*, 8500 damage is very crappy if you can consider the preconditions. To do this I need to add CRAPPY units (blood shaman and normal shaman or even one of them). Shaman die too easily compared to even the Orc Chieftain, that is more to resurrect. Also, there is a big cooldown, and it hurts the CRAPPY orc chieftain's combat abilities even more, due to loss of passive adrenaline buffs.

Anyway, so why do I say 8500 damage is crappy? Shrek team works well if the leading Giant unit blows an enemy counter attack. I will typically have the giants together for this reason and spirit strike hurts friendly units AND pushes them back. Double bad.

Ogre has Ogre Rage, which gives me double my CURRENT attack not double the base attack.

Trolls gain attack from malevolence, which means any unit, friend or foe that does, he gains attack.

Orc Chieftains gain...verry little compared to those two skills.

So, while my Ogres and Trolls will quickly converge to +60 attack over defense and deal maximum damage of around 16-19K per hit AND they can hit more than once with counter strike AND they do not shift the enemy AND they do not hurt friendlys AND I do not have to sacrifice one of the other GREATER giants for this purpose, you can sort of see why I can easily say, Spirit Strike sucks.

And to top this all off the Orc Chieftain still sucks in combat. He has a very hard time reaching +60 attack over defense compared to the other giants. Yes yes he has the hit-through ability which does not hit friendlies, but considering the alternatives, not so fantastic.

I'd rather not waste a round casting Helplessness to help out a weak giant. I'd rather cast phantom, hell breath, pygmy, plague, stone skin, etc.

Onslaught is currently broken in this patch.

[RYTEDR]

I would just like to add that Exorcism is not quite as useless as suggested.

Just so you know, Exorcism works on ALL summons, not just Phantoms. Thorns from Dryads, Droids from Engineers, demons from Demonologists etc. You can't dispel those, and the damage output can be quite impressive and cripple the enemy's summons. Yes, it's a bit expensive, but you don't have to use level 3 Exorcism to still get impressive damage.

Carry on. *Disappears*

[Fatt_Shade]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Look at my old thread regarding Sacrifice and Astral Resistance. In the current patch, you absolutely want to have as high Astral Resistance as possible. Sacrifice will still give you the FULL benefits of the restoration, but the Astral resistance will REDUCE the damage you take.

Healing doesn't matter if the Shaman die. Every other round is still wasteful, so I would need to resurrect. Every round I do not have a counter-attack giant is potentially 30-40K less damage aggregate PER GIANT against the enemy.

*yawns*, 8500 damage is very crappy if you can consider the preconditions. To do this I need to add CRAPPY units (blood shaman and normal shaman or even one of them). Shaman die too easily compared to even the Orc Chieftain, that is more to resurrect. Also, there is a big cooldown, and it hurts the CRAPPY orc chieftain's combat abilities even more, due to loss of passive adrenaline buffs.

Anyway, so why do I say 8500 damage is crappy? Shrek team works well if the leading Giant unit blows an enemy counter attack. I will typically have the giants together for this reason and spirit strike hurts friendly units AND pushes them back. Double bad.

Sacrifice/Astral resistance combo didnt know thx for info. It`s even easier to restock my army now

For Shamans i didnt say every other but almost EVERY round with only 8 adrenaline cost, and their gain +1 adrenaline for every orc unit attack + from kills. They reset their abilities (fighting spirit) almost every round. And with full adrenaline they make 25-31 magic range dmg/heal your army, only few other 4th lvl can do anything similar (necromancer normal attack alchemist poison bomb). I never use shamans to fight, they stay behind and spam totems and magic axes, rarely they actually attack some1 with melee attack.

I mentioned spirit strike in general not connected to shrek build. 27 chieftains 8500 dmg to 2 units, 2000 physical and 6500 astral (bonus from 200 blood shamans). In same round 28 ogres did 2600 physical dmg to 1 unit. I just say spirit strike can be nice aoe dmg ability, and it`s 35-45 physical +1 astral dmg/blood shaman in army so no enemy have resistance to it. It`s aoe, but who said you need to do it near your own units ? And it cost 20 adrenaline, so you`ll lose 1 lvl of adreanline, but if you kill some1 with it it`s back up on 3 lvl so no combat stats lost. I did this with all orc army just to compare 5th lvl units.
I agree blood shamans fit more with orc range units, but their bonus to chieftains is nice to know.
In pure shrek team chieftains are weaker then other, but in comparing orc 5th lvl`s i like them more.

So exorcism use is to kill undead/demons, and demonolog can summon demon, so does that mean this spell make x3 dmg to them (they are both summoned and demon) Actually i never use it since every time i get that spell i already have some better available.

[Zechnophobe]

I think Fatt, you really just need to have tried out these combat styles before decrying the spell. Level 5 armies are very strong, and often great for smooth no-loss runs. When you have 800 hit point units, a level 1 Healing Light is much MUCH less cumbersome in many situations than sacrifice, Turnback Time, etc tricks.

It's a lot like Magic Shackles. You just... need it sometimes.

[Fatt_Shade]

I agree that 5th lvl are great to play, and life light is handy with them it`s just that i never played Shrek team (tried 4 times, and every time one of my giant firend missing in all game, and using trophies to upgrade orc veterans is to expensive Just never had luck with shrek units.
As for dragons they are available in 100% games but not much fun to play repedetly
(1 playthrough with them was enough), and there life light wasnt much help killed my bone and not working for black`s.
It`s not that i dont know about using life light it`s just i never had opportunity for it
Only my thought for such mana/heal ratio on 3lvl it should resurrect or at least remove poison/burn. But bince almost no1 use more then 1lvl life light thats why i said it`s worthless. For pure dmg spell there are many better choices, and for heal 1lvl is more then enough, who ever need heal for 3k+ Hp no unit have so much. So there`s no need to upgrade it=worthless. Spell that is possible to use for only 7 units in all game (rune mage, red dragon, green dragon, ogre, chieftain, troll, giant) and not effective above first lvl is not something i`d pick as good spell.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

I agree that 5th lvl are great to play, and life light is handy with them it`s just that i never played Shrek team (tried 4 times, and every time one of my giant firend missing in all game, and using trophies to upgrade orc veterans is to expensive Just never had luck with shrek units.
As for dragons they are available in 100% games but not much fun to play repedetly
(1 playthrough with them was enough), and there life light wasnt much help killed my bone and not working for black`s.
It`s not that i dont know about using life light it`s just i never had opportunity for it
Only my thought for such mana/heal ratio on 3lvl it should resurrect or at least remove poison/burn. But bince almost no1 use more then 1lvl life light thats why i said it`s worthless. For pure dmg spell there are many better choices, and for heal 1lvl is more then enough, who ever need heal for 3k+ Hp no unit have so much. So there`s no need to upgrade it=worthless. Spell that is possible to use for only 7 units in all game (rune mage, red dragon, green dragon, ogre, chieftain, troll, giant) and not effective above first lvl is not something i`d pick as good spell.

In the latest patch, trophies no longer are based on your leadership/enemy leadership or whatever befangled formula they had. (darn, it was so fun netting nearly a thousand trophies in a single battle).

They are based on your current experience level. If you use the trophy badge throughout the early game, you should have plenty by the time you need them.