class difference!

[Fatt_Shade]

Skald/Paladin needed buff comparing to last 2 games tL and AP/CW. There Warrior had best rage skills and most attack/crit% and initiative for archers and hit enemy for 30k+ critical , Mage with x2 spell cast and 70+ intellect builds could dish out geyser/fire rain/death star/black hole ridiculous dmg in every turn. And Paladin had basically nothing medium army, medium intellect, and some bonus to undead/demon which were limiting considering if you have 60 attack more then enemy defense dmg is max there is no need to lower his defense further so it`s also medium bonus in some way.
Now roles have changed Warrior still have most amount of rage and highest attack/crit% due to most might runes , Mage stayed same as before with mana/intellect/x2 spell, and Paladin got some lds bonuses and changed Holy anger to Edda to pester enemy undead/demons.

[namad]

paladins were always awful...


the fixed healing ability is a) his ultimate final ability and b) useless in a no-loss run... that's right the skald's ultimate ability does LITERALLY NOTHING AT ALL in a no loss run! in fact... his ability is only really at all useful if you get OBLITERATE! which if you're doing that a lot... well it's not good!


edda? at level 2 when I first got edda it was absolutely useless, the drawbacks often outweighed the bonuses, now maybe at level 40 or something edda will rock? who knows? I don't know exactly how it scales... I'd say the paladin got ONE BUFF, the one BUFF HE ABSOLUTELY NEEDED! he has the highest leadership now, but his abilities are still the WORST ABILITIES...


you can't possibly sit there with a straight face and tell me that the spirit tree isn't still the worst tree of the three, at least now they're admitting the spirit tree is the worst, and so it's balanced by having the best leadership, seems fair to me! edda and rez after battle ultimate? don't hold a candle to alchemy+high magic! now the might tree might seem a bit weak, but... in this game... the rage system has been... UPGRADED! you have 3-5 separate rage rest cooldown timers that work simultanously now as well as improved rage bonus skills, even if the non-rage related might skills are a bit lax...


it seems like they're really focused the three classes well this time around between rage/magic/and weird gimmicks but at least your leadership rocks?

whereas before it was might/redmage/magic which was just a less well defined split... I never found rage abilities in the might tree all that key in the first 2.5 games in the series... heck... in crossworlds my mage had some fairly good rage abilities that didn't feel like I needed the might tree!!!!


using awaken dragon PLUS another spell every turn? (thanks to high magic?) makes up for a lot of the missing rage abilities from the might tree in older games? I wonder is awaken dragon even still in wotn? it seemed a bit op...



although really big question is.... can you still use guard droids+repair droids+SACRIFICE to reproduce infinitely many troops in your army? mid-battle, nearly endlessly, not only allowing you to rez, but to grow entire stacks of troops you didn't have enough of to begin with? that was CRAZY OP is that still in?

[Loopy]

Have you seen the Viking unique skill Absolute Rage? Holy crap that thing looks powerful. 50% chance for +25% attack bonus every hit, 2x critical chance on counter attacks, +50% crit damage? This is like a potential 3x your maximum damage range on every counter attack, and +50% crit damage alone will be great for any kind of ranged attack build. I mean Higher Magic is pretty damn awesome, but this comes close.

Soothsayers get Creation. I can't overstate how powerful this is. In AP we had Magic light (+% to healing, pretty bad overall) and summoner (+% to summoning, VERY nice). Now Creation does both, along with all other non-combat spells, AND gives increased duration. As far as I can tell so far it works on _everything_ non-combat, including spells and parts of spells that don't normally get boosts from intellect. Stone Skin at +52%? Hell yes. Blind for 4 turns? Yum. Even on those skills where intellect worked before it's still the equivalent of +40 intellect as far as making spells last longer, which is insane.

What does Skald have? A resurrect that works randomly, which you shouldn't need most of the time, and which can be done on your own? Not really worth my time IMO. Edda is just kind of meh for everything except undead, where it provides mana (that you don't really need at the beginning of battle) and rage (which warrior already has more of and uses better).

I think it's very well balanced now. Skald skills just aren't that great. Outside of your started skills all you really have to look forward to in your tree is some +crit and +morale. Skald was simply by far the weakest class in TL and still much weaker in AP. They needed these buffs. With the sadly constrained first island Skald may have an advantage in no-lossing, but outside of that I think the other classes have a much more exponential power climb.

[Zechnophobe]

I really agree that the change was fairly needed. Before you had no speciality of the Spirit class. They sorta had a grab bag without any of the best stuff for either.

Now might = best at rage, magic = best at spells, and spirit = best at leadership.

The only problem I see now, is that 'boss' fights where you don't get to use Rage are rather a problem for warriors. They lose out on their biggest perk. I feel like something should have been done to make rage more useful, even if you aren't using your chest. Heck, I'd love it if they could finally find a way to integrate 'rage' abilities into boss fights in a meaningful way.

[Fatt_Shade]

@Loopy About your comment that Creation is great skill and giving spells longer duration. I`m bitching about that for long time. Check intellect description in hero screen : every 20 points of intellect certain spells last longer. This was in the Legend, AP and CW and never worked. So now they make skill that does that, but still no bonus from high intellect. Gj 1C
In HoMM3 babies mod this was fixed i have no idea how, but it`s doable which means if they fix it in game Creation + this stats boost some spells will be super overpowered.
Expl intellect 61 means +3 turn for spells and +2 from Creator and 2 basic from Sheep spell = 7 turn, or fear 9 turns . . .

[Zechnophobe]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

@Loopy About your comment that Creation is great skill and giving spells longer duration. I`m bitching about that for long time. Check intellect description in hero screen : every 20 points of intellect certain spells last longer. This was in the Legend, AP and CW and never worked. So now they make skill that does that, but still no bonus from high intellect. Gj 1C
In HoMM3 babies mod this was fixed i have no idea how, but it`s doable which means if they fix it in game Creation + this stats boost some spells will be super overpowered.
Expl intellect 61 means +3 turn for spells and +2 from Creator and 2 basic from Sheep spell = 7 turn, or fear 9 turns . . .

The 20 intellect thing works on some spells, just not ALL spells. It seems to only effect spells that have variable durations. So Magic spring gets longer, I think haste and stone skin do, but polymorph does not.

It's just another instance of poorly described mechanics only understandable via trial and error .

[DGDobrev]

I tend to disagree that paladins were bad. It was just hard to play them as a third option. Everyone was so obsessed with Warrior and Mage playstyle, that he failed to see how a mix of them could do well. Here's an example of how to play a weird Paladin in KBAP/KBCW:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDGmNH-8FFY

I do find the Skald to be a bit overpowered. I suppose the warrior took a leadership nerf cause some of the new skills would make him a beast of he had too big of an army. Still, as far as buffs go, the difference between lvl 1 Stoneskin and lvl 3 stoneskin is big, and the Warrior won't be able to see much from it until late game. Having healing as a set spell is just plain awesome - it makes the skald a prime target for a no-loss play, especially if you can get some higher HP units quickly.

We will see how this KB plays out. It may just turn out to have made all the 3 classes interesting.

[jake21]

In the previous two games I found paladin better than mages at the end game (but still far behind warrior; warrior; esp in crossworld with insane better special skill was simply easy as cake). At the start of the games I found mage did pretty good because they started off with decent spell that was better than low troup count (early game is like level 1-5; late games is level > 20).

I haven't fully played WOTN yet; but my initial impression is that skalad is significantly easier both at start and end of game; mage weaken from previous games at the start due to weaker spell (my sooth had a bit of time up to level 17; but after I fed my first valk lots of items (which gave me lots of rage) things were a lot easier; though i was no were close to no loss).
-
My summary would be that they went a bit overboard in improving skalad (paladin) and debuffing warriors; though warriors are not bad - mages are always a bit more of a challenge.

(these comments are on impossible). Note that I find no-loss impossible in crossworld not too difficutl but can sometime take a bit of time; while impoisslbe is not too bad in legend; I was never really able to get no-loss impossible in legend (I think better players have done this). For WOTN no-loss is going to be difficult due to start of game but skalad should be feasible; other two classes I have my doubts.

[BB Shockwave]

Warriors will never be as effective at spellcasting as mages - due to lacking mana and int. plus slots to equip items that boost these stats, and lack of runes to update all spell schools to level 3 (they can, but would need to sacrifice a lot of runes for that). A Mage will always have a bigger spell selection and mana pool.

The paladin was - and always will be -somewhere inbetween, which was just fine. While a warrior will mostly cast mana-cheap debuffs and buffs, a paladin can use more costly summons, resurrections, time back. He will still not be able to cast such damaging spells as a mage, or cast twice per round.

[Fatt_Shade]

Am I seeing right here ? In might skill tree Viking specific skills are Persistance (total crap and really similar to Shield of rage) and Absolute rage ??? So any class can get Bloodlust and Runic power, how is Rage domain of Warrior class if any can get this 2 mostly rage oriented skills ???
Mage is best in magic and spell dmg, Paladin have greatest army and dmg undead/demons, Warrior have best rage skills NO wait he doesnt