Dragons: Suck or Awesome?

#61

— Begin quote from "coyot"

No. Total damage is NOT the same thing as “total damage that the unit is doing to one enemy”. That’s exactly what YOU get wrong :slight_smile: . That is, your statement is true for cases when there is one tough enemy passing through your zone, not waves of weaker enemies.

— End quote

which you are still wrong about. Slows effect all enemies, letting them be killed x tiles earlier(due to their lowered movement speed) which lets your units switch to the next one. Ice Mages do increase the total damage of all of your units that attack enemies they slow by extending the amount of time they have to attack that same unit.

#62

you are one heavy nitpicker you know? -.-

So how about i call it “potential total damage”, happy now? -.-

*Edit: And Laureola is completely right, thats exactly what i meant.
Total damage = time * dps
Where time is the amout of time that the enemie is in range to the unit. Slow increases that value, so the total damage (or potential total damage since they might die before getting out of range) would increase thanks to slow. *

And ok, you are right, i completely forgott the “Roar”-ability, but here is the issue: Roar only works on non-boss enemies (who will most likely die even if they’re not stunned or slowed), stuns for only 4 seconds but has a cooldown of 13.4 seconds (at least i think thats what it is on lvl 9… its 2 seconds stun and 13.4 seconds cooldown on lvl 1 with niru).
The fact that it doesn’t work on non-boss enemies already makes it a sklill i usually only have on lvl 1 because i don’t need it… (or rather it’s inferior to the dragons other skills)

And i just tried: Those cultist gets slowed with chill and will ALSO freeze! But they are completely unaffected by stun -.- (tried it on “Eztli-Tenoch’s Right Hand”)

So here is an idea that would make Dragons worth it (right now, in my opinion, they are to expensive for what they bring): Give them a “cripple” effect that slows down the enemies as well (i mean “stun” and “freeze” are more or less the same thing, they both stop the enemie for some time, so why not create a second slow effect?). Would probably best as an extension for “Claw” (Bite would be better but that one already has the poison effect), so whenever an enemie is attacked by a Dragon with “Claw”, the enemie gets “Crippled” wich slows it down by x% (similiar to the “CHILL” skill of the ice mages). And it should also work for “boss” enemies (like the sheep… slow works, freezing not, stund not, cripple should thus work again). I don’t think that this would unbalance the dragon, because Claw only works on a single foe, so the Ice Mage would do mass slow but little damage while the dragon does single slow but a lot of damage…
Maybe even add it to “Roar”… also this would be strange but well, they are Dragons ^^

#63

— Begin quote from "Laureola"

— Begin quote from "coyot"

No. Total damage is NOT the same thing as “total damage that the unit is doing to one enemy”. That’s exactly what YOU get wrong :slight_smile: . That is, your statement is true for cases when there is one tough enemy passing through your zone, not waves of weaker enemies.

— End quote

which you are still wrong about. Slows effect all enemies, letting them be killed x tiles earlier(due to their lowered movement speed) which lets your units switch to the next one.

— End quote

The unit that is dishing out actual damage does NOT care at all which enemy it is hitting. A knight will only attack once every x seconds, no matter whether his potential targets are slowed or not :slight_smile: . It only makes a difference with the last wave…

In other words, if you need slowing creeps in order for your killzone to deal enough damage to them, you will most likely suffer from congestion from further waves, because you’re only delaying the problem (too low DPS).

— Begin quote from ____

Ice Mages do increase the total damage of all of your units that attack enemies they slow by extending the amount of time they have to attack that same unit.

— End quote

Ice mages can increase the total damage dealt to that same unit, NOT necessarily total damage dealt. That only works if there are reasonably big gaps between units. If there are more creeps, you simply need higher DPS (higher than creep growth HPS). Ice mage won’t help you with that.

#64

The thing is that you have mostly multiple lines, so slow DOES increase the total damage.
In lane 1 the enemies get slowed, your units can attack them for a longer time, while the next wave comes on lane 2, where (most likely) other units are attacking the enemies there.

Of course, it all depends on the strategy you’re using, but there are more then enough scenarios where Slow is helping you a lot (and not only in the last wave).

#65

Also, any lane being hit by AoE attacks (from Ice Mages and Healers mostly) are, in fact, taking more overall damage when slowed by Ice Mages. Unlike melee attacks and skills, those shots of Holy Light and Sleet and what-have-you are hitting everything in range and are only limited by their own cooldown inbetween casts.

So, Ice Mages DO equal more overall damage done - if you’re putting overlapping AoE in your lane(s).

#66

Generally, Dragons need to be boosted to at least level 3 to have a respectful damage on an enemy wave; damage itself is awesome but attack speed is quite low comparing to other defenders. Overall DPS is medium below level 3. That’s how it is but only considering that there is a gap between the Dragon and another not ranged unit.

About Ice Mages, exactly what marak said above. Also you should have in mind that when froze or slowed down -except the damage itself- is that it weakens the enemy in multiple ways, allowing not only to be hitten more times but also making it applying extra damage to fire attacks. It even boosts the effects of poison as it enlarges the total time spent by the enemy to cross the battlefield and attack Azra. The last can be argued though; a few weeks ago I read in Lar’s blog something about poison DPS being decreased in one enemy if two archers poison it the same time but I’m not sure.

#67

— Begin quote from "Marak"

So, Ice Mages DO equal more overall damage done - if you’re putting overlapping AoE in your lane(s).

— End quote

It’s at best an extremely minor effect, that mainly profit to ice mage themselves. And a dragon do equal more overall damage in the same way :p. (also, I am under the believe that dragon poison help ranger poison, since the dragon poison is in general more powerful, and the way poison stack mean that ranger keep the higher poison if they poison enough)

On an not-too-related note, do you believe that there is a way to show without too much discussion a hame 87/90 without ice mage use ? (I.E. 1 lvl 7 ice mage, or 6, I can’t recall) On one hand, it would show that ice mage are not that essential ; in other hand, I sadly have more than enough technical knowledge to edit out the save file. I must admit the 20+ hours needed would feel a lot less meaningful without tangible proof :stuck_out_tongue:

#68

Every single unit in this game has multiple(except knights) aoe attacks. this worrying about whether or not you have aoe is silly. If you use a ranger and zerker at the same spawn you have overlapping AOE.

#69

— Begin quote from "Ohlmann"

On an not-too-related note, do you believe that there is a way to show without too much discussion a hame 87/90 without ice mage use ? (I.E. 1 lvl 7 ice mage, or 6, I can’t recall)

— End quote

I’m going to try a dragon-heavy game :slight_smile: . I expect that I would really need the ice mage on just a few occasions, altough it would depend on how hard will I want to challenge myself (especially the map without rangers with the abominations might be quite difficult in a linear run).

#70

— Begin quote from "coyot"

I’m going to try a dragon-heavy game :slight_smile: . I expect that I would really need the ice mage on just a few occasions, altough it would depend on how hard will I want to challenge myself (especially the map without rangers with the abominations might be quite difficult in a linear run).

— End quote

Well, this one I have never done with ice mage :stuck_out_tongue: I had put one dragon next to the three entrance, and one on the tip at the right, with some knight to support them. Worked wonder.

Ice mage tended not to be powerful enough to truly exploit the small amount of good position in the map.

Note that if you want to do both linear run AND forget one class, it may be uselessly hard. OTOH, with the small amount of money you will get, dragon will be at their power apex, since they don’t need equipment.

#71

— Begin quote from "Ohlmann"

Note that if you want to do both linear run AND forget one class, it may be uselessly hard.

— End quote

That’s what I like - finding what restrictions can one get away with while the game remains enjoyably playable. And linear runs are quite good in that regard - I’ve done a few (so far without any class restrictions though) and it forced me to think much more about placement and targetting options. I.e. the two-lane long-horizontal-zig-zag level that features shooters, that was a good example of the need of good placement in regard of timing of the waves.

#72

In any case, I would be interested to see if you are able to kill the Hand without ice mage and being pretty low level. Since IIRC both him and the fingers are immune to stun and knockback, I must admit that ice mage do shine here.

#73

— Begin quote from "Ohlmann"

In any case, I would be interested to see if you are able to kill the Hand without ice mage and being pretty low level. Since IIRC both him and the fingers are immune to stun and knockback, I must admit that ice mage do shine here.

— End quote

Hand’s dead baby, hand’s dead.

It was a close shave, but on first try, without any great thinking, and with one wasted skillpoint on both knights (too much breaker, if they had +1 swing instead, the job would have been faster).
To get to what you can see I had to shuffle zerks a bit to deal with the waves, but I managed to free them up just as the hand was getting past original position of knights. (After that, the finger was dispatched by rangers, then I had to shuffle the army a lot to deal with the closing revenants, but overall it didn’t seem too hard, I had more difficulty with some previous battles…

Also, I made things harder for myself by wasting scrap on recruiting dragons, 2 more healers and just Niru would have made things easier in previous levels. Dragons become truly awesome only when heavily experiened, not something that’s going to happen in linear runs.

Party: 5x12 zerks, (swords 2x24, 3x16), 3x 12 rangers (23,23,17 bows, no armor), 12 and 11 healers (cheap equip), 12 and 11 knights (2x32 swords, cheap armor) and Niru at 12 (plus 2x 10 dragons not used in this battle)