Chilling Bones: insanely useless

[erased. over. out]

I have just finished the Dungeon campaign- but looking back at the Necromancer levels, I can't help but feel angry at how useless the Chilling Bones ability was! Playing with Markal, I acquired the ability with great anticipation, only to be greatly let down. Has it aided any of you guys in any way? The most I'd get out of it was 5-10 extra damage! I had quite a large number of troops as well, so I was puzzled at how little damage it did. I thought the Demons' Hellfire ability was much more useful (even though it would drain mana at an annoying rate).

[Alamar]

This and chilling steel used to be insanely OVERPOWERED. I wouldn't really pick either of these now though unless you happenned to need them to get an advanced ability.

[ThunderTitan]

Well i'm so glad they didn't take the middle road with this ability. Either useless or overpowered is always the way to go.

[Orfinn]

How was chilling bones and other abilities overpowered in the beta?

[Gaidal Cain]

Cold Steel added one bonus damage per creature. Couple it with Skelly Archers, and, well...

[Bardolph]

In my experience this ability did 1-2 damage after the enemy attacked my creatures.
I think this is also a bug and should be mended.
They could easily change it to 3 damage for 100 hp worth of creatures in my stack or something.

[DaemianLucifer]

Considering how they like logarithmic functions Im suprised they didnt use it here as well.And this is actually one place that it would really work at.

[Bardolph]

I don't think a logarithmic function is really good in this game.
For example let's say I have 100 archers: ln 100=4.6.
If I have 200 archers: ln 200=5.3.
Not a lot of difference. And if you add a constant a to both examples the difference is still the same.
That was the problem when fighting mages: 2 or 16 would in both cases hurt my cavaliers.

[Cunning Death]

I don't think a logarithmic function is really good in this game.
For example let's say I have 100 archers: ln 100=4.6.
If I have 200 archers: ln 200=5.3.
Not a lot of difference. And if you add a constant a to both examples the difference is still the same.
That was the problem when fighting mages: 2 or 16 would in both cases hurt my cavaliers.

that's the point of logarithmic function: the order of magnitude is the deciding factor

[Bardolph]

I'm just saying that 100 and 200 archers shouldn't do similar ice damage,
and 2 or 16 mages shouldn't do similar magic damage for flavour reasons.

[Gus]

well, that's what you think (and that's what i think, incidentally, but this has little relevance), but the devs must think the contrary, otherwise they wouldn't have chosen a logarithmic function, whose point is precisely to "level" differences.
I think that's what he meant.

[DaemianLucifer]

I'm just saying that 100 and 200 archers shouldn't do similar ice damage,
and 2 or 16 mages shouldn't do similar magic damage for flavour reasons.

But that is exactly the point.The damage done by chilling bones shouldnt rise to quickly,so logharitmic raise of that damage is quite nice.Lets say it rises from 1 to 10 damage for 1 to 10 creatures,then it raise to 20 damage for 100 creatures.Then it raises to 40 damage for 1000 creatures.Not too powerfull,yes,but neither weak like now,neither overpowering like before.As for spellcasters,they should use linear functions since now its much better to divide your casters,which is dumb.

[cornellian]

In one (out of four) of the MP games I played so far in HoMMV, I picked up Sylvans and made 1 stack of Hunters and 6 of druids for my main hero against my necro opponent (playing w/ Lucretia as main hero), while the rest of my army went harassing his economy.. He never knew what hit him in the battle as undead can't close in in a turn and 6x10 druids do 4 times the damage of 60 druids which is plain stupid.

Yes it was an abuse of the game mechanics and I am not proud of it, but it also goes to show that people can turn this log calculation to their advantage pretty easily.

[Bardolph]

He never knew what hit him in the battle as undead can't close in in a turn and 6x10 druids do 4 times the damage of 60 druids which is plain stupid.

Couldn't explained it better myself.
We need some incentive for grouping troops together, making big stacks of creatures not the other way around.
I think the game's logic should be that the troops that are together cooperate and make more damage than the same troops separated out of reach with each other.
Just because it is Nival's decision doesn't make it the best.

[Alamar]

He never knew what hit him in the battle as undead can't close in in a turn and 6x10 druids do 4 times the damage of 60 druids which is plain stupid.

Couldn't explained it better myself.
We need some incentive for grouping troops together, making big stacks of creatures not the other way around.
I think the game's logic should be that the troops that are together cooperate and make more damage than the same troops separated out of reach with each other.
Just because it is Nival's decision doesn't make it the best.

I ditto that 100%.

[PhoenixReborn]

I'll chime in to agree that chilling bones and touch were useless when I took them...

I couldn't begin to suggest a solution.

[wolf8t8t]

their ulimate skill?

[PhoenixReborn]

Well I found a use for chilling bones.

I was fiddling with duel tonight and I took Orson who has chilling bones and fought against Raven who has lots of spells. Raven used phantom forces a good deal but when he attacked with the phantoms the chilling bones magical damage dispelled the phantoms.

Nice.

[asandir]

cause it's not physical damage, cool, i suspect hellfire would do the same, now if only the ai would be smart enough to try and use his spells properly ....

[Sir_Toejam]

whatever the weak-ass formula is for chilled bones is the same they used for fireshield.

both are ridiculously underpowered.

the whole point of fireshield in previous Homm games was to make players with lots of melee stacks think twice about attacking creatures with fireshields.

Efreets used to be something at least a bit scary from that perspective, and i never heard anybody say that fireshield in that instance was overpowered.

why not just use whatever the old formula was for fireshield?