All around worst hero?

[gzork]

It's hard to understand why, but there's clearly some heroes that are flat out better than others, when you think about which heroes you'd never want to use, I'd think these would stand out, but which is the worst?

Fortress: Svea:Basic Destructive, Master of Storms - Lightning spell damage is irresistible, immunities and magic proof still apply. Ultimate skill unavailable. In my opinion, this is the clear winner. Not only does it not bypass immunities or damage reduction, but from what I've seen, Lightning spells get the LEAST use.

Stronghold: Kilghan: Basic Leadership, Recruitment - Gain number of goblins equal to hero's level each week, goblin's stay with hero longer before betrayal. (1% more of goblins need to die for them to switch sides.) You only need one Trapper to lay a trap, and only basic Goblins will betray you, never saw much of a point in this guy.

Inferno: Nebiros: Basic Attack, Tactics - Enemy hero can't use tactics, hero and hero's army gets +1 Luck. Enemies don't get to use Tactics? A little too reliant on what the enemy takes, it's like the Orcs' shatter magic trees on crack. +1 luck is alright, but with how much Luck and Morale fluxuate, it ends up not meaning much.

Haven: Ellaine: Basic Leadership, Recruitment - +1 att/def to peasants, conscripts, and brutes for every two levels of hero, +1 extra gold for each, peasant, conscript, or brute player owns (making it 2/peasant each day). The extra money's nice, but if you try to take advantage of the att/def boost at all, you're not gonna see much of it.

Necropolis: Kaspar: Basic War Machines, First Aid - +5 dmg/healing First Aid Tents do per hero level (Need Plague Tent skill to do damage, capped at +175 due to level cap). First Aid Tents don't get a great initiative. +175 damage or healing now and then isn't likely to turn the tides in a battle, and that's if you get to level 35 in a game.

Necropolis: Deirdre: Basic Dark, Banshee Howl - Bashee Howl gives enemy units an additional -1 morale/luck. (Normally -1 luck, morale, -10% initiative, does not scale with level as the tool tip implies.) Probably one of the better ones on here, but compare her to some of the other Necropolis heroes and it's clear she belongs on this list.

Academy: Faiz: Basic Dark, Master of Pain - Curse of Vulnerability does a small amount of damage in addition to its normal effect. Scales with level. (70 damage at level 20)Very, very little damage on a spell you won't use all to often as Academy. You're also not too likely to get great Dark Magic spells in Academy towns... Also, I keep thinking his name's Fair, which annoys me to no end.

Academy: Galib: Basic Luck, Magic Mirror - Increases chance that Magic Mirror will reflect spells onto enemies instead of allies. Does not increase chance of magic mirror triggering. (Chance is 40% +2%/level) I'm hesitant to put him on here because of how luck based his bonus is. But in my experience, the mirror itself doesn't come up too often (if it did, it would be fairly overpowered) but if you're fighting a Might based army, this won't help all that much, anyway.

I won't deny that some of these abilities are useful, but other hero options are just far superior imo.

[Ya5MieL]

Game's worst main heroes doesn't equal game's worst heroes overall.

Ellaine can be very good as secondary hero.

Galib is great secondary(collector) due to fast resourcefulness, and he can be good main as well, tho it is very situational.
Magic Mirror triggers 50% of the times, which is considerable, and great way to counter blind, frenzy, implosion (opponents will not dare to cast those spells), etc...but as i said, it depends on opposition.

Svea and goblin hero are worthless. (but it is not the same laying trap with 1 gob and 100 gobs, just to mention.

Kaspar used to be called overpowered but has apparently lost his "charm"


Anyway, i think Svea will get my vote, she should have got additional 0.01 ATB stun per level for lightning spells to be of any use.

[humleren]

My vote goes to Faiz, simply because you don't need dark magic as a Academy. Imo I think most of those heroes doesn't make good primary heroes, but a least decent secodary ones

[Dacarnix_]

Ellaine can be very good as secondary hero.

Agreed. I think she's even my favorite secondary hero in the game. Ship her all your Peasants, and the money will eventually start to add up quite nicely. And recruitment is tailor made for secondary heroes.

I've definitely got to go with Svea for the poll. Her ability is literally useless in 99% of battles and only marginally interesting in that last 1%.

[danhvo]

Kaspar is actually one of my favorite heroes. He's the first one I'd pick if I play Necro, as his ability is extremely useful early in the game. Even in late game, I still find it useful.

I definitely can think of a lot of much worse heroes than the ones on this list, namely the ones that specialize in creatures that I hardly ever use (e.g. Orson the Zombie Lord).

BTW, how is Svea's lightning magic irresistible if it doesn't reduce the effect of immunity and magic-proof? I thought the term implies that the ability works just like the warlock's, except that it works only with lightning?

[Ya5MieL]

It only ignores magic resistance (which is neither immunity, not magic-proof).

EXTREMELY situational..... and even when situation is right, it is weak.

[Dacarnix_]

Kaspar is actually one of my favorite heroes. He's the first one I'd pick if I play Necro, as his ability is extremely useful early in the game. Even in late game, I still find it useful.

I definitely can think of a lot of much worse heroes than the ones on this list, namely the ones that specialize in creatures that I hardly ever use (e.g. Orson the Zombie Lord).

I agree. Kaspar is definitely a hero I'd pick before Orson.

But no one's worse than Svea.

[Markal]

Although as a main hero the recruitment heroes are weak they're some of the strongest support heroes. I've started out with them to ensure that I have them right away in order to get more troops from the start, until I got the mod for having campaign heroes.

[gzork]

Ah, kind of meant to imply main hero. But to be honest I hadn't really thought about some of them in that light, I can see double money from a hero you don't use being pretty useful, and as expected, Svea's on top. But Kaspar? Really? I need to take a look at that. Maybe it pops up more often than I was thinking it did.

[Jolly Joker]

I'm wondering a bit here: the usual way to go on any normal map is to build a Tavern first (if necessary) and hire another hero. So even if you play random you'll have two heroes to pick from, and usually one will become your first main battle hero, while the second will serve as a combination of scout, grabber, recruiter and whatnot.

So a much more, well, gaming-relevant question would be:

What COMBINATION of two heroes may be the worst (and maybe best as well) for each race.

That's not easy to answer, but to give an example, I think that for Academy the combination Narxes and Faiz would be the worst I can imagine.
For Inferno for me it would seem to be a toss-up between Grawl, Jezebeth und Alastor - all three have a lot going against them and a bit going for them. Getting 2 out of those 3 would always leave me with the feeling of being off to a bad start...

[Dacarnix_]

Narxes? Really? He's not very good starting out, but by the mid-game, he's one of my favorite Academy heroes. The amount of damage that his boosted mages dish out is pretty amazing.

Svea + Inga is about the most disappointing combination I can think of. A rarely-triggered ability and an ability that sometimes does nothing for an entire game. YAY!

[gzork]

I get the feeling I went about this the wrong way, what I meant was your primary battle hero, and even then considering a lot of major variables, it's still pretty vague, huh?

I mean, you brought up Alastor and Jezebeth, both of which have abilities that, on paper, seem pretty useful, but in early game don't come into play at all...

But I'm glad that most people could agree that Svea's useless. I gotta wonder what they were thinking when they designed her.

[tb5841]

Kilghan - More goblins give a higher chance of success for Set Snares and Defile Magic, and add damage to Horde's Anger. And Leadership is a brilliant choice for a Stronghold hero.

Nebiros - Though the special ability is poor, Attack + Tactics is possibly the best starting skill combination with Inferno, making this a fairly good hero.

Ellaine - Leadership is fairly good for a Knight, and the starting troops are useful, along with the extra money she isn't too bad.

Kaspar - Useful for creeping early on, certainly not a bad choice.

Deirdre - poor special ability but reasonable starting skills

Faiz - Vulnerability can be used multiple times on one unit, and so does work well with Mark of the Wizard. And Dark Magic is very good for Academy against Might-based teams (e.g. Stronghold).

Galib - A good choice for a Might-based Wizard, or against another Academy team.

Svea - no redeeming features whatsoever. Destructive Magic was a good skill for a Runemage in HoF, and so despite her awful ability, she had good starting skills. Now they are useless.

I definitely think Jezebeth should be on this list. With Succubus Seducers her ability is less useful than before, and she has Sorcery but has no access to Counterspell, making her completely useless.

[Willow]

I agree Svea is probably the weakest of the heroes, since her special ability doesn't offer much of a boost. However, she's one of my favourites character-wise. It's a shame they didn't improve her ability. Maybe someone will mod her in the future.

[PhoenixReborn]

Destructive Magic was a good skill for a Runemage in HoF, and so despite her awful ability, she had good starting skills. Now they are useless.

My memory fails me...what is so different about destructive in HoF and destructive in ToE?

[Dacarnix_]

I agree Svea is probably the weakest of the heroes, since her special ability doesn't offer much of a boost. However, she's one of my favourites character-wise. It's a shame they didn't improve her ability. Maybe someone will mod her in the future.

Even something as simple as +2 Spellpower for lightning spells would be a step in the right direction.

[tb5841]

Pheonix Reborn wrote:

My memory fails me...what is so different about destructive in HoF and destructive in ToE?

Ignite felt so much more useful when it was Dwarf-only, as did Swift Mind (which is now much harder for a Runemage to get). Empathy was also a Dwarven-only skill.

Now everyone has these skills, Rangers have a far better Imbue Arrow system along with High Druids, and Wizards have Elemental Gargoyles/Magnetic Golems/improved MotW, while Dwarves have no real destructive improvements.

It's not so much that dwarven destructive magic has been weakened, but compared to a Ranger or a Wizard or a Necromancer a Runemage is a fairly poor destructive caster now, whereas in HoF the Runemage may have been a better one.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

It is true that not all heroes are created equally, unfortunately. The recruitment heroes are ok for secondary heroes. Ellaine is actually pretty useful as a money maker, just give here all peasants (and it some maps have extra peasant huts.)

I wish Galib started with a spell other than cleansing. Can't creep with cleansing. Starting with luck makes it fairly easy to get warlock's luck with him (hopefully you will get good destuction spells in the guild) and his spell twisting ability can be useful. Narxes starts with magic fist which is pretty useless for early creeping but is good for your mages if you can make it through the early levels.

[blizzardboy]

Blasphemy. Ellaine is a wonderful young lady. She brings in extra money for you (something Haven never has enough of), and yes, you DO notice those bonuses with the huge mass of brutes/conscripts in the final fight. What they touch; they kill. And aside from those two things, she has a quick set up (leadership+recruitment) to allow Divine Guidance at level 3, which is the best early skill in the game IMO. I can pretty much drive through monsters early game just as quickly as I can with Dougal because it's so easy to get Divine Guidance at an extremely early level with Ellaine. I say this from experience.

Plus she wears purple.

I've killed several Russians with Ellaine. She once was confined as a frustrated garrison-only hero back in Heroes 5 because conscripts didn't have the taxpayer ability. But now that you can upgrade your peasants and still make money off of them, Ellaine has potential in the wider world.

[Markal]

I saw someone use an Armageddon strategy using dwarven fire resistance. They were able to win battles through destructive magic no matter how large the enemy was in comparison to their own. However, this obviously would take quite awhile to accomplish. My point is that it's an advantage dwarven rune mages have over other factions.