raise dead

[minger]

Is it universally accepted that raise dead is ridiculously overpowerful if you are the undead?

Didn't find any threads about it; wasn't sure if I was the only one who thought so, or whether it was so universally accepted that it didn't need mentioning.

Even when you aren't the undead, i find it ridiculous that when you use raise dead on a stack, and the enemy kills off people in the stack, the people in the stack that are killed are the "raise dead" ones and not the "living" ones.

What's even weirder is when a stack is DEAD, then raise dead is used on them, AND they are the only stack left, the opponent is still on the field! In other words, shouldn't stacks that were raise-dead-ed be treated just like phantom/gated creatures?

[DaemianLucifer]

Is it universally accepted that raise dead is ridiculously overpowerful if you are the undead?

Didn't find any threads about it; wasn't sure if I was the only one who thought so, or whether it was so universally accepted that it didn't need mentioning.

I dont know if its universally accepted,but I do find it overpowered.

Even when you aren't the undead, i find it ridiculous that when you use raise dead on a stack, and the enemy kills off people in the stack, the people in the stack that are killed are the "raise dead" ones and not the "living" ones.

This is only logical.The dead ones are used as meat shields by the living ones,just like they would do in real life.

What's even weirder is when a stack is DEAD, then raise dead is used on them, AND they are the only stack left, the opponent is still on the field! In other words, shouldn't stacks that were raise-dead-ed be treated just like phantom/gated creatures?

Yes it should,but it seems to be missed by the developers.

Also,raise dead can heal your units,but this one is a bit tricky.If you have a badly damaged unit,you just cast raise dead to restore it to its former glory.Im not sure how this actually works though,but I think that as long as the damage received afterwords,minus the damage healed by the tent(or any other means)doesnt exceed the hitpoints unit had before raise dead was cast,it will survive.I did this ones with my pit fiends.I still dont know how.

[ThunderTitan]

It's ridicously overpowered no matter what faction you p[lay with. Bugged too, as you can still fight with only Raised troops, but lose the hero at the end anyway.

Maybe they should increase it's lvl to 4, and it's mana cost to way more.

[MrSteamTank]

Is it universally accepted that raise dead is ridiculously overpowerful if you are the undead?

Didn't find any threads about it; wasn't sure if I was the only one who thought so, or whether it was so universally accepted that it didn't need mentioning.

Even when you aren't the undead, i find it ridiculous that when you use raise dead on a stack, and the enemy kills off people in the stack, the people in the stack that are killed are the "raise dead" ones and not the "living" ones.

What's even weirder is when a stack is DEAD, then raise dead is used on them, AND they are the only stack left, the opponent is still on the field! In other words, shouldn't stacks that were raise-dead-ed be treated just like phantom/gated creatures?

I definitely agree. While we're talking about overpowered spells lets talk about phantom forces too. Now that spell is just as ridiculous.

[minger]

yeah i do agree that it's not super problematic that the living people in the stack use the raised dead ones as meat shields.

Also I am glad to hear that the "only remaining stack is a fully raised-dead stack" problem is a bug.

[Gus]

Even when you aren't the undead, i find it ridiculous that when you use raise dead on a stack, and the enemy kills off people in the stack, the people in the stack that are killed are the "raise dead" ones and not the "living" ones.

This is only logical.The dead ones are used as meat shields by the living ones,just like they would do in real life.

Except i'm pretty sure it's not the case. Example:
I have 10 Titans. They kill 5. I have 5 left. I raise 2. I now have 7 left. They kill 4. I kill them all. I have 1 Titan left, not 3.

EDIT: fixed quote.

[ThunderTitan]

Except i'm pretty sure it's not the case. Example:
I have 10 Titans. They kill 5. I have 5 left. I raise 2. I now have 7 left. They kill 4. I kill them all. I have 1 Titan left, not 3.

I think Gus is right. As i recall i had stacks die after i used Raise Dead and never lost more then 2 of the creatures.

[cornellian]

Raise dead is really a little too useful as it is, but lets keep in mind that it is the spell that gives Necromancers any chance of actually being a good necromancer. If it was a 4th level spell, by the time you'd get it, you'd have cleared all the easy fights anyway, therefore missing the easy skellies. Considering that necros' troops are a tad worse than average in usefulness (w/o raise dead that is), that would be too much for the faction to handle.

In short, necromancers' power is in numbers, and to have the numbers, you need to get it going pretty early which relies very much on raise dead.

However I agree that Phantom Forces is ridiculous now, as you can easily make your own copies of 20 titans all over the place.. Phantom, Frenzy, and Puppet Master should be like Hypnotize in previous HoMMs, the HP of the stack that is casted on should matter. In a large map you can easily have several expendable heroes with expert dark magic that can cast one little spell like Puppet Master to royally screw your army and flee on the next turn.

[Bandobras Took]

It's impossible to discuss Raise Dead being overpowered without mentioning Vladimir (the Necropolis Raise Dead specialist). It's his starting with the spell and making it even more effective over time that really gets me down. Otherwise, you at least have to build up your mage guild at least somewhat, delaying the "day one" effect.

[Rainalkar]

I still don't understand fully how it works though. I played single recently, Jhora/Academy, and Vladimir attacked me in my town with his troops. I had 3 giants, some golems and gremlins, and mages divided in three stacks. I lost all the mages, my gremlins were never targeted so I ressurected the golem there and then, and kept casting raise dead on the giants. I won the fight, and I was left with two giants - I was buffled, because I raised them more than a dozen times, often when all three were dead, and I have no clue how is it possible that I am left with two in the end (and no, I did not have summoning, even if I did it doesn't explain the one giant lost).

[Gaidal Cain]

The bug with combat not ending was rather irritating in the third Dungeon map. I think I killed some stacks of blood fuires 5 or 6 times in total some battles, just because of it. If it had worked properly, I wouldn't have had to care about them (I was exploiting an AI bug that kept them from attacking rather heavily and using a Phoenix to kill of the rest of the enemy). It really is a very irritating spell.

[MrSteamTank]

Raise dead is really a little too useful as it is, but lets keep in mind that it is the spell that gives Necromancers any chance of actually being a good necromancer. If it was a 4th level spell, by the time you'd get it, you'd have cleared all the easy fights anyway, therefore missing the easy skellies. Considering that necros' troops are a tad worse than average in usefulness (w/o raise dead that is), that would be too much for the faction to handle.

In short, necromancers' power is in numbers, and to have the numbers, you need to get it going pretty early which relies very much on raise dead.

However I agree that Phantom Forces is ridiculous now, as you can easily make your own copies of 20 titans all over the place.. Phantom, Frenzy, and Puppet Master should be like Hypnotize in previous HoMMs, the HP of the stack that is casted on should matter. In a large map you can easily have several expendable heroes with expert dark magic that can cast one little spell like Puppet Master to royally screw your army and flee on the next turn.

I definitely agree. Puppet Master and frenzy only give you partial control of the unit. Like for every spell power your hero has he can only affect anywhere from 50-200 hp worth of units.

However, frenzy and puppet master should work so if you can only mind control half the stack then thats exactly what you do. The stack mind controlled or frenzied can only attack and cast at half strength.

This way these type of spells still are uber as they waste a stacks turn and retaliation along with possibly setting them up for a nice AoE spell as they are bunched but a level 3 hero with puppet master can't force a full 100 stack of titan to blast youre entire stack of genies. It makes sense and it still keeps the spells very powerful.

As for phantom forces that you mentioned. Well thats a given and it would probably need an initial initiative drop on top of summoning units based on spellpower.

Raise dead is too strong too but it could probably be balanced by simply raising its mana cost a bit, limiting how many times it can be cast on a single stack, or reducing it's power a lot when you outnumber you opponent significantly(this way in neutral battles when you clearly won, you can't just leave the computer's army with say 3 gremlins and raise your army back up again with no losses by waiting and casting raise dead over and over as raise dead will be super weak then).

[DaemianLucifer]

Its pretty interesting how this spell can be easily nerfed,yet still making it very useful.Just make it summon the dead stack as a new stack that disappears after the combat,and that new stack leaves no bodies for raising(again,just like in HIV).This way you wont be able to raise 1 titan infinite number of times,but just once,and there would be no need for dumb corpse disappearing.

[Alamar]

For undead [to me] it seems overpowered because that is almost the only spell that you need against nuetrals once you've got the necromancy ball rolling.

I wouldn't mind, for example, making it a L3 spell thus meaning that you needed either Sorcery OR Summoning [or a wand] to make it work.

I don't mind the spell too much for other factions though at L2.

BTW: Raise Dead on a conjured Phoenix works wonders

[Alamar]

I may have not been right when I said that the spell wasn't overly powerful.

Theoretically I would imagine that if you have a L2 spell that raises a certain number of HPs back from the dead that a L2 destruction spell [cast at the same level of skill] should basically be able to nullify each other.

As it stands now you need 2 castings of Ice Bolt [basic] to nullify the HPs of the raised creatures.

Oddly the only direct damage spell that can nullify an Expert Raise Dead is an Expert Implosion and then that only happens with spell power of 20 or more. [Note I wasn't counting AOE spells]

Taken in that light to me it does seem too powerful for a L2 spell. Raising to to L3 and/or buffing other L1 & L2 spells [or some combination] would be required to give the spell more balance.

[russianspy5727]

no, making raise dead level 3 is still not enough. Once Vladimir gets enough knowledge, you will always get with minimal or even no casualties even with a crappy army. Its just like having ressurct, except right in the beginning of the game (raise dead and resurrect have the same raising power). I will only be happy if raise dead does not bring the undead back to "life"; it should work the same on the undead like everyone else.

[omegaweix]

I may have not been right when I said that the spell wasn't overly powerful.

Theoretically I would imagine that if you have a L2 spell that raises a certain number of HPs back from the dead that a L2 destruction spell [cast at the same level of skill] should basically be able to nullify each other.

As it stands now you need 2 castings of Ice Bolt [basic] to nullify the HPs of the raised creatures.

Oddly the only direct damage spell that can nullify an Expert Raise Dead is an Expert Implosion and then that only happens with spell power of 20 or more. [Note I wasn't counting AOE spells]

Taken in that light to me it does seem too powerful for a L2 spell. Raising to to L3 and/or buffing other L1 & L2 spells [or some combination] would be required to give the spell more balance.

Alamar, it is a pleasure everytime to read your game enhancing suggestions (especially after your view on possible AI tweaking elsewhere)....

....we should parachute you into Nival Headquarters to drag the old H5 cart out of the mud!

Consider me as your first groupie (*Go Al Go*)

[Alamar]

no, making raise dead level 3 is still not enough. Once Vladimir gets enough knowledge, you will always get with minimal or even no casualties even with a crappy army. Its just like having ressurct, except right in the beginning of the game (raise dead and resurrect have the same raising power). I will only be happy if raise dead does not bring the undead back to "life"; it should work the same on the undead like everyone else.

I understand your POV but I'm not sure that I agree with your proposed solutions.

I don't have a problem with Raise Dead being a rough analogy to the H3 spell Animate Dead. The good thing with Raise Dead (compared to Animate Dead) is that pretty much everyone can use the spell -- it's just less effective on living creatures.

Also IF the problem is ONLY with Vladimir then just change how his special works .... for example instead of +1 spell power every level applied to Raise Dead just give Vlad a static bonus of +2 to +4 spell power. This will still make the special handy but it shouldn't be nearly as devistating as it is now.

The way things are now any big change to the way Raise Dead works is likely going to force you to rebalance the Necropolis faction significantly.

I may have not been right when I said that the spell wasn't overly powerful.

Theoretically I would imagine that if you have a L2 spell that raises a certain number of HPs back from the dead that a L2 destruction spell [cast at the same level of skill] should basically be able to nullify each other.

As it stands now you need 2 castings of Ice Bolt [basic] to nullify the HPs of the raised creatures.

Oddly the only direct damage spell that can nullify an Expert Raise Dead is an Expert Implosion and then that only happens with spell power of 20 or more. [Note I wasn't counting AOE spells]

Taken in that light to me it does seem too powerful for a L2 spell. Raising to to L3 and/or buffing other L1 & L2 spells [or some combination] would be required to give the spell more balance.

Alamar, it is a pleasure everytime to read your game enhancing suggestions (especially after your view on possible AI tweaking elsewhere)....

....we should parachute you into Nival Headquarters to drag the old H5 cart out of the mud!

Consider me as your first groupie (*Go Al Go*)

Thanks man .... I hope my head doesn't get any bigger (or fatter) though

Mod note: Would you just learn to use the damn edit button, please?

[russianspy5727]

[quote]The way things are now any big change to the way Raise Dead works is likely going to force you to rebalance the Necropolis faction significantly.[/quote]


Alamar, if you are trying to indicate that the Necropolis faction could not hold off on its own without raise dead, I would have to disagree. Necromancers have the strongest racial ability, necromancy. If you have a 25% necromancy ability (which is easy to gain with the necromancy amplifying ability), and you attack some squires, the amount of squires you kill is the amount of skeleton archers you get. thats pretty insane. At the end of my multiplayer game, I gained 2000 skeletons archers, almost all gained by raising.

if thats not enough, necropolis has this nifty little building called the Shrine of the Netherworld. This allows you to convert live creatures into undead ones BY TIER. While some my haven opponent has to mix and match his army with a dungeon faction, I can just convert mine into the appropriate undead, whatever the second town may be. That is a huge advantage.

If that's not enough, necropolis also gets the spectral dragon. This is actually the worst level seven unit in the game, but the Dragon Tombstone building make them the best. This gives an extra dragon per week, a whole 50% increase (provided that you have a castle). In my opinion, 3 spectral dragons are better than any two level 7 units making necropolis even more superior.

giving raise dead to the necropolis faction is like giving America the middle-eastern oil. It's doing well enough as it is, why give it more?[/quote]

[Alamar]

Mod note: Would you just learn to use the damn edit button, please?

Apparently I would be incapable of that