Your opinions on this Agrael build

[Tenchifew]

I am in the mission 3 right now:

expert gating
consume corpse
mark of the damned

expert attack
battle frenzy

expert logistics
pathfinding
swift gating
teleport assault

expert sorcery
magic insight
(phantom Forces!!!)

basic luck

i plan to choose:
expert luck
and
swarm gating as soon as possible

attack
archery and tactics

racial
hellfire

this leaves me with one free slot
candidates:
dark magic (mass slow)

enlightenment
more attributes

leadership
well... leadership and gate master

i tend to choose leadership at the moment
(spam phantom forces and gate more troops from them. with expert luck, gating and gate master i can get over 100% gated troops if i am lucky)


dark magic is very nice... but i have to choose if i cast a dar magic spell or phantom forces - a tough choice and i think after mass slow it will be phantom forces all the way - and to take a whole skill for one spell...

enlightenment - more attributes are A VERY GOOD THING but in this particular case i have more attack -good- and more knowledge- not a must with consume corpses skill.

therefore i think to choose leadership - more faster acting troops.

What are your opinions on this?

[Sir_Toejam]

I always like dark magic with inferno. Mass slow and mass confusion rock - though i wouldn't bother using confusion until you get expert level dark magic; blind and hypnotize are useful on occasion too; the rest is just icing to me.

However, you shouldn't count out destructive magic either. If you managed to get any kind of decent power stat (above 10, say), it can also be useful, and you can pick the skill that increases hellfire damage by 50%, which comes in handy quite often.

I never found a need beyond expert gating and swarming gate to give me decent gated stack sizes, and moral is easy enough to get (so long as you don't mix, your troops are already at 2, and map objects that boost are pretty common), so I would put leadership a bit lower on my list.

all the rest of your skills look peachy to me.

for some reason, Inferno is my favorite faction. I just like the way the heroes build up (good balance of stats usually), and I like most of the creatures as well. gating and speed typically reduce opponent archer effectiveness tremendously (you either gate in a distraction, or make any one of 3 units run across the field in one turn to attack directly).

they're a bit on the fragile side, but I also find i rarely take any losses when fighting neutral stacks after level 10 or so.

[maltz]

Leadership is quite hard to get for Agrael, but very helpful since you will be using Sylvan units (right?).

Sorcery I feel is a bit wasted, because you could just simply pick phantom force as your bonus in the previous mission. All of the mass effect castings will not be affected by the sorcery +30% speed, so you only have more phantom force, and higher-level phantom force. Unfortunately, your main power house are only mid-level creatures that don't require any points in sorcery for you to clone. Also, now that phantom force is nerfed so you can't really clone the same thing over and over.

I would have swapped sorcery for dark or light. Either of them will pull you through very nicely on heroic.

[Tenchifew]

I took sorcery because phantom force is a lvl 3 spell - i couldn't cast it without sorcery (magic insight than capped at creatures lvl 4) or summoning magic. I also play 1.0 - played 1.3 haven campaign and couldn't understand as a friend of mine told me the last haven mission to be difficult - it was a cakewalk for me. I reinstalled the game and in 1.0 it was challenging and fun, so i play onwards in 1.0 - the phantom force spell works very fine.
Are mass effect castings really not affected by sorcery 30% bonus? it would be a shame. I would like to avoid mixing troops the leadership would be just for faster troops with more gating (gate master).

another problem i am lvl 16 and my stats are
attack 12
defense 2
spellpower 2
knowledge 7

- not a magic powerhouse. Dark and light spells would only last for 2 turns or less and we really shouldn't speak about summoning (besides phantom forces) or destruction.
Enlightenment may help but then i wouldn't have another slot for a magic skill, may still take it for attack boost though.

ok will wait till i have other skills i want and look at my attributes and decide then.

Sir_Toejam you have a definite point about moral items beiing quite common - i really didn't consider that.

I begin to like the inferno faction - it is my first playthrough of HOMM5 although i played the series since part 2, and i like the different feelings of 2 factions i played so far.
Haven - physical powerhouse with a pretty useless racial special and abilities - i would take a regular 6 skill over it every time.
Inferno - fast and deadly but fragile with a real good racial special.
I think i will also enjoy necro, dungeon and academy. Sylvan... - in 2-4 my favourite faction... not so sure.

a little bit off topic: try out Sir_Toejam's fasttrack mod - it is really good imo.

On topic again: All your suggestions ideas and critisisms about this skill build or just stories how you like to play inferno are more than welcome.

[maltz]

I took sorcery because phantom force is a lvl 3 spell - i couldn't cast it without sorcery (magic insight than capped at creatures lvl 4) or summoning magic. I also play 1.0 - played 1.3 haven campaign and couldn't understand as a friend of mine told me the last haven mission to be difficult - it was a cakewalk for me. I reinstalled the game and in 1.0 it was challenging and fun, so i play onwards in 1.0 - the phantom force spell works very fine.

I've played this Agrael campaign probably 3 times on heroic in various patches and I never needed sorcery to cast phantom force (free from mission 2). Actually, sorcery and whatever expert level only limits your "ability to learn a spell", not the ability to cast it. Later on in the Necro campaign, you can totally ignore dark magic and still learn and cast Frenzy and Puppet Master when they are offered as mission bonuses.

So I take it you are playing in version 1.0 then? Good luck because you will need it to avoid various game-stopping bugs here and there. Plus 1.0 Gilraen on heroic is known to be... er, very hard.

[Tenchifew]

Oh i thought sorcery or summoning was needed to be offered the mission reward - my mistake. Had no bugs so far but Gilraen is indeed.... hard... but i think i have a strategy that just might work (better i hope it will) third take on this map but i think i will try it out tomorrow.
Can write about it then if someone is interested.

[asandir]

One thing i can suggest, cause the build is pretty solid ... HELLFIRE!! this ability is a great bonus, especially with soldiers luck .... combine with succubi mistresses and you are on to a winner 100 bonus damage comes in pretty handy!

[maltz]

On destructive magic: The scope of this inferno campaign is quite small (no huge armies unless you drag for ages), so even with Agrael's minimal spell power it can make a (mediocre) difference.

I personally prefer light more than dark for resurrection's sake. In patch 1.2 I charged the pheonixes with my archdevils, and with a constant stream of resurrection I was able to scored a perfect victory. Not anymore in patch 1.3, though.

The problem with dark magic is that you can't really learn any good spell from it when you really need it (mission 3, that is!). Light is offered in Sylvan towns, so it is possible for you to cast some crazy stuff when facing Gilraen (especially when he frenzies your stack; that's mean.) But mass slow is enough to make the entire investment in dark worthwhile. With light Agrael comes with free Righteous Might. With master of wrath (mass effect) you can really turn the tide while facing Gilraen.

[Idleness2]

I actually managed to get urgash's call with Agrael somewhere in the middle of that capture the elf sea port part of the campaign. I dunno how hard the rest of the campaign was supposed to be, but I think i got no casualties, at all, ever, after getting the ultimate.