I think one of the reasons I am so choosy on the Heroes I choose is because I tend to keep them for the whole game. I rarely bother to actually dismiss them so I want to make sure there good. Hero level just matters so much and it's such a pain to level a new Hero. Therefore basically I choose 2 low (0 fame), 2 Med (via Summon Hero)and 2 champs (via Summon Champ) so my Ideal Hero Roster would be;

Zaldron - For his Sage and Caster abilities not to mention the Free Counter Spell he comes with.
Serena - Sage for her Random Pick would be best. Or Noble or Arcane Power. Her Healing spell is good early on.

MALLEUS - Read opening post for reason lol.
Shalla - Random Pick of Agility, Luck or Super Blademaster. She is the strongest of the Thrown Heroes.

Warrax - Randoms or Agility and Might with perhaps Lucky. Super Arcane, Legendary or more Casting. Armor Piercing Ranged attacks AND the ability to go Melee is just so good.
Roland/Mortu - Both really need Agility for extra Defense. Or perhaps Constitution for Roland and Super Might/Legend for Mortu.

Mind you if I have more than 1 enemy that specialize in Death Magic then I would replace one of them with Elana for entire army banishing hehe.

EvilLoynis, I just had my first experience creeping a map with Elayna + Holy Word. She had gear adding -3 to spell save... just lloloollolololoollll... she even killed a demon lord with a holy word cast. Ridiculous.

Yes she is quite a good Hero. One of the best things about her is that their is no "Randomness" in her abilities as she does not get any Random picks, but really to be blunt she doesn't need any.

Another good way to use her is if you have the Node Mastery Retort, give her a few -# artifacts and she can instant kill most nodes, except Sky Drakes, with just casting Holy Word.

Holy Word - Each Figure in all enemy Fantastic Units must make a resistance roll at a penalty of -2, Undead Units at -7, or be completely destroyed. Chaos and Black Channeled creatures count as Fantastic by the way.

Both Staff and Jewelry can have -4 spell save each. Therefore with 3 pieces of equip with a total of -12 Spell save you would instant kill all fantastic units, except Sky Drakes, with a resistance of 14 or less. The Colossus is the only Fantastic unit to have at least 15 resistance (in node he would have 17) so even then would only resist at a 10/30% chance with the above gear.

Taking out any Death Creature sites would be super easy even without gear as they would have to have 8 or more resistance to even have a chance to survive. Demon Lords have 12, DK's 10, Wraith / Shadow Demon's / Night Stalkers 8 but with -5 spell save even Demon Lords don't stank a chance.

Taken from MasterofMagic.org :

[i]"Elana is all that is pure and sweet. Remember that girl you went to High School with who looked like Elle McPherson and went to church four times a week? The one who wouldn't be a cheerleader because the uniforms were too skimpy? The one every guy wanted to get busy with but didn't even try because they knew she was locked at the knees? This is that girl.

OK. Now that you have the image firmly fixed in your mind, imagine that she is really pissed off. I mean hot. Steaming hot. Smoke pouring out of her ears and all that stuff. This gives you a good idea of what you're dealing with when you pick up Elana The Priestess. She has a sweet and caring side which will greatly benefit your troops, and a mean and hateful side for her enemies. As Duke Nukem would say, she's going to "tear em' a new one".

First, lets look at her sweet side. Elana is so sweet, even the Gods like her and have given her a Charmed life. This means she never fails a resistance roll on a nasty unit spell. Her charm is so strong in fact, that she is a Super Prayer Master which gives all troops a bonus to their resistance in combat! She is also rich and contributes 10 gold to your bankroll each turn and will work for you out of the goodness in her heart. Being a Natural Healer, Elana will heal any troops stacked with her at the end of each turn and her Purification ability allows her to heal any of your corrupted land. (It almost sounds like she came out of a Disney© movie and she should have little birds swirling around her head...)

However, she is not all sugar and spice. Elana also has an extremely powerful magical ranged attack which is backed by Arcane Power. Rarely is such a "priestess" granted such a nasty power, but that is why she is a Champion. Elana's hatred for evil allows her to use her magical ranged attacks to blast away her enemies. Luckily for you, she's also kinda dumb. Just tell her your opponents are devil worshipers or IRS auditors, and she will kill them too.

When it comes to crushing evil -- as in undead -- enemies, there is no better Champion than Elana. She has a whole list of powerful spells to help her do her work. Her Prayer spell will give all of your troops a +1 bonus to their To Hit, resistance, and defense making sure they do better in battle. Just in case any of them get hurt, she can cast Healing to mend their wounds. When faced with a particularly nasty evil unit, she can cast Dispel Evil. This beauty of a spell gives an evil unit a -4 spell save to resist, or perish instantly. If the unit has been raised from the dead, they have to save at -9! Its sort of like a Disintegration spell, but just for evil units. Finally, when really faced with a challenge, Elana pulls out all the stops and casts Holy Word. This spell inflicts a burning holy light on each evil figure of each and every evil unit forcing them to save at -2 (-7 if undead). This spell is more like a Flame Strike for the undead. Watch her take out a group of zombies in a single turn! Wow! "[/i]

ROFL

He might be the best hero in the game period when you figure in his low cost and how early you can get him.

If you gear him up so he has -12 saves, that Flamestrike spell just obliterates everything. The bigger the enemy army the better.

But of course you already knew this.

UWolf I think your under a bit of a misconception. The -# Spell Save boosts only effect spells that take into account the enemies Resistance.

It's not really intuitive but the majority of so called "Magic Attacks" and "Spell Damage" actually measures itself against Defense Shields and has nothing whatsoever todo with resistance. Malleus's damage spells (FLAME STRIKE, FireBall and Firebolt) don't get any bonus from -# spell save sadly.

Spells that DO benefit are spells like Black Sleep, Disintegrate, Holy Word, Life Drain and other such spells.

Disintegrate automatically kills any unit (without Magic Immunity) with a resistance score of 9 or less. If your Hero has each slot filled with a -4 Spell Save item, total of -12 spell save, he can potentially kill any unit with upto 21 resistance.

It's kind of sad that spell damage can never really match up to the hero just using his ranged attack for 3mp 90% of the time.

Ahh, I see what you're saying. Since that's the case, then the -12 saves impacting Flamestrike it would be ridiculous. Malleus already wipes out entire armies with that spell. Pretty much anything he can't take out with Flamestrike he can clean up with his "ordinary" magic attack.

Have you noticed this item crafting bug? If you start making a staff and add a charged spell, you can deselect the charged spell before you cast, but it still goes on the item, even if the final item is not a staff or wand, and even if you add a different fourth power. You can make a staff with four powers plus a spell. Or a ring with four powers plus spell charges. Or an axe with four powers plus a spell. And you don't have to pay for the spells.

I have no idea what problems might arise if you make an axe with a spell and give it to a hero with no spellcasting ability.

It's a known bug/exploit. IIRC the catch is that YOU can't tell the hero to use those spells; they can only access them if you play the battle on Auto.

He's right that it's a known exploit. The fact is you can even get the spell charges on Armor and Shields although your hero cannot access them.

Also there was a bug using spell charges on Axes (perhaps other weapons as well but have not tested them) with Heroes with inborn Fire Breath or Thrown abilities. Heroes effected are Fang, Shala, Bhagtru and Gunthar. With these Heroes if you even access the spell book that lists the spell charges, don't actually have to cast it, then your Heroes Thrown/Breath attack disappears for the rest of that battle.

*Not sure if it effects Heroes who get Fire Breath via Chaos Channels though.

I admit that I use this bug when crafting weapons for my Heroes as I only play on Impossible and the Computer is already super duper cheaty in oh so many ways. Not the least of which seems to be that they have double population growth, no upkeep costs on Summoned Units and get major amounts of gold or mana any time they run low.

I don't usually use it, but I did try putting Disintegrate x4 on the staffs for four spellcaster heroes once.

My 5 favourite Heroes are:

1) Malleus, flame strike, nuff said.

2) Allora, i like her alot, very deadly at high levels with good gear.

3) Shin-bo, Stack on that att bonus and go to town.

4) Shalla, buffed up = very deadly

5) Elana, awesome vs undead and summons

Yikes I am currently playing a game where I actually passed up getting Warrax because his randoms sucked.

For his 3 Randoms he got (In order of uselessness) Charmed, Armsmaster and the not so useless Legendary. However I took a good look at my current Roster and decided he didn't make the cut lol

Speaking of Malleus, not only is he awesome, but he's so tough he can wear plate mail. At least when my opponent has him. Apparently.

First time I'd seen that bug (I'm using Insecticide, not sure if it's related).

Not that it matters much, but there are still a few places where the computer wizards can do forbidden things. I was just amused by this one.

Roland Vs Mortu Which is better?

I have always maintained that Mortu is better no contest.



MORTU

Might, BLADEMASTER, Constitution and Legendary + 1 Random Fighter Skill.

Starting Stat -> Demi-God Stat.

Attack 10 - 26
Defense 5 - 9
Resistance 6 - 14
Health Points 11 - 27
TO HIT % 30 - 100% !!!



ROLAND

Super Might, Legendary, Prayermaster and **HEALER +1 Random Fighter Skill.

**The "Healer" ability he has is the same that Shamans and Priests have. This heals him, and anyone who starts the turn in their army, 25% or total hit points per turn healing. This is REALLY good when leading an army away from town as the normal healing rate is 5% when away from town. (10% in town and 15% in town with animists guild).

Starting Stat -> Demi-God Stat.

Attack 10 - 30
Defense 5 - 9
Resistance 7 - 23
Health Points 8 - 16
TO HIT % 30 - 60



The only time Roland is better is if you are leading and army and/or load him up with Life Enchantments, although these CAN be dispelled quite often and easily if fighting enemy Wizard thus wasting your time and mana.

Mortu however has that massive to-hit super ramping up his damage output. In fact with his first 3 level increases he goes up 10% each time thus matching Rolands 60% at only Commander (lvl 4, 120 xp) instead of Demi-God (lvl 9, 1k xp). This makes actually getting him those levels even easier.

One of the main Pro Roland is that it's easy enough to give him artifacts to up his hit %. To clarify this a bit it costs 400/800 mana to add +10/20% to hit on a WEAPON! (Art/Rune combo lowers this to 100/200). It's 2x that to add the same to JEWELRY, although Jewelry is better as it applies to Thrown/Breath attacks unlike weapon.

Mortu = Good no matter what while Roland only if you have the spells/artifacts/army or random pick. Well come to think of it Death has always been more reliable than Life lol.

That's a handy tidbit of information I wasn't aware of, so thanks. It'll help me jack up the breath attack for the Draconian. I seem to get him quite often.

My favorite heroes are heavily weighted to the early game. Any hero is going to be a force of nature by the late game, what is enormously helpful is heroes you can easily get early on.

Gunther the Barbarian - he hits things with an axe.
Shuri the Huntress - Blademaster makes her weak ranged attack quite deadly.
Serena the Healer - she heals all the armies.
Malleus the Magician - read this thread
Fang the Draconian - He flies and breathes fire. Also, he breathes fire and flies. Kind of fragile, though.

Torin and Roland and Mortu and all the other super high end heroes are amazing - but by the time I get them the game is usually all over but the crying. Because Gunther and Shuri have led my armies to triumph over two planes long since.