Blood seems underpowered. | Forums

[shirazuki]

Some of the reputation abilities are nice, and you are going to take abilities from both sides anyways, but if you go blood, Counterstrike lasts 1 turn, and all CC (Puppet master, time stasis, petrify, Intimidate etc._ Lasts a lot shorter.

If you go tears, life drain might only be 60% instead of 90%, your direct nukes are a little weaker, and you probably won't use those as tears anyways, while you will still use tear defensives and CC as blood.

Reputation level has a pretty minimal effect on blood warcries too - Flawless assault will always last 5-8 turns at end-game, heroism is unaffected, heroic charge is broken and might as well just be rush-2 right now.

[Zhjaeve]

For me, it's not the abilities itself but just the fact that gaining blood rep requires you to spend far, far longer at every army camp (1 sec to hit "let them flee" vs a 1 minute clean-up fight). And that's only IF the neutral army tries to flee to begin with, too many simply don't

[Arcane_Weapon]

Time Stasis as Blood lasts 3 turns vs 4 turns as Tears, not really that much shorter. In regards to Retaliation II and III yes, Tears is vastly better.

You should also be looking at the abilities the hero gets though and which you find the most useful and then design your build off of the path you want to take.

I tend to find the Blood hero abilities are more fitting towards my play style than Tears (Sanctuary Might being the one case where I love Tears).

[EBugle]

Actually, puppet master lasts -longer- as blood, as it's like the only blood CC spell (unless I'm missing one from schools I haven't encountered). Shame it's so easily dispelled, though.

Blood seems to favour the early game while tears favours late game. Early game, blood nukes kind of just obliterate creeps, and I've found early game drain life is a lot nicer than regeneration (late game it depends on the situation, but I think regen wins since its durration scales and life drain's doesn't). And spells like storm arrows (which I absolutely love) are actually really good throughout (especially against those poor naga.), though I wish the duration would grow as the hero does (most buffs should, actually...)

Tears, on the other hand, seems to favour late game with all of its CC, and abilities that prolong the battle. I haven't actually tried tears yet (I've been roleplaying my campaign heroes to which feels better and Anastasya felt kind of aggressive to me. I'm probably going to wind up with evil --> blood, good --> tears in the campaigns, aren't I?), so I'm not entirely sure how good they are, but as I've been using CC a lot during the end game of the campaign despite being blood... well that's just more evidence tears favours late game.

So I can see an argument for playing blood early game and switching to tears later. It might give you a less solid late game over all, but I think you'd have a more solid game overall which might just tip the scales. Shame you can't seem to change once you've changed classes twice, though... Or maybe that's just in campaigns...

[jigglefloyd]

Blood is not weaker late game.

Ever Try The Following?

Heroic Charge + Cleave + Rampage. Do this with Haven with Sun Crusaders and its GG. Your damage goes up 22% per square crossed, that's over 100% in 5 squares and they can't retaliate. Throw a Guardian Angel on him and they can't even attack him when their turns come up. This combo is good with any elite faction unit.

Stronghold - Shaman:
Water + Fire Magic, only ones in the game that can do this combo. Get Blizzard/Circle of Winter/Eternal Winter then follow up with the three Fire Nukes and Immolation, that's a 48% increase in Fire Damage against all "Chilled" creatures. Max your magic power in both schools and you're good to go.

Mass Inner Fire + Mass Heroism - nearly 30% increased might damage for your whole army.

Some Blood spells just outright rape by themselves when you max your blood reputation.

Fire - Frenzy is simply Broken. You basically can take your strongest melee unit out in the field and give it a free attack with +50% dmg, no retaliation. Or you can cast it on a stronger enemy stack.

Dark - Puppet Master. Only way you can get 2 turns reliably from it, broken spell when used at the proper moment.

Disruption - This is a great spell to get for Blood Might Heroes. It allows you to reduce the armor of a unit by 17+, which is like giving any might unit that attacks it a 30-35% increased dmg. Great strategy for focus fire. Also, this negative armor stacks, so it's great against elite/champion units.

Even nuking power is phenomenal late game if you get all of the power upgrades, some good items, and Meditation. Implosion/Firebolt/Lightning Bolt are the most powerful. Cast meditation, get +20 spell power for the next 3 turns, yeah...pwnage.

Also, there aren't more blood abilities than tears. Many abilities are neutral. Some factions like dark/fire have way more blood than tears, others like haven have more tears. Everything else evens out.

[jigglefloyd]

Originally posted by Arcane_Weapon:
Time Stasis as Blood lasts 3 turns vs 4 turns as Tears, not really that much shorter. In regards to Retaliation II and III yes, Tears is vastly better.

You should also be looking at the abilities the hero gets though and which you find the most useful and then design your build off of the path you want to take.

I tend to find the Blood hero abilities are more fitting towards my play style than Tears (Sanctuary Might being the one case where I love Tears).

You're incorrect concerning Time Stasis. Here is the following equation:

Time Statis: Target enemy creature skips the next 1.4/1.8/2.2(+stats) turns. Time Stasis is not dispelled by attacks.

Meaning the base efficiency is improved with tear level (x/y/z). Then depending on your hero spell power and the enemy hero's + creature's spell defense, this base efficiency is changed. It isn't a static 3 or 4 or whatever, and tears makes a big difference as maxing it pretty much guarantees an additional round, which is a HUGE deal actually.

[Arcane_Weapon]

Originally posted by jigglefloyd:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Arcane_Weapon:
Time Stasis as Blood lasts 3 turns vs 4 turns as Tears, not really that much shorter. In regards to Retaliation II and III yes, Tears is vastly better.

You should also be looking at the abilities the hero gets though and which you find the most useful and then design your build off of the path you want to take.

I tend to find the Blood hero abilities are more fitting towards my play style than Tears (Sanctuary Might being the one case where I love Tears).

You're incorrect concerning Time Stasis. Here is the following equation:

Time Statis: Target enemy creature skips the next 1.4/1.8/2.2(+stats) turns. Time Stasis is not dispelled by attacks.

Meaning the base efficiency is improved with tear level (x/y/z). Then depending on your hero spell power and the enemy hero's + creature's spell defense, this base efficiency is changed. It isn't a static 3 or 4 or whatever, and tears makes a big difference as maxing it pretty much guarantees an additional round, which is a HUGE deal actually. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Where did you get those numbers from? Not that I doubt you or anything, but I'd love to know if there's a place that explains how the skills power up based on the path you follow.

I pulled my numbers just looking at a Tears vs Blood Necro Magic hero, I knew that the number was modified, but the base number is easy enough to compare.

[Galucard]

All spell schools seem unfinished for me, IMO every single school of magic, might schools too, should be completely filled, like the prime one.
But I completely agree that TEARS is much more powerful at the moment

[SteinerNein]

Originally posted by Arcane_Weapon:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by jigglefloyd:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Arcane_Weapon:
Time Stasis as Blood lasts 3 turns vs 4 turns as Tears, not really that much shorter. In regards to Retaliation II and III yes, Tears is vastly better.

You should also be looking at the abilities the hero gets though and which you find the most useful and then design your build off of the path you want to take.

I tend to find the Blood hero abilities are more fitting towards my play style than Tears (Sanctuary Might being the one case where I love Tears).

You're incorrect concerning Time Stasis. Here is the following equation:

Time Statis: Target enemy creature skips the next 1.4/1.8/2.2(+stats) turns. Time Stasis is not dispelled by attacks.

Meaning the base efficiency is improved with tear level (x/y/z). Then depending on your hero spell power and the enemy hero's + creature's spell defense, this base efficiency is changed. It isn't a static 3 or 4 or whatever, and tears makes a big difference as maxing it pretty much guarantees an additional round, which is a HUGE deal actually. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Where did you get those numbers from? Not that I doubt you or anything, but I'd love to know if there's a place that explains how the skills power up based on the path you follow.

I pulled my numbers just looking at a Tears vs Blood Necro Magic hero, I knew that the number was modified, but the base number is easy enough to compare. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Did you ever try looking at the numbers after maxing out PRIMAL MAGIC and universal magic stat as tears and compare it with blood? There are also other factors that go into it, probably dynasty traits as well.

However, that isn't the whole picture anyways as the previous poster mentions there is mitigation. Being Tears spec kind of ensures that you don't end up with a ONE ROUND stasis as anyone who has DUELED could figure out. :/ This is before using Oblivion which shortens all durations by another 1 to a minimum of 1. So yeah, KIND OF IMPORTANT.

Funny habit of yours Arcane_Weapon.

[shirazuki]

The fan manual has all the values. Don't know how they got it, but its easily the most accurate source there is and ever will be, just as in Heroes V.

But spell scaling has always been an issue in heroes, its a problem here because spellpower is buggy and isn't scaling linearly at all times, all units have inherent magic defense (And when against a hero, it gets even higher), and unit pooling leads to bigger armies than before.

I liked Heroes V destruction myself, it took a really long time for their damage to become less relevant, and even then they still had secondary effects to fall back on, like master of fire's defense debuff.