Artillery: Difference between revisions

From Heroes 3 wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
No edit summary
No edit summary
Line 21: Line 21:
* {{H|Jeremy|Captain}} - Basic Artillery {{withhota}}
* {{H|Jeremy|Captain}} - Basic Artillery {{withhota}}


'''Heroes with Ballista (or Cannon) as specialty:'''
'''Heroes with Ballista as specialty:'''
* {{H|Arlach|Overlord}}
* {{H|Arlach|Overlord}}
* {{H|Christian|Knight}}
* {{H|Christian|Knight}}
Line 27: Line 27:
* {{H|Gurnisson|Barbarian}}
* {{H|Gurnisson|Barbarian}}
* {{H|Pyre|Demoniac}}
* {{H|Pyre|Demoniac}}
* {{H|Torosar|Alchemist}}*
* {{H|Torosar|Alchemist}} <sub>*Does not start with the skill Artillery.</sub>
 
* Interestingly, Torosar has specialty Ballista but does not start by default with Artillery skill.
* {{H|Ranloo|Death Knight}} {{withhota}}
* {{H|Ranloo|Death Knight}} {{withhota}}
* {{H|Jeremy|Captain}} {{withhota}}
* {{H|Jeremy|Captain}} {{withhota}} <sub>*Cannon instead of Ballista.</sub>


== Discussion ==
== Discussion ==

Revision as of 15:28, 14 March 2018

Secondary skills
 Air Magic
 Archery
 Armorer
 Artillery
 Ballistics
 Diplomacy
 Eagle Eye
 Earth Magic
 Estates
 Fire Magic
 First Aid
 Intelligence
 Interference Horn of the Abyss
 Leadership
 Learning
 Logistics
 Luck
 Mysticism
 Navigation
 Necromancy
 Offense
 Pathfinding
 Resistance
 Scholar
 Scouting
 Sorcery
 Tactics
 Water Magic
 Wisdom
Artillery
Basic Artillery: gives control of the ballista to the hero, allowing one shot with a 50% chance to inflict double damage.
Advanced Artillery: gives control of the ballista to the hero, allowing two shots with a 75% chance to inflict double damage.
Expert Artillery: gives control of the ballista to the hero, allowing two shots which inflict double damage.

Artillery is a secondary skill that gives the hero manual control over war machine Ballista during combat and control over the arrow towers when defending a town during siege. Basic Artillery provides a 50% chance that ballista inflicts double damage. For Advanced Artillery this is a 75% chance and for Expert Artillery a 100% chance. Advanced and Expert Artillery also enable the ballist to shoot twice in a row, instead of once.

Heroes with Artillery as a starting skill:

Heroes with Ballista as specialty:

Discussion

The only redeeming feature of Artillery skill is that while defending a siege, it gives the defending hero control over the arrow tower(s). Sometimes more valuable than the damage of the towers is the chance of defending hero to cast the first spell in each round. Additionally, heroes with Artillery specialty start with a ballista, which can be useful in the combat as the AI sometimes attacks it wasting an otherwise possibly harmful attack on the "free" ballista. However, purchasing a ballista for this purpose is typically purposeless unless the kingdom has plenty of gold to spare.

The problem with Artillery skill is the ballista, which is not only ineffective but also expensive, weak and possible risk factor during combat. An example of the ineffectiveness is that even if the hero has Expert Artillery, Expert Archery, Attack skill value of 20 and the target is within range, the ballista only deals approximately 200 damage against a neutral stack of Archangel. Moreover, the ballista has only 250 health and acts last during the combat round, which means it may be destroyed in battles even before it can inflict any damage at all. Another major disadvantage of ballista is, that in a combat it may provide creatures with breath attack an opportunity to attack troops behind ballista without fear of retaliation. Not to mention the fact, that ballista is not deployed when attacking creature banks or defending against a siege.