Editing Artillery (section)

==Chance to get==
{{Secondary skill chance explanation}}
{{ZET SEC SKILL CHANCE TABLE| 5| 2| 6| 1 (lowest)| 4| 1 (lowest)| 5| 4| 5| 3| 8 (highest)| 1 (lowest)| 8 (highest)| 4| 8 (highest)| 1 (lowest)| 8 (highest)| 1 (lowest)| 5| 1 (lowest)| 6| 6}}

{{fanopinion|
Artillery is useful if you have access to [[Ballista]], and even better choice would be selecting a hero with this speciality as your "number one", especially on small maps. If the [[Blacksmith]] of your home town doesn't produce Ballistas, but you have an opportunity to get it (by capturing a town with Ballista, on the map, or building a [[Ballista Yard]] in a [[Stronghold]]), Artillery is a good choice. Moreover, it allows you to fully control the town's defense (as sometimes [[arrow tower]]s kill enemy's least valuable troops, i.e. neither ranged nor flying). High price of a Ballista is "the other side of the medal". A secondary hero may learn Artillery so as to shoot wandering creatures and weak enemy troops, avoiding melee attack and thus decreasing losses. Always learn Artillery if you rely much on [[Blind]] spell, as otherwise Ballista may shoot blinded creatures, making them able to fight.

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 bank]]s or defending against a siege.

When playing on 200% difficulty (eg., the setting usually reserved for competitive games), players start with minimal resources. In this instance, heroes that start with Artillery can be a godsend, especially if your town lacks ranged units by default and you cannot afford to upgrade units during the first few turns. Because of their large pool of hitpoints, you can kite a single flying stack around, out of danger, while the artillery softens the enemy stacks to the point where your stack can one-shot them.

Also, Ballista/Cannon specialty can be very strong on campaign heroes as they start with a ballista and good stats on subsequent scenarios and can usually start clearing the map with no additional troops
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{{secondary skill 'see also'}}

[[Category: Secondary skills]]
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