Artillery

Secondary Skills
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Archery
Armorer
Artillery
Ballistics
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Eagle Eye
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Artillery
	Basic Artillery: gives the hero control of the Ballista, Arrow Towers, and the Cannon. The Ballista has a 50% chance to inflict 200% base Damage. The Cannon has an increased chance to hit fortifications. The Ballista and the Cannon cannot be dealt more than 40% of their Health as Damage from any single damage source. gives control of the ballista and defense towers to the hero. The ballista has a 50% chance to inflict double damage.
	Advanced Artillery: gives the hero control of the Ballista, Arrow Towers, and the Cannon. The Ballista shoots twice and has a 75% chance to inflict 200% base Damage. The Cannon has an increased chance to hit fortifications and inflicts 200% base Damage to creatures. The Ballista and the Cannon cannot be dealt more than 40% of their Health as Damage from any single damage source. gives control of the ballista and defense towers to the hero. The ballista shoots twice and has a 75% chance to inflict double damage.
	Expert Artillery: gives the hero control of the Ballista, Arrow Towers, and the Cannon. The Ballista shoots twice and inflicts 200% base Damage. The Cannon precisely hits fortifications at maximum Damage and inflicts 300% base Damage to creatures. The Ballista and the Cannon cannot be dealt more than 40% of their Health as Damage from any single damage source. gives control of the ballista and defense towers to the hero. The ballista shoots twice and inflicts double damage.

Artillery increases the base damage of both the ballista and cannon the ballista ; the "double damage" in the skill description does not mean that the total damage (final damage) is necessarily increased by the same percentage, as it might also be increased by other factors, such as high Attack skill - see damage formula.

Heroes with Artillery as a starting skill:

•   Vokial the Death Knight
•   Zubin the Battle Mage
•   Pasis the Planeswalker
•   Ignissa the Planeswalker

Heroes with Ballista as a specialty:

•   Torosar the Alchemist

Heroes with Ballista as a specialty and Artillery as a starting skill:

•   Christian the Knight
•   Pyre the Demoniac
•   Ranloo the Death Knight 
•   Arlach the Overlord
•   Gurnisson the Barbarian
•   Gerwulf the Beastmaster
•   Morton the Mercenary 

Heroes with Cannon as a specialty and Artillery as a starting skill:

•   Jeremy the Captain 

Horn of the Abyss

Effects on cannon:

With Basic Artillery or Advanced Artillery the cannon does randomly 1 or 2 points of damage to fortifications. With Expert Artillery the cannon always does 2 points of damage to fortifications. With Advanced Artillery the cannon does double damage and with Expert Artillery triple damage to enemies. As opposed to ballistas, cannons always shoot once.

Trivia

The ability to control the Arrow Towers was added in Armageddon's Blade.

Chance to get

Out of total 112 for Shadow of Death, and of (112 + Interference chance) for Horn of the Abyss .
Banned skills change the probability.

Town	Class	Chance to learn
Castle	Knight	5
Castle	Cleric	2
Rampart	Ranger	6
Rampart	Druid	1 (lowest)
Tower	Alchemist	4
Tower	Wizard	1 (lowest)
Inferno	Demoniac	5
Inferno	Heretic	4
Necropolis	Death Knight	5
Necropolis	Necromancer	3
Dungeon	Overlord	8 (highest)
Dungeon	Warlock	1 (lowest)
Stronghold	Barbarian	8 (highest)
Stronghold	Battle Mage	4
Fortress	Beastmaster	8 (highest)
Fortress	Witch	1 (lowest)
Conflux	Planeswalker	8 (highest)
Conflux	Elementalist	1 (lowest)
Cove	Captain	5
Cove	Navigator	1 (lowest)
Factory	Mercenary	6
Factory	Artificer	6

User Commentary

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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 towers 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 banks 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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See also:

• Secondary skills