r/heroes3 • u/Moorbert • 8d ago
Question Should I relearn the Game?
Hey there fellow players.
Heroes3 is one of my alltime favourite game. In my youth i put in hundreds of hours and if this was not enough. hundred more. and my friends and me we always thought. jeah go solmyr and chain lighting will obliterate everything. but the more videos and guides i see, it seems that also heroes that improve battle capabilites of your units are often chosen in higher difficulties. is this because the people want to challenge themselves or because the balance is not that much on magicians side?
i guess i somewhat never understood the game properly. that would also explain why i was always good in multiplayer mode against my friends... hot seat is still the best mp mode, you cant change my mind :D
and as soon as i play campaign. i really suck and loose.
thanks in advance for your insight.
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u/Legal_Weekend_7981 8d ago
You can, if you want to.
However, random videos on youtube can sometimes be misleading. Heroes that boost a low level units unit are largerly great because they start with several stacks of that unit, so you can get a strong stack at day 1. Boosting the stats of this unit is also nice, but it's far from the only reason.
Spellcasters who start with strong spells are not weak. They are rarely seen is for two reasons: 1) They are ridiculuously overpowered on small maps with little resources, so they are banned there in competetive play. 2) On larger maps in all likelyhood everyone will get to strong spells, and everyone has a lot of army, so having chain lightning isn't that big of an advantage.
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u/Irydion 8d ago
For the magic vs might hero: magic heroes have a hard time being good at might. But might heroes can very easily be good at magic. So it's a choice between good magic + bad might vs good magic + good might. The choice should be quite easy :)
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u/Moorbert 8d ago
its propably about scaling your abilites when leveling up as well right?
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u/Irydion 8d ago
Yes, it is also important. Might heroes will have a bigger attack and defense growth than magic until level 10, where it becomes more or less balanced across all primary attributes. You get much more from a high attack and defense than a high power and knowledge. Just a few points of power and knowledge is enough for most early games.
And then you also have the secondary skill chances. The best magic skills are the schools of magic (and wisdom). But you are actually guaranteed to get offered those for might heroes too! Whereas magic heroes are not guaranteed to get the good might skills. The difference between getting a magic school offered every 3 level (for magic heroes) vs every 4 levels (for might heroes), is just not good enough to justify using a magic hero (same for wisdom, every 6 levels vs every 3 levels).
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u/livinglitch Conflux 3d ago
Might heroes have a low chance (2-3 out of 10) chance of learning basic earth and air magic, as well as 1-2 chance (death knight has 5) chance of learning intelligence to pad out mana.
Youll need expert earth to TP around freely, resurrect multiple losses, mass slow/stoneskin and expert air helps with dimension door. Doing all of that is greatly aided by intelligence.
I would gladly take good magic + bad might as there are spells that can quickly turn the tide of battle.
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u/Irydion 3d ago
Might heroes have a low chance (2-3 out of 10) chance of learning basic earth and air magic
Of "naturally" learning them, yes. But magic school are special secondary skills. You are guaranteed to have a magic school choice every 4 levels on a might hero. So, for example, a barbarian, whose chances for magic schools are air3/earth3/fire2/water0, will have a very high chance of having either air or earth at level 4.
It's the same with wisdom. For example, a barbarian, who has a low chance of learning wisdom "naturally" (only 2), will be guaranteed to have it by level 6 (wisdom is offered at least every 6 levels for might heroes).
So, in the end, the choice is between having a hero who has your TP/DD/Fly and bad might stats/skills, or a hero who also has TP/DD/Fly but with good might stats/skills. The choice should be pretty easy :)
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u/SunnyDayInPoland 8d ago
Not always, having Craig Hack with no Advanced/Expert Wisdom, Earth or Air magic makes him really slow since he can't use Town portal or DD
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u/Irydion 8d ago
The thing is that it's very unlikely to lack those secondary skills on Crag Hack. Because the game will give you at least 1 school of magic skill choice every 4 levels, and being a barbarian, he actually has a higher chance of getting air and earth (lesser chance for fire, and cannot get water).
Same for wisdom. You cannot go past level 6 without having the game offer you wisdom.
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u/SunnyDayInPoland 8d ago
It's more about when Crag hack will get those skills. On average, when is a magic hero likely to have advanced Earth magic and expert air + wisdom? I'd say about level 12? When is a barbarian likely to have those 3? Probably 18 or later, and that can be a long time because the experience required to level up grows exponentially.
It's really tiring when your main hero doesn't do town portal or DD in mid game and you miss out on the positive snowball effect you would get with a magic hero: earlier control spells -> more targets each round -> more army and resources -> faster level up etc
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u/Irydion 8d ago
It's not that much of a difference. The magic hero gets their first guaranteed magic school only 1 level earlier than the might hero. As for wisdom, you can 100% get it at level 6 on a might hero, so you have a very very high chance to have it at expert by level 12. And if you don't pick new skills specifically to get it as fast as you can, you can even guarantee to have it at expert by level 8.
In theory, you could see that this is an advantage for the magic hero, because you can have expert air/earth + wisdom at an earlier level, you should get it faster, right? But in practice, the might hero being better at combat early on (higher atk/def + might secondary skills) often means that you reach a higher level faster. In the end, most of the time, you don't even get expert air/earth + wisdom faster with a magic hero because in the same time it took you to get them, the might hero will be higher level and have them too!
The only times a magic hero is going to be picked is because of their specialty. Luna for example has a specialty that is so good that she will be faster than every other hero in most situations.
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u/PkerBadRs3Good 7d ago
actually Crag Hack is likely to have expert Air/Earth faster than magic heroes because he cannot be offered Water, and Water diluting the pool ends up mattering more. and generally you do not need Wisdom fast because it usually does not matter in the early game, if anything it's better to delay it slightly more instead of having Wisdom turn 1.
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u/Ignimortis 7d ago
You get a guaranteed Wisdom on Might heroes at level 6, and a guaranteed magic school every 4 levels. It is quite likely, in fact, that your Crag levelups will be Earth or Air at 4, Wisdom at 6, and Air or Earth at 8.
Let's consider the most delayed skill improvement hypothetical situation.
- Level 1: Advanced Offense, 7 slots
- Level 2: Expert Offense or basic skill, let's say you get lucky with the skill and grab that
- Level 3: (Expert Offense or Adv Logistics) or basic skill, get luckier yet and grab a new good skill again
- Level 4: skill improvement or basic Earth/Air/Fire, let's say you get Earth
- Level 5: skill improvement or basic skill - let's say you are still very lucky and get another good skill
- Level 6: skill improvement or Basic Wisdom
- Level 7: skill improvement (you have six skills right now) or new skill, yet again pick new skill
- Level 8: skill improvement or Air/Fire, take the magic skill
At this point you have 8 skills, one of them at Advanced and seven at Basic. It will take 15 more levels to max them all out. This is the "worst" theoretical situation because the chances of maxing out your magics early are the lowest.
But this also assumes that you have always picked up new skills, which will happen very rarely. If you pick up a new skill every other time (at levels 2, 4, 6 and 8), you would have only five skills, out of which three would be Wisdom, Earth and Air, with at least one likely improved at least once, and even if not, it will only take 6 more levels to max them out if you dedicate yourself to that (since that would require you to max out Offense and the level 2 skill at 3/5/7).
If you are lucky in a different way and get offered improvements to magic skills consistently, you might get something like Adv Wisdom and Expert Earth+Air by level 12, too.
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u/Netherscreamer 6d ago
It really depends on the map size, whether the game is vs Ai or PvP, town matchups and so many other factors. IMO:
1) Might heroes are kinda easier to build and are better early-game where their stats give them more and they are not constrained by running out of mana or lacking good spells and/or expert magic schools. You can just snowball one fight after another with Tazar or Craig and Solmyr would need to go refill his mana after every couple fights
2) Magic specialities are really not that good at most cases especially lategame. Something like scaling +stats to units or +% to might skill will give you more as the army gets bigger and bigger. These bonuses really shine after like 50 turns or so when magic starts falling behind more and more. What is the point of 5k implosion damage if you face 2 stacks of 20 archangels that will just obliterate half of your army AND res each other AND can be revived by your opponent and so on.
3) Basically wisdom+earth and/or air magic are enough so you can fill other slots with non-magic skills and have better results in most games. These 3 plus intelligence + magician well artifact set (which is pretty easy to obtain esp on L and XL maps) + offence + defense +logistics +tactics/necromancy/kinda anything will give you the best outcome from my experience
And the biggest thing that I have with pure magic builds it that you can only dish out one spell per round. This kinda limits magic impact on battles and makes magic more of a supporting tool instead of being a win-condition. Though with tons of mana and sp you can just spam ressurections onyour units turning every battle into a battle of attrition which is the way I usually overpower AI opponents who really don't know the value of this spell (both in vanilla and HOTA)
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u/guest_273 Thunderbirds 6d ago
I think in HotA Mages are more scuffed because the Interference skill and artifacts exist.
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u/Ignimortis 8d ago
Magicians just don't scale that well. Even the best spells will do a few thousands of damage, but in many games, you can just buff your units with low-level Blesses or Hastes, or debuff enemies with Slows, and that usually has more of an impact when armies field hundreds of strong high-tier units.