 Hello my friends and welcome to the Heroes of Might and Magic 3 hero class rankings list. So how will we decide whether a hero class is good or bad or whether it deserves a spot near the top or near the bottom? I propose to use two key criteria. The first criteria is we're going to be asking how often is it the case when you're playing as the town that is aligned with that hero class that you want that hero class to the exclusion of others. So take for example knights we have Valeska here in the top left corner representing the knights. How often will it be the case that we want a knight to lead our castle forces as opposed to choosing a cleric which is the main competition in the town or choosing a hero from some other faction or from some other class instead? How well does the knight bully the other character classes out of the castle? The second criterion is the shoe on the other foot. So how likely is it that we would choose a knight to lead our forces if we are not playing as the castle if our main town type is something else like the inferno or the dungeon or fortress or whatever else? So let's bring up the knight list and we'll have a look. Okay so we've got the knights here on the screen and a quick acknowledgement and shout out to heroes.velazy.net where there's a central repository for all the data on all the heroes creatures and everything else in the game. This is an image I've taken from their website or from that website. I'd like to start each analysis by reminding us ourselves what is the primary stat line for this class. So knights operate on a 2211 which means two attack, two defense, one spell power and one knowledge. That's their starting primary stat list and I think for a hero of might that's pretty good. A balance of attack and defense obviously not geared at all towards spell casting. When we look through the list here we might just make a quick note to say I am going to operate on the horn of the abyss mode. One thing we need to do is exclude just a couple of people on this list roll and and so mullock towards the bottom here. Catherine as well we need to exclude for the same reason. The key characteristic that you can see here is leadership for knights and leadership is a great skill. It's a really really nice skill but it's a bit of a meme like every single one of them has it and there isn't a lot of variety there. When we look down through the list of specialities we've got Christian with his ballista and artillery that's a really nice pairing. He comes with a free ballista, he has special bonuses to make the ballista shoot better and he is a natural talent at artillery. Edric is great with griffons, armor is a solid secondary skill. Archery is an okay thing for Oran given that we've got marksmen in this town. We have Sausure and you know Valeska, Tyrus, Cavaliers, the creature based sort of specialities there as well as a navigation hero in Sylvia. All of these second skills are pretty good as well and they're pretty strong. So how do we apply this test? Well let's think about the first primary test. How likely are we to choose a knight while playing as the castle? I think we're pretty likely. It's a really solid class. There's no one really on this list that's terrible. I mean I don't like Tyrus's Cavaliers speciality. I don't like tier six specialities. I don't think they really trigger a matter much but Tactics is great so she's solid enough. Estates is great for Lord Heart. Beatrice with Scouting is fine and the Horn of the Abyss expansion for those of you playing that one. Yeah I think it's pretty likely you're going to choose a knight to lead your forces and be pretty happy with that in week one, week 10, week 20 as the castle. We might give them something like seven and a half out of ten on that score. How likely would you be to choose a knight to lead your forces if you're someone else? That's a second test right so if we're the dungeon it would be the main one I'm thinking of. So I think the knight is a really solid solid offering for foreign factions as well. Sausure, Valeska, Tyrus, I was going to say Catherine, but those three specialities as well as Edric's Gryffins won't matter. So we might give them a seven out of ten on that second score. Where should Valeska go to represent the knights? I think we need to actually put a pretty high on the list as a starting point because not many of the other classes are going to score very highly in both categories. So I think the knight is somewhere on this podium, this secondary podium. There are a couple of other classes I'm really excited about that are probably going to hog this area. I think she might be somewhere around fifth right so we'll say that the knights are the fifth best best class. We will be tweaking and moving and competing and and re-jigging as we go. Next cap off the rank is the cleric represented by Ingham here as we can see. Okay and here we are with the list we have the same eight clerics regardless of whether you're playing Horn of the Abyss or Shadow of Death. And well what can we say? I suppose well let's start with the starters we need to go on. Let's look at the primary stat list. So for a hero of magic you typically have five points spread around the four skills and clerics are 1-0-2-2 so they have one attack, zero defense and then two spell power and two knowledge. So for a hero of magic I like two knowledge. Two knowledge is good and having two spell powers as a starting point is is is pretty decent. When we think about the castle in particular the castle gets up to level four the mage guild can be upgraded to level four which is a lot better than level three but not as good as level five where most of the towns are sitting. So we're sort of okay on that test. We've got basic wisdom and obviously advanced wisdom for Adelaide as standard and that will that will that will combine reasonably well with the two spell power and the two knowledge that you get fresh out of the gate. Looking down through the list of individuals a dealer with bless she's really good at bless and she has diplomacy. I like to turn diplomacy off in the games I play but I don't want to hold that against a dealer too much. Adelaide's frost ring I don't care about frost ring very much and even as Adelaide I'm probably not casting frost ring all that often. The advanced wisdom is kind of a bit of a let down compared to having a good second skill too like intelligence or estates as you can see below. Caitlyn is a really solid hero I think with intelligence and gold. I love having free resources and I'm going to rate these heroes pretty highly even though maybe they're not as attractive for a primary primary hero but they're very very appealing to have in your army or to have in your forces let's say. Cuthbert's weakness and estates goes well. I actually don't like I don't mind Cuthbert. Ingemonks aren't a big deal for me and mysticism isn't a huge deal for me although it is better in Horn of the Abyss than in the basic game. I like Loinus a lot with prayer. Prayer's great spell and knowing its pressure out of the gate is quite solid quite decent. Rion's first aid is disappointing it's not a great skill and Stone Skin is a disappointing start. Sanya is one of the heroes that I'm going to label the trash heroes. There's basically a big waste bin where all the eagle eye specialists need to be put sadly because of the woeful utility of eagle eye. So right off the bat we have really only seven out of eight characters that are remotely usable or interesting because Sanya is beyond you know reprehensibly bad. Rion is is poor. I would say looking across the list 1022 my general feeling is one of okay I'm okay with this class I think it's a good class but I'm not jumping for joy about it. Let's apply the test. How likely am I to choose a cleric when playing as the castle? I'm moderately likely. I think a knight is better so I'm going to give them something like a five and a half. I think they'll get bullied off by the knight and they'll be bullied off by other useful hero classes from other factions fairly frequently. How likely am I to pick a cleric as a foreign town? Well I actually think maybe they score pretty well on this front because there's only one I mean if you look at Sanya and Ingham are quite unattractive to a foreign town but everyone else is actually pretty solid provided that you have star accesses and wishing wells and stuff around and you're like yeah I could really use a hero of magic here. The cleric isn't a bad shout but I think I'll give them a slightly higher score on that second test maybe something around the six and a half. So I think we're definitely below average maybe somewhere between 13th and 15th I think is where the cleric is going to land I think. Okay the next cap off the rank is the ranger represented by Rylan here. So ranges of the rampart. I'm working my way from castle down to cove in the sort of order classical order of the towns that shows up in the menus of the game. So let's start ourselves off by reminding everyone what this stat list looks like for ranges. It's one three one one okay one attack three defense and then one each for spell power and knowledge. So we've pivoted away compared to the night from attack to defense right off the bat that immediately makes me go right because the rampart doesn't really desperately want more defense than it wants attack I don't think and I think I prefer two two one one for my mighty characters. When you look down the list here of things that these heroes want to do they want to shoot as you can see here three of them are really archery focused and then there's leadership as well so that's a damage dealing kind of mentality and I just feel like one three one one looking down through the list here. Clancy is very good with unicorns and his resistance is replaced by interference in horn of the abyss. I don't love tier six specialities but I do love unicorns. Ivor is awesome with elves and elves are what the rampart is really all about. Check out my creature tier list for more if you want to hear me waxing on for like 20 minutes about how great elves are. He's also got offense which is a strange combo but Ivor feels great you know especially when you are the rampart. Genova we have a gold hero in Kaia we have a logistics hero. Logistics being the greatest skill in the vanilla game and is still a very solid skill in horn of the abyss as well. Mephala has armorer leadership we've got Ryland with leadership diplomacy again won't hold it against him don't love the dendroid speciality really. Thorgrim I think shows up I don't know maybe he does show up with resistance still in the horn of the abyss the way it's written here I don't love resistance it's a solid skill but I don't in the early game especially when you're fighting the environment it doesn't do anything okay. Euphretin not very good we're going to skip Gelu because he won't show up in random maps and then Giselle is added in the horn of the abyss. I think that's an impressive list of specialities and skills okay all of these skills are right up there with the kind of skills that you're going to want to choose yet you want offense you want logistics leadership works really well with rampart archery is meh but not when you're fighting with elves archery if you you can go ahead and build around elves and have archery and be quite happy how likely are we let's apply the test test number one how likely are we to want to buy a ranger while we are playing as the rampart either in week one or week 10 or week 20 bearing in mind that you can get to mage guild level five in the rampart okay that's available that's a that's a that's an option you can put your money in effort and energy into mage gilding um so there's a bit of an opportunity counterfactual thing going on there but I have to say I think this is a solid roster and a solid list of heroes similar to the knight I think you're going to say yeah yeah I'd like I like this maybe just a little bit behind where the knights are given that archery isn't always going to be well as the rampart though archery is fine right the 1311 is a bit annoying I'm going to give them a slight haircut compared to the knight on that first test something like whatever I said for the knight was seven and a half maybe it should have been eight for the night and I'm saying seven and a half for these guys on the second test how likely am I while playing someone else like anyone like let's say fortress or um I don't know dungeon tower to pick this hero type I think moderately likely uh yeah I we're in cleric territory for that um the archery won't be useful very often for everybody noting that kaya has logistics though so who cares that archery sucks and jenova is gold so again iver iver turns off clancy turns off rylan goes away you freak is not interesting at all to to a foreign power um yeah I think we're in that same sort of six and a half range I don't think there is appealing as a knight for a foreign power either but still solid so let's have a look at the let's have a look at the podiums okay so rylan where should we put you man you're not as good as valesca you don't deserve this spot here it's not like you're just barely not as good I think you are better at the rampart than the cleric is at the castle so I want to be in this neighborhood um they're solid heroes I actually think I underrate them when I play the game probably what'll happen is there'll be quite a few classes in this cluster of sort of seven to eleven that I'm gonna have difficulty discriminating against or discriminating between okay looking at the druids now and an interesting list uh this is the horn of the abyss version is very very similar I think to the shadow of death version though we have eight individuals to examine here now a druid has an interesting primary stat profile zero two one two zero attack two defense okay which is which which matters which means you you want you want to have an you want to be able to leverage that two defense right with an army of some kind I would I would I would argue and then one spell power and two knowledge so for a start when you're starting out how likely am I to pick a hero of magic I'm looking for that two knowledge that that matters to me more than two spell power does so that's good but it's a little bit of a strange stat line um they're not what you'd call a hybrid class of fighting and magic I don't think it's still a hero of magic but yeah that's how it feels to me anyway but it's kind of you know having just having your starting primary stats soaked up in two defense instead of having that over in power and knowledge makes them a little bit sketchy with that said they all come with wisdom and the rampart can get to level five mage guild so there is a nice alignment there however as we start to look through the list and we'll do this now it's not exactly a list of superstars right eris is good with pegasy and pegasy are some of the least interesting and useful units in the rampart eris's specialty won't matter his scouting is very good scouting is particularly useful in the early game but protection from air starting spell not really that good so right off the bat we're going to need to teach eris something we're going to need you know a mage guild he can't just go out and get things done allegar on the other hand is he comes with his spell book it's already got ice bolt written in it as you develop allegar he casts ice bolt really effectively and hopefully he gets water magic and he already knows sorcery because he plans to cast ice bolt a lot so again you've got this kind of what we said with christian it's a pre-built combo kind of guy he he knows what he wants to be with his life you can see there is a gentleman in his mid 40s he's been around right he knows what he's good at and what he's about it he's great at casting ice bolt and he he makes sense and he's a good hero coroneas sadly it would be so cool if slayer was a good spell sadly slayer is unplayable and i don't think the horn of the abyss changes it into anything like it's not unplayable but it's just a terrible spell you don't want it in the early game and you're never really going to cast it in the late game being able to teach it to other people is no of no use because it's a bad spell so coroneas stinks he's one level above the trash bin he's basically sitting on the lid of the trash bin he's looking down at malcom who is in the bin along with sanja sadly so i jumped ahead there malcom is one of those trash heroes that has to go in that bin elisha intelligence is solid goes really well with wisdom curse is a nice spell to know off the bat and the intelligence works it all kind of works clicks together elisha's a good hero gem first aid and first aid summon boat is actually quite handy to know right out of the gate though malcom as we said terrible melodia also is woeful luck is an okay handy skill to start with but fortune is a spell you never cast and i don't even think in order the abyssal cast at being a specialist out it doesn't help um euland is middle of the road i love ballistics so i give them a thumbs up for that but being really good at casting cure doesn't matter overall i just weigh it all up across the eight individuals it's a lackluster performance allegah and elisha are trying their best to get this group of people to work together and to actually put up a case let's think about the first test how likely am i to choose a druid to leave my rampart army not very allegah elisha yes please come on board fellas let's do it everyone else meh okay so we're in the sort of four out of ten i'm not going to pick melodia if i can pick someone else right so it might be three and a half four out of ten is probably too generous i think i might be down in the round the two and a half to three out of ten and how how likely is a druid going to be to bully out the other classes and say no ranger you don't want that ranger you want me or you don't want that warlock you want me not very two and a half test number two how likely am i to pick one of these individuals while playing as a foreign power a hero of magic uh you know elisha and allegah yeah i i would gladly take these guys uh playing as the um tower playing as the conflux um i could take melodia but i don't really want to i could take uland and be be okay with that and and develop uland into something that matters i might want eris's scouting you know as a foreign power sort of the same thing happening with the cleric has or it's like oh yeah if i've got the right conditions i might but i think i'd prefer a cleric to these guys um so four out of ten i'm saying four four four ish out of ten probably that's a bit generous where should she go as a representative for the druids i'm afraid it will be in this bottom tier this bottom ranking there are some woeful classes here that we'll get to you so i want to leave a bit of room for them this is a pretty poor class though the druid i'm going to leave her at 17th for now okay i need to speed up a bit i think uh the video is going to be too long otherwise alchemists so here's the list of alchemists and let's start as we always do with a reminder of what the stat list looks like it's one one two two on top of that this class starts with a spell book and a spell written in that spell book for a hero of might so let's just reflect on that for a second you get one one they're already ready to fight and help their army that they're leading in some regard at least and then they have two skills two spell power and two knowledge which would make a cleric blush and they have a spell book and as we scroll down quickly on this right hand side we can see that spell book is filled with really good spells for the early part of the game on the frontier of your empire hiring one of these guys they come ready to go they've got one one two two and i can cast magic arrow right i only can cast magic arrow like four times that's good right so there's a background radiation of goodness i think to alchemists that we really have to acknowledge here before we even begin the analysis now let's have a look down through what we've got as you can see skill one is hovering really around scholar and mysticism everybody is either a scholar or a mystic and neither of them are insanely great skills with the scholar scholar's fine but you really only want one scholar in your army so if i'm playing as the tower i'm not going to want there's going to be a diminishing returns thing going on with alchemists as you hire them mysticism is really quite poor in the vanilla game but it is a solid skill in the horn of the abyss with that said if there's a wishing well nearby mysticism's a waste that takes some shine off that that first column of skills specialities well faffner's good with nagers and i don't think that matters being good at helping nagers be be better fighters doesn't matter i don't think an interference is okay used to be resistance i own is great with genies so is thane i hate genies i don't build around them i'm not going to try to rush my genies and build a big stack of genies maybe if there's a dwelling out an external dwelling it matters advanced scholar and intelligence is okay i guess um but i don't like that speciality these specialities josephine's golems don't care about golems i don't need you to make golems better they're there to die or get in the way of things nila great with armor a solid solid skill and obviously a solid hero as a result gargoyles are a really good creature and scouting works well and you can get some good things done with picket ram in the early part of the game with that combo rissa gives you free mercury which i love and offense works really well free magic arrow what's not to love about rissa torus i think it's a bit of a star uh really really great hero you get a one one two two profile he knows tactics he can heal his own spell points as he's going you can throw four magic arrows out of the gate and you get a ballista a bit of a mixed bag of stuff going on right as we moved our way through the specialities and looking at the combination of skills doesn't quite click across the board everywhere let's apply the two tests how likely am i to choose an alchemist to lead my army in the tower they're up against wizards and they're up against foreign uh foreign forces wanting to push in i think you're you're you're very very likely to choose one of these individuals right to to do the job especially in the early game i think i do prefer the magic arrow guys and the haste guys to the shield guys so i think the alchemist is in the same conversation as the knight for attractiveness to the tower i'm going to give it a slight haircut give it seven and a half i'm kind of using the night as a bit of a yardstick for the heroes of might here now how likely is an alchemist to push in and take over uh in a foreign town quite likely give them a sort of a six and a half out of ten on the second test so where should we put josephine not as good as a knight but better than a ranger here sixth next in line to the throne of the secondary podium i think i'm happy with that it's reasonable you could maybe make a case for moving both of well maybe you can make a case for moving i think i like the knight better than the alchemist enough to say that there probably is a gap here i'm ready to move a leska up i like alchemist though it's a really solid class so we'll leave her there for now next cab off the rank is the wizard okay and we have the list of individuals here drag on at the bottom we can ignore uh he's a campaign hero right what are the primary stats for a wizard zero zero two three okay so no fighting ability at all and then two spell power and three knowledge so three knowledge is a pretty big buff compared to two knowledge and certainly compared to one knowledge and the two spell power is is really really nice as well um i suppose they're wizards right so you would expect that in terms of flavor obviously the tower can get to level five mage guild they all have wisdom cool okay right we're we're we're we're off to a fairly solid start i would say looking through the creatures on yeah i'm going to pronounce um that wizard's name as on yeah that's how we pronounce it here in ireland where i live uh although there's some symbols and stuff above the letters uh you might call you might call this hero ain't i don't know um giving free gold amazing i love it yes sign me up being a scholar fine okay you're a wizard it's likely that there'll be other wizards and other spellcasters in this journey and having a scholar is is going to be okay and curse is a fine starting spell um astral hypnotize doesn't matter and being good at hypnotize whenever i've been astral and gotten him up to level 15 or level 20 like finally someone who can actually cast hypnotize he still can't like it it just you can't there's nothing worth hypnotizing on the field kaira with haste works really well our diplomacy again i'm just going to sort of imagine is replaced with some good skill i'm not going to hold it against her she's not good for me because it's a wasted skill and in the sense that i banned myself from hiring her in the first place but yeah i'm definitely not going to hold that against um against that the class dear myth with fortune uh similar to melodia i think we talked about earlier totally useless not good don't care about fortune and intelligence is okay um the 0023 makes her still hireable she's not woeful um haylon okay not bad i mean mysticism is just all right even in the horn of the abyss stone skin isn't a very good starting spell though so i don't love haylon not a lot of love serena we have a trash bin hero sadly and so at this point from first down to sixth there you're kind of going oh yeah they're okay it's feeling like they're cleric type of thing then you get to solmia the genie wizard maybe the greatest hero in the game uh the poster you know hero on the front cover of the rulebook just an insanely good hero um what we talked about before with i don't remember which ranger it was who alma was it um who had ice bolt and sorcery and he knew what he wanted to do with his life solmia is that on speed he's just amazing right chain lightning is fantastic it's one of the greatest spells in the game you want solmia when you see him when he shows up his sorcery combines beautifully his wisdom makes it so that he's ready to learn other spells in the air school you want him to become an expert air mage air magic is um just the absolute obvious beeline skill for him his destiny is foretold and he's going to be amazing for you there are a few other heroes in the game that can rival solmia i think for sure awesomeness theodorus at the end as well worthy mention i really like a theodorus magi is a strong strong stack assuming you can get um you know you can recruit them i i waxed on about that in the creature's tea list how hard it is to develop the dwelling but this the creatures themselves are awesome obviously magi and i love ballistics so i rate theodorus probably more highly than the community does but that's just how i feel i love ballistics i know that as a community you all think it's just meh but i think it's awesome and i have to be true to myself so solmia theodorus come in at the end and massively pick up the tab right solmia is at the table at the end of the dinner and he's the one saying waiter give me the bill i'll take it i'll pay this bill because i'm solmia and i'm amazing let's apply the the test okay how likely am i to choose a wizard when playing as the tower obviously solmia is a no brainer theodorus i'll snap him off absolutely but the other six well yeah i'm moderately likely right because being a hero of magic does work with the tower creatures okay you can do all kinds of cool things with these creatures you can they respond well to haste they respond well to shield they respond well to they pair well with direct damage spells you can pile into a specific stack with your mages and your gremlins and then lightning bolt them you know it it heroes of magic work with the tower i think that that from a design perspective from a design philosophy they did get that right or they did nail it but the six wizards at the top are just all right they're not insane um so i think i'm going to give this class something like a seven for the attractiveness to the tower now obviously solmia is the exception he's a 10 or maybe a 12 how do i feel about these guys on the second test how likely are you to hire a wizard when you're someone else solmia absolutely theodorus yeah for sure i'll take that i'll take a theodorus i'll take a halo out on the frontier of my borders yeah and if i'm playing with diplomacy i'll absolutely appreciate kaira i like onya at the top that's pretty good it's a pretty good score i might say seven out of ten for the first and again seven for the second you do need out there in the world as a foreign power you need us you need to be able to teach these guys spells to get it to get it working you need a level two mage guild for them to immediately go and study because if you hire damith or if you hire astral astral is useless until he is you can get him to a mage guild and that's a bit of a right compared to the alchemist who says no don't worry about it i've got a spell book and i've got magic arrow right here ready to go i have two knowledge instead of astral's three but astral doesn't know any spells so i'm giving them a haircut compared to the alchemist i think they're not as good as a team as the alchemists are but they are solid in both tests i'm using theodorus as my representative for the wizards for reasons i'll explain in a second i think they're worse than an alchemist and this will be a close one the ranger had a little bit more appeal i think to the wider community than the wizard will have do i want to put them just alchemist wizard or do i want to swap this over and do something like this i think the ranger has a little bit more universal appeal to the wider community okay to the other factions the non rampart factions than the wizard has conflux loves wizards places like the dungeon are going to love the wizard but these secondary skills of all the stuff that was in there artery offense um the one three one one i think it's close i think it's close and obviously the whole soul mere effect i'm going to make it i'm going to do it like this for now um one thing i might just point out uh is the reason i'm using theodorus and not soul mere is i know there are some of my viewers who like to don't really want to watch the two hours and they just want to flick through to the end and see how i get what i what i where i put everybody if i put soul mere at eighth i'm going to get a lot of negative comments uh justifiably so because he doesn't belong um as an individual certainly in that in that spot so that's why i'm using theodorus um instead of soul me uh let's move on from wizards to demoniacs now for those of you playing at home yes i am going to pronounce this demoniac have at me i might be wrong it could be it could be completely wrong pronunciation so the demoniac is the hero of might coming out of the inferno we have a stat profile of two two one one so exactly the same stat profile as the night bit of a bit of a secret tick mark just for that as a starting point now what is the deal with the demoniac let's have a bit of a scan through we've got a mixture of different people it will ignore z i was going to say exhort will ignore zeron at the bottom he doesn't show up in the random maps i play uh does he i don't think he does show up um maybe we should include him yeah he doesn't tend to show up in the random maps i play anyway so right out of the gate we've got carl with gogs and archery so a hero who knows again what he's about his specialty matches his skill his scouting is solid he's a really good hero is a really solid hero someone you're going to pick up pretty often when playing as the inferno you're not going to love him as a foreign power um my voice is starting to go already so this is going to be hilarious fiona i really love fiona um having played a recent successful campaign with her hellhounds are the best creature in the entire inferno her scouting is great especially in the early game ignatius imps don't matter at all interference i'm not that huge on that tactics is solid marius is good with demons which can be a pretty good thing if you are demon farming as your strategy and advanced armor is a really really solid secondary skill as well for her to start with nymus is the sort of mirror image of marius she's pit fiends instead of demons and offense instead of armor octavia's gold yes please i love free gold give me that all day long basic scholar what why why are you a scholar why is that a thing uh i don't get why you're a scholar but the rest of what you're saying is great pyre comes with the blister and the artillery combo and logistics so it's she's christian but on speed the logistics is just delicious i love the combo of the artillery and the blister really really amazing hero pyre rashka is a bit of a train wreck specialist at efreet i don't need you to be i love efreet but i don't need you to be a specialist at them uh he has basic wisdom and he's a basic scholar as well but he starts the game with one spell power and one knowledge so he's a nombo he's a walking nombo opposite of a combo kind of thing i don't like rashka um so with that all said how do we feel about these guys as a class amps demons and pit fiends as a specialist all right hellhounds sure and gogs matter um if you're playing in the horn of the abyss the magog is a is a powerful creature a very powerful creature in the vanilla game magogs i think are to be avoided because of the friendly fire problem which again go check out my creatures tealest video if you want to learn more about what i think about that stuff um but overall i think the demoniac is solid right and feels solid the skills feel okay let's apply the test i'm playing as the inferno how likely i might have picked one of these individual people over someone else over a heretic or over a foreigner from a different faction fairly likely i'm gonna say six out of ten um ignatius is gonna have trouble nymus is not necessarily gonna be you know to the exclusion of all others rashka i'm definitely setting him aside i think it might be six out of ten i'll say six out of ten for test one test number two how likely might i pick one of these guys instead of someone else when i'm playing as fortress or castle or rampart not very uh not very octavia and pyre come on board yeah let's see what we can do i've got some good army for you here in the rampart pyre i want you to take these elves and i want you to take the dwarves and centaur army i've got i want you to run around the map with your logistics and your awesome balista this all clicks for me yes please but no one else not really like not no one else really i don't think uh cuts the mustard four out of ten for the for the team four out of ten so fiona is my favorite demoniac where is she going to go six and four we gave them they're worse than a wizard and i think they're better than a cleric okay what did we give this guy it was the opposite was it four and six six and four and four six i think it's probably a close call between these two yeah the demoniacs are better at the inferno than the cleric is at the castle but then it flips flips over and they're much less attractive to a foreign power than the clerics are i think um this is close i'm actually going to do this move here and i'm going to give Fiona that 13th spot i think she i think these two are similar in attractiveness to uh in terms of desire ability and quality star power so that's the demoniac moving on to the heretic and we have the heretics here in front of us let's begin as we always do what is the primary stat list for the heretic well it's one one two one one attack one defense kind of middling starting point like the alchemist okay and then two spell power and only one knowledge oh for a hero of magic with one knowledge oh no no come on the inferno can get up to level five i don't want you wasting your time with attack and defense i'd rather have two knowledge than i i would almost trade the one attack and one defense for one more knowledge uh which we don't have which is a bit of a shame so right out of the gate basic wisdom for everyone and one knowledge doesn't feel like a great combo two spell powers like well how am i going to leverage that you you're probably going to leverage two spell power by having um high damage highly damaging spells or highly impactful uh buffs in the early game well let's look at the starting spells shall we bloodlust protection view earth haste weakness was good fireball with one knowledge who is fireballs our fax has fireball but he only has one knowledge so he can't even cast it inferno well inferno is a great spell um and obviously his iron can't can't cast it on day one either but at least he gets to hopefully quickly level into uh some spell points and be able to cast it um and then zyda stone skin so these starting spells aren't very good and don't gel with having two spell power in the first place so i'm already kind of slumping in my chair a little bit ash the heretic let's have a look she's good at bloodlust but that doesn't matter that much so bloodlusted creatures do a bit more damage than they would have i guess is her buff and her secondary secondary skill her second second skill is basic eagle eye so ash is poor cool artwork though all of them have amazing artwork access mysticism all right okay in horn of the abyss yeah but protection from air eiden intelligence decent okay and view earth is a spell you'll cast but these guys need to learn spells you know in order to be good call it gives free sulfur which i love and he and haste is a decent spell olima is kind of like kathbert a quite a solid hero i quite like the weakness and i love ballistics xarfax again yeah leadership and fireball don't really go together so your leadership i don't need those creatures to have i don't need you to be a great leader while casting fireball so he's a bit of a nombo hero it doesn't really go together right a little bit like rashka xyron's inferno is cool and the fact he can teach to other people is actually really really cool and zaida sorcery is your thing but you only have 10 spell points to start with and the spell you start with is stone skin if he started with fireball if zaida had fireball or if the fire school of magic had a tier two damage spell that worked properly as i think we all wish it did um then he would be good but he doesn't really click none of them click because the dna of the class just doesn't click right i've said enough bad things about them how likely are you to pick a heretic over a demoniac or someone else to lead your inferno not very we're in we're in druid territory here right how likely are you as a foreign power to choose one of these to lead your heat your army presumably in the you know in either a hybrid way or in a magic heavy way not very not very i'm gonna take a wizard if i'm if i'm a magic heavy um army or town um and i've got a mage guild do i want to hire a heretic a heretic and wait for them to level up so that they can finally learn lightning bolt or do i just want to hire damith that really weak wizard who has three knowledge 30 spell points right out of the gate do i want to hire an alchemist instead right so these guys score two out of ten and then two out of ten again so i think these are worse than a druid yeah i'm really i'm really solid on that these guys are worse than a druid so where should xarfax go he's down here in the doldrums he's worse than a druid is there likely to be someone else on that list that needs to go here and in between there's one class in particular i'm saving 20th four yeah i'm gonna put him 19th it might be 18th i don't think he's 20th because there's one class in particular that i i'm really gonna wrap bag on um coming up in the not too distant future okay so we are nearly nearing the halfway mark i hope you're still with me i hope you're enjoying this narrative which is probably over over being overdone but i can't help myself like it's just such a cool game you know i've got to talk about it how can you not how can you not you know just talk about it forever i have to try because you're going to get annoyed with me because i'm taking too long heretics are done what's next on the list we're into the necropolis and we're going to be talking about the death knight so necropolis that classic town type unique all unto itself and notoriously difficult to put into t lists and rankings the various um creatures heroes skills and so on um across all of the videos i've done it's it's it's it's been the most troublesome so let's see how we go here we've got here the list now we're going to ignore heart lich at the bottom he just doesn't come up i don't think in the templates i play anyway ran louis a thing though he's been added as part of the horn of the abyss expansion what are the primary skills for a death knight well it's one two two one very peculiar one attack two defense two spell power and one knowledge so yeah interesting then on top of that they start with a spell book and a spell on the right hand side very much the same idea as a alchemist in that regard but they don't have the two knowledge they've got two defense instead you're only casting your magic arrows a couple of times in the early game having just hired them so i'm already thinking about alchemists and how great they are you've got a hero of might that starts with a spell book and a useful spell as you can see scrolling down slow isn't is amazing as a spell but i don't desperately need to know it on day one hasten magic arrow oh yeah yeah really really good so i already love this class even before we start the analysis proper so chana is good with whites don't care but she knows magic arrow and tactics right out of the gate yeah so chana solid like i don't care that the white about the whites the rest of it is a great story clavius whoa yeah give me gold give me necromancy give me offense give me magic arrow i want everything that you're offering me i love clavius i take him all the time gal fran great with skeletons well guess what you you know necropolis a lot of the time is building around a huge skeleton ball of um of death and gal fran's a great person to do that giving them armor great giving them casting shield on them great right it all clicks together isra is good with the necromancy okay great that's cool um isra is totally useless to a foreign faction but is going to be very very strong for the necropolis moando comes off a bit i don't really like moando i don't think you need to be buffing liches it's not a thing really and learning stinks um straka stinks okay walking dead not very good interference whatever he knows haste which is a strange thing i guess hasten walking dead might be a bit of a combo but not really um tamika again helping black knights be better than what they already are not very applicable very often uh but she comes with offense and magic arrow so kind of like chana like yeah fine and then vocale a bit of a weirdo like vampires are it's useful to buff vampires because they're such a key unit such a key creature he's very very attractive to the necropolis artillery is a weird thing for him to know you've got to buy him a balista i know so it's probably not going to hit that often stone skin who cares um and then randallu i actually found i didn't use randallu for anything important in the campaign i played recently um he didn't end up i think he famously didn't end up fighting a single battle but looking at the character obviously in general you've got the christian thing going with balista artillery and then he knows haste which is a random thing for him to know doesn't gel with balista obviously um but i really saw it uh here i was well in that in in in the roster right let's apply the test how likely will we be to choose a death knight while playing as an acropolis extremely likely i think maybe if it's not 10 out of 10 it's nine and a half out of 10 they can be pushed out by necromancers they can be pushed out by foreign foreigners um that have superstar qualities such as soul mere okay i'm going to say nine and a half out of 10 you don't have to build yourself around necromancy especially not when you're in the horn of the abyss so amazing right an amazing choice so much value right out of the gate how likely are we to choose a death knight from this list while playing as a non-necropolis town this is a hard one to answer because they come there's so much value it doesn't matter that tomica is black knights in necromancy because she has offense she has a one two two one and magic arrow with a spell book you get all this value so they do i do i would hire a death i'd hire clavius in a heartbeat man to to lead my let's say stronghold forces he's raising skeletons that i have to dismiss or find a home for or maybe i'll put them behind a a gate behind a and in the in the horn of the abyss you can leave troops scattered around at different mines and stuff you could find a use for those skeletons maybe but you don't care are they as good as a knight a normal knight for other foreign powers i don't think so right because the necromancy and the specialities don't don't click as well as they do for an elk so they don't score as highly as an alchemist would um for this for the secondary test don't they maybe it's in and around right so maybe it's in and around six and a half seven for their appeal to a foreign power maybe i'm being too generous but the nine and a half for the for the for the base for the necropolis is is too strong to ignore so i think these guys are better than a normal knight for that reason and as you can see that means they're on the podium as things stand and i think death knights are really good the necropolis loves them and foreign powers will begrudgingly hire them because of just how much value you get what you get for your money i don't think they're gonna come they're certainly not first for me because i can think of one or two others they might be silver i don't i i'm gonna say bronze for now for the death knight all right let's look at the necromancers now in the necropolis so we have the necromancy blanket skill that carries over the same from the death knight and the weird thing that means is that as a hero of magic these guys don't have wisdom except for ashlyn that we'll talk about in a second at the top so you substitute wisdom for necromancy and that creates a bit of an interesting dynamic in terms of their primary stats we've got one zero two two so they have one attack which seems odd zero defense and then two spell power two knowledge i like the two two so they have the same list as a cleric that means they're a solid spellcaster for me and someone that you can begin leveling up as a spellcaster doing what they do from the time that you first hire them either in the early game or the late game so we're off to a reasonably good start in terms of the start line let's have a look at the individuals we have ashlyn up front and wow okay so ashlyn is nearly as good as soul mere she comes with meteor shower a huge damage dealing spell right out of the gate however she has two knowledge and 20 spell points to start with she's going to struggle to cast meteor shower very frequently compared to soul mere casting his chain lightning so she's not as good as soul mere the necromancy is great for the necropolis but useless for everyone else nagash i don't know why i said that then that's just obviously true and i've already said it before nagash gives you free gold great intelligence works really well as well protection for me as a bit of a letdown nimbus sadly is one of our trash can heroes he needs to hop in the bin alongside malcom and the others sandro is a very interesting hero one you can really build around starting with slow doesn't gel that well with sorcery but he is someone you can yeah he starts 1022 and then you can build up into someone who is an expert air mage casting chain lightning with specialities in sorcery or casting meteor shower while raising skeletons all works together very nicely he's a pretty popular hero i think with the community as well sandro i played with septiana in the previous necropolis campaign she was my chief main hero so a lot of affection for septiana in truth though she's not very good death ripple isn't a very good spell and her specialty in it doesn't matter certainly i didn't find it didn't matter being able to teach death ripple and other stuff to other people is okay given that there aren't any other scholars in the in the list then we come to that whoa so animate dead is an absolutely key spell for the necropolis being good at animate dead is going to matter being able to regenerate spell points out on the adventure map with mysticism will help that is amazing but he's only amazing for the necropolis he is completely useless outside of the necropolis vitamina exact same story and then g at the bottom xi i had xi in the previous campaign i wasn't sure how to pronounce her name expert stone skin or a specialist at stone skin does not matter and learning stinks so xi not very interesting i don't think so we have a bit of a mixed bag going on here we've got two insane heroes in ashlyn and thant and then everyone else we've got a couple of solid entries here sandro nagash solid solid and then the rest are all kind of chaffy and nimbus is a joke so let's apply the test how likely are we to choose one of these characters to lead anacropolis over the competition and the competition is the death knight largely as well as foreigners um i think we can kick foreigners out pretty reliably we can say no no no you're going to pick me over a wizard or someone else coming in um to to challenge or you know a cleric or something because i've got the necromancy and generally the roster is strong enough we also have the two superstars that you're going to pick so i think we need to give the necromancer a pretty generous score on the first test maybe an eight i would say out of ten for the first pillar the second pillar how likely am i to choose one of these while playing as a foreign power only ashlyn okay only ashlyn maybe sandro no one else so they score pretty badly nagash maybe you might take nagash you you're gonna score something in around five out of ten it might that might even be a bit generous so i think it's something like eight and a half maybe i'll give them for for test one and five out of ten for test two just acknowledging the epicness of ashlyn septiana is my representative rightly so eight and a half and five are we in this region i think we are right eight and a half is a really solid score you're going to push out other heroes from the necropolis you do have nimbus in your list though are you better than an alchemist i think they're a bit worse than an alchemist and i don't really want to put either of these classes down here at this point so i'm going to promote the alchemist and give the necromancer sixth place i'm going to do that just for now there will be a reckoning at the end the next cab off the rank is overlords and this is the roster of eight individuals let's have a look shall we the primary stat list for an overlord is two two one one just like the knight and the demoniac uh which gets a bit of a thumbs up for me um i like that stat line for my heroes of might it's just feels good it feels nice the dungeon is a place that likes to deal damage from far and having a high attack just does feel quite nice looking through the roster here it's as you can see a kind of a mixed bag of specialities we have basically it's leadership offense and tactics all jumbled up together in um in a sort of a random mix the secondary second skills then uh the same thing again except we have a smattering of scouting logistics is amazing artillery and uh an interference but we'll come back to that as we go through each one adjit i love beholders really really great unit his ability to specialize in beholders really starts a matter leadership when it triggers with beholders works really nicely adjits a good hero alak is christian um in the dungeon works really well basic offense is a solid skill to start with dace minotaurs i don't love specializing in because they're tier five but minotaurs are amazing and dace's ability will will trigger and matter tactics and offense sign me up damocon gives you free gold and advanced offense right out of the gate he's going to make your troops your harpy hags and stuff hit like a truck and he's giving you free gold each turn what's not to love gunnar is one is just like pyre just like whoa yeah logistics amazing skill and he's an expert at it or specialist at it is the right word plus tactics amazing oh are we convinced yet lorelli harpies are awesome i love leadership and i love scouting shakti troglodytes aren't amazing but being a specialist at tier one is going to pay dividends in the early game not so much in the late game being a specialist troglodyte master hiring you on week you know hiring you in week six or something not going to hit as hard but offense and tactics great big tick mark there sinker is unfortunately a dog's breakfast manta cores don't matter they're a terrible unit and specializing them in is even more stupid um her leadership okay is is is a redeeming feature basic scholar what why why are you a scholar with two two one one i'm not even going to buy you a spell book so i don't like sinker i think she's she's bad she's she's not in the bin but she's not good she's really really not good with that disappointing part at the end said everyone else is a is a is solid is so so solid right so let's apply the test how likely are you to pick an overlord to lead your dungeon army to lead your dungeon forces to greatness over someone else a warlock and warlocks have a little asterisk on them that we'll talk about in a second over a warlock or over a foreign hero i say very likely i think you're very likely to pick an overlord they are just because they are awesome everywhere except for sinker seven out of eight of them are just saying you can take me take me i'm great look at my skill set tactics offense logistics leadership all of which the dungeon creatures adore okay all of which they adore i'm gonna give them a i'm gonna give them eight and a half pushing towards nine for their attractiveness to the dungeon for their ability to bully out the other classes for the second test how i'm likely am i to pick an overlord to lead my forces when i'm playing as a foreign faction well let's think about that what if i'm the castle what if i'm the rampart what if i'm the fortress what if i'm tower alak right damocon gunner yes yes they're good they're really really good like they're really solid two two one one tactics offense what more do you want i'm gonna say eight for the second for the second test so there's no one on here there's no soul near on here right but it's the consistency down the pack that is giving them that that really high score for me noting that sinker stinks so i think these guys are above the death knight okay and bit of a spoiler i don't there's there's one other class that i am thinking of for for contesting for the first spot and i'm gonna wait till i get to that class to try and make that decision but overlords for me as a team pull their weight so hard in both domains in the domestic domain and in the foreign domain so for now it's a tentative first place for the overlords but they are at risk let's get on to warlocks okay so the warlock list now warlocks have a profile of 0032 they're kind of the spiritual opposite to the wizard three spell power and only two knowledge i do prefer it the other way around especially early on so there's a first little thing if we're comparing the two wizards as a starting point me not quite as good as 0023 i don't think they all have the wisdom same way that the other heroes of magic tend to have as we go in their first skill slot as we can see so let's have a think about how 0032 plays as we go down the list first creature first hero sorry off the rank is alamar resurrection and scholar so i come out of the gate knowing how to cast resurrection and i'm able to learn once i get to advanced scholar how to teach it do i need to be an expert scholar i think i need to be an expert scholar to teach other people how to cast it resurrection is the third best spell in the game i mean it's insanely good it's an amazing spell in horn of the abyss it's still brilliant and being able to guarantee that i know it straight out of the gate is is just superb now i do need to ratchet up my knowledge pretty quickly to be able to leverage it properly with only 20 spell points as opposed to solmia's 30 spell points amazing hero alamar you're going to pick them if you get a chance however that isn't the case with everyone i'm going to skip ahead actually to dart to demer and jedite if you look at jedite he's the same hero more or less except without the scholar thing and he's got the advanced wisdom ready to go okay so they're more or less the same hero both of them are insane demer also insane right he has the same thing that ashland has meaty or shower right out of the gate don't care about scouting all three of these heroes alamar demer and jedite are just awesome and in that top shelf of heroes of in terms of desirability now what about the rest of the list dark storm basic learning and i'm really good at casting stone skin yawn fest no thank you really bottom of the barrel not a good hero not terrible but not not exciting at all guion is a trashcan hero oh no that's bad jager is bad right mysticism he's not bad he's all right jager's okay but he's he's he's he's wanting right malekith sorcery basic sorcery cool okay you're going to be a damage dealing warlock that's cool but bloodlust is what you start with so you need to be able to teach these guys spells like that malekith needs a mage guild to be good sefenroth i don't mind at all um crystal is decent intelligence goes really nicely with 0032 it would be nice if she knew a better spell than protection from air so we have a massive there is no other class in the game that is as widely spread in terms of quality at one end of the spectrum you have alamar and jedite at the other end you've got guion so this is going to be a tricky one how likely are warlocks going to be is the team as a as an eight as an eight cox coxless eight how likely is this team going to be to push out other heroes in the uh dungeon well it depends on whether you get these three guys or not if you don't get these three guys not very they can't hold their own they're going to be bullied easily bullied by the overlords if you do get one of these three you are going to easily snap them off ahead of anyone else in the game um so how do we rank them as a team as a team i think they they hemorrhage down to about seven and a half because of how bad some of the players on the team are yeah i'm saying seven and a half how likely are you to pick a warlock as a foreign power i actually think moderately likely yeah yeah obviously you're going to pick the the three amazing guys who do resurrection and star and um resurrection and meteor shower you're going to do that everywhere except for in the necropolis and maybe the conflux you're going to want these heroes so the desirability yeah is is reasonable i'll give them maybe a six out of ten for that reason um because of the fact that they have those superstars none of the rest of them are particularly well then again malekith you could hire malekith in the tower in the conflux and be pretty happy right you could hire sephiroth for the crystal and the fact that she does click together her intelligence and her spell power and her wisdom and her knowledge click together so maybe i'm being a bit hard maybe i'd say so seven and a half for primary and seven yeah they probably deserve a seven right for for that secondary test of the foreign power test seven and a half and seven but it's a mixed bag there's it depends on who which warlock you get it really depends on who you get so i think warlocks are in this area and i don't know where i think warlocks might be a little bit better than a wizard because of the three superstars well but the wizards have two super well have soul mere and they have more consistency the wizard has a little bit more consistency in appeal than the warlock it's close though you could swap these two over i think you could easily swap these two over i'm going to let wizards beat the warlock though for now right we're off to the stronghold what can be said about a barbarian well they're very offensive every single one of them has the offense skill right down the middle of skill one the primary stat list on top of that is four zero one one so four attack zero defense and the bare minimum on spell casting so we're talking unambiguous right and very much in theme with the flavour of what we all think of as a barbarian in these in these kind of games having massively high attack buffing is really really useful um but it can come at the cost of being a little bit fragile to damage um on the on the flip side looking across the list we've got crag hack out of the gate and he's really good at offense and he starts with advanced offense so he's the most offensive of all the barbarians and a bit of a poster hero for the for the class Gretchen um goblins stink and being great at making goblins good isn't going to be very useful very long path finding is a nice skill gernison is the christian of the stronghold and solid for that reason comes with artillery comes with a blister great and offense is a great place to start jabakas orcs stink and they don't care about offense anyway crelion um okay ogres are a good creature sheva rocks are a good creature but i don't love tier five specialities as i said before tyrax or can be really really nice wolf raiders can be a really solid option for you in the early game combined with the tactics you can engineer some really really nice fights especially against the environment um when you go up in against an enemy hero those wolf raiders are going to get lightning bolted and he drops off a little bit i think in the late game as a result yogg cyclops speciality does not matter at all but the ballistics kind of goes nicely you got this idea that he's really good at attacking cities and his offense doesn't matter with cyclops either so how do we feel well let's think about the first test how likely are we to pick a barbarian over someone else in the stronghold i think quite likely part of the problem i have is that goblins and orcs and ogres don't need plus four attack really then any more than they need plus two plus two from a knight a knight would do just as well at serving the denizens of the stronghold with plus two plus two and leadership plus two plus two and leadership instead of plus four plus zero and offense will do just as it'll help an orc or a goblin army or a wolf rider army like wolf raiders love leadership they really love leadership so it almost feels like a knight does a better job of serving the stronghold slightly better job like it's not that cragg hacks and his and his friends stink or anything at doing the job they're they're good but they are a bit more of a glass cannon and they don't always synergize exactly with what's needed in a given fight whereas plus two plus two and leadership is going to just be more resilient you know especially in the early game than uh plus four plus zero and offense i i think so i kind of feel like if the knight is eight out of ten these guys are probably seven airshad of ten maybe hemorrhaging down to about six and a half out of ten in terms of their appeal for leading an army of stronghold creatures around part of the problem is i don't love stronghold creature armies i don't really want to build a big stronghold army that often so six and a half out of ten for test one how likely am i to pick a barbarian over a over a domestic hero class elsewhere so if i'm playing as castle rampart fortress i think i'm moderately likely these skills are useful um fortress could get on quite well having plus four plus zero to balance out the high defensive creatures that they have pathfinding yeah cool scouting and yeah the offense works a bit of a shame that you specialize in creatures that i don't plan on hiring so i'm going to give you a five and a half out of ten it's a solid like there's no one bad on this list who overtly stinks um but you know they're not going to be massively more attractive than uh the domestic the domestic heroes i don't think six out of ten ish so where should we put crag hack as the representative of barbarians i think they're worse than warlocks yep they're a bit worse than warlocks uh as a team happy with that instinctively um here ish maybe tenth maybe twelfth and the second class in the stronghold is the battle mage and here we have the battle mage list and before we get started i don't mind telling you that the daggers are out for me with this class um i don't like battle mages and i am going to explain more a bit about why that is as we go let's begin with shall we the primary stat list okay just just let these numbers sink in two one one one so we've got five points three of them are allocated to attack and defense and then one spell power and one knowledge for a battle mage okay clues in the name here's my problem this is my problem skill one is wisdom they all have basic wisdom which means as intuitively as we're hiring them it's like i'm someone who's going to be great at casting difficult spells difficult spells tend to cost a lot of money and they tend to they tend to leverage off high spell power but at the same time i'm also telling you that i have one spell power and one knowledge as a start as i level up i'm going to often level up my attack and defense instead of those other uh two primary skills just as a by the by which immediately means that to me you're a failed class you don't make sense as a class right two one one one basic wisdom just what it's like the heretic it's like what i don't how am i supposed to what am i supposed to do with this so i've attacked too early right let's let me let me sort of explain more as we go so let's let's have a look at desa so desa is actually a good hero because logistics rocks it's amazing and he's good at it so desa is an exception i'll hire him and i'll use him certainly as a stronghold but certainly you know he'll show up elsewhere and i'll be able to make use of him as well with his logistics good hero okay good okay we've seen these before we've seen sandro before right basic sorcery basic wisdom and i'm a specialist at sorcery wonderful congratulations tell me more about yourself oh well i have two attack and one defense and i don't know how to cast spells and my starting spell isn't even a damage dealing spell bloodlust right and like this like from a flavor point of view yeah the battle mage you picture you picture the battle mage buffing a big army of creatures while also buffing their attacking face i get where they were trying to go with it but wisdom is such a bad skill for these guys to have and sorcery is what is a woeful speciality for them to have now gondola is interestingly a hero of magic that has offense as her speciality understands offense and slow so she's a barbarian with her stats um messed up instead of having four zero she's got two one for attack and defense and then one of her skills is just burned on wisdom so she's a bad barbarian gondola for me oris has the enviable prize in my opinion of being the worst hero in the game bar none so in the trash can with malcom and the others there's a special compartment at the very bottom of the trash can for oris where she goes right down into the very depths of the trash can below her is the hard steel of the trash can itself specializing in eagle eye with basic wisdom a starting stat profile that does not align with basic wisdom in any way shape or form and her starting spell is protection from air worst hero ever okay bar none sourung okay i love gems free gems give me give me give me your interference is okay your bloodlust is all right you're better than most of the rest of these tarak is a solid i love tactics being good at haste ken is kind of okay is relevant they creatures are even faster than they would otherwise be and haste is a good starting spell for someone who is as dumb as having one spell power and one knowledge um so there's a saving grace there tarak's all right vey okay i like magic arrow out of the gate i like ogres and i like leadership and then zubin pretty poor okay artillery is dopey because you don't start with a blister i've got to buy you one and being good at precision isn't useful i hate the battle mage i hate the class i never go for these if i can help it um that said i'm sure that i have a video on the channel where i played as gird maybe desa and gird i would have taken desa but i'm nearly sure i used gird for some stuff um probably because she had a good starting army and i just swallowed it anyway i guess i'm gonna say i never take them and then you guys are going to find me on the channel doing the exact opposite okay desirability i think i'm happy to say i've never hired oris except as a courier hero all right anyway let's get on with it how likely am i to choose a battle mage to lead my stronghold army to glory three out of ten okay i'll give them three because two one is something you're a fighter some of you have some reasonable things going on logistics sorcery offense tactics leadership these are useful so i'm moderately likely to use you i might i might i might i might i might give you a three and a half okay you are going to get bullied by the barbarian and by foreigners in this in your domestic town of the stronghold how likely am i to pick one of you to lead my foreign army you know it's not it's not unthinkable maybe i'm being too hard on them two one one one in somewhere like the castle and you pick gondola okay that's basically like a knight but instead of leadership it's offense and a spell book and i know how to cast slow it's actually not bad right like that's actually not terrible maybe i'm being a bit hard on them it's the wisdom that sucks so three and a half domestic and i'll say maybe three and a half of foreign so they're worse than a cleric are they worse than a druid i was going to say they were like here 18th that's where i wanted to put them let's have a look so yeah we've got to choose where the gondola is going to come in between is she better than a heretic the too much of a mixed bag of it can they've got conflicting storylines there's a conf there's a conflict at the very core of the design of the class that none of them it's the same as the heretic that none of them can really overcome the druid has two knowledge out of the gate okay and they're likely to develop knowledge and spell power as they level up they have one point in sorry they have two defense yeah so similar sort of problem they got two defense this thing got two attack and one defense instead of having spell power and knowledge anyway that's enough battle mage is yeah beast masters are next so here are the beast masters and we're off to the fortress a beast master has is kind of the opposite of a barbarian you've got zero attack for defense and then one and one for power and knowledge and instead of being an expert or instead of all of them knowing offense they all know armor instead which is the defense buffing skill similar to the barbarian most of them are creature specific specialities here's the difference though the creatures that they specialize in are good instead of gremlin uh sorry goblins and orcs and stuff it's cool creatures like wyverns basilisks nolls serpent flies and lizard men all creatures that i love buying and love fighting with i don't think that zero four one one is a very useful stat line for this town though for fortress okay the theme is there these creatures all have moderately mediocre attack but amazing defense they tend to have amazing hp just good moves and then good value for money they're good you know they're good creatures to buy for that reason from an economic standpoint zero four one one doesn't help that like very i'd prefer two two one one yeah and uh armor armor is cool armor is good but i would be just as happy with offense if not maybe a bit more happy with offense than armor but with that said the creatures that they're specializing are better than the creatures that the barbarians are specializing in so i already kind of like them a bit more than the barbarian um let's go through and think about the individuals though so we've got alkan his uh gimmick is gorgons and offense brog hild wyverns and scouting all all solid right i mean wyverns are tier six but you can get them much earlier than than other tier six creatures bron basilix basilisks are a good creature interference is okay nolls solid useful dracon thank you your leadership is going to be useful to me as well gerwolf yeah sure a christian for the for the um fortress sign me up corbach serpent flies are amazing so a dragon flies pathfinding great taza armor armor armor nice one and then wiston a nice narrative of archery and lizard men okay similar to what carl is doing similar to is it the oran the night it all clicks together in other words everyone on this list has similar property to what the dungeon overlord has okay armor isn't as amazing as the mixture of leadership offense and tactics that the overlord has and there are more creatures there's you know seven of them are six of them sorry are creature specialists so they'll they'll they'll wear them down a little bit the zero four one one as well as i've said i don't love it as much as two two one one zero four one one you know there are going to be some classes like overlords and knights that say hey i could do your job better than you um yeah uh i think they're moderately good seven out of ten for the second test will i hire these guys to to lead my dungeon army would i hire them to lead a tower army maybe yeah i might hire them to lead a stronghold army because i kind of like zero four um i might hire them to lead a cove army actually i think that would go nicely zero four one one balanced against the really high attack power of the creatures of the cove you know so i think these guys are moderately attractive to foreign powers something like five and a half out of ten there are no superstars here but everyone is saying yeah i you know as a team what do we say seven out of ten for test one and a five and a half for test two beast master so i think that puts them in here i think they're up in this region somewhere in here i think they might be better than a wizard i think they might be better than a ranger are they better than a necromancer um yeah okay that's it beast masters so these witches are going to be needing stitches by the time i'm done with them a witch has a stat profile of zero one two two okay so zero attack one defense and then two each for spell power and knowledge so okay for a hero of magic acceptable we're in cleric territory or you know as a sort of starting point here's my beef the fortress much like the stronghold which i didn't talk about when i was attacking battle mages earlier the fortress can only get to level three mage guild that's another reason why battle mages suck so bad oh can i just say for a second basic wisdom going up to expert wisdom if you're hanging out in the stronghold as a battle mage that's pointless the stronghold can only get to level three in the first place okay witches have the same problem the fortress can only get to level three so being having wisdom isn't going to pay divs unless you're really able to go around you're going to have to go out of your way to teach your spellcaster fancy spells you're going to have to go find somewhere else to learn dimension door because i can't teach it to you i can't teach you waterwalk or any of the stuff that you're really going to leverage in the late game as a hero of magic so the town is saying to the witches i'm not behind you i'm not going to support you in the same way that the stronghold laughs at the idea of wisdom of on any of its starting heroes okay and that's a problem right but i will say that the two two for spell power and knowledge it's it's where you want to be as a starting point okay for someone who starts with a spell book sure let's have a look shall we android intelligence okay intelligence works dispels a useful spell not really in the early game though marist pretty poor stone skin doesn't matter and learning stinks merlanders advanced wisdom won't matter but weakness is a useful spell i want to say it won't matter it won't click rossick mysticism and magic arrow not worthless but okay stig was one of my heroes in the previous thing but really only not able to leverage her sorcery really she is at least all lined up and that she knows sorcery and she's good at sorcery again it would be nice if shield wasn't her starting spell you need a way to teach her the good spells tiva go ahead and drop jump in the trash with malcom verdish pretty poor first aid just isn't good a good thing really and protection from fire and then voy navigation we won't hold it against her it might be amazing often it'll be useless right okay how likely are we to pick witches to lead our fortress army i'm not likely at all right i'm looking to the beast master instead i'm saying dude can you save me because i can't i can't guarantee that this witch's journey is going to be a uh an arc i can't guarantee her arc is going to work because i need to find an enemy town an enemy tower or rampart or dungeon that has a fifth guild mage fifth level mage guild in it before she can be switched on in the mid game or late game i can't teach her the thing she needs to know so i'm looking to you instead you know how likely might pick a foreigner yeah or a beast master i'm just gonna pick someone else a lot of the time so i think these girls are are they all girls oh sorry maybe they're not all girls down in the two out of ten region for the first test for the second test how likely am i to pick a witch from this list to do a job for me well i was gonna i was gonna give them a really bad score for that as well but i actually you know you could see yourself taking a witch as the conflux or the tower you could take stig in in the tower right that's actually not bad that works yeah i think that actually does work i think they're better at um helping foreign powers with their spell casting needs that you foreign powers can leverage these these characters okay melinda works andrew works rossick will work stig will work okay the others are all not really so i think maybe it's four and a half for the second test two and a half and four and a half which actually means i think that i was gonna put i was gonna put them in 20th this is the which was the class i was thinking of just absolutely putting in the bin because of the mage guild level three thing but now that i'm the more i think about it the more i realize that the battle may just have that problem as well on top of having one one as they're starting spell power and knowledge so witches are better than these i think i'm doing this and i'm giving melinda and the witches 18th place over a drew well are they even could they hold a candle to the druid they have druids have one and two instead of two and two for spell power and knowledge but there aren't as many bad druids well as malcom though yeah they've got melodia malcom gem is first aid and then the coronious the hilarious slayer guy all their secondaries are poor but but but but here's the thing in the rampart you can get the rampart to level five mage guild you know and for a wisdom hero uh you know so i think it is close there are plenty of bad characters in druid to rival the the bad characters in which but because of that mage guild thing right if that druid goes on to be my primary hero i can get behind them and i can invest in the mage guild level four level five so that's what separates them so i'm going to still put witches down in the doldrums i think they are better than the heretic with its two spell power and one knowledge but the heretic can get to level five as well and there are less morons in the heretic list as well let me just pull up heretics quickly yeah so the heretics don't have an eagle eye person um everyone is mediocre-ish xyron's kind of cool olima's all right calla gives you sulfur um so i think heretics are better than witches yeah so my gut feeling was witches and battle mages stink because of that mage guild issue i'm going to stick with that okay i'm going to stick with that okay so here are the planeswalkers there are eight of them to choose from and they all specialize in elementals uh one of the different various kinds of elementals they're starting primary stat profile is three one one one so three attack one defense and then one each for the uh magic abilities i like there that primary stat profile three and one seems good sadly though i hate all the elementals except for the psychic ones psychic and magic elementals so mon air and passus um maybe you're okay but like i said before tier six you don't need to buff tier six creatures as a specialty it's not going to trigger and matter much in the game there's not many points in the game where it's going to matter so none of the specialities really end up mattering much to me as a starting point so i already i'm thinking okay compared to a knight my standard poster kind of standard stock hero might i don't like them as much as a hero as a knight already let's look at the skill set though i'm not going to go through each one because they're all kind of interchangeable we've got tactics offense logistics uh as a one of well they're good they're good abilities they're very very solid abilities tactics and offense are the reason why i love the overlords okay but uh and then i love estates estates is is really really useful and um i hate learning and artillery is useless i don't like artillery is a starting skill i like it as a skill okay but only if you've got access to a blister or if you've come by one um one way or another so where are we this is tough let me downsize here and uh we'll think about it how okay i haven't applied the test how likely am i to buy a planeswalker to lead the conflux okay this is this is actually really really useful logic how likely am i to choose a planeswalker well they're up against elementalists okay they're up against elementalists and and elementalists are good okay which we're going to get to in just a moment that that actually does make a difference how the test was how likely am i to pick them in the conflux i love elementalists and i'm going to pick planeswalkers less often as a result okay wizards and warlocks love to show up in the conflux and make you know make trouble for the planeswalker okay you're going to hire sephanroth or theodorus certainly solmia certainly jedite you're going to hire them over ignisahir right a lot okay i'm going to give them seven and a half uh i'm going to give them seven out of ten so might only be six and a half out of ten actually okay how likely would i be to hire one of these as a foreign power when i'm out on my frontier doing things as the dungeon yeah might pretty pretty pretty likely a great skill set and estates and logistics or the stuff they've gotten there yeah why not six i don't care about your specialities but you're you're handy heroes and you're you're gonna do you're gonna do good for me um six and a half and six puts them somewhere in this region i think i think ignis is going to be fighting with fiona yeah i'm gonna put fiona above ignisah i'm gonna put demoniacs above planeswalkers but it's close and again this is based on my chosen criteria the two pillars right the fact that the conflux has this weird thing going on where elementalists are really strong fiona and her friends have to fight against heretics for for for your attention and they're gonna win that fight yeah so that's why even though the secondary skills are solid the speciality stink and the competition is very very hot which matches the artwork moving on then to elementalists and this was the class that i was looking forward to that i was alluding to earlier when i put um overlords up on the pedestal let's have a look shall we the elementalist stat profile is 0033 so they get six spell our skill points instead of five for a hero of magic that's unfair and uh doesn't uh happen anywhere else um from what i can see in the list anyway no other hero of magic has five uh sorry has six they all have five everyone has wisdom so we're heroes of magic three spell points three spell power three knowledge means we all without exception can cast our spells uh up to 30 we have 30 spell points to work with on day one in addition if you cast your eye to skill two every single one of them starts with a school of magic unlocked and that doesn't mean they know all the spells it means that they have proficiency they're on their way to becoming an air mage or water mage or whatever one it is that is generally good because you know that out of your eight skill slots you're going to want to fill uh those eight with at least one but possibly two or even three different schools of magic so what i'm saying is that the elementalists all have a huge candidacy for being your big primary amazing hero that you're going to level up all the way to the end because they come ready to rock they come with everything you need plus three plus three to both the skills that matter and they're already proficient in one of the schools of magic so they almost out wizard the wizard if that makes sense let's have a look through though ainan disrupting ray isn't a spell that matters or gets cast very often brist's haste is okay okay cl her magic arrow is amazing especially in the early game does more damage and she can cast it like six times right out of the gate so you hire her on day one and she can run around with no army uh and just clean up uh the the area my friend matthew um years ago told me about that exploit uh game he was playing where she just breaks the game open for you the in the early game glare and grinden i love the gold gimme gimme gimme like that's just awesome and then i don't care about bloodlust stone skin and as i say firewall isn't something i've used as an exploit but people do speak fondly of so in a weird way the specialities and the spells kind of take a little bit of the shine off but you've got pound for pound every single one of these eight individuals is extremely good extremely attractive let's have a look at the test how likely am i to hire one of these as the conflux given that i can do the college of magic i can teach them the university magic university i can get to level five no problem in terms of mage guild yeah highly likely very very highly likely nine out of ten i mean that wizards and warlocks are gonna fight with you you know how likely are you to hire an elementalist while you're playing as a foreign faction well well circumstantially very likely like it could be 10 out of 10 if you have a faction and an environment in which you can teach these heroes some spells if you can teach any of these people lightning bolt they are going to outclass so many other character classes for your attention however if you can't and you're on the frontier with a stronghold no mage guild i need someone i need to hire someone who can go around and get things done and level up and invest in and deploy a big army and use it well well these guys are still interesting to you but probably not right you're probably going to go go go with a different class or the domestic class so i love and elementalists where should labita go um i i want the elementalists in my top three are they better than overlords maybe they are so i need to come back to that question we need to maybe bring both lists up alongside each other at the end to figure out who deserves first place elementalists just as a team are so so good so solid but there is that situational issue that you need to be in magic for them to be of use if you are then they're just unbeatable two classes to go both from the cove town and the horn of the abyss for those of you not familiar with horn of the abyss it's an amazing expansion to the game that i highly recommend you give a try and you might still conclude you don't want to play with it but yeah i could i'll take too long waxing on about how good and how lovingly it's been built let's have a look at captains so a captain is kind of like a barbarian the profile is 3021 so instead of 4011 they have this weird thing where they've got two spell power and only three attack but very obviously attack minded looking through the list we can see a smattering of offense similar again to the barbarian but also intermingled with leadership and tactics armorer all of which are really really nice skills i love estates there with lina at the bottom miriam's logistics is really nice um so already starting to feel like yeah these guys have a say um alongside the knights and overlords in terms of attractiveness of their secondary skills and their stat list the two spell power is a bit weird though it's a bit weird let's have a look at anabelle she's good with pirates and pirates are a great unit in the cove kind of think of them like uh an elf that can only shoot four times um and yeah doesn't deal doesn't hit as hard as elves but but it certainly hits hard has very high attack rating and that attack rating goes nicely with the archery they also have no melee penalty so their offense will kind of kick in as well kasiopea um is a water woman um or a nymph or an oceanid or whatever she is nymphs are the level one creature and they're not good not really they're pretty good although they're all right they're kind of like i think of them as a um sprite not a sprite a pixie being an expert at nymphs doesn't doesn't hugely excite me but offense and tactics are great coax is really good at offense and okay that's cool and he has pathfinding a bit like cragg hack derrick crewmates are a solid level two unit um and offense and leadership works with them so i think derrick's okay i won't talk too much about elmore i won't hold navigation against him ill or uh storm birds are a really solid unit armor at tactics is good jeremy uh is the christian yeah except it's a canon instead of a ballista different damage profile um and different sea different characteristics during the siege um offense means he's good he's a solid hero good pick free canon lina gives you gold and estates which i love and then miriam scouting logistics solid actually right so i was going to go kind of negative but then towards the back end there i kind of started to perk up a bit so i think the captain is good i think the captain is good how likely are you to choose the captain while playing as the cove well the cove's creatures are all unlike the stronghold they are all geared towards attack and less so towards defense already so when you hire the heroes you're kind of doubling down on that story with the offense if you if you take a cove army and lead it with a barbarian what you've got on your hands is a glass cannon something that can hit extremely hard when it attacks but god help you if um your opponent casts lightning bolt or you know has a haste advantage over you or casts experts slow on all your stuff and you start taking hits right so i actually ironically don't think captains are as good at helping the cove as overlords are at helping the dungeon or as knights are at helping the castle i don't think they're quite as good at doing that primary job they're still very good so i'm only going to give them seven out of ten for that for that reason even though the roster is strong there's no weaklings on this on this roster right not really cassia pea maybe isn't isn't as strong as the others maybe it's seven and a half how likely are you to pick a captain to lead one of your um to lead an army and to develop as a foreign faction pretty likely moderately likely i would say similar similar offering to what the um overlords and knights are saying except pirates nymphs crewmate stormbirds um yeah i think they're okay um they're going to get picked 3021 instead of 2211 is a tad awkward so a little bit of the shine comes off in their appeal so i think this this class is behind the knight i think it's behind the knight but it's still very good i think i like alchemists more than this do i like them more than the beast master i think them i do like them a bit more than the beast master uh so jeremy i'm he wants to get onto the podium he wants to get onto the podium but he's up against thant and ashlyn and the other necromancers that so he doesn't quite make the podium the second podium but i think he's better than a beast master so i'm going to rejig things here okay so that's just the edit made that's a really solid score seventh place it's it's not easy to get to get in the top half when you're up against you know the the other classes we've talked about okay and here are our eight navigators heroes of magic of the cove persuasion and no one else has this stat profile we've got weird one here two zero one two well if i'm starting off as a hero in the game at level one pretty much anywhere in the game the stats i value the most highly are either attack or knowledge so i kind of like two zero one two it's like yeah you're a hybrid you're a hero of it hero of both but you're an effective hero of both this is what the battle mage needed to be it's what the witch needed to be as well um it's certainly what the heretic needed to be two zero one two much much better than the stat profiles of these three and the druid and stuff so let's have a look at what we've got now the cove can get to level four it's mage guild the same as the as the car source can't quite get to level five but level four is still okay so we've all got wisdom and we're starting in a town uh we're often starting or working for a town that can get to level four i'm not going to hold that too badly against them um okay so and our crystal uh provider and pathfinding and he knows slow great i love free crystal so good good handy hero astra cure and luck mcassimetra sea witches are the ranged unit that acted i'd like to think of them as like liches except instead of death cloud they cast a spell after they attack you quite a nuisance to fight against and quite powerful so being a specialist in them yeah i suppose is okay she already knows water magic like an elementalist so that's good so yeah kasmetra ends up being pretty kasmetra is her name ends up being pretty strong i think dargams air shield might be good but i doubt it i i don't use air shield very much his tactics are nice eovasius was my mortal enemy in the last campaign and he was a pain in the butt his clone he gets two clones instead of one and he can do it right from the beginning and he has intelligence to get the extra spell points he needs to be able to do it as much as he wants you can tell that the designers of hero horn of the abyss have thought carefully about hero uh composition about the composition of abilities inside each of the specific heroes and so eovasius is strong he's a good good hero manfred's fireball and fire magic okay cool um i don't know i guess is he a genie um by descent uh at least he's telling his story it's like i like casting fireball and i am a firemage cool okay spint is good at casting damage spells except he starts with bless and then zill air is good at forgetfulness his forgetfulness lasts longer than everyone else's which doesn't matter um okay how do we feel if i'm in the cove how likely am i to pick one of these guys or girls or guys to lead my army to greatness and to level up and invest in this hero fairly likely they're a good class you get 20 spell points to start with plus two attack for your army it is a hybrid class but it's one that you can take in whichever direction you want they will struggle a little bit for a balanced you know like because they're a hybrid as they level up their primary stats whichever one you've picked won't necessarily be the one you get as as as they level up you get it up with a spellcaster with really high attack that doesn't quite click as well as someone with high spell power would um but you can't hold that against like they've really made a legitimate effort to create a genuine hybrid class where the battle mage and heretic really fail uh to to to do so so i like the navigator i'm gonna choose it over others not as much as a captain but i will choose navigators these navigators over foreigners fairly fairly frequently probably six out of ten um how likely am i to pick a navigator to do something for me out in the world as a foreign power fairly likely they're good heroes just because they're good they have a lot going for them to attack to knowledge i get crystal or i can i can do good clone or sorcery so yeah i'm gonna say six out of ten for both both tests okay so kazmatra six and six probably belongs somewhere in this region here i think they're better than a cleric i think they're bad ignisa these guys are strong but they have this weird thing where they're up against elementalists as i said earlier i went wax on about it again are they better than a demoniac maybe a bit better okay i think they're better than uh demoniacs so we have a candidate list um kind of ready to uh send off and seal up and and finish off finish off having said that there's a couple i just want to check there's one main fight that i want to have before i sign off for first place i think i'm not going to have individual fights for tenth versus eleven stuff like that you could easily argue that oh navigators belong up here and rangers should come down a few squares this middle section here it's hard to discriminate between them i think i'm happy with the second podium it's really between the overlords and the elementalists uh where i want to do a little bit more analysis before we conclude okay so it's a showdown for first place between the overlords and elementalists how are we going to split them here the key thing is that both lists are really solid from top to bottom slide asterix in that the overlord has sinker which and she sucks maybe the first fist that's thrown first point goes to the elementalists just because sinker on the tug of war if there's a rope between there's eight people on each side sinker is there going complaining and not doing not not working hard enough how amazing is it to come with a school of fire magic a school of magic over another over a different over a different casting how amazing is it to have three spell power and three knowledge compared to another magic class is it really as amazing as i said it's pretty good and they all do it on the other hand with the overlords like is there ever is there ever an enemy faction or sorry a rival foreign faction that says no to those seven you might say yeah i say no to adjard i don't need i don't need interference right you know and we say like okay foreign factions don't want beholder's minotaurs harpy's troglodyte specialities either having said that with the elementalists foreign powers don't always want a spellcaster they want someone who can actually get the job done with two two one one and a bunch of useful skills because i don't have this i can't teach you lightning bolt i don't have time to for you to learn lightning bolt so i think what this boils down to is elementalists are better than overlords as late game mega stars late game absolute mega unbeatable mega stars that can teleport around the map they're town portling or if you've got that spell switched on i have i have a habit of turning it off at the moment but they just dominate and on the battlefield implosion chain lightning i don't need an army i am become the very essence of earth or fire or air right amazing level 20 characters for me though i think overlords win the early game appeal factor more so in the dungeon and as as an option for a foreign power early in the game okay i'm ready to make a decision because the elementalist does carry a degree of of situational factor at different parts of the game early in the game as the conflicts sure they're insane i've got like yeah i'm getting because i plan on leveling you up to level 20 i'm yeah i want you as an elementalist sure but across all the other scenarios late in the game as the conflicts early in the game as someone else let's say pick pick the inferno late in the game as the inferno they are amazing if you can teach them spells okay overlords are just amazing all the time or they're really really they're at least really really solid all the time whether you're in the dungeon a high spell casting environment a high a highly magical environment or not but for that situational factor i'm just going to very slightly tip the scale to the overlord i'm going to call it there and so the final fight has been fought and the winner has been decided bronze goes to the death knight silver goes to the elementalists extremely close second to our prize winner the overlord down in the dungeon first place best class in the game worst class in the game is the battle mage and that's it