25 Dwarf Mystics = awesome?

[Soulja]

just throw away T, 25 A/M, all run 2 raw TPA and 15% WT

20% TG
10% RAX
15% Hosp
10% Guild
7% Farm
3% Dungeon
10% Banks
15% Towers
15% WT

even a Gnome rogue won't get through consistently enough to be effective, and certainly not on many of the dwarves.
everyone run fog and semi suicide...ass kicking...

[Ishandra]

10 Guilds isnt enough, the DWs can be MVed then heavyily chained 1 at a time. Massacres will remove WT and TPA, leaving 3-4 completely open to NS/Prop/AW.

They wont do well with the dragon war, especially if any gaining GC get robbed.

DW is a strong set up but an entire KD leaves them weak to certain things.

[Dlaf]

well, good luck finding war.
And try to som gnome rogue kd :)

[validation]

Yer, those SoMs are troubling... Still, DW/Mystics would rape. We're actually running both Dwarf Mystic and Gnome Rogues atm... Going okay so far.

[Ishandra]

DW are good but they need thievery and intel support from the rest of the KD to be properly effective.

[toast]

% guilds in war doesnt matter cept for duration spells. for all you know they could run 30% guilds OOW.

dwarfs have free building construction so they can at least handle the massacres better then most

[Ishandra]

Guilds under 14% in war gives fog durations of under 12hrs, dropping as low as 7 hours if you have a double tap of land come in. This means 3-4 log ins a day and wastes a lot of stealth.

DW can rebuild from massacre, but as buildings are DWs biggest strength they take the second most damage to massacres (to Gnome). With no speed build, they are left open with next to nothing TPA and only 5-10% WT, which can be GAd or just Td right through, easily.

I dont think the build itself is optimal, let alone the KD set up. Better to have some Mystics, 1 or 2 shepherds and the rest warriors.

[bigboywasim]

If you run 20% WT like a dwarf should then land coming in and getting taken away still leaves a decent amount of WT for protection.

Massacres are usually done before war and usually on a selected few, so you will still have many dwarfs who have not been massacred before war.

I agree with the Som issue it is a pain even with 50% Crime science and 2 TPA raw against thieves.

[Cheech]

DW/Mystic have their advantages no doubt, but I'm a little uneasy about going full anything. Intel isn't going to be as much of an issue as people make it out to be. However, I like to have at least the threat of thievery in my kingdom to force the opponent to run WT. Without that you will need some kind of heavy hitting sidekicks like possibly orcs or another race with a very solid economy like humans.

You see a few full dwarf kingdoms all the time, and it rarely works.

My current kingdom is running dwarf/shepherd and orc/warrior. So far we are doing alright, but we haven't had a war yet of someone who has remotely the same activity and teamwork as we do. I can report back on our progress when we war someone a little closer to our level.

What I like about my setup is we take advantage of dwarves free build (dwarves run a fairly high number of guilds OOW in order to get wpa up) to protect against MVs. Everyone has over 80 opa easily - some as high as 110 or so. The enemy kingdom often has to choose whether to hit into fog or plague. Our dwarves are immune to both to prevent them from catching plague from a chained target. The chains with half the kingdom having huge gains are great while plague opens people up to double taps. Not much of hybrids, but so far we're getting the job done. Unfortunately, we haven't got the opportunity to war anyone with remotely the same coordination or activity that we have. I'm really interested to see how this setup will fair vs a better kingdom. Will keep people posted.

[Luc]

10 Guilds isnt enough, the DWs can be MVed then heavyily chained 1 at a time. Massacres will remove WT and TPA, leaving 3-4 completely open to NS/Prop/AW.

They wont do well with the dragon war, especially if any gaining GC get robbed.

DW is a strong set up but an entire KD leaves them weak to certain things.

10% guilds is fine in war for mystics. On genesis my dwarf sage has 10% guilds and gets around 10 hour durations on fog. A mystic would have no problems getting decent durations.

Also, I assume the point with going mystics is to play a/m. If they get their wpa up, they will be hard to mv. Sure it can be done, but not without wasting mana that could be spent on casting ms etc. And if none of your high wpa provs are around, you may not be able to mv at all

Forcing the opposing kd to waste time on massacres is win for the dwarf. All races can be taken down, what matters is what kind of effort it takes. And a well played dwarf takes a pretty big effort to take down.

I do agree it's nice to have some thievery support for the dwarves though. Just keep in mind that those thieves will get targetted a lot

[Ishandra]

The problem isnt that DW isnt stupidly strong, its that having pure DW/Mystics is a waste.

If only 4 of your provs are being hit, thats 21 Fogs you've wasted, which could have been 21 more ops. 21 NMs or FBs or MS is a big difference. If you only had 4 DWs who could draw all the hits by being semisuiciders, thats 4 useful fogs then 21 other ops (the same or rogue ops) from your other provinces.

All the DW need to play semi suicide to make it worthwhile if they arent getting hit, which means that the ones that are will be VERY open to massacre. As soon as an MV hits, which wont be hard after pre-war massacres, that DW will be ripped apart as he's by far the best target.

I think magic sci increases durations too (at least on Gen) since my DE/Sage has had 40 hour self spells with 30% Guilds and usually has around 20hrs on most with under 20% Guilds.

Massacres are never wasting time either, they do more useful NW damage than Trad March, the only reason to swap to land hits is to start chaining and to get yourself some free credits for spec pumping ;)

[Catwalk]

If only 4 of your provs are being hit, thats 21 Fogs you've wasted

So if only 4 of your provinces are being hit, that's loads of DPA wasted on everybody else? Doesn't work that way.

[Ishandra]

It does work that way, which is why you keep an evenly low DPA accross the board. Anyone with 60 DPA while the rest has 40 DPA, are wasted, as will never be hit.

Anyone with fog who isnt being hit, is wasted. If you can draw people into hitting your fog, by being one of the lower DPA and most aggressive targets, then its pointless to have fog.

[Luc]

Ishandra, do you feel the same way about Clear Sight? I mean, if you're all elf, it's a waste for them all to cast it, since only a few will be opped? Or Minor Protection for that matter. Why cast it if you're not gonna get hit? It's mana you could use for something else. See how pointless that argument is?

If you had 4 aggressive dwarves, I'd just let them grow fat and then ns them down. No need to even bother hitting them until the end of the war. If there are 20 dwarves though, I have no choice but to choose a few of them as targets because I can't mv them all, but them having fog cast forces me to mv or suffer for it. Yes, they will have "wasted" mana that could be spent on something else, but they have also forced me to limit myself as far as targets go.

If I was up against your 4 dorfs + something else, and my high wpa provs weren't around to mv to start a wave, I could happily just choose a non-dorf to chain. If they're all dorfs, I either have to choose to delay the wave or hit into fog. So casting fog gives a tactical advantage for the dwarves, given that they play their provs well of course.



To get back to the first post of the thread:
Do i think 25 DW/My is awesome? No, I would never run more than 5-6 mystics. Only reason I see to use mystic is to get access to MS, and you don't need the whole kd to be able to do it

[Ishandra]

In a word, yes. Not every elf needs CS up at all times. In our last war I barely used it, because the enemy KD's hybrids were extremely weak once we had massacred and I took maybe 2 or 3 thievery ops for most of the war. They knew I was rogue so didnt even bother trying. CS does however protect from SoMs and GC theft, which can happen to all your provinces regardless of being real targets or even thief targets. MP should be up most of the time but again, if your not likely to take a hit I wouldnt bother casting it when you could cast a storms or pitfalls.

If you were leaving 4 aggressive dwarves alone, then I should hope they had the sense to be suiciding making doubles, chaining your attackers heavily into overpop. They can forsake max gains, honour and defence to ensure they do maximum overpop damage. The more you resist hitting them, the tastier targets the dwarves should try to be. It just happens a lot of people dont play that way, opting for the safer route.

I think running all of anything is terrible because the benefits are diminished the more of something you have and the weaknesses leave you far too open with no way of countering your enemies exploitation of them.