Heretic

[Tadpole]

Part of Heretic is half rune cost and no exploding wizzies, so you could tolerate a lower success rate like 50-60%.

Haven't really looked at the age changes. But seems fair...

Though 50-60% success rate means more effort any way you look at it. Like you pointed out yourself, NM is predominantly an early-war spell. Rune (at least past early age) and wizard sustain isn't too much of a factor. Guess the rune cost really could come in handy to deploy NM strats earlier in the age than otherwise possible though. That's a pro :)

[citadela01]

When you sum it all up ... rwpa investment and lack of attacking enchaning personality ... runing heretic is a huge investment.
I rly dont see viable way to incorporate heretics into anything other than focused NM strat. And considering going that way pretty much means you put all your egs in the same basket ... I rly dont like them.
I am a big fan of hybrids, and general idea of incorporating hybrid tailored personalities seems awesome to me. But in its current form it seems too restrictive and niche to me.

[Cry0]

Late to the party here.

My opinion of heretic is that halfer/heretic a/t would be a lot of fun. Ignoring any benefit of heretic aside from the thief losses I see it as a great a/t personality.

The issue I see with hybrids is land -- you have a really really hard time running barracks, training grounds, hospitals, etc, etc on (non undead) an attacker - you try to run a hybrid and throw in the need for thief dens to midigate thief losses and ouch -- really land thin.

Insert heretic.

Halfer could run a/t with 0 thief dens, the 50% tpa boost should give them a big enough edge over other attackers to be able to NS. The 0 losses allow them to brute force NS enemy heavy attackers.

People ALWAYS seem to undervalue NS, it is the best op in the game IMO. Kills armies home and away, relatively easy to do, yes please. You can hollow out attackers pretty quickly and the only way they can stop it is through WT (and cs).

Same logic is also true for an elf a/m -- if you go back into my forum history whenever the topic comes up I always fall back on runes. As a mystic with 150% magic sci and 20% towers I am usually short on runes around day 3 in war -- how the f' could an attacker have enough towers to actually use their mana?

Insert elf/heretic. 100% boost to towers and 50% rune refund on success, that is a gigantic land saving for someone looking to run hybrid elf/heretic a/m. I am not so sure on the nightmare end, NM seems fairly difficult and I doubt an elf/heretic could get enough WPA to reliably NM anything that isn't land fat. However, fireball fireball fireball, control that econ. A/M is still not my cup of tea -- WPA pumping without mystic is awful, makes it really hard to effectively do ops.

Of course, my KD said no to heretics so oh well =P I thought halfer/heretic a/t seemed pretty awesome this coming age. Everyone kept seeming to focus on the magic end of heretic and not how awesome 0 thief losses on failure is. Will see.

[FATstrat]

Halfling is the worst race to have heretic on - they barely need it. Theives cost less and TDs reduce losses significantly. Nightmares with no + spell % modifier.

[noobium]

Halfling is the worst race to have heretic on - they barely need it. Theives cost less and TDs reduce losses significantly. Nightmares with no + spell % modifier.

Halfer has Mage's Fury (+20% offensive wpa), and other traits which allow them to gain and keep raw wpa (+pop, defensive elite and turtle capability).

I don't see it as a waste. Probably the biggest problem is Halfer's viability as an attacker, since presumably the halfer isn't playing a strict t/m role. Heretic would be pretty bad for that, anyway.

For thief losses... 0 loss is a big deal when the Halfer can't afford retraining, nor the build space for dens... and when Heretic is losing nothing and capable of training on top of that, it is that much better for the Halfer, rather than treading water every time they fail.

I still think Heretic's thief loss should be nerfed to -50% or -75%, because zero-risk thievery is pretty strong in and out of war. That way, there is enough incentive to use Heretic thieves sans dens, but it isn't a license to spam 20-25% success rate ops.

[Inka]

I see some benefit with a heretic for a good attacker.

In a kingdom like mine, a mid tier warring kd whose active attackers have very different login times, I am proposing Orc/Heretic on my core attackers. We couldn't chain deep because we couldnt log in at the same time. So my theory is during war they login, NM the **** out of their target and simply double/triple tap and log off. And coupled with +20% gains and +25% enemy casualties, this means quick overpop and lower defense.

This way they don't wait for T/Ms to show up and help us attackers. Though this presumes a decent wpa level on my provinces but i guess they will be upto it.

[Bishop]

Not exact science, but my experience suggests you need about 4-5x mwpa to NM with any kind of consistency

NM is easier than LL and you need 4-5 for LL. NM would be pegged around 3-3.5. I find NM a lot easier than MS, for example.

[LoRD_SaMPuaN]

NM is easier than LL and you need 4-5 for LL. NM would be pegged around 3-3.5. I find NM a lot easier than MS, for example.

is this admin perspective, or player perspective?

i would definitely put nm up there with ms, if not harder, and my personal observation after leading +100 nm waves tells me at least +4 mwpa for any reliable success.. i havent collected data to make it a proof though, so i might be wrong after all due to rng issues and bad memory..

[Panthira]

Definitely player perspective, because that has been my experience with NM and LL. NM is easier.

[Andurilas]

Always player perspective from Bishop. I don't think he even knows the formulas unless given in age changes.

[Bishop]

is this admin perspective, or player perspective?

i would definitely put nm up there with ms, if not harder, and my personal observation after leading +100 nm waves tells me at least +4 mwpa for any reliable success.. i havent collected data to make it a proof though, so i might be wrong after all due to rng issues and bad memory..

My personal opinion (and remembering the original difficulties). NM definitely feels easier than MS.

I think often people underestimate their opponent wpa. I have often investigated claims of spells being broken and invariably i have found the estimated opponent wpa is way off.

[Cry0]

Halfling is the worst race to have heretic on - they barely need it. Theives cost less and TDs reduce losses significantly. Nightmares with no + spell % modifier.

With land coming in from attacking the last thing you want to do is have to retrain thief losses plus train new thieves to compensate for acres diluting your TPA. You also seem to assume that there is money to train thieves. Almost every war I am in money is pretty tight between cranked up wages, dragon funding and getting your population fireballed.

For thief losses... 0 loss is a big deal when the Halfer can't afford retraining, nor the build space for dens... and when Heretic is losing nothing and capable of training on top of that, it is that much better for the Halfer, rather than treading water every time they fail.

That.

I literally said, "My opinion of heretic is that halfer/heretic a/t would be a lot of fun. Ignoring any benefit of heretic aside from the thief losses I see it as a great a/t personality.".

Noobium highlighted exactly why it is strong and everyone I talk to seems to be devaluing that benefit.

A halfer could run 3-4 raw TPA can stand a good chance to effectively NS enemy attackers, as long as they are hitting it at a 50% success rate there is no down side.. their thieves don't die.

You compare it to a normal prov w/ no TDs or TDs and low BE, your thieves die at a staggering rate. As a mystic I can easily lose 1 TPA in the initial 24 hours of war simply due to failed NS/Robbing. As an attacker, I cannot even count how many times I saw my TPA get shredded doing nothing more than gathering intel.

With that said, as noobium also pointed out mages fury helps if you want to NM. However, I think both elves and halfers w/ mages fury will have issues nightmaring. You need pretty high WPA and it is really rough getting 4-5+ raw wpa without mystic bonus unless your KD sits and pumps wizards for a loonnggg time or you land drop.

That is why I see the big benefit to heretic as being for a/t and I think halfer fits that the best.

[FATstrat]

If you are poorly prepared maybe Heretic is good for you then, but it is at the cost of a real personality bonus.

Halfling is one of the worst races for heretic. Training half price theives is easy, and with decent TDs not only do you lose less thieves, you also fail less, so the effect is two fold. Good t/ms have managed their thief/wiz losses without heretic for so long, it really does seem like a personality for first-timers.

[jmiedema]

Though Rogues manage thief losses through TD's which only have great thief reduction at a high BE. So heretic will let you deep draft farther without sacrificing BE/High Thief Losses. This allows for more defense/troops along with the build space saved from high towers/TD's would allow for more forts, so I think Heretic allows for a tankier Hybrid at the expense of getting to utilize great spells like MS and great ops like AW/Prop. But fantastic if your Heretic goal is being a Hybrid that runs like 2x mwpa and mtpa than the opposing attacker core, and just be tanky while fireballing and rioting and controlling resources on their attacker core.

[Palem]

Good t/ms have managed their thief/wiz losses without heretic for so long, it really does seem like a personality for first-timers.

It's really not a TM personality though. It's a hybrid personality. I'm currently planning on playing one next age.