Archangels are a game ending unit, period. By the time you get them you should already have a solid enough magic based hero built up as either your main or secondary hero and than that hero with just a stack of Archangels(possibly split into 2 or even 3 depending on the situation, for their resurrection ability in case that wasn't clear) can do so much work on his own, leaving your other hero with the rest of your army(all tier 1-6 Castle units that is) as another tremendous fighting force. Archangels are so much more powerful than regular Angels that they're very much worth the upgrade and are absolutely game changing. Moreover as I just mentioned above, they make all your other units obsolete, as in immediately downgrading to a secondary role. Their speed and resurrection ability are their 2 most important attributes, the rest of their stats are nice and all but secondary, and that's what I think your analysis is most wrong about regarding the Archangel. It's not their fighting prowess that takes them over the top but their speed and how they enable any good magic based hero to completely dominate. Black Dragons are the only thing a magic hero with an Archangel stack can't immediately destroy with whatever powerful magic you have on hand, which is where the rest of the Archangel's stats do come into play as well as otherwise underutilized spells like Clone. Clone 1 big Archangel stack and those Black Dragons suddenly melt like butter, but for anything not Black Dragon that isn't even needed... Phoenixes, before and after the nerfs, fulfill a very similar role to the Archangel, in being the absolute fastest unit in the game, and also immune to fire magic(thus Armageddon) making them arguably better for the role. However their combat stats are vastly inferior(albeit they do come in bigger numbers to compensate) and they can't resurrect themselves back to life, meaning you must have the Resurrection spell and find time to use it on them to not lose them to attrition. For this reason the Phoenixes, even after the nerf, are still amazing and still absolutely need to be in S tier, maybe S- or whatever with the Archangels being in S+. In the same vein I actually value all 4 dragons much lower than you. While magic immunity is great and all it's also a double edged sword for the Gold and Black Dragons as they're also immune to Resurrection. Gold Dragons can get around this with the tier 5 Sacrifice spell to replenish their numbers, Black Dragons have no such luck. Either way it's clunky to keep up their numbers, and Black Dragons still have better stats than Gold Dragons and immunity to Implosion is no small feat so they're still probably better than their Gold brethren but it's a close call and situationally the opposite can be true. Also their speed, while absolutely still very fast, doesn't at all guarantee first turn(and the ability to cast a spell before your opponent can act) as there are plenty of units faster than them(the above mentioned Archangels and Phoenixes as well as others like the Arch Devils) and this first turn advantage can absolutely be crucial. Lastly you really should even out your list a bit more. Way too many units in A, B, C tiers, too few in the rest. You should move some of the best A tiers to low S to free room and than downgrade from B to C to D and possibly from D to F to make the list more visually appealing and less cluttered. After all rankings are all relevant to each other so cramming so many units in A, B and C doesn't actually mean anything as opposed to using all the tiers more equally.
Heat stroke has unlimited uses but requires Dreadnoughts to remain in place. It also has no retaliation. You also got the Nix ability wrong: they ignore enemies Attack stat, similar to how Behemoths ignore enemies Defence stat. This means Nixes essentially have higher defense stat by 30 / 60% of enemies' attack stat. Edit: You also forgot Haspid's Revenge ability, which makes them deal more damage the more units were lost. As a result during a final battle with an opponent, a stack of Haspids at ½ their number deals almost as much damage as the full stack, making them particularly useful for these long final battles were both sides take significant losses Sprites also require Garden of Life now (although before 1.7.0 they required Magic Universiry which was a steep price) You must've got Phoenix growth slightly confused. Their base growth used to be 2 (4 with Castle), but now is 1 (2 with castle). This can be now increased to 3 with the Vault of ashes. So their max growth is 3, whereas it used to be 4. You also forgot about the Firebird nerf - they no longer are fire immune and instead take 50% less danage from fire spells, and therefore can be targeted by fire mind spells such as Blind or Berserk.
Hey Julius! Thanks for these. I didn't realise that with Dread/Jugger, might move the needle up a bit on them but I'd need more reps I think first. I must have explained Nixes wrong but I had them right in my brain I had meant to talk about Revenge but forgotten, my point was going to be that I don't really want it triggering, as per phoenix rebirth. With the conflux these are fair points, I had thought I was back getting 4 phoenix pw with the vault that makes me more bearish now
One cool thing about Olgoi is that their corpse devour ability stacks. So you can actually devour multiple corpses (across turns) and then attack with 3+ attacks. Kind of hard to use but when it works out it really packs a punch. I got hit by 4x attacks on one turn once in a PvP match and it was devastating.
Hii! Under your last tier list I've made a ranking of factions based on its unit performance, now it's time to update it to include the hota changes: Castle: 11 Rampart: 7 Tower: 6 Dungeon: 6 Inferno: 9 Necropolis: 2 Stronghold: 4 Fortress: 8 Conflux: 2 Cove: 11 Factory: 7 Stronghold and Tower are no longer in a points deficit, Castle was again stopped from reaching the lead and inferno had quite an impressive spike. I very enjoyed the video, keep up the good work!
Great long video. Of course, I have a lot of changes I would make (subjective reasons included too haha), but it was really cool to listen to your thoughts and I can definitely understand why you would place one or another unit where you did. 👍
Just downloaded Heroes of Might and Magic III again, after something 20-years. Your video was the first thing I found to help me decide what faction to play! Thank you.
I was thinking a tier list about the Grail Structures in the game would be neat, but actually, a tier list on the towns in general would be even better. Which towns are easy to optimize? Which ones have the best extra structures? Which ones have a convenient build order/requirements?
In Stronghold I would avoid Orges and cyclopsis. Reasons why BC the amount of Crystal needed and wood was enormous. I would go straight for thunderbird and behemoths as soon as I could. Later I find out from your video that Orges are pretty powerful. That kinda balances out the costs.
Hey there - sorry what exactly do you mean man? I did a Hero Class tier list which includes Cove (was done pre-Factory release). I assume you don't mean the champion creature
one things you forgot was the the devils and arch devils have -1 & -2 luck and in hota that actually means something, ive had plenty of times where i went to go kill devils only to have them live due to bad luck and then i get messed up
This is super true! I think Shamans puppet is my highest ranked artifact now (accounting for commonality). Definitely worth noting on Ds and ADs for sure!!
I think the archdevils are the biggest dissapointment of the game. devils are good but their upgrade is the worst. it has absolutely nothing on archangels. lower dmg, defense, attack, hp and EVEN speed. now you might say ok if they are this bad surely they will be cheap. nope almost the same price and even the building is expensive as hell. no retaliation is nice but not when you sacrifice all this, you are not even gonna be using no retaliation to archangel since he would kill you before. - luck is nice but again, its not enough. the only scenario when they are somewhat even is when you have small numbers like 1-2 archdevils just for the luck debuff but still I rather spend resources elsewhere. Now I wouldnt have an issue with archdevils being bad if inferno had great units excluding 7th but thats not the case. they have nothing interesting besides efreet so its a shame that a town with such a good theme is this bad.
I miss HoMM Analysis videos. I dont really liek gameplay videos, and I always cherish any video that just rants or analyse the game, over and over again
Nice video. Agree with alot of your thoughts. I would probobly rank the Hydras alot higher, like you said they cause havoc in your army if teleported. God forbid they are blessed aswell
Factory units got done dirty. The strongest tier 1 is the upgraded halfling 2-3 damage, 1-3 dmg without upgrade. It should be a tier S or tier A at the very least. Also the flying tier 7 units for factory have 1 turn invulnerability which means u could have orb of vulnerability and Armageddon down black dragons (needs lots of spell power) but for RNG maps it is crazy effective. Factory is one of the strongest castles in large maps with lots of artifacts.
@@paulgoes5494 I get everyone has a different way of playing the game, but you also ignored a few crucial points imho. Such as the speed difference between Halflings, Grenadiers and Master Gremlins. The 6 speed on the upgraded halflings is crazy, and goes a long way to minimizing damage (the normal halfling has an equivalent speed to master gremlins). Also, defending halflings has never really been an issue, maybe it's because you play different maps from me (I'm exclusively RNG with default/Original template) but whenever I pick the halfling speciality hero (6 speed normal halflings with a combined total of 60 halflings on day 1@ impossible difficulty) is crazy. If you allow your halflings to be attacked you either attacked enemies that you shouldn't have, misplayed the combat, or are making a sacrifice for some sort of bigger value. The attack on halflings and upgraded halflings are close to upgraded marksmen (5 vs 6), combined with 2-3 damage which is the same, also only having 1 attack less than marksmen which are a tier 2 unit, only difference being that they have 2 shots, vs 1 and less hp.) I haven't seen you play, but I always use split engineers to take the first hit (once I buy my second hero) in case I'm attacking a large stack. Please remember that halflings speed means that they move faster than 90% of the tier 1's and a majority of Tier 2's. Equal speed to Marksmen (with a +1 speedboost if you attack them in the Factory area or +2 if you have a halfling speciality hero). The speed means that they will always deal crazy damage at the most opportune time. The gold cost is worth it, and its speed and strength easily makes it far more valuable than a master gremlin I'd value halfling grenadiers as double of what master gremlins are worth, especially as the halfling speciality hero means that even unupgraded halflings can have 6 speed (which is faster than master gremlins, with better damage and equivalent attack). They're an easy S tier in most situations imho (if you're a factory player.) There's a reason why the original game didn't have a gremlin speciality hero for Tower (because master gremlins are crazy good) but halflings do have it, and that boosts their strength to a crazy extent. Recommend: try using the halfling speciality hero and play at impossible difficulty - it's crazy how much easier your life will be (even against strong netural monsters). There's literally no easier start in terms of pure army strength than using the halfling speciality hero. Edit: Just wanted to add that the upgraded halflings also have a hidden passive that gives them +1 luck as well as 20% def penetration, for a tier 1.
Hi good sir. I enjoyed the video, and you took your time to explain each unit in an effective way. I was excited to see where you ended up with the best unit in the game, the Vampire Lords, and they are bumped up from 7th to 4th place, still behind Grand Elf, Black Dragon, and Marksmen. This makes no sense to me, so wanted to dig your brain a bit again. To be able to get Black Dragons in your army, you must spend like crazy. Yes, they are super good, the best unit that can be bought from a castle, but they are so hard to get to and the growth numbers are poor. You need three levels of mage guild, you need to build the Pillar of Eyes, Chapel of Stilled Voices, Labyrinth, Manticore Lair, regular dragon cave, and then get the upgraded one to upgrade from red dragon to black dragon. That is an insane number of resources and gold, for three dragons pr week. The cost of one black dragon is 4000 gold and 2 Sulfur. This should result in the fact that you do not get many of them, and they are completely irrelevant for both early and mid-section of the game. This move the discussion to the next point I want to make. Grand elf stacks are great in initial stages of the game, and they are easy to get to and to clear lots of the fights within that stage of the game. But!! When you get past the initial stages and enter the mid to late stages of the game, the grand elf stack gets targeted first most of the time, and are destroyed by towers, magic and opposing heroes flying creatures. So, your top unit is only a top unit for first part of the game, and then are spent most of the times. That is my experience when I have played as Rampart in both original and HotA version of the game. They are so hard to keep alive and they are just not worth the mana and constant babysitting. Same goes for the Marksmen from Castle, they suffer the same way. My point is that with the Vampire Lords, you get a unit that are super useful in all stages of the game. If you play it correctly and places your Vamp Lords on one of the corner hexes of the map, where they can only be attacked by two units at the time. They will keep themselves alive with the life drain, and can kill dragons, titans, Ancient Behemoths etc. If you are skilled with magic and give the lords a doze of Counterstrike with expert air magic in skill, then the lords can be placed in the middle of battlefield, and they will retaliate over and over and life drain all day long. You just use it once and they take care of the rest for you. In early stage, you can easy clear a dragon utopia maxi size with like 35+ lords, and the benefit of reward back with gold and artifact make this a killer combo. Search in RUclips for Vampire lords are OP and see Alex the magician (pro player) highlight just how powerful the lords are. Look forward to your comments back. I have started watching your Factory videos now, lots of fun and good entertainment!
Thanks Wolfman! Very thorough and reasonable logic there. I think there's a couple of differences in the games we probably play - I've spent most of my years in the game on L or XL impossible random maps where the hardest part of the game really revolves around those first and second key battles against the AI. So I probably weight elves and marksmen higher just due to their ability to punch through that most critical phase of the game for me. On a giant map, vs fewer opponents, with high starting resources or pvp, I think they would drop back quite a bit. All fair points on BDs! But I just can't help loving them so much. I think also to be honest I have not utilised the counterstrike combo to great effect all that often. Thanks again for the thoughts and contribution man - P
@@paulgoes5494 Well yes and no to your question about game play. I play PvP on JC and JO yes, but there Necro is nerfed by the fact that you always loose the bid round to be able to play as Necro because they are the best faction to play as. With the minus gold it is not so many resources and easy build path as is would be with the starting 10K gold. Necro and Dungeon is the top factions to play as, and if you roll one of those you will have to pay extra gold to be able to play as them, and Necro the most, because they are best faction. Skeleton horde and as many Vampire Lords as possible, and you are super strong and difficult to win over. As for single player, same as you play, I tend to play XL maps on impossible, random generated, with random heroes but I select the faction. I find stronghold and inferno as the weakest and where I’m worst at my game play. Stronghold is cheep and get good solid creatures fast, but Goblin, Wolf rider and Orc are “shitty” to play with. Ogre, roc, cyclops, and behemoth are great units, but with no gold and resources to start up, I always struggle to hold my grounds during week 3 or 4 when AI turn up. For inferno imps are just meat, and the gog are weak. The hounds are where I must rely in the initial stages. The best unit in inferno is the efreet sultan, and with HotA and the target hex, also the Magog is now a good creature. Devil is just too expensive to get. So, as you see, we play same game play and not same game play. I have found that Necro is the strongest faction when you use skeleton stacks and Vampire Lords. The rest of the units can wait, and just stack up, and be relevant when the gold and the resources are in place for it. Walking dead are poor creatures, they are super slow, and they do not deal damage in battle. I always just let them guard the town. Tomb of souls are also not a priority. Wraith is great to drain mana, but not much else. Lich is ok but get super strong and good with HotA and the target hex when they are upgraded to power lich. Black knights are ok, expensive and do not give my army what I need, so I tend to let them stack up and upgrade and use them when they turn to Dread Knight, who is a super, super powerful unit. The dragons I never bother with, its not worth the investment. So, I just use skeletons and the vampire lords for the critical point of game as you pointed out. With necro amplifier building and expert necro, the skeleton stack just grows and grows. I use one stacks of skeletons to block, kite, and take retaliation for big stack of skeletons. The Vampire lords fly and hit without retaliation, and can chill in corner hex of map, where they only can be targeted by two units at the time, the rest will go for one stacks of skeletons until the lords have killed one of the two attacking units. This play gives a small loss in skeletons pr fight, but an increase when necro skill have transformed and raised dead. The lord’s stack is without loss, because of the life drain they do. Multiple fights, and army grows and grows, exp go up and artifacts added to the hero. Mule hero take over the skeletons after ended fight, so main gets full speed (9) and max movement, and mule gives skeletons back to main after ended turn. This allows main to do more fights pr round and get more done. This is something I see in your videos that you do not utilize. F.ex when a hero is in a town to get troops the next day, and you plan to gallop out with him/her. You keep slow units on the hero when you end the turn. If you by one of the fastest units, just a one stack, and put the slower creatures in the garrison, then your hero movement is way better next day. The game calculates your hero’s movement at ended turn, so this will give you way more movement and allow you to cover more ground pr turn. I currently watch your factory gameplay and saw that Agar with the legs sits in the town with Armadillo on him, with speed 4. And there are centaurs with speed 6 in the town. A single click from hero to garrison, and armadillo will not count when ended turn. Just a friendly tip for a better and faster hero next turn. 😊
Thanks Wolfman! Yeah I spotted that too with Agar when I watched it back but I will definitely admit that I regularly forget to swap out the slow pokes before the end turn I am notorious for not thinking of it and then wondering why on earth my hero is so slow. Really interesting to hear your take on the necro there in detail! I too think that inferno and stronghold are the hardest to play in single player but I am looking forward to my next inferno run where I will be spamming those magogs - have not played inferno in HotA mode yet.
Truthfully, I think Vampire lords are the best units. They're the only unit with life drain ability, plus, with about 50+ vampire lords, you can successfully take a dragon Utopia. Strategy: gold and black dragons attack (even if there are 6 and 5 of them respectively (maxed)). red/green wait their turns not to fire breath the black/gold dragons. Fly to the top left corner and wait. the green can't cross the map, but flies close enough that the black and gold dragon can't double team you. then just sit there and wear the two stacks while life draining. Sometimes I can do this with a little over 40 Vampire lords. This strategy is effective especially for wandering monsters with 2-hex spaces. you can take almost anything down. the only exception on the adventure map is for non-living units/elementals. By the 4th month you can acquire over 100 VLs and as long as you have a strong spell power/knowledge, you can clear most adventure map units, if not all with the help of animate dead. Vokail really buffs the effect, and it's easy to buff lvl 4. Just need to unlearn his artillery skill lol. Also, ancient behemoths, if you match them in any quantity into a single stack against arch angels, the behemoth will win. If the battles have multi-stacks, the AA have a better chance with resurrecting each other, but still very close. The A-behemoths reduce enemy's defense by 80% not the enemy's damage (perhaps a slip of tongue in the video?), that's why they are deadly. but you're right, that city walls are a pain. thank goodness for stronghold that their cyclopes can take down the walls with ballistics!
Thanks JP great comments! Yeah there's a few mixups in there but really appreciate you hearing me all the way home! A lot of people skip straight to the final list, see AAs in less than S, hit the ol dislike and move on
Would you ever do stand alone videos for a group of creatures or spells break them down a bit further? Would be very entertaining to listen too on the side while doing something unrelated.
Hey Rage thanks for the idea, I'll have a think on it! I tend to worry that these videos are already too long as I'm rambling on for so long (eg the halflings here OMG would I ever get past them) but I think some folk weirdly are cool with that :)
@@paulgoes5494 These could be 10-15 minutes if you are talking about one creature stack. I've enjoyed your tier list so these would be interesting to watch. You could talk about their stats, how to get them, pros/cons have then fight a small stack of peasants. Look forward to any new videos you make.
I'll mostly agree with your ratings and would rate most of these creatures in similar way there are however few creatures I'd rate very differently firstly I'll strongly disagree with your opinion about crimson couatls. personally I feel like upgrade helps them a lot, mostly because they can turn on invulnerability and act on the same turn. you can just make them invulnerable and fly into enemy army, normally sending single stack of mobile units like that causes them to take massive damage but in case of couatls you can safely send them to deal with some big irritating stack of units and not be worried about taking massive losses, on top of that they combo with many spells pretty well, if you clone them clones can use invulnerability, you can give them frenzy and not care about it's drawbacks or you can use your own aoe magic and not be worried about hitting them. second thing I'll disagree with are sea dogs you rated them as low b but I think they don't even deserve that rating, resources and time you need to invest to get them are just to much. there is a reason you almost never see them at higher level of play, you'll always have something better to invest in and you often end the game before you'll actually build them. realistically you'd probably only want to invest in them if you really are forced into that because for example you found like 2 dwellings of pirates and pandora box with pirates/corsairs/sea dogs week 1, otherwise you'll probably end up always having something better to spend your money on, they may be strongest tier 3 unit in the game but they rarely are worth their price. if they are not worth their price in regular pvp where you start with 10000 gold (+- tradeup) they are surely even worse in your environment where you start with no gold at all. about updates to units from older towns: I don't think introduction of experimental shop is that big of a buff to giants, that surely increase their value but I don't think they deserve to be almost as highly rated as angels, sentiel automatons or ayssids after all they are tier 7 unit with no other special ability than immunity to mind spells and about average stats also I don't think phoenixes should take such huge downgrade. phoenixes take a hit but they remain fastest non-neutral unit guarantying you first cast (unless your opponent have something like azure dragons) and this is in my opinion enough to give them at least high 'a' if not low 's' my last point of disagreement would be behemoth adjustment, I think biggest strength of behemoths is their accessibility, they are only tier 7 unit that can be reliably bought week 1, sure there are other t7 units you can build week 1 like for example green dragons but that requires to much of sacrifice (in case of green dragons you need to postpone elves upgrade) and really good economy, especially if you take into consideration the fact that you play with no starting resources this t7 rush is realistically possible only on stronghold. ancient behemoths are just big ball of stats with special ability that effectively makes them even bigger ball of stats, most of t7 upgraded units can shoot, fly or have something else to them that makes them special and in my opinion better than ancient behemoths(with some rare exceptions like ghost dragon). sure regular behemoths are also just big ball of stats but they have one 'special' thing to them as they are deployable super early and even tho it isn't strategy you'd aim to play every game I think just having this as option makes regular behemoths better than ancient ones
Thanks for these Toothy! Interesting take on the Crimsons will be good to see if others agree. I've not gotten to frenzy them and found them good but not insane so far. Fair enough on the conflux and I may have had some sour grape syndrome there having spent 25 years spamming those sprites and phoenixes! Giants I'm looking not just at the shop but the deletion of mage tower from the path and I see beauty there. But also, latest campaign there were workshops everywhere... Fair enough on Ancients on these I may have been overswayed by the masses :) although I do think D+ was too low
I just got into HOMM3 a little bit after growing up playing 2 as a teenager and enjoying 5 a lot and 6/7 decently (7 feels like something is missing that I can't put my finger on but it just isn't very fun to play and the skill perks suck) Inferno is awful. It just plays so terribly. Magogs hitting your own stuff is a massive L. Demons suck and are so boring. Imps are unjustifiably bad. Pit lords not only suck and have poor growth, but their mechanic is insanely goofy and finnicky to use When I moved onto the dungeon faction their whole roster felt so much better and interesting
Hey Merk, well if you're on the HotA mod, you can target the ground with your Magogs so they are infinitely better (literally as they were a hard zero before). The competitive community would disagree on the pit lords you can engineer a ball of demons by sending imp after imp to intentional doom in a series of curated/safe fights. I'm not a big user of the strat myself in honesty though. Overall inferno is still seen as one of the toughest / underpowered factions by most folk who comment on the channel
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Finally, its been a long time
Wild timing, I literally just finished watching the original video yesterday!
He is hacking our computers or something; I finished watching the old video not even an hour ago
Lets go boii, so far so good, be sure too stay alive and keep the good work
Archangels are a game ending unit, period. By the time you get them you should already have a solid enough magic based hero built up as either your main or secondary hero and than that hero with just a stack of Archangels(possibly split into 2 or even 3 depending on the situation, for their resurrection ability in case that wasn't clear) can do so much work on his own, leaving your other hero with the rest of your army(all tier 1-6 Castle units that is) as another tremendous fighting force. Archangels are so much more powerful than regular Angels that they're very much worth the upgrade and are absolutely game changing. Moreover as I just mentioned above, they make all your other units obsolete, as in immediately downgrading to a secondary role. Their speed and resurrection ability are their 2 most important attributes, the rest of their stats are nice and all but secondary, and that's what I think your analysis is most wrong about regarding the Archangel. It's not their fighting prowess that takes them over the top but their speed and how they enable any good magic based hero to completely dominate. Black Dragons are the only thing a magic hero with an Archangel stack can't immediately destroy with whatever powerful magic you have on hand, which is where the rest of the Archangel's stats do come into play as well as otherwise underutilized spells like Clone. Clone 1 big Archangel stack and those Black Dragons suddenly melt like butter, but for anything not Black Dragon that isn't even needed...
Phoenixes, before and after the nerfs, fulfill a very similar role to the Archangel, in being the absolute fastest unit in the game, and also immune to fire magic(thus Armageddon) making them arguably better for the role. However their combat stats are vastly inferior(albeit they do come in bigger numbers to compensate) and they can't resurrect themselves back to life, meaning you must have the Resurrection spell and find time to use it on them to not lose them to attrition. For this reason the Phoenixes, even after the nerf, are still amazing and still absolutely need to be in S tier, maybe S- or whatever with the Archangels being in S+. In the same vein I actually value all 4 dragons much lower than you. While magic immunity is great and all it's also a double edged sword for the Gold and Black Dragons as they're also immune to Resurrection. Gold Dragons can get around this with the tier 5 Sacrifice spell to replenish their numbers, Black Dragons have no such luck. Either way it's clunky to keep up their numbers, and Black Dragons still have better stats than Gold Dragons and immunity to Implosion is no small feat so they're still probably better than their Gold brethren but it's a close call and situationally the opposite can be true. Also their speed, while absolutely still very fast, doesn't at all guarantee first turn(and the ability to cast a spell before your opponent can act) as there are plenty of units faster than them(the above mentioned Archangels and Phoenixes as well as others like the Arch Devils) and this first turn advantage can absolutely be crucial.
Lastly you really should even out your list a bit more. Way too many units in A, B, C tiers, too few in the rest. You should move some of the best A tiers to low S to free room and than downgrade from B to C to D and possibly from D to F to make the list more visually appealing and less cluttered. After all rankings are all relevant to each other so cramming so many units in A, B and C doesn't actually mean anything as opposed to using all the tiers more equally.
Heat stroke has unlimited uses but requires Dreadnoughts to remain in place. It also has no retaliation.
You also got the Nix ability wrong: they ignore enemies Attack stat, similar to how Behemoths ignore enemies Defence stat. This means Nixes essentially have higher defense stat by 30 / 60% of enemies' attack stat.
Edit: You also forgot Haspid's Revenge ability, which makes them deal more damage the more units were lost. As a result during a final battle with an opponent, a stack of Haspids at ½ their number deals almost as much damage as the full stack, making them particularly useful for these long final battles were both sides take significant losses
Sprites also require Garden of Life now (although before 1.7.0 they required Magic Universiry which was a steep price)
You must've got Phoenix growth slightly confused. Their base growth used to be 2 (4 with Castle), but now is 1 (2 with castle). This can be now increased to 3 with the Vault of ashes. So their max growth is 3, whereas it used to be 4.
You also forgot about the Firebird nerf - they no longer are fire immune and instead take 50% less danage from fire spells, and therefore can be targeted by fire mind spells such as Blind or Berserk.
Hey Julius! Thanks for these.
I didn't realise that with Dread/Jugger, might move the needle up a bit on them but I'd need more reps I think first.
I must have explained Nixes wrong but I had them right in my brain
I had meant to talk about Revenge but forgotten, my point was going to be that I don't really want it triggering, as per phoenix rebirth.
With the conflux these are fair points, I had thought I was back getting 4 phoenix pw with the vault that makes me more bearish now
One cool thing about Olgoi is that their corpse devour ability stacks. So you can actually devour multiple corpses (across turns) and then attack with 3+ attacks. Kind of hard to use but when it works out it really packs a punch. I got hit by 4x attacks on one turn once in a PvP match and it was devastating.
Hii!
Under your last tier list I've made a ranking of factions based on its unit performance, now it's time to update it to include the hota changes:
Castle: 11
Rampart: 7
Tower: 6
Dungeon: 6
Inferno: 9
Necropolis: 2
Stronghold: 4
Fortress: 8
Conflux: 2
Cove: 11
Factory: 7
Stronghold and Tower are no longer in a points deficit, Castle was again stopped from reaching the lead and inferno had quite an impressive spike.
I very enjoyed the video, keep up the good work!
Hey Hiram, I remember this yes! Thanks for the update! I wonder if I was too nice to Cove...
Great long video. Of course, I have a lot of changes I would make (subjective reasons included too haha), but it was really cool to listen to your thoughts and I can definitely understand why you would place one or another unit where you did. 👍
Thanks Leaks!
Great tierlist ty for your work!
Enjoyed the vid!
Would be interesting to see how those new balancing changes play out
Just downloaded Heroes of Might and Magic III again, after something 20-years. Your video was the first thing I found to help me decide what faction to play! Thank you.
Epic! Welcome back to the fold man I hope you get hooked good :)
I was thinking a tier list about the Grail Structures in the game would be neat, but actually, a tier list on the towns in general would be even better. Which towns are easy to optimize? Which ones have the best extra structures? Which ones have a convenient build order/requirements?
Hi Abel yes I'm kind of working toward something like this idea
How do you get this
Ranking System Explanation
2:23 - 4:20
In Stronghold I would avoid Orges and cyclopsis. Reasons why BC the amount of Crystal needed and wood was enormous. I would go straight for thunderbird and behemoths as soon as I could. Later I find out from your video that Orges are pretty powerful. That kinda balances out the costs.
1:19:25
Can u do tier list of champions in HoTa?
Hey there - sorry what exactly do you mean man? I did a Hero Class tier list which includes Cove (was done pre-Factory release). I assume you don't mean the champion creature
one things you forgot was the the devils and arch devils have -1 & -2 luck
and in hota that actually means something, ive had plenty of times where i went to go kill devils only to have them live due to bad luck and then i get messed up
This is super true! I think Shamans puppet is my highest ranked artifact now (accounting for commonality). Definitely worth noting on Ds and ADs for sure!!
I think the archdevils are the biggest dissapointment of the game. devils are good but their upgrade is the worst. it has absolutely nothing on archangels. lower dmg, defense, attack, hp and EVEN speed. now you might say ok if they are this bad surely they will be cheap. nope almost the same price and even the building is expensive as hell. no retaliation is nice but not when you sacrifice all this, you are not even gonna be using no retaliation to archangel since he would kill you before. - luck is nice but again, its not enough. the only scenario when they are somewhat even is when you have small numbers like 1-2 archdevils just for the luck debuff but still I rather spend resources elsewhere.
Now I wouldnt have an issue with archdevils being bad if inferno had great units excluding 7th but thats not the case. they have nothing interesting besides efreet so its a shame that a town with such a good theme is this bad.
Paul Goesling! You Sonofagun! This vid is a banging idea!
12:10 literally started to remix.
Hey thanks Austra! Love it when you drop by man it's like we have some deep unspoken connection
r-r-r-r-r?
You remind me of a guy I used to hang out with, for sure. Do you play magic?
Mate I do! Do you like Ulver?
I miss HoMM Analysis videos. I dont really liek gameplay videos, and I always cherish any video that just rants or analyse the game, over and over again
Easter miracle 😅
Nice video. Agree with alot of your thoughts. I would probobly rank the Hydras alot higher, like you said they cause havoc in your army if teleported. God forbid they are blessed aswell
Thanks Frank! Fair
Factory units got done dirty.
The strongest tier 1 is the upgraded halfling 2-3 damage, 1-3 dmg without upgrade. It should be a tier S or tier A at the very least. Also the flying tier 7 units for factory have 1 turn invulnerability which means u could have orb of vulnerability and Armageddon down black dragons (needs lots of spell power) but for RNG maps it is crazy effective.
Factory is one of the strongest castles in large maps with lots of artifacts.
Hey Koinz! Well I dedicated a pretty big chunk of the vid to the halflings so can't claim I haven't had my say! Respect your view though man
@@paulgoes5494 I get everyone has a different way of playing the game, but you also ignored a few crucial points imho. Such as the speed difference between Halflings, Grenadiers and Master Gremlins. The 6 speed on the upgraded halflings is crazy, and goes a long way to minimizing damage (the normal halfling has an equivalent speed to master gremlins).
Also, defending halflings has never really been an issue, maybe it's because you play different maps from me (I'm exclusively RNG with default/Original template) but whenever I pick the halfling speciality hero (6 speed normal halflings with a combined total of 60 halflings on day 1@ impossible difficulty) is crazy. If you allow your halflings to be attacked you either attacked enemies that you shouldn't have, misplayed the combat, or are making a sacrifice for some sort of bigger value.
The attack on halflings and upgraded halflings are close to upgraded marksmen (5 vs 6), combined with 2-3 damage which is the same, also only having 1 attack less than marksmen which are a tier 2 unit, only difference being that they have 2 shots, vs 1 and less hp.)
I haven't seen you play, but I always use split engineers to take the first hit (once I buy my second hero) in case I'm attacking a large stack. Please remember that halflings speed means that they move faster than 90% of the tier 1's and a majority of Tier 2's. Equal speed to Marksmen (with a +1 speedboost if you attack them in the Factory area or +2 if you have a halfling speciality hero). The speed means that they will always deal crazy damage at the most opportune time. The gold cost is worth it, and its speed and strength easily makes it far more valuable than a master gremlin I'd value halfling grenadiers as double of what master gremlins are worth, especially as the halfling speciality hero means that even unupgraded halflings can have 6 speed (which is faster than master gremlins, with better damage and equivalent attack).
They're an easy S tier in most situations imho (if you're a factory player.) There's a reason why the original game didn't have a gremlin speciality hero for Tower (because master gremlins are crazy good) but halflings do have it, and that boosts their strength to a crazy extent.
Recommend: try using the halfling speciality hero and play at impossible difficulty - it's crazy how much easier your life will be (even against strong netural monsters). There's literally no easier start in terms of pure army strength than using the halfling speciality hero.
Edit: Just wanted to add that the upgraded halflings also have a hidden passive that gives them +1 luck as well as 20% def penetration, for a tier 1.
Thanks Koinz! I will try out that hero at some stage and yes it is entirely possible that I'm not setting up to get the best out of them
Hi good sir. I enjoyed the video, and you took your time to explain each unit in an effective way. I was excited to see where you ended up with the best unit in the game, the Vampire Lords, and they are bumped up from 7th to 4th place, still behind Grand Elf, Black Dragon, and Marksmen. This makes no sense to me, so wanted to dig your brain a bit again. To be able to get Black Dragons in your army, you must spend like crazy. Yes, they are super good, the best unit that can be bought from a castle, but they are so hard to get to and the growth numbers are poor. You need three levels of mage guild, you need to build the Pillar of Eyes, Chapel of Stilled Voices, Labyrinth, Manticore Lair, regular dragon cave, and then get the upgraded one to upgrade from red dragon to black dragon. That is an insane number of resources and gold, for three dragons pr week. The cost of one black dragon is 4000 gold and 2 Sulfur. This should result in the fact that you do not get many of them, and they are completely irrelevant for both early and mid-section of the game. This move the discussion to the next point I want to make. Grand elf stacks are great in initial stages of the game, and they are easy to get to and to clear lots of the fights within that stage of the game. But!! When you get past the initial stages and enter the mid to late stages of the game, the grand elf stack gets targeted first most of the time, and are destroyed by towers, magic and opposing heroes flying creatures. So, your top unit is only a top unit for first part of the game, and then are spent most of the times. That is my experience when I have played as Rampart in both original and HotA version of the game. They are so hard to keep alive and they are just not worth the mana and constant babysitting. Same goes for the Marksmen from Castle, they suffer the same way. My point is that with the Vampire Lords, you get a unit that are super useful in all stages of the game. If you play it correctly and places your Vamp Lords on one of the corner hexes of the map, where they can only be attacked by two units at the time. They will keep themselves alive with the life drain, and can kill dragons, titans, Ancient Behemoths etc. If you are skilled with magic and give the lords a doze of Counterstrike with expert air magic in skill, then the lords can be placed in the middle of battlefield, and they will retaliate over and over and life drain all day long. You just use it once and they take care of the rest for you. In early stage, you can easy clear a dragon utopia maxi size with like 35+ lords, and the benefit of reward back with gold and artifact make this a killer combo. Search in RUclips for Vampire lords are OP and see Alex the magician (pro player) highlight just how powerful the lords are. Look forward to your comments back. I have started watching your Factory videos now, lots of fun and good entertainment!
Thanks Wolfman! Very thorough and reasonable logic there. I think there's a couple of differences in the games we probably play - I've spent most of my years in the game on L or XL impossible random maps where the hardest part of the game really revolves around those first and second key battles against the AI. So I probably weight elves and marksmen higher just due to their ability to punch through that most critical phase of the game for me. On a giant map, vs fewer opponents, with high starting resources or pvp, I think they would drop back quite a bit. All fair points on BDs! But I just can't help loving them so much. I think also to be honest I have not utilised the counterstrike combo to great effect all that often. Thanks again for the thoughts and contribution man - P
@@paulgoes5494 Well yes and no to your question about game play. I play PvP on JC and JO yes, but there Necro is nerfed by the fact that you always loose the bid round to be able to play as Necro because they are the best faction to play as. With the minus gold it is not so many resources and easy build path as is would be with the starting 10K gold. Necro and Dungeon is the top factions to play as, and if you roll one of those you will have to pay extra gold to be able to play as them, and Necro the most, because they are best faction. Skeleton horde and as many Vampire Lords as possible, and you are super strong and difficult to win over. As for single player, same as you play, I tend to play XL maps on impossible, random generated, with random heroes but I select the faction. I find stronghold and inferno as the weakest and where I’m worst at my game play. Stronghold is cheep and get good solid creatures fast, but Goblin, Wolf rider and Orc are “shitty” to play with. Ogre, roc, cyclops, and behemoth are great units, but with no gold and resources to start up, I always struggle to hold my grounds during week 3 or 4 when AI turn up. For inferno imps are just meat, and the gog are weak. The hounds are where I must rely in the initial stages. The best unit in inferno is the efreet sultan, and with HotA and the target hex, also the Magog is now a good creature. Devil is just too expensive to get. So, as you see, we play same game play and not same game play. I have found that Necro is the strongest faction when you use skeleton stacks and Vampire Lords. The rest of the units can wait, and just stack up, and be relevant when the gold and the resources are in place for it. Walking dead are poor creatures, they are super slow, and they do not deal damage in battle. I always just let them guard the town. Tomb of souls are also not a priority. Wraith is great to drain mana, but not much else. Lich is ok but get super strong and good with HotA and the target hex when they are upgraded to power lich. Black knights are ok, expensive and do not give my army what I need, so I tend to let them stack up and upgrade and use them when they turn to Dread Knight, who is a super, super powerful unit. The dragons I never bother with, its not worth the investment. So, I just use skeletons and the vampire lords for the critical point of game as you pointed out. With necro amplifier building and expert necro, the skeleton stack just grows and grows. I use one stacks of skeletons to block, kite, and take retaliation for big stack of skeletons. The Vampire lords fly and hit without retaliation, and can chill in corner hex of map, where they only can be targeted by two units at the time, the rest will go for one stacks of skeletons until the lords have killed one of the two attacking units. This play gives a small loss in skeletons pr fight, but an increase when necro skill have transformed and raised dead. The lord’s stack is without loss, because of the life drain they do. Multiple fights, and army grows and grows, exp go up and artifacts added to the hero. Mule hero take over the skeletons after ended fight, so main gets full speed (9) and max movement, and mule gives skeletons back to main after ended turn. This allows main to do more fights pr round and get more done. This is something I see in your videos that you do not utilize. F.ex when a hero is in a town to get troops the next day, and you plan to gallop out with him/her. You keep slow units on the hero when you end the turn. If you by one of the fastest units, just a one stack, and put the slower creatures in the garrison, then your hero movement is way better next day. The game calculates your hero’s movement at ended turn, so this will give you way more movement and allow you to cover more ground pr turn. I currently watch your factory gameplay and saw that Agar with the legs sits in the town with Armadillo on him, with speed 4. And there are centaurs with speed 6 in the town. A single click from hero to garrison, and armadillo will not count when ended turn. Just a friendly tip for a better and faster hero next turn. 😊
Thanks Wolfman! Yeah I spotted that too with Agar when I watched it back but I will definitely admit that I regularly forget to swap out the slow pokes before the end turn I am notorious for not thinking of it and then wondering why on earth my hero is so slow. Really interesting to hear your take on the necro there in detail! I too think that inferno and stronghold are the hardest to play in single player but I am looking forward to my next inferno run where I will be spamming those magogs - have not played inferno in HotA mode yet.
Truthfully, I think Vampire lords are the best units. They're the only unit with life drain ability, plus, with about 50+ vampire lords, you can successfully take a dragon Utopia. Strategy: gold and black dragons attack (even if there are 6 and 5 of them respectively (maxed)). red/green wait their turns not to fire breath the black/gold dragons. Fly to the top left corner and wait. the green can't cross the map, but flies close enough that the black and gold dragon can't double team you. then just sit there and wear the two stacks while life draining. Sometimes I can do this with a little over 40 Vampire lords. This strategy is effective especially for wandering monsters with 2-hex spaces. you can take almost anything down. the only exception on the adventure map is for non-living units/elementals. By the 4th month you can acquire over 100 VLs and as long as you have a strong spell power/knowledge, you can clear most adventure map units, if not all with the help of animate dead. Vokail really buffs the effect, and it's easy to buff lvl 4. Just need to unlearn his artillery skill lol.
Also, ancient behemoths, if you match them in any quantity into a single stack against arch angels, the behemoth will win. If the battles have multi-stacks, the AA have a better chance with resurrecting each other, but still very close. The A-behemoths reduce enemy's defense by 80% not the enemy's damage (perhaps a slip of tongue in the video?), that's why they are deadly. but you're right, that city walls are a pain. thank goodness for stronghold that their cyclopes can take down the walls with ballistics!
Thanks JP great comments! Yeah there's a few mixups in there but really appreciate you hearing me all the way home! A lot of people skip straight to the final list, see AAs in less than S, hit the ol dislike and move on
Would you ever do stand alone videos for a group of creatures or spells break them down a bit further? Would be very entertaining to listen too on the side while doing something unrelated.
Hey Rage thanks for the idea, I'll have a think on it! I tend to worry that these videos are already too long as I'm rambling on for so long (eg the halflings here OMG would I ever get past them) but I think some folk weirdly are cool with that :)
@@paulgoes5494 These could be 10-15 minutes if you are talking about one creature stack. I've enjoyed your tier list so these would be interesting to watch.
You could talk about their stats, how to get them, pros/cons have then fight a small stack of peasants. Look forward to any new videos you make.
I'll mostly agree with your ratings and would rate most of these creatures in similar way there are however few creatures I'd rate very differently
firstly I'll strongly disagree with your opinion about crimson couatls. personally I feel like upgrade helps them a lot, mostly because they can turn on invulnerability and act on the same turn. you can just make them invulnerable and fly into enemy army, normally sending single stack of mobile units like that causes them to take massive damage but in case of couatls you can safely send them to deal with some big irritating stack of units and not be worried about taking massive losses, on top of that they combo with many spells pretty well, if you clone them clones can use invulnerability, you can give them frenzy and not care about it's drawbacks or you can use your own aoe magic and not be worried about hitting them.
second thing I'll disagree with are sea dogs you rated them as low b but I think they don't even deserve that rating, resources and time you need to invest to get them are just to much. there is a reason you almost never see them at higher level of play, you'll always have something better to invest in and you often end the game before you'll actually build them. realistically you'd probably only want to invest in them if you really are forced into that because for example you found like 2 dwellings of pirates and pandora box with pirates/corsairs/sea dogs week 1, otherwise you'll probably end up always having something better to spend your money on, they may be strongest tier 3 unit in the game but they rarely are worth their price. if they are not worth their price in regular pvp where you start with 10000 gold (+- tradeup) they are surely even worse in your environment where you start with no gold at all.
about updates to units from older towns:
I don't think introduction of experimental shop is that big of a buff to giants, that surely increase their value but I don't think they deserve to be almost as highly rated as angels, sentiel automatons or ayssids after all they are tier 7 unit with no other special ability than
immunity to mind spells and about average stats
also I don't think phoenixes should take such huge downgrade. phoenixes take a hit but they remain fastest non-neutral unit guarantying you first cast (unless your opponent have something like azure dragons) and this is in my opinion enough to give them at least high 'a' if not low 's'
my last point of disagreement would be behemoth adjustment, I think biggest strength of behemoths is their accessibility, they are only tier 7 unit that can be reliably bought week 1, sure there are other t7 units you can build week 1 like for example green dragons but that requires to much of sacrifice (in case of green dragons you need to postpone elves upgrade) and really good economy, especially if you take into consideration the fact that you play with no starting resources this t7 rush is realistically possible only on stronghold. ancient behemoths are just big ball of stats with special ability that effectively makes them even bigger ball of stats, most of t7 upgraded units can shoot, fly or have something else to them that makes them special and in my opinion better than ancient behemoths(with some rare exceptions like ghost dragon). sure regular behemoths are also just big ball of stats but they have one 'special' thing to them as they are deployable super early and even tho it isn't strategy you'd aim to play every game I think just having this as option makes regular behemoths better than ancient ones
Thanks for these Toothy! Interesting take on the Crimsons will be good to see if others agree. I've not gotten to frenzy them and found them good but not insane so far.
Fair enough on the conflux and I may have had some sour grape syndrome there having spent 25 years spamming those sprites and phoenixes!
Giants I'm looking not just at the shop but the deletion of mage tower from the path and I see beauty there. But also, latest campaign there were workshops everywhere...
Fair enough on Ancients on these I may have been overswayed by the masses :) although I do think D+ was too low
I just got into HOMM3 a little bit after growing up playing 2 as a teenager and enjoying 5 a lot and 6/7 decently (7 feels like something is missing that I can't put my finger on but it just isn't very fun to play and the skill perks suck)
Inferno is awful. It just plays so terribly.
Magogs hitting your own stuff is a massive L. Demons suck and are so boring. Imps are unjustifiably bad.
Pit lords not only suck and have poor growth, but their mechanic is insanely goofy and finnicky to use
When I moved onto the dungeon faction their whole roster felt so much better and interesting
Hey Merk, well if you're on the HotA mod, you can target the ground with your Magogs so they are infinitely better (literally as they were a hard zero before).
The competitive community would disagree on the pit lords you can engineer a ball of demons by sending imp after imp to intentional doom in a series of curated/safe fights. I'm not a big user of the strat myself in honesty though. Overall inferno is still seen as one of the toughest / underpowered factions by most folk who comment on the channel