Defensive Strikes...

I was messing around with the Khazad today, and I actually managed to grab Medicine fairly early(Turn 210 on Epic, so 140ish on Normal). I quickly built Arthendain, who is actually a really powerful hero, essentially a crossbowman with extra healing abilities. Now, crossbowmen start with a 40% chance to cause a defensive strike for 20%. Drill I-IV adds another 40% for 20%, and Keen Sight adds an extra 20%. Now, does this really total up to a 100% chance at causing defencive strikes? If so, that's actually really powerful...

Yes.

There are 2 ingredients you're missing: Blitz for unlimited defensive strikes each turn, and precision for a little more damage (totals up to 50.) Now it's a little weaker than it looks because each level the attacker has and each point of defensive strength he has weakens the D-strike a bit, but it's still extremely powerful.

Ohh... Blitz. That's why the Defensive Strikes didn't happen all the time... because I attacked earlier. For a minute I was wondering if it was multiplicative(40% + 10% = 44%).

Now the question is, if you go with this strategy(either for Arthedain or regular Crossbowmen), do you want to make them as powerful as possible with Combat I-V and Heroic Strength, or keep them weakish so they don't actually fight and can't die? I mean, I suppose the former would be better if your opponent is a fan of Shadow magic, but otherwise you would have a near-invincible stack.

Arthendain's a spellcasting hero, so it's nearly impossible to get him to defend a stack no matter how strong you make him.

Arthendain doesn't start with channeling promotions (which have the less likely to defend effect)

True, but he does start with the hero promotion, which does have the less likely to defend effect.

Also drill reduces the damage from collateral damage, thus it's more important in defence.

Hmm... actually, after fiddling around with the DLL, I discovered that it isn't that he's a hero that makes him less likely to defend. World units have 1/2 their strength when running chance to defend (aka, a strength 10 world unit is counted as a strength 5 when running chance to defend).

That being said, the stronger he is, the more likely he is going to survive. As you can't get any unit with enchantment 2, he is going to be strength 9 for the rest of the game, unless you give him orthus's ax or some other item. Having all those defensive strikes, getting him combat 5, means that he's strength 18 with 4-7 first strikes - nothing in the midgame is going to beat that. The only thing that would make him better is if he somehow got cannibalize (sigh... if only). So as long as he isn't the only defender on a tile, nothing is going to kill him. Getting that 100% chance to do 50% damage with defensive strike is awsome, and as long as he has blitz that will hit everyone. So I would try to buff him up as much as possible and make him as strong as you can, as (imo) he is a better hero than even Maros.

-Colin

Defensive strikes are truely awesome. As long as the enemy doesn't have any units that are immune (such as assasins) one Crossbowman with Combat I-V, Drill 1-4, Keen Sight and Precision can take out armies of over 200 units on defense. By itself. I had a stack with the guy too, but they didn't even get the chance to see combat. Of course when I did that I landed the stack on a forested hill, and had destroyed a large portion of the enemy's mounted units in an earlier (failed) invasion so I can't say I wasn't lucky. The best place to see this in action is definitely on Erebus maps when the mountains force you to pull amphibious landings. I'm really glad it wasn't the Sheaim with their Pyre Zombies that I was facing though!