Am I the only one who'd rather have Air3 than Fire3 on archmages?

[Monkeyfinger]

Oh, sure, meteors can bulldoze a crappy city guard. So can anything. What are they going to do to a CG3 longbowman? Or a combat 5, iron wielding axeman? Or god help you, a hero? Feed them free experience and make you accumulate War weariness (yes, meteors and fireballs count as normal units for these purposes) while doing weak collateral damage, that's what.

Maelstrom can't have its effectiveness reduced by the target having high strength. It does better "collateral" than 3 meteors, especially to a big stack (it hits everything in that stack, normal collateral doesn't.) It hits 20 squares; meteors hit 1. It doesn't cause WW. It doesn't feed experience to people who survive it.

True, it can't bombard. But 60% CD is dick ass hard to get in this mod, and 40% won't do much to protect a badly hurt unit. If you're fighting a creative leader, one catapult can undo that advantage. It can't kill, but that's what conventional units are for (and meteors are pretty bad at that against serious opponents anyway.)

tl;dr meteors are overrated and gay, use maelstrom instead.

 

[GePap]

You can also use pillar of fire against Cities. It is very effective at weakening everyone in the stack.

 

[feydras]

I'll give it a try again for one of my archmages. Probably still take along a meteor storm thrower to bring down city defenses. I hate lugging around seige weapons because they are stuck at Move 1. This is especially true when i'm playing as the super mobile Calabim.

- feydras

 

[Vehem]

I'll give it a try again for one of my archmages. Probably still take along a meteor storm thrower to bring down city defenses. I hate lugging around seige weapons because they are stuck at Move 1. This is especially true when i'm playing as the super mobile Calabim.

- feydras

The two actually work ridiculously well together, same with "Crush/Meteor", or "Crush/Adept-skelly summoners". Any spell that can guarantee whole stack damage, combined with a summoner of numerous "throwaway units" (fireballs, meteor's, skellies) tends to have a lot more success against late game city defences than a group of Meteor-flingers alone.

 

[kenken244]

(yes, meteors and fireballs count as normal units for these purposes)

No they don't, the only reason they seem to is they tend to kill more units than a standard army(at least, without other spells)

 

[Grillick]

I like using Dwarven Druids along with Fire 3 archmages.

I think the Luchuirp are a little too powerful.

 

[bc1]

If there was only a choice between meteor and maelstrom I would pick maelstrom, the converter of all ennemy stacks within 24 squares into XP farms.

Of course the best is a combination of the two (use meteors to bombard). Furthermore, although powerful at level 3, air mana is much weaker than fire at levels 1 & 2. Level 1 allows to burn jungles, and fireballs are the best at level 2.

 

[MaxAstro]

Yes, yes you are.

Thread over.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I strongly prefer Air III to Fire III (albeit, not as much as I did when spells could actually kill), but I'm not a big fan of Air I or II. I tend to go the Fire route only because combat mages with Fire II are much more effective in battle, able to weaken enemies to the point that they can clean them up for the xp and use it to become archmages faster. If I could build archmages directly I'd go straight for Air, but the ability to push units away does not give a unit a leg up in gaining the experience it need to reach this level. (I think that Air is a much better route for summoners though.)

 

[Fenboy]

The two actually work ridiculously well together, same with "Crush/Meteor", or "Crush/Adept-skelly summoners". Any spell that can guarantee whole stack damage, combined with a summoner of numerous "throwaway units" (fireballs, meteor's, skellies) tends to have a lot more success against late game city defences than a group of Meteor-flingers alone.

To be honest, between Crush and Pillar of Flames, most SoDs I encounter seem too quickly turn into XP farms for my heroes

 

[R0GERSHRUBBER]

Fire II is great, and Fire I is worth having to deal with jungles. That's why I usually opt for the Fire route unless I have an excess of mana.