Why are bow-using heroes so terrible?

[jhsidi]

I do see Seravy's point. I suspect what really happened is that, given the low # of heroes included in original MoM, new traits simply got lumped into the least useful heroes.

Those heroes were almost all bow users. However, the dwarf and barbarian fit in this "least useful" category. Unless you're running a buff strategy, these two heroes are nearly worthless in combat. The barbarian will pretty much die to a recruit level swordsman or literally any resistance-based spell; the dwarf can't do damage.

Ultimately, I think it would be better for the game if all heroes had value for most gameplay strategies -- once more heroes are added, anyway. That might mean intentionally splitting them into categories:

- Combat hero (good melee or ranged)
- Casting hero
- Army support hero (orc warrior and huntress currently fit here)
- Empire support hero (dervish currently fits here)

... combat heroes are really the problem here. Since SOME strategies (mostly Life, to a degree warlord / tactician, and also enchanters) can basically break the game using heroes, these heroes like the orc, barbarian and dwarf are balanced to be completely useless for everyone else. If you're running certain chaos, death, sorcery or nature builds, these guys are literally worse than a halberdier or bowman.

So I think all the named heroes should either be thrown more firmly into support (get rid of the orc's bow, give him another mediocre support skill, now he's a general) or increase their stats so they'd be useful to ALL builds... but also move them into a higher tier. The barbarian fits here. Every time I get that guy (unless I'm running a Life build) I immediately throw him into a battle to die, because he's a complete waste of space that I never want to see in the game again. No hero should get that reaction.

[MrBiscuits]

I agree that bow heroes are terrible, give them +5 ranged attack or something. 
Also do they definitely have long ranged now? There's no icon and they seem worse than when they had the long ranged icon in Caster of Magic.

Also agreed that the Huntress is useless without the web spell (actually making this a non-magical ability like Giant Spiders would be even better).

[Seravy]

Checked the level-up stats and heroes only gain +1 ranged attack every two levels, while they gain +1 melee every level.
While it can be argued that ranged attacks are more powerful as there is no retaliation, in most cases heroes are tanky enough to not care and melee allows them to attack twice a turn assuming they are in range to do so while ranged attacks don't.

It might be worth reconsidering this and raising how much ranged attack heroes gain from levels. However, this does apply to both bow and magic ranged attacks unless we specifically want the two to be different.

[zuzzu]

I think a buff to arrows would be nice - both in terms of damage (+1 per level, and perhaps a +1 starting) and also in number of ammo (10 or 12, instead of 8?)

It would be nice if one of the arrow heroes would have an ability to "freeze", like with Ice Bolt. Much more interesting strategy.

Magic ranged is already powerful as it is, IMHO.

[jhsidi]

Agreed on giving the buff to bows only and not ranged magic. Every character with ranged magic also has spells, which is a huge force multiplier. Most of the lower leveled bow heroes just have a bow.