Heroes and abilities

[Nelphine]

I've re-edited it with a lot more comments.
Ranger is high tier, therefore my casting bias really boosts him up. Basically, by the time you can reliably get him, you can expect to have powerful spells in the game; and even if his default spells aren't super good, just getting to cast, say, both prayer and blur on the opening turn is HUGE.
Edit: he's higher than the tier 3 casters because he has lucky and some random things.

The main thing wind walking heroes let you do is banish a wizard, in late game (ie very rare spells, when spell of return costs a wizard 1-3 turns to cast), in one turn after they return. So your enemy literally never gets to cast overland. It's unbelievable. Given that only one hero, and not a champion at that, has wind walking, it's not a huge deal if you leave it as value 4.

Ehh, consider my casting bias. I just.. by the time I get the paladin, I generally have +15 or more in melee strength from items if I really care to have a melee hero. So, I don't need a hero who is innately good at melee. Basically, they can be the best melee hero ever, but give me a melee hero who can ALSO cast a spell on turn 1? Infinitely better. And except for all the pure archers who are in tier 0, all ranged heroes are casters (which is why they're rated so high; it has very little to do with the ranged attack.). Same thing with amazon, even if I don't have quite that good items at that point.

[Nelphine]

I really do think it's justified though; combat spells WIN things

Nothing prevents you from giving your melee heroes an item with your best combat spell in it (up to 4 times, even). Except for the casting cost of course, assuming you also want stats on that weapon it is expensive...

Yeah, the casting cost is huge. Especially if it changes as you learn more spells (the ranger is particularly good example of this; you probably have the best uncommons/early rares by the time you get him; but as the game goes on, you really don't want to have to craft yet more items to cast the better rares, and then the very rares, as you learn those.)

And if they aren't a caster, then giving them an item that solely lets them cast spells means you're completely wasting the rest of their innate abilities. Admittedly, I've advocated just that in some instances - particularly the cost of summon hero - so that's not all that bad. But at that point, they're literally no different than a tier 0 hero, so why would I rate them higher than a tier 0 hero? So if you craft an item, it practically must be an item with combat stats on it for them. And then that cost is just exorbitant.

[Seravy]

Basically, by the time you can reliably get him, you can expect to have powerful spells in the game; and even if his default spells aren't super good, just getting to cast, say, both prayer and blur on the opening turn is HUGE.

Except he doesn't have the mana pool to do that. I guess +20 Skill items can help...

Honestly, I don't understand. Yes, casting a spell on turn 1, especially a very rare, is great. Cutting down two Sky Drakes is better. You can't do both at the same time so ideally you have both type of heroes - a few casts the necessary combat spells like High Prayer, the others go and kill stuff (mainly the things that could kill or damage the casters). If I had to choose I'd rather have only melee heroes though - I can cast the spells myself, in worst case it takes more turns. But the melee hero can kite if I need time, or start by killing the weaker targets. Melee heroes also act as a conversion tool that turns healing into more damage output by surviving more attacks. Casters don't (they won't get extra ammo when healed and don't do enough damage in melee).

(btw if you aren't using the melee hero for melee combat, you can ignore stats on the weapon and just give them that Sword of Flame Strike x4 instead. Saves a lot of mana. Sure, they won't have MP to do anything after turn 4, but even caster heroes run out of MP in 4 turns if you use big spells...)

[Nelphine]

No, if you're using a pile of heroes, then you cast 7 flame strikes on turn 1, and you win against anything not fire/magic immune.

Or you cast supreme light (especially since all your units are casters!)/high prayer/5 exaltations.

Or whatever your realm combo is.

And remember, melee heroes with caster? They can STILL go in and smash super hard AND cast a spell, every combat turn. And someone like the chaos warrior? yeah... he hits hard enough to one shot things. So, you don't need both melee strikes. Those heroes get 100% of the caster side, and 75% of the melee side. That's way way better than 100% of the melee side.

And in case you missed this edit from my last post:

And if they aren't a caster, then giving them an item that solely lets them cast spells means you're completely wasting the rest of their innate abilities. Admittedly, I've advocated just that in some instances - particularly the cost of summon hero - so that's not all that bad. But at that point, they're literally no different than a tier 0 hero, so why would I rate them higher than a tier 0 hero? So if you craft an item, it practically must be an item with combat stats on it for them. And then that cost is just exorbitant.

Also yes, the extreme cheapness of +20 caster skill may be contributing to this thought process. I can get +60 caster skill much cheaper than a x4 spell, and the actual mana pool of the hero is practically irrelevant, because that's enough to cast any combat spell in the game.

[Nelphine]

Oh one other thing. Every single realm has great melee summons. Which means, in general, that's the last thing you need your heroes to actually bother doing.

[Seravy]

So basically, you are saying casting skill is underpriced on items right now? If you can easily have +60 on them, their own mana capacity doesn't matter?

[Nelphine]

Yes and no. You generally only need to get the hero mana pool up to 40 to really make an impact. So that only needs +10 per item. So unless you make +10 noticeably more expensive than +20 is currently, my use of heroes wouldn't change a lot (although getting flame strikes would be a bit harder, you'd need casters with a decent base mana pool).

Also note, even if you did make it that expensive, I would just rate extra levels of mana pool at a full 1 per level instead of 0.5. (for instance, the necromancer would have his score go up another 2.5)

The items make it super easy, but at the end of the day, casting a spell is better than a melee hero. So yes, an archangel is better than the paladin. An angel probably isn't better.

It's the same basic reason that we can defeat nodes and lairs so easily - getting a melee hero better than a great drake isn't trivial - yet we crush great drakes in a node without any difficulty. But giving that great drake the ability to cast a spell to start the combat (even better, a cross realm spell), and he's way harder. Thus why nodes with behemoths are often more difficult to beat than great drakes.

So I guess that's about my comparison. Unless I'm getting a melee hero at least as good as a great drake, I want caster. And as long as melee heroes with caster exist, they'll always be much much more powerful.

[Nelphine]

Er, tldr of last post : absolutely caster skill on items is underpriced. I (believe I) said so when it was introduced. 

But caster is so phenomenally important late in the game, that I would increase the value of caster if the item skill price was higher; I wouldn't stop thinking caster is the best skill a champion can have.

[Nelphine]

Hmm. But if it was actually hard to get +30 or more from items, I'd reduce the per tier bonus to 0.5, as the default mana pool of the hero would be more important so that would drop necromancer down 2, for a net gain of +0.5 since he starts with a very high mana pool.

[Seravy]

By the way you are describing the exact same thing why I think Efreet might be too poweful. (Caster 40 times 9 in a stack)