Is it just me or is Hellheim troops way to strong?

[General_Jah]

DrPraetorious said:
200-300 units? That's a lot of vanir.

Air spells are not great for damage output. Thunderstrike is nice, but yeah, it isn't going to be decisive. If you want decisive impact from zaps, you want fire or water.

If you want good use out of your air magic - go into alteration. Wind Guide makes a *huge* difference in the effectiveness of your archers - they hit roughly twice as often, in my experience. Of course, you only need that once per army.

Phantasmal Army is also a great spell. If you can get ten guys to cast that (which you should, if you're facing up against 200-300 helhirdlings), that's a whopping 250 guys. They're not great units individually, but they can pin the helhirdlings down (especially with no fire bless) while your real units pepper them with wind-guided arrows.

Other than that, the evocation that really shines against glamour armies is freezing mist. You don't care much about the damage that it deals, but it pops their glamour. You may need to put water-boosting items on your guys before they can cast it, though.

Magic has to be used situationally - if you're not familiar with the magic list, it can seem pretty useless. Unlike in dom2, you don't just grab a bunch of guys and tell them to hurl lightning bolt - you can still do that, but in dom3 it generally isn't cost effective (but it depends on who you are fighting.)

If you can get science fiction levels of magic, note that many of your units are lightning immune. If you switch to an entire army of Storm Guard, and give a few of your eagle kings a stack of air gems each, they can shoot shimmering fields, which is a spell that really will kill an entire army of Vanir all by itself.

thanks for the advice with the archers, I will try that... BUT in my experience archers just dont do much damage due to the fact heavily armored troops can shrug off their arrows with ease... Almost all of Hellheims troops have pretty good armor

Do you find archers are useful even against more heavily armored foes?

[Maltrease]

Thunderstrike should be very effective. You just need lots of chaff. Try something like Aim (or better windguide) then Thunderstrike x 3 and retreat. Spread enough chaff around to delay his troops. If you are blasting Helherding ranks you are popping 100 gold per thunderstrike hit. As long as your Eagle Kings survive you can throw away 20-30-40 archers (2-400 gold) you will do far more damage.

[KissBlade]

I should point out another reason Helheim was considered overpowered before was because of the recruitment bug.

[General_Jah]

Maltrease said:
Thunderstrike should be very effective. You just need lots of chaff. Try something like Aim (or better windguide) then Thunderstrike x 3 and retreat. Spread enough chaff around to delay his troops. If you are blasting Helherding ranks you are popping 100 gold per thunderstrike hit. As long as your Eagle Kings survive you can throw away 20-30-40 archers (2-400 gold) you will do far more damage.

retreating with hit and run is actually something I have not tried much of at all...

could someone point out to me the strengths of doing this and perhaps some techniques...

is it very effective overall?

thanks!