@Szwagier And I agree, all I meant is if you haste a unit a mage cannot slow it unless it casts slow two times. Once to remove haste second time for slowing after the haste was canceled.
You are basically saying the same thing, maybe it is clearer if I formulate it that way :-)
@Warbux All I say is true though these are numbers not feelings.
Szwagier is right you can body block invisible mages and wall them off, and you can use runes to catch them as they go through expected path ways.
Also he is right to say that there is no stopping a hasted dk it will do damages no matter what, if it does not manage to get to your mine it can still kill whatever was in the way.
The real superiority of haste though is its versatility you can use it to do a lot of things and it is the cheapest spell to both research and use there is.
Every single numbers that I gave are right, prices are also right and these spells are effectively used that way.
Now I am not saying strategies do not exist that human can win with.
Some strategies are both available to orcs and humans for example:
- powering to ogres/knights,
- powering to sappers,
- powering to mages
- rushing,
- dualing
etc...
And they are for the most part almost as easy to pull off as a human as it would be for an orc and as deadly.
What I am saying here, is orcs just have more options available to them and can afford to fail more because of the possibility of falling back to lust if the original strategy failed.
Humans do not have a mid game option, there is no in between early and late game for humans they cannot afford to fail.
And again if you want to compare, you have to take into account numbers too, how long does it take you to make two mages + research blizzard and invisibility then having enough mana for both spells and hit your first target with the combo.
How long do you think it takes an orc to have D&D and haste and two dks with enough mana to hit their first target?
Even if you somehow managed to have it out at the same time which is impossible you are still missing a nuke in case you face enemy mages or if you get hit before blizzard is finished researching. Death knights have Coil for free!
They have the best nuke/heal spell in the game, for free, and you have fireball lol now good luck proving fireball is super good.
Hell even if polymorphism was the free spell for humans I would still rather have Coil.
Why you may say?
Because I played enough humans to know that if I just finished producing two dks they almost immediately can use Coil because it only cost 100 mana, if I get two mages out they just cannot cast polymorph they are sitting ducks waiting to be slaughtered.
You have the 200 mana in total, you just do not have it on one unit. Every time you cast a spell with a mage that situation will happen because this mage wont be able to nuke anything for a looong time. So you have to time it in your head, and make sure you know which mage has what amount of mana all game.
With DKs you do not have that problem 100 mana is much easier to reach and it wont be hard for you to find a dk that has enough mana to use that nuke during the game you dont have to even think about that.
If you play humans a lot you will understand what I am talking about, having mages standing behind just so that they have enough mana later you are basically always managing that mana.
Now you may say there is slow right! Well spot on! slow is actually way better than polymorph but you still have to research it, it is not free.
So lets add all that if you add 200 ticks for blizzard 200 ticks for invisibility and 100 ticks for slow. And if you sum all that up you have 500 ticks of research to do before you get your late game mage equivalent to dks.
For the price: 5000 gold to get all these researched.
If you take polymorph instead of slow that is even crazier:
600 ticks worth of game time.
6500 gold.
for orcs well that takes 300 ticks worth of time to research 250 ticks if you go for whirlwind instead of d&d.
And well the price I think it is easy to do the math as well: 2500 gold if you go for d&d 2000k if you go for whirlwind instead.
lets sum that up:
If you only take blizzard and invisibility and have no extra useful spells:
400 ticks
4500 gold
Best timing for human with slow:
500 ticks
5000 gold
worst timing for human (polymorph instead of slow):
600 ticks
6500 gold
best timing for orc (whirlwind):
250 ticks
2000 gold
worst timing for orc (d&d):
300 ticks
2500 gold
Now how much faster do you think a human can get his mages ready to fight an orc that goes for the same strategy?
Even if the spells were better in your opinion how much of a lead do you think 4k gold and 2 times faster researches gives at that time in the game?
