Dread Knights

[Solo]

Maybe it concerns only my practice...

Last time I almost do not see dread knights in my games. In some game I saw a dread knight in my opponent's army and I told myself: "Wow, this is a first time during a long period I see this hero class!". So I think it shows this hero type is downshifted and players vote againt him choosing another heroes.

DK is rather like paladin. He has chaos instead of leadership, and he is ery slow (cannot increase his speed), and he searches ruins worse than paladin. Yes, he could achieve chaos 18. After a long long long practice. I laugh remembering a horse lord who could get L=25 having only level 4. He has something more, but I think it is not enough now when we could get a barbarian, a horse lord or an assassin.

Is my obseration really correct?
What is your experience?

[Jeremy]

I certainly do find myself rarely buying Death Knights. For me, least bought except for Horse Lord.

I think if it's starting Chaos was 4 rather than 3, I would buy it much more.

[smursh]

I still use Dreadknights in some games, but not as much as I did before the new heroes came out. They can still be effective, but the slow speed and poor ruin hunting makes them a poor choice for first hero. For this reason I only buy them in games where I have several other heroes.

I do think once rangers become available to counter assassins I will go back to using DK's more.

[KGB]

At the earliest the DK is always my 4th hero and sometimes I may not take one at all.

The reasons are simple:
1) The Paladin outclasses him in every respect (+4 to +3 initial bonus, higher UL and better UL upgrades, moves faster).
2) The items in the game are biased toward Leadership (the AA items, All L1 ruin items are leadership based).
3) The new specialty heroes (Barbarian/Assassin) have value much faster (as early as L1 and definitely by L2) so are great early game investments and have no Archon counter to their powers.

So the DK is really a luxury for me on larger maps that I think might reach late game status (turn 25+) where I have time to level his Chaos or on rich maps (in terms of gold/cities or both) where I get a ton of heroes early on.

KGB

[Negern]

The problem with dks is vs neutrals. Most heroes give their bonuses to the full stack. DK only uses his bonus on the single neutral defender. That makes him a poor choice until contact with other players are made. At a high level, he is by far the best, imo.

To encourage early use, I think the strength should be increased by 5 or 10. It will make little difference except for making it easier to reach 90% vs neutrals in early games.

[Moonknight]

I could see a justification for DK to start off with a higher strength...

[KGB]

I would much rather his pillage value started at 65 or 70 instead of 40.

Then he would be an option on maps where you planned to pillage for gold. Extra strength only matters if he gets in combat which means the rest of the stack is lost.

KGB

[smursh]

I think starting pillage at 70 would be too high. At this a lv-2 DN could be at 85%. That is too high too soon. Increasing to 55% to start with might be better, and perhaps allowing the DN to increase his movement up to 16(still start with 14). This would still be slower than other heroes, but not by such a huge margin.

[KGB]

You might be right. But for me to even consider him as a first hero the pillage will have to be enough to generate a real difference in gold and be equal/better to all 1 turn units (esp Orcs). So I think it will have to be at least 60% and the level up increase can drop to +10% and cap out at 80%.

And you are definitely right that his max move needs to increase to 16.

KGB

[Solo]

The problem with dks is vs neutrals. Most heroes give their bonuses to the full stack. DK only uses his bonus on the single neutral defender. That makes him a poor choice until contact with other players are made. At a high level, he is by far the best, imo.

I did not undestand. We have a dread knight and some units in our stack and one enemy unit. What is real difference between to add strength to all our units and to decrease enemy one unit's strength? In the first case each our unit will have greater strength and in the another case one enemy's unit wil have lesser strength but for all our unit. So I think it is almost the same. Isn't it?