Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?

[Shangrila00]

I did see that, though low precision 10 AP damage is still no good against a shielded thug, and no better than indy crossbows against unshielded thugs barring any special vulnerability to decay. And ethereal summons have so little protection that AP means nothing when comparing with the bow of war.

[brxbrx]

You know, a single volley of those banefire arrows can wither an entire army.
And they're really cheap.
Assuming people still even use armies in MP, not just tricked out thugs and mages with lots of gems to spam fireball.

[Admiral_Aorta]

On an unrelated note, the wiki has a size 6 divine mummy with awesome stats as a possible result of ritual of rebirth. How do you get it? I tried RoRing Hannibal, the size 6 elephant mercenary and still only got a giant mummy.

I'm not sure if it's actually possible to get these in any way other than wish, size 6 units just give you giant mummies. The description seems to suggest you should get them from using ritual of rebirth on a pretender but you can't do that.

[rdonj]

I'll try to explain this better then. 5D gets you the equivalent of more than 20 crossbowmen who you don't have to pay upkeep on, can see in the dark, and have magic weapons. These magic weapons will counter a large number of things, and remember that anything can be made ethereal, not just things with no protection. And these banefire bows are far more versatile than a bow of war is, because they can actually hurt things that have decent protection. Reanimated archers are actually some of the best ranged units in the game.

Further, consider what else you're going to be spending 5D on that would be as effective in battle. Banefire crossbows decay things, but they attack much more slowly and kill very slowly. For 5D you can buy maybe two wights, or a number of weak undead. You really can't do much to beat the cost vs versatility by using death gems. So I would call their niche "cheap, effective fire support".

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

[...]a bow of war is so much better at just spamming magic arrows against ethereal summons or popping fog warriors[...]

Hold on... Are you cerain the arrows of a bow of war are considered magical? I could swear I have seen them do absolutely nothing against mistformed armies and the like. (Though I will admit it's been a long time, and I've never used them extensively. Not a big fan of magical bows in general myself, I generally find other things to do with my gems. Also the fact no one else picked up on this probably means I'm wrong...)

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Admiral_Aorta

I'm not sure if it's actually possible to get these in any way other than wish, size 6 units just give you giant mummies. The description seems to suggest you should get them from using ritual of rebirth on a pretender but you can't do that.

The divine mummy is a random indy pop type. No other way of getting that one.

[nordlys]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

The divine mummy is a random indy pop type. No other way of getting that one.

What if a wished-for pretender unit, like a titan, is RoRed? Still a mere giant mummy? Even the unit graphic hints on a titan, not unlike tartarian.

(the part about "does not work on undead or lifeless units" in conjunction with "can be used multiple times on a hero" is a bit misleading since a mummy is both lifeless and undead, heh)

And to further derail the thread, does RoR work on uniques? I have a bunch of archdevils in HoF thanks to Flames spam, what if I kill them off and try to RoR? And then resummon them again?

[Soyweiser]

RoR doesn't work on uniques iirc. And RoR a titan gives normal large mummy, not a divine one.

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by rdonj

I'll try to explain this better then. 5D gets you the equivalent of more than 20 crossbowmen who you don't have to pay upkeep on...

20 crossbowmen with only 6 rounds of ammo each, and die like flies without lots of archer and undead decoys since they have no hp, no protection, and terrible MR on top of undead vulnerabilities, rendering the lack of upkeep somewhat moot.

I do see your point that they are rather more versatile than the magic bows, being better against soft targets than the magic xbows and better against hard than the bow of war. Though since by the time you get Reanimate archers, you also have flaming arrows, even that's questionable.

[brxbrx]

If you have air as well as fire and death, missile protection and wind guide would remedy most of the problems.