macnbc fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Apr 21, 2014

• Estates is good on secondary heroes but a waste of a skill slot on the guy that actually does things.
  
• Artillery is only useful early on and only if you have access to a Ballista so its usefulness is limited. Don't use a Ballista without Artillery if you have Blind because the random shots will often hit the blinded stack for non-existent damage and allow them to act again.
  
• Ballistics helps a lot against enemy towns but does nothing otherwise. Not a bad choice since siege battles are often rough but does nothing 90% of the time. Strongly consider it if you're lacking in flying troops because without Ballistics the catapult's aim is hilariously poor.
  
• Same deal with Resistance, except replace "towns" with "heroes". Good to have against 'em, useless against most neutrals unless you're facing Faerie Dragons or something.
  
• Archery ranges from good to must-have depending on how many ranged units your town has. You can rarely go wrong with it and if you happen to get it as Tower it's hilariously powerful.
  
• Leadership is okay but usually only necessary if you're using creatures from many different factions for some reason since you get +1 Morale just from having all creatures from the same faction and Morale and Luck do nothing above +3. Completely useless for Necropolis since undead have no morale.
  
• Luck on the other hand is very useful since you inherently have 0 luck and lucky hits are often devastating since they're guaranteed double damage.
  
• Tactics depends entirely on your army composition, it's not a must-have skill but it can be very useful since you can protect your ranged troops or move your own units closer to or further away from the enemy. Try it out and see how you feel about it.
  
• Necromancy is nerfed to half strength in Horn of the Abyss for a reason, only Necropolis can make good use of it but it's incredibly powerful on them. It becomes utterly broken if by some chance you manage to find all the pieces of the Cloak of the Undead King which on a Necromancer means that instead of Skeletons, you get an equal amount of Liches.
  
• Diplomacy is really interesting. It can either break the game in half or do absolutely nothing. I'd say take it if you can because getting even one decently-sized stack of neutrals to join you can swing the game massively in your favor. It works on anything from Peasants to Black Dragons but the chance of joining is higher if your army is stronger and composed of creatures of the same faction as the neutrals, amongst other things. This can easily snowball as getting one stack of neutrals increases your army strength, thus making the next stack more likely to join you and so forth. Of course, once all neutrals are gone or the map designer has set neutrals to "Never join" (which is rare), it does nothing.
  
• Pathfinding's usefulness depends entirely on the map and your faction. If the entire map is grassland it has no effect whatsoever, but if there's a lot of Snow, Rough, Swamp or Sand terrain it'll make moving on that terrain much faster. One thing to keep in mind is that all creatures have "native" terrain on which they get bonuses and don't suffer from decreased movement. Tower armies won't need Pathfinding to move on snow for example, nor do Fortress armies need it on swamp. However if you have even one non-native unit in your army, the whole army will suffer the full movement penalty so keep that in mind.
  
• Same deal with Navigation. Utterly worthless when you're not sailing but a massive +150% movement bonus while on a boat. Consider the map and choose accordingly.
  
• Intelligence is usually good to have, at Expert it doubles spell points which is never bad. Remember that ending your turn in a town with a Mage Guild will fully replenish your mana, so if you already have high Knowledge and easy access to towns/magic wells it may not be necessary.
  
• Scouting is one of the worse skills in the game but not 100% useless. It's a pretty decent pick for a secondary hero that runs around exploring but it takes a valuable skill slot and does nothing when you already know the terrain around you.
  
• Mysticism is worse than Intelligence since it doesn't scale at all. It's barely above "crap" tier because it can be useful on some maps that don't have a lot of wells or towns, but there are usually better choices because extra 2-4 mana per turn isn't that much.
  
• Sorcery is good in theory but in practice you'll be spending more time casting buffs and debuffs instead of damage spells and it doesn't help with those at all. Useless on most physical heroes, it's not terrible for a spellcaster hero but don't pick it over better skills.
  
• Water Magic isn't as must-have as Air or Earth Magics but it does have a few spells that benefit a ton from Expert level, namely Bless, Prayer and Forgetfulness. If you're fortunate enough to have Prayer in your spellbook, grab it because Mass Prayer is one of the best spells in the game.
  
• Fire Magic is the least useful of the four Magic skills but it's still nice to have if you have the spells for it. Curse and Berserk work really well with Expert Fire Magic but the lack of adventure map spells makes it less desirable than the other three and "good" factions get Bless instead of Curse in their mage guilds. Blind is one of the best spells in the game but it does its job even without Fire Magic, although FM does make it even better.
  

Kanfy fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Apr 22, 2014

SpRahl fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Apr 22, 2014