Thanks for the insight. 

I still think almost any assassin or Warrior with a +15 defense shield is going to be fine as well.  I find Warrior with the Reap line and shield or an assassin with acrobat and that shield to be the turning points where they turn a lot more survivable.  And they are both much more capable of dishing out damage as well as taking it. 

Perhaps Defender could be made more useful with only a few tweaks to his tree, notably some kind of taunt as others have mentioned.

I mean a separate Summoner class, similar to what is found in Demons and Wizards mod.

What exactly "does +10 (or any number) while defending" mean? Does it mean +10 when his side didn't attack to start the battle? 

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Edit/clarification: Yes, a unit with "while defending"-bonus will get the bonus if he doesn't attack/cast magic/use items. I think you can move and then pass/defend. You will get a shield over the figure - showing it's defending.

E.g. Let's say you have a warrior with shield of +10 Dodge when defending  and spearman. If the warrior doesn't attack anything nor cast any spells, he will get the +10 Dodge (but not the spearman).

More or less as NeoNick7 said, although there are no dodge while defending bonuses that I know of. As long as your unit doesn't make an attack or use most special abilities, that unit will drop into defensive stance at the end of its turn, putting a shield icon over its head. At that point, it will add its defense while defending bonus to its defense score, and any unit which makes an attack against it until its next turn will have attack damage calculated against the new defense number.

Units will also enter the battle in defensive stance if they are in the defending army.

Example:

Let us say that you have a unit with 10 armor and +10 defense while defending, and are being attacked by a unit with 10 attack. If your unit strikes first, then its defense against the enemy unit will be 10 when the enemy unit takes its turn, which means that the damage range for the enemy attack is 2.5-5 damage. If, on the other hand, your unit passes its turn (or uses a special ability that drops the unit into defensive stance after taking the action), your unit's defense until its next turn will be 20. This means that the damage range for the enemy unit's attack will only be 1.7-3.3 damage.

This is good for preserving a weak unit while you clean up the enemy, or for holding the melee line while archers or mages do the real damage, but also prevents the unit which passed its turn from contributing its full attack strength to the battle. Therefore, it's inadvisable to use it unless you 1. are trying to preserve a weakened unit, or 2. equipped your troops or champions with weapons or traits that give counterattacks (only Warrior champions have access to a trait that grants counterattakcs, and most of the weapons that grant counterattacks are swords). Also, counterattacks are usually made at half the normal attack score for the unit, so swordsmen sitting in defensive stance won't contribute as much damage per strike as swordsmen who are striking at the enemy; on the other hand, the swordsmen in defensive stance might last longer, depending on what you're facing.

Thanks. I had no idea that's how it worked. My problem is that my defender champion has such defensive bonuses; but if I don't play aggressive with my champions, this might result in my trained units suffering more attacks. I'm not really sure how I'm going to put this to use.  but I'ma new player, so I'm still figuring out many things. Thanks again for clarifying 

The legendary pink "Bunny slippers" gives +10% Dodge plus another +20% Dodge when defending. But I agree that that this seems an exception, normally "while defending"-shields give Defence - so my example was not very good.

defensive bonuses can be pretty good if you actually try to utilize them. don't forget that the defensive trait (for trained units) is very cheap (only 4 production cost - that's basically a free addition). i often design early game units with this trait because in the early game, when defense and attack values are still very low, a situational +10 defense is a huge difference. say you have a line of spearmen or clubmen with defensive and you face a bunch of melee opponents. the simple solution is to rush in, focus fire on one enemy and hopefully kill/cripple them. the damage in that initial turn is underwhelming since the enemy units start in defensive stance, so they get +5 defense (that's the base value of defense stance without traits/shield). the 5 attack value of your spears vs. the 5 defense (+whatever armor they have) means that you won't do a whole lot of damage. when the enemy moves, one or more of your guys will take a heavy beating, since they only have at best 6 defense from a full suit of leather (at worst, they don't even have leather so they will take full damage vs. their 0 defense)

a different approach in the same situation is to move forward and pass instead of attack. if your troops have the (again - very cheap-) defense trait, they will now have 15 defense during the enemy turn (possibly more if they also wear leather armor and maybe also a wooden shield). with this boosted defense value, they will take only little damage. now it's your turn, your men are (mostly) unharmed and the enemy sits there with zero defense since they just wasted their attack against your boosted defense and thus gave up their own defense boost for no real gain. in this situation, you can for example try to move your guys into a flanking position and hit 2 enemies at once with their spears, or if your guys use clubs you can use the double damage special attack vs. a zero defense victim.

that's a very simple and often surprisingly efficient strategy. if you have a mix of high defense and high attack units (i.e. a defender champ or specialized tank units with shields and def traits backed up by squishy high damage axemen, mages, spearmen etc.) it's a bit more complicated, but usually it's a good idea to hold the squishies back for a bit and only move the high def tanks forward. after the enemy spent their first attack vs. your def specialists, you charge in with your axemen and cleave them down. it's easier if your damage dealing units are ranged attackers (bows/staves). your tanks just form a line and shrug off weak attacks while your ranged damage dealers kill the enemy units from their safe spots behind the tank shieldwall.

also, don't forget that the defender champ has the guard ability which leaves them in defensive stance and also boosts the defense of affected allied units. it's usually a waste of a turn to attack with a defender champion - they don't have any offensive traits so their attack damage will be pretty low. it's usually better to use guard or - if there's noone in range to guard- just pass the turn.

I find out Summoner to be a powerfull specialization. I especially love the thunder and earth elementals, though almost all summons are good overall. Thunder does stuns every surrounding stacks when you cast it; I would almost say it's OP in itself. If you attack a city, for exemple, you can stun 9 units before they get to move. Defenders are fodder, but they can deal quite high damage output, since they are clubmen, ie they get the double damage skill. So, you stun them, and kill them quickly (low HP), before they could use their skill. If needed, it even has a stun skill for 3 ennemies in a line. It also moves very quickly and has a decent damage output; I've seen it moving 4 times in a row... Add initiaitve on it with a spell, and it gets even worse for the ennemy.

Earth elemental is very powerful against group of ennemies thanks to the damage multiplier; then, it can really hit hard, harder than other summons. I like it more than the grave elemental actually; grave has a nice special ability, but has rather disapointing stats IMO. Plus, earth has tons of HP with decent defense. Good both in tactical or strategic casting, while most other summons are used during tough fights, to add some fodder, or casted behind ennemy lines to spread/distract ennemy forces and kill range units.

Overall, the ability to add in thousands of HP with decent defense in a single fight, plus the specific effects that comes with it when cast, in combination to your army, can make you win almost any fight, regardless of the odds.

Defending can be usefull, for exemple, to delay the ennemy from reaching your troops, if the terrain allows it. Or, you can just defend to lure an ennemy; then, it will attack, deal low damage, you will probably retal (a good defender should use swords IMO), and then you will deal full damage instead of dealing low damage because ennemy defends, with little penalties for not having first hit. If you happen to get a leech dagger early in, you can end up with a very powerful defender.

To my opinion all 5 hero classes have their right to exist. The trick is to balance them with your army. In general you need

- units who can tank

- units who make damage

- optionally units who heal or strenghten other troops.

The result is the following:

- leader: I take it if I want fast research and an early access to (ice)-mages who deal a lot of damage. Later on you need a strong tank unit. The role of the leader is to give accuracy/initiative to the army and to heal the tank unit.

- assassin: I take it in combination whith the "Curse of Cersia"-Spell. Due to the high crit chance it makes a lot of damage - more then a mage. And it also can easily kill enemy heros and other units with high armor. If the enemy has casters or bowmen with very high accuracy the assassin gets a problem because dodging won't work anymore.

- defender: The playstyle is comparable with the leader. But here the hero has the role of the tank. If the enemy units can't reach other units they will attack the defender otherwise. So you must move the defender to the enemy melee troops and move the other units to the background.

- mages: As spellcasters they make a lot of damage with the fireball. No melee hero can make comparable damage. But the mage must be protected. So either it needs summons or a tank unit.

- warrior: It is comparable with the assassin, has a great advantage against crit immune monsters and many units. The problem of the warrior is that at the beginning it is weaker then the assassin; dodging is very good at the beginning until the enemy has troops with high accuracy.

Don't forget that a hero with the stone skin (earth magic) makes it invulnerable for three rounds against physical attacks. This can be very powerful.

I think the main problem with making viable melee Heroes is that their power is dependant on their gears. With mage heroes you eventually research plenty of spells to use, and assuming you have mana supply to can wreak havok. Even when you have the gold, your melee heroes power don't scale as fast as your troop because using the same gears than troop don't make a solo unit as powerful as a squad or a company. You can loot powerful gears that would make them really powerful, but they are few and far between and few of your heroes get to use them.

Either good loot should be more common as the game progress or some means to buy them should be implemented.

I've got a screenshot on my home computer of a dodge assassin critting for 320ish damage with Curdgeon's maul.   I didn't totally pimp out the hero to 11 at a super high level, this is mid gameish level 18 or so I think..   I'm sure I've got higher but I didn't take a screenshot at the time.   I'll post it later.

Most of the units are just a single figure, generally get focused, and are pretty weak. While writing this I realized I kinda wanna make a mod for phantom warriors from MOM. Although pretty weak they used to just wreck my high armored guys if they got close. They totally ignore armor. This seems like a great unit to add to this game. 

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