Recently, I was asked why I have not tested the reinforcing ability of the dragon we affectionately refer to as “Pinky” and compared it to Inferno, Hydro, and Terra. I was intrigued by this question as myself, and probably many other players, have completely discounted poor Pinky since Inferno was released. What follows are the surprising results of those tests.
Once again, I need to thank Tamir TT of ~DRK for helping me science this stuff out and for her patience during the testing process! I also want to send a big shout out to my wife, FinsBabe (LOL), who recently started playing again, for her willingness to send her dragons over during the testing process. It is the contributions of players like Tamir and Babe that makes it possible for me to provide articles like this to our players.
As many of you know, I am active in many of the Game of War Line rooms (Line Display Name: FinsUp / Line ID finsupgow) and I am always willing to answer player questions in the rooms or via Direct Message. If I do not know the answer to a question, I am always happy to find the answer or to test your theories to determine the best practices one can take in building their account.
The “only because my editor made me do it” Disclaimer: The stats and defensive data present in this article are current as of the date of publication. As anyone who plays Dragon Dimension knows, MZ is always releasing new components to the game and sometimes even changes stat functionality without notice. With every release that occurs, the information contained in this article will become staler (unless updated, of course!). Use this information at your own risk!
The Test Account Stats and Testing Protocol
As you can imagine, I again used my own account as the crash test dummy. To give you an idea of the relative strength of my account at the time the tests were conducted, here are my stats for the Hero that was used, Hero III, throughout the tests:
At the time of testing, my Hero III was Level 206 and for these test hits, I defended using my current defensive gear set. This gear set consists primarily of Elite Marshal Set Gear but I swap out the Elite Marshal Fireplate for the Obsidian Knight Battleplate to hide my Set Gear level. At the time of testing, I had the gear gemmed with a single set of Abyss, and the remainder of the gear was embedded with Unbreakable gems. In my wall I had the following Monsters active: (a) Level 50 Waterlord Forest Dragon; (b) Level 50 Bone Ice Dragon; (c) Level 50 Turkey Drake; (d) Level 50 Stone Golem; and (e) Level 50 Golem. The only other adjustment to my account was a new banner preset containing Legendary banners that I put together in order to strengthen my Infantry troops.
This present includes the Royal Trident Banner (22,500% Infantry Attack / 28,000% Infantry Defense), the Elite Infantry Banner (20,000% Infantry Attack / 25,000% Infantry Defense), the Luchadore Power Banner (1,500% Infantry Attack / 2,000% Infantry Defense), and the Haunted Banner (22,500% Enemy Troop Attack Debuff). Given the parameters of the testing, I did not activate any available boosts.
The attack set up for our test hits remained constant. Ms. TT used her strongest troop and dragon combination, Infantry troops marching with her Level 150 Inferno Dragon, and skilled her Level 144 Hero IV to strengthen her solo attacks using the skills available to do so with Hero IV. Finally, the attacking Hero was dressed up in a full set of Power Shaman that had been leveled up to Set Gear Level 25. I asked TT to not activate Synergy for these tests as doing so was not necessary and I did not want her to waste her boosts.
For these tests, I wanted the strongest dragons that were available on the game at the time of testing to reinforce my account. Fortunately, Babe has all 4 of her dragons at max and each dragon was fully skilled. With this setup, there could be no question regarding the relative strength of each reinforcing dragon in comparison to the other dragons used. In other words, any strength difference is a function of how MZ released each dragon rather than the allocation of skill points by the player.
As with previous tests that I have conducted, the setup used was for defending against solo attacks so we could remove the variables that may creep in from filler accounts. That being so, I adjusted my troop count down to 34 Million Regular Infantry T7 troops. At the time of the tests, I also had 1 Million Level 8 Dragon Vanguards, 504,222 Level 8 Dragon Sentry, and 500,123 Level 8 Dragon Shields. For each hit, I healed my troop count back to this baseline and healed all four of my dragons between each hit.
Dragon Reinforcements Re-tested
As with any tests that we conduct, we first obtained a baseline so we could compare subsequent hits against our baseline report. Here is the report for the baseline test:
As you can see from the report, 3.77 Million of my troops were wounded but I was able to kill 7.99 Million of TT’s troops.
For our first hit, I asked Babe to send her Dragon, also known as “Pinky,” to reinforce my stronghold since she is the star of the show. Here is the report for that hit:
Here is my analysis of the hit:
As you can see from the report, in comparison to our baseline test I suffered 3.23% fewer losses and killed 12.52% more of TT’s troops. This is a pretty decent result when compared to the ratio of losses to kills present in the baseline but does that mean that Pinky has made a resurgence? Let’s see how the other dragons fared in comparison to Pinky!
For the next hit, I was reinforced with Babe’s Inferno dragon. This dragon was at its then-current max of Level 150 and the reader should be aware that levels above 150 will change the results seen here as the stats available above Level 150 are substantial. In any event, this dragon is linked to the only troops that I actually have in my account – Infantry – and is also linked to the attack that TT is sending against me. Thus, I have Infantry versus Infantry with both the attacking and reinforcing dragons maxed. Here is the report for that hit:
Here is my analysis of the hit:
When you compare the results of the Inferno reinforcement against our baseline, you clearly see that the Inferno dragon only provided an advantage as to the number of troops I killed in the attacking march with 15.59% more killed versus the baseline. When compared against the hit with Pinky reinforcing, I killed slightly fewer troops, 170,000 less, but saved a significant number, roughly 120,000, of my own troops when compared against the baseline.
This result presents an interesting conundrum. If you have a type match between the attacker and the defender, which dragon do you use? At first blush, Pinky seems to be a viable option. Let’s look at how our Hydro and Terra Dragons fared before we answer that question.
For our next hit, I requested the Hydro Dragon as reinforcements. As you may recall, in the Wheel of Death the Hydro Dragon would be considered the stronger dragon to use against an Infantry missile-like TT was sending. Given the way my account was set up, with only T7 Infantry troops, I was curious how my account would fare. See for yourself:
Here is my analysis of the hit:
In reviewing the analysis of the hit, it is clear that the Hydro Dragon fared better than both Pinky and the Inferno Dragon. Given the absence of Ranged troops in my account, I must admit that I was shocked by this outcome. I expected a much smaller statistical difference between the Inferno and Hydro tests since I did not have a single Ranged troop in my stronghold. Instead, I saw more than 3% savings in my troop loss and 0.71% more troops killed versus the Inferno reinforcement.
For our final test, I requested a reinforcing Terra Dragon from Babe. Given the results from the past two hits, I was unsure what to expect here but hoped to see that the Terra dragon also reduced my losses when compared against the Inferno test. Here is my report for this hit:
And the comparison graph:
As I had hoped, I suffered fewer losses when compared against all other reinforcing dragons. Given the outcome of the Hydro test, I had hoped that this would be the result as it conformed with how the Wheel of Death was expected to operate.
My Final Thoughts
Here are my takeaways from these tests. Pinky is only a viable option if you have no other option available to you. Sorry Pinky, but you are still relegated to being an Economy Dragon. Second, if your goal is to minimize your losses then you should request reinforcements that strengthen your weaker troop. Here is your cheat sheet:
Infantry missile = Terra Dragon
Ranged missile = Inferno Dragon
Cavalry missile = Hydro Dragon
Third, if your goal is to kill more of the attack then you should request reinforcements that strengthen your stronger troop. Here is your cheat sheet:
Infantry missile = Hydro Dragon
Ranged missile = Terra Dragon
Cavalry missile = Inferno Dragon
Now, time for deeper thoughts. I had always assumed that the reinforcing dragon bolstered the specific type of troop that it was aligned with. From the tests performed in this article, it is clear that this is not the case. The only troops present in my account, besides Mercenary troops, are Infantry troops. The absence of Ranged or Cavalry troops should have had an impact on the outcome of the tests that were performed here. What we saw instead was that the reinforcements performed consistently with the Wheel of Death even absent the troops related to the reinforcing dragon.
This is extremely important for a couple of reasons. First, it confirms something that both Horrific and I have stated all along. It does not matter which troop type you run so long as you run enough troops to kill the attacker’s march. Please do not get me wrong. You still need the stats on your account to back up your troops. This brings me to my second point. It is not the troops that you have that are important. It is the stats. At the end of the day, Game of War is a matter of percentages. Empire Defender stats versus Empire Strike stats. Troop Attack versus Troop Defense and Health. Type attack versus Type defense. So long as you maintain a strong account from a stat perspective, you have significant leeway in how to set up your individual account.
Where to go for Additional Information
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