There has been a lot of discussion over the past couple of months about how Dragon skills work defensively and what is the best method of skilling your dragon for defensive purposes. There is a school of thought which posits that dragon skills do not matter one way or the other. Another school of thought is that the only critical skill the dragon brings to the table is that it must be fat and healthy to be effective for defense, thus skilling for dragon growth is critical. Other people claim that our dragons act like troops and are a force multiplier for defense purposes. I decided to take a closer look at the dragon skills to see if I could make heads or tails of how they actually work in the Dragon Dimension. Then, for fun, I decided to add Pinky into the mix to see how our old Economy friend has handled the transition into the big leagues!
Anyone that conducts testing knows that it is next to impossible to do without help. For these tests, my lovely wife – Finsbabe (LOL) – agreed to be the guinea pig and donated lots and lots of troops to the cause. I want to thank her for her patience and willingness to help with the testing process!
The “only because my editor made me do it” Disclaimer: The testing presented in this article is 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 more stale (unless updated, of course!). Use this information at your own risk!
The Testing Accounts and Protocol
Given that our focus was only on the defending dragon, all tests conducted were against encamped troops. Each test was conducted using 5 Million T7 Infantry along with a Level 263 Hero III wearing the Lycan Set Gear on an encampment being attacked by 5 Million T7 Infantry and a Level 298 Hero II wearing the Imperial General Set Gear. Later tests involved swapping out certain troops and dragons, but the troop numbers and Heroes always remained the same.
The dragon that we used to defend the encamped army was a Level 155 Inferno Dragon. This dragon had sufficient skill points available to skill every available skill to max for that level, which is how we had the dragon skilled for the initial tests that were conducted. For later tests, we changed the allocated skill points to focus on dragon skills versus non-dragon skills and other variations on that theme.
The Baseline Tests
For our first baseline, we conducted a simple test. This test was troops versus troops with only our attacking and defending heroes present in the marches. For this test, we used T7 Infantry troops and generated the report shown below:
As you can see, this did not work out too well for Finsbabe! All of her troops were killed, I capped her Hero and only lost 3,594 troops in the process.
For our second baseline, we wanted to see how a healthy Inferno dragon that was fully skilled with all available skill points handled the hit. The only difference between this attack and the other baseline was the addition of our Inferno Dragon into the mix to assist with defense. Here is what we saw from the report:
As you can see from the results, I still killed the entire encamped army, dealt additional damage to her dragon (2.46 Million Dragon HP lost), and lost very few troops (7,009). The big change, however, was that I did not capture her hero in this hit. This is to be expected, you will not capture your opponent’s Hero unless you are able to zero out their dragon!
Let’s see if we can start to answer some questions about dragon functionality by conducting further testing!
Do Dragons work as a force multiplier?
To answer this question, I used the data obtained from our two baseline hits and increased the number of troops present in the encampment from 5 Million to 7.46 Million. If you recall our second baseline test, the defending dragon lost 2.46M Dragon HP, which was shown as a total loss of 7.46M when you include the troop deaths of 5 Million. Here is what the results were when I added 2.46 Million troops:
My thought was that maybe increasing the number of troops in the encampment to the same amount of overall losses present in the baseline hit would result in another non-captured hero. Nope! I still captured Babe’s hero. I think this clearly establishes that our Dragons do not work as a force multiplier.
I wanted to see if the dragon by itself, with all of the appropriate skill points allocated but with the Dragon HP zeroed out, did anything for a defender. Here is the report from that hit:
If you compare this against our first baseline, a zeroed dragon is completely ineffective from a defensive standpoint. You can have the biggest dragon in the game, with all of the appropriate skill points at max, and if there is no HP present in the dragon it is like there is nothing here. Recall, if you will, the outcome of the T7 versus T7 baseline with no dragons present – I killed the entire encamped army, captured her hero, and only lost 3,594 troops. With this hit, I also killed the entire encamped army, captured her hero, and lost 3 more troops than from the previous hit. It is my firm position that I lost those 3 extra troops because of the 6,321 Inferno Dragon HP that had regenerated prior to my hit!
Testing the functionality of the dragon skills
For this series of tests, we wanted to see how changing the skilling of your dragon might change the outcome of battle. I had to redo the testing here as the data did not seem to match, as such my Hero II is slightly stronger, at Level 301 than it was for the testing. Also, I had completed additional research in the interim. This being so, I re-did the entire series of tests relevant to this component of the article.
Recall, if you will, that our dragon skills are broken down into 2 categories. The first category is what I call dragon-specific skills and include things like Dragon Growth, Flight, Regenerative Tail, Dragon Aggression, Dragon Onslaught, Defensive Talon, Dragon Strength. Here is an explanation of what we understand each of these skills bring out in your dragon:
Dragon Growth: This skill is related to what we refer to as Dragon HP. It correlates to the size of your dragon, the bigger your dragon has grown (via the addition of more skill points) then the more Dragon HP is available. Dragon HP is another way of showing how much damage your dragon can sustain. As your dragon’s HP is diminished, the weaker it becomes. Once the HP reaches 0, your hero can be captured.
Dragon Flight: This skill is related to how fast your dragon can travel across the kingdom. Honestly, it does not matter since you are probably using speeds to get your dragon where it needs to be.
Dragon Regenerative Tail: This skill is related to how quickly your dragon heals once it has been hit. Does it matter? No, use instant heals instead!
Dragon Aggression / Dragon Onslaught: As best we can tell, these two skills are the same and are similar to the attack stats that we see for our troops. In other words, it increases the attack capabilities of your dragon.
Defensive Talon: It is believed that this stat functions similarly to our defensive stats for troops. Thus, it increases the defensive capabilities of your dragon.
Dragon Strength: It is believed that this stat functions similar to our troops’ health stats. If this is correct, it is a measure of how much damage your dragon can sustain before it becomes ineffective.
To establish a baseline, with an unskilled dragon, Babe skilled her Inferno dragon with only 1 point allocated towards Dragon Speed and sent her Hero III, Inferno dragon, and 5 Million T7 Infantry troops onto an encampment. This was the result of that battle:
Next, Babe skilled all available skill points for her dragon to maximum and sent her Hero III, Inferno dragon, and 5 Million T7 troops to an encampment. Here is the result:
To get a feel for how the non-Dragon (type attack/defense/health, troop attack/defense/health, Empire Assault, etc.) skills worked Babe re-skilled her Inferno dragon to maximize those skills and only allocated one skill point for the remaining skills. With the dragon skilled in this manner, our report looked like this:
Next, Babe re-skilled her Inferno dragon to maximize the Dragon-specific skills (growth, aggression, etc.) and only allocated one point to non-specific skills. Here is the report of that battle:
For the final test, we removed all skill points that we could for Dragon Growth and left everything else at maximum. Here is the result of that hit:
Here is a graphical comparison of all five battles in this series:
The analysis of these battles is interesting and leads to the following conclusions:
- An otherwise healthy dragon that has no skill points allocated is no better than a zeroed dragon.
- If you cannot skill both dragon-specific and non-specific skills, maximize your non-specific skills (type stats, debuffs, troop stats) first.
- The dragon-specific skills alone will not provide significant defense to your stronghold.
- Failing to maximize your Dragon Growth skills is not critical, so long as your dragon is otherwise healthy and you have allocated sufficient points within the non-specific skills.
- Fully skilling your dragon with both dragon-specific and non-specific skills (skilling to max) will present the strongest defensive posture for your dragon.
The long and short of it is that all of these skills work together. Best practice is going to skill in this order for defense:
- Type Stats
- Debuff
- Troop Stats
- Dragon Growth
- Dragon-Specific Skills
What about Pinky?
I wanted to see how Pinky stacked up against the Inferno, Hydro, and Terra dragons in an isolated attack scenario like we were doing with the encampments. Quite frankly, I was beyond surprised at what I was seeing!
Here is a general baseline report for 5 Million T7 Infantry versus 5 Million T7 Infantry with a fully-skilled Inferno dragon defending:
For comparison purposes, we also swapped our Inferno dragon for Hydro:
and then for Terra:
Next, we used Pinky to defend. However, this account had not yet applied the Legacy point for Pinky so I left her as she was just to see what the report would look like. Here is the result:
Here is what the result was once we applied the Legacy point:
I was totally gobsmacked by the result so I tested it again. Same result! Without the Legacy point skilled, Pinky acted just like our Inferno, Hydro, and Terra dragons! Once the Legacy point was skilled, Pinky became STRONGER than any of our previous dragons! What the heck?!
Now for the fun stuff! The next hit was 5 Million T7 Infantry attacking 5 Million T7 Ranged with Pinky defending:
Next, we tried Infantry versus Cavalry with Pinky defending:
Here is a graphical representation of these battles so you can easily compare numbers:
What did I see consistently during these tests? Pinky is now, by far, the absolute best defensive dragon we have available to us!!!!!! Does this make any sense? No, not a bit. Especially when you consider that the Pinky used for defense in these tests was about as small as you will find in the game right now at Level 149. Logically, Pinky should not have performed anywhere close to what we would see with our Inferno, Hydro, or Terra dragons but the results of the tests clearly establish that Pinky ruled the day!!!! Way to go Pinky, you went from zero to hero in one release!!!!!
The next takeaway from these tests is that Pinky will perform best defensively with Ranged troops as the most compatible, Infantry troops second, and Cavalry troops third. This may indicate that we need to revise the Wheel of Death as it would apply to our Dragons!
Final Thoughts
My final thought is pretty simple – I want to be reinforced with Pinky if I am being hit. I do not care how big Pinky is, if you have it and it is not zeroed that is what I want you to reinforce me with for now. Granted, none of the tests conducted thus far have Pinky defending against rallies. For my next article, I will focus on how Pinky does against rallies and hopefully, we will see her performing to the level that we saw during the encamped battles!
Where to go for Additional Information
I hope you enjoyed this article! Team Real Tips has guides for pretty much all aspects of Game of War. Remember, our beloved game is constantly changing. Thus, the burden remains on YOU to educate yourself on those changes. Read the blogs released by MZ! Ask questions of RealTips writers in our Line rooms and on Discord! Remember, there really is no stupid question and we are happy to help you understand the stats that you are working with!
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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. Don’t forget to sign up for our Email Subscription that will automatically notify you when we release new content! Finally, join us in our Line rooms.
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