King's Bounty Analysis Extra: Leadership to Health Ratios

Rather than a one-off post or a 'rerun', have a brand-new The Legend post!

While Defense is an important factor in a unit's overall durability, the most reliably relevant metric (Not to mention the most straightforward to calculate) for comparing overall durability of stacks -whether considering who is your best meatshield or which enemy is easiest to kill quickly- is to look at the ratio of their Leadership to Health, followed by looking at their resistances if they have any of relevance, hence this post.

For convenience, this is ordered from most favorable to least favorable, using only base Health and base Leadership to decide this order. I do, however, individually note resistance values and certain modifiers (eg the Skills that lower Leadership requirements), and provide the modified ratio appropriately for each of these scenarios, including combined scenarios. (ie 'what is a Knight's effective ratio when benefitting from Iron Fist and being struck by Physical attacks?') In the case of Skill modifiers, I give only the highest value. (ie I'm not bothering to tell you what a Bowman's ratio is if you have Bowman Commander at its first rank)

I do not calculate results for mixed damage types. If you want to know how durable Black Knights are when being hit by Unicorns, figure it out yourself. Similarly, I'm not covering Item-based modifiers, even though for example there's gear for reducing the Leadership requirements of several Human units. This is already an unreasonably large project.

I provide a bit more color commentary than I did on eg the Initiative tier/damage type distribution extra, as well.

As I doubt your average player cares about exact fractions, these ratios are not expressed to their fullest extent. I instead truncate, removing anything that would require me to add another decimal place. As such, many of these are rounded slightly down from their actual value. I provide the original Health and Leadership so you can ask the internet to tell you what the actual ratio is, if you care for that level of precision.

Similarly, in some cases I used approximations to reach my final number, above and beyond truncating. These cases are marked with a tilde (~) to show that they are less exact, and may be meaningfully wrong when you want to compare two cases. (ie two units that are very close, where my numbers claim A is tougher than B, may in fact be the case that B is slightly tougher than A for those purposes) The margin of error should be sufficiently minor it doesn't really matter, but I'd rather minimize opportunities for errors to multiply in understanding.

Also, you can mentally append 'for their Leadership' or some such variation whenever I talk about a unit's durability. I'm not going to write it out every time, but you should still understand that I'm not suggesting Orcs are per-head tougher than Red Dragons.

Also, something to keep in mind is that Stone Skin can be stacked with existing Physical resistance to get some units to fairly bonkers ratios. I won't be getting into every individual case, but broadly the impact is going to be higher the better the unit's base Physical resistance, and I'll be touching on a few specific cases.

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Positive ratios

Units whose Health is actually greater than their Leadership, making them reliably durable for their Leadership, particularly from the perspective of effects that ignore Attack/Defense modifiers. (ie Spells and Rage attacks, primarily)

Dryad

1.25 (20 Leadership, 25 Health)

Summon Thorns: 0.25-0.5 per use

If you ever wondered why Dryad stacks seem to last bizarrely long, this is why: they actually have the highest Health for the Leadership of any unit in the game! Their Defense is lackluster and they have no positive resistances so there's absolutely plenty of units who can last longer in various conditions, but among other points this makes enemy Dryads the unit type that tends to take the longest to die to Spells and non-percentile Rage moves. In conjunction with intermittently summoning Thorns and not having to worry about retaliations when attacking, their Health actually tends to go quite far even in unit-to-unit combat.

Dryads furthermore have Beauty, and so will dodge 30% of attacks from a great many unit types. In those conditions, that brings their effective ratio to just short of 1.80; if you ever found yourself horrified by your all-manly army struggled to work their way through a Dryad army, it's because they have the power of math on their side. (And also Lullaby and all...)

I'm curious why Dryads, of all things, were given this honor.

Also note that this means they're surprisingly efficient as a Sacrifice base. Even when looking at Gold costs, they're just as efficient as Peasants are!

Of course, Peasants are also all-around terrible whereas Dryads are very good units in their own right, so you should still prefer Peasants over Dryads for Sacrifice fodder, but still, it's amusing and potentially useful to know about.

Griffin

1.12 (80 Leadership, 90 Health)

1.24~ (10% Physical resistance)

1.4 (20% Magic resistance)

It's worth pointing out that there's a Regalia that lowers Griffin Leadership by 30%. If you take advantage of it, inflate all the above numbers by about 42%. That's a bit over a 2-to-1 ratio against Magic damage, for example.

This is, of course, why Griffins can be surprisingly painful to work through, and yet another reason why they're very useful units, as they're actually quite efficient for absorbing punishment.

Orc

1.08 (60 Leadership, 65 Health)

1.2 (10% Physical resistance)

Yep, Orcs-the-unit are the third-most generally durable unit in the game. As a result, when you're running around in Orc territory near the end of the game, you may wish to consider using Soul Draining on big Orc-the-unit stacks over other stacks of similar size.

It's too bad it doesn't do much to make them more appealing in player hands.

Black Knight

1.06 (150 Leadership, 160 Health)

1.51~ (30% Physical resistance)

2.12 (50% Poison resistance)

Yes, Black Knights have around a 1.5 ratio on Physical durability. As Physical damage makes up the overwhelming majority of unit-based damage (And a fair amount of Rage-based damage, and some Spell damage), this makes Black Knights shockingly general in their durability... especially since they're actually even more resistant to Poison, which is usually one of the best ways to punch past good Physical durability.

As they lack actual weaknesses, they're still distressingly solid at tanking Fire and Magic damage, and will in fact win straight fights against, for example, Fire Dragonflies. 

A Level 3 Stone Skin bringing them to 70% Physical resistance gives them a ratio of roughly 3.5, which is completely insane, with only Ghosts and Cursed Ghosts able to do better. (They can hit a ratio of 5.0 if backed by Level 3 Stone Skin) So that's one way to use Black Knights.

1-to-1 Ratio

Units whose Leadership is equal to their Leadership. I don't bother to list their base ratio, since it's implicit in the category.

Peasant

5 Health/Leadership

Your most generically useful Sacrifice fodder unit, and not the worst choice if you just need a meatshield for more valuable units. Being a 1-to-1 ratio is not unique to them, though, not even from the early game perspective. 

Dwarf

80 Health/Leadership

In theory, this is respectable, but in practice there's plenty of options at this tier and multiple units that are effectively more favorable even though their base numbers are worse. 

Miner

20 Health/Leadership

So Miners are equal to Dwarves-the-unit at absorbing punishment, but will lose damage value more consistently.

This makes very large enemy Miner stacks potentially very frustrating to wear down, but doesn't exactly make them appealing to use.

Cerberus

90 Health/Leadership

2.0 (50% Fire resistance)

You might think Cerberi would be your best Demon choice for tanking Fire damage, but actually Archdemons are slightly better at the job before taking into account that their Defense is much higher. Similarly, Demons-the-unit are pretty consistently more real durability on the battlefield thanks to their summoning ability.

Poor Cerberi. On paper they really don't look so bad...

Sprite

8 Health/Leadership

1.25 (25% Magic resistance)

0.66 (-50% Fire resistance)

Black Dragons are simply better at absorbing Magic damage than Sprites are, but f you've got Sprite access, don't yet have Black Dragons, and are prepping for a Magic damage-heavy force, Sprites are worth considering.

Zombie

30 Health/Leadership

2.0 (50% Poison resistance)

0.9 (-10% Fire resistance)

As Black Knights are flatly superior at surviving -among other advantages they have- Zombies are primarily likely to see use by virtue of a lack of better options. It's not like they have much going for them other than being relatively durable.

Decaying Zombie

40 Health/Leadership

2.0 (50% Poison resistance)

0.9 (-10% Fire resistance)

The fact that Decaying Zombies have the same base ratio but better per-head durability and of course better combat stats doesn't exactly help Zombies, either. Not that Decaying Zombies are terribly appealing, mind...

Undead Spider

13 Health/Leadership

2.0 (50% Poison resistance)

0.9 (-10% Fire resistance)

Technically the fastest of these upper-ratio Undead, but all their buddies have Running, so... a bit dubious of an edge, and only made worse if you're running with Zombie Rina, since Speed boosts get less impactful the more Speed you already have.

Skeleton

12 Health/Leadership

2.0 (50% Poison resistance)

0.9 (-10% Fire resistance)

Bone: 3.3 (70% resistance to arrows)

+Bone: 2.97

Yep, same ratio as Zombies and Decaying Zombies, albeit worse per-head durability... and against arrows they're actually incredibly durable.

There's no Poison-damage arrows, so I haven't bothered to list a combined ratio there. The Fire+Bone combo is exclusively relevant to the Flaming Arrow Talent on Bowmen; as enemy Bowmen can't get it (in this game), this makes that specific value irrelevant to your usage of Skeletons, only mattering when your Bowmen are firing on enemy Skeletons.

Cave Spider

14 Health/Leadership

1.25 (20% Physical resistance)

0.9 (-10% Fire resistance)

I tend to be pretty down on spiders overall, but Cave Spiders are actually fairly efficient Physical tanks. They lose out to, among other things, Black Knights, but there's a fair stretch of the game where you might not have access to their competition. Paladin runs in particular can appreciate that they're a low-Level Physical tank, thanks to their reliable relatively early access to Resurrection; sure, Knights are actually better at tanking Physical punishment, but if they suffer casualties you can't Resurrect them unless you've got Order Magic 3, which is a long ways off.

Indeed, Cave Spiders are one of your better semi-disposable tanks if you're playing the Paladin once you've gotten to Order Magic 1 so you can Resurrect them. Even before getting into their widely-relevant Physical resistance, they're actually one of only a few 1-to-1 ratio units that can be Resurrected at all, especially when focusing on options you're liable to have in the mid-early game of running around Darion and the Isles of Freedom. Positive base ratios are also worse for Resurrection purposes than having resistances push your effective ratios up; a unit with a 0.5 ratio and a 50% (relevant) resistance will have Resurrection effectively undo twice the casualties compared to a unit with a 1.0 ratio and neutral resistances. And out of units that can be Resurrected with Rank 1 Order Magic, Cave Spiders are actually the one with the best effective Physical ratio -Knights are better, but being a Level 4 unit they require maxed Order Magic for that to be an option. So it'll take quite a while to get to using them that way.

And Knights are actually the only unit that's a better choice for tanking Physical damage and then undoing it with Resurrect! Black Knights would also be better, but they're Undead, so you can't Resurrect them at all.

So maybe give Cave Spiders a whirl if you want to see Resurrection doing good work, or have been previously put off by me badmouthing spiders but like the idea of using them, or lucked into spider-supporting Items, or some mix of these.

Thorn Warrior

8 Health/Leadership

2.0 (50% Poison resistance)

0.5 (-100% Fire resistance)

Sowing: 0.155 to 0.5 (2-4 Leadership of Thorn Warriors or Thorn Hunters. 0.5 is a high roll of Thorn Warriors, 0.155 is a low roll of Thorn Hunters)

Thorn Warriors are pretty consistently your earliest option for a unit that's good at absorbing Poison punishment, so if there's a battlegroup made more or less exclusively of Lake Dragonflies or Swamp Snakes or Venomous Spiders that you want to push through early Thorn Warriors are very possibly going to be your go-to choice for tanking the damage. They lose out as soon as you have access to Royal Snakes, which tends to happen pretty quickly, but still.

Sowing is also, if the RNG cooperates, potentially a very impressive amount of Health added to the battlefield; a high roll of Thorn Warriors giving you 50% of your Leadership in completely disposable Health is pretty bonkers! And since the resulting Thorn can, itself, use Sowing, you can potentially get lucky and have your half-stack of Thorn Warriors produce a quarter-stack of more Thorn Warriors, bringing you to 75% of your Leadership in disposable Health.

Of course, usually the RNG won't cooperate so effectively, with a low roll of Thorn Hunters being barely above 15% of your Leadership, but still.

It's too bad you can't undo Thorn casualties. That limits their appeal a bit as you start getting a hold of ways to erase casualties, and more options for avoiding casualties in the first place.

Of course, converse to all this is that they're atrocious against Fire damage. This doesn't matter too much as far as using them (Fire Dragonflies and Keeper fights are the main early sources of Fire damage; by the time other sources are common you've probably moved on), but it makes them particularly easy targets for the Mage, which in turn gives the Mage a particularly easy early game if you just seek out Thorn-heavy fights.

Lightly Negative Ratios

Units whose Health is below their Leadership, but is at worst 75% of their Leadership.

Furious Goblin

0.95 (40 Leadership, 38 Health)

I describe Furious Goblins as 'glass cannons' in the Orc analysis post, but that's misleading in terms of their ability to soak punishment for their Leadership. This is very noticeable for a Mage in the late game, where Furious Goblin stacks will often come out the other side of a withering rain of Spell damage with high enough numbers to still be a threat.

I'd say it also protects them from Rage, but by the time you're seeing Furious Goblins regularly you'll have Soul Draining and your other damaging Rage moves have already fallen pretty far behind in relevance. In practice such an edge is more hypothetical than real.

Marauder

0.93 (30 Leadership, 28 Health)

It's really too bad Marauders tend to get pushed aside by Snakes and especially Royal Snakes. If it weren't for the extremely direct competition they'd be a solid early game unit -to be fair, they still have potential from Rina's support and Jackboots being a generally good Boot that incidentally supports them, but still, they're brought down pretty hard by Royal Snakes having much the same qualities but better performance.

Snake

0.93 (30 Leadership, 28 Health)

1.86 (50% Poison resistance)

Yep, same base ratio as Marauders, but with a free resistance thrown in. Just further emphasizing how the reptiles push out the criminals.

Unicorn

0.92 (130 Leadership, 120 Health)

1.23 (25% Magic resistance)

Unicorns have an impressive combination of general Speed and general durability. I tend to not end up using them, but they're one of the best options for a fast tank, especially because they're legal for stuff like Resurrection. And by the time you have significant access to them, you can absolutely have Resurrection at Level 3 if you want, so their high Level may well fail to be a hurdle for your run using them that way.

Swordsman

0.91 (35 Leadership, 32 Health)

1.14 (20% Physical resistance)

Iron Fist: 1.14 (Leadership reduced to 28 per head)

+Iron Fist: 1.42

Guardsmen are okay Physical tanks, and indeed at the beginning of the game tend to be one of your best units for getting into melee. (If only because your options are limited) 

Guardsman

0.9 (50 Leadership, 45 Health)

1.12 (20% Physical resistance)

Iron Fist: 1.12 (Leadership reduced to 28 per head)

+Iron Fist: 1.40

Very slightly worse ratios than Swordsmen. So slight it's probably more important in practice that they have better per-head durability; anytime your Guardsman stack loses 1 less member through having almost 50% more Health per head, the Guardsmen defacto had a better ratio. The mechanics of melee combat mean I don't even have to limit this statement to 'total by the end of the battle'; one more Guardsman surviving means one more dishing out damage, which will on following turns lead directly to less damage happening. (Which is an example of why you shouldn't treat these ratio posts as some be-all-end-all commentary on unit quality, by the by)

Fire Spider

0.9 (30 Leadership, 27 Health)

1.8 (50% Poison resistance)

1.2 (25% Fire resistance)

Fire Spiders are another unit that's pretty solid for Resurrection abuse in the mid-early game. They'd be better if there weren't better options for Poison tanking and if Fire tanking was more consistently relevant to the early game, but still.

Swamp Snake

0.89 (28 Leadership, 25 Health)

4.45 (80% Poison resistance)

By far your best choice if you want to tank Poison damage and then wave it away with Resurrection... until you get to Order Magic 2 and can pretty handily replace them with Royal Snakes.

Swamp Snakes really needed something else to keep them relevant...

Knight

0.88 (180 Leadership, 160 Health)

/ 1.26 (30% Physical and Fire resistance)

Iron Fist: 1.11 (Leadership reduced to 144)

/+Iron Fist: 1.58~

It's kind of amazing Knights are so lackluster in practice given they actually have a quite good base ratio for a Level 4 unit (Unicorns are the only Level 4 unit with a better base ratio, and a good fraction of Level 4 units are sub-0.75 or even sub-0.5!) and then further extend it with solid Physical and Fire resistance while having much better Attack and Defense than most of the units with a similar or better base ratio. They're even a solid option for Resurrection once you've got Order Magic Rank 3, and the Warrior in particular boosts them yet further.

They just get dragged down so hard by being 2 Speed, bad Initiative, and lacking unique special abilities to keep them relevant anyway...

The fact that Black Knights are so great doesn't help, either. Knights backed by maxed Iron Fist are only about 5% better at soaking punishment from Physical attacks than a Black Knight with no boosts of any kind!

Ancient Bear

0.87 (80 Leadership, 70 Health)

0.96 (10% Physical resistance)

0.78 (-10% Fire resistance)

One of your more solid options for an early-game tank, and still okay even later in the game when their per-head Health being decent is no longer helping so much.

Royal Snake

0.86 (60 Leadership, 52 Health)

0.95~ (10% Physical resistance)

4.3 (80% Poison resistance)

0.95 for Physical resistance is a bit of an underestimation of the true effective Health, for reference. This is part of why Royal Snakes are so great: in many fights, they're extremely close to a functional ratio of 1-to-1 on durability, while having a number of qualities usually found on noticeably frailer unit types. And of course against Poison attacks they're just absurdly durable.

Black Unicorn

0.86~ (150 Leadership, 130 Health)

1.14~ (25% Magic Resistance)

Worse than regular Unicorns for raw toughness, and slower to boot. And you might already have Tolerance by the time you've got access to them, making their own Tolerant ability irrelevant... it's all small enough it probably doesn't matter, but still, I'm a little surprised to realize Black Unicorns are kind of niche if you scrutinize them alongside Unicorns.

Barbarian

0.85 (35 Leadership, 30 Health)

Resistant to Cold: 1.14~ (25% resistance to cold damage)

Given that their base ratio is worse than Swordsmen and Guardsmen, both of whom have the broadly relevant Physical resistance, Barbarians are not likely to justify themselves on the basis of being a relatively durable 3-Speed unit with no major weaknesses.

Fortunately they have much better damage potential, so they're far from irrelevant, but given melee units who lack No Retaliation are generally taking damage as they do damage... more durable competition is a pretty big flaw.

Berserker

0.85 (35 Leadership, 30 Health)

Resistant to Cold: 1.14~ (25% resistance to cold damage)

Not any tougher than Barbarians.

It's too bad, from a player-usage perspective, that they aren't tougher. If you want to use a melee unit in the form of just mindlessly hurling it at the enemy, there's much more durable options that will tend to do better in extended melee combat before considering you presumably won't be as dumb as the AI. And since enemy groups shy away from being heavy on long-ranged attackers, Berserkers being lightning-fast by early-game standards isn't actually that significant. It's not like they'll grab chests for you.

Lake Fairy

0.85 (7 Leadership, 6 Health)

1.14 (25% Magic resistance)

Cleanly worse at tanking punishment than Sprites unless Fire damage is being thrown around. Of course, for a Mage this tends to make Lake Fairy stacks harder to nuke down than Sprite stacks... and when using Fairies, they're both pretty good at dishing out damage without taking damage. So that's all a bit misleading.

Sea Dog

0.85 (40 Leadership, 34 Health)

Another rare example of an 'elite' unit actually having a better ratio than their less 'elite' counterpart.

They're also another strike against trying to use Barbarians as your melee tank, if a bit less egregious since reliable Barbarian access shows up noticeably earlier than reliable Sea Dog access, as opposed to the reverse for the Barbarian to Swordsman/Guardsman comparison. After all, they're the same ratio, similarly fast for most purposes, and then Fury Attack is far better at damage output -all with the free bonus of slightly increasing your Gold intake for being in the army.

Bear

0.85 (70 Leadership, 60 Health)

0.77~ (-10% Fire resistance)

Yes, Bears have a worse ratio than Ancient Bears. I meant it when I said there's really no reason to use regular Bears if you can use Ancient Bears instead. Ancient Bears cost more to hire for the Leadership, I suppose?

Ancient Treant

0.83 (1200 Leadership, 1000 Health)

0.92~ (10% Physical resistance)

1.66 (50% Poison resistance)

0.41~ (-100% Fire resistance)

The best base ratio on a Level 5 unit. Too bad you can't heal them at all...

Venomous Spider

0.83 (12 Leadership, 10 Health)

4.15 (80% Poison resistance)

0.75 (-10% Fire resistance)

I guess they're the best spider at tanking Poison?...

Devilfish

0.83 (12 Leadership, 10 Health)

1.05~ (20% Fire resistance)

For a Level 1 unit, Devilfish have a horrible base ratio. It's a little weird.

Demon

0.8 (250 Leadership, 200 Health)

0.88 (10% Physical resistance)

1.6 (50% Fire resistance)

Summon Demons: 0.1 to 0.3 (50-75 Leadership of Demons-the-species: 0.1 is a low roll of Demonesses, 0.3 is a high roll of Cerberi)

That's right: Summon Demons can bring Demons-the-unit effectively over a ratio of 1.0. Only better, since the summoned units don't cost you gold as they take damage

Shaman

0.8 (200 Leadership, 160 Health)

Archmage: 1.0 (Leadership reduced to 160)

Totem of Death: 0.05 (10 Health per 200 Leadership)

Totem of Life: 0.035 (7 Health per 200 Leadership)

Totem of Death+Archmage: 0.0625 (10 Health per 160 Leadership)

Totem of Life+Archmage: 0.044 (7 Health per 160 Leadership)

On paper, the Totems add essentially nothing, but in practice they'll often eat an entire attack, so when used well they can be quite the boon.

And of course even without the Totems Shaman are the single most durable 'mage' unit, with Archmage outright bringing them to a 1.0 ratio. Of course, they're technically a melee unit, unlike most mage units, but given they have three reloading Talents that don't care about range, you're not particularly obliged to have them take hits as part of contributing to the fight.

Polar Bear

0.8 (150 Leadership, 120 Health

0.88 (10% Physical resistance)

0.72 (-10% Fire resistance)

Resistant to Cold: 1.06 (25% resistance to cold damage)

Effective ratio-wise, Polar Bears are better than regular Bears against Physical, but worse than Ancient Bears against everything except the tiny handful of effects tagged as cold damage. Fortunately, very early on Polar Bears can justify themselves via relatively high Health per-head.

Pirate

0.8 (25 Leadership, 20 Health)

Just use Sea Dogs!

Veteran Orc

0.78 (140 Leadership, 110 Health)

0.87~ (10% Physical resistance)

Quite a bit worse than their 'lesser' counterpart, ouch. Regular Orcs are over 30% more durable!

Treant

0.76 (260 Leadership, 200 Health)

0.85~ (10% Physical resistance)

1.52 (50% Poison resistance)

0.38 (-100% Fire resistance)

A tad bit worse as a pure tank than Ancient Treants, but I tend to find Treants more useful anyway due to their superior mobility and all.

Scoffer Imp

0.75 (60 Leadership, 45 Health)

1.5 (50% Fire resistance)

This is actually 25% better Leadership-to-Health than regular Imps. Scoffer Imps are nice!

Robber

0.75 (20 Leadership, 15 Health)

Yep, worse than Marauders. And Snakes. And Royal Snakes. And Swamp Snakes.

At least they have Greed?...

Werewolf Elf

0.75 (60 Leadership, 45 Health)

You might notice we haven't gotten to Wolves yet. Yeah, even aside Regeneration, Werewolf Elves are way better at soaking punishment than Wolves.

Moderately Negative Ratios

Units below 75%, but no lower than 50%.

The majority of the game's ranged units show up here, but so do a decent array of melee units that can fight without necessarily suffering losses... and a few melee units that can't do so and are just kind of unfortunate as a result.

Royal Thorn

0.73 (380 Leadership, 280 Health)

1.46 (50% Poison resistance)

0.36~ (-100% Fire resistance)

Germinate: 0.24~ to 0.78~ (150 to 300 Leadership of Thorn Warriors or Thorn Hunters. 0.24~ is a low roll of Thorn Hunters, while 0.78~ is a high roll of Thorn Warriors)

Yeah, Royal Thorns give a better ratio of Thorns generated per use of Germinate than Sowing provides, while being a reloading skill instead of a charge-based skill. It's also worth pointing out that a single use of Germinate brings the Royal Thorn's effective ratio to over 1.0, even if it generates Thorn Hunters and rolls as low as possible; Royal Thorns are really quite effective at extending your army's durability (So long as Fire damage isn't about), which is pretty unusual for a ranged unit. 

Too bad you largely have to wait until quite late in the game to get any.

Horseman

0.72 (180 Leadership, 130 Health)

/ 0.9 (20% Physical and Fire resistance)

Iron Fist: 0.9 (Leadership reduced to 144)

/+Iron Fist: 1.12

These are pretty impressive values for such a fast unit, and indeed Horsemen are often a bit of a pain to fight for any class because it's so difficult to take them out without them inflicting casualties. They're also a decent unit for the player in the mid-early game for the same reasons -often more useful than Knights, for example- and being Level 4 means that Level 3 Resurrection can further extend their durability if you like. They're worse at raw durability than eg Knights, but their advantages in mobility often more than make up the difference in practice, among other points letting them better pick their targets to minimize opportunities for effective retaliation.

Necromancer

0.7 (200 Leadership, 140 Health)

0.77~ (10% Magic resistance)

1.4 (50% Poison resistance)

Archmage: 0.87 (Leadership reduced to 160)

+Archmage: 0.96~

+Archmage: 1.92

I'm not doing the ranges on Raise Undead, as it's too dependent on target type, how many units were originally in the stack, how closely of a ratio your Necromancer stack can get with the unit type being raised, and luck of the draw in the cases where the unit has multiple possible Undead they can be raised as. I will note that its peak result is, if you have Archmage maxed, about 0.7 per use, as it's 100 Leadership per Necromancer and Black Knights are a little over a 1.0 base ratio. Without Archmage it peaks at just over 0.5 per use. Given it has three charges... yeah, Necromancers can easily work out to more than 2.0 for their slot.

The need to have a corpse to get started is crucial for preventing them from being overpowered outright. And they're still very good.

And you might notice Necromancers have a pretty good ratio for a ranged unit even on just raw Health. And have two positive resistances. They're broadly quite good!

Hyena

0.7 (20 Leadership, 14 Health)

0.77~ (-10% Fire resistance)

The fact that Hyenas are down here as a pure melee unit that doesn't have No Retaliation or the like is... painful for them.

Catapult

0.66 (120 Leadership, 80 Health)

0.44 (-50% Fire resistance)

This is pretty frail, but reminder that this is only the third proper ranged unit I've covered. Catapults are actually pretty durable by ranged unit standards so long as Fire damage isn't being thrown around.

It's unfortunate that they get bonus damage against Gremlins but Gremlins are one of the premier sources of enemy Fire damage...

Lake Dragonfly

0.66 (9 Leadership, 6 Health)

0.94~ (30% Magic resistance)

If no Magic damage is about, Lake Dragonflies are horrible at soaking damage. If it is about, they're still not great, but I guess you can justify taking them early in a run for the Magic resistamce.

Fire Dragonfly

0.66 (9 Leadership, 6 Health)

0.94~ (30% Fire resistance)

It's too bad enemies have such poor Fire damage access... and that multiple Fire damage units are way more resistant to Fire damage than Fire Dragonflies...

Ogre

0.64 (900 Leadership, 580 Health)

// 0.71~ (10% Physical/Fire/Poison resistance)

You might notice this is the second Level 5 unit that I've covered. Ogres have bad durability per-head for a Level 5 unit, but they technically are beating the average when it comes to the per-Leadership ratio.

I don't think this really helps them, but it gives some context for why the devs thought they might pull their weight with their stats.

Elf

0.62 (80 Leadership, 50 Health)

Bowman Commander: 0.78 (Leadership reduced to 64)

Ranged unit number four, meaning Elves are actually kind of good at surviving, when compared to other ranged units. Especially with Bowman Commander maxed, where they actually beat out every other proper ranged unit for raw Leadership-to-Health ratio durability.

Thorn Hunter

0.62 (8 Leadership, 5 Health)

1.24 (50% Poison resistance)

0.31 (-100% Fire resistance)

Sowing: 0.155 to 0.5 (2-4 Leadership of Thorn Warriors or Thorn Hunters. 0.5 is a high roll of Thorn Warriors, 0.155 is a low roll of Thorn Hunters)

Yes, Thorn Hunters actually have a decent durability ratio for a ranged unit. It's easy to overlook since their per-head durability is horrible and the Fire weakness makes it easy to delete even large stacks quite suddenly, not to mention Royal Thorns are so much better to slot in if you can, but still.

Vampire (Human form)

0.62 (80 Leadership, 50 Health)

1.24 (50% Poison resistance)

0.68 (-10% Fire resistance)

A horrible ratio for a melee unit, except they have No Retaliation, Regeneration, and the ability to undo casualties in bat form.

Ancient Vampire (Human form)

0.61 (180 Leadership, 110 Health)

1.22 (50% Poison resistance)

See what I just said about Vampires, and throw in their immunity to crits.

Ranger

0.6 (150 Leadership, 90 Health)

Bowman Commander: 0.75 (Leadership reduced to 120)

Trading a bit of durability compared to Elves-the-unit. Still more durable by ranged unit standards than you might assume, especially if backed by Bowman Commander.

Imp

0.6 (40 Leadership, 24 Health)

1.2 (50% Fire resistance)

Very frail for a unit that's not a true ranged unit!

Goblin

0.57 (35 Leadership, 20 Health)

This is sliiiightly better than eg Bowmen, but alas, Goblins don't have Skill support... or Item support... or other unit support... and are bad at outputting damage...

Skeleton Archer

0.57 (14 Leadership, 8 Health)

1.14 (50% Poison resistance)

0.51~ (-10% Fire resistance)

Bone: 1.85 (70% resistance to arrows)

+Bone: 1.665

As with Skeletons, that Fire+Bone value is extremely narrow, while Poison+Bone is purely hypothetical in this entry.

Even so, Skeleton Archers are unexpectedly good at persisting in the face of Poison and arrows. Their per-head durability is atrocious, but a stack can last quite a while in the face of those threats.

Giant

0.56 (1600 Leadership, 900 Health)

Ahead of most Level 5 units, but not the best ratio of them, nor the best per-head bulk. Also, they don't have resistances of any kind, so they don't excel in some circumstance at tanking hits. And they don't have Skill support or good Item support or unit support. Ouch.

Bowman

0.56 (50 Leadership, 28 Health)

Bowman Commander: 0.7 (Leadership reduced to 40)

Bowmen are basically precisely the middle of the pack for true ranged unit durability, at least when ignoring Bowman Commander skewing things. Pretty nice design given probably most players assumed they were a kind of representative default of ranged unit design.

Priest

0.52 (50 Leadership, 26 Health)

0.58 (10% Magic resistance)

Archmage: 0.65 (Leadership reduced to 40)

+Archmage: 0.72~

Healing: 0.2 (10 Healing per 50 Leadership)

Healing+Archmage: 0.25 (10 Healing per 40 Leadership)

It's too bad the Healing amount is basically always going to be substantially wasted outside usage in the very, very early portion of a run. A theoretical functional ratio of 0.9 (with Archmage maxed) sounds quite nice, but it's basically imaginary past the very early game. And very early on, per-head durability is way more important than the Leadership-to-Health ratio.

Still good anti-Undead fighters, anyway.

Inquisitor

0.5 (100 Leadership, 50 Health)

0.55 (10% Magic resistance)

Archmage: 0.6 (Leadership reduced to 80)

+Archmage: 0.68

Resurrection: 0.07 (7 Healing per 100 Leadership)

Resurrection+Archmage: 0.09~ (7 Healing per 80 Leadership)

With Archmage maxed and a Resurrection target they're... almost 0.7 in ratio.

That's a bit misleading, mind, since Resurrecting a unit with pertinent resistances will extend the value. Put Stone Skin on a Knight and Resurrect them as they tank Physical punishment, and that value can easily be going over twice as far as my above numbers suggest.

Ghost

0.5 (80 Leadership, 40 Health)

/ 1.0 (50% Physical/Poison resistance)

Technically very, very sad durability for a straightforward melee unit, but since they heavily resist the overwhelming majority of unit-derived damage, their true bulk is usually perfectly fine... and then they can grow their numbers by consuming souls... so it's pretty unusual for their on-paper frailty to truly be accurate in player hands.

In enemy hands, it's more likely to be meaningfully true, of course, but you shouldn't underestimate big Ghost groups.

Demoness

0.5 (160 Leadership, 80 Health)

1.0 (50% Physical resistance)

Just like Ghosts, horrible base durability. Unlike Ghosts, the qualifiers here are a bit limited: the main point in their favor is that you're more likely to be using them for their Talents than as a straightforward melee fighter.

Vampire (Bat form)

0.5 (80 Leadership, 40 Health)

1.0 (50% Poison resistance)

0.55 (-10% Fire resistance)

Another horrible base, another highly misleading one, thanks to their resurrecting-leech and innate No Retaliation.

Ancient Vampire (Bat form)

0.5 (180 Leadership, 90 Health)

1.0 (50% Poison resistance)

See prior comment.

Wolf

0.5 (30 Leadership, 15 Health)

0.45 (-10% Fire resistance)

Wolves are our last unit in this tier, and unlike the prior units, they... don't have any particular qualifiers to this durability. Their Talent utility exists but is pretty limited, and they don't have any special abilities making their true durability meaningfully greater. They're just... frail melee fighters who inevitably take casualties in the process of doing their job. Not great.

Severely Negative Ratios

Anything below 50%. Units down here die horrifically quickly to Rage and Spells unless resistances are protecting them. This more reliably makes them easy enemies than frail allies, since enemies don't get Rage and most battles don't involve Heroes (And not all Heroes can cast damaging Spells), but even as player forces they'll tend to suffer if forced to take hits.

Fortunately, most of the units down here are ranged, or otherwise are able to contribute without being torn into, making their abysmal base ratio mostly less of a weakness than it could be. The units down here are generally better off than the melee units in the previous group -a Wolf technically having a slightly better ratio than the units down here isn't all that great when it has to fight such that its bad ratio is a pertinent problem, and most units down here don't.

Cursed Ghosts

0.46 (130 Health, 60 Health)

/ 0.92 (50% Physical/Poison resistance)

Slightly worse ratios than Ghosts, but they're still usually able to absorb absurd punishment in actual fact.

Alchemist

0.46 (250 Leadership, 120 Health)

0.61 (25% Poison resistance)

If you make a point of getting access to the Alchemists in the Marshan Swamp as soon as you can, their per-head durability makes them an impressive tank for the early portion of the game, while also being a rare example of an early-game unit able to attack without getting hit back.

By the time you get access to new stocks in Kordar, their poor ratio becomes a lot more pertinent than their decent per-head Health. No longer can you have them act as a Gold-free meatshield for more frail ranged units, alas.

Bone Dragon

0.46 (1300 Leadership, 600 Health)

0.92 (50% Poison resistance)

Bone: 1.53~ (70% resistance to arrows)

Bone Dragons are one of the worst-off in this range in practice, as their resistances are specialized (Only a handful of units are considered arrow-users, and Poison is the second-rarest damage type -and these resistances don't even overlap), and they're a melee attack that lacks No Retaliation, lacks any special behavior to create opportunities to do good damage while avoiding retaliation (ie they don't have Fire Breath), and they have only a single Talent for dishing out damage without provoking a retaliation. Most of the units in this tier are ranged, and the other exceptions all have a more widely-useful resistance set, with its fellow dragons getting either multiple Talents for damage without retaliation (Plus other effects!) or one such Talent plus Fire Breath to let them get good damage on big stacks by attacking adjacent stacks that are weaker. (Or use a more-resisted damage type)

As such, Bone Dragons feel the pain of their sub-0.5 ratio more keenly, more consistently, than anything else down in this range.

Cannoneer

0.45 (220 Leadership, 100 Health)

0.5 (10% Fire resistance)

Cannoners are pretty bulky per-head for a ranged unit, but ultimately are still suffering the usual ranged unit frailty. Still worth bringing into Keeper fights, and plenty great in most regular fights, but don't expect them to last for long if you let enemy melee get in reach.

Also, notice their durability for Fire damage purposes is superior to Catapults in spite of their base ratio being quite a bit lower. This is one reason they tend to be better than Catapults when it comes to Keeper fights, where Evil Gremlins tossing out Fireballs is a regular occurance.

Archmage

0.45 (200 Leadership, 90 Health)

0.9 (50% Magic resistance)

Archmage: 0.56 (Leadership reduced to 160)

+Archmage: 1.12

Toward the beginning of the game, Archmages seem impressively durable, simply because you can grab them when you're fielding just one; 90 Health is a lot to chew through before doing any lasting damage at that stage of the game.

By the time your Leadership is measured in the thousands, they're still okay at surviving if you happen to be facing a Magic-heavy battlegroup, but are otherwise chewed through fairly quickly. The Archmage Skill helps prop them up, but not a ton.

That said, their Magic Shield Talent doubles the effective ratio of whatever unit you like for a bit, and it's a cooldown Talent so you can use it repeatedly throughout a battle. That can make a dedicated tank absurdly efficient at soaking damage, if it's already good at the job.

Druid

0.43 (110 Leadership, 48 Health)

0.58 (25% Magic resistance)

Archmage: 0.54 (Leadership reduced to 88)

+Archmage: 0.72

I'm not calculating the bear-summoning Talent. It barely adds anything anyway, so Druids really are just abysmal at soaking punishment, even by the standards of mage units.

Emerald Green Dragon

0.43 (1600 Leadership, 700 Health)

0.48~ (10% Physical resistance)

0.62~ (30% Magic resistance) 

0.86 (50% Fire resistance)

Our first Level 5 unit to be down in the sub-0.5 ratio zone, and not at all the last. Also pretty representative of how that base ratio is somewhat misleading due to having widely positive resistances; not that their ratios are good, mind, but their horrible base ratio is only truly in play when Poison damage is directed their way.

Archdemon

0.41 (1600 Leadership, 666 Health)
0.46 (10% Physical resistance)
2.05 (80% Fire resistance)

It's too bad dedicated Fire damage attackers are so rare. Still, this does mean Archdemons are a great choice to bring into the Black Dragon nests, and the Mage finds them notable of a foe since the most cost-efficient damage Spells are Fire damage.

Evil Beholder

0.39~ (180 Leadership, 70 Health)

This is just sad.

I've always found it weird that Beholders and Evil Beholders have No Melee Penalty, and this really highlights one of the ways it's strange: they have no business exchanging blows with foes!

Red Dragon

0.385 (2000 Leadership, 770 Health)

0.43~ (10% Physical resistance)

0.55 (30% Magic resistance) 

1.9 (80% Fire resistance)

Like Archdemons, Red Dragons are actually exceptional in their ability to soak Fire damage. They're otherwise still reliant on their Defense to be able to survive damage, and so Spells and Rage can tear them down quite quickly.

Cyclops

0.37 (1400 Leadership, 520 Health)

/ 0.53~ (30% Physical and Fire resistance)

0.92~ (60% Poison resistance)

Against most damage types, Cyclopes are actually pretty decent by Level 5 unit standards, and of course have very solid Defense, and unlike most Level 5 units don't have to deal with counterattacks by default, so even though their base ratio is third from the bottom they're not as bad as that sounds. As most Magic-damage units actually have sub-standard damage, they tend to hold up okay in most conditions.

That said, the Mage can absolutely destroy them with Lightning, as can some enemy Heroes if you bring Cyclopes in against them. Similarly, they're one of the units most susceptible to Black Hole -conveniently, the greatest concentration of Cyclopes is in Kordar, where you get a hold of Reaper, so if you want to see Black Hole put in work it's not that hard to arrange.

Beholder

0.35 (140 Leadership, 50 Health)

This utterly atrocious ratio, with no qualifiers like good resistances or high Defense, really drags down Beholders. Enemy groups of Beholders that technically out-Leadership your army can often be devastated before they get a chance to act, and in your hands if you aren't completely confident in your ability to avoid them taking hits they're going to cost you gold at a frustrating rate, not to mention lose damage rapidly in combat. They are ranged units with good Speed, so it's easier to keep them safe than with plenty of other units, but honestly, if you're not abusing Paralyzing Ray they're very hamstrung.

Black Dragon

0.32 (2500 Leadership, 800 Health)

0.37~ (15% Physical resistance)

/ 1.6 (80% Magic and Fire resistance) 

Behold! The worst ratio in the game!

In actual practice Black Dragons aren't really the worst for most purposes, of course, thanks to their favorable resistance spread; only Poison does full damage to them, and since they're immune to Spells it doesn't actually matter that for example Poison Skull would hypothetically kill them very effectively. As every unit that does Poison damage has fairly poor Attack and Black Dragons have very high Defense, it's not like unit-based Poison damage is that effective against them, either.

That said, they are the unit that dies most readily to Sleem's Poisonous Spit and Cloud of Poison. This... isn't very useful, given that by the time Black Dragons are showing up regularly Poisonous Spit's damage is simply too low, and Cloud of Poison's difficulties with extremely fast units limit it as well.

So really Black Dragons are very misleading to think of us being at the bottom of the list, even though base values put them here. They do have durability difficulties, enough so I'm very glad Armored Princess bumps them up noticeably, but they're a good illustration of the limits of this approach, making a unit seem much easier to kill than it really is.

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And that's the truly final extra for The Legend! (probably)

If you're reading these in the intended order, you presumably wish to move on to Armored Princess now.

See you then.