Game Breaker / Heroes of Might and Magic

• Creatures:
  • The dragons of the first game are much stronger than any of the other unique creatures of the other factions. Any warlock who can stock enough treasure to support them and have a secure access to a sulfur mine can storm his way through any other faction's armies without too much difficulty. The dragons' dominance continued in Heroes II, though the titans did provide some resistance, though some speculate that it's not enough. Lampshaded in one of the random rumors you can hear at the tavern: "A Black Dragon will take out a Titan any day of the week."
  • The third game's Armageddon's Blade expansion introduces four neutral dragon units. Each is in a tier of their own and they are obscenely powerful. How powerful? The strongest one, the Azure Dragon, costs 30000 gold and 20 mercury to recruit from its nest. And that's a bargain. Its special ability is to scare its enemies shitless, preventing them from taking any action for a turn, has by FAR the highest stats in the game, except speed which is still among the highest, and is immune to level 1-3 spells — actually an advantage over the magic-immune Black Dragons since they can be resurrected. Usually falls under Awesome, but Impractical due to the staggering cost and the fact that you have to fight three of them to claim their dwelling, however.
  • IV continues the trend with the expansion-exclusive Megadragon. These guys have monstrous amounts of health (more than twice as much as their closest competitor, the Black Dragon), as well as disgusting amounts of damage capabilities and the standard dragon breath attack, which can hit two stacks of troops at once. This is only somewhat mitigated by the fact that they can't fly, they only have 50% magic immunity instead of the Black Dragons' 100% (though this means that their stats can be buffed even further by spells), and the fact that they usually can't be recruited on maps by any hero.
  • Ghosts in II are the one creature in the game where there is no way during standard gameplay to recruit them into your army. Use the map editor to add ghosts into your army manually and you'll see why. For every creature a ghost kills it adds one ghost to the stack, and with a reasonably intelligent player controlling them, it's easy to have a stack of 100+ ghosts within the first week - and because of the way the killing things equals more ghosts, an army with ghosts will snowball into invincibility through numbers within a month. One of the major criticisms of the Price of Loyalty expansion is that it added a dwelling allowing ghosts to be recruited by heroes.
  • The Castle town's Angel and Archangel in III. They're extremely fast and powerful, boasting some of the highest stats in the game and the ability to resurrect other units. Couple their resurrect ability with the Clone, Blind, and either Fireball or Meteor Shower spells, and you can take out even the toughest armies without suffering a scratch as long as your hero has enough SP. They were even more broken in the launch version of the game, where for some reason they were the only tier 7 creature not to cost any magical resource (thankfully, expansions added Gems to their price).
  • The Fortress's Gorgons and Mighty Gorgons in III. These cows have solid attack, high health and defence, and reasonable speed. But the worst part about them is the Mighty Gorgons' Death Stare ability, which has a 1/10th chance of killing the top unit of a stack after an attack regardless of that unit's health. The chance raises for each Mighty Gorgon in the stack, and every 10 Gorgons adds a chance to kill another unit. That means just 11 Mighty Gorgons could take out two Azure Dragons in one shot.
  • The Necropolis' vampire in every game. The upgraded versions in the third and fifth game as well as the vampire in the fourth game combine decent stats for their tier, the ability to fly/teleport on the battlefield, no enemy retaliation, and the ability to heal and revive their numbers when attacking living units. Although, the vampire's power might be just due to the rather bizarre way to balance the Necropolis, where outstandingly strong creatures (vampires, death knights, liches and to some extent skeletons) are "balanced out" with laughably weak ones (walking dead and wights). Vampires also tend to be expensive for their tier, and their damage output does lag behind other units at its tier, but this usually isn't a major issue if you get enough of them — and you probably will get a lot of them thanks to rarely losing any in fights.
  • Arcane Archers in V. They are third tier, and so can be acquired easily and early, and have the highest damage of any ranged unit when accounting for their weekly growth. Oh, and they deal full damage even at long range, and take into account only half of the victim's defence. They die quickly, but can do horrendous amounts of damage to much higher tier units before this happens.
  • An extremely game-breaking combination of Untamed Cyclops and Chieftains from the Orc faction in Tribes of the East can allow you to trample through gigantic armies with no casualties. Each Chieftain increases the initiative of the Cyclopes, giving them more turns in combat. Behold◊ the results◊.
  • Pit Spawns in V. They may not be able to cast spells like pit lords can, but their ability, Blade of Slaughter, adds +2 damage onto their attack for every unit in the target stack. This effect applies no matter how many Pit Spawns you have, so if you split them into multiple small stacks, you can utterly eviscerate even legions of low-HP units, no matter how badly outnumbered you are. They're also faster and tougher than Pit Lords and have 50% magic resistance, resulting in a creature capable of slaughtering entire armies of weak units while being difficult for casters to handle.
  • Genies in the 1st and 2nd game. Any attack from a stack of genies (even a stack of one) has a chance of halving the target enemy stack's numbers. Mitigated by the fact that genies are exceptionally rare, and don't repopulate every week.
  • Death Knights take a similar role as II's genies in V. Usually chances are calculated by comparing the total hitpoints of the involved stacks, but Death Knights always have a 25% chance. They are even harder to get than genies, though, and they don't fly, but they're also considered undead, with all the advantages that come with it (i.e. immunity to Mind spells, easier to resurrect, etc).
• Spells:
  • The classic example is Slow, a spell that reduces a unit's movement (and in early games pushed back its turn order). While it's not too busted on one creature, II added a mass version of it, which was strong, but limited by mana cost and it being a level 4 spell. It's not until III that Slow's brokenness truly became apparent, since its Mass version became the Expert-level of the base spell, a level 1 spell with a cheap cost and wide availability. Opening a fight with mass Slow spells doom for the opponent, since they'll have no chance to retaliate or even retreat before you get a full turn. Later games softened the blow by splitting speed and initiative (turn order) into two stats, meaning Slow won't completely neuter an army.
  • Blind and Berserk are considered standout Fire spells in III. Blind prevents a target from doing anything for either a lengthy duration or until they're attacked. Blind can lock the opponent's most powerful creature out of the fight, forcing the opponent to waste a turn Dispelling/Curing them or trying to fight with a man down. If the opponent only has one creature left, Blind prevents them from retreating while you take all the time you need to set up for a killing blow. Berserk on the other hand forces a creature to waste its next action rushing recklessly at the nearest unit, friend or foe, and attack it. Use it on the opponent's biggest threat to both make it weaken something else they control and also suffer retaliation damage. Even the devs knew Berserk was busted, using it as the solution to a Puzzle Boss where you have to defeat over 2000 Naga Queens in the Dragon Slayer campaign.
  • Hypnotize in IV. In III, it was limited by Spellpower, while in V it applied a massive initiative penalty. In IV, neither of that happens and Hypnotize ignores line of sight, which means a Grandmaster Order mage can hijack enemy stacks with no counterplay outside of Mind magic immunity. There is a reason Order campaign in IV requires you to find a Mind Shield before the final battle.
  • V's dark magic in general is pretty damn powerful. Slow, Blind, Frenzy and Puppet Master are already mentioned, but Weakness and Suffering can really drop enemy offenses down in the pits, Decay can deal a surprising amount of damage, while Vampirism can allow your creatures to recover their losses the same way Vampires do. All you need to do is stack mass Haste on top of that to complete the Humiliation Conga.
  • Dimension Door allows you to teleport to the target location, bypassing any obstacles in the way including campaign-specific gates that are supposed to shield "invulnerable" enemy cities from your wrath. It also has a surprisingly long range and takes very few movement points. The only thing that makes it not snap the game in half is that you can only use it four times a day. Even in V, where it also takes up half your day's movement, so it can only be cast twice in one turn, it's still busted.
  • How about Town Portal in II and III? It allows you to instantly teleport to any town you own at Advanced level, so not only you can pick the most powerful creatures from each town, but also get the bonuses all grant (increased stats, extra mana, movement, etc.). On top of that, it makes the surroundings of all your towns incredibly dangerous places even if there is no one around. Combine with Dimension Door, and it's instant doom for anyone foolish enough to even set foot on the map. Even when it was supposed to be nerfed in IV by making it Order Magic exclusive and being only able to get the hero to the nearest town, it is still useable even when the hero has no movement points, something that not even it's II and III counterparts do. In fact, IV allowed Town Portal to be used in the middle of battle, making it a foolproof way to escape fights with no drawback if things get hairy. It finally took V which adds the requirement of using up all remaining movement points to finally balance it out.
  • Armageddon is normally Awesome, but Impractical, but becomes busted when combined with units immune to it. It does the most damage of any spell outside of Implosion and does so to all creatures on the battlefield. This is meant to be balanced by being a Symmetric Effect, but using creatures that are immune to fire makes it a one-sided battlefield destroyer. It's part of the reason why Conflux was so despised in Armageddon's Blade, as they had half of their roster being immune to it (Fire/Energy Elementals, Earth/Magma Elementals, Magic Elementals, Firebirds/Phoenixes), and could always cast it guaranteed since Phoenixes are the fastest creature in the game.
  • VI has some immensely strong high-level combat spells as well, with special mention to Time Stasis and Meditation. Time Stasis disables the target completely for up to four turns with no downside and with no recovery even from taking damage, making it possibly the strongest disabling spell in the series. Meditation meantime adds a temporary but massive 20 Magic Power to the spellcaster's spells, and on top of that it restores 50% of their maximum mana, making the resource practically infinite in all but the direst of circumstances even with its limitation to one use per combat.
  • Implosion becomes this in both VI and VII. Which would be par the course, since it is the biggest single-target offensive spell in the series outside of IV (where Disintegrate is stronger), but in VI it serves as the biggest meta-game breaker, as the damage dealt by Implosion is unhealable by virtue of being Prime damage, which makes it especially potent in the game that focuses on resurrecting your losses as much as VI does. Meanwhile in VII it becomes a surprisingly cheap and powerful Percent Damage Attack that also disrupts enemy formation due to moving creatures around the target.
• Skills:
  • Any hero that specializes in Logistics in III and V. Logistics is a Boring, but Practical skill that simply increases your hero's movement. A character that specializes in it? Not only do they start off with the skill, they boost it by every level that other heroes can't. Even at a modest levels, it can turn said hero into Sonic the Hedgehog on the world map. It doesn't matter if his army is weak; you'll never have a chance at catching him unless he runs into a corner. And when it comes to the late game, these guys are often turned into heat-seeking missiles by being given the faction's top creatures, letting them come out of nowhere to annihilate enemy heroes and demolish multiple towns in a single turn.
  • Earth Magic is a Game Breaker at Expert level in III however, with spells like mass Slow which completely crippled armies, Expert-level Implosion which is the ultimate damage-dealing spell and perma-Resurrection/Animate Dead which, especially when combined with Blind, pretty much meant a good spellcaster would never lose troops in most battles as long as they have mana. Add Town Portal to the mix and one has almost no reason not to take it because it's just that powerful.
  • Air Magic, while not quite up to Earth Magic levels, are this as well in III, especially if you have Expert Air Magic. Mass Haste not only does the job of Mass Slow, but also makes it so that some of your slower units could leap across the map into the enemy face when they'd normally have to spend a turn waddling over. Lightning bolt, while not as damaging as other damage-based spells, can be learned without Wisdom and can still kill a respectable amount of creatures, while Chain Lightning can devastate entire armies that try to split their stacks. And then of course Air Magic has the infamous Dimension Door and the very useful Fly spell (which completely negates the need for boats on some maps and can be more economical than dimension door on occasions). And if your enemy is Undead? Destroy Undead is a one-sided Armageddon.
  • Necromancy is extremely powerful as it allows you to raise a percentage of enemy troops as Skeletons after battle. Initially this isn't much, but it can be buffed to the point where you're raising more than 60% of all casualties back as skeletons (even other dead skeletons). This can easily result in your army becoming so huge that even if you suffer losses, you still come out with a net gain in skeletons in any battle. But what truly broke this ability was the combination artifact "Cloak of the Undead King"; instead of raising normal skeletons (or Skeleton Soldiers) the cloak allows you to raise Liches, a level 5 ranged shooter with an AOE attack. In the base game Necromancy was already considered a powerful secondary skill, but combined with the expansion's Cloak, it utterly broke the entire Necropolis faction. Not surprisingly, building the Cloak of the Undead King is banned in tournament play as a result.
  • Diplomacy in III is considered to be the broken skill, so much so that mods often nerf it and it's banned in online play. This is because Diplomacy allows you to negotiate with neutral creature stacks, often allowing you to absorb them into your army for a fee (or free, if you're really lucky). You see all the things that make Necromancy a broken skill? Diplomacy does it ten times better. Furthermore, Diplomacy also lets you surrender for cheaper. Surrender, unlike retreat, lets your hero preserve their units when they flee from battle. Combined with the above and you basically will never have to worry about heavy casualties so long as you have gold. It also has one hidden ability; it lets the hero who has it enter a Library of Enlightenment as early as level 4 on Expert level, down from the normal 10+. Libraries provide a hefty +2 to all stats: That's eight levels worth of stat boosts for free. At that early in the game, this often has the effect of doubling the heroes' effectiveness compared to them getting it at the intended level.
  • Resistance in III, which gives your troops a small chance to completely negate enemy spells. While it may be unreliable, it can save your creatures from important spells like Slow, Curse, and Lightning Bolt. Since you only get one spell per round, a lucky negate can totally ruin your opponent's plan. It also stacks with any other forms of resistance, such as the natural resistance that dwarves have or with three artifacts that provide a similar effect, whether or not you have the Resistance secondary skill. Due to the extreme RNG nature of it and how it can be utterly game-warping at the pro level, the skill is banned in the Horn of the Abyss mod and replaced by the Interference secondary skill, which lowers the Spellpower of an enemy hero.
  • The Order magic from IV. The aforementioned Blind and Berserk spells? Level 4 Order spells, but dwarfed by the level 5 Hypnotize, the granddaddy of mind control spells. One should also beware of Forgetfulness, which neutralizes ranged units, Teleport, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin (and can be used on enemy creatures to boot!), and Steal All Enchantments, which removes all status buffs from the enemy and gives them to your own army. Combined with the ranged and spellcasting Order creatures, winning endgame battles without moving a single unit is not only possible, but usual.
  • The Combat skill tree in IV. Particularly the main skill, increasing the Hero's physical defense that it would need at least a dozen top-tier units to challenge them alone. Add to that the Magic Resistance secondary skill, that grants full immunity against hostile spells and spell-like effects at its highest level. Not to mention there is only one negative status effect (stun) that is not considered magical in nature. The only magical attack it does not make your hero immune to are the Cancellation spells.
  • Ultimate skills in V. Sure, they require a very specific skill development and levels out of reach in smaller games... but once you have them, you pretty much won the game, at least most of them. How about guaranteed luck on each and every action (and 25% more damage, too)? Or guaranteed unluck for the enemy? Or every spell on the expert level?
  • Training (which allows you to upgrade lower tiered units into higher ones - turning a peasant into an archer into a footman into a priest into a cavalier) for the Haven faction in V, before it was put back to slightly less game breaking levels in the expansions. On paper it doesn't look all that broken, as it costs triple of what the unit normally would - until you realise it's possible to get enough artifacts to reduce the upgrade cost to nothing, giving you the ability to turn all of your peasants into cavaliers for free.
• Heroes:
  • Loynis one of the closest in III. Starts with pumped up Prayer spell - decently strong buff of 4th level increasing attack, defense and speed. So basically its a three spells in one. With Expert Water Magic it buffs all your army instead of single unit by 4 stats and usually that also means you have mass dispel in your spellbook too. Funny part is Loynis increase effect of prayer by 1 per his every level, effectively making it 5 times stronger by level 20. Unsurprisingly it makes your army wipe floors with everything comes in their way. The only risk is if Prayer is overwritten by other spells.
  • Sir Mullich, another Castle hero, gives everything he controls a +2 movement bonus. What elevates this to gamebreaker is that the Castle has three units - royal griffins, champions, and angels - who, with Sir Mullich's movement bonus can cross the entire map in one shot. Oh, those champions? Unlike most fast units they are not low on defense, and they get a damage bonus for each square they move.
  • Thant is possibly the most powerful of the heroes of Necropolis because he starts with and specializes in Animate Dead. Unlike Resurrection, Animate Dead lets you keep any undead units after the battle at any mastery. Unlike other specializations, Thant's ability remains useful from beginning till end, as it multiplies in effectiveness with him, allowing you to effectively never lose a single unit throughout the course of the game. This gets worse if you combine him with the Cloak of the Undead King (see below) as Thant can not only never lose a single unit in any battle, every victory also significantly boosts his army's power.
  • Galthran in III. He buffs skeletons. Necropolis heroes get a lot of skeletons from their Necromancy skill, and can convert their subpar tier 2 unit (Zombies) into skeletons as well. While not as powerful in the late game, in online play (where maps tend to be randomly generated) Galthran gets powerful really fast and can leverage that power to take on more armies earlier on, leading to a snowball effect. He's one of only two heroes (the other being Sir Mullich) commonly banned in online play.
  • Luna, one of the Conflux heroes added with Armageddon's Blade in III, starts with the spell Fire Wall with a specialty that causes it to deal double damage. Basically, this means that if you only give her one pixie and enough spell points, she can singlehandedly clear your entire starting zone with a bit of clever tactics, thanks to the A.I. Breaker nature of said spell and the fact that wandering creatures will split into more stacks the weaker your engaging army is.
  • Crag Hack, while not as busted early, really proves his chops as he levels thanks to his Offense specialy. It improves the effect of his Offense skill by 5% per hero level (read, his units deal 1.5% more damage per level on Expert Offense), and said effect grows strong really quickly. Combine that with his very high Attack due to being a Barbarian, and Crag Hack proves to be the best hero for pure, unadulterated damage in the lategame. As a bonus, Crag Hack joins with Advanced Offense, and nothing else, meaning he has 7 free skill slots.
  • Tazar is pretty much the Immovable Object to Crag Hack's Unstoppable Force, and is his equal-but-opposite in just about every way. He has Armored specialy (read, his units take 0.75% less physical damage per Tazar's level at Expert Armorer), and just like Crag Hack, it doesn't take long before the effect becomes very noticeable. Thanks to his superb Defense due to being a Beastmaster, even Crag Hack will have trouble getting though Tazar's army. And, just like Crag Hack, Tazar starts with Advanced Armorer and no other skills, giving him the same 7 free skill slots Crag Hack has.
  • Deleb, one of the random Inferno heroes in V. Basically, she adds a fireball effect to her ballista, dealing extra damage to the attacked unit and anything in a neigboring square. With the ballista and triple ballista skills, these fireballs hit two and three times plus the fact that Demon Lords already have a high attack skill. Her special ability is ridiculously powerful in the early-game and remains useful in the mid and late-game. It eventually got nerfed, but as everyone else she also got more perks for the ballista.
  • In the latest version 3.1 of V, the best non-campaign starter heroes are Telsek (great synergy between War Machines and Fist of the Khan special) and Vladimir (Reanimator special allows him to creep with Skeleton Warriors with zero to minimal losses). Special mentions to abovementioned nerfed Deleb (still great with fireball ballista), Vittorio and Laszlo (both slightly weaker Haven versions of Telsek) and Orson (starts with Defense + Vitality and tanky zombies special)
  • Dark elves in "V" can empower spells, increasing damage by expending more mana. Sinitar has the Catalyst specialty, reducing the magic he spends when empowering a spell. With the right combination of gear and spells, (arcane training, erratic mana and ring of Sar-issus to lower mana costs, Runeforce items, warlock's luck and Rage of the Elements for extra damage), Sinitar can inflict a lot of damage on his opponents with very little cost.
• Other:
  • The "Power of Dragons" artifact set in V, if completed, provides heroes with a free tier 7 creature every day of the week (most tier 7 creatures are recruitable at a rate of two per week, except for bone dragons and towns with Grail structures), as well as giving tier 7 creatures a significant power boost (plus minor boosts for all other units in your army) and multiple bonuses to a hero's attributes.
  • Of all the grail structures in III, two in particular stand out as far better than any other:
    • The Tower's Skyship gives you vision over the entire map. This is helpful so you can see exactly where your enemies are weak, and you have first pick over any unclaimed artifacts.
    • The Conflux's Aurora Borealis fills the city's Mage Guild with every spell in the game. Since what spells you have available are typically limited by (a) the type and number of cities you have and (b) your hero's Wisdom skill, the utility of this building basically has no bound. It was strong enough that the Horn of the Abyss Game Mod nerfed it to only include spells from your current Mage Guild tier and only include spells Conflux can naturally learn (so no Armageddon), and it's still considered the best Grail.
  • The Conflux faction in III is really overpowered. So much so that it is banned from official tournaments! In fairness to the Conflux, it was assembled quickly to replace the Forge when fans demanded that it be changed. If it had a bit more time, then maybe it wouldn't have been so game breaking. Sprites are a strong contender for best tier 1 creature - they're the fastest in the game at 9 speed and enemies don't retaliate against them. Storm Elementals are also insanely busted, being a tier 2 shooter with stats good enough for a tier 4. They also spawn four tier 7 monsters per week, and while Firebirds are pretty wimpy (possibly why the spawn rate is so high), Phoenixes are really badass, with self-resurrection, fire immunity, and 21 speed. It also managed to oust Tower as the Magic town due to Conflux's inbuilt University; while Tower had a chance to give more rare spells to your heroes, Conflux could allow your heroes to master all four schools of magic for only 4000 gold!
  • All those examples pale in comparison to the "Cloak of the Undead King" artifact in III's Expansion: Shadow of Death. Yes, it needs several artifacts assembled to begin with, but it consists of only 3 items, all of which are relatively commonly found. You know how Necropolis can use the Necromancy skill to assemble massive armies of Skeletons (level 1 melee units) that can stomp almost anything with sheer numbers? Well, instead of Skeletons, try Liches, a level 5 shooter with an Area of Effect death cloud! Truly, you have not (un)lived until you have stomped an enemy with an army of over 1000 Liches. And, the more Liches you have, the more armies you kill, and the more armies you kill, the more Liches you gain. This snowballs ridiculously; and can reach such ludicrous levels so fast, that it is unbelievably easy for even a single stack of Liches to reach the dozens of thousands, and attempting to split that stack in your inventory will cause your game to instantly crash. The assemblage of this artifact singlehandedly turns the normally weak and relatively easy to deal with Necropolis Faction, whose only threatening force is the Zerg Rush potential of it's Skeletons; into an unstoppable nightmare by late-game, capable of wiping out literally everyone in the game with little resistance, including you if you're unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of this, and made the mistake of not having dealt with Necropolis by then. For obvious reasons, assembling the Cloak of the Undead King is banned in online and tournament play.
    SsethTzeenatch: Not sure if your opponent has assembled a "Cloak of the Undead King"? Don't worry, I have a foolproof method of finding out! Mouse over his stack of Power Liches in combat, note down the number, if it's somewhere between several hundred thousand or if the text box is flickering and glitching out, he probably has it assembled. Let me explain, normally, Necromancy revives only Skeletons, but with a Cloak of the Balanced King, you revive Liches instead. Liches are Level 5 Necropolis Shooters, and your opponent has billions of them. He has so many, that if he ever tried to split the stacks in his inventory, his game will crash.