MMH5.5 - Heroes of Might and Magic 5.5

I watched a review of the mod, and I liked almost everything related to the interface and visuals; great job! However, I also want to note what I didn't like (areas that could be improved), specifically in the skill tree: 1) 8-10-12% skills – there's almost no difference in the benefits gained; effectively, these are all 10% skills (plus or minus 2%), and they should be considered equally accessible (9 easily accessible skills per class). How to improve it: switch from 12-10-8-4 to a system like 18-10-5-2 or 16-11-6-2; this would create a much better difference between the specialized groups. Why this is important: you have 24 hero classes, not 8. If the skill profiles are not specialized enough, many classes will be too similar to each other. 2) Many similar classes, especially in the specialized group (chaos + summoning + spellcasting + occultism + education): Druid, Warlock, Elementalist, Flamekeeper. More attention should be paid to the fundamental differences between classes of different races. 3) I don't like the distribution of debuff skills to non-orc races, but that's a matter of taste. However, what definitely raises questions are the following perks in the debuff skills: - Celestial Shield in the Chaos debuff; - Fire Protection as a stepping stone to Storm Wind (in my opinion, it would be better as a final perk in the Chaos debuff); - Reflection and Resistance in the Darkness debuff – these perks clearly don't fit there. At the same time, why is Cursed Land moved to Darkness magic instead of the debuff? 4) "Attack" skill: - Fire Arrows don't fit (either move them to the machinery skill or remove them from the tree altogether), but what to give after shooting instead of them is a difficult question (maybe give nothing?). - Attacking Healer is too weak for dwarves; you could try increasing the Power of dwarven dragons by 3 times, which would allow you to get a good bonus around them, thereby strengthening the perk, but even better – remove this perk from the tree and come up with something else, not as boring as +2 to attack. For example, +1 to initiative (using scripts). - Ranged Attack, it is suggested to increase it to 25%. - The skill itself, it would be logical to increase it to 10/17.5/25%, similar to defense (the 5% step is too weak). 5) "Defense" skill: - Defensive Healer, the same as with the attacking healer, it would be best to give "Readiness" here (without penalties). - Master Smith, test the functionality and clarify the description; what kind of magic does the protection come from? As far as I remember, there is only one 15% perk for universal magic protection; the rest are more specialized (like protection from Chaos magic, protection from the Chaos magic of the enemy hero, or protection from magic only for orcs). In general, the magic protection branch is not very appealing; a perk like +10% to health would look better. 6) "Luck" skill: - Critical Hit should be renamed to Critical Luck and given a good bonus (instead of 1.66 x 1.1, give 1.66 x 1.2 = 2.0); otherwise, the perk is very weak. - Curse of the Dead: -1 to luck is too weak for a final perk; it would be better to have "Luck Stealer" +1 to luck. 7) "Leadership" skill: - Aura of Speed doesn't fit here; it would be better to move it to logistics. Instead, it would be logical to give the "Retribution" perk from the attack skill (but then you would have to come up with something for the attack skill). - "Battle to the Last" looks strange coming from "Prayer"; I would swap "Battle to the Last" with "Recruitment," and have "Inspiration" come from "Prayer." - Recruitment, it would be better to have something more useful in combat instead of this nonsense, and remove it from the tree (as an option, in my mod, I gave +X% to the size of the current army of the hero each day/week for this perk). 8) "Spellcasting" skill – 12/24/36% is too strong (on expert difficulty, the hero effectively casts spells 1/0.64 = almost 1.6 times more often! This is a lot and disproportionate to the bonuses to spellcasting). 9) "Logistics" skill: - There is not a single combat perk, except for the situational +3 to speed during sieges. I would rework logistics so that all its perks give combat bonuses related to initiative or speed, or penalize enemy heroes in initiative/speed, or some interesting activated abilities like stealing artifacts on the map (similar to stealth from Heroes 4). 10) "Combat" skill: - Thorns armor (+1 to attack and defense) is completely out of place; you need something else, or nothing at all. - Readiness: it would look better in defense, but in any case, the strange -2 to attack penalty raises questions; are you sure it's even needed there? 11) "Occultism" skill: - Distraction is too weak for a final perk (I would increase it to 20%). 12) "Gate Opening" skill: it will most likely be too weak in its current form, because the demon spends too much tempo on summoning reinforcements (75% of the turn) and summons too few (15-25%): - Master of Gates is especially weak (only +5%). 13) "Necromancy" skill: - Emissary of Darkness (weakening enemy Darkness) is not thematically related to Banshee's Scream; this is a filler perk for a place where there may not even be an additional perk. 14) "Master of Artifacts" skill: - The perks "Suppression of Light" after "Magic Mirror" and "Academic Reward" after "Absorption of Artifact" look out of place, and "Power over Machines" would be better in the golem branch. 15) "Knowledge of Runes" skill: - The "Runic Knowledge" perk (level up +2 knowledge) is not thematically appropriate here; in general, this type of perk should be a final one, not a stepping stone, because with sufficient late-game leveling, it allows you to have a very beneficial effect. 16) "Battle Cries" skill: - The "Tribal Teachings" perk (level up +2 knowledge) is not thematically appropriate here; it is more suitable for education, as it is related to level-ups. The next point is that many new heroes have been added to the game, but many specializations have become duplicated. In addition, most of the other heroes look ugly (portraits) or don't fit the visual style! In my opinion, more strict attention should be paid to the selection of icons for new heroes, as this could be a fly in the ointment for the beautiful visuals that were implemented in MMH5.5 for other things! It is better not to add a hero than to add a poorly drawn hero. Following the principle of "do no harm." Also, the author of the video review noted that spellbooks have become too large, and I agree with him – you should not change the scale of the original spellbooks.