Which Haven heroes do you prefer?

I actually like Dugald; I would easily put him in first place. Axel in second, and Vitto in third, probably. You can start with Elaine, but it's more for getting money from peasants, and then you can choose a main hero from the tavern (you'll definitely find one of the first three). Laslo... Well, maybe for a quick game. I don't know about others, but I prefer armored infantry over zealots, even though they are weaker, they are very helpful against archers. And armored infantry are not a strike force, so I wouldn't take Laslo either. But that's according to my tactics; maybe I'm wrong.

I agree, Dugald is very strong, but he's not suitable as an attacking hero; he's more of a defensive hero, and that's when it makes sense to use armored infantry, which will protect the archers, and paladins won't be worse off next to them. If you play against Ossir with Dugald, for example, you can easily defeat him with a defensive tactic, and there will be many more archers than forest archers. However, even with Laslo, by training archers, you can play against Ossir with fewer losses. Vittorio is just an ordinary hero, a "machine" hero. We played recently; the ballista had 42 attack, and the hero had 28 attack (I don't remember the damage) for 3 shots (1 luck), and they took down a Fury with 92 health. That's not bad, but I don't like or prefer machine heroes, except for an easy start; otherwise, they are inferior to heroes who buff units. Axel won't give a noticeable advantage with knights unless you're going for a self-sufficient army, turning the knights into super-armored, fast-moving terminators with luck.