How useful do you find the archers/barbs that drop from hero abilities?

I just wonder what people's thoughts are on the matter. To me it seems like they are useful if they buy your heroes more time or add to the overall dps of the raid.

On buying your Heroes time:
The BK doesn't vanish, so everything is still targeting him, so they don't buy him more time.
The AQ vanishes, but the archers still draw AoE fire so she is still getting hit by WT or Mortar- so they actually have her take more damage compared to her only having the vanish ability.

On adding to the DPS of the raid:
Triggering hero abilities is based on hasting your BK or keeping your AQ out of harms way (and, post-update, for her added magic arrows), not for the added troops. So you tend to trigger those abilities when the BK and AQ are in the midst of battle... surrounded by defensive buildings... mortars and WTs kill the barbs/archers so fast, they might get 2-3 seconds of dps in.

I get that, based on their names, archers and barbs are associated to them... but having the troops appear from their abilities isn't a huge boon. I would sacrifice all of those minions from deploying for just one more second of haste/vanish, but I doubt those minions are going anywhere... except to the grave once they appear in the middle of 2 mortars and a WT...

To get maximum benefit, you generally need to activate in the heart of a base, under heavy fire.

That heavy fire always includes Mortars / Wiz Towers which kill the additional troops very quickly.
And for the Queen, even hidden the archers standing right next to her put her under fire from Splash attacks.

So unless you have used a high proportion of defense targetting troops to gut a base [hogs/loons] and are fighting the clock. They are pretty useless.

They're pretty useless in my experience, especially on maxed bases.

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Yeah. I agree. They are killed so fast that it doesn't even matter.

9 out of 10 times they have been pretty useless. I did just get lucky on a CW attack and used kings ability at the perfect time. His barbs helped to destroy both IT's and even 1 or 2 lived another second longer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by facescraper

They're pretty useless in my experience, especially on maxed bases.

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+1
10chars

Put it this way..... They die so fast that i STILL think the forums and SC are "Trolling" me and no barbs/ archers come out at all

You need to be a cat to see them being deployed. friggin x6 vision

Well they've never really hurt me. I think its just an extra 3 seconds before an xbow or inferno locks on

They are only useful for the queen when she is being targeted by point defences.