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Some schools have specific types of creatures because of the flavor of the school, and here I would like to examine the types of creatures most school have. I also include a summery of what new creatures could be useful in that school.
While categories of creatures are numerous, I will categorize only 4 specific categories - flying, fast, archers, and intercepting. I am sort of skipping elemental schools, because most of them don't have many creatures.
***For the purpose of this examination, a "good creature" is a creature that is often taken by mages even if it is out of school.***
Mind - Have a flier, but usually forcemasters don't depend too much on mind creatures anyway. Don't have any good creatures. Instead of a dragon, I wish mind school had as a 6th level creature a "Knight of the old republic"
Arcane - Have archers, fast creatures, and a flier who can also intercept. Gorgon archer and devouring jelly are good creatures. Overall, have a lot of powerful slow creatures the combine well with having both mage wand and teleport in school for arcane mages.
Nature - I will look at 2 sub categories, animals and plants:
Animals - Have fast and flying creatures, no intercept (since such defensive tactics are not inherent to animals), and archers are limited to range 1 (Galador and spitting raptor). Steelclaw Grizzly is a good creature, and some might say crevere as well (though not nearly as often as most other creatures labeled "good"). With no slow creatures and several fast creatures, animals make up for the short range of it's archer by moving quickly to the enemy. I wonder how slow animal could combine with the game, since after all both tanglevine and stranglevine are nature spells that exist to keep the enemy is the same zone. Perhaps a mighty turtle or a huge snail?
Plants - No flying nor fast, technically have intercept but one that cost a lot and isn't very mobile, it's archer have snatch, which is totally essential to these immobile creatures. No good creatures, and even beastmasters that have these creatures in school almost never take any plant creature other than kralathor. All are hydro immune, flame +2 and not very mobile (the only non-rooted creature here is kralathor). Since there is almost no variety, most druids also take some animals to compensate for the total lack of mobility, lack of armor and the vulnerability to fire. A plant that spit acid to range 2, or a fast plant with a low uproot cost could be interesting options for the druid (though mobility problems are somewhat compensated by having animal in school). Now with lesser teleport out the druid will be countered more easily (with the vinewhip staff becoming far less mighty), so the druid should probably have longer range archers (a plant that spit acid to a range of 2), or at least an incantation that let all plants uproot for until the end of the round.
Holy - Have archers, fliers, intercept, but only now in PvS there is the first fast holy creature. Guardian angel is a good creature. Most holy creature tend to have low health compared to creatures that cost the same in other schools, but they have aegis, high armor or a defense to compensate (which is why Holy Avenger is so awesome for giving +5 life). With so many new holy creatures in PvS and priestess academy, I can't really say anything about a need for a new type of holy creatures.
Dark - I will have 3 sub-categories: Demons, Skeletons and Zombies. No dark creature have intercept, and it should definitely stay that way (otherwise necromancer are going to be way too powerful, now that they have to go out of school for intercept they usually wouldn't bring 4 of these). Thematicaly I can't imagine a dark creature whose main purpose is intercepting.
Demons - Have fliers, archers with range 1 and no fast demon. In some ways, the wildfire imp sort of a fast creature, so it isn't that a big of a problem. If a warlock really want a range 2 archer, then he could take a skeleton archer.
Zombies - Don't have any fliers, archers or fast zombies. Zombies are just extremely durable and deal tons of damage, and their purpose is to fool noobs into believing they outmaneuvered the zombies, just in time to be devastated by "Zombie Frenzy" (as happened to me once when I was a noob). You can't kill them, and you can't outmaneuver them, so your best hope is just killing the enemy mage first (most of them are pests, and those who are not are still bloodthirsty, so they are not the best guards). This game definitely doesn't need any new zombies, but ways to counter zombies (I mean, other than killing the mage, so you could actually have a chance of defeating these creatures). Warlocks sometime use zombie brutes (some of them even 4 zombie brutes).
Skeletons - Don't have fliers, but have archers and fast creatures. The fast creatures don't benefit from the armory, but you just cant have it all. Skeleton knight are good creatures. New skeletons should probably be mixed schools like these pirate skeletons in PvS, more of these would be nice. Perhaps a skeleton soldier with a strong full attack and lesser quick attack would also be a nice strategic addition to the skeletons arsenal.
War - No fast, No fliers, have intercept and a lot of archers (including the only range 3 archer in the game). If not flying soldiers, there could at least be some fast ones. I know that with Horn of Gothos the anvil throne could just make all soldiers fast, but that just means that fast soldiers will also close the gap between the warlords a bit. Dwarf Panzergarde is a good creature, and some would say Grimson Deadeye as well (or at least I used one in a priest book).
What do you think about the creatures in different schools?
And which new creature spells do you hope to see in the future?
