Stephen III is an upcoming legendary Engineering (Siege) commander in Rise of Kingdoms. He will be released with another engineering commander John Hunyadi.
Is he worth investing in? Does Stephen III replace the older engineering commanders, such as Babur and Margaret?
In this guide, you will find Stephen’s talent tree builds, best commander pairings, formations, and pretty much anything you need to know
What is Commander Stephen III good at?
Stephen III is a ranged commander who leads siege units. He uses ranged attacks, along with minor healing and buffs. He is a decent commander to do ranged attacks from a safe distance during Openfield fights.
Stephen III Skill Overview
Victor of Vaslui (Active Skill)
Required Rage: 1000
Stephen’s Active skill does 800 ranged direct damage or 1500 direct damage if the enemy march is in the melee range.
He also does 200 additional damage for 2s and 350 if the target is in melee range.
Lastly, when his troop launches a basic attack, it does 300 mighty healing for 2 seconds.
The melee part seems pointless, because if you fight other troop types at melee range, they are going to smash you.
As per the ranged attack, the 800 damage factor is very little, but an additional 2×200 damage can help a bit.
The last part is very interesting; you can heal for a total of 600 points upon launching a ranged basic attack. Since there is no cooldown, you can just keep switching targets after hitting it for a while to continuously get the heal.
No Rest of the Righteous(2nd skill)
The siege units gain 35% defense, a pretty good stat buff.
Moreover, siege units gain 20% march speed when not in combat. Now, this must be a joke because even after a 100% march speed boost, cavalry matches will still catch siege with ease.
Defender of Lipnic (3rd skill)
This commander’s troop takes 15% less ranged counterattack damage. This is quite a good skill because, as you might already know, ranged troops take back damage from the enemy matches, even if they are at a distance.
It’s worse against commanders who have counterattack damage. This skill will certainly help to reduce the damage taken.
Aside from that, there is a 10% chance to gain 25% more ranged normal attack damage for 3 seconds.
More normal damage is always good for ranged commanders; there is a 5-second cooldown on this, which makes it a little less viable.
All Men Must Serve(4th skill)
When Stephen’s troops launch a ranged basic attack, it has a 40% chance to gain 2% attack, but at the same time also lose 0.5% defence. This can stack up to 15 times and can last up to 15 seconds.
To be clearer, you can have up to 30% more attack and 7.5% less defense for 15 seconds.
Cosmin Forest (expertise) – boosted 3rd skill
His expertise skill does 10% more ranged skill damage.
It has a 20% chance to do 500 ranged direct damage to up to 3 targets(-15% damage factor per additional target). This skill has a 10-second cooldown.
This is quite a strong Expertise skill; 10% skill damage can boost his active skill as well as the other commanders’ active skills.
The AOE damage is small and has 10 second long cool down. Not very powerful but nice little bonus to your overall damage output.
Skill upgrade order
5-5-5-5(expertise)
If you do plan to use Stephen III for Openfield fighting, then it will most likely be in ranged mode and along with John Hunyadi.
Stephen’s second skill does have much value. But you will need his expertise skill to boost the damage output of your march.
So, you will need to max out all skills, even the second skill, to get the most out of Stephen III pairings.
Is Stephen III worth Investing in?
If you are a siege player who loves to do ranged attacks using the engineering commanders, then you can consider him.
John Hunyadi seems better than Stephen at the moment. However, both of them aren’t launched in the game, and we are yet to test them in the game.
So, maybe wait till we see some more test results and update our verdict here in the near future.
Stephen III Talent Tree builds
Stephen III is yet to be released in the game. We will update the talent tree once he is available.
Stephen III commander pairings
The best commander pairings for Stephen III will be released once he is released in the game.
Stephen III Best Formation
Stephen III is a ranged commander, so you don’t have any other choice than using a V formation for him. Currently, it’s the only formation available for the ranged commanders.
