Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Holy Avenger:

Are you sure you didn't see it fire several times in a row at the end of a fight? After the last enemy is dead/retreated, several (5?) rounds of battle still pass in order to give poison/Decay/Holy Avenger a little bit more time to take effect. A similar mechanic results in units who retreat while suffering from Decay disappearing in little puffs of blood--they aged to death.

Soul Vortex:

Yeah, I haven't actually done this a lot. When I have there's usually a group of "real" guards (Helhirdlings) to accompany the Hangadrott, which is probably why I never ran into (or thought about) the 75% HP autoroute threshold. [IIRC, autoroute happens not when 75% of your UNITS have died or routed--it's when 75% of all HP have died/routed. Thus, monkeys matter less than Tartarians.]

-Max

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Yeah, I guess that could be it. Weird if it keeps track and only fires once per round. That would be both once per time you take damage and once per round. Which I never even considered.

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

hmm. maybe y'all are right. i had a battle replay of holy avenger, and i watched closely and the unit actually only got damaged once each turn. he was surrounded and i assumed he got hit multiple times, but he didn't. so maybe it will proc multiple times in a round.

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Hmm, using a communion to buff multiple thugs with Holy Avenger might be nifty, but probably not terribly useful.

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

I think the problem is they have to take damage to proc the effect; where other shields proc on hit.

it is still useful though if you want to stack up such shield effects, although you always have to consider the opportunity costs.

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Are you sure about this? In my experience, Stoneskin always gives +2 and Ironskin gives +3 after maxing out, but Legions of Steel doesn't seem to work on a E9 Cyclops (who is fully armored) with over 30 protection.

I think there is some protection point at which Legions of Steel stops working though I'm not clear on exactly what it is.

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Hmm. E9 Cyclops has something like 29 base protection already. Let's say his armor is 15. (For simplicity, we'll make it 15 on both head and body.) Base protection combines with armor according to the formula

total = base + armor - (armor*base/40).

Thus, before Legions of Steel he would have 29 + 15 - (29*15/40) = 33.4 protection. After Legions of Steel, he would have 29 + 18 - (29*18/40) = 33.95 protection. Depending upon how rounding is done, he's getting a +3 armor bonus without changing his total protection at all. Does that sound like what you saw? If so, it's not Legions of Steel's fault.

-Max

P.S. All you guys that talk about buffing spells for SCs, how do you deal with the fatigue? Do you just make amulets of resilience mandatory gear for your thugs/SCs? (They probably should be anyway, but it's one less slot open...)

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Some form of reinvigoration is mandatory for anything except 0 encumbrance non spellcasting SCs.

Soul Vortex or life drain weapons work too. Some way to keep fatigue down.

I'm generally willing to risk moderate fatigue for a few turns after buffing, if it's dropping quickly. Ex. Dai Oni casting Soul Vortex get quite a bit of fatigue that will last until they get surrounded. If they don't take a critical hit right away they'll be fine.

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

I like Summon Earthpower for reducing fatigue. The only downside is that if you want to use it on an awake SC, it requires researching Conj 3 early when you might want to research something else.

I'm not sure about the exact armor values, but I will look at them later. Maybe there was a chance that the Cyclops *missed* himself when casting Legions of Steel.