Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

The thing with the affliction bonus is that a lot of the time you expect to be killing targets you hit with damaging battlefield spells, and when you don't and they get an affliction quite often it isn't particularly damaging within that combat - disease for instance.

The creatures you want to afflict are the thugs and SCs for the most part, and typically they aren't going to be hurt much by the big area effect spells you throw down on the battlefield.

I trialled the D9 bless a few times in MP games and I can't think of a single major battle where it made the decisive difference

F9 on the other hand makes a huge difference in a lot of battles - above all due to the +4 attack. It means you hit most of the time against normal troops, and means you have a chance against thugs! When you are trying to swarm a high defence thug or SC with sacred troops the +4 makes a huge difference.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Not only does the fire bless scale itself up, but the death bless does not scale itself in terms of both atk and MR. MR checks are always vs 10. So if you're fighting chaff with MR 10 and you're comparing the death bless, it looks better than if you're fighting with and against sacreds with stats of 14 across the board. If your 14-stat sacred goes up against an enemy 14-stat sacred, the ammount you hit for either bless will be the same as the 10-stat chaff battle, but the ammount the death bless AN damage hits will be far less.

There's one massive advantage to the death bless however, and that is that AN damage ignores the effect of shields. This can have the effect of, for practical purposes, reducing the enemy def+parry by more than the fire bless's atk bonus. However, it is only for the AN part of the damage, and only if the MR check is passed. So a death bless might be better for low-damage sacreds like Jaguar Warriors against low-MR enemies like humans, but once either the MR scales up (nonhumans typically) or the damage you're doing with the regular weapon exceeds the bless effect extra damage, the fire bless becomes better again.

While you guys are right that affliction chance on ranged and spells is nice, I find that it doesn't matter in the long run. To get into another battle with the same units, you typically have to lose. And if you're fielding mages and you lose, you've usually lost far more than the extra afflictions gain you. Its useful for hit-and-run battlefield-wide spells like Rain of Stones or Earthquake, but I wouldn't base a pretender design choice around those. Not to mention that even the most elite troops are killed in one to two hits by spells they aren't immune from. So typically you don't just damage your enemy with spellcasters.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

jaguar warriors are low damage sacreds?
Besides, how does an AN negate the effect of shields? You still have to score a hit for the secondary effect to go off; you're still down +4 on the chances to hit in the first place, and I hardly see how 2 pts of damage MR can really be considered massive.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

There's little point in investing in either D or F bless without good, offensively minded sacreds (Jags come to mind.) If you have more defense-oriented sacreds either bless is a waste compared to E/N/W for them, as you're not really playing to their strengths.

Since you're fielding somewhat fragile sacreds you're going to want to ramp up your kill speed to the max to cut through chaff as quickly as possible while the arrows and evocations rain down, and F beats D in that case hands down, just test it if you have any doubts. You're basically trying to play to your strengths here, instead of force-fitting a role on troops they have no business being in.

A D bless doesn't really change the math of if putting your sacreds vs an SC is a good plan...if they can kill it with a D bless they'll kill it with F bless most of the time too, and if they can't kill it you're going to be on the losing end of the exchange with a pile of dead sacreds compared to a beat-up but alive SC. If the D bless is really that much of a deterrent a good opponent will fall back behind a chaff screen and blast some holes in your sacreds from afar while your D blessed guys struggle to kill the chaff quickly. The D bless also has a harder time against PD, forcing you to raise your raiding squad size, which is one of the areas that sacreds shine at come mid-game once the evocations start getting too hot and heavy.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

AN damage doesn't ignore shields.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

I think his point was since AN ignores protection, it doesn't matter if the attack is parried or not because the extra protection from the shield is irrelevant.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

They're low damage in that each attack itself is low damage. Obviously jags do a ton of damage, but each individual attack isn't a big one like, say, a giant like the Unmarked sacred.

My point is that a "shield hit" still counts as a hit. For most purposes, it acts like a miss since the added protection is significant. But in the case of AN damage, the added protection is irrelavent. Stuff like Gate Cleavers, Death Blesses, Dusk Daggers, all hit and do damage through shields.

Squirrelord has it right, except "parried" is a different term used for arrows, which doesn't involve protection at all.
reference: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=39853


I'm not saying a death bless is better in melee than a fire bless, but it has that single point in its favor. The MR resistable part really kills it.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Tests carried out by Micah recently suggest a shield parry in melee can do something to negate AP and AN damage from a weapon like the dusk dagger or sword of sharpness.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Let's be fair--F9 bless doesn't really scale either. For an unit with attack 10, a +4 bonus is huge vs anyone with a shield (def 14). (+160% damage? Something like that.) For a hypothetical elite unit with attack 15 already, the bonus would be much more modest (+40% or so), and vs. chaff without shields like Ulmish infantry it would be negligible since you're hitting all the time anyway.

In theory, if you're dueling someone high-Prot but low-Def (like Ulm), a D9 bless would be better than a F9 bless. I've also found that a E9D9 bless works okay against knights and heavy inf in general, since the 2AN attack ignores shields[1]. (This was as Helheim, whose sacreds have great endurance and multiple weak attacks.)

-Max

Note: I'm not advocating a D9 bless--I take it because it's fun, and because I like having a D9 spellcaster, not because the bless is good.

[1] Or so I have always believed. If Micah has tested it otherwise, okay.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

I think a D9F4 bless could be superior to a F9 bless (or F9D4) because +2 attack is already quite good...
Of course it depends on the nations a lot, and also on the game size/number of opponents (e.g. D9 > F9 argument is moot for blitzes).
So:
Death > Fire for sacred mages and archers.
Fire is better for low attack or high damage sacreds where extra damage is less important than extra hits.
Fire is also probably better in EA than LA due to better armor in LA.