Re: Various questions
 

Ah well, I suppose having 350% affliction rate with your nuking mage is more then enough, disease is like overkill lol.

Re: Various questions
 

Actually it's not a 350% affliction rate, it's a +350% bonus to your ordinary affliction rate. I find it easier to describe it in mathematics :D -> (affliction chance after bless) = (affliction chance before bless)*4.5

It's still pretty good though. It's considered one of the weaker blesses but it's good in some situations (like when casting flames from the sky).

Re: Various questions
 

The affliction rate is absolutely worthless.

Death is for tarts, banes, mound fiends, darkness, soul vortex, ...etc

Re: Various questions
 

I dunno, i'm a fan of a d-bless for mages. You'd be surprised how often an inconvenient chest wound makes the difference between an SC or tough sacred kicking your *** or falling over dead. Limp, cripple, and blind can all be rather nice as well. And scoring feeblemind or mute against mages is generally enough to make them absolutely worthless.

That said, D4-6 is generally enough for these purposes. No need to go all the way to D9.

Edit:
The bonus affliction chance is separate from the D9 weapon effect and applies to any damage the blessed creature does. Mages casting spells? Check. Sacred hydra poison cloud's poison damage? Check.

Re: Various questions
 

Lol a D9 saint shroud mage dropping AoE ritual/battle spell sounds good, too bad the death weapon +2 AN + disease bonus don't get added. The D9 bless actually sounds a lot better vs thugs/SC/Giants then the standard fire bless in mid-late game. You'd get a super efficient ghost summon with that kind of Death...

Some more questions popped in to my head:

- When using stone sphere into domed provinces, do you trigger the dome's retaliation effect if any? If the retaliation effect does occur and your sphere holder dies, do your other commanders pick up the stone sphere (assuming they have slots for it) 100% of the time?

- if a D9 saint shroud mage cast global or dome, like that lighting strike in your dominion global or a fire/ice dome, do those lighting/fire/ice damage also carry +350% affliction power?

Re: Various questions
 

I think this is a tough one:

- Will a mage casting transformation / crossbreeding get better chances at rares creature(s) if Lady of fortune (or firebird for that matter) was present in the same provinces.

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AFAIK no.

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I did about 60 casts and had no discernable differenc.e

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Are they an independent effect, or do they increase the local luck scale? Because i think its based on local luck scale.

Re: Various questions
 

My presumption was they increased the luck scale.
Either way, my tests were done G3L3 vs G3L3 with LoF.