Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Honestly, I really don't see why it's Evo-5. I don't see why it has to be higher then Thunderstrike. Anyone care to enlighten me to the reasoning?

(makes a mental note to suggest a lowering in CBM)

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

You've totally sold me on this tolkien- i can't wait to try this.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I don't agree with this. To be sure, thunderstike is a great spell, but orb lightning *definately* has its niche. The most obvious being A2 mages can cast it to very good effect if you deploy it properly. Other times orb lightning shines:

If you're fighting guys who are size 5/6 and only one per square, thunderstrike will do 26+ AN damage, while orb lightning for an A4 mage will do 40 AN. Even if you're fighting size 3 cavalry you're still often looking at a very compatible kill count per casting...which is not bad when you consider that you're also not passing out after a few castings.

Orb lightning's short range can actually be very useful for making your mages target who you want them to. Triple blessed sacred cavalry charging straight ahead into your troops? Orb lightning can clear the way so *your* cavalry can waltz up to the enemy archers which is hell of a lot better than blasting the archers with thunderstrikes because they're packed denser so the AI thinks they're better targets.

Orb lightning's fatigue cost for a mage powerful enough to be considering thunderstrike is negligible. You can lay out a lot more damage over a long battle than you could blowing your load on thunderstrikes.

Again, there's no doubt thunderstrike is a great spell, I just object to the assertion that there is no niche for orb lightning. Orb lighting is also a good spell.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Right, and don't forget that the real fatigue cost for orb lightning with an A3 mage is even lower than stated, at around 3, not 10.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

And don't forget that orb lightning does stun damage as well (per lightning, which amounts to far more than that of thunder strike for higher path mages, but it's not AoE).

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Well, thanks for the correction: I was basing this on a human-sized units. I forgot about giants (in which case, Orb Lightning is going to be more useful).

My main problem with Orb Lightning is the range (15 is rather small), and that the fatigue for Thunderstrike, if you're reverse sabbathing with reinvigoration (which was the discussion that sparked the whole Orb Lightning vs. Thunderstrike debate), is more or less irrelevant, as fatigue won't be much of an issue in that case.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I tried to run a reverse communion with the thunderstrikes and blood sabbaths and it didn't work. If you'll bear with me, maybe you can explain what i did wrong.

i was breaking a seige from formoria (i hate formoria) and they had lots of troops of various sorts and i had about 12 helherdlings and some infantry and 8 vanjarls.

the first four vanjarls were scripted with:
sabbath slave, blessing, thunderstrike, thunderstrike, thunderstike
the next 3 were scripted with:
sabbath salve, thunderstrike, thunderstrike, thunderstike, thunderstrike
and the last was scripted with:
sabbath master, mistform, reinvigoration, air shield, reinvigoration


Instead they sat around casting holy avenger and sermon of courage and the sabbath master casted fanatacism.

Why didn't they cast as i was hoping they would? thanks for any help- i am still having lots of trouble with my sabbaths/communions.

Thanks ahead of time.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

did they have slaves?

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Sabbath/Communion slaves don't get a boost in their casting level, unless a master casts something like Power of the Spheres/Hell Power/Summon Storm Power. So they were unable to cast thuderstrike because they weren't A3s.

Only the masters get a casting level boost from just having communion slaves.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Dang, thanks for that clarification, VFB. I for one (and there are likely others) was under the mistaken notion that slaves had their effective caster levels raised, just like masters.

After reading your post, I went and re-read Baalz' communion guide (carefully, this time ;) ), and sure enough, in the bit about reverse communions, it spells out the need to cast booster spells to raise slave levels. A very important fact to get straight.