Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Change Air 9 from Shock Resistance to Precision buff, like +4 or something. Air 9 is so niche but a precision buff would really be interesting I think for sacred mages and things like ancestral vessels =).

Death 9 to a fear weapon or a fear aura instead of it's current form.

Blood 9 to something else besides it's current crappy version.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

I'll sign this petition.

One suggestion for Blood9:
Dying Breath: Upon dying it curses the attacker AND deals something like a single 12 point AN damage.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Or W9 F9 bless should be weakened. Like F9 change to fire weapon, but no additional damage, just fire effect and magical. W9 lessen quickness to 25%.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

I'm not sure I'd sign on to weakening W9 or F9 blesses. The A9 bless would certainly make things more interesting. Suddenly a nation like EA T'ien Ch'i would have a serious question on their hands regarding their bless.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Order of power, IMO

Regen - although generally best for high HP units, even a 10-12 hp unit gains a slight HP regen and the affliction reduction to 1/8
MR - everyone can use more MR, not sure if i like the max of 18 (from manual)
re-invig - everyone can use invig, higher armor more so
+atk - frequently useful, although the increments are low
+def - less useful as can be easily reduced through swarming, unit dependent, existing high def gets much better
airshield - niche usefulness, but still good at low levels
+affliction - niche usefulness, +shroud can make even some spells even more effective
+str - more damage is good, but low increment and the increase doesn't seem worth it. Either the unit has high str already and its a small % increase, or low str already and the little increase doesn't help much

Many seem good at lvl 4 (i.e. +2 atk) but the increase at lvl 8 isn't that hot (+2 atk to +4 atk)

Major bless
Quickness - almost always good
Fire affect - magic weapon plus significant damage, plus burn
Berserk - very powerful, but also double edged.
+4 prot - nice, but doesn't seem to impact as much as above. Primarily good for mid-high prot units although some benefit to low prot units.
Twist Fate - Kind of good, but 1 shot benefit. AFAIK the hit doesn't have to do damage, just land to dispel TF making it less useful on high prot units. Needs a bit of a tweak up but not much.
Death weapon - magic weapon? 2 AN (or AP) AN is kind of nice, but 2 damage isn't that great. If it made the whole attack AN it might be too powerful. Possibly make full attack into AP? Not too great as is.
Lightning resist - meh, very niche. Possibly mirror image? Mistform being too powerful. +precision as above might work too, possibly +precision for minor and +80 airshield for major?
Death curse - meh, really needs to be changed. Very niche in usefulness


Seems like there is a large disparity in power, with F,W,N being great; E,S being ok, and the rest being weak in comparison.

To also be considered: a D9 pretender will get great value out of the path level with many death spells being level dependent and good high path cost spells. The same could also be said for B9, S9 and E9. Possibly pushing E,S up to the need no change level.

Thoughts:
Add a state called partial ethereality - 40% instead of 75% for S9, or possibly luck?
Raise E9 to +5 or +6 prot
D9 to AP weps (or create a new weapon status for partial AP (similar to partial quickness)) Partial AP would reduce prot by 1/4 instead of 1/2. Or give all weapons a coat of poison/corrosion/disease.
B9 - no clue, but death curse kind of sucks. Possibly a minor drain life effect? 1/2 or 1/4 of current wep drain life. Possibly similar to 10% regen (lvl 6 nature) but gives a bit of invig as well.
A9 - 80% airshield, mirror image, lesser mistform effect, lightning weapon effect, or lightning shield effect (either similar to fire sheild, or a type of charge body that doesn't affect the sacred for a 1 shot attack ala reverse twist fate)

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Curse Luck from Blood 9 would be kind of interesting. Ability to NEGATE LUCK, on thugs/SCs... that's good.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

I definitely think Life Drain for Blood 9 is VERY thematic and actually very very nice.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Personally I think the blesses go very well with the spells. Sorcery paths are typically very powerful and have weaker blesses while elemental paths have stronger blesses but fewer powerful spells. I'm not sure if it's meant to be that way or not.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

That would be nicely thematic but I'd be worried about it being tooooo nice...

I think if it was limited in some way it would be pretty sweet.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

You can't make D9 give fear 0, it's just too strong. I think death and astral blesses are fine the way they are. Air bless on the other hand - I think precision would be interesting for that.

What if B9 gave some form of blood vengeance? Would it be too strong?

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Maybe if it were just 1-3 points of life drain per hit, or something like that.

Jazzepi

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Right now its capped at weapon damage and not str damage correct? Possibly just do a fraction of weapon damage.

In my mind I saw the drain life as being half as efficient as the same level regeneration bless since it provides re-invig and can be quickened.

Since I just realized the implications of quickness, it would either have to be just base weapon somehow (no eq) or capped at 1-3 pts of damage. Would be crazy to have a blessed SC with quickness, gloves, bird, etc and getting 20 drain life attacks ON TOP of standard weapon/item damage.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

I can live with the astral bless as s9 is powerful in and of itself and both the minor and major blesses are useful in most cases.

I'm not a fan of the death major bless at all, and the minor one is a bit unwieldy.

Air major bless sucks, minor could be changed as well but is thematic and somewhat useful. Even 20% airshield helps with semi-nekkid sacreds (jags)

Blood minor is fine if bleh, Major needs a major rehaul.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

B9 could be given a "blood-drinking" attack. Once a unit is struck, the unit most make a MR resist roll or suffer a life drain attack. Make the roll "easy" -4. No real idea what a fair damage level would be.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Precision bonus or Haste would make sense for Major Air.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

'zerk seems more Blood than Nature, to my weird sense of it.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

You guys missed it.

Unlockable units.

Could be bless 9 to summon or bless 9 before the race could buy. Don't even show till the Pretender gets there. Something according to race. What is their strong suite?

Fire for Marignon.

Nature for druids.

Air and astral for amazons.

Maybe special heros to unlock or special enemies. Depending on luck. Maybe a random special enemy when Ermor goes astral 9 or when a air race goes earth 9. Something nasty to make you think twice about opening the gates or a SC for just the right bless. Make luck and bless more important.

Greed, I want to unlock the ancesteral dragon hero. Fear, I released the dread that moves from my province to my province killing 90% of the population till you stop it. The life champion that causes massive growth and good fortune. Does astral or nature 9 cause a growth bonus C'tis's enemies.

The Ermor 30% spell fat. penalty merc offers his service to all but Ermor.

Do you unlock special merc's devoted to your doom because you crossed the threshold. Do the special salvation merc's offer you their service?

Does solar disc have a special enemy or friend just waiting for him to empower to much. Will declaring war on the bless 9 scholar cause his enemy to offer you is service?

Weird bless units that can only be bought at the castle the 9 bless Pretender is at.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Keep in mind that blesses aren't suppose to be perfectly balanced, so long as the magic path is balanced accross the board. I think it comes as no surprise that the two most powerful magics for endgame, blood and astral, are also considered the weakest blesses.

Thats not to say some there isn't a case for blesses being changed. It is, however, saying that the argument for changing blesses should not be "the current one is crappy". I'll admit that I can't even fathom a niche roll for the Blood high bless. I do know replacing it with Blood Vengance is a terrible idea, thats way overpowering. Perhaps a minor morale boost instead, say +4. Now, there are probably some real tangible uses for that. Of course, its not nearly as good as some other blesses, but it shouldn't be.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Jutetrea,

Regen doesn't necessarily cut your affliction chance to 1/8. KO mentioned a while back that it actually depends on your regen %.

-Max

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Go away. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif The last thing we need is making blesses absolutely necessary for everyone. Even folks without solid sacreds.

In my opinion, blesses should be reduced to what they were - a 2 morale bonus. Nothing else!

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Blesses were never *just* a 2 morale bonus. In Dom1 they gave +3 att +3 str, the equivalent of a F6B6 under the Dom 2/3 system. (Nearly everyone who cares about their sacreds has a stronger bless than that, often *much* stronger, which is one reason blesses dominate the game so much more than they did in Dom1.)

IMO, the main problem with blesses is the ability to rush with them: why not weaken blesses in enemy dominion? For every 2 candles you get -1 to each path of your bless, or something like that. Rushing people's capitols would be far less effective since the first thing you lose is the quickness and flaming weapons. If you take it slow and push their dominion back while keeping your sacreds in friendly, neutral or near neutral dominion, then they have time to research some counters.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Oh, you're right. Jogged my memory a bit. But still, the thing is, the 3str/att/2 morale was something that EVERYONE got, so it wasn't ever an issue of any kind. And the fact that I happened to forget the exact bless effects of the good old days doesn't change my point, which is, making blesses even STRONGER from the crazy point they are NOW would be a baad baad idea. Sure, some of the blesses suck and probably could use a boost of some kind, but if some of them suck, why also upgrade the better ones?

Makes no sense, does it?

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

I already know this but it doesn't work that way even if it's intended for practice. Nature is tremendously good in both bless and magic form. So is Astral. Twist of Fate is nothing to laugh at, especially if you've ever played against s9 vestals. Meanwhile Air 9 completely SUCKS and taking 9 bolts of it is just going to get you one mean orb lightning thrower. HEck if it came down to it, I'd rather have a pretender that could cast flames from the sky or Maelstrom than Gale Gate.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

I like the reduced bless in enemy dominion idea.

There are 6 steps to a bless right (some effects stay per 2 lvls (fire, water, etc), some are per level (air, death).

Max of 10 dominion.

Personally I think losing the lvl 9 bonus first would suck, but it could be up for discussion. I'd say lose the incremental minor blesses for lower candles and only lose the lvl 9 bless for enemy dominion of 6 or higher.

Using Fire as an example
0: candles, no change to bless
1: -2 attack
2: -2 attack
3: -3 attack
4: -3 attack
5: -4 attack
6: -4 attack, loss of flaming effect
7-10: -4 attack, no flame, -2 morale

So a dominion push would always be able to slow down a bless rush.

Beyond that, upgrade air, death, blood major bless at least to something useful. Death and Blood to a lesser extent then air.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

One of the things I truly love about Dominions is that it is wildly, flagrantly unbalanced. Balance is just a euphemism for boring sameness. In the end the only way to TRULY balance the game would be for everything to be identical.

In my opinion you should only be re-balancing for thematic reasons, or when something is so powerful it's practically a necessity (VQ's), or so weak it's never used at all.
With that said, I wouldn't mind seeing Blood/Air blesses changed to something more fun. Maybe if Blood 9 made your units mindless, or the aforementioned precision boost from air, which I especially like since it might make a ranged sacred focus viable. Death is fine as is, I think. Apart from being an awesome path, I still don't think we've seen the possible Affliction % benefits when stacked with global/overland casters fully mapped out.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Points to Cheezeninja.
In random idea field - (for fun, not balance)
Charge Body replaces SR (note - charge body hurts both the attacker and defender)
Harrying Winds (acts like Stone Bird, but weaker- gives every unit an extra, but weak, attack. Functions like Slave Warrior's bite- not powerful, but size two units can bring down the defense values quickly)
Phantom Weapon - causes cnfusion

Blood Hunger - unit gets small lifedrain, but loses health every turn - or a one use Leeching Touch

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

random ideas from me:

- a9 gives Flying http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
or
- a9 gives that charge thingie.. forgot the name

Precision buff would really be cool though

giving Blood 9 a drain life attack would be very thematic, but maybe too powerful?

Death should give Fear or Awe

and minor Astral blesses should give more Magic resistance imo (like +2/+4/+6 etc)

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

I think the lvl 9 blesses are meant to be unequal. W9 bless needs to be more powerful as W9 is not as useful in its own right while S9 needs to be weak because S9 is powerful in its own right. B9 is the only one that I think needs strengthened. Currently I cannot think of any situation where one would want to start with a B9 pretender.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

S9 bless isn't actually weak though. S bless isn't great, but S9 is usable, unlike blood or air. What is A9 on a pretender good for? Why would you really need air that high?

I don't really buy that balance argument. Air magic is very powerful, but air on your pretender isn't really.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

If the blesses were changed, someone would figure out how to use this to their advantage and start a new round of calls for modifications.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

A9 on a pretender is surely of no use, but A mages are the most powerfull battle mages around, able to toast my anathemants or witch hunters before they can even get in range for their poor F spells.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

But what does that have to do with air bless being weak? It isn't like you can't use national air mages if you don't take an air magic pretender. I don't understand the argument that because air magic grants powerful combat spells it should have a weak bless - the combat/utility spells are used by recruitable air mages, the bless is on the pretender - they aren't really related at all. I mean sure the pretender is another air mage, but one isn't going to make much difference and he still wouldn't need anywhere near A9.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

While A9 is not that useful, A4 or A5 is certainly extremely useful on your pretender, esp. considering in LA, no nation gets A4 and even A3 is not guaranteed for the strongest air nation.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Meh, people who think that changing things to make them more balanced promotes the same style of play are completely incorrect. Balance promotes people to try new things and encourages different strategies, rather than the obvious best.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Exactly. Right now, anyone who wants a strong bless for sacreds with low HP takes W9 and probably F9. If they're high HP they take N6-9 and possibly E9. The rest are basically not worth consideration as blesses. MR protects against too few things, strength only helps you if you hit (and then not very much) and air shield has low percentages and limited usefulness once arrow fend and storms start flying. Death is OK for sacred battlemages but that's more a novelty than a strategy that will win games.

There are other reasons to take some of those paths on your pretender, but not high enough for a strong bless. Why can't we have 8 strong blesses that are actively desired in addition to the other uses of those paths? (Some people say that water is a weak path outside of its bless - I don't believe this is true anymore, but even if you think it is, do you want to make the same claim about nature?)

Let Death Weapons live up to the name - every hit works like Heart Finder Sword, MR or die (unless lifeless). Let S9 give luck instead of merely twist fate. Let B9 horror mark or curse any target hit (including hit by spells, like Death's afflictions bonus). And let A9 give charge body in addition to 75% SR (and maybe increase the air shield percentages, they're so low as to be almost ignorable now). Those would be some blesses that would make people think twice before reaching for W9 game after game after game.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Hmm, well...

For an alternate Wind bless, might I recommend an increase in Action Points?

There aren't too many sacred missile troops, and Air Mages get +Precision from Air magic anyhow. This give melee troops a decent buff that stays w/in the character of Air magic w/out intruding w/other Path blesses.

I did also think that Death bless w/out Fear kinda sucked, but then again, that may be a bit imba. Another idea would be to automatically raise the unit as Undead if killed in battle? Or perhaps give Sacred Units Life Drain attacks?

As for an alternate Blood bless, perhaps a minor life drain ability? Or give Blood the Berserk ability (aka Frenzy) and give Nature poison weapons?

As for Awe, i'd leave that for a Astral bless, since most creatures w/Awe tend to be Astrally summoned (i.e., use Astral Gems).

Some ideas for ya http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Sombre : I think you're right, my pretender usually sits in it's keep, waiting for powerfull equipment. By the time he goes to battle, he will be empowered. I don't think it would change the way I play to change the A bless, but I only play on big (400+) maps.
On a small map, if the A/D/B blesses were as interesting as the F and W bless, wouldn't everyone select A/B/D ?

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

No. If A/B/D were as interesting as the others, people would play A/B/D/E/F/W/N pretenders.

Increasing action points is an interesting idea, but mostly that just gets you into melee faster, to no real point if you've got an arrow ward up. Well, okay, it'll help you chase down routing troops I guess.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Death bless is very strong as is. Maybe its worse against national troops than Fire, but it makes SCs nearly obsolete. Ever tried using an SC against a W9D9 jaguars?
Anyway, I'd like to see strong blesses weakened atm... Sacred troops dominate the environment too much, just as SCs were in Dominions 2. At least SCs required some research and planning, while sacreds are a no-brainer in many cases.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Umm... SC's I design don't get hit by D9. In THEORY D9 should be the SC destroyer but a magic /negatable/ attack is laughable. Also, the very idea of bless troops against SC rarely happens since the entire point of getting a SC is that he's maneveurable enough to avoid armies you don't want to fight and squash the ones you do.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

MR doesn't negate the increased affliction chance.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Death Bless is fine in my oppinion.

Its not the ultimate bless for your sacreds but the bless bonus is ok for your troops.

In addition you power up all your mage to do 100-500% more afflictions and this can be very good in battle with the right strategy even against SC's.

I tested spells like Flames from the Sky. This also work. In middle/late game some of my caster wear shroud of the battle saint just to bring affliction pain to big/nasty armies.

Air 9 is really crap. Don't touch it in moment.

Well Blood 9 could be good if there were a race with for example weak sacreds + bless commander as PD. I did some test games with the insectoid mod and it works pretty good against attacking SC's and other things. Sadly the mod MP game wasn't started so i can't test it more. Mictlan has sacred PD but other blesses are better here. Maybe Kristoffer can make a race of a lot of really crappy & really cheap sacreds which are also in PD to make this bless more interesting.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

If you arent talking about turn 60+ or a medusa pretender, its more of an oversight by your opponents. There are ways to counter such an 'uncratchable' SC, like giving some cheap commander an eye of the void.

Arm loss and chest wound arent.

It happens every now and then, when your opponent relies on sacred troops heavily and your nationals cannot do jack against them so you are forced to rely on SC instead.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

and why not a D9 bless giving Deceased ?

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

Ideally, in a magical world where code dances to my whim, blessings would be based on your Pretender and his/her level of Dominion, not on anything else. It's silly to say "well, my Pretender is really good at fire magic, so all my sacred troops do magical fire damage" and call that a blessing. It's not a blessing, it's the result of a spell that the magical game-fairies cast for you when you're not looking.

It's equally silly to suggest that your Pretender can be X amount good/knowledgeable of fire magic and that's why his blessings are effective, but if he becomes X+11, that doesn't do a damn thing.

Much more sensible, fun, and opening-of-the-game-to-roleplaying-and-modding, if the bless is based on the form chosen and divine power possessed by the Pretender-including obtained divine power from temples built, since that would make for some very interesting strategy.

Naturally, it would be difficult to implement.

Re: Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses
 

I'll jump in, since I'm drunk.

All of the blessings are fine except for Death, B9 and A9, which are a bit underpowered.

A4 gives you the ability to forge air boosters, which is so useful that the A4 bless can be substandard. None-the-less, A4+ should give sacreds +1 precision, +1/2A past 4, IN ADDITION TO THE AIR SHIELD, because sacred archers should want an air blessing. and sacred non-archers wouldn't care.

While we're at it, F9 should give flaming arrows as well as flaming weapons.

B9 should absolutely be "blood weapons", which have lesser life drain. Lesser life drain is not that big a deal. Arrows should become "blood arrows".

The death blessing should simply be better - about twice as big a bonus to affliction chance. D9 should apply to missile weapons as well, of course.