Spells: What are your favorite buff combinations?
 

Talk about your favorite buffs for combat SCs and thugs here. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

My favorites right now are probably Summon Earthpower for the +4 reinvigoration and Invulnerability for the 25 protection with no added encumbrance. It seems that for a non-undead combat pretender, having at least E2 or E3 is very handy just for these two spells because otherwise, you have to pile on heavy armor and reinvigoration to offset the weight.

Luck and Body Ethereal are also nice from items of from casting. Mistform, Astral Shield, Fire Shield and Soul Vortex are also nice additions in no particular order. Twist Fate is a little lower down on the priorities and often gets dropped.

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

I really like the air trio: air shield, mistform and mirror image. Very effective, very easy to get and low fatigue.

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

soulvortex + mistform + mirror image + quicken self

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

> soulvortex + mistform + mirror image + quicken self

Which is why Niefelheim and Fomoria are so freakishly strong. More than a third
of their Jarls/Kings can cast that combo, preceded by bless. Personally, I will
sometimes drop the mirror image in favour of 'Air Shield' or 'Breath of Winter.'

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Soul vortex, mistform, air shield, blessing, hold, attack -> script for a hangadrott raiding enemy PD. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Curious. Why that order?

I tend to put the more defensive and or fatigue reducing buffs first.

I'd put those as Air Shield, Mistform, bless, Soul Vortex, hold attack. (Depending on the bless, if it included Earth, it would go first.)
Soul Vortex last. It costs a lot of fatigue and won't help until you've closed with the enemy. Putting it first increases the chance of a lucky critical arrow before your defenses are up.
Is there a reason for that order? (I was also wondering why no mirror image, until I remembered...glamor)

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

summon earthpower + strong earth bless is killer if you have it available and usable for your SC. you will basically never have to worry about fatigue.

don't overlook divine avenger if you can cast it too. it seems it will only proc once a round (and not once for each time you take damage). but it is good as both crowd control and for SC duels.

ironskin + legions of steel will add +6 protection, no matter how high it already is. (add earth bless for +10)

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Hmm, by 'divine anger', do you mean Holy Avenger?

I think Stoneskin and Invulnerability also add a small amount of protection even when you've hit their protection limit. Stoneskin may add a bit less IIRC.

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Putting Soul Vortex first is a good idea if you have a bunch of serf warriors on Guard Commander. Batteries. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

-Max

Re: Spells: What are your favorite buff combinatio
 

Got to be careful killing off your bodyguard that way. 75% hp limit and all. Clever though.

I'm usually not quite that ruthless with my troops. Mostly because of the hassle of having another set ready for the next fight.

Holy Avenger:
I've certainly seen it trigger multiple times in one round. Usually when I've killed off an AI prophet...

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.