death bless
 

what exactly does this avail you? does anyone use this? i tried it on, what was probably, the worst pretender ever created(that'd be a good thread).

i guess it means your blessed troops inflict afflictions on enemies? help me, dudes.

Re: death bless
 

Yes. AFAIK, it also works for spell damage, so some death bless could be EEEEEEVIL on sacred mages casting evocations. Even if enemies live through it - they are crippled for the rest of their (short) lives.
Major D bless isn`t suitable for nations with blessable thugs, because it replaces any useful magic effect on thug`s weapon, like this AoE damage on Fire Brand. And those 2 points of damage from major D bless are MR negated.
I think, high D bless is the worst high bless in game. If you want higher damage - get high F or low B.

Re: death bless
 

lucky for you, shard, you are vs me in the game where i have the most useless pretener of all time.

hey, you learn by f***ing up...

Re: death bless
 

Well, you still have (or, at least, had) serious financial lead due to my somewhat failed expansion and crappy starting position.
And your pretender isn`t useless - he still can pose serious problem to unsupported armies and his snake freespawn is very nice.

Re: death bless
 

its also useful if you have sacred archers.

LA Ti'en Ch'i makes good use of a death bless having both sacred casters and sacred archers. I've only ever used the heavy death bless on Ti'en Ch'i but i didn't really regret it.

A pretender with high death can also be used to summon many ghosts with pretty good efficiency if you like ghosts and they fit into your nation tactics

A minor death bless (D4-8) increases the chance of your blessed sacred units (or blessed sacred mages) causing an infliction on those they damage.

I think some people like to do this on archers. LA TC has sacred Ancestor Vessel horse archers, but I can't remember if their howling bow messes up some bless effects..?

EA Kailasa has sacred archers too, so they could use a death bless to increase inflictions on the victims of their archery. I don't think too many people do that though - the monkeys are pretty vulnerable to archery, so picking an archery fight with people tends to not be something Kailasa wants to do (but maybe someone has made this work?). A not terribly good idea would be your archers raining affliction causing shafts down on your archery vulnerable melee troops as they engage the enemy. The screeching you hear is not monkey happiness.

Having blessed thugs that are more likely to cause afflictions can sometimes scare your opponents. Other players may not want to send a well kitted-out thug or SC against your thugs with their increased affliction chance.

Sacred mages raining evocations down on the enemy get the bonus affliction chance too. Get hit by a fireball and lose an eye! Or use the blood large AOE low damage spells (ie. Agony, Harm, Bloodletting) to give afflictions to an entire army.

Major death bless (D9+) provides a bonus AN damage (MR save negates) to melee attacks.

The major bless (like the major fire bless) interferes with the secondary effects on popular forged weapons used by thugs/SCs, like the frost/fire/death brands. When you want AOE fire for the entire square you're attacking and all those gems you spent forging that rocking gear only get you some +AP fire damage to the single target you hit, this is frustrating.

Of course, you can always ignore the bless effects and just decide that it's useful to have a pretender with access to high death magic for it's own sake. If you wanted a nice bless, why didn't you take water or nature or earth? :)

--
Edit: Too slow. Ninja'ed! :)

Re: death bless
 

D9+ works fine for nations wanting to hire thugs.

Just make sure the said firebrand thug is non-sacred like a bane lord and you're good to go ;)

Then kit your blessable anti-SC thugs up with dual dusk daggers, bless them and watch them take out both of that SC's eyes out in the first combat round and pop a chest wound and a limp in the second round.

That will make it harder for him to flee your D9 anti-SC thug as he chases him down and loots all that good armor and misc items off his body.

Re: death bless
 

D10-blessed Rudra with 4 dusk daggers, anyone? :D

Re: death bless
 

Mictlan with a W9D9 bless is actually pretty viable. The bless works fine vs normal troops and is terrifying vs enemy SC. Each jaguar warrior in jaguar form will dish out 4.5 dmg 2, armor negating, mr negate attacks a turn. And if anyone of them makes it past the SC magic resistance they will probably cause an affliction.:D

It lacks the extra attack bonus from the fire bless, but remember that even a shield hit will trigger the death weapon effect so against enemies with shields its almost like they really got +4 to attack. And the enemy must save vs 12 witch is hard for indies.

Re: death bless
 

hm, now I have a question about Death Bless.

I know Awe has different strengths at dom 9 and dom 10....

And A10 has more shock resistance than A9....

Does the save vs the AN damage get harder to save against at D10 over D9?

Re: death bless
 

Taking level 10 magic on your pretender never improves the level 9 effect. It improves the minor effect. So A9 continues to improve air shield, not shock resistance. Likewise, for the deathbless, taking D10 improves affliction chance, not the MR damage.

As others have said, death is not a very good bless, but some nations can use it. LA TC and Kailasa have been mentioned, but I think Abysia is an even better candidate- with all those sacred mages dropping fire evocations, high affliction chance helps them stay relevant even when your enemy has buffed his troops with 50% fire resistance.

Re: death bless
 

fyi the major bless effect does 3AN damage in cbm.

Re: death bless
 

Awesome Death-Bless is Awesome!

Re: death bless
 

In addition to what others have said, I'll add that D9 bless works very well against most types of thugs.

Re: death bless
 

I'll also point out a fact that most people don't factor in when comparing it to the other major blesses; that it's much cheaper a lot of the time...

Re: death bless
 

Does this issue occurs with F9 bless ?

Re: death bless
 

Yes.

Re: death bless
 

Yes, it does.
S bless is also cheap. And S9 pretender is, probably, even more useful (teleporting fountain with Master Enslave FTW!), altouugh more vulneurable in combat..

Re: death bless
 

Then in the current game I'm playing, I should consider not giving my SCs shrouds of the battle saint & frost or fire brands anymore, as I do have a F9 bless. :D

Thanks.

Re: death bless
 

Give them Swords of Quickness instead.

Re: death bless
 

In cbm the death weapons bless is still resistable right?

Re: death bless
 

Right, it is.

Re: death bless
 

Death bless (Db) with sacred archers has been mentioned.

You can also duplicate this pretty cost efficiently with sacred mage + bow of war for certain nation, more specifically it's best for those nations with cheap sacred mage with a water path for a quicken self.

Say, LA Atlantis' Tungalik as one example. Of course, you do need the appropriate construction research so it's not an early game tool.

Of course, you'd want more synergy then just sacred archery if possible. As mentioned: Db spell blasting, other national sacred troops, spell path diversity...etc.

Going back to LA atlantis example, they have the Db Tungalik BoW angle, Db Angakok spell blasting angle, arssartut sacred troop (though Db is a bit of an overkill on top of perma-weaken bone glaives), and for spell diversity despite appearance it is actually useful if you open up crosspaths, say for example ND (Lamia queen), SD (Ether gate), ED (hidden in sand... it's more useful to LA atlantis then you think)...etc it doesn't hurt that N, S, E are all very useful bless and diversity for LA atlantis.

Oh my, I seem to have veered off a bit there...

Re: death bless
 

Clarification requested: Because with quicken self you cannot melee attack twice but you can fire a bow twice? (If it's one of those bows which only fires every other turn, q.s. doesn't make it fire every turn, does it?)

Re: death bless
 

You attack twice in mele if you use quicken self. It gives you quickness effect = increased action points + 2 attacks per turn(or two shots with a bow) It doesn't affect spell casting so you still will be casting only one spell per turn.

And about the crossbow question: Yes it would fire every turn with quickness.(given that it fires 1 time for 2 turns.)

Re: death bless
 

Think before quickening archers, though, as the extra action points seem to cause them to move forward each turn no matter how you script them. It can still be good to get more shots off early, but you don't usually want unarmored archers rushing into melee.

Re: death bless
 

That's very interesting! I had assumed the "once every two turns" was a "feature" of the bow, like, I got too hot from firing sort of as a machine gun, or something ... :)

Re: death bless
 

No. More like, it takes too long to load and cock.

Re: death bless
 

This makes it more viable for me, as I didn't fancy the "every other turn". Tell me, playing SP (so it's not like the opponent might be all mages), is it ever really going to target much of interest? I get the impression, even with some "targetting", there is so much chaff around in any decent AI army that doesn't pick much of interest to hit?