Well, I just tried out a "super caster" phoenix pretender (F9A9), and he seemed quite decent. provided some artillery support in the early expansion, then retired back to base in order to get research under way (playing c'tis w/ drain 3).
then, after research gets kicked into high gear, he re-emerged as a kick-*** dominion defender - any incursion, and he could respond w/ extreme prejudice - sulpher cloud, fire cloud, orb lightning, etc...
Plus, by then w/ an eye of aiming he had a 30 precision
And the serpent dancers worked reasonably well w/ the blessings, though really the 75% lightning resistence is more of a multiplayer sort of thing.