[Sandman]

Air 9 blessing makes for a truly AWESOME combination used together with Wrathful skies - and is the best protection against an enemy using that spell if you have many sacred troops.

I suppose I'm wedded to the idea of using bless effects as a booster to early game power, and I don't deny that sounds like a powerful combination. But the pain in paying for a bless effect that doesn't have as much immediate power as some of the others and then researching a level six spell doesn't sound that great.

And that is discounting the exceedingly strong power of the L4 blessing at high levels of air magic. For instance I love air 8-10 for Marignon (a Virtue is best for this) since it will allow my crossbows to fire straight into the same enemy formation my Knights of the Chalice are engaging in melee - and I don't need my Virtue along to cast "Arrow Fend" to get the effect, any priest will do.

Well, you could always use indy archers without piercing bows, and take fire 9 instead to deal with heavy foes. Although if the air shield works on flaming arrows (which it probably does) then that method does sound interesting. But is it really 'exceedingly' strong?

I suppose my problem is that the air blessings require subtlety, whereas most of the other blessings are in-your-face badassness.

Charge body combined with total immunity would be dreadfully overpowered. Every enemy hitting one of your sacred units (for the first time) would die. Imagine attacking an army of knights with flagellants. 30 flagellants would beat 40 or 50 knights. Most of these knights would die.

You're right, of course. I'll forget about that idea.