[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Blitz:
Precicely my point. The GK is almost like a nerfed VQ. It loses the blood magic, Flying, Lifedrain, Immortality, Regeneration and is a whopping 20 points cheaper.

It also has far cheaper paths: If you're not willing to screw over your scales to get the high and diverse magics needed to create a really heavyweight SC, you can go the GK route instead, and either get the same scales with higher paths, or more paths with the same scales. If the VQ were significantly altered, such as losing a Misc slot, I'd be dumping it in favor of the GK. The lifedrain is a minor matter, as the VQ loses its lifedrain when given a weapon, which you will do shortly anyway, just to prevent empty slots from picking up cursed items. The blood magic is mostly meaningless on the VQ, as blood is by far the cheapest path to empower in, and provides absolutely no benefit in combat, the main reason why you'd take a VQ: To have the best possible base chassis for building a monster SC out of it. In exchange, you basically get squat all as far as dominion strength(an unexceptional 2), and blessing bases(death/blood, neither of which are strong blessing material). You're going to have to pay for any extras yourself. While a potent defensive weapon, as an attacker, the VQ is somewhat less impressive, as immortality is gone in enemy dominion, and the chassis itself is physically frail, having a mere 23 base HP.

edit: The GK also has a much higher defense value. Please do not try to argue that this equates to immortality or any such nonsense.

This is indeed not "equivalent" to immortality, but it's definitely a feather in the cap of somebody taking the GK route instead. Sure, it's not a substitute for immortality, but the lower chassis cost, combined with the lower path cost, will let you afford better defensive paths on top of that.