[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by PvK:
Is there any reason why we shouldn't read that an overstatement from the perspective of a narrow selection process? She's still a good immortal fighting chassis with a huge list of build-in abilities. Looks good to me.

Well, the way I see it, the best comparison is with the Prince of Death. The base differences between the two post-patch is:

1) 100 points in favor of the Prince of Death.
2) 2 base Dominion in favor of the Prince of Death.
3) DDD (PoD) as opposed to DBB (VQ). If you are talking about an SC build for them, this is a point in favor of the PoD. I've never heard of an SC using Blood magic in combat.
4) The PoD has about a 2-3 pt. edge in every fighting statistic over a VQ. He also enjoys twice the base HPs of a VQ.

Now, balanced against this, you have the VQs Etherealness, Immortality, and Regeneration (there's also the Life Drain attack). If you think that's balanced, that's fine. I, personally, do not, especially since everything but the Immortality that the VQ possesses, the PoD can attain through items or spells.

As a test, I took a VQ and a PoD, and bought them up to the same level. The amount of points that took for each was:

VQ: 195
PoD: 116

Also, any further increase to Dominion (which is currently a 3) or to Death magic will favor the PoD, while an increase in Blood magic (which, for an SC, is suboptimal) favors the VQ.

Good point about Broken Empire, but they'd have to change the god selection UI to eliminate it only from the Ashen and SG themes. Seems to me there are good thematic and logical reasons from taking from them, and the perhaps unnecessary hit to Broken Empire doesn't seem to me like a big deal.

Personally, I'd rather have an unclear reason for an omitted pretender choice, than a couple of pretender choices that don't make a lot of sense (vampire queen with murderous dominion exterminating her blood sources).

True, but beware of where that path leads you. Why should Jotunheim get non-giant pretenders? Sure, there's Utgard, but that's only one theme. Same for C'tis and non-lizards. Etc.

Then there's the question of why it was removed from ONLY Ermor. If it had been restricted farther, I'd actually have less of a problem with it. But the 'only Ermor' removal smacks of silver bulleting, which is generally not a good way to enhance game balance.

Oh? What about the chorus of whines that everyone was copying Norfleet's strategy?

As Yossar said, I've not seen a single report of anyone but Norfleet able to win with the strategy Norfleet used.

Cool - looking forward to it!

Mm. Be careful of what you wish for.

Scott