[Oversway]

In the unmodded game, Order 3 Misfortune 2 was standard. Death 2 or 3 was pretty common as well. The bad effects rarely outweighed the good.

Now it is more of a trade off, which seems to be your issue.

I don't see why you won't take sloth if you have low resource troops. If you take Order 3 Sloth 3, you get a net gain of 9% for zero point cost. Part of the game is can you have to do something with that savings to make up for the sloth?

But if you don't like it, you can go for great scales and have a less powerful pretender & blessing effects. That is a viable choice, too.