Yay, I also would go for good scales instead of a bless. You won't have many burning ones anyway (even with full scales you can't fill all the spots usually unless with extremely good capitol placement and/or the global which boosts the resources), and your normal troops are very good anyway. I won't go with drain either, the mages are good and you need to climb the evo/thaum/constr/blood trees fast with an already unexceptional research ability.
Also, you will probably need a rainbow to help with the poor diversity or the top blood summons/rituals.
PD is so good you can get some points going with misfortune IMHO too, the PD mage can fireball teh barbarianz!!
A good dominion is IMHO needed to get the most from your high Heat scale in battle (makes heat aura and some spells/summons somewhat more effective, and cold nations sad)
But that's just my opinion, and you know, if that works for you, it's ok
