Quote:
Originally Posted by alhorro
Vampire lord is also a best prophet possible — after prophetizing he turns from just a thug/support mage into a great SC.
There are easy ways to counter vampires though. Evo and anti-undead mages surrounded by chaff have great chances to destroy the entire pack in one turn even in darkness, not to mention that getting a dv mage is not harder, than getting a VL. VL has low MR and could be easily mindhunted, and without gear he can't survive a single earth attack — so sending a "queen" without decent backup means a certain decapitation of your pack. As for SCs — any SC with the vine shield and enough hp/def/prot/luck to survive the first round of swarm attack, easily sends them all to torpor.
Vampires are handy of course, but the best application of them — defensive anti-sc VLs with flambergs/demon banes/etc and immortal chaff to protect your mages from flyers.
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That's just not true unless your opponent is just outmaneuvering you all over the place. If you're using them defensively then you should have a good idea what you're dealing with, and even if not you're only out a little time to redeploy much more effectively for round two. If you know what your opponent has and you still let a little old vine shield stop you I don't have a whole lot of sympathy. Lets see...
Life for a life - anything which is not lifeless or having ridiculous hitpoints will be splattered before you know it.
Drain life - oh, there are lots of people with vine shields? That's ok, you take your time chewing through the swarm I'll keep-a-sniping until you're all gone.
Disintegrate - Oh, you are lifeless? Well, lets just see how many MR rolls this takes.
And to answer your next objection...Oh, I'm sorry, you brought a fire brand with the idea that you're going to chew through my swarm quickly....did I forget to mention that I threw some lifelong protections on my vampire lords (a great addition to the swarm). How many times do I get to cast disintegrate/drain life now? I do believe the answer is "until you are dead".
Earth attack - after the very first time you kill my vampire lord (as in use a powerful earth mage and some gems to send my guy back home for a turn) I'll start attack, then sneak, attack, then sneak meaning you're unable to target me with the earth attacks. As to the mind hunts, the vampire lord's MR is 17 (under the dreadfully bad assumption that I don't throw a armor of souls and amulet of MR on him) so how many pearls are you spending exactly to check the (several) vampire lords I have running around without ever actually killing any of them?