[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Slobby

Agreed, but with jade knives now unique I don't know how worthwhile blood saccing is.

I wonder about that myself, especially since Van only has H2s. Should still work for protecting your own dominion but I don't know that you'll be able to generate much of a dominion push.

Originally Posted by Slobby

Actually I find the hearts of life to be quite useful and am now planning on spamming the hell outta them for thugging/casting purposes. Without them thugging options for Van, eh not so much.

That's an interesting idea! I've never actually used hearts of life, I think because I hated the idea of giving up a misc slot on my thugs. And the idea of equipping communion slaves with them (maybe combined with a light earth bless and summon earthpower?) seems very interesting.

Originally Posted by Slobby

And speaking of empowering. A fun trick might be to put W and E on the pretender to summon Grendelkin. Empower the Grendelkin in blood, give maybe a blood thorn and definately hydra armor and ring of regen then script blood vengence/reinvigorate/attack. Will still need to test that one but on paper looks good...

Funny you should mention that. At one point I considered empowering bane lords in B and running a reverse communion. Of course I wanted to run more than just B buffs through the communion and fatigue built up quickly. In the end I decided it wasn't worthwhile. But grendelkin are of course much tougher than bane lords and could be worth the trouble. Fun idea, anyway.

Originally Posted by Slobby

All in all in terms of summons, there really is nothing there for Van until Blood 7 & 9, however with the scaling upward blood eco through forging boosters, forging hearts, empowering, and combat casting, I'm now of the opinion that there are definate uses of slaves in the early and especially the mid game of Van and can't really foresee too much stock piling going on.

All the more reason for the blood eco, inefficient as it is, to start sooner than later .

I agree with Executor that Van is screwed with regard to blood hunting but this has been an interesting conversation and I have to admit it makes me want to play Van despite the hits they've taken. I'll be curious to hear if you manage develop a strong blood economy despite having to spend all that effort to empower/forge boosters in order to get effective blood hunters.