Air bless: useless?

[Sandman]

The air bless is unchanged from Dom 2, and I wonder, what's the point of it?

Only about half the nations have serious missile weapons, and only a few have the air magic to make the lighting resistance worthwhile. An enemy making heavy use of lightning will probably be casting Storm, and not using archers, so there's little synergy between the air shield and the lightning resistance.

For sacred units which have low protection and no shield, the astral bless is better. Twist fate works well into the late game, and magic resistance is always handy. Even better, astral nations can use spells like Body Ethereal, Luck and Anti-magic to further enhance the astral bless, whilst the air shield becomes obsolete with Arrow Fend.

The air bless needs help. Ideally, it'd be a good bless for air nations like Vanheim and Caelum.

[Folket]

Perhaps I will try a air bless in my next game to see if it is that useless.

[quantum_mechani]

The 4-8 bless has a niche in a few cases, the level 9 effect is second only to blood 9 in uselessness.

[Nikolai]

Do not forget, high air bless make nether dart, blade wind, and most bolt spells miss three of four times. And Shock Resitance stacks with Shock ward (or whatever it name) and Storm warriors.

I do not like high blesses to use or have used on me. But I think Air Bless 9 can be useful, if you plan to cast Wrathful Skies with sacred mages and thugs.

Is it less useful than other blesses? I think so. Other blesses make for rushing, not Air. If not for rushing, I think high blesses are cripling yourself.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Wait. You're talking about missile resistance bless as needing help? First off...
Lesser Air Bless shouldn't be compared to the Greater Astral bless.
Lesser Air VS. Lesser Astral
Helps versus ranged fire/No help against ranged fire.
No Help versus Shadow Bolt/Helps against Shadow Bolt and other MR spells such as Decay.
Helps versus some fire and many earth spells/No use against spells that do not check MR.
Becomes moot when Arrow Fend is castable/Stacks with other MR boosters.
Air spells not always castable/Astral spells not always castable.

Regarding its value for Air Nations, I've got no opinion. But it has been invaluable for certain games I've been playing as nations such as Atlantis that have no missile troops. If my current build supports an inexpensive air bless, I will take it.

My current pretender build for BAG involves an imprisoned Titan with Air 6, Earth 9 for a bless. The bless is not factored into my long term strategy, but has, in test games, allowed me to take 20 provinces by the end of the first year. A lot more than I ever expected a nation like Late Era Atlantis to manage. Of course, in MP, I'll be running up against human controlled nations as well. And as my Arssartut are capital only it won't be useful once I run out of independents to massacre. Fortunately, I've got other plans for that stage.

[thejeff]

Remember as well, that if you've got low level air mages it's really nice to have A4 on your pretender to get access to Air boosters. 20% air shield isn't much but it can help. I wouldn't build a strategy around it, but it's a nice bonus.

[Sandman]

Does air shield work against bolt and dart spells?

I don't see a problem in comparing the lesser air bless with the greater astral bless, they've got similar effects, and with the Oracle, astral-9 is very cheap. In any case, ranged weapons can be dealt with in other ways; troop placement, counterfire, protection, regeneration, etc.

Another nice 'quirk' of the air bless: take air-9 for 70% missile protection, and watch as your sacred air mages waste a turn casting air shield.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

It's a bad idea to reveal my plans in advance, but what the heck. Try this experiment.

Strength five independents.
Late Era Atlantis.
Imprisoned Titan.
Air 6, Earth 9.
Order 2, Productivity 3
Death 2, Cold 3
Magic 1, Misfortune 1
Dominion 8

Every turn for the first year recruit one Tungalik and 8 Arssartut. Send out every other Tungalik with bless orders and sixteen Arssartut. Put the Tungalik at the very back, the Arssartut a little ahead with Hold and Attack orders. Watch as they slaughter 40, 50 units. Avoid cavalry, but little else- perhaps barbarians. Take on the cavalry and barbarians with Seal Hunters and Snow Warriors added onto your starting force. You can sometimes send out just eight and win, but it results in low research and swarms flanking your Arssartut and killing the Tungalik who's trying to stupidly cast a touch spell because you haven't researched anything.

Now, take off the air bless, and see how long they last against the crossbowmen plentiful in LE independents. The +4 protection from the earth bless just doesn't cut it. The Earth protection bonus is more valuable, but at E9 it should be. The Air makes a big difference, though.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

For the info on what spells are blockable, check out Kristoffer O's 9/22/2007 post on the last page of
FAQ Discussion & Submission Thread and 10/03/2007 post in Arrow Fend Thread

Similar effects? One works only once, while the other has a permanent effect. Twist Fate isn't of much use on a unit with only 10 defense, though goes up in value with ethereal or harder to hit units.

I admit, that the value of the air bless for an air nation has its flaws. But it can be powerful for a non-air nation. And for an air nation, it'll allow you to save gems and can be used before arrow fend is researched, allowing you to bypass some research, if you have a reason. For nations like MA Agartha, however, you have these limits.
1). No archers = no counterfire
2). Earth magic is pretty short ranged. You'll often have mages in forward positions if you actually want to hit something important first turn with Blade Wind (i've ocassionally carved up poorly protected Star Children casting communion slave, and that was important with forty of them). The air bless will help keep them alive while you're skipping Stoneskin in favor of a first strike.
3). You do get ironskin for protection, but lucky strikes still happen with frequency. Especially with fatigue kicking in. I've done quite well without an air bless, but I've seen plenty of situations where a 40% miss rate would have made a difference. Of course, I would be giving up something to get that air bless with Agartha's choices... but I would be giving up something with most blesses.
4). Regeneration requires another bless - or items and is hardly effective on 10 hitpoint mages. Though it's certainly useful on a lot of front-line troops.

There are situations where I would pick astral, and situations where Twist Fate is near useless.
Twist fate good? Ermor's Shadow Vestals, or T'ien Chi's (3.08?) Red Guard or Ancestor Vessel, to name a few. Where it benefits from neither air nor astral? Abysia EA's Burning Ones, with a glorious 5 or 2 defense, and 17 protection 23 hitpoints. I've outlined a situation where I prefer the air blessing- there are probably others where its handy, but I've stuck to Atlantis, Agartha, Ctis, Yomi in competitive situations, and am not very versatile.

[Sandman]

With your Late Atlantis build, an earth-9 cyclops with the same scales and dominion is 160 points cheaper. That's a heckuva lot to pay for a 40% air shield. With better scales, you can throw in more back-up troops and chaff. The Titan is an incomparably better fighting pretender, but even so.

Twist fate isn't just good on high-def pretenders, it's great on inexpensive massable sacreds, and it's also better if you want to try 'first strike' spell casting with sacred mages.