Death & Blood a little borked?

[Huzurdaddi]

These two paths SEEM to have some of the best summons in the game at somewhat low research levels.

As examples: Devils, Banes, Wrights.

All exceptional summons for their cost, all at low tech levels.

Now if these paths were the ones that had poor higher levels summons then I would say that makes sense from a balance perspective.

However they also have excellent higher level summons as well, ex: demon lords, ghost riders, tartarus gate.

Finally, even if they had just some of the best summons but had poor combat magic then I would say : "maybe they are balanced."

Now it is true that blood has pretty bad combat magic. But death has excellent combat magic. Eg: Life Drain, Soul Vortex, raise dead. All excellent.

I don't get it. It seems like death and to a lesser extent blood are just better paths than the other magic paths. Is this intended? Perhaps I am missing something?

[ June 02, 2004, 19:06: Message edited by: Huzurdaddi ]

[Vynd]

I haven't played a lot of Blood Magic. But I have noticed that most of the powerful Blood summons require significant skill in both blood and some other sort of magic. This seems to be less true for other schools of magic.

[NTJedi]

One of the reasons why ERMOR is so strong is because death magic is very powerful. In my multiplayer games we've Banned the ghost riders spell simply because it's way too powerful for its low cost. Many gamers on the forum are using the castling strategy because of spells such as this.

[ June 02, 2004, 19:35: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

[Taqwus]

Death summons are unusually vulnerable to Dust to Dust, Wither Bones, Solar Rays. Some also suffer from a tendency not to play well with others (cold aura, disease spreading) and this is especially true of death battle magic (area life-draining / disease-spreading / decay-causing tends to be indiscriminate, for instance.)
Death magic also lacks friendly fliers, has few mounted units, provides fairly limited forging, and is very bad at providing other benefits such as countering other magics (no domes or ward spells, say), providing mobility (Stygian Paths is late, hard and dangerous), no troop enhancement spells et al. It's quite strong at what it focuses on, but hopeless at others.

Blood is similar in degree of focus. It's great for summons, especially in winged summons, but lousy at most other tasks.

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
I don't get it. It seems like death and to a lesser extent blood are just better paths than the other magic paths. Is this intended? Perhaps I am missing something?

You're absolutely correct, Air is a much weaker and less useful path all around. DOWN WITH DEATH AND BLOOD.

[Arralen]

And Astral ... don't forget about astral .. you may get your path level 5 pretender killed by a lousy shaman !!

oh, wait, does it make it too strong or too weak???

Damn, nerf it anyway. All of them...

[ June 02, 2004, 20:15: Message edited by: Arralen ]