Help me choose a pretender for EA Helhiem...

[DrPraetorious]

Yes, the N4 is mainly useful for the affliction resistance. You take hardly any fatalities, but if you've ever been playing helheim with a F9W9 bless, select the unit and click "w".... you often have a lot of injuries even with no deaths at all.

Also, the regeneration is not useless, especially against archery. Regenerating even 1hp/turn appreciably reduces casualties against arrows. You're not nearly as invulnerable as you were pre-patch.

I think S9 would almost certainly be better than A9. It's also easier to get. I did a W9S9 imprisoned oracle as helheim once, was quite effective.

[Micah]

The earth bless got better after the ranged attack vs glamour change also, since it drops the chance of an arrow breaking your guys' glamour from 38% to 14% on a successful hit, since it's much less likely to punch through the armor. In melee the earth bless isn't about stopping attacks completely, just stopping a lucky hit or two from killing your unit. Fire is still damn good though.

[Jazzepi]

I would like to comment that the W9E9 bless is very powerful. The extra protection is huge, but what's really nice is the fact that it turns your regular commanders into thugs. They bless themselves, cast a few air based buffs, and charge into combat with high protection, high defense, and reinvigoration (the latter being very important for thugs). This lets them mow through troops.

Jazzepi

[Shovah32]

E9W9N9 Destroyed scales ftw! Basically i just wanted to post this for fun(although i have used it and enjoyed it) and pretty much agree with DrPraetorious on everything he has said, although i would probably give E9 a little more credit that he does(its also great help when making your sacred commanders into thugs).

[thejeff]

I used a E9F9 bless with EA Vanheim.
On the theory that they don't have a high enough defense to make full use of the Water bless and lose defense/gain protection when they beserk anyway.

Maybe not the best choice, but it worked nicely. That was before the glamor change. I'll bet the poor Vanheres get slaughtered by arrows now. Slower and no shields.

[FrontalAssault]

Wow this is great help.

Now tell me what does turning your commanders into thugs do?

[DrPraetorious]

Disclaimer: I'm durnk.

"thugging" your commanders means using them as melle combatants. Unless they are equipped with some magic items ("thugged"), this is generally a bad idea, because they cost more than regular troops (often a lot more) and are only marginally better.

However, given a few magic items, thugged commanders can be extremely effective, with the ability to mow throw disproportionate (although seldom infinite) numbers of lesser troops.

Typical base-line thug equipment includes anything strongly beneficial that costs 5 gems are less, such as the ice brand, the amulet of luck, the bracers of defense, maybe a black steel breastplate if their basic armor has a low protection value, stuff like that. Fire brand, armor of displacement and jade armor cost somewhat more but are also popular choices.

Generally, you want to field a lot of thugs, you expect some of them to die, so cost is a big issue - you don't want to spend too many gems to outfit each thug.

This is distinct from a "supercombatant" strategy, where you try to make units who are literally invulnerable (or close to it), and who are expected to mow through entire enemy armies all by themselves.