Warriors of the Five Elements.

[Renojustin]

With F9, they eat thugs, high defense troops, setting things on fire which is always nice... I see the loss of F9 as too much of a maulus to WotFE, who only have 16 damage base.

S9 would help against one arrow volley, help some against MR base resist spells, but you're already talking base 14 MR when blessed. I don't seeing it add as much to their survivability as F9, where they can mow through opposing troops, thus removing a potential source of damage.

So for the bless, W9F9 seems to be THE way to go for these guys.

While S9 can be used to better effect by your pretender on the strategic map, the reverse is true for battle magic in my opinion. So the relative utility there might come down to what you're going to use your pretender for, exactly. A Phoenix going up against an army that's not heat resistant can be hard to watch.