Undead Killing

[Vicious Love]

That seems like a good equipment loadout for taking out undead SCs and thugs, but it might not be all that effective against an AE chaff horde. The Spirit Helm is expensive and only useful against high-quality units, whereas Ermor relies on the lowest quality units in the game, albeit in large amounts. Ditto regarding the F9 blessing, though it can be tremendously useful against ethereal undead. Burning Pearls are also next to meaningless against soulless and not particularly useful against longdead, as neither type of undead has particularly good defense. Also, a Charcoal Shield would be much more effective against hordes of chaff.

Also, although your anti-SC results speak for themselves, I'm not certain this would be the ideal loadout for combating mid-level undead thugs and troops(wights, ghosts, etc), because:
A) Ethereal undead, especially ones with tricksy lifedraining, paralyzing and strength-stealing attacks, are another story altogether, and often call for an entirely different sort of tactic than that used against conventional undead
B) Melee heroes carrying loads of equipment vs. anything with a bane blade = a suboptimal idea. Decay hurts, and it takes a hell of a lot of MR to be absolutely safe.


As for my contribution to the discussion, fun fact: Spell Foci only cost 5 astral pearls, and work on Banishment. On a related note, it's usually most cost effective to get large numbers of low-level priests casting Banishment, instead of a few pricey high-level ones, but a Spell Focus/Rune Smasher combo is more than enough to change this. Best supplemented with a casting of Power of the Spheres, for an even larger area of effect, even more damage, and possibly even more penetration. If communion masters benefit from spells cast by other communion masters, a Crystal Matrix might be a good way of getting this boost out of a friendly astral mage(the alternative is the Crystal Shield, which is simply too heavy).


...


Also, if you're positively desperate for The Ultimate Banishment, I suppose a little Hell Power never hurt anyone.

Update: In case anyone wasn't aware of this factoid, the Herald Lance's x3 multiplier doesn't mean that any damage inflicted is multiplied by 3, it means(or so an older thread would have me believe) that the entire roll to damage, including strength, before accounting for armor, is multiplied by 3. Plainly put, the Herald Lance is the melee weapon against powerful undead or demons. The Solar Rays are very nice against weaker stuff, but nothing takes out a higher-end thug or SC quite like the pointy end.

[shovah]

ive been replacing the spirit helm with wraith crown for etheral and the burning pearls for bracers of protection and it works like a charm vrs ashen/soul autospawns (the paladins have 3 flaming attacks each alon with high defence, high protection and cold resistance 75%
they are also some of the best counters ive found for tartarians (next to my golems

and i know you could gain spells from them all but would a nataraja with 4 herald lances,wraith crown, some armour, boots of giant strength, lycanthrope amulet and amulet of resilence or something else work?
i mean would all his attacks work at his very high strength and x3 damage ?
if so maybe give him jade armour and boots of quickness and possibly some astral for armour negating work?
i mean the herald lance attacks would be 30ish strength each so 90 vrs undead and with astral weapon armour negating aswell. so that would be 360+ armour negating damage (tartarian killer) and thats without factoring in boots of quickness and jade armour

[Molog]

Charcoal shield on high hp regenerating critter works good at killing lots of weak undead.

[Endoperez]

Banishment with Hell Power?! Doing that with a Goetic Master would be like straight from the story of that theme...

[shovah]

try this slight change: paladin with herald lance, accursed shield, blue dragonscale armour, wraithcrown, ring of the warrior and bearclaw talisman
(
i used precious instead of talisman thanks to bogus but talisman is nearly as good, or you could replace talisman with burning pearl) 2 of these with a e9 n9 bless took out more than 10 tartarians in one fight until they got crushed by lightning bolts

the main reason behind no defensive miscs was i re-read rules on repeling attacks, basically with a long weapon you usually get a free attack before getting hit so i tried to boost attack and strength quite high

the plan was these guys charge in and hopefully bring a tartarian to low health, then finish him with repelling and it worked (etheral from the crown is esential)

i used mother earth to get that bless and her with boots of the mesenger, hydra skin armour, ring of regeneration, amulet of resilence, herald lance and charcoal shield works amazingly well vrs undead scs and weak hordes.

just get her tocast a few spells on herself at the start of battle and charge in (gift of gaia ect for extra regen) with the HUGE regen she gets and the shield the weak undead practically bounce off her and with her high strengthand herald lance she can crush SC's when she hits

[Endoperez]

While you do get a free attack when you repel, that attack does only 1 point of damage. Only one, always one. It goes through armor, though,

[B0rsuk]

Endoperez said:
While you do get a free attack when you repel, that attack does only 1 point of damage. Only one, always one. It goes through armor, though,

Enough to kill a soulless ?
I always thought it's 0 damage. Well, 1 is better than nothing.

[Vicious Love]

Endoperez said:
Banishment with Hell Power?! Doing that with a Goetic Master would be like straight from the story of that theme...

Computer conked out for a few days. I've returned in time to LOL in agreement. Jolly good.

[Valandil]

Solar Brilliance works too... Kinda expensive though.
I have a 1500+ kill pretender in my current game against AE ermor.

Vicious Love said:Also, if you're positively desperate for The Ultimate Banishment, I suppose a little Hell Power never hurt anyone.

Speaking of ultimate banishment, it's a zero fatigue spell. A couple of of pythium divine casters leading a a communion of 8 or more communicants and blasting away at undead hordes with massively powerful banishments is a sight to behold. because banishment doesn't cost any fatigue, a few communicants can easily empower any number of theurgs. (without being killed for a change )
With enough matrices any nation can do that though it's cheapest for Pythium, obviously.
I used this tactics agains Ermor once, and had it used against me a few times, it is extremely powerful against big hordes, though not very effective against SCs. And be prepared to lose the communicants after the fifth round if the battle isn't won by then.