communion (?)

Taqwus · #1 July 13th, 2007, 02:55 PM

Communion Master / Phoenix Pyre.

Shovah32 · #2 July 13th, 2007, 03:01 PM

Dont forget air shield/twist fate there, without it theres a good chance of your slaves blowing up in your face.

Baalz · #3 July 13th, 2007, 03:12 PM

A couple more points:

1) Communion slaves *do* act by themselves if they come in the battle sequence before any communion masters have cast a spell that round. The combat sequence is deterministic, so if you're clever you can do things like have your slaves casting spells while your masters come at the end casting self buffs (which effect all the slaves). If your slaves can cast things which reinvigorate themselves (like drain life) this can be a never ending fountain of nastiness as the master casts big spells and the slaves reinvig themselves.

2) A big risk of communions is that the masters don't consider the fatigue of the slaves when they're casting. This means you can quite easily have your slaves killed by a master spamming completely useless stuff at routing enemies. Nothing quite so frustrating as loosing half your mages winning an easy fight. Consequently communions are usually best for big decisive battles.

3) The buffs conferred on communion slaves remain even if the master leaves the battlefield. This means another use of a communion is to get buffs on SC/thugs who couldn't otherwise get them. Giving a slave matrix to somebody tough, then having a couple master mages cast invulnerability, blood vengence, mistfrom etc. can make for an awesomely powerful SC with very little cost. It's particularly wicked for things which can't usually wear too many items (tarasques, Wyrms, etc).

4) Communion slaves take (significantly) more fatigue when the master casts spells which the slaves don't have the right paths for. Putting the cheapest mages as slaves is not always the best choice.

PyroStock · #4 July 13th, 2007, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Baalz said:
1) Communion slaves *do* act by themselves if they come in the battle sequence before any communion masters have cast a spell that round.

This then brings back my question of having a mage be both a slave & master at the same time. If the order is: #1-7Slaves, #8Slave/Master, #9Master. Then #8 could still cast as a master and be a slave for #9 (& maybe himself too?), right?

Quote:

4) Communion slaves take (significantly) more fatigue when the master casts spells which the slaves don't have the right paths for. Putting the cheapest mages as slaves is not always the best choice.

In another thread someone mentioned a slave commune unit (with no magic paths) takes less fatigue then 1astral mages. If that's true wouldn't a cheap non-mage with a slave matrix take less fatigue than most typical slave mages (like a 1 astral mage)?

Baalz · #5 July 13th, 2007, 03:43 PM

Slave matrixes only work if the unit is a mage, as far as I know Pythiums communicants (the unit you mention) are the only special case that can join a communion with no magic paths.

Dunno about being both master & slave, my gut tells me it wouldn't work but I've never tested it. I'm guessing casting master cancels the slave effect and vice versa.

PyroStock · #6 July 13th, 2007, 04:03 PM

Quote:

Baalz said:
Slave matrixes only work if the unit is a mage,as far as I know Pythiums communicants (the unit you mention) are the only special case that can join a communion with no magic paths.

If Pythium slave communes take less fatigue with no magic paths then wouldn't having slaves with different paths from the master also be better for less fatigue... as in a master casting earth spells and having the slaves with only say 1 astral and no earth (rather than 1 or 2 earth)?

Quote:

Dunno about being both master & slave, my gut tells me it wouldn't work but I've never tested it. I'm guessing casting master cancels the slave effect and vice versa.

I don't know either, but IIRC in another thread KO said Solar Brilliance was the only spell he recalled that cancelled another (Darkness).

thejeff · #7 July 13th, 2007, 04:34 PM

I think Pythium communicants are a special case. You can test it, but I wouldn't assume other no magic (or different path) slaves get less fatigue.

Can anyone confirm that slaves act if their turn comes before the masters? I've never noticed this. I would expect to see slaves casting fairly frequently, until they fall asleep at least. But I don't use communions often.
There are known weirdnesses with quickness.

This could be nicely exploitable with an SC. Allowing him to self buff, as well as get buffs from the master.

PyroStock · #8 July 13th, 2007, 04:50 PM

Quote:

thejeff said:
Can anyone confirm that slaves act if their turn comes before the masters? I've never noticed this.

This is what originally made me start thinking of a slave/master. I had what looked to be slaves casting (I assigned some cheap fatigue spell after slave commune), but when someone else said slaves couldn't I assumed that meant the AI skipped my slave script on some of them assuming it was not necessary for that fight. Now I'm more inclined to believe Baalz is right on slaves being able to cast depending on the order.