Death Magic on the Battlefield

[Cor2]

Agreed. I was destroyed recently by Shadow blast spam. Very effective.

[Niarg]

When I tried shadow blast 3 D4 mages set to cast it 3 times killed about 20 enemies.
They targeted areas with few troops in and often missed completely, also they seemed to concentrate on a single mass of enemies and attempt to kill every last one rather than targeting for the most damage.

Any ideas on why it was so ineffective for me?

[MaxWilson]

Niarg said:
When I tried shadow blast 3 D4 mages set to cast it 3 times killed about 20 enemies.
They targeted areas with few troops in and often missed completely, also they seemed to concentrate on a single mass of enemies and attempt to kill every last one rather than targeting for the most damage.

Any ideas on why it was so ineffective for me?

Poor precision? And, possibly, not a big enough army on your side. You want to combine Precision 14+ with some troops of your own to hit the sparse areas that have just had most troops killed, and to get them to clump up again for another Shadow Blast.

In general, arty AoE spells are not as good in practice as they seem on paper because even with good Precision, the AoE is somewhat randomly-distributed around the target point.[1] You can often improve AoE spells by giving the targets a resaon to stay clumped together (carrying a Bag of Winds is good, because the Air Elemental will attack on round 1 and they'll spend round 2 clumping together to destroy it). Alternately, use a BIG AoE and resign yourself to killing fewer units than you would think with pure spells.

-Max

[1] This makes the battle AI make poor choices because it picks spells by simulating the results a few times in its head, then picking the best result. I know it does this to choose spells and I think it might do this to pick spell targets as well. (Probably targets the center of each squad and sees which one does the most damage.) The randomness of spell AoE makes this a high-variance method in sparse troop formations, which means the naive "do what worked best in simulation" give poor results. BTW, "real" AoE spells like Thunderstrike and Banefire do not tend to suffer from this problem because they always affect a 3x3 square area.

[Agema]

Shadow blast does have an MR resist, doesn't it? Doesn't that limit it quite a lot?

[Ironhawk]

It does have an MR-resist. But most regular units will be effected by it anyway. Its really quite dangerous. I've had entire armies decimated by this spell.

[MaxWilson]

Shadow Blast is best for tipping the balance in big-army-vs.-big-army combats. At least, the times when it devastated me have all been in a castle assault or something when the defender unexpectedly strafes my army with Shadow Blast on the first round of combat. Doesn't always win the battle for him, but it sure can even out the casualty count.

-Max

[Baalz]

Hmmm, I guess those shadow blast detractors haven't seen how effective it can be. I've seen it be very effective when properly used.

1) As mentioned above it's just for large battles - just like most any gem requiring spell

2) Having one powerful D mage is nice, but I find it's also very effective to spread out and have 2-3 mid level D casters each cast it once. Opening round of a fight, have 3 D2 guys with eyes of the void fire shadow blasts from the front line (each only has 1 D gem). The effect on human level MR troops is absolutely devastating even if some of it misses and it cost you three gems plus risking some cheap mages. Not bad at all for a big fight.

[Tyrant]

Since it's resisted and low precision, the efficacy of Shadow Blast is widely variable. If the enemy army is so big you can't miss, or coming through the gate in a siege you're gunna nail a bunch of targets, but if they have high MR and/or Antimagic it won't do that much. In a game i'm in right now i got two mages into the HoF in a single battle by spewing SB. In another one awhile back shooting it at some MR 14 sacreds had no discernible effect.

There's a pretty short list of big AE blasto spells- Falling Frost, Falling Fire, Shadow Blast, Acid Rain, Blade Wind, Nether Darts, Magma Eruption and Astral Fire. Acid Rain is clearly superior, but rare's the mage that can do it. Among the rest it just depends on what you are fighting. Shadow Blast has some advantages- it works underwater, it does not work v undead, and it's AN damage.

Since it's unlikely that you will have many mages dedicated to casting it, those that are should always have a Spell Focus, and optionally a Void Eye if you think you can get away with it, and a Rune Smasher if you got one.

[thejeff]

The problem with gearing up mages to cast SB with high penetration is that you now have to try to arrange for the few geared up ones to cast it as many times as possible. Which means loading them up on death gems, because they will overspend. And then you're still only going to get 5 before the script runs out and they do something else. All that penetration gear won't help when they start spamming Raise Dead.

Unless I'm trying to get it to work on high MR targets, I'd much rather get more mages to cast it in the first round or two, which can be easily done with a death gem or 3 each, than a few to keep casting it. It's only D2. For anybody with death mages it's easy to get quite a few of them.

[MaxWilson]

Tyrant said:
There's a pretty short list of big AE blasto spells- Falling Frost, Falling Fire, Shadow Blast, Acid Rain, Blade Wind, Nether Darts, Magma Eruption and Astral Fire. Acid Rain is clearly superior, but rare's the mage that can do it. Among the rest it just depends on what you are fighting. Shadow Blast has some advantages- it works underwater, it does not work v undead, and it's AN damage.

The paralyze effect is also potentially nice.

Cloud of Death belongs on this list, too. Sauromancers love Cloud of Death.

-Max