Death vs. Fire bless

[cleveland]

Baalz said:
I also again want to point out the ignoring shields is almost always *at least* as good as +4 attack against any troops with shields, and often quite a bit better. Against units with tower shields (not common in indies, but much more so against real opponents) it's more than twice as good.

Are you certain about this? I was under the impression that the F9/D9 effects were secondary weapon effects, so only were applied upon a successful strike of the primary weapon. In other words, the to-hit probability doesn't change.

[JimMorrison]

I think what he's saying is, since the damage completely *Negates* shield protection as well, then even a shield hit will do damage every single time - thus an opponent with a large shield and heavy armor will more consistently take more damage from small AN hits than from large AP hits.

[Kristoffer O]

Cleveland is saying that the initial attack must hit for the AN effect to even be considered, so shields do matter.

I'm not sure myself, but I'm inclined to believe Cleveland is right. This does probably only affect melee weapons though. Blessed bows might work strange, much like poison arrows.

[Renojustin]

Only the Parry addition to Defense matters in that case, against the unit's normal damage, which works against Fire bless as well; the shield's Protection, however, is completely nullified against the Death bless damage, making it more useful against shielded troops than Fire bless as Baalz explained.

[JimMorrison]

Kristoffer O said:
Cleveland is saying that the initial attack must hit for the AN effect to even be considered, so shields do matter.

I'm not sure myself, but I'm inclined to believe Cleveland is right. This does probably only affect melee weapons though. Blessed bows might work strange, much like poison arrows.

But that's the point, imagine it like this. Opponent with 7 parry, 14 prot shield, and 18 armor. Your unit consistently hits for ~20. so when you get a clear hit, you're doing 2+2AN. When you hit the shield, which is quite often, you are still doing 2AN. In other words, on shield hits, you are still getting half of your typical damage on that opponent. In contrast, your Fire blessed friend is hitting a bit more often, but hits that shield just as often, and when he does, he has to roll 32+ to do -any- damage at all.

That's how shield hits work, isn't it? It's technically still a "hit", with the prot value of the shield added to the prot value of the armor. So if you are doing AN damage, a shield is useless, it is just encumbering your foe, and limiting their damage capacity. Obviously, it still has value if it's only a Death bless, and not an AN weapon, but still.

And then all of those little 2+ hits are causing Afflictions of course, wearing down your poor foe.

[Kristoffer O]

OK I follow you.
I was unintentionally thinking about effects upon dmg, not upon hit.

[konming]

cleveland said:

Are you certain about this? I was under the impression that the F9/D9 effects were secondary weapon effects, so only were applied upon a successful strike of the primary weapon. In other words, the to-hit probability doesn't change.

While you are right secondary effects only applied with a successful strike of the primary weapon (verified using -ddddd), you are wrong about the to-hit probability thing.

A hit can be an armor hit or a shield hit. In both cases, primary weapon hits. Fire bless secondary attack is an AP attack, so shield matters. A shield hit is as good as a no hit for most cases. This is especially true for a kite shield with its huge protection bonus. So your fire bless secondary attack pretty much requires an armor hit to work for heavily shielded opponents.

Death blessed secondary attack however, ignores protection. So it does not matter if you hit a shield or an armor. Therefore, its actual chance to do damage is greatly improved.

[cleveland]

konming said:
While you are right secondary effects only applied with a successful strike of the primary weapon (verified using -ddddd), you are wrong about the to-hit probability thing.

How can I be right about the 1st and wrong about the 2nd?

I said that the secondary F9/D9 effect is only called upon a successful Attack roll of the primary weapon. If the primary weapon is not AN, then the primary weapon must defeat the shield parry, so the to-hit probability for the secondary F9/D9 attack does not change.

I suppose people are confusing the Attack and Damage rolls. My comments were specifically referencing the Attack rolls. Baalz stated that AN weapons ignore shield parry during Attack roll, and therefore implied that the D9 bless will produce a successful Attack roll more often against a shielded opponent than the F9 bless. While he's 100% correct that AN Attack rolls ignore shield parry, the F9/D9 damage are SECONDARY EFFECTS, and therefore do no have Attack rolls...only Damage rolls. Your to-hit probability (i.e. the probability of a successful Attack roll) doesn't change with a D9 bless.

[thejeff]

But an attack stopped by a shield parry is still a hit and can even do damage. It's just that the Shield protection is added in to the regular armor protection so even AP damage is unlikely to get through. The AN attack hits the shield, but ignores it's protection.

If you examine debugging output, you should see damage being rolled for a shield parry.

[krpeters]

So a death bless negates the armor value of shields? That explains a *lot*.

It also means that archers with a death blessing would deal catastrophic damage to opponents. Are there any blessable archers in the game?