Petition to Save the Moloch!

[PvK]

Again, I have no strong disagreement against those points. I was just complaining about overuse of "useless" to mean anything but "has NO use".

I'd add that not only should the imp routing not rout the Moloch, but they should also be guarding him, rather than charging into the wild. Or, as suggested, just dropping an imp every now and then (1/turn?) would be good.

PvK

[lonewolf]

Why can't the imp thing be implemented like the Soulstone of the Wolves? i.e. have imps appear all round the battlefield and converge on your foes. I'm not exactly sure how the Soulstone works, but I've had literally dozens of Soulstone-produced wolves rout and still not have my Soulstone-carrying commander rout. I think it's because every round new wolves appear, so technically the unit hasn't routed. If the number of imps produced was even 3-4 per round, it would help without making the Moloch too powerful (except against indies and the like, which is fine) - they'd just be a nuisance to more powerful foes.

[PvK]

The stone is probably casting Howl every turn. That's a powerful effect against mortals, even when it's mere wolves. People mock imps, but they are actually pretty good units, when they don't get wiped out due to suicide flights. Infinite imp stream would I think be overpowered, unless perhaps it were only one per combat round.

PvK

[Blitz]

I see the same dorks are here nitpicking at the use of the word "useless" again. Norfleet is completely correct that save for the use for fire-9 blessing, the moloch is not a strong choice for any pretender role. Even in the fire-9 blessing role, he is arguably superceded by the phoenix, who is a stronger artillery unit and is of course... immortal.

Having to tow around an army with your SC sucks. He's clearly worse than the POD and Virtue in the flying humanoid class, simply because of the presence of the imps. Were the imps removed or repaired, his high attack rating, heat aura, fire resistance and ambidexterity would place him in the upper tier with the POD and Virtue. His combat stats are all equal or higher than the POD, and his path cost and combat abilities are superior to the virtue.

Having said that, even with imp removal... the 70 point paths make building a killing machine extremely expensive. Air and Earth magic are standard for most SC's, and selecting both bring the Moloch's pricetag up to a hefty 247 with FFF/EE/AA. While certianly feasible, I suspect players intending to use him as a SC and not a bless chassis will find other avatars to be superior in most cases.

How come nobody talks about their Shedus anymore? Wait! That pretender is perfect too.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Blitz:
I see the same dorks are here nitpicking at the use of the word "useless" again.

I see that your still demonstrating your ignorance of game mechanics and complete lack of social skills.

Norfleet is completely correct that save for the use for fire-9 blessing, the moloch is not a strong choice for any pretender role. Even in the fire-9 blessing role, he is arguably superceded by the phoenix, who is a stronger artillery unit and is of course... immortal.[/qb]

To bring a Moloch up to fire 9, dominion 6 costs you only 285 points. To do the same with the Phoenix costs 408 points. That's hardly a comparable role considering that the Moloch is a far superior fighter.

Having to tow around an army with your SC sucks. He's clearly worse than the POD and Virtue in the flying humanoid class, simply because of the presence of the imps.

You will eventually reach the point in just about any game where a single SC will be unable to deal with the armies your opponent's can put together. At that point, you will be bringing an army along with him anyways. Otherwise he'll just be taken out by a four or five castings of ghost riders.

Having said that, even with imp removal... the 70 point paths make building a killing machine extremely expensive.

Not at all, since items give him everything he needs. Blood thorn, lucky coin, starshine skullcap, copper plate/cold dragon armour, quickness boots, lightning ring/frost ring, regen ring. After all, the archdevils don't need anything other than those items.

Air and Earth magic are standard for most SC's, and selecting both bring the Moloch's pricetag up to a hefty 247 with FFF/EE/AA.

That's not a particularly effective build, since you can put only a moderate suit of armour on him to bring him up to high armour levels, and mistform breaks as soon as it is hit by a magic weapon.

How come nobody talks about their Shedus anymore? Wait! That pretender is perfect too.

This thread is not about the Shedu, which is why nobody but yourself is bringing up that off-topic irrelevancy.

[Kel]

Originally posted by Blitz:
Air and Earth magic are standard for most SC's, and selecting both bring the Moloch's pricetag up to a hefty 247 with FFF/EE/AA. While certianly feasible, I suspect players intending to use him as a SC and not a bless chassis will find other avatars to be superior in most cases.

He also starts with a high dominion, which is a point discount if you compare him to a lot of other SCs.

Starting with F3 is also going to give him a huge discount if you want to make him a fire bless *and* an SC (entirely feasible).

Lastly, when you are balancing, you can't aim for the top of the power curve or you will get balance inflation. How many of the available pretenders would be better but, also, how many would be worse ?

Air and Earth magic are standard for most SC's, and selecting both bring the Moloch's pricetag up to a hefty 247 with FFF/EE/AA.

That's not a particularly effective build, since you can put only a moderate suit of armour on him to bring him up to high armour levels, and mistform breaks as soon as it is hit by a magic weapon.

To be fair, it's not a bad base, imo (could use one less or one more earth. Technically, he can summon earth to invulnerability (or just ironskin). Whether or not it's optimal, it is quite sufficient for the sake of the argument.

- Kel

The Moloch has a base Prot of 15 (same as all Devils) so there is no need for Earth Magic outside of those who have played with too many VQ's. A suit of armor will put him in the upper 20's which is by and large close enough for protection purposes.

I like the Moloch, I don't like his imps however, but the Imps do not make the Moloch 'useless' in any role other than a Blessing Strategy. It only makes him at current inflexible in his SC role early in the game (which is where SC's are most valuable).

AFAIK it is not the intention of IW to keep the battlesummon creatures routable as they are and finding the reasons why and modifying them to the vision of IW to work how they see them is in progress. That is the only answer that I can give you with any assurity.