Newbie Thought: Anointing The Rhuax

[SelfishGene]

Do items survive on a mage after death/ressurection from Phoenix Pyre?

If they do, try double Hearts of Life....

[Managarm]

Llamabeast and Selfishgene, thanx a lot for your comments!! Now I see that the Rhuax thing was just a foolish idea of mine...

Your words suggest me a couple of additional questions:
1) Does Phoenix Pyre respawning heal afflictions? Cumulative afflictions in each new life is not funny at all...
2) Is Defense NOT as useful (generally speaking) as Protection? At least Protection stays always in place regardless of fatigue and multiple attacks
Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to this scenario an E9 Bless is preferable before a W9 Bless, is that so?

Cheers

[MaxWilson]

Defense is great for line units, which generally won't be facing greater than 6:1 odds even if they're on the corner of a formation. Protection is generally better for SCs because of the swarm factor, although e.g. an anti-Jotun SC probably never faces more than 7 opponents at once and so a defense of 36 would still be quite nice. Note, however, that Protection drops with fatigue just like defense does, although the mechanism is different. Critical hits, page 76. At 60 fatigue, 25% of hits are critical, so it's vital for a melee SC to keep fatigue low through reinvigoration items and/or life drain.

I know that Phoenix Pyre leaves some afflictions in place. It may or may not have a chance of healing some afflictions, but you definitely do pick up afflictions. Also, the manual says it's 10 squares of 50 AP damage which sounds great; in practice I haven't found it to be anything near 50 AP. Perhaps 15-25, which is not bad but not good enough that I'd regard Phoenix Pyre + getting killed as a viable offensive technique. The damage is more a perk than the main effect.

That said, the idea of an Ironskinned, Boots-of-the-Messenger'ed, Phoenix-Pyre'd Anointed of Rhuax is kind of a fun one. I'd probably give him a Standard of the Damned instead of a melee weapon so he'll drain life instead of meleeing, to recoup his fatigue losses. [later] A quick test with Svartalfs (since that's what I have in the game I'm currently playing) shows that 1.) the afflictions you pick up from dying multiple times take a lot of the fun out of it (5+ afflictions gained just killing off a bunch of crummy militia and light cavalry, even with Invulnerability) and 2.) I don't know of any good way to force casters to use Drain Life instead of other mass-damage spells after the 5 scripted rounds are over. Their fatigue goes up and then they die.

Take that for what it's worth.

-Max

[Managarm]

Max,
Many thanks also to you for the explanations on defense, the testing and for highlighting the fatigue FX on protection, I definitively missed that bit reading the manual!

Yes, I found quite funny trying to transform the Anointed from a very good battlemage with some melee capability into a high explosive meat grinder... The Kamikaze of Rhuax...

Although getting severe afflictions in the process makes this idea unfeasible

[DrPraetorious]

On the original topic - the annointed of rhuax is significantly tougher than other battle-mage chasis (except for giants, obviously), which *is* a big advantage, because it means he can run forward and then drop short-range fire zap spells.

Of these, Immolation (Alteration 3) is really worth the trouble. 14 points of AP damage with an AoE of 7.

The big merit of this is that you can do it early - late in the game you can rain this kind of fiery death from a distance. So I think forging stuff to toughen the guy up may not be the best use of your time. OTOH, if you have an enemy who manages fire resistance, you can convert them to effective thugs (not SC), especially if you have a sexy blessing like E9N9.

[Endoperez]

Immolation isn't really that good. It's AoE 7, true, but that AoE is centered on the caster... usually it only affects 2-3 enemy squares. It's decent for level 3, but Abysia doesn't get that much use out of Alteration.

[Managarm]

DrPraetorious said:
So I think forging stuff to toughen the guy up may not be the best use of your time. OTOH, if you have an enemy who manages fire resistance, you can convert them to effective thugs (not SC), especially if you have a sexy blessing like E9N9.

Thanks for the recommendation, now I'm planning to shift my strategy to achieve full Evocation support ASAP.

Bearing this in mind my Pretender design will be as follows:
Awaken Solar Disc (for early research), F9, Dominion 5 (higher dominion it's not important since blessed troops' cost), Order 3, Production 3 (Abysia needs tons resources), Heat 3, Death 2 (survival), Magic 1 (research).

I'd rather prefer to play offensively with a F9 blessing, it's just a matter of playstile, taking (even more) advantage of the two attacks that The Burning Ones have. Unfortunately they're quite slow but this is mitigated a bit in Heat-3 Dominions as Endoperez highlighted before.

Suggestions?

[MaxWilson]

The one suggestion I have is that you might considered taking a dormant pretender and putting the points into your Dominion. Even though it doesn't increase the amount of sacred troops you'll be making, it pushes your heat dominion, and Abysia benefits a lot from fighting in heat.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

SelfishGene said:
Do items survive on a mage after death/ressurection from Phoenix Pyre?

If they do, try double Hearts of Life....

By the way, Hearts of Life still get used up if he's using Phoenix Pyre. I don't know whether they kick in before Phoenix Pyre or simultaneous to it, but they get used up well before he runs out of fatigue, so it's probably a waste of items.

-Max

[Sandman]

Unfortunately, this little guy has a very low protection and defense values (1 and 11 respectively), extra help is needed to make him last longer in melee.

They get +6 def, strength, attack and movement in a heat-3 dominion. Which is massive, frankly.