Who are the most powerful pretenders?

[Endoperez]

Edi said:
Not just the 1 free pearl, but she has two paths to start with and those two are earth and astral, which are always useful and especially as a combination.

CB gives other humans similar starting paths, but also gives the Enchantress etherealness. Even without it she'd be worth it for the pearl.

[Edi]

Haven't checked the CBM out yet, because I've had more than enough to do with all the other stuff and my non-Dominions activities. If it's anything like the Dom2 CBM, the pretenders at least will be far superior to the base game. The sorceress actually did have etherealness in Dom2, so it's just been returned to normal, as it were.

What I meant was that in addition to the pearl, she had better paths than any of the other rainbows, so she was a complete nobrainer.

[ArkhanTheBlack]

The 'rainbow' Kraken is still my favourite! Being able to expand in early game without wasting money on troops and get a huge gem income very fast combined with a quick research to spam SC commanders is very nice.

[DireAussie]

I prefer rainbow pretenders. Your expansion isnt as quick. However you get early research, early gems searching, and if you survive the early game you have a lot more options with forging and summoning later on. You also dont have to worry about losing your pretender in battle.

[kasnavada]

Cyclop, wyrm, kraken, great enchanteress, gorgon and all immortal pretenders are among the most powerful.

Immobile pretender seem somewhat above the norm due to the high starting dominion and low cost, but they don't move.

Basically, any pretender that can be used out of the box with no or little equipment as an SC, or that can provide you an advantage in mid and late game via immortality or large amount of magic diversity is powerful. Other are rather useless by themselves (even if they may be useful for a powerful bless effect).

[Cerlin]

Lets see, for total usefulness I prefer any rainbows but especially the ones on mounts or flying.

For bless i tend to use the Lord of the Forests a lot. I love the Nature 4-6 and Earth 9 bless in general, especially EA.

For theme my favorite is divine emperor and the Allfather.