Spells: What is MIrror Image useful for?

[Natpy]

Body Ethereal, Luck, Awe, Twist Fate ets... "to hit" probabilities multiplied.

[moderation]

Interesting. Then it seems there are two ways you can optimize your SCs. Either by buffing protection until you can't be harmed or by buffing defense. But I guess even with defense you will need some protection.

Both Mistform and Mirror Image do seem a little dangerous to use, since they can "pop off" after you take a hit.

[Fal]

Mirror image doesn't cancel after struck by magic weapons right? whereas mistform does. It's very dangerous to send Tir na n'Og's Ri as thugs against nations with magic weapons for this reason, such as LA Atlantis. And indeed mirror image is useless against missile weapons.

[Natpy]

I think buffing def is more effective.

[thejeff]

Remember that effective defense gets lowered 2 by each attack.
So once your SC gets surrounded and attacked by 21 troops, the last will be attacking his defense-40. It's hard to buff defense enough.

[Baalz]

Well yeah, but high protection can be overridden by one lucky roll to. If you've got a 1% chance that a hit cancels your mistform or a 1% chance that a hit scores enough damage to overcome your protection and kill you it amounts to the same thing.

It all boils down to getting a build where there is an x% chance that each hit will kill/cripple you such that x is sufficiently small it's unlikely to happen in the course of a typical battle. For real SCs where you expect them to be attacked thousands of times over several battles x needs to be very small indeed.

Most people tend to look down on defense builds for SCs because they can be easily circumvented by making enough attacks. Duh, so can high protection builds, just send in a thug wielding a gate cleaver or even a sword of sharpness generally. Against non thug/SCs it's not too hard, by stacking effects to make x small enough without having much protection.

Consider a lucky, ethereal, mirror image/glamoured guy with a 25+ defense wielding a vine shield or an awe shield. Against most opponents even when partially surrounded he's only getting attacked probably 5 or 6 times and out of those hits which overcome his defense only 25% (ethereal) of 50% (lucky) of 20% (5 mirror images) = 2.5% will land. 2.5% isn't a terribly low number for x, but it is if the average guy only has a 1% chance of getting by his defense, particularly if it then also has to overcome even medium strength protection. You start getting down to a .001% chance or some such that a blow will land and pop your mirror image.

All number crunching aside, luck + ethereal + mirror image + a >25 defense + awe/vines/some way to reduce number of incoming attacks will generally get you through swarms of "regular dudes" unscratched and will stand you in good stead against most SCs not tailor made to kill you.