Death vs. Fire bless

[Cor2]

dont forget that the affliction part of the death bless also works for bless mages casting AOE spells.

[MaxWilson]

Eagle warriors have two low-damage attacks IIRC, and knights are size 3 so are easily swarmed. It's not surprising that the death bless does relatively well in this situation because:

1.) The 6 AP fire attack won't often hurt high-Prot knights.

2.) The Eagle Warrior's weapons (daggers?) also won't often hurt knights. Thus, fire bless is relatively impotent in this situation.

3.) Death weapons do something like 2.7 points of damage on average, when they get past MR. (Vs. Prot 17 knights it's like a Damage 19 attack.) Baalz says they ignore shields--I haven't tested it, but it's probably true given how shields are supposed to work. That helps offset the -4 to attack, relative to fire bless, since the daggers don't do anything to the knight anyway. I'm AFG, but 3 Eagle Warriors will probably hit 2 knights through their shields 3 or 4 times per turn for 8-11 points of damage, which kills one knight per turn (and causes about 2 afflictions per turn). Plus the occasional lucky dagger strike that actually does damage, call it 0.3 per turn. Fire bless will hit just as often, and will ALWAYS hit with a dagger, but breaks through the Prot much less often. I'd be surprised if it were more than 2 or 3 HP damage per turn.

So yeah, Eagle Warriors vs. knights would rather have Death bless than Fire bless because they don't need the boost to Attack, and they can't get through the armor with their natural weapons or with fire weapons. Fire bless would stack better with Strength of Giants, though. However, death bless helps mages and death magic is more fun than fire magic, IMHO, so I might take a death bless even if I didn't expect to fight knights with eagle warriors.

-Max

[ano]

I think that death bless is very good for cheap sacreds that you can amass. My games with mictlan convinced me that for jags and eagles death bless is very, very good. However, they both need a boost to attack to be able to counter high defense (and vine shield) SC's. With D9 bless a normal SC doesn't really need to be killed - hitting several times is enough and even if you lose the fight it will be victory.
From what I played and experienced an imprisoned D9W9F4 PoD is splendid for EA\LA Mictlan in many aspects. And your scales won't be that bad with him...

[Baalz]

Hmmm, I think the damage done by death weapons is higher than the average implies because the variation is capped at 0 damage on the low end which is close to tie while there's no upper cap. If you hit twice and there's a difference of 10 between the attacker and defender's rolls both times but the winner is reversed, you deal 0 and 12 damage - it's a bit misleading to think of it as 2.7 damage per hit. Of course this doesn't take into account the MR check, but I guess my point is that 2AN damage is more than it sounds when you're talking about a lot of rolls. Look at it this way, if you hit twice, figure MR is gonna fail once, and you're gonna roll 0 damage once...then that means every other eagle warrior lands a kill or at least significant damage - not bad at all against heavily armored troops.

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.

[Omnirizon]

do not forget that the afflictions too can incur damage and stat penalties, often which can be more meaningful than extra damage and attack of a fire bless; even against swarms of normal troops.

additionally, a death bless is typically more accessible, and death typically is tons more useful on a pretender than fire, IMHO.

[sector24]

So how did Death go from the worst bless to like the 4th best bless?

[Omnirizon]

why should blesses be ordinal?

[Rytek]

Bless effects can't be judged.
It all depends on what unit is to be blessed.

A water bless for Nifel giants is ok. But they will fatigue faster and actually be less effective in larger battles where an earth and or nature bless is much more effective.

On the other hand a water bless is superb for a unit like EA TC's sacreds when an earth and or nature bless is not as good for this unit.

[MaxWilson]

Baalz said:
Hmmm, I think the damage done by death weapons is higher than the average implies because the variation is capped at 0 damage on the low end which is close to tie while there's no upper cap. If you hit twice and there's a difference of 10 between the attacker and defender's rolls both times but the winner is reversed, you deal 0 and 12 damage - it's a bit misleading to think of it as 2.7 damage per hit. Of course this doesn't take into account the MR check, but I guess my point is that 2AN damage is more than it sounds when you're talking about a lot of rolls. Look at it this way, if you hit twice, figure MR is gonna fail once, and you're gonna roll 0 damage once...then that means every other eagle warrior lands a kill or at least significant damage - not bad at all against heavily armored troops.

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.

1.) That's why it's something like 2.7 instead of just 2. IIRC, of course. I ran a simulation to figure out exactly how much average damage 2 AN does but it was more than a year ago. A forum search for MaxWilson and "death bless" should turn up my posts.

2.) Don't tower shields give +7 to def? Ignoring shields is somewhat worse than twice as good as +4 to attack.

-Max

[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.