Death vs. Fire bless

[krpeters]

So a death bless negates the armor value of shields? That explains a *lot*.

It also means that archers with a death blessing would deal catastrophic damage to opponents. Are there any blessable archers in the game?

[thejeff]

No, the 2AN damage part of the death blessing doesn't apply to archers or spells. Only the extra chance of afflictions counts.

LA T'ien Ch'is Ancestor Vessels are heavy cavalry archers and very nice with a death bless.

[Baalz]

Just to be clear since there seems to be a bit of confusion about what I said, what I meant is just what Jim said...the vast majority of times a shield hit is *effectively* a miss (causes no damage) for a fire bless but *effectively* a hit for a death bless (causes 2AN damage). So *effectively* a death bless ignores the shield defense, and thus any time the shield defense is greater than 4 it's *effectively* better than the attack bonus for a fire bless. I guess I was a bit ambiguous, I think of a "hit" in this context as an attack which causes damage.

[cleveland]

Gotcha. Sorry for misinterpreting.

An interesting, lesser known effect of the D9 bless is that Death Weapons cause disease directly. The weapon "bless death" (wpn #448) calls its own secondary effect "Disease" (wpn #143), which doesn't seem to check MR and gives the target the Diseased affliction...in addition to the +350% chance of other afflictions.

Of course the targets are only affected by disease if they fail the original MR roll, so it's not as devastating as it sounds. But it'll make your opponent think twice about sending his elephants against your lowly flaggies.

[Omnirizon]

krpeters said:
So a death bless negates the armor value of shields? That explains a *lot*.

It also means that archers with a death blessing would deal catastrophic damage to opponents. Are there any blessable archers in the game?

EA Kailasa's Yavana Archers

until now thought completely useless. I think A10D9 might work with them.

they could work quite nicely by themselves, or with chaff if necessary; and Kail has no shortage of chaff to choose from

No need to rush for Gandharvas or Arrow Fend, you could get Celestial music fast. D9 blessed longbow archers with the high precision of the Yavanas firing twice a turn, you could place em so far to the back, and with a little chaff to stall stuff, they would empty their quivers. anything left alive would get killed by them in melee once they were finally reached.

[Tifone]

i think they said this D bless doesn't apply to archers

[Omnirizon]

i know F bless doesn't, so D bless may not either. not too sure.

that's a pity though, because it means Yavana Archers would remain mostly useless.

[Endoperez]

Death Weapons from Death 9 only affects melee weapons. Improved affliction chance from D9 (350%) works for melee, missile, magic and perhaps other sources of damage as well if there are any. I'm not sure about fire shield.

[Omnirizon]

the fact that the D9 damage is AN synergizes well with the increased affliction chance though. if they are protted to hell, then you might get the AN damage through, if they are MR to hell, then you might get normal damage through, either way, you can probably get some afflictions through.

and even with minimal damage infliction, if you start getting some afflictions on, anything becomes a lot less of a threat.

wonder how F8D9 might stack up to F9W9, especially considering the gain in design points. something with higher armor and low defense, that wouldn't benefit from the weak effect of water.

[JimMorrison]

Dammit you guys! I JUST started an EA game, and now you've got me all curious to try Kailasa. Maybe I'll do some SP tinkering to work it out.....

Was just playing with pretenders a bit - I do think N4 is pretty useful for Kailasa. Though, I suppose you could just plan to mass buff with Ethereal/Luck by the time it really matters.

Also, their recruitable anywhere sacred, is not the archer, so this somewhat complicates the issue. While I'd agree that the Death bless is still very viable for them, the fact that most of your sacreds would be full time melee, kind of changes the rest. I was looking at a Master Lich with 6A/9D/4N which seemed pretty viable as far as retaining decent scales as well.

However, overall it seems like you are best off trying to use blockers to eat arrows. That being the case, the Air could be dropped altogether, to give them a bigger Nature bless which could be enough to keep the archers up (you should have at least some protective buffing going on before things get really hairy), and also provide a lot more benefit to the melee.


Okay, I'm getting carried away! To sum up, yes I agree that Kailasa is a good example of Death potentially being better than Fire.