Blood of the First Born

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Paralyze is not particularly effective. High prot, hi regen SC's with/without FireShields can ignore being paralyzed.

Now, if combat ended when all units were paralyzed... another story.

Drain life doesn't do sufficient damage - now it is useful as a buff - but as a tactic to kill a big unit - not so much.

I don't remember incinerate. Sooo since Ihaven't seen it used I'm inclined to say it isn't effective = ).

Incinerate is something like 10 or 15 points of AN Fire damage. There's an item (Phoenix Rod, 25 Fire gems) that lets you cast it. Fire mages frequently choose it to eliminate single units (that lone knight that broke the blockade) because it's Prec 100. I don't know why you haven't seen it used--perhaps the SCs in question were fire resistant?

Just like Frozen Heart, Incinerate and Drain Life obviously require you to deal damage faster than the target heals. This probably means you need 2-3 casters doing 30+ HP per turn (AN). Since they're all Prec 100, they scale well w/ number of casters.

Paralyze against an SC is probably most useful in conjunction with other spells that actually finish off the SC, like the afore-mentioned direct-damage spells, or Mind Burn. As you say, SCs will frequently be able to stand off troops w/ Awe, Fear, high Prot, etc. even while paralyzed.

-Max

P.S. In theory, Paralyze out to do a massive amount of damage to SCs because paralyzation damage turns to real damage if you get re-paralyzed, according to the manual. In practice I haven't observed this w/ Paralyze, although I haven't really been looking for it.