Air bless: useless?

[Jazzepi]

Air bless = garbage.

Jazzepi

[ryo_akashi]

I just wish that Air 9 provides an additional +2 precision. Useful, but not overpowered. It might open up different bless builds for strategy...

[Cor2]

Not useless. Not great either.
I can see the lv9 air bless being useful for a nation like Man. They get national troops capiable of orb lit and with a little buffing, lit bolt. B/c they rely so heavily on archers your not going to want to cast storm. You haev alot of crazy low precision mages casting lit stuff and your poor sacreds get hit. They also get hit by your longbowmen and the enemies archers. they don't have sheilds. And you save fatigue and time by not having to cast airsheild.

IMHO lv9 air bless synergizes perfectly with Man, and lv8 is useful for any nation with sacreds w/o sheilds.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Sandman said:

For sacred units which have low protection and no shield, the astral bless is better.

Really, how? Twist fate works once. Get hit by a slinger, and its gone.
As Atlantis' fastest unit has 9 AP, Twist Fate will never survive to close combat.

and magic resistance is always handy. Even better, astral nations can use spells like Body Ethereal, Luck and Anti-magic to further enhance the astral bless,

Very true

whilst the air shield becomes obsolete with Arrow Fend.

Partially true. If your sacreds are very expensive, like a 150 gold Niefelheim giant, you're going to give them proper support. If however, your sacreds are a cheap 25 gold, its nice to have taskforces you can support with only one commander and yet tear through independents or province defense while your real army engages the bulk of the enemy force.

If you take a peek at man, you need one Magister Arcane to provide the arrow fend (250 vs 130 of Tungalik), a Magister of Theology (40 gold) to bless and carry the spare gems. The compact taskforce obviously isn't a great idea here. You'd be investing 930 gold for an equivalent force of sixteen. Whereas I'm spending 530.

So, if you have an inexpensive commander who can bless and lead a relatively inexpensive squad of sacreds who aren't that powerful compared to other Elites, but like a Chainsaw compared to the boring old day to day troops... An air bless can give you a lot more mileage to your troops- though they're not great for the epic battles.

The air bless needs help. Ideally, it'd be a good bless for air nations like Vanheim and Caelum.

Actually, I agree. It would be nice if it wasn't as redundant. However, it is worth noting that unlike both fire and water, there are no shock-resist spells, and lightning always hits if there's something in the square where it falls.

If you look at Caelum- I could think of all sorts of wonderful uses for the Shock Resist bless if only they had flying sacreds. Unfortunately, the earthbound are at a measly 5 AP. I suppose you could use them as bodyguards to prevent melee messing up your script while like the last spell your mage casts is Shockwave. But with their current options and those Storm Guards there isn't anything that shock resist can do that you can't do sooner with non-sacreds.

On top of that, your sacred Earthbounds have Kite Shields and 19 protection, rendering missile warding rather useless. Most of your mages can also cast air shield or arrow fend as well. You'd only find a use for the missile protection if you were spamming LE Caretakers in some kind of bizarre strategy. (Earth Boots+Summon Earthpower -> Attack -> Point-blank Bladewind -> Retreat?). Anyways, air bless is a waste...

On Vanheim (EA), you've got rare air focused chassis like Asynja. And then you have Vanhere sacred infantry and sacred mounted commanders with air magic. Other than research, there's zero barrier to getting up Arrow Fend. Use two gems instead of one, and you're not even taken out by the fatigue. However, Arrow Fend does require Enchantment six, though Air Shield is available immediately.
If you take the air bless, you can support with a simple Vanherse of 160 gold and 8 fatigue per cast. If you rely on magic, then a Vanjarl will cast the spell for you, but falling unconscious in the process, and costing two gems and 280 gold. Alternatively, you could get the Vanadrott out for 380 gold, spend two gems, and take about 58 fatigue instead.

I really didn't find any valid rush strat using the air bless, though I'm not familiar with the race. I'd say it's also a bit crummy, though considering the high defense, it might be combinable with Shock Wave - barely.

[Jazzepi]

>Actually, I agree. It would be nice if it wasn't as redundant. However, it is worth noting that unlike both fire and water, there are no shock-resist spells, and lightning always hits if there's something in the square where it falls.<

Untrue, there is a battlefield wide AoE spell that increases elec resistance, and another one that does a large AoE for the same effect.

I still maintain that air bless is garbage. I would always, always, pick twist fate over it (which is universally cheaper to get anyways with the way pretenders are laid out). Especially against crossbow men, who will only shoot once-twice against a quickness blessed group of sacreds set towards the front of the battle map.

Air bless is easy to get around too, you just don't build archers, you mass meele, whereas twist fate works against both and is much harder to counter.

Jazzepi

[Micah]

It should be noted that the MR portion of the S bless doesn't apply past MR 17...not sure if that can be gotten around by making sure the bless goes off before the antimagic spell or not, but it might not combo that well with astral magic (partly dependent on sacred MR, but most that are worth blessing are 11 or higher, so at least half of it would be wasted, Jags being the notable low-MR exception...hunter spiders too, I guess), much like arrow fend and the air bless don't get along.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I will say this. Do you use garbage?

If you had a strategy that involved Dark Skies or a Gale Gate, would you bother taking advantage of an incidental air bless? Would you see any benefit from that? Or would you ignore the bless completely, despite having taken air anyways.

As a primary bless strategy, there are a lot of problems with an air bless. As you've said, there are ways to get around it. There are also ways to circumvent twist fate and nations where its almost useless. Abysia with def2 sacreds? Jotunheim where you're outnumbered six to one?

With some nations, like certain eras of Atlantis, Agartha, and Ctis, you only get to play the melee game anyways, and you may or may not have certain advantages there- an opponent massing melee sometimes only levels the playing field.

An air bless is not a winning strategy like a fire bless can be. When picking paths for blesses alone, air isn't one of my picks either. But I play a lot of nations where Astral magic is garbage, but Air magic has some real value.

But when you're not basing your entire game strategy around blessed troops, air is a damn solid bless. I don't expect my air blessed Arssartuts to win me the game. If the opponent actually masses melee or kills all my Arssartut - I don't care. I'm only churning out eight a turn, tops. I already got my money's worth from them, doubled their usefulness and versatility, in fact reliably tripling my normal expansion by the end of the first year, surpassing the early value of a supercombatant, IMO. By the time someones' countering them, I'll already have dropped Arssartuts from my plans because of their scarcity. And I'll be using my six points of air magic for key tasks.

I won't let myself loose on the argument of universally cheaper. I'd take it a bit further afield than I should, and get senselessly agitated. I'll simply say that MA Atlantis has no oracle, just a monolith. And with only one astral pick, an astral nine bless will leave an awake pretender with only 22 points. Whereas an Arch Mage with an air 8 bless has 60 points to spare, and my Air Six, 180.

I'm going to stop debating this for now. I took this position in part because I found air blesses useful, and in part to play the devil's advocate. I still believe it's not garbage, but I'm not going to let myself be agitated simply because I'm not getting people in general, or one person in particular to agree with me. And once I stake out a particular thesis, I do tend to get contrary w/o reason.

Maybe I'll revisit later. But I don't want to go stir-crazy and derail the thread into a flamewar for no reason either. Other than the reason that I was arguing, and therefor must win because my ego demands it.

I will give into a little of my inner child for satisfactions sake and say...
Nya nya nya. I'm right and you're wrong. I can't hear you. *Sticks fingers in his ears*.

Ah, that was cathartic.

Okay, I wish you well, but its best I cut myself off for now. Getting off work early (but still needing rest) without any plans gave me too much time to myself with nothing to do but argue. I will continue to read this thread, however. And may chime in later when I'm in less of a bratty mood.

[Jazzepi]

>As a primary bless strategy, there are a lot of problems with an air bless. As you've said, there are ways to get around it. There are also ways to circumvent twist fate and nations where its almost useless. Abysia with def2 sacreds? Jotunheim where you're outnumbered six to one?<

Don't put words in my mouth. I never said I'd bother with twist fate on these nations, it's obviously subpar, but air shield would be /even worse/ which just further proves my point that is has no place as a high level bless. In fact, the only reason I would ever take air on my pretender is to get level 4 air to allow me to easily forge air boosters. And as I said, I would always pick a high astral, enough to get twist fate, over a high air any day.


>I won't let myself loose on the argument of universally cheaper.<

Obviously some nations don't have access to the astral fountain, but most do, or they have access to the sacred statue, and the vast majority of the time a high astral bless is infinitely cheaper than the air bless. Oh, and high astral bless lets you cast much better ritual spells than air. Dispel with a huge added bonus to your roll? Or maybe arcane nexus with your level 8 or 9 caster that's nearly impossible to dispel. Or master enslave with a pretender that's ready to cast it out of box. Or Gate so that you can teleport your entire army into the enemy's capital, and then spam master enslave communion awesomeness while you take it down.

A high air bless will never, ever, be a good bless because it's opportunity cost is far too high, and it doesn't help you enough. Maybe it would be if quickness, twist fate, and flaming weapons weren't around. All of them are vastly superior, and except for the water one, offer better late game casting options. Although the sea of ice is quite useful, as is the ability to summon water queens out of the box.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

My apologies. I did not intend to put words in your mouth. I did not intend to claim you had a stance on Abysia, but in hindsight, I agree that it clearly came out that way.

I'll rewrite that section.

As a primary bless strategy, there are a lot of problems with an air bless. As you've said, there are ways to get around it. There are also ways to circumvent twist fate.

I'll provide an example from a nation I'm familiar with, Agartha. The Ancient Ones really are not a good bless chassis until Darkness is castable, but then blesses are kind of moot. Most blesses are a bit of a waste on them, compared to other nations. But being as I'm not familiar with many nations, they will have to serve as my example.

Twist fate will protect them from one attack. With forty hitpoints, that one attack isn't likely to be significant. With a defense of ten, and a parry of only two, they're going to be hit rather easily by missile and melee attacks unless you've got a secondary bless up. A simple chaff screen or group of slingers will quickly dismiss Twist Fate, unless support spells or secondary blesses are in place.

Body Ethereal, or versions of luck can make them more effective, though you are drastically limited by your national mages.

An air bless, on the other hand, has a permanent affect, fully effective immediately without requiring support spells (which you might not have the mages for) such as body ethereal to reach maximum potential, and has no practical fatigue cost. It also presents capabilities you are unable to reproduce using national mages. Your national mages can boost mr in smaller, less effective capacity via iron will or lead shields, or later on in Army of Lead. Unfortunately, Agartha has nothing approaching the effect of Twist Fate, but they do have a few other ways to prevent attacks from hitting now that cave forts and provinces are properly darkness-ing battles.

If you have a high air bless on Agartha, then you can be more aggressive in your use of Blade Wind. This is especially handy because you have such low precision, Darkness or not. Any level of Blade Wind won't protect your Ancient Ones from friendly fire to the point where you don't need to take precautions, and the cost of the higher levels is way too much as well. But there are specific opportunities- worthwhile ones- to a pretender with air magic. In the case of a titan, you may find a staff of Elemental Mastery useful. The Flying Carpet or Winged Shoes will have a dramatic effect on the mobility of your map-move 1, expensive, capital only Oracles. And it achieves that at construction four, not in any unique item. Anyways, there are a few reasons to take air, and while the effect of an air bless alone is not enough to take air, there are situations where the combined value of a low-middling air bless is higher than that of Astral magic on non-oracle/sacred statue pretenders.

And there are opportunity costs to the sacred statue. Astral magic has a lot of expensive temptations. And it can be tough to get your pearl economy off the ground. You cannot manually move around searching for astral sites, though you may get lucky- probably so in the site rich early age- and find a site with the side effect of producing the pearls necessary for steady (and slow, with only one caster) Arcane Probing. On the positive side, Astral pearls are easier to convert to and from- and Probing costs a low two pearls. If you're unlucky at finding sites, though, forty gems can easily be wasted. It doesn't happen often, but it happens, and even when it doesn't, I really don't like the inconvenience. I'd be more interested in bootstrapping a blood economy off of a pretender.

There. I doubt that was any more convincing, but hopefully less troublesome. I really didn't intend to put words in your mouth, and I hope this straightens things out between us- though we'll still be on opposite sides of this debate.

I kind of was unfocused in this post, but here I have a specific question for you. Focusing solely on a 50% air shield and twist fate - none of the other effects considered - what bless would you rather have on Agartha? Leave the MR boost out only for the moment, because while it is worthy of consideration I'd like to save that for later, please. I don't have much energy left tonight.