Bladewind/Gift of Heaven/Falling Frost questions

[Agrajag]

Well, you probably won't be able to stop the first Bladewind no matter how hard you try, so I wouldn't consider that much of a counter.
Unless you are spamming so many spells that no army could survive anyway :X

[Cainehill]

And, bladewind is already a fairly pathetic spell that's been nerfed in Dom3, since it _used_ to be fairly effective against all those ethereal, 0 protection hordes.

In any case, it certainly isn't arrows, so arrow fend and the like shouldn't have any effect on it. It's not "Arrow Wind" or "Arrow Storm", after all.

[Endoperez]

Blade Wind has been dealing mundane damage for a long time. It's the number of effects that enables it to hurt ethereal units, not the fact that it's a spell.

[Graeme Dice]

It's still a rather ineffective spell unless you are playing an early age game.

[UninspiredName]

I don't know, a spell that mimics 50 archers is fine by me.

[Shovah32]

Make that 50 high damage archers

[Corwin]

calmon said:
1. In my test the mage didn't cast a scripted Arrow Fend. Maybe because there are no attacking archers, only the bladewind casters. So i think it doesn't work. In my oppinion it should work. There should be an active counter vs. bladewind, the counter shouldn't be just a good protection.

Or maybe the attacking force was not large enough? Arrows Fend costs gems after all, mages may decide to conserve them.

I wonder is somebody could try casting Arrowfend spell while under attack by bladewinds/archers, and let me know the results? (I am away from my Dom computer until tommorow)

As for "arrows" - true, bladewinds is not made from arrows. But "air shield" description said it blocks any "missiles", not just arrows. And based upon what Endo said, Bladewind seems to be a storm of mundane missiles.

[Graeme Dice]

Bladewind does not mimic 50 archers, it has far less precision, and can typically only be cast twice per battle for an E2 mage. A single casting has roughly as much effect as the complete ammunition stores of 4 longbow archers.

[Corwin]

You can survive bladewinds by creative scripting, using decoyes and the fact that bladewind is not a long range spell. Once I've managed to get my small group of w5Es in front of 10 Vanheim's Dwarfs with earth boots and earth gems. My W5Es have dodged 19 out of 20 bladewinds castings (the one that hit was still painful though - prot 9 is not nearly enough vs bladewind).

[Corwin]

Graeme Dice said:
Bladewind does not mimic 50 archers, it has far less precision, and can typically only be cast twice per battle for an E2 mage. A single casting has roughly as much effect as the complete ammunition stores of 4 longbow archers.

Yes, however when you are faced with charging hordes of low/med protection units, bladewinds are much more useful than 4 archers, since the total damage over 15-20 turns does not matter - what matters is to kill as many attacking enemy troops as possible in the first few turns, before they overrun your amry.