Warriors of the Five Elements.

[Renojustin]

With F9, they eat thugs, high defense troops, setting things on fire which is always nice... I see the loss of F9 as too much of a maulus to WotFE, who only have 16 damage base.

S9 would help against one arrow volley, help some against MR base resist spells, but you're already talking base 14 MR when blessed. I don't seeing it add as much to their survivability as F9, where they can mow through opposing troops, thus removing a potential source of damage.

So for the bless, W9F9 seems to be THE way to go for these guys.

While S9 can be used to better effect by your pretender on the strategic map, the reverse is true for battle magic in my opinion. So the relative utility there might come down to what you're going to use your pretender for, exactly. A Phoenix going up against an army that's not heat resistant can be hard to watch.

[Wrana]

On transporting them: if you get astral, you can use Gateway, & if you have nature - Faery Trod. both are relatively easy to use at endgame, & both are easy to reach w/ Tien Chi.
Though I agree that survival would be very thematic for these guys!

[Jazzepi]

Renojustin said:
With F9, they eat thugs, high defense troops, setting things on fire which is always nice... I see the loss of F9 as too much of a maulus to WotFE, who only have 16 damage base.

S9 would help against one arrow volley, help some against MR base resist spells, but you're already talking base 14 MR when blessed. I don't seeing it add as much to their survivability as F9, where they can mow through opposing troops, thus removing a potential source of damage.

So for the bless, W9F9 seems to be THE way to go for these guys.

While S9 can be used to better effect by your pretender on the strategic map, the reverse is true for battle magic in my opinion. So the relative utility there might come down to what you're going to use your pretender for, exactly. A Phoenix going up against an army that's not heat resistant can be hard to watch.

I completely disagree. It's easy enough to give a thug fire immunity through charcoal shield and firebrand. Any experienced player that's seen your bless will have an easy time removing the benefit of the F9 bless against their SCs and thugs. It also gives a bonus to attack, but the defense loss to SCs, thugs, and troops off of the extra attack from the quickness effect is comparable considering that they're already dual wielding.

S9W9 is also a much cheaper bless to get than F9W9 and unlike F9, S9 is much much more useful in the late game. You can get the female statue, and throw her around the map, either leading a master enslave communion, or just tech her out with lots of gear and let her go nuts standing there with astral shield, fire shield, etc.

Jazzepi

[BesucherXia]

Looks like I am among the minority of Air-Bless fans. But still I would like to state my argument:

-FW-Bless is much more expensive than WA/WS. Since no pretender has initially FW path, open a new path and grab level 9 is a big investment.

I have made a small test, to get a F9W9 pretender for EA_TC you must pay at least 670 points with no consideration of Dominion (Dragon/Mother of Rivers), while the cost of W9A6 is just about 440 points for Frost Father. That's why I always leave my hand untouched when looking at F9W9 at least for some 25 gold guys. A9 is also a waste for WotFE IMO.

-F9 is always good to deal with defence intensive units/thugs. But please check the WotFE's 25 gold cost again, you can group them in great horde and overwhelm any thugs just make use of the multiple attack penalty. Dam16 is not so brilliant, but In EA there is not so many protection intensive units, while most of them have bigger problem to deal with WotFE's incredible defence/encumbrance combination as the drawing combat continues.

Honestly I have never tested EA TC with high bless in MP games. S9 can benefit more as a long term strategy comes into discussion, but I still believe just take W9A6 and you can make things better at starting phase since the only weakness of WotFE is no more question while TC is never considered to be lack of long term strategy.

Edit: some of my points are already covered by Jazzepi before I finish my post... Shame to be not so good with my English.

[Shovah32]

I personally prefer W9S9 to F9W9 on these guys. Firstly, it's cheaper. You can take an oracle and doing that lets you get high dominion and decent scales along with your bless.

Secondly it really increases their survivability. Unlike what Renojustin said, it helps against more than one arrow volley: not every warrior is going to get hit in the first volley. I would also say it helps their survivability more while in combat - sure, F9 lets them kill stuff quicker, but with their high defence they almost never get hit so that twist of fate bonus really helps.

I'd also disagree about S9 being worse in battle. Sure, F9 can be devastating against non fire-resistant enemies, but even Flame Storm from a F9 caster can be stopped with some counter magic. As a test, I put 100 Mictlan Warriors against a F10 Flame Storm caster. With Army of Gold, I lost less than 20 warriors from the first casting, and a total of 41 from two castings in the same battle. And any enemy who knows you have fire magic will have his thugs/SCs protected against it.

Where-as if you have a few penetration boosters on your Oracle even Master Enslave(ring of wizardry, ring of sorcery, eye of the void and either a crystal coin or spell focus gives a total of +6) can have a big penetration bonus on it, such as the +6 I mentioned. Even with antimagic up, alot of armies can be enslaved by that.

Your oracle with those items also gets +8 penetration on enslave mind, that's enough to get rid of alot of thugs/SCs who haven't pushed their MR up far enough - you could either astral travel your oracle in with a big enough shield of troops to protect him while he does his work(25 gems total - worth it to kill alot of thugs/SCs), or simply teleport him in along with a small number of thugs/SCs(golems are great) to protect him.

And of course, having an S9 pretender can completely screw any plans your opponent had for a thug/SC with astral magic(golems, for example).

Looks like Jazzepi beat me to my main point(note to self - don't leave for half an hour mid-post) but I guess it's still valid.

[chrispedersen]

The primary benefit of F9 is not the damage done, nor the setting on fire, nor the bonus to attack - although all these things are nice.

Its the fact that it makes the attack magic - and so works on ethereal etc.

I have experimented a lot in small player games and in sp; the results of my tests are that TC with a Dual or triple bless doesn't *need* a water bless.

These units are so cheap, and so fast that the twist fate gives adequate protection in a horde. Plus, they usually are experienced by the time they encounter MP.

[thejeff]

The only thing I'd say to defend F9 against thugs, is that I believe Flaming weapons still count as magic, even if the target is immune to fire. Thus Mistform and Etherealness can be countered, which helps a lot against some thugs.

[Endoperez]

The fire attack is 6 points of magical, AP damage, but the actual melee damage isn't affected. Fire-immune unit is safe with etherealness, since etherealness works just fine for the melee part and fire resistance protects him from the separate magical damage.

I'm not sure how Mistform works. Fire damage could negate it, but I'm not sure - it could go either way, really.

[Renojustin]

I'm just sort of wondering here how you get Eye Of Void, 2 rings, Crystal Coin, and Spell Focus on the same caster. Not many have more than 2 miscellaneous slots.

Also, I did forget about the magical attack aspect of F9 bless, which can become very important against a lot of nations and strategies.

2x 14 ATK, 16 damage mundane attacks just isn't very impressive when weighed against 4x attacks at 18 ATK (and can be considered 6 attacks with fire). While it's true that there aren't very many units in EA with outstanding protection, that only makes your attacks more powerful as you can overwhelm two lightly protected units with each WotFE per turn. And of course you still have to consider thugs and SCs, which will all have very good protection.

[chrispedersen]

Besides.. if you spam a Divine Bless.. Doesn't an S9 all of a sudden become a lot more effective?