Suggested Changes to Bless Bonuses

[Humakty]

A9 on a pretender is surely of no use, but A mages are the most powerfull battle mages around, able to toast my anathemants or witch hunters before they can even get in range for their poor F spells.

[Sombre]

But what does that have to do with air bless being weak? It isn't like you can't use national air mages if you don't take an air magic pretender. I don't understand the argument that because air magic grants powerful combat spells it should have a weak bless - the combat/utility spells are used by recruitable air mages, the bless is on the pretender - they aren't really related at all. I mean sure the pretender is another air mage, but one isn't going to make much difference and he still wouldn't need anywhere near A9.

[konming]

While A9 is not that useful, A4 or A5 is certainly extremely useful on your pretender, esp. considering in LA, no nation gets A4 and even A3 is not guaranteed for the strongest air nation.

[Velusion]

Meh, people who think that changing things to make them more balanced promotes the same style of play are completely incorrect. Balance promotes people to try new things and encourages different strategies, rather than the obvious best.

[Chris_Byler]

Exactly. Right now, anyone who wants a strong bless for sacreds with low HP takes W9 and probably F9. If they're high HP they take N6-9 and possibly E9. The rest are basically not worth consideration as blesses. MR protects against too few things, strength only helps you if you hit (and then not very much) and air shield has low percentages and limited usefulness once arrow fend and storms start flying. Death is OK for sacred battlemages but that's more a novelty than a strategy that will win games.

There are other reasons to take some of those paths on your pretender, but not high enough for a strong bless. Why can't we have 8 strong blesses that are actively desired in addition to the other uses of those paths? (Some people say that water is a weak path outside of its bless - I don't believe this is true anymore, but even if you think it is, do you want to make the same claim about nature?)

Let Death Weapons live up to the name - every hit works like Heart Finder Sword, MR or die (unless lifeless). Let S9 give luck instead of merely twist fate. Let B9 horror mark or curse any target hit (including hit by spells, like Death's afflictions bonus). And let A9 give charge body in addition to 75% SR (and maybe increase the air shield percentages, they're so low as to be almost ignorable now). Those would be some blesses that would make people think twice before reaching for W9 game after game after game.

[Autochthon]

Hmm, well...

For an alternate Wind bless, might I recommend an increase in Action Points?

There aren't too many sacred missile troops, and Air Mages get +Precision from Air magic anyhow. This give melee troops a decent buff that stays w/in the character of Air magic w/out intruding w/other Path blesses.

I did also think that Death bless w/out Fear kinda sucked, but then again, that may be a bit imba. Another idea would be to automatically raise the unit as Undead if killed in battle? Or perhaps give Sacred Units Life Drain attacks?

As for an alternate Blood bless, perhaps a minor life drain ability? Or give Blood the Berserk ability (aka Frenzy) and give Nature poison weapons?

As for Awe, i'd leave that for a Astral bless, since most creatures w/Awe tend to be Astrally summoned (i.e., use Astral Gems).

Some ideas for ya

[Humakty]

Sombre : I think you're right, my pretender usually sits in it's keep, waiting for powerfull equipment. By the time he goes to battle, he will be empowered. I don't think it would change the way I play to change the A bless, but I only play on big (400+) maps.
On a small map, if the A/D/B blesses were as interesting as the F and W bless, wouldn't everyone select A/B/D ?

[Agema]

No. If A/B/D were as interesting as the others, people would play A/B/D/E/F/W/N pretenders.

Increasing action points is an interesting idea, but mostly that just gets you into melee faster, to no real point if you've got an arrow ward up. Well, okay, it'll help you chase down routing troops I guess.

[Kuritza]

Death bless is very strong as is. Maybe its worse against national troops than Fire, but it makes SCs nearly obsolete. Ever tried using an SC against a W9D9 jaguars?
Anyway, I'd like to see strong blesses weakened atm... Sacred troops dominate the environment too much, just as SCs were in Dominions 2. At least SCs required some research and planning, while sacreds are a no-brainer in many cases.

[KissBlade]

Kuritza said:
Death bless is very strong as is. Maybe its worse against national troops than Fire, but it makes SCs nearly obsolete. Ever tried using an SC against a W9D9 jaguars?
Anyway, I'd like to see strong blesses weakened atm... Sacred troops dominate the environment too much, just as SCs were in Dominions 2. At least SCs required some research and planning, while sacreds are a no-brainer in many cases.

Umm... SC's I design don't get hit by D9. In THEORY D9 should be the SC destroyer but a magic /negatable/ attack is laughable. Also, the very idea of bless troops against SC rarely happens since the entire point of getting a SC is that he's maneveurable enough to avoid armies you don't want to fight and squash the ones you do.