Assassinating priests and astral mags

[B0rsuk]

Hey

I have problems assassinating priests and astral mages. Priests - mostly due to Holy Avenger. I thought I could fix the problem by adding lightning resistance, but it doesn't help. Is there any resistance against the kind of damage Holy Avenger and Smite do ? Other than high hp and regeneration ?

Astral mages are one of reasons I don't try to asssassinate Ermor. As far as I remember, some of their astral spells don't care about MR or anything at all, and have very good precision. Any way around this ? Or just high hp and regen ? I can't seem to regenerate fast enough. I guess I could try skeleton spam with skeleton talisman, but that would be uncool.

In both cases, I think boots of Long Strides or even better - flying - could help. The point is to not give them enough time to cast anything. (1 turn is too much when it comes to Holy Avenger).

Any ideas on equipping Bane Spiders ? They seem to be very good overall, except for nasty armor with -5 defence and 5 encumbrance. I prefer to replace it with cheap Fire Plate, which offers nearly as much protection but much better defence. I think for Bane Spiders to be effective the fix must be as cheap as possible. There's a great potential in them - buffed stats, two decent magical weapons I don't wish to replace.