Bladewind/Gift of Heaven/Falling Frost questions

[Corwin]

It's been a while since my Dom2 days, so I've partly forgoten few particular details- therefore I have few spell-related questions, which I hope somebody will be able to answer.

Remind me please - bladewind damage is condidered
to be "normal" type, not magical, correct?

If this is the case, then "Arrows Fend" spell should give 80% ptotection from damage done by Bladewind, correct? (IIRC "air shield" , which is basic spell that "arrows fend" cast on all ubits, only protects against nonemagical attacks.)

And what about "Gift From Heaven" - are they simply rocks or do the do magical daage as well?

Last question - do I remember correctly that "Falling Frost" damages units regardless of their cold resistance, unlike "falling fires", to which fire-resistant units are ummune? How effective are nummble units vs "Falling Frost"?

[Endoperez]

Check the manual. Blade Wind is indeed mundane damage, but Gifts from Heaven isn't. Falling Frost deals cold damage.

[Corwin]

Endoperez said:
Check the manual. Blade Wind is indeed mundane damage, but Gifts from Heaven isn't. Falling Frost deals cold damage.



So you are saying that Arrow Fend will give all your troops 80% protection against BladeWind, correct?

Also manual doesn't say anything about Falling Frost being negated by high defense, but ingame description implies it. Do you know any details?

[Endoperez]

Earthquake, on pg 245, has "Def" listed as a Special feature. There are only perhaps one spell which has the Def tag, and it isn't mentioned in the early descriptions of AP, AN, Mundane and other special properties. Some spells can be avoided with high def, and if Falling Frost's descriptions says defence helps, either the manual or the game should be updated.

[Corwin]

Endoperez said:
Earthquake, on pg 245, has "Def" listed as a Special feature. There are only perhaps one spell which has the Def tag, and it isn't mentioned in the early descriptions of AP, AN, Mundane and other special properties. Some spells can be avoided with high def, and if Falling Frost's descriptions says defence helps, either the manual or the game should be updated.



Thanks.

Yes, the question is "which one is wrong". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


What about Arrow Fend? Does it really give 80% protection against Bladewind?

And talking about errors in manual - I always thought that Mistform is dispelled when the target is hit with the blow that does more than 25% of target's hitpoints or magical weapon. But the manual says it is just 25HP. Was I wrong or is manual wrong?

[Endoperez]

Re: Bladewind - I don't know. See the "Forum and manual interaction" thread.

Re: Mistform - I don't know, but if any creature with less than 25 hp has ever lost Mistform while fighting against normal units, it can't be 25 hp.

[Corwin]

Endoperez said:
Re: Bladewind - I don't know. See the "Forum and manual interaction" thread.





Link pls?



Re: Mistform - I don't know, but if any creature with less than 25 hp has ever lost Mistform while fighting against normal units, it can't be 25 hp.



Actualy it can, since manual also said that mistform has 1% chance per turn of dispelling by itself.


OK, so 2 of my question remains -

1.Does anybody knows if Arrow Fend spell protects against Bladewind? (80% protection due to "air shield" effect I mean)

2. Is manual wrong about "Mistform", where it says that to dispel it damage from a single blow must be higher than 25HP, rather than higher than 25 % of target's HPs?

[calmon]

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.

[Agrajag]

Well, there are protection boosting spells.

[Twan]

Bladewind also cost 80 fatigue, so except if a pretender / very powerful mage cast it any spell increasing fatigue may be seen as a counter.

[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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[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.

[Corwin]

Anyway, it looks like nobody know for sure the answer to the question of if Arrow Fend (air shield) works vs Bladewind or not - all this is just a guestwork on our part. We need somebody to run a real test. Any volonteers? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Also my Mistform question still stands - is manual wrong when it says 25HP, rather than 25% of HPs?

[mivayan]

Bladewind - Shields and etherealness helps, so air shield *probably* does. But needs to be tested to know.

Each of the 3 rocks from Gifts from heaven is AoE 1, which means it always hits unless specially specified. Manual doesn't say 'mundane', so ethereal doesn't help. Prot helps in theory (yay, only 125 in stead of 150 damage).

Falling frost - dunno how good defence is. Cold resistance helps against it but not against the evoc7, W2 spell Ice strike.

[UninspiredName]

In the massive battles where Blade Wind is truly worthwhile, it's precision is usually enough to get the job done. As for fatigue cost, I mostly meant that it mimicked a volley of 50 archers. Even in skirmishes it usually lands a lot of hits, and because they're all at once it will sometimes force a morale check. Then you need to factor in the amount of afflictions the spell will dole out early enough for it to matter somewhat.

Of course, this is only my experience with Blade Wind. I once used six mages and that spell to decimate Jomon's forces, (Standard Samurai) so it can't be that useless in Late Age.

[Corwin]

Bump - still looking for Arrow Fend and Mistform answers.