How to use blood magic effectively in battles?

[konming]

Blood magic has some great summons, but I could not find good battlefield magic. I wonder what good players use?

Blood Broil - Does not use blood slaves and AN, but has short range (20) and can be resisted by MR. Also single target and less than stellar precision.

Agony - 1 point of damage seems quite useless. Fear+0 attack would be useful, but I never saw it been effective.

Hellfire - Now we have a decent AOE attack. Still, falling fire would be much better IMO.

Harm - I do not see the point in this spell, can anyone point out a use for it?

Blood Rain - -4 Morale could be useful against elephants I think, other than that, what use is this spell?

Blood Letting - at 400 base fatigue, a B4 caster can at most decrease that to 80 fatigue. And doing 1 point of AN+MR damage, what's the point?

I admit life for a life and infernal prison are really great later against SCs, but before that, I cannot find a decent battlefield spell, or is there some secret I do not know?

[Micah]

Leech is fairly solid for low-level casters, since it's a life drain attack and will pay back most of the fatigue it costs to cast if you hit a square with 3 units in it. Rush of Strength is decent because it hits your whole army.

But yes, in general outside of L4L and the "go to hell" spells blood magic is *** in combat. So is most water magic, outside of quickness. Just the way things go.

[konming]

Yeah, I forgot about Leech. That's a decent one.

[The DarkOne]

Harm can actually be pretty useful if you cast it with a highlevel bloodmage since both area of attack and damage increses with the level of the bloodmage casting it.
Assuming that both AoE and damage increses by one for every level of bloodmagic above the 2 needed a level 9 bloodmage will have a AoE 11 dam 9 AN attack which isn't bad.

[Sombre]

Water magic does have frozen heart, which is pretty damn good. The equivalent blood spell is leech.

Hellfire can be ok as well.

[Lord_Bob]

If you have other paths.... or empower a mage in blood, the fatigue reducing spell would probably be worth something.

[Taqwus]

Hell Power, if you've got multiple other paths. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

In general, while Blood got a combat boost over D2, it's still a summoning-heavy school -- especially if you're Lanka or Mictlan with all those tasty national summons.

Edit --
Oh, and certain tasty items, as well. Blood Thorn is the only 1HD non-unique life-draining weapon in the game, IIRC. Hell Sword is 2HD, but gives fire resistance, 'zerk, AND lifedrain. Armor of Souls is nice if you're facing lots of astral mages or mindblasters, for the heavy MR boost. Boots of Youth, for, well, youth. Contracts give devils...

[Warhammer]

Life for a Life looks like it would be good against SCs.

[Velusion]

Warhammer said:
Life for a Life looks like it would be good against SCs.



I've found B9 is excellent in that scenerio. The "send to inferno" spells and LfL can be very powerful against SCs.

Of course... you have to get to B9 and are only usable by above average blood mages...

[Micah]

L4L is B3, but only 1 slave, so a B2 mage could get a cast off...not exactly "above average" there. He'll be very much KO'd from it, but L4L is kind of a multiple-caster spell anyhow if you're trying to drop a 200HP SC.

[Velusion]

Micah said:
L4L is B3, but only 1 slave, so a B2 mage could get a cast off...not exactly "above average" there. He'll be very much KO'd from it, but L4L is kind of a multiple-caster spell anyhow if you're trying to drop a 200HP SC.



I'm pretty sure the computer won't cast it (it will default to something else) unless you have 3B. I've actually been testing it out in test games the last few days and I can't get the B2 mages to cast it (even when loaded up on slaves).

[Micah]

Well, it wouldn't be the first time the spellcasting AI didn't work like it ought to, so I may very well be mistaken.

[K]

Reinvigoration is the best combat blood spell. Rush of Strength is nice as well. The spells that send dudes to hell are the premier SC killers.

Otherwise, pray your mages don't cast any of the other spells (though Hellbind Heart is almost as good as Charm or Enslave and will do wonders in Assasinations).

Otherwise, blood slaves make good meatshields.

[konming]

I think Hellbind Heart is just like Charm, even longer range, but high fatigue cost and requires blood slave. It certainly is better than enslave. But all these spells tends to work on single more powerful target, as area kill is hard to find.

[AreWeInsaneYet]

why the hell would you ever need the area kill in blood?
just like the blood astral magic also lacks aoe spell and nobody suffers from that. there's not a single nation have no access to nonblood magic, just move your *** and youll be more comfort.

[DrPraetorious]

Water magic sucks in combat except for falling frost, frozen heart, quickness and the various underwater spells which are all sheer gravy (except, okay, the zap spell, that's not much good) - in other words, it sucks except for all the spells it gets, which are good http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Blood Rain is often an outstanding spell, especially if you have a bunch of fearless units.
Agony is also more effective than it looks. With the great range and large AoE, you can rout whole armies with it. Falling foo is better but that doesn't mean Agony isn't good.

Blood Vengeance is actually worth casting on a number of units - if you head straight for Blood 9, you can have Jotun Skratti cast it and then turn into werewolves. Instant SCs - this really works, although anything requiring a 9 that just clears chaff is, admittedly, not infinitely exciting.
Might as well cast Pain Transfer at the same time if you're swimming in slaves.

Blood Lust is always worth casting as Lanka.

[Lingchih]

Hellbind Heart, in my experience (very limited... I don't use Blood much), is inferior to Charm. It cost 100 fatigue, requiring you to use Reinvigoration plus a bunch of blood slaves, to cast it multiple times, and does not seem to hit as hard as Charm.

[Velusion]

Yea, Blood Vengeance is another good B9 spell for SCs/Thugs.

Oh and LfL is actually lvl 8, so not quite as bad.

The best are still Infernal Prison and Claws of Kokytos. As someone mentioned before they are the ultimate anti-SC spells.

[sum1lost]

Bloodletting is actually brutal against large armies. One player used it to slaughter my communions and legions very effectively in Chinchilla.

[Folket]

Leech is the single most powerful spell. Just use huge armies of 60-100 gold B1 mages. Against ordnary units they kill 30 gold a turn for three turns. Against other units it will be much more efficient.

[Cor2]

DrPraetorious said:
Falling foo



NOooooooo Any thing but falling foo! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Cheezeninja]

I've found summon imp to be a very effective spell to boost early expansion. Beyond that it probably isn't very useful unless you happen to have a research armada of B1 mages in good position to charge in and summon a literal horde of imps.

[Burnsaber]

Cheezeninja said:
I've found summon imp to be a very effective spell to boost early expansion. Beyond that it probably isn't very useful unless you happen to have a research armada of B1 mages in good position to charge in and summon a literal horde of imps.



Imps are pretty brutal if you buff them a bit. A round of summoning imp horders + Rush of Strenght (or that spell which gave all demons Str boost) can give those buggers a real bunch.

[FAJ]

Blood is most useful for helping out your own forces, not really hurting the others.

Reinvigorate, rush of strength, bloodlust etc.

Blood vengence is a nice one too. Pheonix pyre + Blood vengence is a decent boost for your own SCs late game.

[Baalz]

You can also do some nasty things with call horror. Make sure you lay a couple horror marks in an army beforehand then 5B/3S mages (easy for Mictlan & Abyssia to get) can teleport two mages in, one casts: call horror, bloodletting, call horror, bloodletting, returning, the other blood rain, blood letting, call horror, blood letting, returning. If you notice a starving enemy army (nobody starves when attacking heat 3 dominions, do they?) that's just about certain to route them which you can use to destroy a whole invading army if you're clever.

Hell power has some nasty uses with immortal units (like vampire counts) where it's no big deal to stack up some horror marks. It not only buffs your magic power it also buffs your defense, attack, hp, strength, etc.

Sabbath master/slave is very useful for buffing thugs as you can follow it up with a reinvigoration to wipe out the fatigue they'll build up being slaves for spells they don't have the paths for.

Bloodletting is great for lone SCs at the end of their buff cycle, it'll not only hit the entire enemy army it also wipes their fatigue and supercharges their HPs.

Imps can be devastating if used correctly. If you're defending and can get them off first they'll completely screw up the targeting of whatever they were hoping to use on your real troops (spells, flaming arrows, etc.). Also, because of their small size and double attacks they're surprisingly effective against guys with high defense.

Leech can be *devastating* if you have a bunch of cheap b1 mages (for researching or blood hunting). Not only is it effectively fatigue free, it's also aoe 1 and kills pretty much any regular type unit. If you're fighting human sized opponents that means 5 blood-1 mages can destroy 15 units per turn with precision-100, AN, and no mr check. This is a very cost effective counter to concentrated elite raiding squads. It's also a very effective SC killer when you spam it like that.