death bless

[parone]

what exactly does this avail you? does anyone use this? i tried it on, what was probably, the worst pretender ever created(that'd be a good thread).

i guess it means your blessed troops inflict afflictions on enemies? help me, dudes.

[Shardphoenix]

i guess it means your blessed troops inflict afflictions on enemies?

Yes. AFAIK, it also works for spell damage, so some death bless could be EEEEEEVIL on sacred mages casting evocations. Even if enemies live through it - they are crippled for the rest of their (short) lives.
Major D bless isn`t suitable for nations with blessable thugs, because it replaces any useful magic effect on thug`s weapon, like this AoE damage on Fire Brand. And those 2 points of damage from major D bless are MR negated.
I think, high D bless is the worst high bless in game. If you want higher damage - get high F or low B.

[parone]

lucky for you, shard, you are vs me in the game where i have the most useless pretener of all time.

hey, you learn by f***ing up...

[Shardphoenix]

Well, you still have (or, at least, had) serious financial lead due to my somewhat failed expansion and crappy starting position.
And your pretender isn`t useless - he still can pose serious problem to unsupported armies and his snake freespawn is very nice.

[Immaculate]

its also useful if you have sacred archers.

LA Ti'en Ch'i makes good use of a death bless having both sacred casters and sacred archers. I've only ever used the heavy death bless on Ti'en Ch'i but i didn't really regret it.

A pretender with high death can also be used to summon many ghosts with pretty good efficiency if you like ghosts and they fit into your nation tactics

[Hrum]

A minor death bless (D4-8) increases the chance of your blessed sacred units (or blessed sacred mages) causing an infliction on those they damage.

I think some people like to do this on archers. LA TC has sacred Ancestor Vessel horse archers, but I can't remember if their howling bow messes up some bless effects..?

EA Kailasa has sacred archers too, so they could use a death bless to increase inflictions on the victims of their archery. I don't think too many people do that though - the monkeys are pretty vulnerable to archery, so picking an archery fight with people tends to not be something Kailasa wants to do (but maybe someone has made this work?). A not terribly good idea would be your archers raining affliction causing shafts down on your archery vulnerable melee troops as they engage the enemy. The screeching you hear is not monkey happiness.

Having blessed thugs that are more likely to cause afflictions can sometimes scare your opponents. Other players may not want to send a well kitted-out thug or SC against your thugs with their increased affliction chance.

Sacred mages raining evocations down on the enemy get the bonus affliction chance too. Get hit by a fireball and lose an eye! Or use the blood large AOE low damage spells (ie. Agony, Harm, Bloodletting) to give afflictions to an entire army.

Major death bless (D9+) provides a bonus AN damage (MR save negates) to melee attacks.

The major bless (like the major fire bless) interferes with the secondary effects on popular forged weapons used by thugs/SCs, like the frost/fire/death brands. When you want AOE fire for the entire square you're attacking and all those gems you spent forging that rocking gear only get you some +AP fire damage to the single target you hit, this is frustrating.

Of course, you can always ignore the bless effects and just decide that it's useful to have a pretender with access to high death magic for it's own sake. If you wanted a nice bless, why didn't you take water or nature or earth?

--
Edit: Too slow. Ninja'ed!

[Excist]

D9+ works fine for nations wanting to hire thugs.

Just make sure the said firebrand thug is non-sacred like a bane lord and you're good to go

Then kit your blessable anti-SC thugs up with dual dusk daggers, bless them and watch them take out both of that SC's eyes out in the first combat round and pop a chest wound and a limp in the second round.

That will make it harder for him to flee your D9 anti-SC thug as he chases him down and loots all that good armor and misc items off his body.

[Shardphoenix]

Then kit your blessable anti-SC thugs up with dual dusk daggers, bless them and watch them take out both of that SC's eyes out in the first combat round and pop a chest wound and a limp in the second round.

D10-blessed Rudra with 4 dusk daggers, anyone?

[Corinthian]

Mictlan with a W9D9 bless is actually pretty viable. The bless works fine vs normal troops and is terrifying vs enemy SC. Each jaguar warrior in jaguar form will dish out 4.5 dmg 2, armor negating, mr negate attacks a turn. And if anyone of them makes it past the SC magic resistance they will probably cause an affliction.

It lacks the extra attack bonus from the fire bless, but remember that even a shield hit will trigger the death weapon effect so against enemies with shields its almost like they really got +4 to attack. And the enemy must save vs 12 witch is hard for indies.

[Excist]

hm, now I have a question about Death Bless.

I know Awe has different strengths at dom 9 and dom 10....

And A10 has more shock resistance than A9....

Does the save vs the AN damage get harder to save against at D10 over D9?