[Squirrelloid]

I grant that the F9 is better melee vs. melee. But it loses elsewhere by large margins.

Useless on sacred mages
F9 is a crappy level 9 path compared to D9
Not nearly as good against high protection units (because AP doesn't totally ignore armor).

Basically, in the following situations I would always want the D9 bless:
(1) You have sacred mages with good AoE combat spells. (Fire, Death, Water, Air, Earth, possibly Nature - ie, virtually any good mage)
(2) You have opponents with powerful units (giants or equivalent), especially blessable ones.

Lets consider case 2 a little more in-depth.

Powerful units like that will tend to appear in smaller numbers. This mean multiple attacks per such unit, and thus increasingly better chances to hit.

Blessable ones probably have an Earth bless and a nature bless (liek E9N6), and often strong base protection. Sometimes they even have strong defense. Because of this, the effect of cumulative attacks is more powerful than the F9 bonus to attack overall. Further, the AP damage is far less useful because it doesn't ignore the armor.

Much of the time your best bet is to fatigue them out so you can start racking up criticals. This means an improved chance to inflict something like 'lost an eye' which makes their attack value lower helps, and chest wound is amazing. Especially when they regenerate, the +affliction chance can really turn combats around.

While it'll happen a low proportion of the time, the AN damage totally ignores that high protection, which means 2AN is actually better than 6AP, even if it happens less often.

Even against SCs/thugs, they'll fail that resistance roll with some frequency - its just a matter of making enough attacks. And they'll tend to have enough defense/protection that the F9 bless won't be that noticeably efficient.

Generally, i think the F9 bless, when its actually better mathematically, just tends to be overkill. Ie, its extra power you *didn't need*. And if the +to hit is the really relevant part, an F4 minor bless is a lot less expensive and half as good - far better value for your points. And F4 is all the fire your pretender will ever need as a spellcaster.

Finally, I have this suspicion that, if the unit with the D9 bless has penetration gear, that'll apply to the AN+disease resistance check, so could work for sacred thugs/SCs of your own. But I don't know that.