useless spirits

[lilmoon]

hi all,

wanted to check what people think about this:

1) FIRE: I think the "fire" spirit is almost useless (I am mage lvl 17) as the damage dealing stuff cost too much and do no damage, and the wall would be useful but now costs me 26 of rage, so I can use it only late in the battle when its of no use

2) POISON: the poison guy has 2 great spells: cloud poison which I keep using and using over and over again, keeps killing archers and similar units. and the glott armor is ok for inquisitors/archers

3) ICE: the recharge is quite useless, the ice throns cost too much and therefore become available only later in the combat, which makes them less useful, the orb is ok just to distract enemies and keep them busy, whilst gizmo is quite irrelevant (200 damage per turn... nothing)

I dont have the other dude, but summarizing the only things I find decent are the cloud poison for damage, glott armor for defence and the orb to keep some unit busy.

please tell me if I am missing something

[Gatts]

In general "become available later in combat" is valid for mage (and little bit for paladin)...
Mage has penalty for rage increase
Mage has the least powerfull armies, so it is very rare you kill whole enemy stack with first hit (as warrior I was able to kill always one enemy stack with archers/ skeleton archers... as archers are low level units, and the killed unit was higher level, I got 60+ rage with one hit only... )
Mage has not only lower Leadership + rage increase penalty, but also lower Attack... this three elements in mutual conjuction end in fact, that you get +1,+2 rage per hit... there are only max 5 hits (five army slots)... so if you don't trhow strong damage spells/ or two spells on your enemy, your rage per turn is 10~20 max (if I count in luck of critical hits, or good strategy, without it would be 5~10)... but well... you can shoot 2 maxed fireballs on your enemies, and get 10 rage from each (even more if you kill a whole stack)... depends

Fire spirit is good IMHO - but he fits much more warrior/paladin, (as spirits should balance the game against spell-strong mage) underground spikes, when maxed only for 40 rage hit everyghing on map what is not yours and deals 1000~1500 DMG (if target is mage-like then 2x so much), also the wall could help a lot to save at least one turn between your archers and enemy tanks

Charges were for me very useful, mostly for regaining mana as warrior, or for regaining rage as mage...(still it may be more expensive, then give rage... but with inquisitors, it is working OK)

Sleem is great, if you are strong mage, you can use gloth's armor together with armageddon... if one armageddon is not enough, use armageddon , ressurect, armomr and aramageddon again...

[gmjapan]

the orb is ok just to distract enemies and keep them busy

Clearly you are not rolling it at the enemy from a distance ;)

[BB Shockwave]

Advice for Mages (and paladins).

First - when you get Rage upgrades, try to choose the ones that do not involve huge increases in Rage. The Ice Ball is a very usefull unit even on low levels, when it only costs 10 Rage. Same with Glot armor - it will always absorb 5000 or so damage, regardless whether it has 400 or 700 HP... so try not to upgrade it that much.

Second: get items that increase rage generation. Spear of Rage is often avaliable in the Creiston Mines after you beat Baron Ahey, or elsewhere. However, you are even better off if you get the Pain Skull. It's more usefull if you get it early on (I was lucky, a ghost stack in the Marshan Swamp had it)... if you manage to fight enough battles, the skull will not halve your Mana before combat, and it gives you +50% Rage increase. Meaning, that usually for a Mage you'd get 1 points of rage when you kill a full stack - now you get +2. And you can get huge amounts of Rage this way when using damaging area spells, Lightning can net you +10 or so Rage even! I find it much more usefull then the Dead Skull (it gives +5 Attack and Intellect- I have about 4 items that give me more then this amount AND provide better bonuses like resistances). It's hard work getting the skull up to this point, though. I recommend you do easy battles with it, for example the pirates in Freedom Islands, or get an easy to upgrade item and fight the keepers, then get the morale low and fight it again.

Also - try to kill full stacks (or have your own full stacks killed!) to accumulate more rage. This works if you or the enemy have units that can summon/spawn troops: Gremlin Towers, Druids, Dryads, Royal Thorns, Necros, Demons. It's a well-used strategy of mine in keeper battles to leave a "friendly" gremlin tower intact, then one-hit kill the troops it summons (friendly gremlins can only cast slow as a debuff/attack spell so they cannot hurt your units) to get instant rage. Or use Reaper's Rage Drain on them.

Also increase maximum Rage. There are Rage skills that you cannot even use with less then 30-40 Rage. Plus the more Rage, the more chance of criticals. There is a might skill for this, as well as items, and of course, roasted rats. They taste 'yuck' but they are good for you! ;)

Zerock is probably the least usefull spirit - in later battles his damage won't be big enough, and his abilities are of little tactical importance. The wall should at least provide cover from enemy archers to be usefull - and it has a very limited lifespan. He's best used against Mage units (Necros, Priests, Mages, Shamans) because he does extra damage againts them.

[loreangelicus]

When a spirit levels up, always prioritize rage decrease and rest recovery decrease. This has a net effect of allowing you to use the rage abilities more often.

This is more poignant on higher difficulties, especially on impossible, as throwing damage abilities has less of an impact as using the more functional abilities like Glot's Armor.

But you only have the first three rage spirits. The last spirit has a more powerful "damage" attack that is useful especially on impossible as it kills a percentage of the enemy stack instead of dealing a fixed damage.