Casting Firestorm in Dominions 5 (and other high fatigue spells)

[Big Dog]

So lets see if I get this right:

Firestorm is 5F and 5 fire gems to cast and 500 fatigue.

So you need a F5 caster, who casts phoenix power first and then casts firestorm with 6 gems to reduce the fatigue to only 125 so that they don't just cast it and die and it turns off.

Is this how you cast the big spells in Dom5 now?


Woops my math was wrong it was 500/3 not 500/4 but yea pretty much you need to power up and then use an extra gem to fully avoid damage as a F5 caster casting firestorm.

A simple chnage that would also buff firemagic would be to lower the gem cost to only 4 firegems so you can use 5 to cast with 250 fatigue and take 1 or 2 damage or something based on the new fatigue damage system.

[Imp]

The trick to casting firestorm is to tech to alt 9, cast wish, and wish for being a nation that uses air magic instead of fire. Then you cast lighting firestorm for only 200 fatigue, spend much less research getting there, and it ignores armor instead of just reducing it by half

You're welcome.

[Big Dog]

Originally posted by Impedocles:

The trick to casting firestorm is to tech to alt 9, cast wish, and wish for being a nation that uses air magic instead of fire. Then you cast lighting firestorm for only 200 fatigue, spend much less research getting there, and it ignores armor instead of just reducing it by half

You're welcome.

There's a lot more things weak to fire than there is weak to shock damage.

Also a lot more things resistent to fire that you can put with a fire storm caster to wipe out whatever doesn't get firestormed.

[terve886]

Originally posted by 3 Theories:

Originally posted by Impedocles:

The trick to casting firestorm is to tech to alt 9, cast wish, and wish for being a nation that uses air magic instead of fire. Then you cast lighting firestorm for only 200 fatigue, spend much less research getting there, and it ignores armor instead of just reducing it by half

You're welcome.

There's a lot more things weak to fire than there is weak to shock damage.

Also a lot more things resistent to fire that you can put with a fire storm caster to wipe out whatever doesn't get firestormed.

There is way more units that are resistant to fire than units that are resistant to shock. Fire damage is AP while shock damage is AN, so shock damage is not hindered by armor of any kind besides shock resistance, and even then shock spells have higher base damage compared to fire spells.

[wilson.max]

Originally posted by Morsigil:

Originally posted by meglobob1:

Yeah the devs totally HATE battlefield wide damaging spells, due to snowflake players complaining, so they pretty much removed them from the game.

And this is evidenced how? Because they made them slightly harder and slower to cast?

Because they added a new one: Meteor Shower.

[berandro]

People talk about communions as if they were easily accessible to all nations. I personally find it ridiculous that a frigging King of Elemental Fire gets damaged by casting Fire Storm.

IMHO, while I think most of the changed in Dom5 are welcome, many of them seem to have created other problems and unbalances.

[meglobob1]

Originally posted by wilson.max:

Because they added a new one: Meteor Shower.

Its lvl 9 research....

On Firestorm in my 20 MP games in Dom 4, the only player I ever saw casting Firestorm was myself and that was as EA Abysia and it killed the caster but did its job at the time in that battle, killing 1,000+ enemy undead. I still got overwealmed by his 20,000+ free spawn, free upkeep undead and the other 1,000 to 2,000+ free spawn, free upkeep undead the player reanimated for free every turn. The overall nerf for battlefield spells across Dom 5 was a major boost for all decent free spawn / reanimater nations.

I am upto near 80+ in my 1st Dom MP and even through all the fire kings are in play and Arch Devils & Hellio demons there is zero chance of anyone casting Firestorm.

In Dom 5 if you do cast Firestorm it will likely kill the caster and if you are foolish enough to use a communion it will kill caster & all slaves more then likely.

Firestorm should get a 100 fatigue reduction or a 1 F gem reduction or both. Its too hard to use atm and may as well not exist.

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by meglobob1:

The overall nerf for battlefield spells across Dom 5 was a major boost for all decent free spawn / reanimater nations.

That point seems really valid. Anyone got any thoughts on it?

[Mardagg]

Arch devil= 4 F, Flame helmet+ Skull of fire=6F
Phoenix power ,Fire storm should work ?!
Could also add Elemental staff to get to 8F in the end.
I agree though, thats a tad too hard right now to cast the strong battlefield spells.

[terve886]

Fire storm should definitely have at least 1 lower gem cost, allowing F5 mage cast it with extra gem to half the fatique. Currently F6 mage can cast it reasonably well when using extra gem, but F5 mage will take plenty of damage or even die.

In dom4 spell fatqiu for single cast could not go over 200, so it was possible to cast the fire storm spell with F5 mage and survive, but in Dom5 the fatique cap was removed.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by 3 Theories:

Hmmm I am not sure if this is true or not but I found something that says that its 1 damage per 25 points of fatigue.

This is from the Manual (page 82), and so it could not be from a more official source. ;)

Like terve886 said, patch 5.11 nerfed Fatigue damage, so now Mages would only take 1 point HP damage from every equivalent of 50 additional Fatigue over 200 - so a spell which would cause 300 Fatigue total would cause 2 HP damage to the mage.
(There is a percentage chance that Fatigue below the threshold can cause Damage as well -- if Illwinter modified that formula, also, the math works out to (Fatigue Points x 2) % chance of taking 1 HP of Damage).

Since the most fragile mages are 8-9 HP*, it seems to me that the actual damage caused from Fatigue isn't that much of a concern. It reduces the chances that a single mage will cast multiple Battlefield--wide spells in rapid succession by themselves, but that can be circumvented by bringing multiple mages to crucial battle (which is a good habit, anyway).

*and the King of Elemental Fire is 54 HP, so losing a couple points of HP is even less of a concern.

[Alias]

Originally posted by sunbeam:

Originally posted by meglobob1:

The overall nerf for battlefield spells across Dom 5 was a major boost for all decent free spawn / reanimater nations.

That point seems really valid. Anyone got any thoughts on it?

I haven't noticed freespawn being an issue in MP.

[Morsigil]

Originally posted by meglobob1:

Originally posted by wilson.max:

Because they added a new one: Meteor Shower.

Its lvl 9 research....

On Firestorm in my 20 MP games in Dom 4, the only player I ever saw casting Firestorm was myself and that was as EA Abysia and it killed the caster but did its job at the time in that battle, killing 1,000+ enemy undead. I still got overwealmed by his 20,000+ free spawn, free upkeep undead and the other 1,000 to 2,000+ free spawn, free upkeep undead the player reanimated for free every turn. The overall nerf for battlefield spells across Dom 5 was a major boost for all decent free spawn / reanimater nations.

I am upto near 80+ in my 1st Dom MP and even through all the fire kings are in play and Arch Devils & Hellio demons there is zero chance of anyone casting Firestorm.

In Dom 5 if you do cast Firestorm it will likely kill the caster and if you are foolish enough to use a communion it will kill caster & all slaves more then likely.

Firestorm should get a 100 fatigue reduction or a 1 F gem reduction or both. Its too hard to use atm and may as well not exist.

Originally posted by sunbeam:

Originally posted by meglobob1:

The overall nerf for battlefield spells across Dom 5 was a major boost for all decent free spawn / reanimater nations.

That point seems really valid. Anyone got any thoughts on it?

For real guys? Ermor has always been that way. As far as I know there has never been a point where MA Ermor (And you HAVE to be talking about them with those numbers. Scelaria maybe in Dom 4 but certainly not now).

Trying to argue that you can't deal with late game Ermor because your casters take a few points of damage is willful ignorance at worst, or simply kneejerk posting at best. It's pretty widely accepted that Ermor's counter is to take them out of the game early. You can still communion easily and take little to no damage from that huge spell (assuming you have the resistance). Big casters generally don't give a single **** about a few points of damage.

Both Ermor and Scelaria received fairly major nerfs. Scelaria cannot use independent priests anymore, which now means they have to choose between mage turns and undead. Either they recruit two level 1 Scelarian priests for a meager undead income and no mages, or they use their mages to recruit more undead but again at the cost of mage turns. Before there was no loss of mage turns, and this is significant.

I'll let a quote from Six-P sum up some of the nerfs to Ermor:

Originally posted by six-P-:

Dom5 seems to change the two major dynamics of dom4's MA Ermor dominance though, and makes seems to make MA Ermor weaker (balanced?).

1) You lose 120 pretender points as dom5 MA Ermor starts with Death 3.

2) You lose ~150/300 pretender points if you try to replicate dom4's double or tribless bless imprisoned pretender strategy (depending on whether you try to pull off an an awake or dormant dom5 pretender, if you go imprisoned in dom5 you're forgoing blesses for a large portion of the game due to dom5 major bless's incarnate requirement).

You don't need a lot of scales as Ermor, but Luck and Magic are still amazing and losing these pretender points cuts into your ability to get them. You also need decent dominion to push your domain. And given the changes with tribless/imprisoned interaction, it seems its basically impossible to pull of a major tribless awake or dormant pretender in dom5. It seems from most posts that the thing that set MA Ermor apart from asphodel or the other freespawn domkill nations was the bless strategy, so the dom5 changes should hopefully bring Ermor back in line with other domkill nations.

Are they still overpowered? Yes. That's why you jump on that nerd ASAP or you just don't let them into your game.

Originally posted by meglobob1:

I am upto near 80+ in my 1st Dom MP and even through all the fire kings are in play and Arch Devils & Hellio demons there is zero chance of anyone casting Firestorm.

Just want to add.. I think you're miscalculating. Even with the previous more punishing 1 damage per 25 fatigue, Amaimom the F4 heliophagus can cast phoenix power and cast Fire Storm without worrying. That's 300 fatigue ((500 - 200) / 25) = 12 points of damage. He has 55 Hp. This is not including a fire booster of some kind, which you should definitely have if you're using Heliophagii and kings of elemental fire. At the less punishing and CURRENT fatigue damage it's 6 points, like a hard punch to the face for Amaimom. With a fire helmet and a gem you're looking at 125 fatigue.

[Mardagg]

Originally posted by Morsigil:

Just want to add.. I think you're miscalculating. Even with the previous more punishing 1 damage per 25 fatigue, Amaimom the F4 heliophagus can cast phoenix power and cast Fire Storm without worrying. That's 300 fatigue ((500 - 200) / 25) = 12 points of damage. He has 55 Hp. This is not including a fire booster of some kind, which you should definitely have if you're using Heliophagii and kings of elemental fire. At the less punishing and CURRENT fatigue damage it's 6 points, like a hard punch to the face for Amaimom. With a fire helmet and a gem you're looking at 125 fatigue.

This isnt right.
Fire Storm is 5F and cost 5 gems for 500 fatigue.
Amaimon (4F) casting phoenix power will be at 5F casting it and as such takes 500 fatigue+spell casting encumbrance. No extra gem can be used.

Also, isnt it the way that you take damage every turn /every other turn from being over 200 fatigue???
This would mean that any mage getting over 200 fatigue because of casting a spell with no means to reduce fatigue per turn afterwards could slowly die ..even high hp guys.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Mardagg:

Also, isnt it the way that you take damage every turn /every other turn from being over 200 fatigue???

No. As posted above (and as written in the Manual), units only take damage if they gain ADDITIONAL Fatigue over 200 (taking 1 HP of damage for every additional 50 points of Fatigue over 200).

[Morsigil]

Originally posted by Mardagg:

Originally posted by Morsigil:

Just want to add.. I think you're miscalculating. Even with the previous more punishing 1 damage per 25 fatigue, Amaimom the F4 heliophagus can cast phoenix power and cast Fire Storm without worrying. That's 300 fatigue ((500 - 200) / 25) = 12 points of damage. He has 55 Hp. This is not including a fire booster of some kind, which you should definitely have if you're using Heliophagii and kings of elemental fire. At the less punishing and CURRENT fatigue damage it's 6 points, like a hard punch to the face for Amaimom. With a fire helmet and a gem you're looking at 125 fatigue.

This isnt right.
Fire Storm is 5F and cost 5 gems for 500 fatigue.
Amaimon (4F) casting phoenix power will be at 5F casting it and as such takes 500 fatigue+spell casting encumbrance. No extra gem can be used.

Also, isnt it the way that you take damage every turn /every other turn from being over 200 fatigue???
This would mean that any mage getting over 200 fatigue because of casting a spell with no means to reduce fatigue per turn afterwards could slowly die ..even high hp guys.

From the manual:

"Fatigue damage

Fatigue damage adds to a unit’s fatigue rather than subtracting from its hit points. Units fall unconscious when they reach 100 fatigue. No unit can have more than 200 fatigue – each 25 fatigue points inflicted once a unit has reach 200 inflicts 1 point of hit point damage. If fewer than 25 fatigue points are inflicted, the chance of taking 1 hit point of damage is (the number of fatigue points inflicted x 4)% except that a single fatigue point will never result in any damage."

The fact that it says "each 25 fatigue points inflicted once a unit has reach(sic) 200 inflicts 1 point of hit point damage" suggests to me that this happens when it is inflicted, but not again. If people are seeing it recurring each turn I would suggest that is a bug, because at even 250 fatigue you're looking at 10 points of damage with the standard 5 fatigue recovery per combat turn. I highly doubt that is what they intended, as this would kill most human mages.


Re: Amaimon the reason the extra gem would be used is because of phoenix power + flame helmet, taking him to F6