62 réponses à ce sujet

[Gecon]

Which spells do you consider useless, so you would never pick them for themselves, only to get higher ones ?

My list:

- Arcane Shield: Err... I prefer not to get hit in the first place. Ok, Arcane Warrior might want to choose this one.
- Staff Focus: A 33% increase of no damage is still no damage. Considering how cheap Mana potions are, the default attack is really not that important.
- Flame Blast, Inferno: Cant be used with ice or grease spells, as they disable them.
- Fireball: Not really belongs on this list, as it is a fast to cast area knockdown. Still it has the same problems as Flame Blast and Inferno. Damage spell that dispels CC spells = bad.
- Rock Armor: See Arcane Shield.
- Stone Fist: Ok - the Shatter Effect IS useful. Otherwise its small damage and a short knockdown ... CoC is far superior as a CC ability.
- Earthquake: I still have to find a use for this one. Everyone seems to resist the effect ?
- Petrify: So whats the advantage over CoC ? Single target too. If it would be permanent like in D&D, sure.
- Frost Weapons: Had I the choice, Flaming Weapons have better damage.
- Rejuvenate: Very small effect, quite long recast timer. Now if Regeneration wouldnt rock that much ...
- Mass Rejuvenation: The effect is even smaller than Rejuvenate, hardly gives the caster back his mana for casting this, and the recast timer is insane.
- Heroic Offense/Aura/Defense: Only one target and quite short effect time. Arcane Warrior needs Offense, though, if they want to hit anything in armor.
- Spell Wisp: As much fatigue as Spell Might, but only half the effect.
- Grease: Maybe doesnt belong on this list, even if the effect isnt uber - but its another CC spell. Still cant be used with Fire spells, because that cancels the Grease effect - from which enemies can now easily flee.
- Spellbloom: Doesnt seem to even give back the mana for casting this.
- Stinging Swarm: Hmm never tried this one yet ... but seriously, a single target damage spell on tier 4 ?
- Anti-Magic Ward: Protect an ally ... against healing/buff spells ? WTF ? And to make matters worse, this is a tier 3 spell which should actually kind of rock.
- Anti-Magic Bust: This spell is hardly ever required.
- Mana Drain: The usefulness of this spell is rather limited, but at least not completely zero. If you actually have a hard time to kill mage opponent once in a while, and managed to get off a Mana Clash that wasnt resisted, you can keep this opponent drained with Mana Drain. Or if you have an opponent mage in a Crushing Prison / Frozen /etc you can use them to refresh your mana, too. Still I wouldnt take it if I wouldnt have to.
- Mana Cleanse: The crappiest of all crappiest spells ever. Hardly steals more mana from the opponents than from yourself.
- Death Syphon: For the rather small effect of this sustainable it steals a huge chunk of mana and also puts a fatigue effect on you.
- Drain Health: This is a bad joke. To make this spell any worth taking, it should at least (a) heal as much as Heal and ( allow to gain temporary hitpoints over your current limit. Right now you have to Hex the target first to get something out of the spell that moves your health bar in a way visible without magnification glasses.
- Death Magic: The only mage that would be possibly interested in this one is Blood Mage - but they get a weakened effect from it. Also I might want to add the name is highly misleading.

And which ones totally rock ?

My list:

- Cone of Cold, obviously. Good damage AND great CC AND you can shatter the poor victims, too.
- Heal, Regeneration, Group Heal, Revive, Cleansing Aura - for obvious reasons

- Glyphs - especially also with the Spell Combo Repulsion + Paralyze. Warding comes with area defense for arrows = rocks.
- Mana Clash - can do insane damage to mages. Unfortunately zero effect if resisted. Glyph of Neutralization is therefore a good alternative.
- Mind Blast, Force Field, Telekinetic Weapons, Crushing Prison - They all rock
- Miasma - cant even be resisted at all
- Hexes - Vulnerability and Affliction are a musthave for damage spells, Misdirection and Death are musthave for Boss fights
- Blood Magic, Blood Sacrifice, Blood Wound - all good
- Combat Magic, Aura of Might, Shimmering Shield, Fade Shroud - probably also good

[deathwing200]

Rock armor and arcane shield are useless? Bad player alert.

[Tonya777]

No they aren't useless but considering talent points are so scarce theres honestly better spells to spend your points on than those , better to just keep your distance and keep yourself healed instead of wasting talent points and sustained ability mana on those 2 spells

[Viglin]

Op...sorry, but your list of useless spells is WAYYYYYYY OFF.



Im going to have to agree to the poster above.

All spells, like weapons and tactics have their time and place.

[deathwing200]

Tonya777 wrote...

No they aren't useless but considering talent points are so scarce theres honestly better spells to spend your points on than those , better to just keep your distance and keep yourself healed instead of wasting talent points and sustained ability mana on those 2 spells

Those two spells are necessary to survive in certain places of the game if you're playing solo.

[II Relics II]

I agree with the others, most of your "useless" spells are quite powerful when implied on certain situations... Drain heal is great since it is both a heal and damage spell, it has often saved me when Wynne's Healing spells were on cooldown.

[Tonya777]

deathwing200 wrote...

Tonya777 wrote...

No they aren't useless but considering talent points are so scarce theres honestly better spells to spend your points on than those , better to just keep your distance and keep yourself healed instead of wasting talent points and sustained ability mana on those 2 spells

Those two spells are necessary to survive in certain places of the game if you're playing solo.

Yeah but thats an IF and a very big IF at that

[Razh2211]

Solo being the key word.

[Gecon]

Viglin wrote...

Op...sorry, but your list of useless spells is WAYYYYYYY OFF.

Im going to have to agree to the poster above.
All spells, like weapons and tactics have their time and place.

And all women are beautiful. Except you can only marry one of them. So how is your statement any useful ?

[Starmartyr]

Gecon wrote...

Which spells do you consider useless, so you would never pick them for themselves, only to get higher ones ?

My list:

- Arcane Shield: Err... I prefer not to get hit in the first place. Ok, Arcane Warrior might want to choose this one.
-

Right there the OP admits that he has absolutely no clue what he's talking about. A spell that adds to your defense keeps you from getting hit.

He probably just spams CoC over and over and plays on Easy to keep his companions from taking damage.

[mmmbeerz]

I'm not entirely sure that you've thought through the possible strategies. While I agree that your "good" list has some of the "good" spells, I think you've missed some potential in the other spells.



If you have more than 2 mele folks in your group, frost weapons + telekinetic weapons is nice. Maybe I just like see all the "hits" you get when those are enabled with weapons that have the other types of damage.



I like fireball as an initial offensive spell in large groups. If you can knockdown/burn some of the mages or archers in the back row, you have time to set up the more close range spells CoC/mind blast with the upfront attackers.



I like stone fist for use with CoC for perhaps less than obvious reasons.



In regards rock armor, there is one part of the game where I found rock armor are essential. Drain life in this same place is very helpful.



Finally, I find that a well-timed grease + fire spell has some nice things going for it.

[Thanatos45]

Rock Armor/ Arcane Shield: probably not too useful for normal mages, but for Arcane Warriors these spells are absolutely essential.

Fireball: AoE knockdown and good damage, what more do you want? Too bad that it dispels grease but it does create a flaming area in it's stead and this minor drawback doesn't make it useless in any way. Same for flame blast and inferno.

Frost Weapons: isn't this simply as strong as flaming weapons? Otherwise it would be bad yes.

Rejuvenate/ mass rejuvenate: cooldown timer is too long but otherwise I find these spells quite useful.

Spell wisp: it may have only half the effect of spell might, but it has only half the upkeep cost (30 vs. 60 mana) and most importantly, it doesn't drain your mana like crazy in battles, so I find this to be actually more useful than spell might.

Drain Health: drain health also damages your opponent, so if it would heal more than the heal spell and also allow you to temporarily have more than your max HP it would be completely unbalanced. Besides that, it's casting time is nearly instantaneous, which is a huge advantage over spells like lightning bolt which have a long travel time.

Modifié par Thanatos45, 15 décembre 2009 - 02:52 .

[pathenry]

Here's a few that are useless IMO:

Animate Dead
Cool at first, but not worth all the points, even with Spell Might
to make the tougher skeletons.

Mana Drain:
Yeah right, only sucks in like 1/500th of your mana bar.

Mana Cleanse:
Doesn't seem to do anything for me.
Besides, whatever it can do, Mana Clash will do better.

Curse of Mortality
It will ruin YOUR day if cast on you, but against most mobs, its totally useless.
I have watched mobs still be healed while under its effects, and its DOT only ticks for
like 6 points.




Uber spells:

Mana Clash:
Instant I-WIN button to AOE kill casters? Yes, please.

Crushing Prison:
Instant I-WIN button to kill single targets? Yes, please.

Blood Wound:
Instant I-WIN button to AOE kill everyone? Yes, please.

[Derrek Cousland]

[quote]
Curse of Mortality
It will ruin YOUR day if cast on you, but against most mobs, its totally useless.
I have watched mobs still be healed while under its effects, and its DOT only ticks for
like 6 points.

[quote]

Yes, what is up with that. It totally screws over your mage, but it seems to have no effect on mobs :s
But it is the only useless, or less-usefull-then-I-thought spell I encountered till now.

[BlackVader]

No damage with staff focus? My mage was hitting for more than 50 damage per shot about 60% through the game. And while it's not THAT much damage, it still never misses and costs asolutely nothing. Very helpful when mana runs low or you're just fighting something not worth spending mana on.

On Death Siphon, I can't say I've really needed it yet but unless you start the fight with it running (which is stupid as you don't need additional manareg before you've even cast a single spell), it's basically free manareg with only the (very minor) drawback of 5% fatigue.

Rejuvenate regs 80 points of mana/stamina and costs only 25 mana to cast. Have 2 mages cast it on each other and both win 55 mana which is a free cast for most spells. And even Mass Rejuv will leave your mage with +30 mana while giving the rest of the party 75 mana/stamina more to spend.

[BanditGR]

Curse of Mortality does have an effect on mobs and at the very least it does seem to prevent healing (in my experience at least). It's damage is indeed poor and only really useful in very specific situations.

[Derrek Cousland]

Lol, screwed up my quoting a little bit there



But on Drain health; It is an amazing spell for when your mage goes one on one with another mage. You can count the effect double then, health the other one loses + health you gain (wich makes it better then plain healing). It made a bad situation an advantageous one more then once for me.

[Jonfon_ire]

[quote]Derrek Cousland wrote...

[quote]
Curse of Mortality
It will ruin YOUR day if cast on you, but against most mobs, its totally useless.
I have watched mobs still be healed while under its effects, and its DOT only ticks for
like 6 points.

[quote]

Yes, what is up with that. It totally screws over your mage, but it seems to have no effect on mobs :s
But it is the only useless, or less-usefull-then-I-thought spell I encountered till now.
[/quote]
[/quote]
I thought Curse of Mortality also guarantees Critical Hits on the target, which is useful even if the No Heal aspect is broken?

Given that the item "Improves Healing" attribute is also broken I think the two might be related if the spell effect is to apply
a "-100% Improvement on Healing" on its target. Heals seem to ignore these modifiers entirely.

Modifié par Jonfon_ire, 15 décembre 2009 - 03:31 .

[Rainen89]

Improved drain, (Vuln hex + drain life is one of the highest single target bursts you can get, while healing for quite a bit. Why did you put arcane shield / Rock armor on the useless list when you are playing an arcane warriior? Fireball is hardly useless, you just can't spam it on your group, the problem is practically everything else in the tree is useless in comparison, but fireball is probably one of the most ridiculous spells. High damage and aoe knockdown. You don't need to worry about it dispelling CC, it is CC.

[Derrek Cousland]

Ah, didn't know about the auto crits with Curse of Mortality. It seems a bit of an Op spell now

[Rainen89]

Death hex generates automatic crits, curse of mortality just makes it so you/target can't recieve heals while dealing spirit damage.

[Viglin]

Gecon wrote...

Viglin wrote...

Op...sorry, but your list of useless spells is WAYYYYYYY OFF.

Im going to have to agree to the poster above.
All spells, like weapons and tactics have their time and place.

And all women are beautiful. Except you can only marry one of them. So how is your statement any useful ?

What part of that isnt clear all helpful?

And as you can see from about 12 responses...you may want to rethink your magic tactics.

[Cybercat999]

OP didnt notice that lot of mobs are actually fire resistant. Or maybe he didnt get to that part of the game yet.

Every single spell can be useful in certain conditions and useless in some other ones. Its called tactics - use what suits the situation, not repeat 2.3 spells you find OP ad nauseatum.

Btw, I find your comparison with women totally off and stupid.

[oriondeltagamma]

I think most of the spells have their place based on party composition and the situation. We all play differently.

Take Animate Dead for instance. I used this a lot to deal with traps, ambushes and generally control the battle without endangering my party members. It is an expendable pawn which can be used to draw enemies into a carefully planned bottleneck.

The magical attack from staves, while useless against *certain types of units* can be quite effective against other types of units. When I had three mages in my party for a little bit their combined attacks were making a huge impact on the enemies, especially with focusing fire.

To say a spell is useless is only to say that you yourself lack the imagination to utilize it, or simply that it doesn't work with your strategy. It doesn't make you cool

To make a metaphore: drinking alcohol can be as simple as drinking the same beer every night or having a different mixed cocktail, based on your mood/surroundings. To say either is the "true" way to enjoy it is to miss the bigger picture. Enjoy what you like, do it often!

PS: I wish my spell bar could be bigger, I ran out of room for spells!

Modifié par oriondeltagamma, 15 décembre 2009 - 04:23 .

[Marvin TPA]

Useless is such a strong word. Mana Cleanse maybe, I haven't found a use yet. A lot of the others on this list can be pretty handy.

The grease/fire combo has a plus side particularly against static targets. Knock the movers down, then burn them while dishing dot on the static archers.

Earthquake can quiet down archers pretty well.

Ice/fire/elec./nature are all subject to resistance, and its nice to have a spare to bypass.

A lot of the buffs are best used on another companion and have no cost to them at all.

Death magic/syphon nice when the tank is empty.

Etc.

P.s. I would love to pick Anti Magic Bust for Morrigan.