A Review of Spells

[Tephra]

After a discussion arose on what spells fail to meet expectations or fail to be useful in any way whatsoever, I think it may be time to review all spells as they currently are now that sorcery and spells have been out for a long time.

The following are only my own opinions, but I hope that Funcom devs would take them into consideration.

Divination

• Reveal Corruption: This spell is free and does what it is supposed to do, but that isn’t much. It is audio cue only, which is not very intuitive, especially if you don’t play with a focus on sound effects. It could be improved by adding purple smoky visual effects, not only to corrupted sorcerers, but corrupted sorcerous objects like sorcerous spell pages too.

• Detect Resources: This spell is actually overpowered considering it is free to cast and toggled. The Careful Harvest perk needs improving more than this spell does.

Necromancy

• Imbue Wisp: This spell is much better now that it is free and toggled, however, its light radius is too small and the wisp itself too large, bright, and distracting. Decrease the size and range of movement of the wisp while slightly increasing the light it casts would greatly improve this spell.

• Embed Wisp: This is basically the same spell as Imbue Wisp, but since it isn’t in your face, is not as distracting. However, it still doesn’t cast very much light, so has no use beyond being a flare you can shoot into the sky.

• Call of the Dead: This is one of the most useless spells available. The zombies are far too weak to accomplish anything. Bumping up their health is all that is necessary to make this spell not useless.

Demonology

• Call of Nergal: I can’t really think of anything particularly wrong with this spell. It does what it is supposed to do. It may not be perfect, but any attempts to change it may just make it worse.

Illusion

• Conceal Corruption: This spell works exactly as it should.

• Mirror Mark: This spell is probably fine as it currently is.

• Invisibility Self: I think this spell is about as good as it could be without a proper stealth system implemented. I’d like to see stealth first, and then I’d like to see this spell improved accordingly.

Thaumaturgy

• Ice Bridge: I have literally never used this spell a single time since taking screenshots of it for the wiki when it was new. I know it has uses in PvP, but I don’t PvP. Maybe if it could span a river and last long enough to allow me to haul a Heroic Treasure across, it might have a use to me.

• Slow Fall: This spell is fun, but it does not last nearly long enough to be used in almost any practical situation. I think the utility of this spell could be vastly improved by lengthening the duration to five minutes.

• Wall of Fire: The original iteration of this spell was 99% useless, the current version is 100% useless. Wall of Fire wins the title of being the most useless spell. The gaps in the wall prevent it from being used as a barrier and the removal of damage eliminated all alternate utility. This spell is not even worth keeping without a complete rework.

• Mass Cull: Nothing needs changing on this spell.

• Creeping Darkness: This spell is just used to annoy people or cancel other area of effect spells. With the spider webs removed, it doesn’t cause slow anymore, so I guess it accomplishes being… dark. Maybe if stealth was implemented and it decreased NPC vision it might have more utility.

• Lightning Storm: Inflicting minor damage to purge fighters seems to be about the only use this spell has, and it doesn’t even do much at that. The problem is the damage is too low. It doesn’t need to 1-shot bases, but it needs a damage buff to be a useful spell.

[CIPHERSTONE]

I’m a dedicated sorceror as fun and painful as that might be at times. I agree with much of what you’re saying. Some comments:

Reveal Resources - would prefer to not see this change.

Wisp (self) - the toggle function breaks this spell more often than not. Relogging doesn’t always fix. Often removing the bracelet is the only way. It seems like logging breaks it. And then recasting does nothing. I personally don’t mind it zipping around, being stationary would be nicer for sure. And giving more light would be great.

Wisp Target - I like this spell. You can use it to map directions up a mountain etc. and being able to drop something that only lasts 10 mins has its uses.

Wall of fire - never used, sounds garbage. Maybe replace with a time based thrall summon of some kind.

Nergal - It would be cool to see the time it lasts scale/increase with your corruption.

Mass cull - best utility tool. I’d like to have it pair with a summoned pouch that puts anything gathered through cull in it with zero weight. Don’t allow anything else to go in and make it insatiable. I’d prefer not to always have to run a beast of burden build.

Lightning - seems mostly a PvP spell and of limited use

Zombie spell - too weak.

I posted another thread here, it would be nice if we could hotslot one or two spells so we don’t have to go through the menus all the time.

[Taemien]

@Tephra

Reveal Corruption: This spell is free and does what it is supposed to do, but that isn’t much. It is audio cue only, which is not very intuitive, especially if you don’t play with a focus on sound effects. It could be improved by adding purple smoky visual effects, not only to corrupted sorcerers, but corrupted sorcerous objects like sorcerous spell pages too.

This spell used to have more functionality. Instead of researching spells and recipes at the bench, they were going to be found in the world. This spell was the first you unlocked and allowed you to explore the map finding elements of corruption that would further your research. What we have now is remnant. It could probably be replaced by something else.

@Tephra

Detect Resources: This spell is actually overpowered considering it is free to cast and toggled. The Careful Harvest perk needs improving more than this spell does.

I would say make them stack. Though right now sorcerers can use the other perk in that tier so there isn’t a wasted perk slot.

@Tephra

• Imbue Wisp: This spell is much better now that it is free and toggled, however, its light radius is too small and the wisp itself too large, bright, and distracting. Decrease the size and range of movement of the wisp while slightly increasing the light it casts would greatly improve this spell.
• Embed Wisp: This is basically the same spell as Imbue Wisp, but since it isn’t in your face, is not as distracting. However, it still doesn’t cast very much light, so has no use beyond being a flare you can shoot into the sky.

These two spells I’ve made good use of. Even prior to their updates. I don’t believe these should be replacing torches or glowing weapons in utility. They have a niche use in being usable while your hands are free doing other things such as climbing and fighting, but don’t give nearly as much benefit as a torch would be in other cases such as exploring and navigating.

@Tephra

Call of the Dead: This is one of the most useless spells available. The zombies are far too weak to accomplish anything. Bumping up their health is all that is necessary to make this spell not useless.

I can agree with this. I think their health should be somewhere between 1-2k health.

@Tephra

Ice Bridge: I have literally never used this spell a single time since taking screenshots of it for the wiki when it was new. I know it has uses in PvP, but I don’t PvP. Maybe if it could span a river and last long enough to allow me to haul a Heroic Treasure across, it might have a use to me.

We used to be able to cast several ice bridges. Limited only by their duration. This was removed because of PVP concerns. But I believe it should be reintroduced.

@Tephra

Wall of Fire: The original iteration of this spell was 99% useless, then current version is 100% useless. Wall of Fire wins the title of being the most useless spell. The gaps in the wall prevent it from being used as a barrier and the removal of damage eliminated all alternate utility. This spell is not even worth keeping without a complete rework.

I don’t actually see this spell ever being useful. Not unless it used the fire elements from demonfire barrages in a line. But it may need to go to T3 if it could do that kind of damage.

@Tephra

Creeping Darkness: This spell is just used to annoy people or cancel other area of effect spells. With the spider webs removed, it doesn’t cause slow anymore, so I guess it accomplishes being… dark. Maybe if stealth was implemented and it decreased NPC vision it might have more utility.

I would like to see this spell renamed to just Darkness or whatnot. And its effect would simply blot out the sun in an area. But I’d also like to see night time affect visibility of many NPCs (nocturnal excluded). Its pretty annoying to get attacked by NPCs in the dark who you can’t see but they can see you perfectly. But this is an issue with detection more so with sorcery of course.

@Tephra

Lightning Storm: Inflicting minor damage to purge fighters seems to be about the only use this spell has, and it doesn’t even do much at that. The problem is the damage is too low. It doesn’t need to 1-shot bases, but it needs a damage buff to be a useful spell.

I’ve had the opposite experience. I’ve used this as a bit of extra damage against world bosses and to eliminate thrall camps when I have no intention of taking slaves. Its damage against buildings was actually buffed. When it was OP, it was actually bugging out. What would happen is it was designed to do area damage even if it missed. Its miss rate was high, on purpose. The miss damage was 100,000 that would quickly degenerate from the point it hit to 0 damage at around 2 meters I think. So a very near miss would do like 90,000 damage. The bug that happened is if the bolt spawned inside of a building and counted as a miss as if it was inside it detected no building being hit and would do its full 100,000 damage all the way down to the ground.

Their fix was to up the damage of direct hits slightly, and make it more inclined to hit rather than miss, and misses would do the same damage as hits. It also will no longer target friendlies. What we have is a storm that is more consistent and does more damage to NPCs over all. Without annihilating bases randomly. I believe it does around 10,000 to a direct hit to a building and around 200 to a NPC. I’m admittedly going off an old memory of those values and they may not be accurate, and its possible it may have changed, but there isn’t any patch notes to suggest. Someone can fish around the devkit and post the values if they want, if there is anything wrong it will show up there.

At the end of the day though, Lightning Storm is meant to damage buildings and enemy units, but not to breach them on its own. We have trebs and bombs for that. But I highly recommend it on a world boss. With it being the only legit target, it will take the brunt of the damage and its quite a bit over time. Very useful for those squishy sorcerers who don’t like to stay close.

[CIPHERSTONE]

And with the change to PVE-C that made everything locked and the buildings can’t take damage, its use is even further limited.

I’ve never tried it against world bosses, I was under the impression it could kill the caster just as easily.

[Taemien]

It used to target the caster on occasion, but not anymore. Its actually quite useful in PVE if you don’t care about non-friendly NPCs dying or agroing.

[CIPHERSTONE]

Will play around with it some more for science.

[Tephra]

@CIPHERSTONE

Nergal - It would be cool to see the time it lasts scale/increase with your corruption.

It does. Corrupted Authority specifically. +30 stamina per point of corrupted Authority. With full corrupted Authority, its stamina is increased from the base of 400 to 1000.

[CIPHERSTONE]

That’s makes sense. Never thought it would extend to the bat. But does make sense why my corrupted str/ago/vit build lasts shorter.

[E.y]

I disagree with some of your conclusions.
I do hope Funcom will take your opinions in consideration, but I do hope they will consider mine too to some extent.

@Tephra

• Slow Fall: This spell is fun, but it does not last nearly long enough to be used in almost any practical situation. I think the utility of this spell could be vastly improved by lengthening the duration to five minutes.

Nicely balanced as it is. I often use it in practical situations, be it in the jungle or in the volcano. The map is such that there is no fall in the game lasting for 5 minutes. One spell gives enough time to complete a couple of long falls. If its length of duration still does not feel enough, then we can summon the spell again. Such a nice spell for adventure should have its counter part, which is to carry enough of bags to summon it multiple times. It feels like we still need to “prepare” a minimum to explore, even as sorcerers, rather than having almost no restrain of power.

@Tephra

Wall of Fire: The original iteration of this spell was 99% useless, then current version is 100% useless. Wall of Fire wins the title of being the most useless spell. The gaps in the wall prevent it from being used as a barrier and the removal of damage eliminated all alternate utility. This spell is not even worth keeping without a complete rework.

I use it a lot during purges. I just match the cast to the waves, so the invaders would burn on the wall. It’s not easy, but once you get the pace, it’s truly helpful to someone who is bad at close combat like me.

@Tephra

Lightning Storm: Inflicting minor damage to purge fighters seems to be about the only use this spell has, and it doesn’t even do much at that. The problem is the damage is too low. It doesn’t need to 1-shot bases, but it needs a damage buff to be a useful spell.

I never tried this one in purges. I exclusively use it in nature against the bosses too strong for me or my thralls, like the Groot boss. It might look funny to good fighters, but I run in circles while summoning storm after storm until death follows. Groot kills me each time unless I summon that storm. It is the way it is, and it is my first to reach spell during combat.

[Tephra]

@E.y

the invaders would burn on the wall

The wall does not inflict any burn damage. You are running around in circles with a temporary wall accomplishing no more than you could running around in circles with a permanent wall you didn’t have to repeatedly summon.

[E.y]

I am not runining in circles with the wall. I am usually perched on a tent next to it with a bow, shooting arrows of gaz lol. The running and repeated summon is for the lightning storm on the world bosses like Groot.

Groot world boss

If what you say about the wall inflicting no damage anymore is true, then it means I am dealing more damage on my own than I thought, thinking it was the wall’s doing so far.

[Tephra]

Wall of Fire hasn’t inflicted damage since Age of Sorcery Chapter 2, which is why it was upgraded from being 99% useless to 100% useless.

[DelRioServerMaster]

Yep. Sorcery is overall, weak. Situationally, very powerful but only when it comes to 4 spells (Bat, Invis, Bridge, Slow Fall).

There is nothing that makes me feel the corruption trade off was worth it. The only reason I still play a Sorcery build is RP. I feel less powerful than I was when running my old Agility builds.

FC failed to take this to the finish and it shows. I’ve offered more than my 2 cents on this topic to give them a place to start conversations on improvement but at this moment I’ve given up on hope of improvement.

I barely play anymore because things just feel so half-baked at this point. I want to believe again, but meh.

And we’re not even counting the disappointing corrupted perks or other utility sorcery abilities in this discussion…

[E.y]

Ok, thank you. I never realized, and was still using it during my purges. I would use all kinds of arrows next to it, gaz most often, explosive and such. I think I killed some of my pets in the process.
Should I try without a wall next time? xD

[E.y]

It’s funny you are mentionning the bat. I used it once since it was released, to try it out, and never used it after. I always carry the improved hiking gloves and boots when I am a sorcerer (lacking of stamina even for simple things). Using the bat should be easier I guess? And yet, I I find it harder to master than just climbing.

[DelRioServerMaster]

I’ve used it several times to paradrop into bases. And also witnessed the alphas on my server launch an airborne attack on a tree-house. Was pretty cool, especially since one of them stayed back and was launching demonfire barrages while the others flew to the base. It’s the only spell I always make sure I have sacks for.

[E.y]

Oooh, PvP. Well, it sounds pretty useful in the situations you are describing indeed. I am a PvE player, so I never had to give more thought about it lol. Climbing feels easier to me for exploration, I just use it. For raiding… I take your word for it

[Taemien]

@E.y

I never tried this one in purges. I exclusively use it in nature against the bosses too strong for me or my thralls, like the Groot boss. It might look funny to good fighters, but I run in circles while summoning storm after storm until death follows. Groot kills me each time unless I summon that storm. It is the way it is, and it is my first to reach spell during combat.

About how many casts does it take on average to kill that one? I’m really curious. I’ve used the spell on bosses but never as a primary damage source.

[MarcosC]

I like sorcery.

I’m the type of guy who will go through hell and crawl over glass in very hard games to create magical/arcane builds.

The advantage: suffer as a mangy dog at the beginning, end up very powerful, making up for your pitiful existence till then. It pays off. It rewards dedication and persistence.

I was quite excited when sorcery was announced.

I only use it for transport and illusion.

That should say something about how it was implemented in this game. Beyond RP, there’s absolutely no reason to use sorcery for anything other than transport.

Anyway, nice suggestions. I’m afraid sorcery will still fall short even if some are implemented.

[SirDaveWolf]

@Tephra

Wall of Fire: The original iteration of this spell was 99% useless, then current version is 100% useless. Wall of Fire wins the title of being the most useless spell. The gaps in the wall prevent it from being used as a barrier and the removal of damage eliminated all alternate utility. This spell is not even worth keeping without a complete rework.

Could be used in PvP as a last resort to block entrances destroyed by raiders, but VERY situational. Maybe in keyhole it is OP, but keyhole is OP in general due to instant 15 meter away replacing of foundations.