Going spell by spell… Here’s been my take thus far.
Reveal Corruption: I’ve got a love hate relationship with this spell. In Beta is was extremely useful. Actually that’s an understatement, it was REQUIRED, once you learned it to find other spells and rituals. When you cast it, you held your staff out and it gave you like a third eye effect through the staff (it still does this animation). Using that you would see corrupted NPCs (wights and other undead), as well as places you could interact with to learn clues or gain more sorcerous knowledge. I never got to test it in multiplayer, but I assume it would show the wispy indicator on players who were corrupted. You could see these wispy indicators through hundreds of meters of rock and walls, so you would go to an area and cast it then look around to see what was what.
Now it does nothing. We learn all spells in the Thaumaturgy Bench and no where else. It doesn’t even show NPC sorcerers. I’m not sure it did in beta either since they didn’t exist when the old spell acquirement system was in place. I think learning every spell in the bench was a mistake (though it made custom maps easy to update for sorcery). And I think some use of this spell needs to be revisited.
Ice Bridge was a helluva lot more useful when it could be stacked on itself. Since that was nerfed, I’ve haven’t had a use for it. There is just no gap where its useful that is short enough for it to work. Its length probably needs to be doubled for it to work properly if they don’t want stacking.
Blood Rite and Souldrain. Kinda just tools to obtain more stuff, I don’t have an opinion on them other than they look cool and really give you a gritty sense of being an evil sorcerer. I have players on my server that are avoiding sorcery for this reason. They don’t have weak stomachs. They are playing characters they don’t see engaging in such acts. I don’t personally see that as a downside, Roleplay is about choices.
Embed Wisp and Imbue Wisp are spells I really like. I use them quite often as it gives me a light source when using a two-handed weapon or bow, and while climbing. It does not replace torches and supplements them. I like that. Their buff to 10 minute durations was perfect.
Slow Fall is a niche spell I don’t use very often, but its quite useful when I want it. Duration is about where it needs to be. Not so long that you can do stupid things with it, but not so short its useless. This one is about right.
Mount summons. I’m not certain what to use these for. Expendable mounts is about it. I guess they work in a pinch. I don’t see anything great or wrong with these. Good for those who require the benefits these provide.
Wall of Fire. In the video around 3:25. That fat s’mores marshmallow thing. I remember that being in Beta. I also remember the Ice Wall. I couldn’t figure a use for either of these. Except maybe to block off a route in a purge. Enemies wouldn’t attack either one. Ice Wall did no damage, Fire Wall did a small trickle of damage (I didn’t see the version they talked about in the video). I don’t remember temp effects, maybe there was.
The version we have I can’t figure a reason for it at all. It puts up this ring of something, that has holes in it. Umm what? I still have no clue what was going on there. I feel like two people worked on it. And didn’t communicate. One handled the effects the wall has, and the other did the model. The one who handled the effects went… “oh can’t have it do damage” and the guy who did the model was like, “a straight wall is too boring.” And then we got what we did. Need a revamp, ground up, revamp this thing. Get an idea for a use case for it before going forward.
Creeping Darkness. I use this to make an area night to annoy friends. That’s about it. I don’t understand what this is for. Probably needs a revamp from the ground up as well. It counters other area spells. But that’s boring as hell.
Mass cull. One of my favorite spells. Acts like a steel pickaxe to everything in a radius hitting 8 times (used to hit 1000… what did that do? makes those in the know laugh, facepalm, and giggle… and no its not nearly as exciting as it sounds, so I won’t elaborate… the one who did it knows what they did). Really useful spell but because its harvest damage is less than hardened steel, it doesn’t replace regular tools. I like that quite a bit. Choices are great.
Detect resources… ughh… so for me its garbage. But I know where everything is. So I’m biased against it. We don’t have random resource nodes. So this one loses value over time for any player. Nifty idea though. Good for those who need it. Maybe in the future the maps might be more dynamic and which case it will be a very useful spell. Who knows?
Summon Corpse. I played Everquest, I can appreciate a summon corpse spell. Which it had a use for servers that don’t drop items on corpses. Everquest doesn’t do that anymore and Summon Corpse spells are still useful because the corpse can still be ressurected for lost exp. Maybe a death penalty can be added to the game to account for this and make the spell useful for those servers too.
Call of the Dead. Not useful. The zombies need like 1,000 health to be useful. They die before doing damage, and even if they’re not the target of attack.
Invisibility. On the fence about this one. Seems useful. Worked when I’ve used it. But haven’t had much use for it. But I’d say its fine as it is.
Conceal corruption. Great for RP. That’s about what its for. Though I kinda feel like it shouldn’t be a toggle. It should be a timed effect that gradually wears off. That would make it a bit interesting. But if its just meant as a cosmetic thing, then leave it be I guess.
Elixir of Rebirth needs no introduction. I think this is the most loved addition with 3.0. In addition they made stats actually matter more on thralls and pets so having this to get rid of undesirable perks was doubly welcome.
Call of Nergal is a fun little spell if I could only remember I have it. Seems like I remember I have it a day or two after doing some climbing.
Abyssal Call. This is a niche spell. I do love how powerful this demon can be. I do think some indicator of how it works should be more transparent. In case anyone doesn’t know. I believe it last 10 minutes before turning on you, and kills you and it do add to the timer. Guess if you want a strong pet and don’t want to put a thrall in danger, it could be good for this. Seriously, try it out, its a butt kicker. Just tell it to stop following in an area away from your base when you’re done. It should keel over and die with nothing nearby when it breaks control.
Summoned weapons. I like these until I get something with comparable power. Then I don’t. I think the bow is bugged because its supposed to fire its own arrows, but I don’t think they do any damage. But I haven’t tested this. It seems its damage output would be alot higher if it did. I don’t think these should come with 50% corruption. Maybe 40% or 20%. It forces them to be used with the armor in this case.
Summoned Armor. Great if you don’t have epic armor, not so much if you do. When paired with the weapons from before, its a great setup. But once you’re pretty well established this isn’t that great. Could be useful in a situation where you’re expecting to die though.
Lightning Storm. This is more of a useful spell than people give it credit for. I use it on world bosses when I’m farming. It frequently hits them and does significant damage with each hit. It does shorten the time it takes to kill these things. I’ve also used it to clear out a thrall camp when I know there is an excess of 15-20 NPCs in a small area. I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’re used to fighting dozens of NPCs at once. It will agro everything.
Transportory Stones. Not a fan of fast travel, but due to the cost of corruption, this one isn’t the worst.
So yeah most things I’m good with, with the exception of Wall of Fire, Reveal Corruption, and Creeping Darkness… they all need revamps to be useful. Ice Bridge and Call of the Dead need buffs.
In addition we need more rituals. I’d like to see some more sorcery from the books, something akin to what Stygia did when they were invaded. They were able to use hexes and curses to weaken the enemy army. I’d like to see something similar here where if someone attacks your base for example, you cast this spell and it drains the strength from your foes. Maybe some damage debuff or healing debuff. Would be good against purges too to reduce the damage they do as well.
