Re: Nominate the most useless spell here!
 

Oy, vey! The Golem maybe is what you should be thinking of?

Re: Nominate the most useless spell here!
 

Ha ha ha, yes I should http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Thanks UncleYee.

Please take blink off the list. It would probably be quite helpful for a handful of Golems who were storming a castle to all cast blink on the first turn. Half of them should end up wreaking havoc inside the enemy walls. Can't wait for the new patch to come out, I'll give it a try with Marverni!

Re: Nominate the most useless spell here!
 

It only helps few low-level Conjurations, while it itself isn't in Conjuration, and isn't low-level. By the time you have Dragon Master, you usually don't have need for low-level summons, and if you do, you probably should have gone for high-level Conjuration instead.

Dragon Master takes Nature, but the spells it helps with take Fire, Air, Water or Earth. Mages capable of casting Dragon Master and more than one of the summoning spells are rare, and the ones capable of casting even one of the drake spells aren't common either.

It's too little, too late, for too few nations. If Dragon Mastery was in Conjuration, or of lower level, and had easier Nature requirement, it could be useful.

EDIT: ARgh! I didn't notice the last page... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Re: Nominate the most useless spell here!
 

I've seen blink funtion in another way. I've seen mages get attacked in melee then blink to safety to cast other spells. It never kept them alive very long, but there's something. I am curious how that spell is chosen by the AI, since it's not a spell you'd likely script.

Blink has been taken off the list for now unless someone still feels its the weakest spell compared to all the others.

=$=

PS -- When time comes to vote on most useless I have a pretty strong argument against Dragon Master, I think.

Re: Nominate the most useless spell here!
 

Interesting negative takes on dragonmaster. I'm a pretty inexperienced player and had the good fortune to make good use of it in a couple of my earliest games.

I was playing a rainbow archmage, though, and on a big map. By early lategame I had 3-5 rampaging armies of 60+ fire drakes, barbecuing one enemy force after another.

Early on, my pretender site searched and laid the foundation for the gem income which enabled me to set up 2-3 summoning squads. Each with 2-3 mages snagging 6-9 drakes per turn.

After a couple games of this strategy I didn't use it again since it was too easy. I didn't realise at the time that it was only a rainbow pretender which made it possible and practical.

Re: Nominate the most useless spell here!
 

blink is not good mainly for the same reason berserk is. If a mage its not scripted or scripted to do something he cant.
he will cast this spells that do a lot more harm than if he didnt do nothing.
ex. turn one blink by a guru right next to enemy meleers. no armor, fatigued, alone. why did he do that?

Re: Nominate the most useless spell here!
 

I just want to echo the gripe about Touch of Madness. Silly Nature mages keep casting it on my missile troops.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

(mumbles something about "Why do Mothers of Avalon hate my Longbowmen so much?")

Re: Nominate the most useless spell here!
 

Actually, I think the hard part is having national mages with access to both high nature paths and an elemental path. What nation were you playing?

-Max

Re: Rule number one
 

I think the list gives opportunity to discussion, if I am violating one of the rules I can remove my post. A few things that popped into my mind:

Corpse Man
"Not worth the cost"
- there are at least two items which increase the amount of corpses you get, and they stack. It gives undeads for magic paths which normally don't get them (?), and there's this very thematic Frankenstein's monster feel to it...

Raven Feast
"Tiny Rewards; corpses better intact"
- if you cast it on your territory, yes, then you probably have better options with the corpses, but you can cast it on enemy provinces (even from allies), too, after a big fight and convert air gems to death gems. Plus, maybe you'd want to exactly deny an enemy to have corpses because they might be able to use them?

Re: Nominate the most useless spell here!
 

Marignon. My archmage had about 6 paths at level 4. He got me such an income that I was able to empower 9-12 of my mages to N3 for dragonmaster. Come to think of it, I believe I found a site that made druids recruitable at one point so I was able to make even more N3 mages.

This was before dragonmaster got patched too, so it would randomly vanish sometimes and I'd have to recast. I didn't realise it was a bug and was trying to figure out what I was doing that invalidated the spell!