[sector24]

The telling phrase for me is, "any change might as well be a straight deletion of the spell." To me that is a pretty cut and dry statement. Now you can say I have created a straw man argument by saying "any nerf makes it worthless", but only if we accept your quantifier "and it can be easily countered anyway." That is an extremely subjective interpretation and is in fact at the heart of the argument. So basically in order for anyone to agree with your conclusion, they need to first agree with your assumption, which is your conclusion. Confusing I know!

I absolutely do not accept your quantifier, so therefore it's not a straw man argument to me. I think paralyze is one of the best low level combat spells in the game and by far the best astral spell at level 4. I think the only spell that is clearly superior is Raise Dead, but that's me.

Now I totally know what you mean, and I am having a bit of fun at your expense (and I appreciate that you can take it and dish it right back) but at the same time the strict interpretation of your argument doesn't necessarily reflect exactly what you mean. So of course you get a whole variety of silly counter arguments that range from term papers to kindergarten insults.

KO's explanation that it's supposed to remove a unit from combat for the duration of said combat is pretty telling and I don't think it's worth wasting developer time to make changes to the spell. But I do think it's a good spell at level 4 where there are very few useful combat spells. It seems to me that since it's astral, it's meant to be used in a communion and is therefore very conducive to penetration bonuses and less than listed fatigue, making it potentially better than its default spell stats indicate.