Gem Usage in Battle

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Bananadine

I'm not sure, but it appears that the "corner" part of the corner-self-blessing idea was suggested because a unit by itself in the corner wouldn't be close enough to other sacred units to decide to bless them instead of itself. But if the unit is alone to begin with, there's no reason to put it in any particular spot just for the sake of blessing--it'll very likely hit itself on its first try no matter where you put it. (I think it's still possible for the blessing to miss, in spite of the maximal precision of the spell, but even if I'm right about that, it's still unlikely enough that you can safely ignore the possibility in most cases.)

I did extensive testing one this. It is not possible for a self bless to miss. (There's some evidence that long range 100 precision spells can miss, especially with low precision.) If there is no other unit within range, the blesser will always hit himself. Any other unit within range, even enemys or non-sacred units, makes it possible. The spell always hits it's target, but to choose that target the AI simulates casting it on the available targets, then picks the first target that got the best result. Since the AoE spread is random, the actual cast won't hit the same squares and thus maybe not the caster.
That's probably clear as mud, but I'm not sure how to say it better.

My experience suggests that the 1-or-0 gem-use switch that shows up in the debug log is the extent of the influence that the enemy's strength can have on gem use in this situation. Especially with a self-targeting spell like Soul Vortex that works no matter what enemies are present, I wouldn't expect enemy strength to have anything to do with the per-spell gem use decision. But I'm only speculating with little evidence. Can anybody confirm this one way or the other?

I think we agree. For some reason I was thinking that gems to avoid fatigue might ignore the gem-use switch. They don't of course.