Has anyone ever had any success with "shards" spells?

[onomastikon]

I have never ever ever seriously damaged an enemy unit with that earth "shards" spell and hate it when my casters use it. Has anyone ever really hurt anything with that spell, or is there a trick to using it?

[Kristoffer O]

No, it,s a lvl 0 spell and should be worthless.

If you want your mages to join battles research some good spells or give them order to attack

[Teraswaerto]

At close range against large amounts of frail unarmored targets the spell might be slightly useful.

[ January 28, 2004, 16:08: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

[Gandalf Parker]

I know the slingers seem to rout alot of units easily and I took it for granted shard might do the same. Seems like stones panic elephants quicker than anything else does but Im not a tester, this is just an impression.

[ January 28, 2004, 16:29: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[aldin]

I've always wondered if a high accuracy mage would get anything out of Shards or if it's just inherently spread over half the map. The thing is, by the time I can improve the accuracy enough to potentially do some good, I have better options for stuff to cast anyway. Perhaps Caelum (Aim) with an Earth-Powered pretender?

~Aldin

[Potatoman]

With high enough accuracy (20-25) stone shards can actually be quite deadly. Good luck getting there without cheating though.

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Potatoman:
With high enough accuracy (20-25) stone shards can actually be quite deadly. Good luck getting there without cheating though.

Buy yourself some Air mages, and you'll see some with very decent Precision. That's another reason why I like Man; those Tuatha are expensive as hell, but when they cast an Orb Lightning, they do hit.

[Jasper]

I've had some very mild success with Shards used by a Pretender during early expansion. The problem is that you need a high earth skill to counteract it's high fatigue cost, and need a high precision to hit.

On a Pretender with high Earth and some Air or Nature (for Aim/Eagle Eye) it's a decent early spell, altough such a Pretender may well be tough enough to be better off just attacking.

[Norfleet]

Spells that tend to spray all over the map are best used when your enemies are all over the map. You don't even need precision. Being outnumbered just means it's harder to miss.

[velk]

You think that shards is bad - wait til you try using tartarian titans - range 30 lightning bolt with 6 precision is kind of amusing 8)

You would need to be fighting against an army of 10,000 to have any chance of hitting anything that wasn't standing right next to you.