Best Spells?

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

Yah, HF was (and still would be) a beauty, but it'll be tough to find a caster for it now without designing a pretender specifically for it (used to be 2-3 Jade Sorceresses with the right randoms could team up to forge boosters and there you go. Now, the JS features what, WN and 50% <FWDN>... no way to bootstrap the booster machine with that!)
Next favorite: Nether Darts (evoc 6? 7? /S1D1) . Plant an Ether Lord (if Jotunheim Utgard, a Norna) at crucial bottlenecks and watch massive invasions come to nothing.... it's just ridiculous when an S7D3 gets rolling with that spell.
Honorable Mention: the Acid series (low Evoc, W2F1) Unlike the other bolt-type spells, there is no such thing as acid resistance. In the early game, it's the Sultan of SPLAT.