Astral magic seems overpowered

[vfb]

Originally Posted by Hadrian_II

Frost brand is the worst brand of all, and water bottle is only useful when you enemy is spamming earth attack on you.

:P Tell that to my dead golems.

[thejeff]

Frost Brand may be the worst brand, but that still leaves it as one of the better weapons. And if you're fighting Abysia, it's far better than a Fire Brand.

It's all situational.

[Omnirizon]

FR might be more likely then CR, due to so many items that are popular on SCs giving FR. Also, there are generally other uses for E gems, so Frost Brand makes a great alternative (unless you are going to be fighting hordes of undead.)

My personal fave, actually, is Demon Whip. As long as you don't encounter FR, you're good to go, and it is only Const 2 and 5 F gems. By far the most economical SC/thug weapon.

[chrispedersen]

Frost brand is better than shadow brand.
Bottle water is ok for assassins.

Water also has tidal wave (vastly underrated), wolven winter, and murderous winter.

Water also dovetails extremely well with water nations. So for example, your cold scales will not affect you (underwater) and can be devestating to heat loving nations. Your summons (winter wolves) are pretty reasonable.

Water has an excellent site searching spell (voice of tiamat). I was against the change that required it to be your province.

Frozen heart, encased in ice, prison of Sedna are all excellent spells. Water is a well rounded school having good construction items, good anti SC, good site searching.

Falling frost is devestating in the hands of someone that knows how to use it... and there are others.

Demon whip is only Con2 in CMB and then only 1.5 or later iirc.

[Redeyes]

One of Water's greatest strengths though is how effectively it lets you bootstrap into Death and Nature through Streams of Hades and Contact Naiad. With how crucial either of those paths are for winning strategies nations with water magic have a decent advantage right there.

What Water lacks is strong globals and rituals, but no single path can have everything (except Death, or Astral, I guess).

[theenemy]

Wow, so they finally took away clams? this is news to me

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Hadrian_II

Frost brand is the worst brand of all, and water bottle is only useful when you enemy is spamming earth attack on you.

Au contraire. Water bottles can be very useful against teleporting SCs (high def high strength units with immunity against awe and blindness and I think life drain and multiple forms), or combined with cold to make them tramplers.

[Tolkien]

Originally Posted by theenemy

Wow, so they finally took away clams? this is news to me

CBM 1.6. Made all gem-producers unique (including bloodstone, but we'll probably see a substitute earth booster next version).

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

I also feel that Holy magic should be a fully realized path of it's own, instead of a tiny group of mostly redundant spells, and that it should be combineable with the Elemental paths--and only the Elemental paths--to make up for their straightforwardness and Late Game deficiencies.

Sounds a bit like the Holy War mod to me...

[theenemy]

Originally Posted by Tolkien

CBM 1.6. Made all gem-producers unique (including bloodstone, but we'll probably see a substitute earth booster next version).

So it's only a mod then