In your opinion, what is the best spell?

[vidarfreyr]

I'm gonna go with: invisibility.

It is almost game-breaking. "Oh, what is this mysterious button at the center of a large abandoned room. Lets make us invisible and press it so we can see the ambush before it happens."

I also find that casting poison cloud through a portcullis is kinda game-breaking too. I avoid doing it. Don't seem fair to the poor critters. How about monsters that open doors?

[karadoc]

Being able to use poison cloud like that is pretty much the only good thing about poison cloud!

For my choice of the best spell, I think I'll just go with the obvious one: Meteor Shower. The damage from other spells pales in comparison.

Force field is also a strong spell. It's got me out of many tight situations. Towards the end-game, I find that meteor shower and force field (and light) are pretty much the only spells I use.

[minmay]

I do not like meteor storm. It is extremely inefficient per energy point compared to every other damage spell in the game, locks down your movement, and most importantly requires 5 fire magic.

I think force field can compete with invisibility for brokenness since you cast it and monsters can't do anything for a long time, but from a human perspective it's hard to precisely count down the duration in your head (which is needed to take full advantage of it), so invisibility is probably more broken in practice. You also get it for free for some reason.

I mean the game basically has 4 spells: invisibility, force field, get true ending, damage. It just looks like more at first since damage is presented as 11 spells instead of 1, and there are 7 spells that do nothing. I guess you could consider frostbolt a 5th spell but the maximum freeze chance (40%) is still pretty bleh.

[Dr.Disaster]

My pick is Darkbolt. All monsters in LoG act by their line of sight which Darkbolt takes away. Of course Blindness does not work on all monsters but those it works are both rendered harmless and open to any attack. In addition even when the spell can not blind the target it deals tile-damager based damage like Dispel.

[AndakRainor]

I do not like meteor storm. It is extremely inefficient per energy point compared to every other damage spell in the game

Why do you say that ? It costs 80 energy for 5 fireballs, and the single fireball spell costs 43 energy. So unless I missed something and the single fireball is a more powerful version of those launched by meteor storm, it is more damage per energy. I also have often seen people claim that fireburst is more efficient than fireball, but in the spells definition we can read : power 20 cost 25 for fireburst, power 70 cost 43 for fireball, so again here fireburst seems nearly always useless when fireball is available.

[minmay]

Oops, meteor storm actually is a bit more damage per energy (30 attack power * 5, a single level 5 fireball or lightning bolt is 60), so I take that part back. But the firing pattern is just so bad...

Fireburst, however, has 26% more damage/energy than fireball, even *before* the DoT: at levels 3, 4, 5 respectively, fireburst has 35.2/25, 39.6/25 44/25 attack power/energy, compared to 48/43, 54/43, 60/43 for fireball.

The object definitions in the asset pack don't reflect the damage actually done by player-cast spells.

[Drakkan]

from standard ones I like fireburst the most. It is accessible from beginning, you can smash majority opponents with it, it is cheap and it deals quite high damage even compared to fireball.

from custom spells, definitely blizzard and ice storm.

[AndakRainor]

Fireburst, however, has 26% more damage/energy than fireball, even *before* the DoT: at levels 3, 4, 5 respectively, fireburst has 35.2/25, 39.6/25 44/25 attack power/energy, compared to 48/43, 54/43, 60/43 for fireball.

The object definitions in the asset pack don't reflect the damage actually done by player-cast spells.

How did you get those values ? It seems I have balanced my custom spells pack totally the wrong way because I used the numbers in the object definitions as a base to compare spells. So I will need to re-balance every thing with the correct values.

Also, I suppose it means the "+20%" damage per magic skill point is not "hard coded" and should be implemented in all custom spells I made ? (I did not really test deeply enough the average damage of those spells and worked on other aspects of the mod instead, now it is time to revisit it and tune it correctly I think!)

[minmay]

How did you get those values ?

cast spell -> inspect created TileDamagerComponent

[karadoc]

About meteor storm using more energy, I'm really not concerned about that. The strength of meteor storm is that it has the highest burst damage of all the spells; and burst damage is what I'm looking for in damage spells.

For fights where I'm constantly side-stepping the enemy and attacking them in melee, spells like fireburst are better than meteor storm - but in those kinds of situations I just don't need spells anyway. In situations where I have time and space to maneuver, I just don't use spells. The melee attackers can do the damage safely enough, and the spell casters can use it as an opportunity to recharge. It's the fights where I can't easily side-step where I need spells; and in those situations there are two stand-out options: force-field for defence, and meteor storm for offence. In situations where you're pinned, or in danger of being pinned in a corner; conserving energy is not a high priority. Killing the enemy as quickly as possible is the top priority.

When killing the enemy quickly is not a high priority, then spells aren't really needed. When it is a high priority, the highest damage/time spells are the most useful. damage/energy is less important.

(Incidentally though, in the late game, invisibility can actually help do more damage - because backstab becomes so very powerful.)