Useless spells

[Razorflame]

i was just wondering what some spells have for value..
i mean i seldomly USE

LAST HERO

the only use i found for this one was killing the turtle
(see the thread i made how)

Kamikaze
what USE could this one possibly have(fireball or ice snake own this one with ez i would say)

PYGMY

besides the fact that it is funny to see a small version of the unit

there are far better spells
(weakness for example)

SHROUD

same shit(better spells to disable archers

HELPLESNESS

gee what use could this have? spells above own this one already(save for last hero)

PEACEFULLNESS

BLESS>PEACEFULLNESS?

[Zonc]

Pygmy is not that bad actually, but I haven't used it much myself, truly.

Healing useless, Light of life pretty much useless too.
Does anyone use Invisibility? Book of Evil is a bad spell, it may seem cool at first sight, but then it casts lightning on your own unit and it's the last time you use it...

[Razorflame]

healing is very good in beginning of game
when u have low numbers it's easy to heal a tank

furthermore light of life can be very good if troops are camped and the undea will run away

it can do alot of damage when u have order at 3 and the skill there after(which increase healing res and such)

like 1k damage on 3-4 stacks+healing your own

book of evil is a great spell
cast it next too his casters
and enemy stacks try to kill it :)

same goes for phoenix:)

[Ryastar]

Mostly agree with the above, as far as most of those being less useful spells, except for a few notable exceptions:

Pygmy is one of the best spells in the game. At level three it essentially kills 40% of the target stack, regardless of the size of it, for the duration of the spell. That's your chance to kill it. Think of it as soul drain for mages, costing mana (and at only 20, it's a steal), and sadly not usable on level 5 units.

Helplessness is also rather powerful. It reduces enemy defense by 60%. It's at its most powerful against level 5 units, making their impressive defense pitiful.

Those are two specific example, but also one thing in general, no spell is useless, it all depends on your playstyle. For example, Razorflame, you mentioned weakness, a spell I consider crap, as better than pygmy. My philosophy is that a dead enemy does no damage (unless it's UNdead, haha), so why bother reducing their damage when I can kill the stack instead, or in the case of pygmy, reduce their damage AND their hitpoints. See, it all depends on your strategy. Eg. the main use of kamikaze is on your own phantom troops, when their duration runs out, BOOM!!! I've also heard that despite the description, you can cast it on enemy troops as well. Invisibility allows for a cheap strategy, which I never use but you can find described somewhere on this forum. The basic idea is to have only one stack of troops (usually green dragons for mana regen), cast invisibility on them. Now they cannot be attacked by enemy troops unless they have the ability eyeless (thorns are the only ones with it, I believe) or by spells from the enemy hero, if any.

[Razorflame]

well true enough

but still rather useless
pygmy got no mass effect like weakness does

that pretty much nullifies it for me i gues

i seldomly use the spells i mentioned above

except for last hero ^^
going cheap on the turtle nowadays

few peasants enough to make it to walk to the turtle and then just LAST HERO :)

and i ussualy find alot of last hero scrolls
so :)

at level 3 or 4 i am mostly able to take out the turtle with useless troops :D

[jwallstone]

I completely agree with Ryastar here, who is right on. Pygmy and Helplessness can be VERY powerful.

As an example, consider fighting ArchDemons on lava terrain, which you have to do for some of the hardest fights (like Baal, who has a huge stack of them). Their Defense is already 78 by that point, before the Hero bonus. A 60% reduction of Defense from Helplessless reduces its Defense by 47, which means that your units now do 256% of their damage without Helplessness cast against Archdemons! (Including the enemy Hero's defense makes this even bigger). So if you're fighting 20 Archdemons, where you could only kill 8 beforehand, giving them a chance to inflict some major pain on their turn, cast Helplessness and watch the whole stack go down. That's how good Helplessness can be. (but of course it's best with high defense units)

Weakness is rather useless in contrast, since you can be much more effective at minimizing damage received by using careful tactics and by simply killing their units first, i.e. with Pygmy and Helplessness.

[Razorflame]

i would just perform a sheep on a demon ^^

[Holywhippet]

Keep in mind that some spells might be more useful depending on what class you are. A mage can (eventually) cast 2 spells each combat round. When you are a warrior or paladin you have to be more selective about what spells you throw around. A mage can toss around a pair of weakening spells then let their troops smack the crap out the enemy or wait until the next round and hurt them some more.

[Ryastar]

i would just perform a sheep on a demon ^^

Which costs 35 mana, iirc, it might be even more. And I'm not sure that sheep can target level 5 units. Helplessness costs 6 mana.

[Razorflame]

oops i was so wrong:)
can't sheep level 5 units:)
^^:>

then helplessness got one usefull thingie for 1 battle :P

[Vilk]

I agree Helplessness is quite useful and not just for few case, I use it a lot to dispose more quickly a dangerous stack.

I also agree that often Weakness isn't interesting in general but with the mass effect there are cases where you won't be able to avoid get hit by multiple enemy units and in those case the mass spell is huge.

Pygmy has a similar use than Helplessness but in different case. I generally prefer Helplessness but when I'm sure I'll get a rude counter attack from the unit attacked.

Invisibility is an excellent spell for few special tactics and I use it sometimes. My standard use case is 2 fast close fighter stack: Throw them in front, both attack then cast invisibility on one of the two. The other unit get all hits. Second turn I repeat and before end of turn I time back the unit that received all hits. That's often quite good with two fast and strong close fighting units with no retaliation and much more efficient than phantom for a similar use case. But that's juts a case there's many more use case for invisibility.

I agree that Healing is cool during the first part of the game. but I see myself use it even in middlegame.

Light of life isn't great but isn't that bad because it's a mass heal that heal any units but undead and demons. Also it has use cases against undead army and when your army has units with high life. Take care that the Healer skill can increase its power of 25%. And an option could be to mix its use with high life units and Peacefulness, never tried.

I don't see much use of:

Last Hero no idea what use can have this spell,
Peacefulness (perhaps combined with some Light of life but I doubt),
non mass Weakness,
Shroud it should be a sort of mass effect on enemy army,
Kamikaze which is just a complicate attack spell,
Summon Phoenix (too much mana, better use Phantom),
Book of Evil is funny... until random hurt you... then you start find it not that funny :grin:
Greasy Mist if you aren't a mage with the possibility to cast 2 spell in a turn,
Plague because its effect is too invisible,
Poison Skull because in general poison effect suck because long term effect are useless.
Berserk because the random doesn't worth it it break too much any attempt of tactic
.

EDIT: Now I'm thinking of it Peacefulness could have some use with an Ancient Ent, its main attack is a special power certainly not changed by the spell and its close attack is so strong that even reduced it would be quite good, 1500 life isn't that bad.

EDIT2: Still about Peacefulness, if you have ton of mana combined with Sacrifice... well ok then better use time back.

[Ryder]

Does anyone use Invisibility?
Often. I attack a ranged unit with my Lake Fairies in a way that it will have to take two steps to get around me to shoot (usually Cyclops). Cast invisibility on them. It gets to the Cyclops turn, cant shoot because something is stopping it, something invisible, so it takes a step, oh crap, still cant shoot, best I take another step it thinks, whoops, there goes it's turn.

Round two, I'll move my Fairies again in front of the shooter and wait, same thing happens and then I have 2 free hits and hopefully have them killed before they get to throw a boulder.

Or it's good just to cast invisibilty on something that you cant get out of trouble.