What is your vote for the most overpowered spell in the game?

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by Harush

I agree that phantom is still powerful for a war or pal, but with fear lasting 4 turns, you can use it to lock down almost all of a 5 unit low level enemy. At 10 mana, I think it's a much closer call vs the 25 needed for a max phantom for mana-strapped classes. Also, with magic runes being in much shorter supply, it's harder to justify getting summoner 3.

I play warrior on Impossible difficulty, and I could definitely say Phantom at 25 mana is definitely more cost effective than Fear at 10 mana. Phantom lasts 3 turns, and you could use the last turn more effectively by just doing a "wait" command. Like I mentioned before, a warrior can only cast one spell, so you could only cast Fear on one enemy at a time. That means on turn 1 you've only locked down one enemy; the rest makes a bee-line for your troops, and that is if you are LUCKY enough to have most/all of your enemies as melee types that have low speed. Turn 2 has only 2 enemies locked down; by this turn, movement 3 melee enemies have reached your troops. That means that they have a chance of causing casualties to your army, making you spend more mana to bring back lost troops.

Fear has 3 disadvantages:
1) It is level dependent, and enemies could still attack equal or lower level units in your army.
2) It doesn't damage the enemies.
3) It controls only one stack of enemies. As you've probably noticed in the later part of the game, you sometimes fight enemies that are distributed into 7+ stacks.

Summoner 3 is nice, but not necessary. If you Phantom tough units the enemies would not be able to even finish off your Phantom, and it would most likely disappear due to the spell's expiry and not due to death. Remember, warrior has double the base leadership gain of a mage.

And before you say that warrior is a mana-strapped class, please first try playing warrior, with a focus on mana accelerator (and calm rage for boss fights), and prepare to be pleasantly surprised.

But words are sometimes cheap, so attached is a screenshot of a sample battle of a warrior using Phantom. First turn of the battle here, can you tell me how many enemies are looking to attack and damage my "real" army? This enemy type also shows a 4th disadvantage of fear; the enemies I usually want to cast Fear on are range units. But Fear doesn't work on Necromancers (undead), the only ranged unit on the enemy's side.