Spells from MM7/8 you wish you got to use more often

[Tress]

I take it you play turn-based? Because as far as I'm concerned, Sacrifice is the best spell in the game. It requires a combination of spells to make it overpowered though: Sacrifice, Souldrinker and Lloyd's Beacon (and maybe Fly).

Usually yes, though considering we'r resorting to beacon anyway, I am not sure if that extra mana pool is worth that. It really doesn't cost that much to port extra time to city. Considering that tradeoff is reputation that is pretty much irrecoverable,(though not that relevant), I still consider sacrifice as a flavor spell.

Immolation is annoying as hell since you cant use it in towns so it's never used

While in that case yes, big part of fight happens outside melee range, and in case you need to get out of dungeon, there is no way to switch it off, not to mention it have relatively small duration that doesn't makes it tedious to recast for long dungeon runs.

It wouldn't make any sense at all if Control Undead worked on Liches.

Why not? Sure they aren't mindless, but you can take D&D as an example where evil cleric analogue for turning undead is controlling them. Of course liches and such are very resistant to it, but it's principle itself is rationalized that caster controls their undead energies that makes them move rather than their minds

[tolich]

Considering that tradeoff is reputation that is pretty much irrecoverable, (though not that relevant), I still consider sacrifice as a flavor spell.

You still may use it in the regions where your reputation doesn't matter, like Eeofol.

[Xfing]

Considering that tradeoff is reputation that is pretty much irrecoverable, (though not that relevant), I still consider sacrifice as a flavor spell.

You still may use it in the regions where your reputation doesn't matter, like Eeofol.

Exactly, all the reputation drops only affect the region that you're performing the heinous acts in, and only once. Similarly, you could hire a reputation lowering hireling, and your rep will only drop once in the area you hired them in (this can be easily remedied by donating to the temple).

I take it you play turn-based? Because as far as I'm concerned, Sacrifice is the best spell in the game. It requires a combination of spells to make it overpowered though: Sacrifice, Souldrinker and Lloyd's Beacon (and maybe Fly).
The idea is to fly around casting Souldrinker on everything while dodging projectiles, then when your dark caster(s) are out of spell points you just Sacrifice a follower and rinse and repeat. When you're out of followers, you cast Town Portal/Lloyd's Beacon to pick up a few more and Lloyd's Beacon back to what you were doing. By far the easiest way to clear entire outside areas.
I did this to kill all the devils outside the Hive in MM7 by just flying through them. The only thing to watch out for is when a devil randomly manages to steal your sorcerer's spell points, causing the Fly spell to wear off, which drops you to the earth at which point a dozen meteor showers from all the devils will kill you.

Well, there's a much better tactic for this. You just cast Armageddon four times with both your priest and lich and watch all the draons and titans get weakened critically, and most of the devills killed off instantly (except for Captains, of whom there are relatively few). You can finish the rest off quite easily with hasted Blasters. BTW this strategy is even better in MM8 (which has many outdoor areas with monsters comparable in strength to those of Eeofol) because of the fact that in MM8 the monsters don't heal, even if you rest/heal. In MM7 a heal resting automatically returns all of the monsters to full health, and in addition they get back to full health anyway after 24 (or so) hours have elapsed. This makes Armageddon much less fun to use and get gigantic experience yields with in MM7 than MM8.

It wouldn't make any sense at all if Control Undead worked on Liches.
They're not some mindless undead raised by a necromancer... they're as smart as they were in life and in full control of themselves. In fact, because of how their transformation works, they're completely immune to mind and spirit effects.

So what? Enslave the Mind spell works on perfectly sentient living creatures, why shouldn't Control Undead work on Liches, then? They're immune do Mind Magic, alright, but that should only affect Enslave. You can't use Enslave on the Undead, because they're all immune to Mind spells - but that's what you're supposed to have Control Undead for. It should work on liches perfectly fine, especially considering that its Mana cost is 35 (while Enslave's is 30 and it can be applied even to dragons). As it is now, the spell's practically useless. What can you take control of with it anyway? Skeletons, zombies or wraiths? Thank you very much. The situation's even worse in MM8 where the Dark resistant skeleton bowmen get enslaved with the spell roughly half of the time, while any Dark immune undead creature (even the higher orders of skeleton bowmen) never get affected by it. This makes it useless against undead dragons (not sure about vampires). The point is, this spell should have a chance of working on any undead - lesser or greater - and that's why I think its mechanic should be changed in a patch