The most USELESS spell

[mr.hackcrag]

Ok then,I dare you to use armagedon against a human and still win that game.

Why not just pair armageddon with black dragons?

[Lady Farquad]

Voted Armageddon 'cause earthquake was not on the list. I used Armageddon once just to see the screen effects.

[DaemianLucifer]

Why not just pair armageddon with black dragons?

Will someone please tie me up before I do something really nasty right now?

[Elvin]

Fist of wrath: its only advantage is that it has physical damage... but as there are so few units that would take more damage from this than Eldrich Arrow for example so I find it useless... even against black dragons I would cast something else... I think it's better to attack the dragons with your hero than cast this spell...

Wasp swarm: too low damage and if you have Expert summoning you will be too busy casting pheonix, elementals, phantom image, raise dead or even Arcane armor... so simply I won't cast this unless I don't have a choice...

Fist of wrath still gives you the sorcery bonus but it really depends on spellpower.
As for wasp swarm if you see a big stack of grim raiders that can reach your titans and is about to play you'll cast it believe me!Screw summon phoenix-that can wait,your army can't.And against neutrals is amazing.It bumped even inquisitors(10 in) before my hero's next turn but that doesn't always work and requires sorcery.Fire wall is used a lot more rarely.

[ThunderTitan]

Earthquake

Actualy i used it once at expert lvl and it made the siege way easier.

[Bonzer]

Each of these spells has their uses, even if only to break the monotony.

Firewall - can be cast on castle gates I beleive? Also as said above, helps to protect your missile troops, useful with certain battle terrain.

Armageddon - useful if your creatures are resistant, or if you have Resurrection and Blind or Puppet Master (as long as you have some troops left, lots of mana, oh, and control of the ballista if you own one).

Wasp Swarm - I didn't know about its initiative effects, but sometimes useful in early game with sprites.

Fist of Wrath - good against ghosts (I think), also apparantly dragons!

Curse of Netherworld / Word of Light - well, ok, by the time you get these two, you probably have much better ones. But how about if you have a high level character just starting a new part of a campaign? Very few troops, lots of mana / spell power. Goodbye mine guards in week 1.

So you see they all have a use, given the right situation, and not everyone plays the same way. I know this board regularly degenerates into a bash Nival rant, but I thank them for CONTINUING to give us the options that were in the original games. Options that allow you to get out out of a hole, have some variation in eye candy, or use many differing tactics.

(I still miss View Air and View Earth though).

[Omega_Destroyer]

Agreed. Life is a lot easier with expert earthquake, especially fi you lack the war machine tree.

[ThunderTitan]

Wasp Swarm - I didn't know about its initiative effects, but sometimes useful in early game with sprites.

Fist of Wrath - good against ghosts (I think), also apparantly dragons!

Without the init reduction WS is kinda pointless on Pixies, IMO. Maybe just as
ranged attack in the beginning, but waiting might be better.

Ghost can't dodge any spells, so a Destructive one might be better, but i'm not sure of it's dmg on Expert, if it's better then lvl 2 Destructive spells.

[DaemianLucifer]

Each of these spells has their uses, even if only to break the monotony.

True,but how often will you find yourself using one?I never found myself using mines in HIII(actually I used them once just to see them,and then decided to never use the spell again).Same goes for armagedon now.

[Shauku]

Ghosts can miss the Magic Fist as it does physical damage!!! The one place you shouldn't use it is agains them

But there is no fear of seeing "resisted" floating above the creature you casted magic fist upon.
On expert level it does more damage than its Destructive counterpart Eldritch arrow. Also you can give it +4 to spell power from Master of Life. Thats what makes it very good.

[Kilop]

On expert level it does more damage than its Destructive counterpart Eldritch arrow

... more dommage than eldricht arrow ??? man that is overpowered !
Nival messed up one more time , nerf summon, buff desructive .. or just warlock... As if they weren t underpowered enought, take away IM from dragons...

that was just a joke... everybody knows anyway how overpowered this would be

[Kashrlyyk]

Curse of Netherworld/Word of light: the damage is so small for a lvl 5 spell that you will almost always have a better spell to cast from the light/dark magic school than these 2...

With spellpower 10 it deals 144 damage to up to 7 creature stacks. That equals 1008 damage.

My problem with that skill is, that it is useless when the enemy only has a few affected creatures. Damage should be 1008/(numbers of affected stacks). But maybe that is too strong.

[Arqane]

Well, they're not useless by any means, but the least useful would be Curse/Word. Mostly because I have won battles because of all the other spells.

Wasp Swarm with it's slowing effect has saved me a few times. I remember a few battles with lots of Master Hunters in particular that I wanted to slow down a bit.

Armageddon w/Black Dragon combo did actually get me out of one fight. My poor Blackie had less than 10 health left, but the groups I was stuck fighting, with the enemy hero coming up next would've killed my 1 Blackie.

Fire Wall is used a decent bit by me in hard castle sieges (while defending). When I'm a caster vs. mostly melee type, I'll often end the fight with the enemy's creatures sitting in a firewall attacking my archers while I blast the final bit of their troops.

[okrane]

Well I'd rather think of my question this way: If you get one of these spells in your mage guild... in stead of their counterparts(the other spell of the same level in the same school of magic) which one would dissapoint you the most?

Couldn't have actually made this the question of the poll :p

[Jolly Joker]

Netherworld is underrated. You haven't got any real direct damage power with a Demon Lord. With master of pain, having a spell power of 1, a Demon Lord will do 104 damage to each opposing stack for 9 mana. That's not too bad in many situations and will outdo each Destructive spell in many situations.
The same is not quite true for Ranger and Knight with Word of Light: the damage is the same, but it costs 2 more mana and works against 2 factions only; Knight hasn't much Knowledge as well, and while I can imagine casting it to finish off something, it's more of a theoretical effect. For Ranger it looks better: Having a stack of Treants against a full Inferno army it may work, but in general Word of Light is only half as effective as Curse.

Bottom line is: Word Light is at least double as useless as Curse of the Netherworld.

[asandir]

love the wording on the bottom line JJ

[Mightor Magic]

Word/Curse for me. The only time I used it was when I had a Wizard get the ultimate ability and so I cast Curse to try it out and yet forgot that it would hit my own troops as well. But since I was using a lot of MR creature artifacts, Curse still didn't do much to my own troops.

And it didn't really do much to the other army either. But it was kind of pretty.

[Sir_Toejam]

what if the holy/netherworld spells were based on 15(power) instead of
10(power)?

would they be deemed useless then?

[DaemianLucifer]

A thought occured:Word light affects undead and demons,just like in HIV?So infernopolis is still there

[Sir William S Titan]

I voted for wasp swarm. In the list, this is one that I'd use the least.