Top level new spells not working

[cjleeagain]

When I played Trial By Fire, I noticed that some newly introduced spells didn't seem to be working. I remember mentioning this years ago.

Since the Trial By Fire campaign is basically Dwarves with Fire Magic and Humans with Light Magic, I wasn't sure of this. And it wasn't important to me anyway.

Now that I'm replaying the original campaigns but have the Trial By Fire addition, I can see the new Level 4 spells Wasp Swarm (Earth magic) and Haunting Plague (Dark magic) in action by other heroes. And they are indeed both screwed up.

This is not just a map specific or hero specific issue. It affects all heroes that I hire, in all the later maps of the Sylvan and Dungeon campaigns. In the earlier maps your ability to build mage guilds or level up heroes is limited so I didn't have any opportunity to try out Wasp Swarm and Haunting Plague.

Wasp Swarm tends to only work once. It has never affected 8 targets in my experience.
Haunting Plague works on all your enemies, but it works at the end of a combat round. But the description also says 'at the start of the next 2 combat rounds'. Which suggests some confusion on the part of the coders who did it.
As a result, if Haunting Plague kills off all your enemies, the battle hangs. You can't do anything anymore. Can't control any creature, can't move, can't target enemies (which are reduced to corpses that you can see on the battlefield anyway), can't cast spells. Autocombat doesn't work. The battle just goes nowhere, and you have to restart the whole combat.

You can still cast and enjoy the benefits of Haunting Plague, so long as the final blow is struck by your hero or creatures.

I personally think this spell is overpowered because it is more discriminating than Armageddon. It will never target your own side. No need to worry about creature vulnerabilities and immunities. My Malwen can do nearly 1200 damage per enemy on the battlefield at level 27, even without the use of that +12 Dark Magic artifact. So as far as I am concerned, this is a spell that needs nerfing anyway and I don't use it.