Yes, I agree. Summoning is quite useful, but every direct attack I have seen is a joke and pales to everything you can do with swords. I feel exactly the same as you, OP.

For a game titled Elemental: War of MAGIC.

I find Magic to be the most underwhelming part of the game....

Magic is underwhelming right now because its bugged.  Currently, magic is using a 0-X damage calculation range instead of a min-max damage range.  Shards are also not functioning properly during tactical battles.  As in shards do absolutely nothing.  If you use auto battle the game actually calculates magic properly.

Stardock is aware of this problem and is working on a fix.  They also intend to add equipment to support mage sovereigns.

Shards should be gravy, not required for magic to matter in combat.  Magic should be reasonable without shards and better depending on the number you hold, otherwise, you have to get lucky for your spells to matter in a game.

Don't forget that magic in many ways is predicated on the build of your initial channeler.  Wisdom is what effects your cost per spell. So if you do create a new hero, try and max out the Wis. You cannot change that in game.

Magic is OP if you know how to "Channel" it, haha love that pun, anways as stated you need to optimize your channeling threw research and shards in the world. If you do, then you will hurt your abilities in other things like making better armor for your army etc. In elemental there is give and take, you are great in one thing or mediocure in it all, that choice is up to you, but if you want those huge exploding 100+ damage fireballs, do the research and know what you need to get there. Assuming in this game is the worst thing you can do, all that text you see actually has meaning in the game.

 EDIT: oh and in tactical as I am reading further in the thread, this was done to fix the way OP abilities of the magic before, it can (again if done correctly) still be OP in tatical. As far as autocombat, personally I noticed the high numbers as well ,I think it still has the old build.

shards are not working in manual tactical combat atm. thats why you see so low damage outputs.

Reliable damage on spells could be nice if it was implemented as an attribute.  I see no reason for spell damage to work differently to weapon damage, it just needs rebalanced.  That said, it would be cool to have a couple of good (say level 3-4) spells that do normal damage but randomise from, say (Int) to (Int-50%).  Drawback could be in extra mana cost or short range or whatever, but they'd be useful when you really need to do just a few points of damage.  Just an idea.

Also, has anyone gotten to the so called "unthinkably powerful" magic of the late game.  Just curious as to what the max level spells do (including the ones you get from researched and quest-obtained spellbooks).

I think Magic is simply bugged in tactical combat, shards or no shards. It misses way too much. I mean it suppose to roll 0 - intelligence, and defender rolls 0 - defenses. So how I can miss HALF OF THE TIME when I have int of 14, and defender has defense of 1??? I should miss only one in 14, which is nearly never. Shards or no shards, combat is not working.

Try this for example.

I have a ridiculously lucky game going where I have 8 shards, 4 of which are fire.  Maxing out the adventure tech tree and some stupidly good luck combined.  Melting Touch (aka 2x int plus shards) claims to do up to 120 damage.  I have yet to see it hit for more than 24, and it *STILL* frequently misses or does low single digit damage...  against level 1 creatures with very low defense (spiders).

I have seen shards increase my spell damage, but my hit chance seems to be affected by INT, opponent DEF, and distance to target.

Then you must be talking about auto resolve because they categorically do nothing to boost damage in tactical as has been confirmed by numerous reports and a Stardock employee

I agree that shards are useless right now in tactical.  I have three of every shard type with 16 intelligence, and I don't think I've ever seen more then 20 points of damage done by my best spells to even guys with 0 defense.

Something needs to be done to fix magic right now because it's whack.  I focused my sovereign on magic and he's probably the weakest character I've got, especially since the quests are so bugged.  Never received Alzor's armor after completing the quest (tried many times from save) and Moriah's lost spell books did nothing for me (I'm at level 5 spells and have yet to see any new spells to research).

Magic-focused sov's are really weak right now.