Heh, ya I used it on my magic build civ. My leader with path of the mage could cast it for 3 mana after the cost reductions from items/traits, and did 4-600 per turn with it. The weird thing was (and this was 0.85) that even if the spell was resisted, I'd still see damage go up. A bug? But coupled with full mana shield, that was just a one person army. Effective 4k health, and I could dish out that much DPS every round . .crazy stuff.
Flipside, that only happened because I had tons of red equipment, a totally mage spec leader, and didn't use mana on the strategic map, so in a way its balanced since I put everything towards it. Since it only got that powerful endgame, in a way its a good thing. If there were more compelling reasons to use mana on the strategic map in my game, I doubt I ever would have gotten the mana pool big enough to really misuse the spell that way.