Storm Spell Casting Time 1 Turn??

I'm just tired of going to fire spells every battle. How I would love a dmg spell from any other element to replace firedart. lol

It is irritating how much of a nerf it is for any given spell being 1 turn rather than instant. The vast majority of spells that have a cast time might as well not exist. I think we need fractional cast times for them to be balanced.

Exactly, When you consider you can cast Flame Dart twice in the same amount of time you cast Storm once, it makes no sense to ever use Storm unless the intended target is immune to fire.

And right is there ever ANY sovereign that doesn't have the Fire school?  For me when rolling up a sovereign, the only decision is what other school(s) do I want to go with Fire.  Any any champion I get that does have Fire or Life becomes a tank.   Air used to be the only other school that was reasonably decent as a battle mage.  If it wasn't for Cloudwalk and Tornado, I wouldn't even bother leveling Air above the level to get Haste.

I think it's justified in the fact that Fire should be the main damage dealing element. It doesn't have many other utility spells that are as useful as what Air has. I think it is a fair trade off.

At least you still have an option to deal damage, even if it is inferior. Or else you'd have no real reason to pick Fire.

An FYI you don't need fire to be a decent battle mage. I've been doing great with just Earth, Air, and Death on one of my custom sovs. I end up with more mana left over to boot too.

This gets to the heart of why Magic sucks IMHO.  The spells themselves are like "that's it?  That's all it does?  "  Each magic type can, could and should have some damaging type stuff, in addition to buffs. debuffs, and summons.  Fireball needs to cost more mana and take 1 turn to cast not 2..  Storm shouldn't take a turn.  Magic is so underwhelming for it to supposedly be so central.  Magic items sure got some improvements, but the elephant(S) in the room are the spellbooks...  

I would've thought that shrink/grow would go more to nature than light but oh well.  I don't think there' a nature spellbook anyway.  Light is so bare compared to dark.  Drain Life is a million times cooler than heal.  Do damage to a target and get healed...  it needs some more buffs, a way or two to do some damage.. like a sunbeam spell or something.. anything and some summons in there somewhere..  whether its angels or whatever.  

In my opinion,  I've been expecting more from spells and THEY ARE JUST NOT DOING IT.   Seems like Fire Dart should have been level 1 for the crap damage it does.  That's right crap damage.  I've tried to post nice things but I don't think anyone's getting it.  Before I decide to give up,  I'm at least going to mention try fixing the spells they still suck.  

There's plenty of bugs and this and that, but if spells never get addressed Fallen Enchantress has fallen and she can't get up...  

sorry I went all drama queen-ish here but that's how I feel about magic. 

Storm "makes sense" to me. It has higher base damage, is a damage type that practically noone is immune to and many are vulnerable to - lightning. That's incredibly important, and the reason why lightning damage is so sparse in the game. You can use it against any monster. Actually, that's probably the intent - against monsters the random nature of Storm goes away since you're mostly fighting just 1 enemy at a time. Yes, it takes 1 extra turn to cast, but factor in that you also get Haste from air1 which is a no-brainer to cast every fight.

Air2 will also get you Gentle rain with water2, or Contagion with death2 (two of the strongest spells in the mid-game).

The only thing I don't like about Storm is that it's air3. It is very weak for a spellrank 3 spell imho. I mean, we shouldn't even be comparing it to Flame Dart. We should be comparing it to spells like Fireball and Summon Ice Elemental.

Comparing it with fireball... which is generally less useful than flame dart, which is part of the problem. It seems strange to me that once you get the rank 2 fire, there are now no other damage spells to look forwards to by leveling up magic skills.

I wouldn't care if Storm is an Air1 spell.  I still wouldn't use it.  Its random target plus casting time verses its damage or usefulness compared to the available alternatives is what kills it for me.   If it were not random or it was back to instant cast, I would use it more.  Even the random nature of it kills it for me as far too often, I've spent the resources to cast Storm only to have it strike for 30+ damage the guy with 2 hit points left while leaving my tank to die at the hands of the other bad guy that could have been dropped by a Flame Dart or two before my tank died.  The only time I'd even consider casting Storm is against one of the uber Wildlands mobs like Morian and if it isn't doing AT LEAST double the damage of Flame Dart, I still probably won't use it.  I'd rather they double the mana cost and make it instant again.

Combat is so fast in Elemental that ANY tactical spell that takes longer to cast than Instant will get very little use.  Combat moves too quickly and is over too quickly.  What it takes to get a caster with high enough initiative to make Fireball useful pretty much breaks the game.  Nothing sucks worse than passing up the opportunity to cast THREE combat spell only to have Fireball go off and kill or just damage only one or two bad guys.  And once you start casting a multiple turn spell, you're stuck casting it.  If one of your guys is in danger of dying and all he needs is his opponent nuked or a quick heal, he's screwed because your caster is tied up trying to cast a spell that might be useless by the time it goes off.  If they feel a spell is overpowered then they need to leave casting time alone and increase either its spell level or mana cost (or both) and/or cut it's effectiveness but they need to leave casting time alone.

Same with Fireball.  It's only useful *IF* you're up against a bunch of big stacks of trained units AND if the trained units are packed closely together (in the last patch or two the bad guys are spacing out more at the start of combat) AND are pretty sure you can get it off before the bad guys scatter all over the tactical map.  When those conditions are met, it is a DEVISTATING spell.  And when you get to the point where those conditions are met, then you're nuking the bad guys to ashes in the first 20 seconds of every battle and watching the excitement of the game degenerate into a snoozer because then it is WAY TOO powerful. 

Fireball in its current form(except for casting time) is a huge mistake.  AOE plus Overpower is so devastating against stacks of trained units they've nerfed it into uselessness rather than addressing what is really the problem with the spell.  I think they need to change Fireball to a range-zero spell with Overpower, and possibly change Overpower to be (Damage * 1/2 Target Units) and change it back to an instant spell.  You'll only be nuking one mob/stack at a time but against a group of trained units, it's devastating without taking out the entire army of bad guys with a nuke or two.  But keeping it an AOE spell and taking away Overpower would also be a reasonable option if they reduce the casting time to instant. Actually, I'd keep Fireball AOE and get rid of Overpower then come up with a different spell that is an "Overpowered" version of Flame Dart.  Then you end up with two spells that are actually useful without either being ridiculously overpowered or near totally useless with nothing in between.

Similar thing with Titan's breath.  I have sacrifice two casting opportunities to cast a spell that might accomplish nothing if the better part of the bad guys are immune to being knocked prone.  It's pretty much useless against any four-legged bad guy from the start.  Throw in the 50+% likelihood that the most dangerous of your opponents are probably immune to being knocked prone, on top of the two turns to cast, and it becomes a very big gamble to cast.  No thanks, I'll take my chances with Two flame Darts or Haste and Stoneskin.  Chances are, any bad guy so powerful that Stoneskin and Haste on my main tank won't be enough to swing the battle in my favor is going to be immune to being knocked prone anyway.  Spending one turn to cast Titan's Breath might be a worthwhile gamble.  Two turns is not.

Like I said, I have very little use for any tactical spell that isn't Instant.  Tying up my main caster for two or three turns to cast a spell that might end up being a waste by the time it goes off is not in my nature to use if I have ANY reasonable alternative.

Sorry for the rant. 

Really, I just wish you could pick your spells per lvl. The higher the lvl, the bigger badder spell. I find myself going down a element path just for 1 or two spells, and then chucking all the rest to the side. Except fire of course. If you don't have fire, you don't win. Okay, an exaggeration, but it really is much harder to try to focus on anything other than fire and be as effective battle-wise.

Gimme AEO lighting with stun effects, or be able to summon up armies instead of walking down the warfare path, I want to be able to revive my dead enemies as undead thralls, or flood an area with a water spell to create mud to slow or stop advancing troops! I know this stuff will come with mods eventually, but I really think the vanilla game needs to have this stuff to really give that WOW magic factor people are wanting. Just my opinion though. *shrug*

Spells just flat out need some balance imo.  Shrink is beyond amazing for taking on monsters that are out of your class in the beginning (Haridens, Great Shrikes, Forest Drakes, River Slags) but is otherwise virtually useless.  That death spell that causes a unit to take crits every hit is just beyond obscene in how strong it is.  And you guys have all hit on how problematic all the elemental offensive spells are.  I think they probably need to be made roughly equal in damage potential and be given secondary effects for flavor.  Stuff like fire is raw damage or gives a dot, lightning has a chance to daze, earth has a chance to lower defense, etc.  This way any school is viable offensively and your choice is more about complementing your troop composition or countering the enemy's, and you're not left out cold by not having fire (or fire shards).  It would be nice if every school had some grand finisher spell at the end that actually felt rand too (storm drake and super light magic summoned hero from MoM anyone?)  You could get clever with these and make them draw power from multiple sources as well, like Soulburn? (the spell that adds dmg based on # of fire AND death shards)

Multi turn spells in air are funny because they're in air, so if it's a looong battle I might cast haste on myself first and then do the spell.

You could make a spell like storm more interesting by making it channeled, where the first cast turn nothing happens, the next turn it strikes a random unit for 12 dmg, and it will keep going 1 turn for each air shard you own and increases in damage by 4 each turn.  Big damage potential but it's a big cost as well to lock your hero down like that.

agreed.

Aerion Istari: i think you're using the spell wrong. Storm can become very powerful. Especially if there is only one unit left and it's immune to magic and can't be targetted. Strom will still hit it . . .

Yes there is the random chance it will hit that 2 HP unit but that's why you kill it first and take the randomness out of it. You know exactly what the unit order is to plan ahead. That's why I like it. It's not just another simple nuke. The one turn casting makes it more than fair since it is in the Air element. When it was instant cast I found no use for any Fire spell . . . that in itself is a big flaw you are missing out on . . .

Titans Breath on the other hand is a very powerful spell. If you have it on a mage with a high INIT and spell power say good bye to an army that won't even get to act. 2 turns seems fair. Of course if you use it with a weaker mage it will be a lot more random but that is the nature of it. Why would you cast such a powerful spell with a < level 10 mage anyways?

I find blizzard to be extremely effective, at least in .912.

It has greater damage and a larger area of effect than fireball.

Blizzard is 4, not 3 like fireball.  It should be a more effective spell.  

And anyone who thinks fireball is a bad spell, probably isn't using it right.  Once the game is all balanced out, fireball will have to be weaker vis-a-vis trained units in some way.  Otherwise, it gives fire mages permanent dominance over all but the most high level trained troops.  

I also think storm is pretty powerful.  If it was buffed at all, some sort of very minor AoE around the main target would work well.  Like 10% or 20% of the overall damage in AoE to the 8 surrounding squares.  Any other buffs, including removing the cast time or making it targeted, will make it pretty overpowered.  

What do you think of my suggestion here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/424238

I think they're related.

I think Storm should take a little longer to cast than Fire Bolt but not a full 2 turns. This might already be the case though and the display might not be giving enough information. Perhaps spells should list exactly how much initiative is required to cast.

Alternatively, maybe Storm should strike adjacent squares for half damage. This would make it more in line with Fireball. With the current leveling curve for champions, it's quite difficult to get 3 ranks in a branch of magic unless you already start with ranks 2 or 3.

I agree, we need a larger diversity of combat spells for damage.  I suggested a couple in another thread, but in general this would allow for a better experience.

Furthermore, there should be a spell in the air school to hasten the next 2 cast on cast time spells.  It should be rank 4 or 5.  Think a mix of haste and focus. 

Finally, the Haste spell has a highly negative effect on some cast time spells.  It causes them to not go off (moves the characters turn up, and they lose the spell.)