— Begin quote from "klattmose"
If she could wreck house all by herself, the game wouldn’t be very interesting. It’s probably for the best that the most she can do is support the team. And, you know, get them on the field in the first place.
— End quote
Then why have direct damage spells at all, if her role is solely that of General/support caster? Why tease us with damaging McGuffin spells that are obsolete past Act VI Normal/Act IV Advanced?
Lightning is still useful as a net to catch anything that slips through your defense, and Dragon Fire does set everything on fire which can cause a lot of DOT.
And when you think about it, Azra has the largest range of all units (i.e. the whole map), and Dragon Fire has a tremendous AOE (again, the whole map). People complain about the Rangers being overpowered; if the damage Azra could do was too high this thread would be about the spells being too effective.
— Begin quote from "klattmose"
Lightning is still useful as a net to catch anything that slips through your defense, and Dragon Fire does set everything on fire which can cause a lot of DOT.
And when you think about it, Azra has the largest range of all units (i.e. the whole map), and Dragon Fire has a tremendous AOE (again, the whole map). People complain about the Rangers being overpowered; if the damage Azra could do was too high this thread would be about the spells being too effective.
— End quote
The spells definitely jump off a cliff as you go deeper into the late Extreme maps. For the normal campaign without a ton of leveling, spells are fairly effective when you’re on the borderline of a perfect game. However, it’s really razor-thin… it’s somewhat delicate, as you tend to either roflstomp with just troops, or to be lacking so much that you spend all your psi cleaning up stragglers and you can’t upgrade anymore, and the game snowballs away. Other games have a separate resource for spell casting, and that could make sense… and even being able to boost Azra with Psi while spellcasting with mana would make me feel less bad about using spells… really, spells are sort of like a mining canary that lets you know that you’re sort of close to being able to lose.
perhaps the spell damage could be multiplied by creep level, so that all spells would preserve their relative strength at higher levels without breaking the balance of various creeps within the same level. In other words, we don’t want to have a “take 10% HP” spell as that’d be too strong when used against cultists and stuff.
That is, if lightning level 1 causes 10 damage to even the weakest creeps, , why not define lightning damage as base_damage * $creep_level. (Where base damage depends on spell level).
Example: Lightning could have base damage 1 at level 1 and 9 at level 9. Looking at creeps in advanced level in last battle, there’s a tough snail level 44 with 7337 hitpoints and an armored fast snail level 45 with 3024 hitpoints. (Let’s pretend that it’s level 44 too).
Lightning level 1 would cause 44 damage to both creeps, causing 0.6% to the tough snail, 1.4% to the armored snail. Lightning level 9 would cause 5.3% to the tough snail and 13% to the armored snail.
But a cloaked cultist level 46 comes with 23642 HP - and for him, lightning even at level 9 would be just a scratch, which is how it’s supposed to be I guess.
Personally i would prefer if there were less damage spells (or remove them completely) and more buff spells… we now have “heal” (for healing) and “frenzy” (for speed up). Would be nice to have a spell for more damage (every defender does x% more damage for Y seconds), more armor (every defender gets X defense for Y second) or maybe even a bleed spell (every enemie gets an x% bleed for y seconds). Those spells would scale (well except for the armor one…) because your defenders get buffed, so the stronger the defenders, the stronger the effect of the spell…
— Begin quote from "Yinan"
Personally i would prefer if there were less damage spells (or remove them completely) and more buff spells… we now have “heal” (for healing) and “frenzy” (for speed up). Would be nice to have a spell for more damage (every defender does x% more damage for Y seconds), more armor (every defender gets X defense for Y second) or maybe even a bleed spell (every enemie gets an x% bleed for y seconds). Those spells would scale (well except for the armor one…) because your defenders get buffed, so the stronger the defenders, the stronger the effect of the spell…
— End quote
Instead of armor, direct damage mitigation. Psi Punching Bag: for X seconds all units are guarded by an aetheric punching bag that absorbs Y% of all damage taken.
Interesting ideas! Keep them coming in case I ever get the opportunity to program in new spells 
I personally found the crystal to be useful at times midgame. Rarely though.
By the time you got the dragonfire it was useless. Not enough damage. The worst enemies were the high health ones, not the hordes.
Heal was useless, far too weak for its cost.
Lightning was useless.
Pushback had a mild, if small use. I never found any use for it. If the enemy has gotten past my defences a small delay rarely does much.
Frenzy was immensely useful at all times during the game.
— Begin quote from "Nepene"
I personally found the crystal to be useful at times midgame. Rarely though.
By the time you got the dragonfire it was useless. Not enough damage. The worst enemies were the high health ones, not the hordes.
Heal was useless, far too weak for its cost.
Lightning was useless.
Pushback had a mild, if small use. I never found any use for it. If the enemy has gotten past my defences a small delay rarely does much.
Frenzy was immensely useful at all times during the game.
— End quote
To leapfrog a bit on this:
Crystal is helpful mainly for polishing off things like Armored mobs (skeletons, snails) that didn’t get their armor crushed by your Knight(s), but again, with static damage, it’s really only useful until you start getting to the Blood Cult desert/ruined city area.
I don’t think I’ve ever cast heal seriously even once. I’ve cast it “for shits” when a map has already been effectively won and I have excess Psi to play with, but really, the times that you might be able to use it to save a unit that’s not being covered adequately by a healer are extremely rare.
Lightning, outside of the “here’s how to use Lightning!” tutorial map, is worthless. it’s a Catch 22: if you use it on early maps to mop up low-health mobs (when it has actual killing power), you don’t get enough of your Psi refunded from the kill. By the time a Lightning kill would allow you to break even or even gain Psi, it’s too weak to actually kill anything.
Dragonfire is the same way. It’s like spending 100 Psi to deal little tiny baby amounts of damage to everything on screen, when a Mage boosted to 3 (140 Psi) would do far more damage if placed close to Azra where she can pelt multiple lanes with Blizzards (sorry, Sleet).
Pushback is actually really good if you spend all 9 points on it. At that point, it knocks any knock-backable enemy - anything that isn’t a Cultist or Splitter - back about 4.5 game squares - enough to force them to run through an entire Killzone a second time. I actually found it to be almost as useful as Berserk, and if you alternate the two of them, you almost always have an “oh crap” button off of cooldown, ready to use.
Berserk: the penultimate spell, since it’s the only one that scales with your units - especially on Berserkers with points in the Speed passive skill. Takes your Killzone(s) from “not quite good enough to kill all that” to “just good enough to kill all that”, especially when doing Advanced/Extreme maps that you really have no business attempting yet.
Honestly the one suggestion I would make is either to make the damage spells scale in some small way with Azra’s level (or attack stat?) OR switch up the order in which you learn the spells. Image something like Lightning, Healing, Crystal, Dragonfire, Pushback, Frenzy. I know you’d have to go and tweak dialogue and cutscenes in order to make this work, so I don’t really expect that to ever happen, but it would keep the non-scaling attack spells viable for a bit longer if you could get them (and put points in them) earlier and then get the 2 useful spells nearer the end of the game.
Other ideas: make Spell costs vary with the number of points invested. Why not take the Lightning Psi cost down a point every 2 or 3 “levels”, so that rank 9 Lightning only costs 6-ish Psi? Conversely, you could make Frenzy and maybe Pushback cost a bit more for every new “rank”, so that the current build of “save ALL points for Frenzy so level 10 Azra can make all units 250% better by the time you fight Ozimal” would have a tradeoff: your moste uber Frenzy would cost more than 35 Psi - maybe by rank 9 it costs 50 or 55 Psi? That early in the game, a more costly Frenzy would be harder to cast on cooldown, since you’re typically not gaining more then a few Psi/kill, and thus, it wouldn’t always be the no-brainer to cast on cooldown that it is now.
Eh, just brainstorming and rambling at this point. I’m just hoping that Gold (or a patch) will play with Spells a bit, since right now only 3 of them ever see use from me (Crystal for emergencies on Advanced/Extreme attempts, Pushback, Frenzy).
Antoher idea:
A “Risk” Spell. giving all enemies present for some seconds more hp and armor, but in return they also give you more psi when they die.
So you take a risk by making them stronger, but afterwards (or in between) you have the reward to build or upgrade more defenders then you normally would. (Yeah, this one is kinda “stolen” from Desktop Defender, the “Charge” Card ^^).
Another would be a “Armor Decay” spell, wich decreases the Armor of every enemy bei X% but at least by Y (so that it’s still usefull if the enemies only have like 5 Armor -.-).
Or how about the overall “Slow Down” spell, wich slows every enemies for some time (but only them), somehow like a reverse frenzy for the enemies ^^ (so it should stack with the Chill-Slow effect).
Well, just some brain storming for ideas ^^
— Begin quote from "Marak"
I don’t think I’ve ever cast heal seriously even once. I’ve cast it “for shits” when a map has already been effectively won and I have excess Psi to play with, but really, the times that you might be able to use it to save a unit that’s not being covered adequately by a healer are extremely rare.
— End quote
That probably depends on enemy strength and your healer coverage and priorities, and style of play. Of course, with some grinding, your characters will probably be strong enough, but if you go for any self-imposed challenges or a bit of aggressive placement, there are cases when healing has it’s use. Especially in the easy ending level, I cast it multiple times as it was cheaper than getting my upgraded knights killed.
— Begin quote from ____
Lightning, outside of the “here’s how to use Lightning!” tutorial map, is worthless. it’s a Catch 22: if you use it on early maps to mop up low-health mobs (when it has actual killing power), you don’t get enough of your Psi refunded from the kill. By the time a Lightning kill would allow you to break even or even gain Psi, it’s too weak to actually kill anything.
— End quote
Lightning is not supposed to be a source of PSI . It’s supposed to be used to catch almost-dead enemies that slip past your defenses, on the premises that the PSI spent on the spell is worth protecting the perfect rating for the mission.
— Begin quote from ____
Dragonfire is the same way. It’s like spending 100 Psi to deal little tiny baby amounts of damage to everything on screen, when a Mage boosted to 3 (140 Psi) would do far more damage if placed close to Azra where she can pelt multiple lanes with Blizzards (sorry, Sleet).
— End quote
Again it can be quite useful when in a tight spot with enough time for it to weaken the enemies.
I am convinced that damage spells should be scaled with the base level of creeps, not AZRA. So that a low-level tough enemy would still be pretty tough in regard to spells, but a highlevel weak enemy would be still significantly vulnerable.
Since everyone’s throwing in their ideas randomly here’s mine:
-Have a spell that causes a random stat effect on enemies. That could take down their Atk/Dfs/Spd/etc or paralyse/burn/freeze/poison them. At any case, leveling up might also allow 2 of them being performed together, with the same amount of Psi.
-Maybe a Coin Flip spell. Well this one’s just for the fun of it; you simply click on an enemy and the coin flips; if you get Azra’s head the whole bunch of enemies of the same type get their HP reduced to half. On the other hand, if you get Etz’s head a random deffender type gets their HP reduced to half!
-Confusion Spell. Lasts for around 10 seconds and gives all enemies already spawned dizzy status; it doesn’t just prevent them from attacking it makes them go up and down in their current positions getting your units some sweet multi’s! Doesn’t work if Random Stat Spell is on(?).
-Explosive Projectiles Spell. Every enemy hit by a ranged attack blows up when he dies, slightly damaging all units around him. But when he gets hit more than 3 times by it, its explosion makes the remaining enemies closeby get blow-up status too! Expensive but worths it when hordes of combined enemy types march at ya heh!
-Teleport Spell just teleports all units back to their spawn tile. This will make them look like a boss when they start moving again, adding some more agony in your quest! Combined with EPS(above spell) and things just got nasty for those poor Revenant creeps…
That’s all for now, hope you didn’t just scrolled through this heh! :mrgreen:
— Begin quote from "coyot"
That probably depends on enemy strength and your healer coverage and priorities, and style of play. Of course, with some grinding, your characters will probably be strong enough, but if you go for any self-imposed challenges or a bit of aggressive placement, there are cases when healing has it’s use. Especially in the easy ending level, I cast it multiple times as it was cheaper than getting my upgraded knights killed.
— End quote
Yeah, I tend to never leave any unit outside the radius of a Healer, mostly because even an Unboosted Healer is very effective at keeping units alive, and the fact that Healers are dirt freaking cheap to place. Not to mention the first Boost (only 30 Psi) gives them a large - albeit weak - AoE attack.
— Begin quote from "coyot"
Lightning is not supposed to be a source of PSI . It’s supposed to be used to catch almost-dead enemies that slip past your defenses, on the premises that the PSI spent on the spell is worth protecting the perfect rating for the mission.
— End quote
That premise fails after map 4 or so, though, when monster HP starts out-scaling Lightning damage in a big way, even if you’re putting some/most of Azra’s points into it. I guess my point was this:
You have a scenario where a low-health mob is getting close enough to Azra that you’re getting nervous (and it’s no longer in range of any of your units). Do you decide to spend 10 to ??? Psi trying to zap it down with Lightning, only to get 2-3 Psi back for the kill… or do you summon a Berserker or Ranger or insert unit here (for 25-??? Psi) in a sub-optimal spot, gaining the same 2-3 Psi back for your trouble and then doubling as a safety net for future leaks? I guess my playstyle is to always summon vs. burning Psi on direct-damage spells with no future/on-going benefit(s).
— Begin quote from "coyot"
Again it can be quite useful when in a tight spot with enough time for it to weaken the enemies.
— End quote
If it has enough time to damage anything significantly, are you really using it a “tight spot”? I’d argue no.
— Begin quote from "coyot"
I am convinced that damage spells should be scaled with the base level of creeps, not AZRA. So that a low-level tough enemy would still be pretty tough in regard to spells, but a highlevel weak enemy would be still significantly vulnerable.
— End quote
That’s a good idea… using such a method would see Spells having the same relative effect no matter what you’re casting it on.
— Begin quote from "Marak"
You have a scenario where a low-health mob is getting close enough to Azra that you’re getting nervous (and it’s no longer in range of any of your units). Do you decide to spend 10 to ??? Psi trying to zap it down with Lightning, only to get 2-3 Psi back for the kill… or do you summon a Berserker or Ranger or insert unit here (for 25-??? Psi) in a sub-optimal spot, gaining the same 2-3 Psi back for your trouble and then doubling as a safety net for future leaks? I guess my playstyle is to always summon vs. burning Psi on direct-damage spells with no future/on-going benefit(s).
— End quote
I very often do not have any spare insert unit here to summon, so it means an extra PSI loss for recalling it first
— Begin quote from ____
— Begin quote from "coyot"
Again it can be quite useful when in a tight spot with enough time for it to weaken the enemies.
— End quote
If it has enough time to damage anything significantly, are you really using it a “tight spot”? I’d argue no.
— End quote
Well, every situation where a slow tough wave appears followed by a fast one has the potential to be a tight spot, and especially those that involve unarmored spawners/abominations - and depending on killzone placements, it might be possible to get significant help from dragonfire. Of course, it means that you have to identify the tight spot upfront, not when there’s already a queue in front of Azra…
— Begin quote from "coyot"
Well, every situation where a slow tough wave appears followed by a fast one has the potential to be a tight spot…
— End quote
Fair enough, but I’d still argue that any time you have to have the next 3 waves “memorized” (or be actively studying the incoming wave bar vs. the actual “fight”) and THEN try to save up enough Psi to use it at the right time means that the spell is more trouble than it’s worth. I’d also argue that, instead of bothering with Dragonfire, you could simply save up 90 Psi (instead of 100), then Berserk and wait for the fast enemies to clear your strongest Killzone before using Pushback to knock them right back to the start of said Killzone for a second pass that they generally will not survive.
But that’s just me. If you can find a genuine use for it outside of instances where you’ve basically already won and want to cast it for shits and giggles, that’s great. 
I’m gonna have to disagree with some people here in saying that the heal spell is pretty useful. I don’t like using healers, and more than once a heal spell or two have saved someone in a pretty crucial situation.
That being said, I feel like the heal spell should actually be two spells, one where the entire party is healed, and another where only one (section? character? 3x3 square?) is healed for a greater amount than the other spell. Kind of like the different healing wands in FE.
I took lightning/crystal as lifesavers, not as actual damage-dealers. I think their function is to cripple away mobs with little hp that somehow managed to get by your units.
I agree with the scaling though, but as fixed damage. Perhaps spells could scale up with total stars gained, so as to increase their importance. maxed lightning could do 200 + 10 per star, capping at 1100.
Or at least scaling with level. Unit do double dip, since their damage increase by their level and their skill point (not to mention equipment)
Note that I do believe that every spell including dragon fire are alway useful. It’s just that frenzy and push do scale with the level of your unit, so to speak, while dragonfire can be a real game breaking when you just have it and a situational spellat the end.
— Begin quote from "Ohlmann"
Note that I do believe that every spell including dragon fire are alway useful…
— End quote
But they’re not. Go cast Dragonfire (rank 9) on the Final Battle on Extreme and watch as is tickles those monsters with 35,000 Health. You could have used that same 100 Psi to Boost a unit up another level and have their new attack deal as much damage as Dragonfire, but with a cooldown not measured in “once every 4 waves”.
Think about it: Dragonfire is dealing 700-ish damage to all on-screen monsters; a Berserker that suddenly gets Boosted to Level 3 with that same Psi is going to start hitting 5 monsters at once with a 30-ish attack power increase. Add those hundreds of points of damage per 5- or 8-second cooldown up over the next however many waves - probably at least a dozen - and tell me where your Psi is better spent.
I realize that Azra’s spells are probably supposed to play a support role and not be killing machines in and of themselves, but with no scaling, they fail to deal adequate damage to monsters that are
A) present in the battles once you escape from the underground city (read: the final third of the game)
B) present in any mode other than Normal or Casual
So that’s 3 Spells and up to 27 of Azra’s 39 potential Skill points being put into abilities that are never worth spending Psi points on when you’re in a tough spot or even worse, any time during a Boss Battle, tough end-game fight, or any Advanced or Extreme attempts on virtually any Map. When your “choices” are “cast a spell that basically does nothing” or “boost a unit to make it deal hundreds - or even thousands - more damage per wave”, it’s really no choice at all.
— Begin quote from "Marak"
But they’re not. Go cast Dragonfire (rank 9) on the Final Battle on Extreme and watch as is tickles those monsters with 35,000 Health. You could have used that same 100 Psi to Boost a unit up another level and have their new attack deal as much damage as Dragonfire, but with a cooldown not measured in “once every 4 waves”.
Think about it: Dragonfire is dealing 700-ish damage to all on-screen monsters; a Berserker that suddenly gets Boosted to Level 3 with that same Psi is going to start hitting 5 monsters at once with a 30-ish attack power increase. Add those hundreds of points of damage per 5- or 8-second cooldown up over the next however many waves - probably at least a dozen - and tell me where your Psi is better spent.
— End quote
So you have infinite tower that can be infinitely boosted and infinite place for them in your version of Defender quest ? Seem nice. If anything, it’s more psi that tend to become infinite on higher difficulties.
Not me, and immediatly flicking 3% life of every monster on the screen is damn sweet when I am on a tight spot. The fact is - dragon fire is not as nice as berserk, and may not be alway better than a tower. That don’t prevent me to find it plenty useful.