This is a thread vouching for the fix of the very useless Death spell, Empower.
For those who need a background, continue reading.
Empower is a Death Spell that Death students receive from Dworgyn at Level 38. We must go through the Crimson Fields and defeat the Oni to get it. This spell costs 1 pip. It deals 500 Death damage to the caster, and gives them "3 pips."
This spell has a major problem. At level 38 and beyond, it is useless.
Let's first take into consideration the cost and reward factors of this skill. It deals 500 base Death damage. This needs to be too carefully timed as it can unintentionally pop blades and shields!
Some would say this isn't so bad because of our resistance. Even with the average death resistance, this spell deals AT LEAST 300 Damage. Furthermore, we would have to waste a turn shielding against death to ease the damage intake. Weakness may play a part in the damage one takes, but we still waste (keyword: waste!) a turn taking damage.
Now what was that damage for? Considering the spell costs 1 pip as well, we gain 2 white pips. A grandmaster typically has a 70% Power Pip chance, so this is automatically a spell that isn't worth using. A high level character can just get a free power pip that turn. Empower is just a hassle for something that can be more easily obtained This spell is very timely, not worth a turn, damages you, and gives 2 white pips. This is not even worthy of speeding up the pips we get for a secondary school, considering all the cons of it.
The Solution:
There are two general solutions I found to this problem. The power pip way, and reducing the cost of one part of the spell.
The solution I like most is keeping the spell as it is, but making your Power Pip chance apply to the pips you gain. As our Power Pip chance increases, so does the likelihood we would get 2-4 pips for our school. this will make th spell FOREVER useful.
The next solution is the eliminating the pip cost to cast the spell. Pips, pips, pips, that's all this spell is about right!
One major con for this spell is the fact it sacrifices the pip you get for that turn, even worse if it was a Power Pip, in which case you get nothing at all. If we have Empower be 0 Pips to cast, then the caster will indeed gain 3 Pips. This makes Empower more versatile, as it is worth using for your primary and secondary needs. I can live with that :D It's really easy for KingsIsle to do that too!
mhmm, one thing you didn't mention is that when used in pvp or anywhere. They empower right away then, pop on a feint then just attack. use a wraith or crow. Giving the caster all granted health back.
So you are saying, you want Death to gain PiPs faster, by using that spell, then your opponents? I think the PvPers will not agree to it, well, unless they are Death. If the term "round base game" as applied. You being Death with a 0 cast for the card will gain your 3 pips per use of the card. While opponent gets 1 PiP, or a slim chance a power PiP on their next turn. you will automaticly have 3 per use of the card?
I can see if that was the case then a Death wizard can stack the spell per round, and gain PiPs way more faster then their opponents do.
Example: Death cast spell card to get 3 Pips on turn Opponent passes he now has 2 total Pips
Death cast spell card to get 3 more PiPs next turn. He now has a total of 6 PiPs He is able to now cast a 6 ranked spell on opponent Opponent passes he now has 3 total pips for a 3 ranked spell
Sure some grands "supposeivly" have a 70% power PiP chance. But I been on some of my Grands, and I did not see power PiPs every round. So the 70 is kind of a bogus percent.
By stacking the spell card in your deck and using it every round you are saving up pips to use that one hale- mary card for an easy kill on opponent.
The death wizards round of pip totals would look like 3,6,12, 15 just from stacking the spell in deck. Using the card on his round.
The opponents per round pips, (if by a small chance would get a power pip per round) would look like 2,4,6,8
Your formula just screams overpowerness. Especialy it being a 0 cost to cast.
Sure some grands "supposeivly" have a 70% power PiP chance. But I been on some of my Grands, and I did not see power PiPs every round. So the 70 is kind of a bogus percent.
Um, it seems to me that you are way underestimating the chance for a grandmaster, or characters over level 35, to get power pip. Most grandmasters have a power pip chance of at least 70%, as grand dirks and rings boost pip percentage by a lot. Even without those, a grands power pip percentage should be at least 60%. Spirit wizards can get this percentage and up after level 35 even, so you might want to go back and familiarize yourself with power pips and their percentage chances.
So you are saying, you want Death to gain PiPs faster, by using that spell, then your opponents?
If I'm not mistaken, that is the whole point to that spell.
You also seem to be conveniently forgetting in your arguement that the Death wizard is taking 500 damage every time they cast this spell, so I seriously doubt that they will be stacking it.
Divine , I agree about empower being useless to me grand death wizard. I just don't see the benefit from losing 500 health and a pip , for a gain of 3 . When I could just pass a round , and get a power pip next round. With my main gear and pet , I am at 78% pip chance.
But you did leave out some death spells that I also never use. Strangle is one , it is supposed to dispell the next outgoing death spell , and they lose pips. Well it is kinda buggy. I cast it on soulsinger and he lost his pips , but cast pirate next round with one pip. I have also played it against Yeva several times now , with no success , I only see her maybe lose one or none , if the creature decides to cast a 0 pip spell , like a blade , then strangle is wasted along with my pips , so , not worth it to me.
The next on my list of dusty death spells is Beguile. Very rarely do I get lucky with this spell , because you have to time it in a way , when you are positive that the creatures next spell is going to be a damage spell. So many times has this spell got wasted for me , because they fizzled or cast a blade on the other creature. A boost that I can't make use of. You can get better results only if you use it on another death wizard . But still , not worth taking the chance and losing pips for me.
Since death two main heavy hit spells are scarecrow 400 , and wraith 500, I need all the pips I can get to cast all the boost and keep my shields going. It is difficult even with feint , trying to take out bosses with one shot. Most of the time , I can never get out all the cards I want before my health gets too low and I have to attack or die. So I have to use my pips with caution. So you might want to add Beguile and strangle to that group too. I have heard they work better in PVP matches .
Doom and gloom is another one I tend not to use, It takes away 50% of the health I would have gotton without it. Playing solo , it seems to be useless . Sometimes I have to nibble on myself waiting for card I want to appear. I just cant take the chance of casting a spell that will do more harm to me than good.
What spell I would love to have instead is a boost , maybe one that gave +20 to ALL enemies . Would happily trade in strangle , empower, doom & gloom and beguile for just one of those.
But then this is all an opinion of someone who doesn't do PvP , maybe they do have a use , I just haven't figured out how to use any of these in a way that seem beneficial to me.
I do ok with the way I have the deck set for street mobs and bosses. I still use quite a few cards, Crow, Wraith , shield, trap, blade, sacrifice , curse, feint, spirit trap, spirit blade, plauge, death trap from the amulet, and poison/prism as needed. I can pretty much solo any area. I know I will never be able to dish out the high hit spells like storm, with death , but least my death can nibble away to stay alive.
(For the novice Death wizard reading this, for Sacrifice, and especially Empower, you would prefer to put a Death Shield on yourself before casting Empower or Sacrifice.)
I don't think Empower needs to be fixed, but Empower is tricky to use, just like Sacrifice. But why stop at fixing Empower, why not do something about the near-worthless Death spells, like Doom and Gloom, Pacify, Animate, and Beguile?
My comments on the spells (I don't PvP):
Pacify - Use up all your pips so a monster won't hit you. Guess what, if you are the only one, it will hit you anyways. And try that with a group and see how long they stay friends, especially the part about all your pips are gone. If anything, I want to get the hits so I can steal the health back while the others (especially Storm), wail on the monsters with their harder hitting spells. On the top of my list of worthless. Give us a spell like Taunt.
Doom and Gloom - Reduces life healing, but not life stealing, by half. Great way to make friends with a Life wizard, and just about anybody else trying to heal during a battle. I could see it would may have a use if you were Death fighting Life in PvP. How about instead of reducing healing of Life spells, its boosts health-stealing of Death spells?
Beguile - In theory the opponent helps you for a round. Good grief. Trying to get this to work against monsters is frustrating to say the least. I get the part about its pointless against a boss or a single opponent. What I really hate is its three pips, its a white-pip-eater.
Animate - An X pip spell that creates a Death minion of increasing strength based on your # of pips. Fun until the monster does Fire Elf against on your Feint, or hits your trap or prism with Death Sprite. Watch out for #8, it does Doom and Gloom. Make sure you count those pips right! I have used it solo fights, but you really got to watch it, maybe unload Feints and Death Traps before starting the battle. And then, you are back to one pip, and its only natural that you will be casting spells like Death Trap or Hex while waiting for your pips to build up. At least its not Life's minion, good Lord is that thing annoying, heals itself all day until it hits your Life trap with Imp when you least expect it.
All the other minion spells - garbage. Give it up. Instead go train Spirit Blade and Spirit Trap from Niles so you can play with the big boys on Dragonspyre. Then get either a Life or Myth wand to cause some more damage with the spare Life or Myth blades left over . You can't train Nature's Wrath, the three pip hitting spell of Life, and Imp and Leprechaun don't hit that hard, so a Life wand is not a bad choice. Plus you can hit the Life Shield of a Death monster if you are trying to Prism the monster. To use up the leftover Myth Blade or Myth Trap, get some Gobbler treasure cards, three pips does 375 by itself, more than the Cyclops, so you can skip any training up Myth. Plus you can laugh at the animation.
(I edited the post, I typed spare Life and Death blades and I meant spare Life and Myth blades).
So you are saying, you want Death to gain PiPs faster, by using that spell, then your opponents?
If I'm not mistaken, that is the whole point to that spell.
You also seem to be conveniently forgetting in your arguement that the Death wizard is taking 500 damage every time they cast this spell, so I seriously doubt that they will be stacking it.
Ahh my fault I mis-read the post, I appoligize If you do take the 500 damage, just to use the spell, then why not, make it a 0 cost to cast. it only makes sence now.
Most of the schools have spells that aren't useful if you're questing solo (life's accuracy boost for all players for example). Simple solution: don't use them. I only used Empower until I was level 42 or so, then it just wasn't useful anymore. And I never found Beguile to be terribly useful. But that doesn't mean they should be removed or changed. KI has attempted - and I believe succeeded - in creating balanced schools with a myriad of different and complementary spells.
Also there was an interesting thread on here a few weeks ago about creating an "efficient" deck, meaning one that causes the most damage in the shortest amount of time. Many players responded they don't actually like an efficient deck because they enjoy seeing the varied effects of different spells. So don't assume everyone feels the same way or wants the same things as you from the game. Just use what works for you and ignore the spells (or clothes, or side quests, or anything else) that you don't like. But have fun!
Thank you Drifter, Sandy, and ic0517! Your posts were very valuable. Also great thanks to whoever corrected Drifter. If saw the post before I wouldn't have handled the misunderstanding so delicately xD
Anyway, I'm planning to post this on Central if any of you want to state your opinions there.
Using a death shield before one casts Empower has had its ineffectiveness addressed in the the first post, if I'm correct. This can be a minor update that I'm sure KingsIsle would easily able to do compared to their drastic issues posted on this board.
I stated the problem, why other solutions are void, and 2 solutions that KI can implant in the game.
To restate my title: KingsIsle, please fix the Empower Spell! :D
(For the novice Death wizard reading this, for Sacrifice, and especially Empower, you would prefer to put a Death Shield on yourself before casting Empower or Sacrifice.)
I don't think Empower needs to be fixed, but Empower is tricky to use, just like Sacrifice. But why stop at fixing Empower, why not do something about the near-worthless Death spells, like Doom and Gloom, Pacify, Animate, and Beguile?
My comments on the spells (I don't PvP):
Pacify - Use up all your pips so a monster won't hit you. Guess what, if you are the only one, it will hit you anyways. And try that with a group and see how long they stay friends, especially the part about all your pips are gone. If anything, I want to get the hits so I can steal the health back while the others (especially Storm), wail on the monsters with their harder hitting spells. On the top of my list of worthless. Give us a spell like Taunt.
Doom and Gloom - Reduces life healing, but not life stealing, by half. Great way to make friends with a Life wizard, and just about anybody else trying to heal during a battle. I could see it would may have a use if you were Death fighting Life in PvP. How about instead of reducing healing of Life spells, its boosts health-stealing of Death spells?
Beguile - In theory the opponent helps you for a round. Good grief. Trying to get this to work against monsters is frustrating to say the least. I get the part about its pointless against a boss or a single opponent. What I really hate is its three pips, its a white-pip-eater.
Animate - An X pip spell that creates a Death minion of increasing strength based on your # of pips. Fun until the monster does Fire Elf against on your Feint, or hits your trap or prism with Death Sprite. Watch out for #8, it does Doom and Gloom. Make sure you count those pips right! I have used it solo fights, but you really got to watch it, maybe unload Feints and Death Traps before starting the battle. And then, you are back to one pip, and its only natural that you will be casting spells like Death Trap or Hex while waiting for your pips to build up. At least its not Life's minion, good Lord is that thing annoying, heals itself all day until it hits your Life trap with Imp when you least expect it.
All the other minion spells - garbage. Give it up. Instead go train Spirit Blade and Spirit Trap from Niles so you can play with the big boys on Dragonspyre. Then get either a Life or Myth wand to cause some more damage with the spare Life or Myth blades left over . You can't train Nature's Wrath, the three pip hitting spell of Life, and Imp and Leprechaun don't hit that hard, so a Life wand is not a bad choice. Plus you can hit the Life Shield of a Death monster if you are trying to Prism the monster. To use up the leftover Myth Blade or Myth Trap, get some Gobbler treasure cards, three pips does 375 by itself, more than the Cyclops, so you can skip any training up Myth. Plus you can laugh at the animation.
(I edited the post, I typed spare Life and Death blades and I meant spare Life and Myth blades).
you crazy? animate is best death spell EVER get max pips, summon that death incarnate, watch it blade then use poison/wraith/ skeletal pirate!
