Most Useful Spells?

[luxlisbon]

I'm not all that familiar with Necromancy, Chivalry, Bushido, Ninjitsu, and Spellweaving, and although I've read all the descriptions of the spells, it's still a bit overwhelming. Anyone feel like sharing which are the most useful to them? I have gotten great use out of Mirrors...

Thanks!

[almighty]

I dont know much about the other skills except healing and chivalry.
This is the first server I played on that allows us to master all skills.
Healing is cool cause it can heal poison or health
With Chiv, Enemy of One, Consecrate Weapon, and weapon specials is some good damage!

Besides that and the obvious heal/cure/tool spells with Mage I dont know what the others do yet and would really like to know myself. (when I say tool spells I mean Mark/Gate/Telekinesis/etc)

[Valishan]

I could say a lot about spells, but I would really like to dodge the fact that I can't write less than a book. If you tell me your playstyle (warrior, mage, archer, tamer, etc...) and karma, I can throw out a few things you might want to fit into your play.

Or if you really want, I can go ahead and write that book of a post about the good stuff.

[almighty]

Write the book
I like to read!

[luxlisbon]

I would be interested in the book...

Honestly I am the kind of player that panics and runs when I encounter a creature I've never seen before! I found an interesting article on stratics about playing as a Samurai Vampire, so I thought I'd try that...

[Valishan]

How much use you get from spells largely depends on what kind of character you're playing. Obviously you'll get more use out of them if you're playing full mage. I play full mage, so this is all going to (mostly) be from that viewpoint; the usefulness of some of these spells will be greater or lesser if you're a dexer.


Almighty hit on the high points of Chiv, but there's a few other useful ones. Divine Fury, Close Wounds, and Cleanse by Fire are good for refreshing stam, healing, and curing, respectively, and still usable at negative Karma. Remove Curse is also nice if you have high karma, since blessing over the -20 point or worse curses that some high-end monsters throw at you is a pain. Holy Light also gets a lot of use in Champs. Sacred Journey if you haven't bothered with the Magery for Recall yet.


Bushido, as far as I'm concerned, is all about Evasion and passive weapon parry. Evasion increases your chance to parry and lets you parry things like Dragon breath and spells. It doesn't have a long duration and there is a delay between each use of 20 seconds.

Melee types also go with Confidence and Honoring enemies too. For the Sampire, Honor and Confidence are both pretty vital; Honor and Bushido work together to give you a big damage boost, Confidence helps you regen health. If you have low HCI on your suit (or choose to not focus as heavy on it), you can use Lightning Strike to make up the HCI difference. I believe I've even seen it said that Sampires should focus on Hit Lower Defense over HCI for that very reason, but I've never played Sampire so don't take that as gospel. Lightning Strike does not break the standard HCI cap, so if you're already good on HCI then stick with weapon specials.


Ninjistu I only ever use for Shadow Jump and Animal Form. Animal Form is pretty much all about the higher level ones; they all give some benefit, but considering what you give up to use an Animal Form you want something big. Unicorn, with it's mount speed and poison immunity (3rd and lower, I believe), is probably the best, but Wolf and Kitsune give mount speed, a +20 heath bonus, and some HCI that might be useful in spots.

Shadow Jump requires that you take the time to both Hide and activate Stealth, but once you do that you have probably the best scouting ability in the game; it doesn't take stealth steps, doesn't reveal you on cast, and doesn't require further usage of either skill. You can just jump your way across the world, if you like. You'll need/want GM Hiding and Stealth to make best use of it, as I believe it does re-check both skills on Jump and you can fail at lower skill.

Mirror Image speaks for itself on this shard. Some people will say that Mirrors need 120 to be utterly impressive, but I don't buy that; I have 150 Str and and 110 skill, my mirrors get 72 str. At 120 skill they get half of your stats, which for me would be 75 str. Clearly not that large of a difference. The biggest benefit of Mirrors I've seen is that they have a higher resist cap at 95%, making their low health much less of an issue as well; they duplicate your gear (with only partial benefit from some properties), so there is some benefit to having a lot of resist over your own 70/75 cap. Likewise, they duplicate your skills and that's where most of their damage output will come from anyway.

Focus Attack gives a damage boost and increases the odds of your weapon's 'on hit' properties will trigger. I haven't played melee in a long time, so I can't say how useful this is on PF compared to other abilities but given how many 'oh hit' properties we can throw on a weapon (or get on artifacts), I'm inclined to believe it might be worth the time.

While not spells, throwing shuriken or using a Fukiya is based off your ninjitsu as well, both of which are other options for high-karma types to inflict Lethal Poison if you're not using a poisoning weapon.


Spellweaving is pretty much about Word of Death, Nature's Fury and Gift of Life, regardless of how you play. The other damage spells are very lackluster, the summons are probably the weakest of the bunch, and the other spells that might have some use aren't active on PF. I've never seen the Spellweaving damage spells with a +6 Focus, but even if they jumped to par with Necro/Magery damage at that point it still wouldn't be worth it hunting down 5 other people all the time to make them useful. I can say that at +3 Focus they still didn't impress me at all.

WoD is pretty unreliable, but as a mage it's the best/only way to kill Toxic Elementals without ruining weapons. It has a long casting time as well, so it's better saved as a finishing shot to a running critter or something Peace-paralyzed.

Nature's Fury is a low-level summon that is insanely effective. I use a swarm of them to kill Roaches, normal and Terragon. It certainly isn't the best way to do the job, but it is one of the safest and the swarm will naturally box the roach so it doesn't run half way to Trinisic before you can land the final blow. It's a targeted, quick to cast summon, so you can also sling them out faster than other summons and don't have to wait for them to get in on the action. They can be pretty mana intensive however.

Gift of Life is a temporary blessing that will res you on the spot should you die while it's active, at no further cost. If you don't have any other way of free ressing, it's worth keeping on at all times in places you're unsure of your survivability (and especially in places where you *are* sure of dying). It is worth training Spellweaving for this spell alone.

Reaper Form is an interesting polymorph since it does seem to give an SDI bonus outside the item cap, but it's really too slow to utilize very often. It also forces you to drop out of Vampire, which I generally dislike doing.


Necromancy and Magery are both very close to my heart. If you're playing as full mage, these are your core spells. If not, you'll probably not care about much but the utility spells.

Necromancy is all about the curses. Evil Omen boosts the spell to follow it in one of the following ways: +25% damage, raise poison by one level, and sets the target's spell resist to 50.0 (note the word *sets*). This means Necro Mages with GM Magery and Poisoning can cast Lethal Poison whenever they want as long as they're within 3 squares of the target. The resist lowering aspect of Evil Omen *doesn't* count for spells that do their effects based off of the target's resist; your Curses won't do bigger penalties because of EO, though they will have a better chance to land on targets with high resist.

Corpse Skin is vital to playing Mage; since Magery is mostly about Fire and Energy and Necro about Poison, having a spell that cuts -15% Fire and Poison resist off of a target makes a big difference. Creatures like Ancient Dragons have 85 in all resist, knocking 15 off their fire resist means your Fireballs will do as much damage as your Energy Bolts, but for less mana and at far greater speed. CS does raise a target's Cold and Physical resist by 10, so if you're in a group try to be considerate of others (though Consecrate Weapon should make that a moot point, but all the same). Obviously you can use Corpse Skin and Consecrate as a dexer to great benefit in the same situations.

Blood Oath is something you probably won't use very much, but should be *very* aware of what it looks like. Blood Oath returns *all* damage done to the caster back at the target; since most creatures you'd want to use this on have mountains of health and resist anyway, it probably won't last long enough to make a real impact in our favor. It definitely does work in the monster's favor, though. I haven't seen a ton of creatures that use it on PF, but those that do can have you killing yourself quicker than you know what happened if you're not careful. Black Lich loves to use this one on me when I already have spells sailing his way.

Strangle is better than Poison Strike as far as Necro damage is concerned. 120 SS and 125% SDI, and I still see Poison Strike do single digits. Strangle is damage over time, partially based on the target's current stamina. It stacks with Poison as well and can only be removed by Remove Curse, which monsters don't use.

Wither is solid for area damage, but I favor Meteor Swarm and Chain Lightning (from Magery) over it for a few reasons. Primarily because they're usable at better range, do better average damage, and can be held until you have all your targets in their place. Cold isn't a popular low resist, other than a few Demons where energy can usually do the job just as well. Wither is also very poor on cost efficiency; when you have one or two targets, you're better off with Harm if you have to have cold damage, and when you have too many more than that you're generally better off moving around to keep from getting swarmed, boxed, and seeing in halftone. Wither is nice for the way it casts and definitely has its place. I would say mostly in places where your targets are a number of weaker creatures that will drop in one or two Withers so you don't burn out spamming it.

Vampiric Embrace is probably one of the best polymorphs in the game; "immunity" to poisons 4th and below, and a natural life drain effect. It also comes with a Silver/Undead vulnerability (which won't happen on PF) and a -25% Fire resist penalty (which is largely unnoticed on PF). The real drawback is the damage you take from spells that use Garlic, such as heals and cures. 100% LRC does not negate this, but unless you're reckless it won't kill you. It also isn't that hard to get around thanks to Healing and, oh the irony, Chivalry.

This is also where the -pire in Sampire comes from; the way I understand it, Vamp form's 20% hit leech life, coupled with Confidence and Healing skill, will pull enough health per hit to keep you on your feet even to solo Peerless. This is also why Honor, DI, lowering defense, and HCI/Lightning Strike are so important, as the life drain needs big, constant hits to be really effective.

Lich Form is another decent poly for the mana regen bonus, but MR isn't hard to get your hands on anyway. The constant health drain is annoying, too. Wraith Form, in theory, lets you mana drain with spells, but I haven't really seen this to be true on PF.


Magery covers pretty much every need very well. Obvious ones are the heals, cures, blesses, and resurrection. Teleport and Telekinesis as well. Arch Cure is worth mentioning, because even at GM Magery the basic Cure only has a 20% chance of curing Lethal Poison, while Arch Cure has an 87% chance. It can also hit more than one target at a time, making it great for managing pets. Mark, Recall, and Gate Travel are also universal reasons to train Magery early. They also make good spells for training Inscription on (as opposed to making stuff you'll only sell), since you can always use Mark scrolls instead of the spell, Recall and Gate for making Runebooks, and Recalls to recharge runebooks.

Damage spells are easy:
-Magic Arrow, Fireball, Explosion, and Meteor Swarm are Fire. Explosion is the best combo lead in the game, with it's long delay; with high enough FC/R you can fit in two or three spells before the Explosion lands, ending a chain with a big hit. Fireball tends to be my primary attack spell, thanks to it's low cost, insane cast speed, and Corpse Skin.
-Harm and Mind Blast are Cold. Mind Blast also has a delay, but it's much shorter than Explosion's. MB is also based on Magery and Intelligence instead of Eval, so its damage tends to be low. Harm's quirk is that it only does full damage at adjacent range.
-Lightning, Energy Bolt, and Chain Lightning are Energy. Lightning does its damage instantly, Energy Bolt has a "delay" in that it doesn't count until the bolt hits. With proper spacing, you can time an EB/Lightning combo so that both hit at once.
-Earthquake is Physical damage, but it only does between 10 and 100 damage, based on the target's health, and is then reduced by resistances. I don't believe this is modified by SDI, but even if it is Earthquake is a base 50 mana spell; way too costly for what you get versus what else you could do with that mana.

In general, lower level spells are fast enough that they should be your primary spells. Save the bigger ones for combos, things that can't be one-hit by less than Energy Bolt, or to polish off monsters while they annoyingly try to heal. Poison is also good for blocking monster healing, especially when the Poison you're dropping on them is 5th.

Curse is the awesome, and should be applied whenever possible/reasonable however you play; since AoS changed the way Curse and the Blessings work (used to be a flat number, now it's a percentage), they are crazy powerful. You're unlikely to get it to land against something with 200 Spell Resist and it would be fairly terrible there anyway (0~1%, in fact), but many roll in the early 100's which is still prime territory. Taking 100 Str off of a 1000 Str creature doesn't sound like it would matter much at that point, but it really is noticeable. This is also true for spellcasting critters that run with moderate Eval and high Int for their spell damage.

The various summons are mostly a waste; pets, Evos, and mirrors are generally a better use of your control slots. Aside from Nature's Fury, Blade Spirits and Energy Vortex are generally the only other summons you need. They're targetable, unlike the Elementals and Daemon, so you can get them right into the action and they cast decently fast so you can swarm a target faster than they can dispel. They're also way beefier than the Necro Familiars or the Spellweaving summons. You need 120 Magery to cast EV at 100% chance; at GM, you only have 50% chance to get off an EV. Both Blades and EVs take 2 control slots each, whereas Nature's Fury only takes 1 each and does everything those two can do.

If you're going to use summons, you'll want to keep Dispel and Mass Dispel on hand as well. Less necessary when using Nature's Fury because they have a short life span anyway, but just waiting for your blades or EVs to die out once they've done their job is wasting your control slots. Dispel is more reliable since it's 6th (therefore 100% chance to cast at 92.0 Magery), but Mass Dispel is more cost effective when you have a big swarm you want to get rid of at once.

The field spells are underrated, but largely because they're very situational. Fire Field isn't very high damage, but it does well enough. It's also a better way than Wither to deal with Black Lich spawns. Poison Field is a good way to keep casters from doing anything but curing. Energy Field is a great obstacle for trapping things. It doesn't break line of sight, so things can teleport over it. It still makes a good buffer for peace-taming to keep potential pets from smacking you around as soon as your peacemaking fades. If you mess up dropping Energy Fields and block yourself or your pets from getting to the creature you were trying to trap (I do it all the time when things start running away), you can use Dispel Field to punch holes in the Energy Field so you can pass. It only knocks out one section of the field, so you'll need to cast it more than once if you're hoping to take the whole thing down. It also works on all the other fields and Gates created by Gate Travel. Paralyze Field is probably the least useful of the bunch since it checks against spell resist; even if it hits against an end-game creature, it won't last long at all.

Invisibility is another useful spell, since it lets you hide without needing the Hiding skill, is immediate, doesn't require broken line of sight to hostiles, and doesn't mess with your skill delay (used to be that you could cast Invis and Stealth immediately after, unsure if that's changed). It *does* have a timer on it, so don't count on it to keep you safe if you're hoping to take an extended AFK in hostile territory. A better solution there is to drop a Wall of Stone between yourself and whatever is attacking you, which will break line of sight so you can hide (which doesn't time out). I haven't run across anything that reveals you when you're hidden, but I remember running across a few creatures that did on OSI/EA so be careful all the same.

Protection is a very nice spell for anyone spell dependent; it removes the chance of getting interrupted when casting a spell, at the cost of a Spell Resist penalty (depends on your Inscription skill just how big that penalty is) and a -2 to Faster Cast. I'm not sure you can make up this faster casting penalty by stacking on extra FC, but I do it anyway. As a mage, not being interrupted is a pretty big deal, but since it covers *all* spellcasting, Protection is good for melee types as well, for those times you need Close Wounds or Cleanse By Fire in a pinch.

Reactive Armor and Magic Reflection are largely useless on PF, but might be useful early on if you're having trouble hitting your resist caps. They also change depending on your Inscription skill, but each one imparts a bonus to certain resists at the cost of others; RA raises Physical at the cost of all four elemental resists and vice versa for MF. At GM Inscription, RA is 15ph/-5/-5/-5/-5 and MA is -20ph/+10/+10/+10/+10; worth keeping in mind if your suit is lacking somewhere or if Vampire takes your Fire below cap, but eventually you shouldn't need them at all (even a full Vulcan leather suit can get you all 70s).



I think that just about covers everything (most of the spells I have hotkeyed anyway), but I'm sure I missed something obvious somewhere. Someone else will point it out for me. I did this pretty haphazardly, so if anything doesn't make sense just let me know and I'll try to be less all over the place.

[Lochinar]

Reply #5 from Valishan .....

Can we get this posting on the various spells and effects copied and stickied in the Grandmaster Forum please? It's one of the most succinct and comprehensive listings I've read , and deserves to become a sticky post to help new (and old) players.

[Mister Ree]

Jul 30, 2010 3:35:31 GMT -5 Valishan said:

Bushido, as far as I'm concerned, is all about Evasion and passive weapon parry. Evasion increases your chance to parry and lets you parry things like Dragon breath and spells. It doesn't have a long duration and there is a delay between each use of 20 seconds.

Melee types also go with Confidence and Honoring enemies too. For the Sampire, Honor and Confidence are both pretty vital; Honor and Bushido work together to give you a big damage boost, Confidence helps you regen health. If you have low HCI on your suit (or choose to not focus as heavy on it), you can use Lightning Strike to make up the HCI difference. I believe I've even seen it said that Sampires should focus on Hit Lower Defense over HCI for that very reason, but I've never played Sampire so don't take that as gospel. Lightning Strike does not break the standard HCI cap, so if you're already good on HCI then stick with weapon specials.

Nice post, but there are a few things wrong/missing on my favorite skill: Bushido

There is no 20 second cooldown for evasion on PF... so just spam evasion every few seconds and feel a lot saver

Sampires don't go for HLD that much on other shards, as casting a spell disables you weapon special (at least OSI and newer RunUO versions), and lighting strike + whirlwind doesn't stack

Counter Attack & Momentum Strike - both spells give you an extra attack OUTSIDE YOUR NORMAL ATTACK RATE! Momentum lets you kill two enemies in the same time you need to kill one of them and counter attack attacks your enemy when you parry him. And you can actually use both of them at once... Of course, if your weapon has whirlwind attack, it beats momentum strike. But for all weapons w/o whirlwind, Momentum strike is the way to deal with multiple foes at once.

[luxlisbon]

Wow!! This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much!

[almighty]

Thank you Valishan!!!
Lots of information I never knew about

[Valishan]

Thanks for the corrections on Bushido, Mister Ree. I'm pretty sure I knew (or "knew") about HLD interfering with weapon skills, so shame on me for letting that one slip in there. Thanks for catching it so quick.

Counter Attack & Momentum Strike: That's both ridiculous and fairly awesome. I don't know how I missed knowing (or "knowing") about this facet of Bushido. Melee types might have more going on than I thought.

I also completely neglected to say what Divine Fury really does for you. Aside from the full stamina refresh, it also increases your swing speed, hit chance, and damage, but lowers your defense chance. Make sure to dress accordingly (65~70 total DCI will keep you at cap).



So to clarify a PF-style Sampire checklist:
-Vamp Form
-Honor new foes immediately
-Confidence, Evasion, and Counter Attack active constantly
-Corpse Skin/Consecrate/Divine Fury/EoO where appropriate

There's obviously more to fit in with a given encounter, like Mirrors, pet/merc control, maybe even Omen + Poisons. You'll have to find the weapon skill usage that fits your play, but I agree with following Mister Ree's points about Whirlwind and Momentum Strike. Especially since a lot of the other good weapon skill effects (Bleed, Mortal Strike, Infectious) can be found elsewhere, especially on pets. With the ability to GM/Legend all skills, you'll likely wind up something much more complex than a Sampire once you get the hang of things, but I think that covers where you want to start. Veteran warriors feel free to add/confirm/correct.

Also, having thought about trying to do all of that again, I have to give props to anyone that does manage to do that on a constant basis. I so don't have the mind for that playstyle; I get too distracted by my instinct to keep moving and my love for that sweet, sweet sound an Energy Bolt makes as it melts the face off something.