Is there any hope for magic? aka Why Pebble is (almost) the only spell you ever need or use.

[Weakest Glue Enjoyer]

"late"-game magic is broken, and not in a fun way. There is no excitement for me when I find a new spell because I know in my heart and my mind that nothing beats Pebble. Pebble is simply too powerful... or rather I should say late game spells are weak as ♥♥♥♥.

For the cost of 3.5 Pebbles I can do a whopping.... 1.5 Pebble's damage. Spell that take my entire mana bar to kill an enemy, take only a mere fifth if I use the All Powerful Pebble.

Pebble's cast time is low, its mana cost is gold, its damage is just right, and best of all is it can be spammed. I love Pebble and there is nothing in my game besides pebble. I have killed every boss so far with Pebble.

The ONLY spells aside from Pebble I have used this game is Arc and Rock Throw, for AOE(of Pebble tier stats) and posture damage(for more easy Pebble hits).

Pebble is an SS-Tier spell, and thats the saddest fact of the game. Despite my enjoyment, there is no joy to be found in my inability to upgrade beyond Pebble, no spell has the oomph to justify their ridiculously higher mana costs when Pebble does everything aside from AOE and posture damage.

So the question remains, will From fix the damage of every spell aside from pebble so they are actually relevant?

[**DeiRowtag]

I never use that spell as a magic main I mostly used sling shot when I'm on horse or the blade trio / great blade slash / Loretta bow and laser beam from the sword night and flame

[OpticalShadow]

So far my staples have been carian slicer, rock sling, maginc enchant. from there magic glintblade and greater phalanx have been useful for a few enemes/bosses that you can abuse some timings with. Handful other spells so far have been good situationally.

[JayXan]

i avoided sorceries because of how easy-mode it makes the game.

[Darx]

the bow shot you can do is also really helpfull in some fights. it has incredibly long reach and and good dmg.

[miscellaneous unc]

Pebble falls off in its utility and range being absolute dog. It also has pretty meh DPS. You trade FP efficiency for a ton more DPS by using Glintstone Icecrag (12 fp, a bit less damage than Great Glintstone Shard but procs cold status effects dealing a ton of damage). You get a ton more range and better DPS using Rock Sling (Rock Sling does not expire like most spells do and can reach 3-4x the range); granted you already listed that one. Adulas Moonblade is really strong and actually fp efficient.

I'm at end game rn and Pebble is a joke. Sure its FP efficient but I don't care about FP, I have Mind and mana flasks and comet shards. Pebbles damage becomes so ass compared to swinging your sword/using weapon art/using less efficient spells like Glintstone Icecrag/Rock Sling that it goes from SS-Tier to Never use-Tier.

And it makes sense! Pebble is the most FP efficient spell in the game! Of course its the "best" pick early game; but as soon as you get more flasks and mind and you end up killing bosses before even finishing your flasks while using inefficient spells you'll realise "oh; the pebble is useless now", pretty damn quick.

EDIT: Wanna know what blows pebble out of the water? Try making a longbow build and see how that works out; you literally shoot Glintstone Pebbles, but they cost 0 FP, you have nigh unlimited numbers of them, you can shoot them while jumping and from further away, and you can even customise your Glintstone Pebble to do bleed, woaaaaah.

[TheShadowHatter]

sorry for the laugh reward, but the fact your post is a long and detailed version of "pebble is love, pebble is life", while you also sport an Omastar pfp which reminds me of Twitch Plays Pokemon and how they said similar things about "Lord Helix" just had me dying of laughter at this post. I don't enough about sorcery in this game but if you're right I do hope they change things because I saw a cool spell someone cast that turned their arm giant and I would love to see more crazy ♥♥♥♥ like that happening ingame.

[Mr. Brokencyde]

Usually the best attack sorcery in these games ends up being some variation of the basic single hit projectile. The value in the vast majority of other spells that have any lies in PvP, for zoning, roll catching, big burst damage in a particular window, whatever.

From is extremely bad at making spells a fun PvE option. Instead caster builds largely amount to 'you're squishier than a pure melee build but you have one projectile to range cheese and can do higher melee dps with buffs or a few specialty scaling weapons like Crypt Blacksword' also occasionally, very rarely an aoe type spell is useful because the enemy is big enough to take a lot of hits. That's it. It sucks.

[terve886]

The magic really needs overhaul for most spells. It doesn't make any sense that a spell with higher mana cost, longer cast time and shorter effective range would deal less damage or less damage for mana. Crystal Barrage is the worst offender with huge manacost for barely any damage output. I guess they forgot that enemies have fixed damage nullification on top of resistance that makes multiple weak hits far weaker than their raw damage output.

I am now going to list how I would start rebalancing the damage dealing spells taking in the following factors in the given order for stat adjustments.

• Range and casting time. How easy or safe it is to cast the spell in active combat situation. Do we expect the enemy to give us unlimited prep time?
  
• Overrall damage and damage type: How much the spell does damage and what are the expected resistances.
  
• Any other interesting special modifiers, such as cold build up or high poise damage that might warrant usefulness even if damage is lacking?
  
• And last but not least, how much the spell should cost FP to cast.

Basically we should first take into account the risk factor of the spell when it comes to casting it. Similar to how parries are more risky to execute compared to rolling, but leave the enemy vulnerable for critical hit.

After we have figured how safely a spell is to cast or have hit its target, we should focus on what the spell should do. Harder to cast spells in general are going to be harder to utilize, so the reward for landing hit with one should be more rewarding. For example there is no reason to cast a really risky spell like Rock Blaster if it is extremely risky, costly and weak for what it does. It could have bigger AoE or it could do more damage, maybe both. Eitherway it isn't the safest bet to cast in middle of enemies and is really expensive FP wise for what it does.

And lastly we should set the FP cost when we already know how effective the spell is going to be to match the performance. It kinda makes sense that spells with longer cast time would have higher FP cost, but the high FP cost is meaningless if the power output doesn't match the FP cost. It also makes sense that some spells would specialize in burst damage, so they can have higher damage in a short cast time, but weaker FP efficiency per damage. Crystal Barrage for example could have some potential use if its FP cost was next to nothing as long as it would do more damage than glintstone per FP even if its range, casting safety and damage per second was inferiour.