Regarding rune magic in general being very weak (early game)

[AshaMarie]

I haven't played for too long, but being level 31 and messing around with the basic rune spells in the game, I can honestly say that most of them are just too weak to be of any use over doing normal attacks or SP skills. Example: The Rune of Water grants 3 spells. One is minor healing that cost 10 mp; however, no matter how strong/weak the person is, it always heals 40 hp which is same as weakest herb. Your party will quickly outgrow the usefulness of this spell because you will have much higher health pools later and enemies will be striking you much harder.

Same goes for the other runes which are earth, wind, fire, and light that I tried. They all just use up lot of MP for very poor results and need a serious buff. I will say though that the enchantment runes may actually have some good use but only in a boss fight. Otherwise, you should just use SP attacks or normal attacks. I just feel like magic in this game isn't scaling much at all. Oh and seems like trying to use a rune spell least for offense tends to make the character slower to act on the turn so using it outside of boss fights ends up being a waste.

[AH-1 Cobra]

None of the level 1-3 offensive spells appear to scale with magic stat. All of the level 4 & 5 offensive spells do.

Level 3 water rune's AOE healing scales with magic stat.

With the exception of the level 4 & 5 fire spells, none of the offensive spells are that good. You need 4* magic slot, or 4* all types slot to use the rune, and most characters with high magic stat can't even equip it.

Isha is the best mage stats wise, fairly balanced stats, and phys defenses and HP aren't complete rubbish like Francesca's, and she's got optimal rune sockets. To explain further. there's a magic boosting rune that's equivalent to the fury rune from suikoden 2 that mages can use, and Isha has the slots to equip that along with the tier 2 fire rune, and that's why she's the best mage.

[AshaMarie]

So you telling me that later there are higher tier spell runes that many mages cannot even use? This must be some mistake. Surely the devs didn't mess it up this badly. I'll have to see for myself.

[Io]

I find a few of the first level Rune Lens magic super useful.

3rd Water spell is an AoE heal that scales off the mage's magic stat.

2nd Earth spell can break armour which is very useful on a couple bosses.

All of the Dark spells are super useful as well. AoE+sleep for random encounters, a HP% damage spell which hurts a lot on bosses and the Dark element buff on someone with a super nuke like Yusuke does a ton of damage plus heals the attacker.

Once you start getting 2nd tier Runes you lose the first useless spells on them and the damage picks up a fair amount cause the later spells actually start to scale off the magic stat.

That's also not mentioning the 'enhancement' elemental Runes which gives elemental damage to your melee attackers or can buff elemental resistances. The Earth enhancement Rune is super useful on the boss you need to fight to unlock Quinn.

[(deleted)]

Originally posted by AshaMarie:

I haven't played for too long, but being level 31 and messing around with the basic rune spells in the game, I can honestly say that most of them are just too weak to be of any use over doing normal attacks or SP skills. Example: The Rune of Water grants 3 spells. One is minor healing that cost 10 mp; however, no matter how strong/weak the person is, it always heals 40 hp which is same as weakest herb. Your party will quickly outgrow the usefulness of this spell because you will have much higher health pools later and enemies will be striking you much harder.

Same goes for the other runes which are earth, wind, fire, and light that I tried. They all just use up lot of MP for very poor results and need a serious buff. I will say though that the enchantment runes may actually have some good use but only in a boss fight. Otherwise, you should just use SP attacks or normal attacks. I just feel like magic in this game isn't scaling much at all. Oh and seems like trying to use a rune spell least for offense tends to make the character slower to act on the turn so using it outside of boss fights ends up being a waste.

The 2nd dark spell does row damage and end turn another 340 DoT dmg on Reyna for 3 turns. It's one of the easier ways to recruit her very early
Since someone said it's useless.