What are good skaven spells ?

[Cadelanne]

Found out that warp lightning is very good for its cost, crack's call can be devastating although costs a lot of mana so you really have to use it wisely, verminitide is also cool because it costs almost nothing and you can use it 6 times. Plague can be devastating but tends to kill as much soldiers on my line than on ennemy's one.

Every breath spells aren't doing ♥♥♥♥ so maybe I'm using them wrong ? The dreaded thirteenth is rather meh and pestilent birth well I've never found plague monks to be doing anything so that's a no for me.

[Barser]

I usually spam Vermintide and warplightning :)

[Wh♂♂par]

Use of Breath spell hints:
Pestilent Breath either for chaff or overcast, the Ruin one needs thin, saturated lines and deals most damage close to the end (like any breath spell).

[Cadelanne]

Originally posted by Wh♂♂par:

Use of Breath spell hints:
Pestilent Breath either for chaff or overcast, the Ruin one needs thin, saturated lines and deals most damage close to the end (like any breath spell).

What's overcast ?

[Wh♂♂par]

Overcasting spells?

[Toby Larone]

Once you put a second skill point into a spell you can overcast them by pressing the icon again (note that not all have an overcast) it gives you two blue arrows on the interface. Overcasting has a variety of effects from duration to cast range improvments.

[Cadelanne]

Originally posted by Toby Larone:

Once you put a second skill point into a spell you can overcast them by pressing the icon again (note that not all have an overcast) it gives you two blue arrows on the interface. Overcasting has a variety of effects from duration to cast range improvments.

Oh ok so that's how it's called in English. Sorry my game is in French and all translations aren't that obvious.

[Falaris]

I think - not sure, didn't play it enough - a gray seer (plague) in a screaming bell damages all enemies around him over time. That's a pretty nice bonus. And yes, plague is a good spell. Warp lightning, yes-yes. All spells that give -melee defence on enemies are worth their weight in warpstone. Rats has a lot of buff/debuff spells. They're all good.

[nathan24]

Death Frenzy is one of my favorite buff spells, its insanely good and if you overcast it you can frenzy multiple units.

[funkmonster7]

Lore of Plague is likely better than Lore of Ruin. (Just a note, Warlock Engineer's spells come from Lore of Ruin.)

Lore of Plague gives you Vermintide (summons Clanrats, 6 casts per battle) and Pestilent Birth (summons Plague Monks, 2 casts per battle). Neither of them can be overcast, or at least not that I know of. Maybe Pestilent Birth? The 2nd perk you take for these skills only reduces the Winds of Magic required to cast the spells.

Lore of Ruin gives you a bunch of damage spells. They are nice, but Lore of Plague gives you those as well.

Continuing on, Lore of Plague gives you an aoe poison attack buff, an aoe armor debuff (it's called Wither, -30 armor debuff, but -60 when overcast); and lastly, the Plague spell. The Plague spell, if I remember, looks like a giant green rat standing over the enemy troops, and he farts out some poison gas that spreads around him in a circle. That fart is pretty powerful, so yeah...

It turns out that I can cast that on wall units in siege, not sure if that's intended. I used it and the rat kinda phased into the wall, couldn't see much of its farting animation but the units pretty much got broken from one cast (although I had Plagueclaw Catapults bombard them for a while there but that one spell did much more damage than my Catapults and Cannons did combined).

Lore of Ruin is great, but Warlock Engineers do not have skills that reduce the miscast chance. Miscast happens when you overcast a spell but it backfires. Sometimes the spells still fire but I've seen my Eshin Sorcerer fail a cast twice during overcast, he suffered health damage and the spell didn't go off. So maybe, during overcast, three things can happen:
1. Everything successful.
2. Caster suffers backlash damage but spell still fires.
3. Caster suffers backlash damage, spell completely backfires upon you.

So if you use Warlock Engineers, just be careful when you overcast Warp Lightning...

The other option is you use Grey Seer (Ruin) to overcast Warp Lightning spells. They have the -% miscast chance skills. But then, you might want Grey Seer (Plague) because instead of Pestilent Birth, they have "The Dreaded Thirteenth Spell", which summons Stormvermin Halberds (overcast, but without the miscast chance, lets you summon Stormvermin Sword/Shield instead). The best part of this spell is if you cast it in the middle of an enemy blob (position the 'hole' where the Stormvermins will come out of), the explosion will blow up whatever is under them. Meaning your regular Vermintide doesn't do damage upon cast, at least I don't think it does, I should test it next time. But this one does a hell of a lot of damage, and if it's not bad enough, Stormvermins are out, not Clanrats.

Originally posted by Falaris:

I think - not sure, didn't play it enough - a gray seer (plague) in a screaming bell damages all enemies around him over time. That's a pretty nice bonus. And yes, plague is a good spell. Warp lightning, yes-yes. All spells that give -melee defence on enemies are worth their weight in warpstone. Rats has a lot of buff/debuff spells. They're all good.

And yes, the bell mount does aoe damage. Not sure how much though, but it's rather small aoe, given how lousy Skaven hold their frontlines, your Plague Priest may as well be fighting in the frontline, and they're quite weak compared to what other factions can bring to kill them Plague Priests.

[Laigon ♥]

Warp Lightning is my favourite Skaven spell. You can get decent kills just by using that with it's low cost/cooldown.

[funkmonster7]

Originally posted by Laigon ♥:

Warp Lightning is my favourite Skaven spell. You can get decent kills just by using that with it's low cost/cooldown.

I used to think so too. Until I started using Plague Priests and summoned actual Vermintide. 2 Plague Priests plus a Grey Seer Plague, you can have an artillery backline destroying everything in the front, the rats in the front are completely expendable since they're summoned units.

Due to how many Bell Polisher items you can get, you can even field 6-8 Plague Priests and your Grey Seer lord of your choice, and have 12 units of Jezzails/Cannons/Catapults at the back without a problem, and you have a frontline at your beck and call. It's crazy OP. It's also considered extremely cheesy but oh well...

Note that all your lords/heroes can carry this Bell Polisher item. Meaning if all your Plague Priests can carry one and it gives you +1 Plague Priest limit each; you can have an endless amount of them. Why bring meat shield units when a single hero can summon 8 meat shields in one battle?

[Andrewbh2003]

screaming bells have a mortis engine effect "very usefull for frontlines"

[Laigon ♥]

I get that summons can get pretty OP but there's plenty of builds that can be OP, I just prefer a mixed army with maybe 6-8 melee with the rest a mix of fun ranged tools. I've been trying out the poison globe mortars recently, what are peoples thought's on them?

[Wh♂♂par]

Originally posted by Laigon ♥:

I get that summons can get pretty OP but there's plenty of builds that can be OP, I just prefer a mixed army with maybe 6-8 melee with the rest a mix of fun ranged tools. I've been trying out the poison globe mortars recently, what are peoples thought's on them?

Good.

[Laigon ♥]

Originally posted by Wh♂♂par:

Originally posted by Laigon ♥:

I get that summons can get pretty OP but there's plenty of builds that can be OP, I just prefer a mixed army with maybe 6-8 melee with the rest a mix of fun ranged tools. I've been trying out the poison globe mortars recently, what are peoples thought's on them?

Good.

The death globe one is really good :)