Let's talk about air magic

[kzickas]

I feel like air magic is a very one dimensional path, with only a few spells providing most of the paths power. Specifically thunderstrike, mistform, air trapeze, fog warriors, and mass flight is essentially the entirety of the path.

If air magic were to be changed to become more diverse, how could it? I think an easy change to make would be to move thunderstrike from 40 fatigue to 50 fatigue. At 40 fatigue an A2 mage can cast storm power, and three thunderstrikes in a row. WIth 50 fatigue storm power and two thunderstrikes would put an A2 mage at 111 fatigue needing to sleep for two turns before getting of the third thunderstrike. While still extremely good against enemies without shock resistance it would not have quite as strong an alpha strike against shock resistant enemies.

If thunderstrike spam were to be toned down a little were would the extra power be put? Should the phantasmal summons be buffed? Right now air is theoretically second only to death magic in gemless combat summons, but these spells are usually something you hate to see your mages casting. If these spells were to be buffed then how should they?

[terve886]

Air is strong, but I would not call it one dimensional. Fire is way more one dimensional compared to air, as it only has elementals and evocations going for it, while Air has super good evocations and plenty of useful buffs ranging from Mass flight to fog Warriors.

If anything, Fire magic needs more diversity, or as it currently stands, at least better evocations since air also beats fire in the evocation department.

[Zonk]

I don't disagree that nerfing Air evocations and buffing illusions might be a good thing, but your list of spells which are "essentialy the entirety of the path" does not include air elementals (far from useless) and arrow fend (a very useful spella against troops based on ranged attacks. perhaps overpowered for its cost)

In the collaboration balance mod we made Phantasms have significantly higher HP, usually the same as the real version, like in Conquest of Elysium (https://coe4.fandom.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Spearman)

Improving their attacks so that they are MR negates hard could also be an option.

[Red_Rob]

In addition to the things you mentioned are things like Wind Guide, Air Elementals, Seeking Arrow, Great Eagles (for mobile siegepower), Staff of Storms to shut down enemy fliers and the Queens of Elemental Air to name a few. Air already has useful army buffs, evocations, thug spells, in-battle summons and utility spells. Making it even more multi-dimensional seems unwarranted compared to paths like Water or Fire.

Oh, and Thunderstrike is already 50 fatigue.

[ChaosKhan]

There are only 3 (4) things which I don't like about air:
1. That it has no impactfull low lvl conjurations. Sure, amphiterres can be usefull, but the you can't compare them to ogres, yetis or fire ants, which are pretty spamable.
2. That it doesn't have items with temporary wind gems to conjure wind elementals for free. I just don't see why the other 3 elements have this option, but air somehow doesn't.
3. The overall weak ritual conjurations for air, even when compared to fire. Wyverns feel underwhelming and are hard to amass, while stuff like fire drakes have already a lot of impact as single units; gryphons are undisciplined, so they tend to just outright suicide in the fights and only the great eagles are kinda, well, great. Considering that all other paths provide some very tough and usefull rank & file chaff like trolls and even casters like troll chieftains or flame spirits, the air branch feels lackluster. There are also draconians with their strange "summon allies" feature and they are kind of tough, but still no comparison to trolls and I'd rather have draconian chieftains as air mages instead.
(4. That it's a hard path to break into without an air pretender ;).)