Fire Magic - Kind of Weak?

[Blants]

Am I just playing this game wrong or is fire magic really underwhelming? I'll be the first to admit I'm pretty bad at this game, but it seems like it has the most spells in evocations, but a lot of them are just weak or awkward to use or take way too long to get online, especially with fire being a damage type that can be easily resisted for a lot of nations as the game goes on. The good spells also just seem to be directly better versions of previous spells, so just over-write them which doesn't give the player more tools to work with but just upgrades that toss the old spells aside. Even if it's meant to be the Evocation magic type, it still doesn't have any battlefield spells that are quite as standout as thunder strike, blade wind or earthquake, or at least ones that don't take longer to become active.

Outside of evocations, fire still has some good spells scattered around, summon fire elementals is fine, phoenix pyre is great and so is flaming arrows, but there's not too much else that's worth going for outside of niche uses.

I'd love to see some more utility for the path to give it some more room to be useful, how about some spells to give a bunch of your units more attack? Or mass-flaming shields? Or flaming weapons? Or awe? How about rituals to improve the resource production of provinces (stoking foundries etc.)?

Maybe I'm just complaining aimlessly at this point, but hopefully someone out there can shed some light on the strengths of fire that I'm just not seeing, so that nodody else has to read my ramblings.

[terve886]

Fire is indeed extremely weak magic. The fact that it is protected 50% by protection means that 5 fire resistance in addition to medium armor is enough to make most fire spells useless.
Not only that, there exists evocation 2 spell called rain, which doubles the fatigue cost of all fire spells in additional to making burn effect disappear much faster.

There is also the fact that in terms of raw damage out put, fire loses to air magic that is extremely hard to fight against due to it having high damage and AN damage that can be only negated with shock resistance, but 5 shock resistance just lowers the incoming damage a little bit. Air magic also has a lot of utility spells ranging from buffs such as fog warriors and mass flight to strategic movement in form of cloud trapeze. Fire has mostly only offensive evocations, and even those lose to Thunder Strike in terms of effect.
Fire magic does have "pillar of fire" spell, that is similar to thunder strike, but it is locked behind evocation 8 research while thunder strike is evocation 4. Fire is also extremely bad for thugging, while other paths offer at least something to increase the survivality of a thug.

it doesn't help either that units with fire magic have lowered max age. As a result, nations like Abyssia suffer a lot from aflictions brought by old age while they completely lack any means to heal diseases that will eventually kill all their mages.

My opinion on fire magic is, following:
• The exessive fatigue penalty from rain should be removed. There is no reason to punish fire magic so hard, especially with such low and easy access spell.
  
• Fire magic should have better spells. I would take advantage from the new casting time introduced in Dominions5 and turn many of the existing (or add new) fire spells into long casting duration, high range, decent damage artillery barrages that will fit fire magic's image of raining death on enemy troops by drowning them on flames.

An example spell for fire: Fire barrage
• Range: 50
  
• Casting time: 300%
  
• Spell effect: 5 projectiles with AoE1 22AP fire damage + the usual large heat shock effect.
  
• Maybe inaccuracy tag?

Compared to fireball spell, the range would be higher (35 versus 50), the casting time would be 3 times higher (100% versus 300%), but the spell would fire 5 projectiles instead of 1 in a single cast (total AoE 1 versus 5). Furthermore the damage the projectiles would be high enough to do some damage even throught 5 fire resistance and armor (16 versus 22).

Of course this is just an example and the balance of the spell is completely up in the air without even taking into account things like fire magic casting requirement, fatigue cost an of course research requirement, but I would still prefer to see this kind of fire magic rather than the one we currently have.

[Big Dog]

I think it's alright but I can see the disapointment in it. Try playing EA abyssia to get to see the true power of fire (as it's pretty much your only national path :D).

Personally I like summer lions (for castle fights specifically) and fire spirits (only research level 6 and F3 requirement, good caster). Summon fire elemental is good as well.

Incinerate is a really good spell in my opinion. Any thug or tough units that are not fire resistant are gonna get hit hard by it (you need F3 to cast, so easy F2 + turn 1 phoenix pyre). Phoenix pyre is a great spell.

The evocations are ok, I think it's easier to field fire mages than air mages (cause of phoenix power v storm power, also phoenix pyre late game can really save lives). The late game fire evocations are as good as any of the air ones.

I think their battle field wipe is kinda weak, you kinda need to turn on both fire storm and heat from hell to really be able to kill a NON-resistant army.

Fire has some ok items that allow commanders to cast spells (turning useless sit behind units into damage dealers) and lightless latern is always good research for the cheap cost.

[BoboYagga]

A number of times, folks have talked about adding a 'gift of health' style fire spell that doubled xp gain in dominion. I would love to see that.

Also, I would love to see more fire spells and maybe spells that can even melt armor (i.e. break protection while doing damage)

[darkdaze]

Rain is probably the biggest issue for fire nations like Abysia. It's just brutal. If it were a little more difficult to research & cast (say like Storm) it'd be a little more balanced.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

"As a result, nations like Abyssia suffer a lot from aflictions brought by old age while they completely lack any means to heal diseases that will eventually kill all their mages."

Er....Besides the Fire Magic spell Pyre of Catharsis...?

Fire has issues, but it does have strengths. Phoenix Power doesn't have the troublesome requirements of Water Power or Storm Power, nor the cost of Power of the Spheres. Fire in a Jar is very easily acquired temp gem generator. It's therefore relatively easy for any nation with F2 mages to access most fire battle spells and sustainably mass summon fire elementals. And Fire Elementals are strong by any measure.

I'm partial to Flambeaus and Wands of Wild Fire. They give you a lot of fire artillery without even using mages. Flambeaus totally wreck Undead.

Always liked Prison of Fire too

[Alias]

Somewhat weak and hobbled by extremely poor AI on freescript.

[Causk]

well it is hard to argue that fire is generally as usefull as air, but let me add a few more unique selling points :
-phoenix fire is 2nd only to earthpower in ease of use and access of pathboost spells
-the fire gem generating global is accessible earlier (ench 6) than comparable spells
-fire has the most economical research boost item (const 6)
-flame arrows is a pretty good buff
-fire has a late research thunderstrike equivalent with pillar of fire(evo8) that is significantly easier to mass spamm(f1 mage with a gem)
-fire elementals are pretty good,especially if you can get some protection on them
-fire has an economical scaling chaff summon with fire snakes
-fire has a battlefield clear spell(flame storm evo 7) that is easy to protect your own troops against (against skeleton + fatigue strategies)
-flames from the sky is a game changer against nations relying on human toughness mages
-fire has an easily summonable f3 mage with the fire spirit (so its relatively easy to get to high path if you start low or with just your pretender)

To get the most out of fire, you need alot more research than with other paths, but fortunately you have some synergy (latern + gem global) helping you get it. If you play a heavy fire nation, you need some sort of early game survival + (build up research) strategy. Abyssia is particularily bad at the 2nd part of this because its researchers are so expensive.

Overall i think fire nations are pretty fun and you can be very competitive with them and its not so much that fire is weak, but that its very hard to get where the good stuff is. Its definitely not the most powerfull path (obviously you would rather have d3 or a3 mages than f3 ones), but it is far from the weakest. What would you even do if you only had water as a strong path in your nation? If you wanted to balance our the different magic path to be roughly equal in power/usefullness(but why?!), you should really start with looking at water.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

on that note, fire gets some good combo path. There's bucket loads of stuff that's fire/earth, and some uniquely good ♥♥♥♥ in fire/water (acid spells and vitriol lion.)

[terve886]

Originally posted by TheDeadlyShoe:

"As a result, nations like Abyssia suffer a lot from aflictions brought by old age while they completely lack any means to heal diseases that will eventually kill all their mages."

Er....Besides the Fire Magic spell Pyre of Catharsis...?

Fire has issues, but it does have strengths. Phoenix Power doesn't have the troublesome requirements of Water Power or Storm Power, nor the cost of Power of the Spheres. Fire in a Jar is very easily acquired temp gem generator. It's therefore relatively easy for any nation with F2 mages to access most fire battle spells and sustainably mass summon fire elementals. And Fire Elementals are strong by any measure.

I'm partial to Flambeaus and Wands of Wild Fire too. They give you a lot of fire artillery without even using mages. Flambeaus totally wreck Undead.

Heat from Hell, like its cold counterpart, is a strong battlefield spell for relatively safely wrecking your enemies...compared to earthquake or things of that nature...

Pyre of catharsis is way too expensive to be used on every mage in your nation. It is simply not sustainable. If you had to only use it for slow to recruit cap onlys, it would not be so big deal, but when most of your mages will hit old age and get aflictions, including disease, the nation needs good access to disease healers rather than single heal rituals.

Fire still has far too many weaknesses compared to other paths that have more utility than fire magic which is pretty much shut down by 5 fire resistance, not to mention army of gold that gives devastating 20 nat prot and 5 fire resistance.
The only magic path weaker than fire in land combat is water, and even water has its uses in water combat, although it could be also debated that water magic is too powerful UW.

Fire magic also has most of its better spells such as incinerate locked away behind much higher research requirement compared to similar magics of other paths. Just compare incinerate to lightning bolt or pillar of fire compared to thunderstrike. Phoenix power also isn't really noticeably more convenient when compared to other elemental power spells. Getting storm as air nation is pretty trivial as long as you have access to A3 mages, earthpower has similar casting requirement but also gives reinvig instead of fire resistance. Power of the spheres is also rather trivial spell to cast as you need to cast it only once in a communion to get most out of it, in fact casting it with every master would be detrimental. Water power is probably the only one that struggles as it is impossible to get it on land battles, but on the other hand it works just fine UW that water magic is already ruling like mentioned before.

As for the fire items, fires in a jar and lightless lanters are certainly powerful, but magic casting items such as wands of wildfire and flambeus are rather expensive for what they are doing. 15 fire gems used to make non-magic casting commander cast low research Fire 2 magic for 5 fatigue a cast could be compared to just summoning a single F3 flame spirit for 30 gems. It could also be mentioned that other than skull of fire, fire magic has rather limited access to path boosters. Well, at least it has better access to path boosters than air magic, so there is that I guess?

Heat from Hell, like the rest of the fire spells, will be shutdown by fire resistance completely. Fire is pretty much single trick pony, because it can be shut down way harder than any other magic path with a simple resistance spell, not taking rain into account. Other magic paths still have their utility spells that can change the tide of battle even if their evocation spells lose their effect. The very reason why acid spells are considered good while fire spells are trash is because acid spells are only resisted with armor, and even that gets eaten by acid spells.

[AgentFransis]

Don't forget Flames from the sky - the ultimate artillery spell. Kills 50% of any human army you throw it at (including the mages).

[Causk]

Fire magic also has most of its better spells such as incinerate locked away behind much higher research requirement compared to similar magics of other paths. Just compare incinerate to lightning bolt or pillar of fire compared to thunderstrike. Phoenix power also isn't really noticeably more convenient when compared to other elemental power spells. Getting storm as air nation is pretty trivial as long as you have access to A3 mages, earthpower has similar casting requirement but also gives reinvig instead of fire resistance. Power of the spheres is also rather trivial spell to cast as you need to cast it only once in a communion to get most out of it,

I think you are being a bit disingenuous here. Air power has the massive drawback of needing storm up, which halves the accuracy of your spells, which does make a massive difference. Power of the sphere takes 100 fatigue and a gem, so its really only useable on high astral mages or communions. Sure earth power is alot better, but every other path buff has significantly more drawbacks than phoenix power.
And yes, incinerate and pillar of fire are much, much higher research requirement than comparable air spells, but they are also significantly better. Incinerate is prec 100 and high damage that the thug needs either a massive fire res bless or significant items to guard against, while a lightning bolt misses most of the time and i countered by a generally usefull thug item (storm spool). Thunderstrike is a great spell, but its a3 and 40 fatigue, you need expensive mages or communions to cast that at all. Pillar of fire can be cast by a 45 gold lvl 1 mage with a fire gem 4 times. Insofar damage spells are concerned, fire has a higher peak, but takes alot longer to get started. You can argue that fire should be better at evocations in all phases of the game, but as is, its a bit of an apples and oranges comparasion.
Concerning buffing thugs/scs: fire has phoenix pyre which is almost worth empowering SCs for. Fire shield is also usefull, if you have tough scs and face someone who relies on swarm or hordes of skeletons to counter you. Again not best of its class thugging support spells, but at least its not a doubled edged sword like astral.
The game has lots of different power curve considerations already (think the difference in power pre and post ench 5 on ctis) and i think ironing them out would not make the game more enjoyable. I think a better design approach would be if every magic path has something unique and interesting to build strategies around. What is great about dominions is its assymmetry.

[terve886]

Originally posted by Causk:

Fire magic also has most of its better spells such as incinerate locked away behind much higher research requirement compared to similar magics of other paths. Just compare incinerate to lightning bolt or pillar of fire compared to thunderstrike. Phoenix power also isn't really noticeably more convenient when compared to other elemental power spells. Getting storm as air nation is pretty trivial as long as you have access to A3 mages, earthpower has similar casting requirement but also gives reinvig instead of fire resistance. Power of the spheres is also rather trivial spell to cast as you need to cast it only once in a communion to get most out of it,

I think you are being a bit disingenuous here. Air power has the massive drawback of needing storm up, which halves the accuracy of your spells, which does make a massive difference. Power of the sphere takes 100 fatigue and a gem, so its really only useable on high astral mages or communions. Sure earth power is alot better, but every other path buff has significantly more drawbacks than phoenix power.
And yes, incinerate and pillar of fire are much, much higher research requirement than comparable air spells, but they are also significantly better. Incinerate is prec 100 and high damage that the thug needs either a massive fire res bless or significant items to guard against, while a lightning bolt misses most of the time and i countered by a generally usefull thug item (storm spool). Thunderstrike is a great spell, but its a3 and 40 fatigue, you need expensive mages or communions to cast that at all. Pillar of fire can be cast by a 45 gold lvl 1 mage with a fire gem 4 times. Insofar damage spells are concerned, fire has a higher peak, but takes alot longer to get started. You can argue that fire should be better at evocations in all phases of the game, but as is, its a bit of an apples and oranges comparasion.
Concerning buffing thugs/scs: fire has phoenix pyre which is almost worth empowering SCs for. Fire shield is also usefull, if you have tough scs and face someone who relies on swarm or hordes of skeletons to counter you. Again not best of its class thugging support spells, but at least its not a doubled edged sword like astral.
The game has lots of different power curve considerations already (think the difference in power pre and post ench 5 on ctis) and i think ironing them out would not make the game more enjoyable. I think a better design approach would be if every magic path has something unique and interesting to build strategies around. What is great about dominions is its assymmetry.

The storm will affect both sides and air magic spells have extra accuracy that nullifies the storm penalty. There is also always the option of adding wind guide for even more accuracy.

Speaking from experience, the 1 astral gem cost is never a problem when you only need to cast power of spheres once per battle in order to boost communion slaves, likewise I only cast phoenix power or earth power only once when setting a communion to help communion slaves getting higher path than communion masters.

Incinerate doesn't do that much more damage compared to lightningbolt which also has AoE1 effect on top and can stun the target. Furthermore incinirate is countered just as easily by equipping ring of fire. it could also be noted that thugs who use iron skin will be extra vulnerable to shock attacks due to -5 shock resistance penalty.

Pillar of fire is also so high in research, that by the time you research it, your opponent might have army of gold researched

Phoenix pyre is indeed one of the better fire utility spells, but fire magic still falls short when compared to other magic paths. A thug with phoenix pyre alone will not last for long, but it will help a lot if the thug is already covered in protection effects, items and magics. Same applies pretty much to fireshield, unit that would survive only 3 incoming hits will not benefit from fireshield, but unit that can take hundrds of hits will have great advantage for casting it.

Not sure what is the point of your last paragraph, it is not like I am suggesting to butcher fire magic. In fact, my suggestion would make fire magic more unique to the other magic paths by making it slower to cast, but more powerful in return.

(As a side note, my personal opinion on MA C'tis is that it is too powerful.)

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Alias:

Somewhat weak and hobbled by extremely poor AI on freescript.

You could say that about all spells, though -- and, as pointed out later in this thread, the higher-research-level spells that the AI defaults to can be quite devastating at times.

I agree that Fire Magic's lack-luster first-impressions come from the fact that it is so easily countered by other magic paths (Ground Army, for example, can nullify Lightning/Thunderbolts, but is an 8th level spell, compared to the level 2 spell that is rain.)

I'd also agree that reducing Rain's fatigue penalty for fire spells to around 20% (rather than the 50% increase it currently imposes) would, in and of itself, go a long way to increasing Fire's viability without making Fire Evocations too strong.

[BoboYagga]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

I'd also agree that reducing Rain's fatigue penalty for fire spells to around 20% (rather than the 50% increase it currently imposes) would, in and of itself, go a long way to increasing Fire's viability without making Fire Evocations too strong.

I agree that changing rain will do a lot to benefit fire. I think that maybe there should be a spell called rain that only does 20% fatigue, that is decent, but a mage weilding the power of fire should be able to shrug off a bit of rain.

Then maybe add a higher research tier spell that is monsoon, or something, that does the 50% fatigue.

Maybe fire spells could have some alternate affect like lightning's stun affect that helps to make it harder to shrug off? Or at least the higher level fire spells? damage armor, fatigue, blinding?

[DasaKamov]

Fireball and similar spells (Flare, Pillar of Fire, etc) does cause "Large Area Heat Shock" as a secondary effect (AoE 6, 10++ Fatigue Damage), so I think the path is fine in that regard.