Add airstrike to book of air

[radinms]

Now AE is a terrible weak background.
Add Airstrike. It's a big buff.

[Sar]

airstrike is a terrible weak spell

Edit: at least that's how I felt last time I tried using it.

[emikaela]

i like this idea. airstrike is niche but pretty good with or against summoning for instance.

[jejorda2]

Would you move lightning bolt to The Book of the Sky? Or maybe Swiftness?

[le_nerd]

But Airstrike is indeed terrible even against flying monsters, of which lair has... like griffins? And the occasional wasp? I am all for it but then airstrike needs a buff as well.

[wheals]

Instead, I decided to remove Airstrike from the Book of Frost.

[Utis]

High powered Airstrike is good, though indeed situational. I. e. something you want, but only if you have decent air skill for other reasons.

(What's with the idea that AE is a weak start ...?)

[tabstorm]

Because the spells are extremely noisy and have very low accuracy, it is easy to get into trouble as an AE, relative to the other book backgrounds that aren't Wizard. Wizard is also bad.

[bel]

Book of Air is pretty good because it has swiftness. No idea why people think AE is weak background. It is true that lightning bolt makes a lot of noise, but it is a fairly powerful spell if you multizap. Static discharge is ok as well. Even shock is decent. Multizap shock can kill a lot of stuff pre-Lair, and Lair.

About the OP, I rarely use airstrike. I suppose it ok, if you want something that does mediocre damage with low noise. But I am not averse to AE being defined by high-noise spells.

[Utis]

I'd say Shock is one of the better lvl1 damaging spells. Maybe not quite exactly as good as Freeze, but I personally regard it as a close second. It may do up to 7d9 damage per mp, only half of which is resisted by AC (according to Siegurt). Admittedly that is rare, but 2d9 is the norm and 3d9 and 4d9 are quite common. Yeah, Lightning Bolt is extremely noisy and unreliable, but also quite powerful for a lvl5 conjuration. I only recently started to dig Wz, but I do agree with the comparision in that both backgrounds make an early transition to melee a good idea, though for different reasons.

Yes, it's easy to screw up as an AE. Even disregarding LB: the background emphasises positioning in a way that is very unforgiving with regard to mistakes. I believe, it is rather strong, otherwise. Since this is CYC, here's a wacky proposition: I propose AE should be regarded a better learning background for beginners than Be. The reason is that Be is too forgiving about bad positioning. Which just means beginners invest more time on a character before they die. With AE they die early until they acquire the right positioning habits, most of which also happen to coincide with good habits for melee.

EDIT: Before I'm guilty of spreading misinformation: "7d9", "2d9" etc. above are simplifications.