poison magic is quite good

[removeelyvilon]

Let's take a look at all poison spells, shall we?

Decent range, but it can miss and it is not guaranteed to inflict poison. Meh.

Granted, it doesn't do anything by itself but very strong with e. g. Olgreb's. Anything that doesn't check EV or AC in a game plagued with crawlcuracy is a blessing + monster damage and affordable spell level. Strong.
One of the best spells in the game.
20ish EV plus venom branded attack with higher base damage and accuracy for small investment? Yes please. Bread and butter of novice transmuters across the glove. Manhandles most of D and Lair, loses most of it's lustre after that. Good.
Very good since recent changes. Decimates packs of humanoids. Strong.
One of the worst spells in the game, it even rivals gell's and shatter for the top spot. Worse than meth cloud in every regard that matters.
Not bad, but not great either. Here's hoping that we can upgrade this to vitriol bolt in 2525. I can wait... Meh+.
Now Level 5 and the bane of elves everywhere. Strong.
Strong.

Edit: pArrow NERFED fron excellent to strong. Morshu remains unfazed, however.

And the verdict:

1. I am colour blind
2. Make the forum background black
3. Poison magic is officially....



We did it boys. Poison magic was thought of as bad, but just like deep dish pizza, it is actually quite good.

[papilio]

"Some" poison spells (Meph Cloud, Toxic Radiance, ...) are good as "supportive" spells.

Venom Mages are crap. (Centaur zombies, freezing wraiths, black mambas, spiny frogs, ...)

[Sprucery]

Venom Mages are crap. (Centaur zombies, freezing wraiths, black mambas, spiny frogs, ...)

VM is good. Just get a god that helps you with the problematic monsters. Kiku is great, for example.

[yesno]

Let's take a look at all poison spells, shall we?

where are the spells, i just see a bunch of little pictures

[dynast]

Venom Mages are crap. (Centaur zombies, freezing wraiths, black mambas, spiny frogs, ...)

VM is good. Just get a god that helps you with the problematic monsters. Kiku is great, for example.

Projection, ladies and gentlemen(sorry if you were being sarcastic).

[Elitist]

Ignite Poison should be removed, jokes aside. It's really good, but it explicitly takes one of Poison's big weaknesses (DoT) and removes it for 3MP. If it sped up the process I'd be fine with it, but I doubt anyone would use it then.

Olgreb's is the most underrated spell in the game and mulches humanoids, yeah. P. Arrow is cool, but it has the same problem that Iron Shot has for me. High investment single target attack that can fucking miss and still eat 6 of your MP.

I don't think Gell's is bad at high spell power. If it was one school, I'd love it.

[Shard1697]

you should probably compare vm to other book starts if you're gonna talk about poison magic being "good"

Meph is slightly overrated, pArrow is significantly overrated.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

I've never built a character around poison magic, because even if it's very effective against most enemies, especially in early-midgame, it doesn't work on everything. Earth Magic, OTOH, leads to Iron Shot which can kill every dude in the game. But I rarely build around that either, because good melee also kills everything, and never runs out and has a more player-friendly interface.

Earth Magic has half of Statue Form though, and statform + UC is IMO the most reliable way to fetch all 15 runes.

[removeelyvilon]

you should probably compare vm to other book starts if you're gonna talk about poison magic being "good"

Why? Poison magic is not a Vm exclusive and Vm isn't barred from learning any other skill either. And even if we assume for a moment that Vm was the worst thing to ever ungrace god's green earth, it does not follow that poison magic is bad in general. Which is exactly the kind of generalized non-statements that we are confronted with here in tavern.

In any case, it doesn't make much sense to judge a spell school as a whole based on a background that just so happens to start with a few spells of that school. If you want to rank backgrounds, fine, that's a different thing altogether.
Now of course it doesn't make sense to judge a spell shool as a whole anyway; spells don't suffer from the same problem that weapons have - unless you have a really, really bad aptitude for a certain school (and even then) you have no excuse not to branch out into that school if you have a good spell available. So for me it is best to look at what the actual spell has to offer and not which schools it is tied to - that's a tertiary considration at best.

Meph is slightly overrated, pArrow is significantly overrated

I will admit that I may have gone a lttle overboard with pArrow but it is definitely a solid spell.