Repel Missiles vs Deflect Missiles?

[arandomperson12]

Why is deflect missiles considered better? It is slightly better at reducing the to hit of bolts (0 to 66% vs 0 to 50%), but is much worse at reducing the to hit of beams (0 to 50% rather than 0 to 100%), costs more mana, and requires much more investment in air and charms.

[ZoFy]

A level 2 Charms/Air spell that helps you dodge enemy ranged attacks (by reducing their to-hit roll (for evasion purposes only) *TO* a random amount between: 50% and 100% for penetrating beams, 0% and 100% for single-target missiles).

A level 6 Charms/Air spell that helps you dodge enemy ranged attacks (by reducing their to-hit roll (for evasion purposes only) *TO* a random amount between: 0% and 66% for penetrating beams, 0% and 50% for single-target missiles).

Notice the "TO". rMsl would reduce to-hit roll of beams to 75% and missiles to 50% on average, while for DMsl the average numbers are 33% and 25%. That's approximately cutting those rolls in half compared to rMsl (once again, on average).
DMsl is surely amazing for characters who can afford it (unfortunately, most of them can't these days).

[duvessa]

The thing about RMsl and DMsl is your success rate doesn't actually matter because you can just take off your armour, put on wizardry/int, and cast them out of combat. So they don't require investment to use; there's nothing to "afford" other than spell levels (although spell power does make them better).

[ZoFy]

Getting DMsl to a positive success rate with just gear (reasonable gear, not triple wizardry) and no skill investment sounds impossible. And human players would not bother playing that optimally for such a tiny advantage.

[Hands]

Recasting in combat is pretty useful too.

[crate]

Getting DMsl to a positive success rate with just gear (reasonable gear, not triple wizardry) and no skill investment sounds impossible. And human players would not bother playing that optimally for such a tiny advantage.

Um I've literally learned dmsl (or at least rmsl) with almost no investment in charms/air before and taken off my armour to cast it. I'm pretty sure I've done this in more than one game.

Like, this isn't even one of the things I complain about that are optimal but tedious but actually not done; this one is something I do. It's really easy, since casting at like 60% fail is fine; the miscasts are not important.

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Recasting in combat is less useful than it sounds since either you're in a position where you can go hide behind a wall (and then why do you need rmsl?) or you are losing a turn to recast it, so it needs to prevent more than one ranged attack in the remainder of the combat to be good.

[Sandman25]

I believe it is not beneficial. With low spell power RMsl is almost useless (it will be expired in a few attacks) and you can die if some nasty monsters comes into view while you are without body armour. In my last game I trained Charms/Air/Spellcasting for RMsl only to ### despite it was castable long time ago.