LoopyLeo wrote: Static Discharge seems quite underwhelming, so maybe I'm not approaching it correctly? How is the spell supposed to be used? Does anyone actually use it?
Static discharge is actually pretty bad when you first get it castable and you have low spellpower, a single shock from it isn't very impressive, it's much much better with high spellpower, as this increases it's chances of generating more shocks. It's optimally used against 2 adjacent critters (that is to say, adjacent to you and to each-other) with 3 and 4 adjacent critters being ok. It also completely ignores EV, so it's good against adders, killer bee's etc. It had a more much defined niche before airstrike was added to the starting book, since that also ignores EV.
In a pinch you can put a single critter next to yourself and a plant (Although even with higher spellpower that's only marginally better than shock), don't ever use static discharge against a single adjacent target, it's worse than shock for that case (Presuming you can double zap, which should always be able to do)
Generally AE is the most position dependent of the elementalists, you want to set up for double-zaps with shock and lightning bolt *every time* additionally you want to lure things further back into cleared areas to use lightning bolt, as it's loud.
Those two things together make exploiting movement speed bonuses (like tengu's flight, and the bonus from swiftness) very very useful. You want to encounter something, move into a position where it will have to approach where you can double-zap it. (This is one of the reasons why rMsl was a very appropriate spell for AE, as they have more incentive to lure things, and ranged missile users are more annoying to do that with)
Some incredibly easy to set up double zaps include:
Move to to the X:
So you end up with:
Move to the X:
so you end up with:
Both of those let you target the square behind the monster for a double zap, and are extremely common scenarios.
Another useful but harder to set up scenario when you want to double zap things but it's not fun to get close to them (like say an ogre)) :
At many ranges you can double zap a critter at both of the Y positions and then move around in a circle until the creature gets to the next Y position, some loops have 3, 4 or sometimes more double zap positions, so you can double zap a critter that's 4 or 5 spaces away 4 or 5 times walking around a loop before they are adjacent.
Airstrike is unpopular because it's damage is really weirdly variable, and is very poor at low spellpower, you're better off using shock twice than airstrike once in many scenarios, particularly early on when it's damage is really bad for the cost. As a level 4 attack spell, it's damage is lower than many of the other level 4 attack spells, so it's really really hard to justify it's cost outside of the rare places where the smite targeting and extra flying damage really help, unless you have an overabundance of MP. It also gets much better later, both because there's more occasions where smite targeting is useful, and because it's damage gets less unreliable at high spellpower