Iron shot VS Lehudib's ryqtal Spear

[gdami1]

Hi

My DEFE is currently spamming iron shot on everything, and Vehumet offers me LCS

Does it worth learning it? It costs more MP and food, has a reduced range, and use more spell levels than I can afford.

If I ever learn it, is it useful to keep Iron Shot?

[Davion Fuxa]

It's the most powerful single target spell in game, and can quickly decimate anything it is shot at. Iron Shot though is nothing to scoff at either however and you can ignore Lehudib's Crystal Spear if you so choose.

Really it is more about your character set up and preference.

[njvack]

You're playing FE so you're pretty likely to get Fire Storm for the "use all the MP and make all the noise and kill all the dudes" applications.

Vehumet's range extension takes Iron Shot from "really good" to "really really good." Hasted and at high power, it'll take down any single target in the game. I probably wouldn't bother with both it and LCS unless you have spell levels to burn.

[Siegurt]

With my late-game EE's it's been "Iron Shot, Iron Shot, Iron shot, dead" or "Iron shot, LCS, dead" (I usually iron shot the first turn then LCS them the second turn when they move into range for it) for most critters.

It's not a huge difference, but 14 sp vs 18 sp does make a difference (Not to mention one fewer rounds), it comes down to question of spell slots, training, and personal preference. I wouldn't *get rid of* Iron shot to replace it with LCS (I tried that once, it's annoying)

[Psieye]

LCS does more damage per turn. If your targets are already in range (e.g. Hell effect makes a Fiend show up in your face), taking less turns to kill it can be very relevant. It's also arguable that you won't need Iron Shot to kill things further away when you have Fire Storm to do that instead (albeit with a lot of noise).

[Baldu]

I seem to remember crystal spear having ~40% higher max damage and ~25% higher accuracy compared with iron shot. Also i'm pretty sure orb of destruction has higher max damage than crystal spear. But iron shot is certainly enough to win games, so no need to get crystal spear or other stuff if it would delay more important things.

[rebthor]

LCS is 10d22
OoD does 9d(pow / 4) damage, but power gets an extra stepdown and will never exceed 87. Power is further reduced by 50/30/10 percent if the orb has only traveled 1/2/3 spaces. That means max power for OoD is 9d21.75. I don't know if the code rounds up or truncates, but anyhow it hits for less.

[Lasty]

LCS is 10d22
OoD does 9d(pow / 4) damage, but power gets an extra stepdown and will never exceed 87. Power is further reduced by 50/30/10 percent if the orb has only traveled 1/2/3 spaces. That means max power for OoD is 9d21.75. I don't know if the code rounds up or truncates, but anyhow it hits for less.

It uses a weighted function to round up or down on each instance.