The Tavern

Among all the great redesigns of the elementalists, perhaps the most surprising overlooked spell is sticky flame

FE got one of the greatest overhauls in the game. Foxfire is brilliant. New FE is well balanced and even with first iteration flame wave it never felt apologetically powerful like the original IE redesign. Even with completely useless sticky flame.

What is sticky fame designed to tackle nowadays? Spells like Poisonous Vapours will do just as much damage to a creature equally susceptible to fire as poison - which is most creatures you'd encounter when relying on a level 2 spell. Sticky flame doesn't ever hit irradiate damage and irradiate hits every tile.

I actually never used it but remember vividly around .10 how people raved about sticky flame. everyone was like, "ohh yeah, stickly flame." was this overhype? or have other spells been brought to an appropriate power level over the years and this poor guy has been left behind?

Now what, precisely, is your point?

i want spells like sticky flame and airstrike to have an even remotely comparable power level to other level four, even some level three spells

You are comparing apples with oranges. Sticky flame applies damage over time, whereas airstrike applies all damage in one not-so-fell swoop, depending on the dungeon layout. There is no way to come up with a formula for all level-four spells that uniformly applies the same damage, because these spells are too different in their mechanics. Which is precisely what makes them so interesting, and what gives you a real choice when you consider which spell school to learn.

Yes, there were things that provided synergies with SF in the past, such as frying the monster in a conjured flame while watching it taking damage through SF. This is more difficult nowadays, but to say that SF doesn't deal enough damage for its level 4 is an oversimplification that doesn't do justice to the facts.

Sticky flame is incredible when you're facing a Hydra. It also has some utility vs Unseen Horrors.
I don't think Poisonous Vapours can even hurt Hydras.

Airstrike is incredibly reliable. I'm often in danger of dying when I switch from Airstrike to Lightning bolt because even though Lightning bolt kills things much quicker **on average**, the sheer reliability of Airstrike has made me complacent. (And Lightning bolt can easily miss a target 3 times in a row.)