Blades Runner
Posts: 624
Joined: Saturday, 18th December 2010, 04:50
In case you still think Fulm Prism sucks...
Fulminant Prism is a level 4 Conjurations/Hex spell that creates a prism of destructive energy at a smite-targeted location. After 20 auts (typically 2 turns), the prism explodes dealing unavoidable non-elemental damage to everything inside a 5x5 radius.
Pros:
- Giant area of effect. It's only a step lower than firestorm (5x5 as opposed to 6x6), while being several times cheaper and easier to learn. The huge area it covers is especially good when you consider that it has...
- Massive damage for a level 4 spell, easily outdamaging most level 5 spells, and even some level 6 spells when you take the huge AOE into consideration. This also makes the spell...
- Very mana efficient, it does huge damage over a wide area for only a modest cost of 4 MP. If you're with Vehumet, casting this spell is almost like channeling magic in many cases.
- Effective against both single targets and groups. While obviously this spell is far more effective against large groups of enemies, it still has a gigantic amount of damage for a level 4 spell, making it also effective against big, single target threats.
- Smite targeted, this allows you to place the explosions in the most optimal position and get the most value out of the spell.
- Undodgeable. Since the spell is considered an explosion, it completely bypasses EV, meaning you never have to worry about the spell missing and your MP being wasted.
- Can hit things around corners. This is very effective against dangerous ranged targets that can't chase, such as Oklob plants and electric eels.
- Effective against all targets. Because it does not deal damage through an element, it is effective against all targets equally, and since it ignores EV the only thing enemies can use to mitigate damage is AC.
- Absurdly destructive early on. Once you get Fulminant Prism castable, it typically already has enough spellpower to destroy most early game threats in a single cast (orc packs are a joke with this spell), and it deals with most big scary things in only two or three casts.
- Scales very well, the damage never stops being relevant in a 3 rune game, maybe perhaps not in extended (I haven't tried it in extended, so I can't really say).
- Very versatile. It's not just for blowing dudes up, it can also be used to block choke points and stop projectiles. Placing one in between you and the enemy also stops non smite-targeted spells.
- Extremely fun to use. This is perhaps subjective, but it's definitely one of the more unique spells in this game, and the amount of positioning it requires goes some ways to make even popcorn fights somewhat interesting.
Cons:
- Requires you to level up hexes. I would assume this is perhaps the biggest downside and/or turnoff to most people. Leveling up hexes on a conjurer is somewhat unintuitive, especially early on when there isn't much XP to shift around and it can be a problem if your race has a terrible hex aptitude.
- Has a 2 turn (20 aut) delay before detonation. This is typically irrelevant as long as you have room to kite backwards while you wait for the detonation, but if you have nowhere to move it can sometimes cause problems.
- Somewhat ineffective against targets that are significantly faster than you. It does big damage, but if you're attacked by something such as a black mamba or a crocodile that's swimming through water, they will typically reach you and get a hit off before it detonates. This is mostly irrelevant against enemies that are only slightly faster, such as spiny frogs or ugly things.
- Unreliable against blinking targets. Once again, it still does significant damage, but enemies that blink are capable of avoiding your damage entirely by simply blinking out of the blast radius before it detonates.
- Somewhat dangerous to use against strong ranged threats. Enemies such as centaurs and yaktaurs are dangerous and have the ability to deal significant damage to you before your first prism detonates. While the prism can easily wipe out a pack of such enemies, it's important to have an alternate spell to deal with these threats if you're caught in a bad situation against them.
- Requires some existing knowledge about enemies, and good positioning and forethought to be most effective. To get the most out of this spell, you need to really think about where you're going to place the prism and how you're going to act in the turns leading up to the detonation. You need to consider how to place prisms in such a way that two of them will be able to hit your targets, without placing them inside of each other's AOE. You need to know how fast enemies move and where they will end up in two turns, and place the prisms and move to manipulate the enemies accordingly.
- Extremely dangerous if you're not careful. This spell does big, undodgeable, unresistable damage in a huge area of effect. You do not receive any warnings or prompts if you're inside a prisms AOE. It is fairly easy to damage yourself accidentally with this spell if you're playing fast or simply not paying attention, and this can be very devastating especially early on when you don't have much health. It's not unreasonable to expect to lose 50% - 70% of your health from a poorly placed prism.
This spell seems to be very misunderstood. It is absolutely absurd and I wouldn't hesitate to call it overpowered. It's relevant all game long, from the moment you learn it until you enter Zot, it's always worth casting at one point or another. It completely obliterates packs of weak enemies, and takes out tough targets almost as fast. If your race has good aptitudes (deep elves are godlike prism users), it isn't unusual to be able to one-shot early tough things when they start showing up, such as ogres and orc warriors. Even if they don't die in one hit, they usually go down with a follow up prism. This remains true for most of the game, and it's not far stretched to say that you can carry yourself all the way through lair, both lair branches, and some of vaults using just this spell alone and nothing else. With good skill investment, it's not unusual to be able to one-shot hydras by the time you get done with lair, and later on you can wipe out groups of monsters such as a pack of deep trolls with only two or three casts (if you get a generous damage roll, it's entirely possible to kill them all in one prism). It has the highest damage output of any of the spells in the starting book, and the damage doesn't start weakening really until you reach vaults, at which point it still remains an amazing AOE option against groups. Eventually you want to learn some sort of good damage bolt spell to help against late game high HP enemies such as stone giants or titans, but even at that point in the game the damage the prism does is still very relevant.
Even if it wasn't an AOE explosion and was just a single target spell like magic dart, the damage is still very high for its level, higher than any other level 4 spell. Mystic blast is very weak compared to this spell, and I very rarely find myself in a situation where I feel like mystic blast would be a better option than a prism. The fact that it IS AOE means that if you catch a group of enemies with it (which isn't hard, the AOE is HUGE), it will easily outdamage most level 5 spells, and if you catch a lot of enemies with it, it easily outdamages level 6 bolts. Indeed, it isn't uncommon for the prism to be a better damage option than a level 6 bolt spell, even later in the game.
Here is a very short video I made showing how absurd this spell is early on, I recommend watching it if you still don't believe me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ll8_g3pSgk
There are many ways to place prisms to achieve desired effects. Here are some simple essentials, they might be obvious but I figured I'd include them in this post. There are other ways to manipulate prisms to get the most effectiveness out of them, but I'll leave that up to you guys to figure out as it's part of the fun.
Damaging a single target or a group of enemies with multiple prisms
Damaging a target adjacent to you
Damaging a target adjacent to you with multiple prisms
EDIT: One thing that I didn't mention (but I should have!) is that enemies treat the prism like plants; they only attack them if they absolutely have to in order to get to you, otherwise they completely ignore them and walk around them whenever possible.