Offensive Spell Tactics

darkmoose

I'm having some trouble using offensive spells in battles. I'm not quite sure why, but given where my casters are, I'm having trouble seeing the right opportunities, and spend most of my time casting defensive spells. Right now I'm playing vampire counts and the only offensive spell I use with any effectiveness is the early one that is good against single units (I use it to kill lords and heroes). Otherwise I'm pretty much just healing (which, by the way, is pretty darned effective, and gobbles up plenty of power).

The descriptions of the offensive spells spook me- poor penetration and best high angles, etc: I'm not sure what these even mean, but I'm assuming I can't use them when my caster is behind a line of my own troops. That could be wrong, as I see don't these terms defined anywhere, and I've looked.

Anyone have more success? Are there any good guides out there on this? Most I've seen are junk.

RowYerboat#9411

You will find a lot of discussion on here about how wonky the offensive spells are. I'm not gonna rehash it all here, but it's basically a mishmash of a) most of them don't seem to do much damage, especially if not overcasted, b) vortex spells move around semi-randomly and so are extremely situational; they also are very unintuitive as far as which targets they are actually effective against; and c) single target spells, especially Spirit Leech, and Fate of Bjuna (better on multi targets) are really good. Those two are especially good because they aren't an actual projectile and therefore can't miss or be blocked.

I more or less have the same approach as you. Fireball is also pretty easy to use, and I use a lot of buffs and debuffs, which are extremely effective. Other than that, I use a vortex now and then just for fun (Curse of da Bad Moon seems pretty effective). But it's easy to blow all your magic on single target damage, heals (if you have em), buffs and debuffs.

Also, there's one good thread on here about some of the mechanics, but I think it's safe to say that no one has really figured it all out. In fact, the opacity of the whole system is one of its biggest problems...

Naysay3r

If your playing VCs you have access tot he only vortex spell worth its salt: Wind of Death

Instead of moving around randomly like every other vortex spell WoD moves in a straight line so a flanking necromancer on a steed can quite easily position himself to take out the enemies entire infantry line!
like with all vortex spells currently in vanilla TW:WH it doesn't do a lot of damage but it does knock units on the ground allowing your charges to hit home super effectively.

Mandalay

RowYerboat said:

In fact, the opacity of the whole system is one of its biggest problems...

QFT. A spell system which:
- Doesn't actually say the damage spells do
- Interacts in an unknown way with armour
- Interacts in an unknown way with mass
- Interacts with a generally confusing, unintuitive HP system
- Relies on a targeting system which isn't explained
- and is subject to rng on top of that

... Is very accurately described as opaque.

I won't say it needs a buff as such but it certainly needs to be more accessible. There was a great post here a while ago which surmised how it probably works, but it was way too much to take in.

I gave up on it and it's certainly not hurting my campaigns (I'm yet to try VC).

Galvanized Iron

After patch lore of Vampires is better than lore of death. Invocation of Nehek makes your army invulnerable as long as you got mana left. Gaze of Nagash now trumps spirit leach for general sniping as it deals pure AP damage and a lot if it. Fate of bjuna now only deals damage to 9 targets, 18 previously, so if you play on huge it is useless, if you play on large it is only useful against trolls and crypt horrors.

brn9876

Mandalay said:

RowYerboat said:

In fact, the opacity of the whole system is one of its biggest problems...

QFT. A spell system which:
- Doesn't actually say the damage spells do
- Interacts in an unknown way with armour
- Interacts in an unknown way with mass
- Interacts with a generally confusing, unintuitive HP system
- Relies on a targeting system which isn't explained
- and is subject to rng on top of that

... Is very accurately described as opaque.

I won't say it needs a buff as such but it certainly needs to be more accessible. There was a great post here a while ago which surmised how it probably works, but it was way too much to take in.

I gave up on it and it's certainly not hurting my campaigns (I'm yet to try VC).

I completely agree. I have never played any game where all the various unit statistics and game mechanics are so poorly explained and understood (this is my first TW game). The magic system is even worse. The buffs/debuffs and heals seem to be the only spells that are truly explained and actually do what they say they do.

Slaists

The big thing about damage spells is that the damage does not scale with unit size. So, on ultra, spells are very weak. On small unit size, they are very powerful.

darkmoose

Well, thanks. It's good to see that others have had similar experiences. I can understand why they don't want offensive magic to be too effective- the battles in this game already feel messier than in some of the older total war games, where you really had to pay attention to things like formation and flanking, or have your entire army rout. Adding yet another piece of chaos to the mix, and having it be too effective, could be overwhelming.