Elemental Forums
With a casting time of one it is the casters third action by the time you get any benefit from it.
At that point I find the combat is mostly over or that I would have been better of casting other spells.
Nakisisa
It has a use at the beginning of battle if you can't reach the other side... use focus and wait for them to come to you. Although if you got Growth or Giant Form it is completely useless.
Sometimes if I'm very short on mana and need to make the one spell count
yea, I guess its only meant as a buff to really expensive spells.
(like, a spell that costs more than 4x the mana cost of focus)
it's a worthless spell. the casting time kills it. To add to that, 25% isn't enough of a boost, it should be 50% imo
At the very least, it needs to be an instant spell. When a mage can usually instakill an enemy with their first turn, or sometimes even wipe out an army, delaying for a turn to boost your magic is not worth it.
Combat in this game is just too fast for most status effecting spells to be worthwhile, except things like slow/haste. Everything else is niche use for extreme situations only
Ideally, i think it should be a strategic buff, rather than a tactical spell. Maybe it could increase the manacost of tactical spells, but also increase the spelldamage/spellmastery of the caster.
Yeah the one turn casting time really makes it unappealing. In that one turn you can ready a Fireball, send a fire dart, or start channeling your Blizzard.
Speaking of Blizzard Does anyone know if the % bonus for spell from focus applies on scrolls like fireballs&blizzard? Because that would be the only viable use of it.
It's useful if you have other casters doing damage and inflicting status effects in the meantime. That way you're not losing as much by being out of commission for one turn. Quite often I also Haste someone who is casting Focus so that they get their next turns faster.
Consider that if you have focus, you're (at the very least) a mid level fire mage with two long range damage spells you could start casting instead from turn one. You don't often find yourself thinking - well, the enemies aren't in range yet, so I may as well blow two turns buffing myself up. That's a melee thought. If you have focus, you're ready to go and start fireballing people from turn one, you don't have those two turns to spare. No mana cost or no cast time (i.e. takes only 1 turn) might improve the skill, but.. it's still antithetical to a mage who should be frying enemies from the first turn in a tactical battle that will generally end by turn 5.
Focus would be a better skill if it made your next spell (only) have no cast time and hit 50% harder. Now instead of 2 turns for a regular fireball, you spend 3 turns (2 for focus, 1 for the no-cast-time fireball) to get a +50% fireball. Same damage-per-cast-time, but better mana efficiency and a couple minor side bonuses. If the focus cast gets interrupted, you only lose focus' marginal mana cost, not the full fireball mana cost. Also if you cast fireball normally, you're committing to fireball at the end of that cast time; if you cast focus instead, you can choose any spell on the spot to use your focus on.
I use it on my one-path warriors sometimes. The casting time makes it usually not worth it, but if I can't move and attack in the first turn then I'll cast it if the enemy doesn't have ranged weapons and is going to spend their turn approaching me.
I use it if I am in a fight that's going to take maybe 5 rounds, so yes, I use it a fair bit.
Yea, ah i tried it a few times, but it never once did anything for me....just too slow.
I propose the name of the spell should be changed to 'close the gate' spell, as in close the gate after the horse has bolted/battle ended!
I don't use it in its current form. For a mage, there are plenty of passive damage boosters that make +25% irrelevant; for a melee champion, trading two action for +25% future damage makes little sense when you could be spending those actions dealing 100% of direct damage.
Previous version of this spell -- no casting time, double damage for one action -- was more interesting. I used it often to power-up individual spells, and it gave a good reason to upgrade fire magic for melee champions (direct damage spells are worthless without path of the mage, but focus is still applicable to melee attacks).
Not sure why focus was nerfed; probably because it allowed double-damage flame darts to be spammed continuously, effectively voiding their cooldown. Increasing cooldowns and/or nerfing the effect a bit might have solved that while keeping the spell interesting.
Generally, I am a fan of spells that require a timely tactical decision to be made: curse and old focus are great examples. I find spells which are cast once at the beginning of battle boring; they are either no-brainers (blind) or useless (new focus), and result in both sides spending initial turns buffing / debuffing rather than engaging in combat. Such spells should become strategic enchantments with an upkeep or be delegated to item stat boosts, while the tactical battlefield is reserved to time-sensitive actions. Some examples:
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