Best Symbol Spell? Weakness or Fear?

[weddingly]

Which Symbol spell do you think is best in fighting against monsters?
Symbol of Fear applies cowering on a will save fail.
Symbol of Weakness applies 3d6 str damage on fort save fail.

Also ddo wiki says Symbol of Weakness will affect bosses....

[Xenostrata]

I know symbol of weaknesses has successfully ****ed me off while running the sub solo. Stupid wizard skeles make me helpless with one spell.

As a caster, one of the things you will generally not want is all your targets scattering and running out of range of your spells. I think a reduction to damage (and possible induced helplessness) is more helpful.

[haku-ba]

Depends what level your caster is. If you are capped and running epics, use Symbol of Death.

[Crazyfruit]

Depends what you're fighting. Some monsters, like Beholders, have a low strength score. Others, like Giants, it won't matter if they're hit by weakness or not unless you have a bad healer. Generally it works well on caster monsters but a reduction to their strength score won't matter unless you can make them helpless. It works best combined with other spells like Ray of Enfeeblement & Waves of Exhaustion.


Also ddo wiki says Symbol of Weakness will affect bosses....

Used to. Supposedly changed in U9. I didn't like that change at all until I was told about some (incredible 'easy mode' of normally tough quests) that weren't listed in MrCow's thread of ability scores.

Quickly lowering their strength was always a good idea when facing a marilith or that guy at the bottom of New Invasion. I'm not sure if it even still works at all, or if the change simply stopped bosses from becoming helpless.

[Junts]

Symbol of weakness is terrible. If they fail the save, they still lose the strength penalty when they either exit the symbol or it vanishes.

The best symbol spell is symbol of pain, which provides a monstrous debuff that lasts a very long time.

[division]

symbol of pain is basically just curse in a aoe version. Doesn't seem all that powerful in non-epic content where the enemies saves don't matter much anyways.

[nibel]

symbol of pain is basically just curse in a aoe version. Doesn't seem all that powerful in non-epic content where the enemies saves don't matter much anyways.

It stacks with curse.