Worst of the Worst Spells

[Quarterling]

All spell point costs are fair enough as is given the static formula of {Cost = Lvl*5+5}, so I will be omitting the rating of spell cost.

- Grease
- Effectiveness: 2
- The only thing I want done for this spell is to allow it to be heightened.

- Deep Slumber
- Effectiveness: 1
- It's been said before, you fight around 8+ HD enemies by the time you get the spell.

- Flame Arrow
- Effectiveness: 1
- Utterly useless. A caster might as well be using an eternal wand of finger of fire or something like that, not bows and arrows.

- Sleet Storm
- Effectiveness: 1
- Only thing it's useful for is griefing your team members.

- Acid Rain
- Effectiveness: 1
- It does very low damage over time, and the fact that every mob's hit points are over-inflated doesn't help.

- Burning Blood
- Effectiveness: 1
- See Acid Rain.

- Fire Trap
- Effectiveness: 1
- See Acid Rain.

- Acid Fog
- Effectiveness: 1
- See Acid Rain.

- Power Word: Blind
- Effectiveness: 1
- Anything over 600 hit points are unaffected? That's pretty much all mobs once you start doing level twelve quests. Again, the fact that every mob's hit points are over-inflated doesn't help.

- Incendiary Cloud
- Effectiveness: 1
- See Acid Rain.

- Power Word: Stun
- Effectiveness: 1
- See Power Word: Blind, but only works on enemies with 450 hit points or less.

- Trap the Soul
- Effectiveness: 2
- It's a nice alternative I use to Finger of Death for enemies with high fort and low will, but it's very costly and the soul gems aren't used for much right now.

- Power Word: Kill
- Effectiveness: -100
- Only works on enemies with 300 or fewer hit points? That's like reaching down into level eight quests now.

[sacredtheory]

I could go down the list as some others before me have done, one by one, rating each spell in the format that MadFloyd listed, but it would be similar to what's already been stated...I'm seeing a trend:

- Power word spells (1 out of 5): very limited usage
- Cloud/fog spells (2 out of 5): somewhat limited usage, they don't really seem to work that well
- HD/HP spells: just not worth it mid-levels on up

Also, I'd like to make a plea to the devs. I'm sure they've heard it before, but I hope they see it again. There needs to be a few more arcane spells that are viable in Amrath. We have so many spell choices to pick from, especially for low-to-mid level, and most of them are decent (as far as damage output goes). But come Amrath, that's not the case. It's not that I don't have fun spamming web and polar ray, but some AoE spells really need to be implemented (I'm thinking of you elec and acid). We have plenty of options for crowd control for that area, but no real damage spells save for a few.

Edit - for example, the 9th level spell "crushing hand" could be DDO'd into an AoE force spell with considerable damage

[krtkoo]

Imo Spawn screen and close wounds are the most useless spells

[Sronnop]

I would totally say Acid Spray.
I'ts just pointless when you ave other, better cone spells!

[Tobril]

Teleport/Greater Teleport
5
Good: Emergency egress and/or general transport is nice
Bad: Both need more locations due to new content areas

Word of Recall
2
Good: Emergency egress and/or general transport is nice
Bad: Needs more locations

Acid Rain
2
Good: Harms fire immune monsters
Bad: Extreme low duration for the spell level

Spawn Screen
1
I’ve never seen a monster create undead upon killing a PC.

Halt Undead
1 or 5
Situational – Highly effective against undead, otherwise useless

Sleet Storm
1 or 5
Situational – Must have freedom via item/buff

Grease
5
Hilarious
Can also be used by creative players as an alternative crowd control effect

Fire Trap
2
Poor effect for the planning required

Dimension Door
5
Emergency egress and/or time saving is highly useful
Unintended consequence of new proximity system requires arcane casters to be extremely brave during emergency egress situations (they have to leave last)

Symbol of Fire
1
Completely outclassed by wall of fire

Circle of Death
1
Good: Makes kobald assault easy
Bad: When the spell is acquired many monsters are ineligible targets

Summon Monster – All
3
Good: Distractions and extra support are nice.
Bad: No control of summoned creature ala hireling bar.
Other: It would be desirable to summon additional lower level creatures and/or add to the available choices for each level

Power Word – All
1
Inflated monster HP make these pretty useless

Trap the Soul
3
Good: Versatile “instant death”
Bad: Expensive, also a nuisance to crush dragonshards into the correct HD requirement

[GhostNull]

Tenser's Transformation:

1. Cost - carry around pots of bull strength, get carried around in someone's backpack (probably to be left out of range of a rez shrine)

2. Benefit - Nothing that can't be gotten from a divine clicky and appropriate gear.

Tenser's- This needs fixed make stat bonus +2 and arcane type or something other that stacks. Instead of no casting maybe remove all offensive casting (any that would break invis). To do this youd need to remove all scrolls from the game though anyone with some umd shouldnt get this bonus. Then add additional similar transformation spells.

I remember a suggestion a while back that would change the way Tenser's works in a similar way to the current incarnation of Combat Expertise. Still maintain the ability to cast spells but at double the cost. And double the cost should be applied from the base cost and not applied after base plus metamagics

I think Eladrin even made a comment about it...

[Sronnop]

Imo Spawn screen and close wounds are the most useless spells

Well, close wounds can be good, depending on the situation. it's a quick, easy spell.

[stockwizard5]

Worst Spells

1: Sleep (HD)
2: Daze (HD), Scare (HD), See Invisible (NT), Spawn Screen (NT)
3: Slumber (HD), Sleet (Broken), Stink (Broken)
4: Acid Rain (D/SP), Contagion (1m), Fire Trap (D/SP), Ice Storm (D/SP), S Flame (D/SP)
5: Cloudkill (Broken), S Pain (Duration)
6: Acid Fog (D/SP,Broken), C Death (HD), Disintigrate (Save), Stone to Flesh (NT), U Death (NT)
7: DB Fireball (D/SP), PW Blind (HD), S Weakness (Duration)
8: Incendiary (D/SP, Broken), PW Stun (HD), S Death (HD), Trap Soul (HD/Components)
9: Meteor (D/SP), Moredekainens (NT), PW Kill (HP)

All usefull direct damage spells no longer usefull at End Game Elite/EPIC Content (e.g. Sorc 10% is useless DD - maybe 100% at least) and more increasers needed with tradeoffs from items/PrC/etc. Also Crit DD should return multiplier * SP mana

[Crazyfruit]

SleetStorm: Spellcost 5, Effectiveness 5 situationally, but also a 1 with poor teammates. A faster casting speed would help it be more useful.

What Ranmaru2 said about sleet storm above. It's a very powerful spell and just as annoying for monsters as it is for you!

Especially good for soloers who wont have silly teammates rushing into it. My old caster used it often in pre-masshold epics (I refused to do the firewall + stand in door/hide in an invulnerable spot with all aggro most people consider tactics) and it was a big help in our successes. Typically 0 pot runs for everyone.

I rarely see it used (even when everyone has FoM), but it and the new ice storm could be a pretty fantastic combo as-is.

Tenser's Transformation: Spellcost 1 due to shutting off all spells. Effectiveness 2. The bonuses are nice, and it's handier than a Divine Power clicky, but it would be a much more useful spell if we could disable it somehow.

[voodoogroves]

Hmmm ... to rate them all ... that's tough. Lemme try some generalities first:

- Any spell beyond 6th or to a limited degree 6th that is meant to do damage. Potency items make casting 6th level spells far more useful and efficient the bulk of the time.
**** instead of up-ing the damage on these maybe add a rider to some of these to daze, stun, etc. short term ... something that is thematic (maybe cold can slow) and only works on some kinds of creatures, etc.

List includes but is not limited to undeath to death, power word X, holy word/dictum/etc.


- Any spell based on HP or HD, even if it was based on that in PNP. Power Word X. Holy Word. etc. Those things that may work in a more linear world of PNP fail to be useful in DDO. With max HP per level and I'm sure monster HD-scaling by difficulty, plenty of them are just not going to work often enough to bother trying.
**** I'm sure you've got scaling numbers you use when you're building new content.


- Spells that affect the UI of the player as opposed to the character too much. Sleet Storm, Cloudkill, etc. Glitterdust and Blindness I can totally see, but the others are just too painful on the PLAYER, not so much on the character.


- Non-waves debuffers ... poison, contagion, etc. maybe even including prismatic spray ... since trash dies so fast and bosses generally are immune to most of the debuffing effects, these are back-burnered.


Some specific spells:

Trap the Soul - I want to love this spell, but the fact that I have to move **** out of my bags when I want to use it and make sure I've got the right sized shards moved out, etc. means I rarely if ever use it. Like only when I'm farming for soul gems intentionally.

[phalaeo]

I was just going to start a thread on this myself.

So I'm encouraging participation in this thread!

Personally, I'd like to see something like:

- spell name
- 1-5 rating on spell cost (1 being bad, 5 being appropriate)
- 1-5 rating on spell effectiveness
- comments

These are spells that I never find myself using for the most part.

Glyph of Warding/Greater Glyph of Warding
5
1
People will not wait for you to cast a symbol that does little damage, so not worth casting. I prefer the CC symbols... especially because Clerics have no enhancement lines for this.

Word of Recall
1
1
Useless. Cast off of scrolls or get a Royal Guard Mask/UMD. Would be better if Temple was in Jorasco near the Divine Vendor.

Seek Eternal Rest
1
1
Never cast it. I'm sure you know that even with the improvements to turning, it's still just.... not used.

Firestorm
2
2
Too expensive, and no enhancement lines... would rather cast Cometfall/Flamestrike

Poison/Contagion
3
1
Nobody is going to stand around and wait a minute for these spells to take effect.

Symbol of Death
3
1
It's a Fort. Save, so mostly works against.... casters. Who wont kite into your symbols to begin with. Also, does not work well at the level you get it- by the time you get it, all the mobs save against it (in my experience)

Thanks, guys!

[Scraap]

- spell name
mass bears/bulls/cats/eagles/owls.
- 1-5 rating on spell cost (1 being bad, 5 being appropriate)
3
- 1-5 rating on spell effectiveness
1
- comments
By level 11-13, most folks have access to at least +4 gear. By 15, non RR +6s are available. Only conceivable fix I could possibly see would be perhaps changing those to a 'natural' bonus, though that would of course mean accounting for +10 stats.

- spell name
The Symbol spells
- 1-5 rating on spell cost (1 being bad, 5 being appropriate)
4
- 1-5 rating on spell effectiveness
2
- comments
might do with tossing down to twice wall of fire duration (120 seconds extended at 20, say) instead of the 5 minutes but once triggered dissipate after 20 seconds bit.

- spell name
Fear
- 1-5 rating on spell cost (1 being bad, 5 being appropriate)
3
- 1-5 rating on spell effectiveness
1
- comments
"An invisible cone of terror causes each living enemy in an area to become panicked. A successful Will save causes enemies to become shaken." There are a lot of responses to panic. Running, curling into a ball (tripped), going berserk and attacking everything around you (loss of hate, but also attacks it's allies) to name 3. Perhaps a bit of random action there would at least make this one amusing.


- spell name
Acid Rain
- 1-5 rating on spell cost (1 being bad, 5 being appropriate)
5
- 1-5 rating on spell effectiveness
1
- comments
bit of a thread already on this one

If they do get around to a wholistic balance revamp, it'd be nice to see say, half a firewalls time for the cloud to allow the DoT to catch, and the DoT it's self brought up to melfs standards (minus the cloud time, since it'd be re-catching if they stay in it, say?). That would strike me, at least, as sufficiently differentiated in action from WoF not to amount to the same thing with a different visual effect. Doubt the damage should be the same though in that scenario. After all once the DoT catches, there's not the same need to drag them back through the cloud.

- spell name
Flaming Sphere
- 1-5 rating on spell cost (1 being bad, 5 being appropriate)
5
- 1-5 rating on spell effectiveness
1
- comments
at 2d6 with no extending, hieghtening, maximizing, ect and randomly rolling around... not real worth it. Perhaps allowing the metamagics to it alongside treating it like those spheres the dogs roll on in carnival (ie, can be destroyed, but causes burst aoe damage in the process) would help there.

There's a few with a few notions. Not gonna by any means say they're all necessarily good ones, but it might be food for thought, at least.

Edit:
I will note that the interpretation used of maximise being x2 instead of removing variation and using the max possible damage is understandable, but to ignore the non-damage spells seems like an oversight, by which I mean a maxed false life should give x2, just as a Ray of Enfeeblement should get a boost of 1d6*2 str damage, for instance, instead of purely focusing on the hit-point sub-stat. aka "Dangit Jim, I'm a wizard not a barbarian!"

[CaptGrim]

Most DoTs need a buff. a DOT should do TWICE the damage of an instant for the same cost.

Single target vs AoE should be looked at as well,

All instant damage should cost less sp than AoE DoTs

All HD limit spells need altered

A few others that stand out for me...

Horrid Wilting:
Cost: 4
Effectiveness: 2
Fix: Make it negative damage so that PMs can buff it. Even if you put it as the same cost as the "new" Delayed blast fireball, it would still almost never be used, as there are no enhancements, and only clickable buffs.

Sunburst:
Cost: 4
Effectiveness: 2
Comments:The Blindness is great and its cool to nuke Vamps with 20d6 purple damage, but it just isn't worth the SP casting it...no buffs like the above(at least for arcanes)
Fix: leave as is except move damage up to 15d6 or 10d6 + 1 per caster level. It wouldn't be a great nuke spell but a hybrid...ok damage(instead of just enough to get aggro) and a cool effect on a failed save.

Charms:
Cost: 5
Effectiveness: 4
The only issue is that Suggestion has a much more predictable duration, in most at lvl content Suggestion will out last a charmed mob. On my Enchantment focused wizard I carry Suggestion, and Dominate...not a single charm.
Fix: Swap the way Suggestion and Charm work, and perhaps throw in a little buff for the charms.

I'll post more later,

PS, I dislike changing things away from PnP but for the sake of the game and usable spells, Changes are necessary. I love the Dev interaction on this Subject and all of the Update 7 stuff, you guys have really renewed my faith in your team and future of this game. +1 Devs

[Autolycus]

Quick list until I can check.

Undeath to Death - it's unbelievable how useless this spell is

Decide whether there should or should not be friendly fire in game. If not, fix spells such as grease, etc..

[Aesop]

Sleet Storm
Cost= 4
Benefit= 2-3

Comment: This spell has some benefits but it effect on Party Memebers make it highly disliked in general. Perhaps just something like making it less effective against party members would be nice...


Acid Rain
Cost= 3
Benefit= 2-3

Comment: Too short and the non stacking nature of Acid make this a sub par choice... An initial Drenching Effect perhaps doing 1d4/caster level capping out at 10d4 followed by the acid burn effect 3d4 per tick for 1 tick per 2 levels... or something like that.


Burning Blood
Cost=4
Benefit=3

Comment: This effect needs something else added to it... searing pain should be lancing across the victim of this... perhaps either a small slow effect or stacking penalties of some sort... perhaps a movement and attack penalty like 75% Movement -2 to hit.


Contagion
Cost= 3
Benefit= 2

Comment: You are better off killing the things on average. The effects are too slow and the "contagious disease" doesn't appear to be contagious very often.


Mind Fog

Cost=4
Benefit=3

Comment: Will Negates on an effect that reduces Will Saves seems... strange. Perhaps Will for partial instead or have it tick every 2 sec to retest for success.


Acid Fog

Cost=2
Benefit=3

Comment: As a dps spell this lacks the effectivness of lower level spells. As a CC spell its apparently not working. First thing is to fix that CC portion and then perhaps give this the same treatment as the Acid Rain suggestion of an immersion damage though perhaps d6 per level max 15d6 plus the DoT effect.


Circle of Death. Undeath to Death

Cost=2
Benefit=1

Comment: Neither are useful in at level of acquisition or higher content. Perhaps give it a secondary effect that damages or debuffs or something and increase the hp maximums


Tenser's Transformation

Cost=3
Benefit=2

Comment: This is one of those effects that just doesn't work in this type of setting. It is weaker than Divine Power on too many levels (this doesn't mean you should nerf Divine Power). Make the Stat increases smaller but stacking (+2 and Exceptional)and apply a 50% increase to spell cost for casting while in this form. Additionally apply an increase for higher caster levels. Increase the Stat and other numerical bonuses by 1 every 4 levels after 11.


Power Word x

Cost=2
Benefit=2

Comment: Hp based spells in general are difficult to balance in this type of game. Perhaps a Percentage of HP would be better or a save effect for those outside of the initial parameters.


Incendiary Cloud

Cost=2
Benefit=2

Comment: Too little damage for the output. Similar to Acid Fog this spell needs a DPS boost. In this case though perhaps an increase in the DPT (Damage per Tick) add in an extra +1 per caster level... or something like that


Meteor Storm

Cost=3
Benefit=3

Comment: difficult to aim correctly causes this effect to lag behind when it should shine.




Additional issues.

WoF and even other standing DoT effects (Blade Barrier and Acid Fog to lesser extents) outpace Direct Damage Spells too far for the same, similar and in come cases lesser costs.

Suggestion: Add a SP tax onto those spells. Perhaps Half the Cpell Level in SP per Tick. So A Wall of Fire would cost standard SP +2 SP per tick. If the spell is negated by other effects (like Ice Storm) then the cost stops as well.


Aesop

[phalaeo]

ICE STORM-

I just read that you guys were beefing it up a little- any chance that you can change the animation/sound?
One of the most annoying spells to have to watch/listen to in the whole game. Ear-grating.

[Junts]

Delayed Blast Fireball / Chain Lightning
Effectiveness: 4
Cost-effectiveness: 1

These spells, in the hands of high-end casters, are tremendous. However, they are way too much mana drian to be used regularly, and for single-target damage, the fact that mobs can save on even a 20 makes polar ray better almost all the time. They need a cost reduction so that there are times when casting them is a better idea than just casting walls of fire, outside of situations where wall doesn't work (eg mantle of invulnerability, immunity to fire, etc).

Cone of Cold / Ball Lightning

Effectiveness: 3
Cost-effectiveness: 1

As above, but they cap at a lower damage total, and in cone's case suffer the evil slow-casting-by-a-sorc-bug shared with scorching ray. These spells are only good when you have mana to burn, which is unfortunate, as they are the 2nd-best spells of their element and you would expect someone specialzied in that element to want to use them more often.

Symbol of (X)
Effectiveness 3-4
Cost-effectiveness: 4
Cooldown: 1

Several symbol spells provide very effective, useful crowd control that, by virtue of their mechanics, shine in certian content (for example, sym of persuasion is the best charm spell vs high-save foes, since you can kite htem through it to make them save repeatedly). However, the cooldowns make these spells prohibitively bad for anyone who isn't a sorceror, and they're niche even for sorcerors. Consider reducing their cooldowns to 2/3 or so of what they are now, so they are still fairly long to counteract the repeated-saves benefit.

Symbol of death
effectiveness: 1
cost-effectiveness: 5

This suffers the power-word kill problem, but would be amazing if it worked at all, since you could kite mobs into it. Buff it carefully, as its at a much more forgivign spell tier (8) than other death spells. However, please buff it.

Meteor Swarm:
Effectiveness: 4
Cost-effectiveness: 1

Like delayed-blast fireball, but capable of even more damage. However, the difficulty in accessing buffs to it makes it a lot harder to use well. Further, it still costs too much. It suffers from a problem of producing 4 meteors but only being able to hit with 3 of htem, making it only 24d6 total damage. If the 4th could hit, it would be 32d6 damage and be used -a lot- more often. However, this would also make meteor-swarm spam mobs far more dangerou than they are now, so that should be approached with care. Consider leaving it at 3 meteors, but reducing cost (but less than the above lv 6-7 spells).

Summon Monsters 1-9.
Effectiveness: 1-2
Cost-effectiveness: 5

Buff all these, even the hezrou. They're all still very bad, except the Hezrou, who's primarily only good when dungeon-scaling is reducing mob strength. Consider making them all subject to dungeon scaling, so that they will scale up when quest difficulty scales. This would give the spells a neat niche, where unlike other spells which may vary significantly based on difficulty (eg damage-based spells become much worse when mob hp increase), the summons would be equally good on all difficulties. It would then be compelling for some reason besides 'I have 5 lv 9 spell slots and i have to load something'. I appreciate that might be a funky mechanic, but I think it would be very cool. You should even let them increase in power on epic setting to the appropriate strength. Summoned monsters already have other downsides which would become stronger under this setup (eg the awy that greater dispelling them makes them hostile), and that would make them quite cool. You'd then only have to balance htem once and let the scaling of their abilities keep them good at all difficulties. This would be a huge benefit to wizards and clerics who can afford to spend a slot on them, and on pure versions of the same over splashes.

The general problem with hp and hd-based spells has been hit hard by this thread already, so I won't bother going into them: I believe you guys are acutely aware already of what the problem is with their mechancis in general.

[dragons1ayer74]

Level 1-3 Review of Worst of Worst

Obscuring Mist (Level 1 Arcane) Cost: 1 Effectiveness: 1 - Rarely ever take seems to work well for the kobolds but horrible for the players

Summon Monster ? (Level 1-9) Cost: 5 Effectiveness: 3 – Could be tougher and stronger plus it would be nice to have other options like feats that allow you to get more than 1 and limited interaction like go pull that switch

Hypnotism (Level 1 Arcane) Cost: 5 Effectiveness: 5 – for low level crowd control against sentient creatures does not get much better than this

Sleep (Level 1 Arcane) Cost: 2 Effectiveness: 1 – Would work well against kobolds on normal setting after that don’t bother

Merfolk's Blessing (Level 1 Arcane) Cost: 2 Effectiveness: 3 – Duration should be similar to other utility spells at 1 min per level, the spell is far too situational. It would be nice if this was like a haste effect in the Redfens quest

Fog Cloud (Level 2 Arcane) Cost: 1 Effectiveness: 1 – Does this spell do anything in game other than a hindering player visual effect?

Daze Monster (Level 2 Arcane) Cost: 1 Effectiveness: 1 – Limited duration, limited hit dice, hypnotism is 1 level lower and more useful!

See Invisibility (Level 2 Arcane) Cost: 1 Effectiveness: 1 – No idea on how/where it would be useful unless it was a huge buff to spot that could be given out to as a buff then perhaps renamed to danger sense.

Flaming Sphere (Level 2 Arcane) Cost: 2 Effectiveness: 3 – Not enough damage out put per spell point cost to be useful to fix it should do a bit more damage and concentrate on an enemy until the enemy is dead and be less random rolling around.

Blindness (Level 2 Arcane) Cost: 1 Effectiveness: 3 – If you have Gliterdust (multi-target, duration additional benefit) or blindness as a choice for a level 2 spell which one do you cast?

Spawnscreen (Level 2 Arcane) Cost: 1 Effectiveness: 1 – Do players every die from wraiths? It needs some other useful effect to be used imo.

Fear Based Spells (Various Level Arcane) Cost: 4 Effectiveness: 2 – Instead of running feared monsters should cower in place, some player consider the use of fear an annoying grief tactic.

Ooze Puppet (Level 2 Arcane) Cost: 4 Effectiveness: ? – Works great on some slime but terrible or not at all on others.

Dispel Magic (Level 3 Arcane) Cost: 3 Effectiveness: 2 – Might be better to have to forms one for self and friends which only dispels benevolent effects and another for enemies that strips them of buffs also more utility like dispelling magic barriers for quicker access through quests would make it desirable.

Stinking Cloud (Level 3 Arcane) Cost: 1 Effectiveness: 1 – another bugged completely not working cloud spell.

Deep Slumber (Level 3 Arcane) Cost: 2 Effectiveness: 1 – see level 1 sleep spell.

Flame Arrow (Level 3 Arcane) Cost: 3 Effectiveness: 2 – It should be like PnP and have not only the utility effect but also be able to be cast on an enemy to blast them with flaming arrows.

Acid Rain (Level 3 Arcane) Cost: 3 Effectiveness: 3 – Too little damage to be useful compared to other damaging spells of this level.

Slow (Level 3 Arcane) Cost: 3 Effectiveness: 2 – the fact that moving targets out run this make it broken in comparison to other choices.

[Doxmaster]

Flame arrow is fine. It’s more a spell casts to aid others (an AA or repeater rogue), or one’s self (if you are an AA/repeater rogue with UMD) than an attack spell.

Spawn screen works just fine, last time I checked. No one ever uses it or needs it though. It could probably be removed from the game without anyone ever noticing though.

Acid rain is horrible because, as a DoT spell, it neither does decent damage nor lasts a decent amount of time.

Halt undead…halts undead. I’m not completely sure what you want from this spell Tobril. If there are undead that cannot be halted even though they are supposed to be halt-able(nameless, non-red/orange undead), let us know.

Blindness is a great spell*: fort save or be useless. Great on casters, archers and rogues. Glitterdust is its sibling spell: great on melees, archers and rogues. It, however, has a slower casting time and is a static spell.

* Spellcasters cast with 100% effectiveness, despite not knowing where they are casting. I believe a 50% spell failure or 50% spell blocking mechanic should be added to the blind effect.

Symbol of persuasion- the person who cast the symbol can’t de-charm monsters hit with the symbol’s Suggest spell. The symbol actually seems to be a spell caster instead of a spell that has a delay.

Trap the soul; the highest HD version should be uncapped, if it isn’t already.

[sirgog]

Prior to TRing, I kept Trap the Soul on my Sorc, and did not take Finger of Death.

That's because FoD targets a universally strong or medium save, while TTS targets a save that's often very weak.

I would like to see a 40HD version, however, and a vendor that sells the higher tier components (like the 10HD ones are currently sold) so we don't need to spend five minutes at a time crunching the Tiny D-Shards into Small and Average ones.