Silver Fire - Level 3 Cleric/FvS
SP Cost: 8 Base
School: Evocation
Component: Somatic, Verbal
Spell Resistance: No
Description: Focuses Weave Magic energy into an incredibly powerful beam that deals 5 to 8 damage per caster level (up to a maximum of 100 to 160 at caster level 20). Ray spells have double range.


So, I've had cure serious wounds sitting in a L3 spell slot, and I never use it, and there was never anything else I wanted instead. So with this new spell, I decided to swap it and try it out. Took it into normal New Ringleader just to have plenty of targets that didn't threaten me at all so I could massacre them without having to pay attention to survival and such.

Cooldown is 3 seconds.

With AoV2, and FvS Smiting III, I took off my spellpower stuff, and turned off max and empower.

Killed about a dozen kobolds, the damage report says that it is inflicting light damage (which the description omits). It also went purple for the few targets that picked up Condemnation stacks. Damage was very consistant at the 48-52 range, except for one kobold who only took 28. I assume he made his save. Which is odd, because the description makes no mention of a DC, and does not list the spell's DC as any other spell that has one does.

I note that 52 damage is considerably less than the 100-160 the description indicates, far less with Smiting III theoretically giving 60 spellpower. I -should- be seeing those hits in the 160 - 256, but the highest that appeared was 57 (non-crit) in repeated attempts. Did get one crit for 115.

Turned on Empower: Damage went up to the 70-80 range. Average was 74.

Empower Off, Maximize On: Damage consistantly in the 96-102 range. Got a crit for 223.

Empower On, Maximize On: Hits for 115-130.

Empower, Maximize, Tier2 Cove Dagger (Potency 48 & 15 Implement SP): Damage range from 155-168.

Decided to test out this save thing...level 2 kobolds are not the best way to get good results there, so I walked over to Lords of Dust and went in on Epic-Hard. I killed off the first room with nothing but this spell, and none of the cultists or dogs made their save. I don't know where the 28 damage on that one kobold came from. I originally thought he'd just happened to roll a 20 on his save, but something else must have gone on there.

Verdict: It's difficult to really say with the bugs afflicting Radiance/Devotion spellpower. On the surface, a spell that hits for 140ish for 8 SP + spellpower boosts from enhancements and items is pretty nice. I'd probably consider using it regularly without running Empower or Maximize on it, as a way to build up light damage stacks for the Ex-Alt powers that ask for light spells, and as a ray it's good for sniping stuff and the damage would frankly not suck that much.

Assuming 140 average unenhanced.
60 SP for Smiting III
105 SP for a Radiance 90 +5 Implement weapon
=165 Spell Power
140x2.65 = 371 points. For 8 SP, that's fairly beefy. Assuming I did the SP math right.

I wonder though if the caster level cuts off earlier than the 20 advertised, it would be one way to explain the significantly reduced damage from what the tooltip indicates. I'm keeping it for now (honestly, I have nothing else I'd put in that spell slot), hopefully when the first patch hits, we'll see where it stands.