The worst magic in games.

[Saltyk]

That's right. Debuffing magic sucks. I'd rather just bash the enemy with my sword, then take a chance of maybe putting them to sleep. Often it would only take one or two blows to kill him anyway. Poison spells tend to be worthless against most enemies as they don't have the large amount of health to make it worthwhile. And silence never seems to work on magic using enemies. And Instant Death spells may work 10% of the time (forget it on bosses). Usually, you're better off just beating and nuking them to death.

In most RPGs, I'd agree that saboteur/indirect magic is rather useless.

In a couple, however, including FF7, which I'm playing for the first time, sometimes the mechanics of the magics work together to make a combo which is quite fun. Put something to sleep, poisoned, and it will die in its sleep if you just wait. The enemy will only wake up if it is physically attacked, so you could even just put it to sleep and hit it with multiple waves of magic and it is helpless.

In Golden Sun, and its sequel, sleep lasts from a turn to 3 turns, on average. But that can be incredibly helpful. Poison, when used tactically, does a hell of a lot of damage, and even when it doesn't, it's quite fun to watch something tough dying to miniscule amounts of damage while you sit and tank.

It really depends on the game, and the situation in the game. If more poison was like Toxic in Pokemon, where the damage per hit grew as time passed, I'd love it as a normal spell. As it is, it's rather situational, but I like the indirect flavor of magic.

In FF7, I'd say just the opposite. It's never worth putting a random enemy to sleep. Why waste a turn, when Cloud will kill most randoms with a single slash? What you describe sounds more like messing with enemies then trying to kill them. The only reason I even used the Bio spell was because it also did a considerable amount of damage while trying to inflict poison on the enemy. More often than not, I feel like using a status inducing spell is a waste of a turn. I do agree that FF13 did make Saboteurs more useful than most games, but I still used them less often than the other roles.

I will admit, for most RPGs, you are completely correct. Not 100% of them though.

Daze effects in Borderlands, for example, are extremely useful; there are many ways to get it, and once affected an enemy is completely harmless until it wears off. Likewise, in any Dungeons and Dragons based video game, debuffs can be extremely helpful, particularly debuffs that hit a large area.

As for other games... It's almost never worth it to use a debuff in any JRPG, despite availability and effect; you pretty much only want them on bosses since everything else dies so quickly, but most JRPG bosses are immune anyway, so anything besides damage is a waste of a turn. Though, even in many western RPGs, debuffs aren't worth it; I never used any in Morrowind, and only the paralyze effects were of any use in Dragon Age (the other debuffs I tried, but they seemed to do so little I never bothered again).

Exactly my thoughts. If the status would be useful, like say silence on a mage, they are immune to the effect. And forget it on 90% of bosses. You're lucky if poison works. In Dragon Age: Origins, I found the best "debuffs" to be spells like Cone of Cold. It did a considerable amount of damage and temporarily froze the enemy. Perfect spell.

I know there are some games that make status inducing spells better, but I rarely feel like they are worth the effort.

 

[Lord Devius]

In FF7, I'd say just the opposite. It's never worth putting a random enemy to sleep. Why waste a turn, when Cloud will kill most randoms with a single slash? What you describe sounds more like messing with enemies then trying to kill them. The only reason I even used the Bio spell was because it also did a considerable amount of damage while trying to inflict poison on the enemy. More often than not, I feel like using a status inducing spell is a waste of a turn. I do agree that FF13 did make Saboteurs more useful than most games, but I still used them less often than the other roles.

I was talking more for bosses, especially before you get any really hard-hitting stuff. Yeah, random enemies, hold down the circle button and watch them get decimated, but hard-ish bosses you can't really do that with.

 

[TK421]

I hate debuffing magic. Why waste good creativity on magic that either only works ~2-15% of the time or reduces an enemy's attack/defense/mana by like 4%? Seriously, that crap is mostly useless to anyone, and absolutely useless to me, and most of the gaming population.

 

[Saltyk]

You know how it goes. You are playing your new RPG and are considering what spells to equip, learn, or whatever system the game uses to determine magic. You see healing magic, something only a fool would bypass. Elemental attack magic, vital to mages, and especially useful if you take advantage of enemy weaknesses. Support magic, that can give you the edge in battle, especially against bosses.

And Debuffing magic. You skip this crap every time.

That's right. Debuffing magic sucks. I'd rather just bash the enemy with my sword, then take a chance of maybe putting them to sleep. Often it would only take one or two blows to kill him anyway. Poison spells tend to be worthless against most enemies as they don't have the large amount of health to make it worthwhile. And silence never seems to work on magic using enemies. And Instant Death spells may work 10% of the time (forget it on bosses). Usually, you're better off just beating and nuking them to death.

I will admit that this does not count in MMOs where debuffing is vital. And more recent games have made it somewhat more viable. But I still think of debuffing as less useful then just nuking or bashing enemies. It's what you resort to when the enemy is too strong, but most enemies are not deserving of that treatment. And often they are immune to the spells or the spells have a low success rate.

What do you think, escapists?

FFVIII's debuffs were actually very useful. But of course, instead of casting them, you junctioned them to your weapons. Nothing beat attacking an enemy and applying Silence/ Blind or Berserk/ Blind. Nothing could actually hit you at that point.

FFVI had a wonderful trick that even worked on most bosses.
Cast Vanish then cast Doom. Yep, Death spells then worked 100% of the time.

I agree that debuffs can be useless in many games, but there are always a few games with very useful debuffs.

EDIT: Reading above, FFXIII's saboteurs are vital to that game. The only way to 5 star some marks is through the saboteur.

Ahhh, but by junctioning the magic into your weapon so that your attack inflicts status ailments, you are circumventing status inflicting magic. A very effective way to do so, but still not using that turn to cast blind, but rather to attack and inflict it at the same time. Even if the enemy was immune to blind, you didn't waste an attack.

All in all, good points all around there.

 

[ClassicJokester]

"Wait, what's this? You only have status-inducing magic spells! Why, those suck!"

About Random Battles!

I was literally thinking of that when I made this post

Haha yay! It was the first thing I thought of when I saw your avatar and the topic.
(Sorta) on topic, though, I used Silence and Sleep all the time in FFX. They were excellent against some of the early big bads. I was going to say Dark Attacks too, but they do considerable damage too.

 

[CarpathianMuffin]

I've always been a fan of debuffing, though only on boss level enemies. Otherwise I just stick with plain old lightning and fire, preferably at once, or life stealing.
Twas quite a successful and semi-famous necromancer in Guild Wars when I used to play, based on these principles.

But that wasn't the topic. xD
Getting tired...

The magic that I find the most useless is raising the dead and the like, or light spells.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Without the context of a particular system my thinking would probably go like this:

Destruction magic does exactly what I want magic to do: blows stuff up. It offers the all important offense, the thing upon which the entire system relies. Destruction is therefore, the most important magic.

Defensive magic would encompass the various defensive spells. Shields to ward off arrows or turn blades, spells that mend flesh and heal burns. Sure, a big enough glass cannon can probably solve the problem, but if you can't guarntee the first shot, you'll want something to defend yourself wit.

Support Magic - it might make a friend hit harder or run faster. By itself, this magic does nothing not already being done through other means. But, because it makes what you do better, it's certainly useful to have.

Manipulation magic - perhaps spells that bend others to your will or something that gets you where you need to be without having to put up with the one foot in front of the other nonsense, these spells generally offer alternate solutions to a problem. Still, since any problem can be resolved with the appropriate application of force this is more or less redundant. It might be useful for someone.

Debilitating Magic - if the fireball just didn't set the target on fire enough, perhaps they need to be made extra flamable? This sort of magic just makes an enemy worse at something. Of course, I could do the same thing just be swinging harder, casting bigger or hiring goons. This is perhaps the least useful form of magic because it is the most situational. Sure, a fireball might not be the best solution to every problem but it will solve most of them. And it isn't like you ran out of elements or destruction after fire. Time I waste weakening the nemy is time I could have spent annihilating them instead. Perhaps, over a long enough timeline, in the right set of circumstances, such a magic is useful but for the most part you might as well make better use of your time by setting them on fire sooner. It might not burn as hot or as long but at least you won't be letting the fires die out while you try and whittle down some resistance or another.

 

[d3structor]

I tried getting through Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne without using debuffs.

It didn't turn out well.

Don't mention Matador to me.

 

[Gigaguy64]

Hmm.
i do agree that Debuff Magic is useless in a lot of RPGs but not every one,.

Golden Sun for example.
A Turn based JRPG with a huge selection of Psynergy(Magic).
Your Wind user was you best friend for the simple fact that he/she could learn powerful Psynergy that could lower an entire opponent party's ATK/DEF/RES/SPD by a huge amount.
And it even worked on Bosses.
They would even learn the typical Status Effect skills and one that could inflect an Instant Death Status Effect, even on Bosses, and Skills that could boost your entire parts Stats in a single use.

OT:I actually cant really think of any Skill that's completely useless as it usually just depends on he game you are playing.

 

[Serenegoose]

I tried getting through Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne without using debuffs.

It didn't turn out well.

Don't mention Matador to me.

Oh.... owch.
You poor thing

OT: Debuffs are entirely dependent on the game they're in. Sometimes they're so fractional as to be useless, sometimes they're utterly necessary. My biggest problem with them is that in most games, boss monsters are immune to debuffs. This is a TERRIBLE idea, because it reduces them from fights where you have to play at your smartest to where you just have to hope you can hit hard enough and packed enough potions.

My favourite debuff class is tough decision between Warcrafts Warlock and Guild Wars Mesmer. I think I prefer the Mesmer though.

 

[Illithidae]

It seems that in most single-player games the debuffing magic is so terrible and useless that it's better to not bother and go learn how to pick nits from chimp backs for all the help it'll do for your combat ability.
Most multi-player games seem to have them buffed to some kind of usability. Being a player of HoN, it's surprising how much of a difference a 3% movement speed reduction makes.