[ChaosTheorist]

Thank you for the kind words, ChaosTheorist,

Ouch. Didn't mean to sound patronizing; sorry if it came across that way.

but actually getting damage in that range is meant quite literally and is not that uncommon at all. Even among Magic-Heavy parties, spells and styles used vary quite a bit between players. Yeah, the high end of the range and higher than that are rare.

"not that uncommon at all....the high end of the range and higher than that are rare."

So it's rare but not uncommon; got it

Let me describe one battle (of several similar) that I made note of. It was two groups of Hellspawn, about 500 HP each, attacking from the same direction. In the first attacking round, my Alchemist cast Tsunami, Mage cast Blizzard and Gadgeteer used a Water Cannon. All three hit all 12. For the Alchemist, the average damage was 107, for the Mage 96 and for the Gadgeteer 72. That gives damage of 1284, 1152, and 864, for a total of about 3300 damage from those three characters alone. After two attack rounds only a couple with a few HP each were still alive. In my post I rounded up to 1300, for the Alchemist.

Impressive. What level are these characters? I rarely see damage like that from my casters.

Tsunami is definitely a kick-ass damage spell. Bang-for-the-buck, it's the most damaging spell in the game. Well, technically I guess it's second best, but the "real" most damaging spell--Banish--is so special-purpose that I don't count it.

I rarely go for thinning type spells in my style (those that kill some but leave the rest unharmed. I always go for maximum damage. Six opponents hit at once was more typical, but about 10 at a time is pretty common, too. All 12 in range of my cone spells was sweet.

And is kind of what I meant by "ideal conditions": being able to hit twice the "typical" number of opponents with high-damage spells.

I think, in one large battle, the Alchemists use of Earthquake gives more damage even than that.

It will if you can't get them all nicely grouped into a Tsunami kill cone. Earthquake is like the equivalent level 7 spells (Mind Flay and Nuclear Blast): costs 18SP/power level, does 12HP/power level to all accessible enemies. But, if you can get them into the cone, Tsunami does more damage (15HP/power level) and costs less (15SP/power level).

The typical rhythm is: Round 1) not an attack round. Enemies engaged but out of range or at extreme range. Get Soul and Element Shields up, cast Bless and Haste, then with any remaining firepower take potions of Superman, Eye for Eye and or cast area effect spells (including, perhaps, Acid Bomb) that can reach at that extreme range and begin the damage.

And this is where I'd use a high-level Death Cloud if available. As mentioned, I rarely see the damage numbers you're quoting, so a group of 500HP monsters is going to take more than a couple of rounds to finish off. That being the case, it's really nice to have a Death Cloud hanging over them the entire battle--every round, every one of them runs the risk of disappearing from the scene.

However, I agree that the one-shot instant-kill spells (Quicksand, Instant Death/Death Wish, Asphyxiation) don't really seem to earn their keep, at least not at the character levels I usually see. Maybe a level 35-40 Priest would get good results from Death Wish, but my kids usually get little more from it than Divine-realm skill practice.

As an aside, the Death Lords in the SE Wilderness shrine seem to consistently get *great* results from Death Cloud, at least on Expert difficulty. I tried to take my "no magic" party through there on Expert, and lost *three* of them in one round!

Note that these are not low resistance monsters. It's just that Powercast in the 95-110 range blows through all but the very highest resistances. Resistances of 90-110 are not too bad at all.

Power Cast at 95+? Holy crap! Again, what level are these guys?

(since Bards and Gadgeteers do not benefit from Powercast)

One of my (relatively) few complaints with the way Wiz8's magic/skill system is set up. Bards and Gadgeteers are already penalized during combat by being Stamina-based; not getting an effectiveness bonus for maxing INT just adds to the insult. I guess that's supposed to offset the "free" spell-casting ability out of combat, but I'm not sure that it quite evens out.

Steve