I think the most useless skill is Apotheosis Especially on the final fight. I got this skill and through the whole game I never had a reason to use it once.

Maybe if it had a 0 AP cost, I could see it as more useful.

Honestly a lot of the source skills are kind of bad and you can get by just using normal magic.

Did anyone find breathing bubbles useful?

I think, you are pretty alone with that. For many Aphotheosis is more a must have for the most insane damage output strategies.

Many source skills are kind of terrible. Apotheosis isn't one of them though. It allows for some really broken combos, especially as Fane.

I use that skill in difficult fights and its totally OP with my elemental mages o.O

Useless skills? I vote "Smoke cover", "glitter dust" or the unique source skill of the Red Prince.

My vote is for break the shackles, Sebille's source skill. But her flesh sacrifice makes up for it.

How about Taunt? Why this skill even exist is beyond me.

Every elf has flesh sacrifice, and everyone who shapeshifts into an elf

There are many useless skills in the unmodded game. Apotheosis isn't one of them.

I think that Provoke, Smoke Cover and Breathing Bubbles are good contenders.

Apo is completely unnecessary unless you're going for some overkill record lol. idk what situation you guys could possibly need that in other than maybe early on in tactician where you're still gearing up. One meteor shower, thunderstorm, or arrow storm(w.e it's called) knocks out most enemies if done right, and if all grouped up, it can kill them all. After that it's just cleanup.

By that metric, the majority of Skills are useless. The discussion concerns which is the most useless. Apotheosis is still useful, even if it's rarely used because the game is ridiculously easy.

If apotheosis is useless then I don't know what's op lmao, it makes solo mage's life much easier level 16 and beyond, without it I probably can't do certain encounters.

• Blood Rain is pretty stupid.
• Snipe is so boring and restrictive considering the level requirement.
• Bleed Fire is trashy.
• Aportation in combat, lol.
• Terrain Transmutation is pretty bleh.
• Sabotage is derpy, but an interesting idea.
• Corpse Explosion - Does no damage and hard to land.

Handful of skills there that are borderline crap, made worse by the fact that memory tax is a very real thing and this game hates you having multiple skills.

Terrain Transmutation is at least reasonably useful. There are lots of times when I might want to switch the surfaces of things. It's at least something I've found much more useful than Smoke Cover, even if a lot of that is out of combat.

Bleed Fire is probably one of the worst. Like, when exactly would that ever be more helpful than detrimental?

Corpse Explosion is very disappointing because of how cool it sounds, and how impractical is is to ever actually use.

I mean yeah, not all of these are great, but they all still have uses. Blood Rain can be used to create blood surfaces and actually makes enemies without physical (...wtf) armor bleed, Snipe may be boring and restrictive but it still does something, Terrain Transmutation is actually legitimately useful in a wide range of situations (go away, cursed fucking surfaces reeeee), and Corpse Explosion might not do great damage and may require corpses that are hard to come by, but they all do something that's ultimately useful in some way.

Out of those, as contenders for most useless skills, I can only see Bleed Fire, Apportation and Sabotage, and out of those, I'd like to disqualify Apportation because it can still be useful outside of combat, I guess - although with Teleportation and Telekinesis, it's highly questionable.

Sabotage is an interesting idea but useless in practice; you can't actually reverse-pickpocket in this game, and you not only do not have any idea if the enemy has any grenades or not (and if you do, why the hell didn't you pickpocket those grenades when you had the chance, to prevent them from using them to begin with?), but if they do have grenades, you want to have those for yourself - either by pickpocketing them in advance, or by killing the enemy before it gets to throw them. It's not only ridiculously situational and uncertain to be of any use whatsoever, but you actually (maybe, maybe not; we can't know beforehand!) demolish resources you want to take advantage of yourself.

And I had completely forgotten about Bleed Fire. That's how useless it is. It doesn't even do any damage by itself, and it only contributes to the battlefield turning into a raging inferno, and screws whomever is engaging the affected enemies in melee combat.

I have a very hard time deciding the single most useless Skill, though. Provoke, Smoke Cover, Breathing Bubbles or Bleed Fire. Unmodded, I can't find a use for any of them. None.

My personal worst of fives:

1.) Bleed fire. It´s more of a detriment then help, I´ve yet to find any use for it.

2.) Breating bubbles: Yeah, nice, but .. well, no. Thanks to the armor system i rather buff or restore magic armor instead.

3.) Sabotage: Sounds cool as a concept, but how am I supposed to know if my target even has grenades? I rather use the AP and the memory slot to do something usefull, like pure damage or apply a usefull CC.

4.) Smoke cover: Highly and I mean highly situational. The 2 AP cost got this skill a spot in the list.

5.) Provoke: If the taunt mechanics where any different (like forcing the target to do basic attacks for instance), but as of yet, I don´t see a difference beneficail to me in AI behavior after a taunt.

By the way, Blood Rain is actually a pretty decent spell. The surface created by it can be used in many different ways. Elemental affinity as a necro, max heal nuke for blood sucker and tons af damage for grasp of the starved.

I consider Rain of Blood acceptable if for no other reason than that blood is easier to see than water, but behave in an almost identical way.

The only bad thing is how badly Necromancer synergizes with the other magic schools (especially Hydrosophist), because of the armor system.

Blood rain is quite useful especially as it douses fire surfaces and allows for blood incarnate summons as well as combos with blood sucker. To me, it's a more advanced rain spell and I use it quite often.

Well most skills, like in any game, are going to be sub-optimal, therefore a lot of the time making them obsolete. The only reason to have blood rain and not something better would be because you're going for a unique build, you just like it, or flavor, which is great too. Or maybe I'm missing its secret, idk :p

The discussion that makes more sense is: What are Tier 1, 2 , 3.. etc skills? Since there's technically a use for everything.

And there would be a difference in tier placement depending on if Solo or in a team. Apotheosis like the guy said could be huge in solo.

Actually, I would like to see a tier list made for the fun of it. We should make one!

This is true, usually as you progress some spells or skills are getting obsolete further down the road.

There is an other apsect to it, too. Some time ago I watched an interview with a Magic the Gathering designer (don´t have the link at hand unfurtunatly) who argued that weak cards are getting designed in purpose. According to him it makes discovering strong cards much more rewarding. Of course, comparing a TCG and with a CRPG is a bit pointless, but maybe this was in part a factor for some less usefull spells/skills.

Blood Rain is situational, true. It´s decent if you have a summoner/necro or build for it to synergies otherwise.

Just for the sake of mentioning it, I tried a "I heal you to death" party setup just for fun and with this group, Blood Rain became a core spell. Not particular strong, but manageable, even on tactitian.

The bummer at least for me was to find the least usefull spells (or those where it´s hard to fit them in any build) by combining spell schools.

As a solo player I consider Apotheosis the number 1 tier 1 skill. This thread made me goggle when I read that someone considered it bad. You have to think, to some extent in combat, until you get a hold of it. After which, combat for pretty much any build that uses it becomes a specific formula. Use abilities xyz in a specific order and you win.

True, it has no use in the last fight, but that is only because in the last fight you have the effect of Apotheosis active anyhow. If you did not have that effect, it would be useful there as well.

I feel like that kind of perspective is completely out of place here; it has its application in a TCG, especially one with formats based around constructing decks from drafted or random cards, but not a cRPG, especially not one where the majority of content is based around creatively and tactically applying the same toolkit repeatedly.

Almost all of the 'useless' spells have a clear intended purpose, it's largely their execution or place in the flawed or supportive systems that makes them a mockery. Even skills that aren't 'useless' are largely overshadowed or undesirable because of bad implementation or poor supporting systems.

That said, my vote is for Smoke Cover because it isn't just bad, it's almost always actively harmful.

Probably not most useless (it was probably actually the most used in EA), but I never found myself ever being able to incorporate Skin Graft. I get why it should be great, but I just never felt like spending the source in it compared to simply using a bigger source spell. Otherwise, the enemies would be dead anyway without it.

Assassinate gets my vote though for one of the least useful skills. The AP cost for the damage, on top of the other requirement to actually get any bonus damage from it is just terrible.

I feel Smoke Cover could be useful in a glass-canon rogue build but the 2AP cost makes it ultimately bad.

No one talk about Taunt? No one? And most combine skill book also.
But provoke(taunt) is the most useless skill I've seen. Not use it = good, player use it = try to hurt themselves.
They can't taunt through my pant!

Well, I'm an elf, so casting Blood Rain for an incarnate is redundant. Rain is better, because it immediately procs a stun when they're shocked and can stunlock them as the water is shocked too. I see some mentioning of Necro synergy, yeah, sure, I guess. Still bad.

Terrain Transmutation for cursed surfaces is whatever. I've beaten the game twice now and am going for an honour mode completion and the only time that it MIGHT have been useful, is with the bugged(?) flaming revenants in Arx's Lizard embassy and even then, doesn't really matter. AP is so scarce and memory taxation is awful; don't really feel the need to waste it on this.

Luckmann, you're being pretty silly about some of the justification of some skills. Aportation? Really? You're gonna pay extra attribute tax and use a memory slot on that? Right.

If you want to know what skills are considered bad by the community, you can have a summary of a survey rating all the skills HERE. There are already over 174 answers.

If you take the survey, you will be able to see even more interesting data

Interesting.

There are a few that surprise me, though not many.

Corrupted Blade is actually a favorite of mine, even at 3 AP.

Vampiric Hunger would be broken in the original game, and sure it's situational if you run multiple armor restoration spells on multiple characters (which you honestly should), but there have been a few encounters where I was outmatched, and vampiric hunger saved my day. It does require a high amount of CON to take advantage of though.

I also kinda like Thick of the Fight. Again, depends pretty heavily on the encounter, but there are some where it's worth it.

Other than that, this list pretty much sums up my own experience as well.

You should make one for source skills, from skillbooks alone - I would be interested in that one for sure.

If you have a google account, I encourage you to fill the survey. You will be able to see the rating of each skills, especially the skills you are looking for.

Thick of the Fight is actually underrated, it does have a place in solo lonewolf spellcaster builds, since it is multiplicative on spells and doesn't require you to get on low life to take advantage of it. The general strategy for using it is port yourself into a pack of mobs then nuke everything. It is better than death wish since when you plan to kill everything on turn 1, you won't be on low hp.

I think that people are more extreme when they rate a source skill or a buff that costs 2AP. And this spell has both.

If it costs 2AP 1SP, it costs one attack (100% damage) + 1SP. It is hard to be profitable damage wise with this spell but it is not impossible.

EDIT : And a melee character will probably prefer using "Overpower" which has the exact same cost and which is really powerful.

I ignore the source point cost of skills, since Apotheosis exists.

Not everyone uses Apotheosis. It may not be relevant for you but it is not the same for other people.
In fact, "at least" 47,5% of the players answering this survey never used it.

I honestly disregarded Apotheosis at first glance too (since Overpower is so broken that I honestly wanted to use my source for that alone), but then again the tooltip doesn't tell you that it actually also increases all of your attributes by 5, something I hadn't noticed until I accidentally clicked the buff icon.

I find Bleed Fire to be very nice when your enemies are already on fire. It makes that burning damage burn harder. I use it with Fane/Beast being spider-legged, web-tossing, cc powerhouses who keep the enemies in check, while the necro flames are working. 1 ap cost is fine for the skill(my Sebil usually has 1 spare ap most of the time). The effect may not seem like much, but I like using it and its one of those skills that works in a niche. -1 ap tea, +1 max ap tea, demon form, haste. Next turn apotheosis, meteor shower skill, adrenaline, skin graft, adrenaline, meteor shower skill, epidemic of fire. Follow up with Bleed fire and the stragglers just die. It seems like win more, but it actually helps with the final few ounces of health. This is when you burst hard. The same thing works when you're burning enemies through ordinary fire spells. And to be honest, it feels nicer to burn the enemies with ordinary fire spells ;D.