Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General How would you rate these 3 spells

Contamination which does poison damage and affects all susceptible surfaces
Global cooling which does water damage and affects all susceptible surfaces
Ignition which does fire damage and affects all susceptible surfaces
I personally feel that these 3 spells are part of the problem with magical AOEs since they can be rather uncontrollable. The fact they affect all susceptible surfaces is more of a downside to the 3 spells moreso than anything.

3/5...mainly because in the RNG of spells like Rain and Blood Rain or whether or not you still need the oil your wayfarer/wizzard made after casting Fosil Strike. On a bad day I would rate them 2/5 due to not seeing a particular surface on the battlefield until after it gets hit by stuff like Contamination.

I don't like those skills. If I want to make a hazardous surface, I'd use fossil strike/flaming daggers/poison arrows/hail strike. I don't see the point of using Ignition/Contamination/Global cooling when their damage is subpar, and may backfire easily (accidentally engulfing ally with fire, blocking off escape route, blowing up stuff that you don't want to blow up, etc.)

If they did more damage they might be worth the risk/situationalness. They can already do a decent amount of damage if you hit enough enemies, but since the name of the game is focusing and ccing, mass low damage AOE isn't that useful.

i use Global cooling regular when the battle turned into a inferno.
i don't use the other 2 skills because i don't find the skills not interesting.

I rate them all crap (0/5) because given the disparity between enemy armor and player character armor, all of those are much more likely to be more damaging or inconvenient for the player characters than they will be for the enemy. I completely agree with you that the uncontrollable nature of them makes them bad.

The same goes for Fireblood, which has a similar problem. It makes an enemy which I can't hit with melee weapons because I'll hurt myself as badly or worse..

Contamination is the only skill I rate 3.5/5 because Zombie talent exists.

More of a hazard than a help for sure. Contamination with Zombie makes it useful, and Global Cooling if you can still do something like attach nails to your boots to make yourself unable to slip in the final release would have quite a bit of use. However, Ignition is just bad. To really make good use of these, you need all the surfaces created to harm enemies and either help or not directly impact all allies, which makes them difficult to use.

In my most recent playthrough i found creating those ideal situations for the spells is hard since most fights there is at least 1 surface present in most fights. I could see a weird 4 mage party using these skills to there fullest but without such commitment it felt hard.

Personly I think that Ignition and Global Cooling were made just to counter Zombie+Contamination combo.

Perhaps, but I stand by my assessment that you need to really be sure that it'll do more harm to your enemies than to you if you're going to use them, and these are the ways I can see. I mean, unless you can get fire resistance to or above 100%, Ignition creating massive fire surfaces is likely to be just as big a problem for you as your enemies.

The only instance in which Ignition is good is on a troll build with Escapist and Restoration (for non undead mobs)

I think, I never really used them so far.