So I’m coming at this as somebody whose “battle motto” is, “the best defense is a good offense.” Meaning, gotta smack these guys down before they can get their claws into me. So I do typically prioritize damage over control. However, I often play as a bard or have a bard in my party, so I do have access to my fair share of controls spells.
I honestly think that if the combat was harder, and I had to strain and struggle to kill the enemies more, I would be forced to explore the possibilities of control spells more. As it is, I can just wallop them and they can flail around trying to hit me with my 23 armor class or whatever. But if I was actually terrified of them, and the damage they could do, that would incentivize me to cast control spells more often. So yeah, unfortunately, I feel like the combat is easy enough (in the vast majority of battles) that you don’t have to look at all of your options. I’m just finishing up on balanced mode and then I’m going to do tactician, but in the battles that I have played on tactician, they don’t seem that much harder than balanced mode.
I will say, I have gotten some decent utility out of “hypnotize,” like in cases where you’ve got a big group of enemies, who are all about to take their turn, and you whack them with that and they can’t do anything. Like you said, “polymorph” can also be really nice in a pinch, and “hold monster” can be awesome in boss battles (like in act 3). And “banishment” can also work well if you want to decrease the enemy pool for a turn or two. I’ve used each of those to beneficial effect. I honestly almost never use “hold person,” because the odds of it failing make it not worth it to me I guess?
