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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 3702400" data-attributes="member: 2011">Not the way he did it.It was armchair do area effect spells every single round. This is worse than normal theorizing since it made a blantantly invalid assumption. AoE energy spells do not fire off every single round in anyone's game. Players are typically lucky to get 2 off in an encounter. And, half or half plus one of the surviving enemy every single round.Let's take the case of 6 opponents. In a real game, they might or might not all be in the area effect for round one. After that, they tend not to be. In his analysis, half were in it round one, half round two (which is best case scenario equivalent for a real game two rounds with half each or one round with all of them), half round three, etc. until gone.In real games, an arcane caster often might not even be in the room yet on the first round (they tend to stick back in most games) to blow up a bunch of enemies before they can move in for melee attacks. Lots of encounters end up with zero AoE energy spells being cast. Other times, an arcane caster can get all of the enemies in a round one AoE, but it doesn't average out to 1/2+ of the opponents every single round. Not even close. Not IME and probably not in most people's experience either.Although a lot of effort was put into the analysis, it's flawed.The fact that Orbs were superior 35% and AoE were only superior 55% of the time with such an obvious skew towards AoE spells shouts at how powerful Orbs are.Plus, it did not take into account the secondary effect of the Orbs. That was just dropped on the ground.It also did not take into account the tactical advantage of killing one opponent being worth more than injurying two (and sometimes three).ThirdWizard put this major point best in that thread:All in all, I find your conclusion flawed because it is based on a flawed and skewed analysis.Note: AoE spells have scenarios where they are better. No doubt about it. AoE spells are great when applicable. However, those scenarios tend to be at best one or two rounds per encounter, not every single round. Single target range touch spells like Orbs (especially combined with Precise Shot) tend to have a lot more rounds per encounter where they can be effective.</blockquote>

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