Editors note:
This document was originally written by Battlemasters Twilus Galeheart, Artorius Dragonwrit, and Yorick Ebonmoon, all of the Rising Winds. It was originally published on 4/24/23, under the v8.5.2 Spicy B ruleset. The content of the text is presented here unaltered, except for minor formatting changes.
Introduction To Spell List Theory
Written by: Twilus Galeheart, Artorius Dragonwrit, and Yorick Ebonmoon.
This document serves as a guide to help newer players easily understand spell list construction, editing, and the theory behind it. Within, we will go into topics such as: must-have spells for the respective classes, making changes to a list based on your field experiences, common pitfalls to avoid, and so on.
Essentials will be the spells that we determine are good at almost anytime for almost any list. These abilities often have good spell point value and versatility. They are often core identity spells of the class.
Traps are what we will denote as low niche and often not worth adding to the list. Often requires a lot of teamwork or specific scenarios to have good use. Usually, these will put crunch on your spell list in areas where you are strapped for points with essentials and other more viable spells.
Archetypes are often the power spike to certain spell lists that make abilities even more accessible. Archetypes can often dictate how you build a list and take some of the average spells to the level of essentials. These are often Archetype essentials and things you’ll want to take pending your Archetype.
Basics
How To Make an Effective Spell List: There’s not really a crazy secret to making a good spell list. The main thing you should be looking at to make a good spell list is a set of tools that will work best for the meta you’re playing in. Does your park have a lot of insubstantial? Take insubstantial counters. Does your park use a lot of iceball? Imbue shield, adaptive protection and choose subdual school, and be active with releases. This applies at all levels of play. Take what will give you a good set of counters for your usual opponents with a mix of what you find gives you success.
How To Edit Your List: The key to making a successful list is testing it frequently and making smart changes that give you more of what you need and less of what you don’t. If you find yourself not needing as many of a spell, take some off and take more of a spell you find yourself using frequently. Repeat this every time you run it until it feels optimized and doing what you intended for the list to do. Make sure not to go overboard on too many of one spell, but also sometimes you’ll have to judge not to cut something that you didn’t use if it’s important to have on the list in a decent quantity. Go with your own judgment but this cycle should help you better your lists over time.
How To Theme Your List: Going into a list, you want to have an idea of what you want to do, this can be helped by picking an archetype, but doesn’t have to be. If you want to kill people with spells as a wizard per se, you would like to take something like lightning bolt to stop a target, and dragged below to kill a target stopped player. If you want to play a verbal bard that keeps people away from your team, you may want to take awe, shove, terror, and lost, as all of those make space for your team. If you wanted to play a fighty druid with self enchanted armor, you’d want to take avatar of nature, lycanthropy, stoneskin, attuned, poison, and the like. If you wanted to play a heavy support healer, you may want to go warder, take powerful protection enchants, and lots of release and greater release to keep teammates safe. It is important to have these lines of thinking when making a list to keep a consistent theme, and maintain synergy.
Key Terms
Spell point Value: This is an evaluation of what you get in return for your spell point. The value increases based on how much you can use the ability. Per life has higher value over refresh abilities. Chargeable abilities also increase value. 2 uses per point is also a value increase. A high value ability example would be Healer release which is 1 point for 2 uses, per life, charge times 3.
Charged: These are abilities that can be charged to be used again using the charge incantation. Some abilities are already charge x (X) or can be made chargeable using experienced.
Frontline: Frontline refers to playing at the front of the field where you will either pull the attention of the enemies frontline or midfield and be the first involved in attacks or defenses.
Skirmish: Skirmishing is when you have small engagements with small units. Often repeating this process over and over rather than slugging it out on the frontline with constant action.
Utility: This term is used to define spells that have more than one use and prove valuable to have in many different scenarios.
Crowd Control (CC): This is imparting state on enemies to create actions you want to make. Pretty synonymous with most games that have these types of effects.
Flanking: Finding the weak side of a team to break into the backline and cause chaos or death.
Meta: A term describing what is most often played and winning in a given Park or Kingdom.
Charge and Cancel
Charge incantation and Cancel are two abilities that all caster have access to. Always make sure to learn how to cast both of these abilities and to purchase cancel on your spell list. Cancel costs nothing and should be something you add regardless of if you take enchantments or not. This is often referred to as the “Yorick Principal”.
Bard
Essentials
Confidence: A core ability already chargeable that gives support to your friends to bring back their chargeable abilities.
Restoration: The value of restoration can be very high. Making this rechargeable with experienced is highly recommended.
Mend: As a more frontline based caster class, mends are very useful for your support and offensive play.
Awe/Lost/Shove: Bard can make great use out of these per life space-making spells, having at least one of these 3 on a list is a must have.
Traps
Agoraphobia: As a 5th level per refresh spell that is of the command school, it has poor spell value and runs out quickly over longer games.
Amplification: This spell requires very specific planning on very specific strategies to be useful, and on your average bard list, it’s not valuable as a niche level 4 per refresh spell.
Song of Visit: This spell is mostly just a worse escape than song of survival, and locks you into an unsafe position.
Discordia: This ability takes up your enchantment slot preventing you from casting your songs. The payoff of Discordia outside of certain game types is just not high enough despite it being five suppressions for a point. Immunity to command is pretty common and getting stuck with this enchantment on is going to be poor synergy in most builds.
Combat Caster
Playstyle: This archetype allows you to cast without a free hand, giving you the unique ability to cast while fighting. You should be looking to stack equipment and combat songs to bolster your ability to frontline and skirmish when applicable.
Spell Synergy:
Equipment: Armor, 1 Point (level 6 and/or level 2): Allows you to soak damage and trade better in melee engagements. While usually spell synergy is about spells and abilities, it is important for bard to take equipment to make certain builds work well. This is one of them.
Song of Interference: This song can save you from powerful spells when surprised in the midst of combat.
Song of Survival: A song that allows you to survive rough melee engagements and escape safely.
Ambulant: This allows you to move while casting, amplifying your ability to cast while fighting.
Swift: Very useful for quick releases or mends to keep you healthy during and in between fights.
Song of Freedom: This song can protect you from a lot of common states applied to people engaging in melee combat, allowing you to apply threat uncontested.
Song of Battle: Gaining armor breaking from this song allows you to go toe-to-toe with every class in melee combat other than warrior.
Mend: A necessity to take on an armored bard list, for self armor repair after close fights. Notably good to experience this spell on longer form games where you’re not always in the front.
Release: Useful to save yourself from a stopped or insubstantial state if caught unaware, or for general use on teammates.
Insult: Great spell to stumble a caster’s thought process and take their attention.
Legend
Playstyle: This archetype provides a playstyle that gives you larger control over the field at large through additional extensions.
Spell Synergy:
Extension: Your main tool on this build, choose key spells that gain extra utility at further ranges.
Insult: Great to use on casters trying to support in the backline to force them to have to target you and need a release from an ally.
Lost: Useful to stop people on far flanks and send them packing.
Dervish
Playstyle: Dervish enables you to run heavy verbal builds with preferably less equipment, to either make space, crowd control, recharge allies, or suppress en masse. Dervish players can truly overtake a field with their voice.
Spell Synergy:
Stun: A great tool for setting up kills on key players, notably good because of the sorcery school.
Lost: Use this to take threats out of a fight or away from an objective.
Terror: Useful to keep specific players far away from your threat range or an objective. Especially useful due to it being a death school spell.
Suppress Aura: A medium length suppression that has a base 50ft range, great for shutting down casters before they make it into their effective range.
Break Concentration: Helpful for those clutch shutdown moments or take intro a melee engagement against another caster.
Awe: This tool is plentiful as a per life space making spell, never bad to have at least one.
Greater Release: An extremely useful tool to save allies at range, stop a fight after death, or elemental barrage. Helpful to grab a good handful of these.
Empower: Slightly more niche, but still a plentiful spell to have for focused recharge support builds.
Shove: A useful per life sorcery spell to keep people away and delay pushes through choke points.
Release: Always pertinent to have a good couple of these to save allies from CC, and getting double from Dervish helps you spend less points for more, or to have a plentiful amount.
Insult: A great tool to use on enemy casters to prevent them from affecting teammates or to force them off of supporting their allies.
Druid
Essentials
Stoneform: Without question your best defensive ability for tanking or defending yourself as a support.
Iceball: Can be taken on any list a druid makes and is considered the strongest crowd control ball in our game currently.
Mend: Being able to mend the magic armor you give out, weapons, shields, or armor allies already wear is just a great way to support your team or yourself in the battlefield.
Icy Blast: This is a per life frozen spell that is arguably an auto take on any non-summoner list. There is no better crowd control than Frozen in the meta.
Heat weapon: A key component to verbal casting tools for Druid. Already a chargeable ability and your best tool against monks.
Traps
Imbue Armor: This ability just doesn’t do enough without a lot of proper planning
Gift of Water: GoW looks cool on paper but has conflicts within it. You get heals, but you have magic armor as well. This is kinda counterintuitive requiring you to take wounds to use the second ability. This Spell is also taking up points from better options at level 4.
Regeneration: At level 3 this ability takes up valuable points away from other key abilities.
Gift of Earth: Just not a very useful enchantment most of the time without proper teamwork. Too many other key abilities at level 2.
Flame Blade: This ability just eats up so many spell points for what it gives you. Bear Strength and gift of fire at level 3 are more effective
Resurrect: This is just a major point sink at 5th level that usually just isn’t ever worth the investment.
Summoner
Playstyle: Summoner is a strong enchanted archetype that loses ranged verbals and equipment past level 2. A summoner is looking to enchant and support the team and even has enchantments to apply to themselves. Mending, healing, and releasing become pivotal in supporting your team.
Spell Synergy:
Naturalize Magic:This is your way of countering other enchanters and with a quick cast and 10 uses for 1 point. The value is insane and can put your team in major enchantment leads.
Ironskin: Magic armor and immunity to flame is very good for making classes like monk or others strong against their counters.
Stoneskin: Magic armor that is ancestral helps counter against balls and arrows.
Lycanthropy: This is a great enchant to give your casters that need to be immune to command. A solid enchant for Wizards and other classes that could use the armor.
Gift of Air: This makes caster classes have a lot of survivability against projectiles and normal weapons.
Golem: This enchant does a lot and can be considered the core of a summoner’s job. Usually used in unison with attuned or essence graft, this ability gives a ton of utility and most importantly makes all the bearer’s enchantments persistent.
Snaring Vines: This ability gives you cc at range without spell balls. This is important in a lot of scenarios especially if trying to help your frontline. Not always an auto take but a notable ability for sure.
Teleport: This can be used to safely position yourself on the battlefield or to move your Golem into hard to access areas to unleash a massive push or flank.
Attuned/Essence Graft: These abilities allow you to stack enchantments into powerful combinations offensively and defensively. They are key components for any summoner.
Poison: This is your only per life enchantment and gives your summoner list some longevity and a burner enchant you can give anyone.
Force Bolt: Underrated offensive capability for summoners to use. Basically thrown arrows.
Avatar of Nature
Playstyle: This archetype allows you to enchant yourself and become a stronger body for martial combat. The important part is making sure you have enough utility spells to go along with your self enchants. Avatars often find themselves helping with flanking attacks or pressuring frontlines with their armor and verbals.
Spell Synergy:
Lycanthropy: Making yourself immune to command while having magical armor along with shield crushing. Making this enchant useful against casters and fighters alike.
Attuned: This is important for making sure you can have multiple enchants in scenarios where you need utility on top of your armor enchantments.
Poison: This is the enchant that gives you longevity on enchanting yourself in longer games.
Dispel Magic: Dispelling frontline without having to wear an enchantment with Naturalize is key here. Along with being able to add extension or ambulant to the incant to ensure it hits is solid.
Ranger
Playstyle: Ranger is the equipment heavy caster. This also opens up the use of a bow which can really change how you need to position on the field. Rangers will sometimes double up on other archetypes but are versatile enough of one to have their own specified builds.
Spell Synergy:
Equipment: All your equipment is now free, make sure to purchase your max of all.
Verbals: Many of the verbals in the essentials and other lists are super strong on ranger builds as well.
Corrosive Mist: Despite this enchantment costing double. In certain formats, the three destroy armor spells you get from this can improve your ability to snipe someone in armor out or stab with a polearm. Can be useful in other archetypes but sticks out in ranger lists as an almost hunter’s mark like ability.
Healer
Essentials
Heal: The bread and butter of the class, it’s in the namesake and has infinite uses for Healer.
Resurrect: Great value at Charge x5 on a very impactful spell. Bring a teammate back to life? Yes.
Release: Healer’s release is 2/Life Charge x3. Great for saving teammates in sticky situations.
Greater Release: A very powerful and faster ranged release. Great for taking barbarians out of fight after death, wizards out of elemental barrage, or saving teammates from range. It can also remove the cursed state unlike basic Release, which is helpful to guarantee resurrects. Recommended to always experience this spell, as you can get it back through steal life or innate very easily.
Innate: Healer is the only caster with per life innate, making it extremely valuable for getting those good per refresh spells back.
Steal Life Essence: A great tool to recharge your spells, curse the enemy, or quickly heal yourself after a close fight.
Iceball: Immense value, one of the best hard crowd control spells in the game.
Traps
Ambulant: Very low value at a level 5 point and per refresh, healer is the only caster with ambulant as a per refresh spell. Outside of Priest, the points are just more valuable on other key abilities.
Greater Harden: Low value for a level 3 spell point, much better enchantment options available at, below, and above that level.
Greater Heal: You’ll very rarely come into situations where you’ll have a teammate get cursed, be alive, and have it be worth your spell points to take this spell.
Undead Minion: Once you’ve unlocked Greater Undead Minion at level 5, this spell becomes entirely obsolete.
Harden: There are so many other high impact level 1 spells to take that it isn’t worth your spell points.
Blessed Aura & Blessing Against Harm: These spells, while seeming impactful, would only really be useful on a warder build, and there are much better, longer lasting high value enchants at the levels these spells are accessible, so they just aren’t worth your spell points.
Priest
Playstyle: This archetype gives you a lot of rechargeability, specifically on your meta-magics. With this in your build, you are aiming to give quick support and micromanage a lot of chargeable spells to keep allies going in any way possible.
Spell Synergy:
Persistent: This spell is mostly a trap for priest, really only usable on Mass Healing, the Charge x3 aspect doesn’t do anything for you here, not great spell point value.
Ambulant: Priest is where Healer’s Ambulant shines, since it changes it from per refresh to per life. Useful for usage on Heal, Resurrect, Sever Spirit, Summon Dead, and Banish. The added Charge x3 here proves to be very useful.
Swift: Swift is great for quick Heals and Resurrects in clutch scenarios, the added Charge x3 here just makes it up all the more often.
Extension: Useful for Banish and Sever Spirit. The added Charge x3 doesn’t add too much value here.
Heal: It’s free now, so make sure to take it.
Necromancer
Playstyle: This archetype gives you rechargeability on a couple of spells, and allows you to use monks and other low armor + low ability players as cannon fodder to defend or heavily assault a location with numbers advantage. Can also be used as a tool just to have rechargeable Steal Life.
Spell Synergy:
(Greater) Undead Minion: This allows you to create your cannon fodder. Useful for holding or sieging locations with constant pressure and numbers advantage. Necromancer allows you to have 5 active, instead of the normal 3, making the rechargeability provided here very useful, given you have enough players to enchant.
Steal Life Essence: Amazing spell, especially amplified to Charge x3. You can use it to chain curse a line of dead players by using the Steal Life to recharge itself, or get near infinite recharges given you recharge and find enough dead players. It can even be used to charge back the Greater Undead Minion on the person you’re casting it on. Sometimes it’s worth it to just take Necromancer and this spell for its amazing utility.
Warder
Playstyle: This archetype gives you a bunch of extra protection enchantments to work with, allowing you to bolster the defenses of your team through big high value enchants or many smaller value enchants. It heavily limits your access to crowd control spells however, giving you more of a true support style.
Spell Synergy:
Persistent: Useful for warders because it increases the longevity of your enchantments, not super useful against heavy dispel teams.
Ancestral Armor: A helpful enchant to take on occasion, more niche, very good for stacking on full kit scouts and Anti-Paladin Classes.
Protection From Magic- Great protection against heavy magic teams. Specifically against teams with a lot of spell balls and verbals
Phoenix Tears: Mainly notable here for the extra protection enchantment slot it gives. Be wary that this will make the person you give it to a more likely dispel target while they’re frozen by it.
Greater Resurrect: More valuable on a warder build because it keeps enchants on a resurrected player unlike basic resurrect.
Enlightened Soul: Great protection against teams with a heavy amount of verbal magic as opposed to spell balls.
Protection From Projectiles: Insane value against heavy archer or thrown weapon teams. Throw this on a squishy caster that’s being targeted by archers.
Imbue Shield: Great against teams with a lot of shield crushing effects and spell balls. Comes in at 4/Refresh as a warder too, so very good value.
Circle of Protection: A decent pickup on warder, gives an okay escape spell for you and a few teammates in dire situations. You can banish yourself or allies out of circle of protection for a safe escape.
Adaptive Protection: A nice spell to take a few of, gives specialized protection against problem schools your team may be facing.
Adaptive Blessing: A decent spell to pick up, being per life it has good value. Good to just hand out as extra help for skirmishers facing problem schools.
Blessing Against Wounds: Another good spell to hand out to skirmishers to help them survive melee combat, also quite valuable, being per life.
Wizard
Essentials
Dispel Magic: You have debatably the most prevalent way of enchant removal in a game where enchantments are very powerful, at Charge x3 on a level 3 ability.
Break Concentration: The ability to remove another player’s casting, even for only 10 seconds, can make a lot of room for your teammates to push forward, or allow you to cast on other players for 10 seconds without the target punishing you.
Release: Not only is Release great at maintaining the health of your team, but is also very effective at maintaining your own personal ability to do your job, by keeping you out of Insubstantial, Lost, Stopped, etc.
Teleport: The offensive and defensive utility of this spell is superb. You can utilize it to throw a heavy hitter into a mob of people for a huge distraction, on yourself to flank, or Swift it on yourself as a method of escape when pressured.
Shove: Being Sorcery school, this ability has the power to make a player on the front line forcibly retreat from you, and is very rarely resisted.
Steal Life Essence- An all around excellent ability, this can allow you to immediately recharge an important ability such as Dispel, recover a lost limb after winning a trade, or can simply curse an opponent to make it so they can’t be resurrected nearly as easily.
Traps
Force Barrier: This may seem like a good escape akin to Druid’s Stoneform at a first glance, but upon further review, this leaves you in a very negative spot without the ability to counterplay, since you have to either rely on a teammate to end your state early, or are subject to whatever the other team may do in the next 30 seconds.
Ravage: The incant is clunky, and Fragile as a state is only loosely usable on many people, as a wounded target is already somebody who would be easier to defeat. The amount you receive may appear delightful, but the usability is very niche and the points are better spent elsewhere.
Destroy Armor: This spell actually is relatively usable, but the trap lies in its price per use- though it provides 2 per purchase, it is only usable per Refresh, and at 4th Level, where you begin to have access to some of the most powerful individual abilities in the Wizard list.
Greater Mend: The middle-ground between an effective single Mend and the wildly powerful Word of Mending, Greater Mend just doesn’t fit the bill at the strenuous price tag it has, compared to just more Mend.
Planar Grounding: Much like Destroy Armor, the problem keeping Planar Grounding from being strongly usable is its frequency- it is again only a per Refresh ability. It is good, but only usable so many times per game, effectively.
Battlemage
Playstyle: The unique part of all of the Wizard archetypes is that they remove a major and strong portion of your usable and strong abilities, to give you access to an also very strong utility in brute force. With Battlemage, a single purchase of Ambulant makes Ambulant usable an infinite amount of times, but removes your ability to provide amazing Enchantments for support, as well as the incredibly strong CC of spell balls. This is great for maintaining hyper-mobility for the caster always on the go, as you can use Ambulant on literally every verbal you cast, allowing you to chase down skirmishers, continue to move while Teleporting to safety, and even begin casting your support abilities such as Release before you are in range of your target.
Spell Synergy:
Release: Being able to begin casting Release for your Frozen teammate before you are on top of them and continuing to move around them to avoid fire allows you to play far more defensively while maintaining your team’s ability to fight.
Dispel Magic: When you begin to cast Dispel on most targets with valuable enchantments, they often tend to try and avoid it. With your Ambulant being unlimited, you cannot be punished for at least attempting to chase them to complete your spell and remove those pesky Flameblades and Ancestral Armors.
Heat Weapon: Removing melee weapons from the equation can allow you to remove threats without expending spells of a much higher level, and this is certainly relevant while either running at or away from targets.
Shove: Being able to run at somebody and force them to run, or prevent them from chasing you, provides excellent mobile space-making.
Astral Intervention: A secret technique in Battlemage is to casually be casting an Astral Intervention on yourself so you can choose to end it should you need to remove yourself from melee, but it also is a very valuable CC.
Hold Person: If you can keep moving and casting while your opponent can’t chase you, it’s almost as effective for verbals as them being Stunned.
Throw: This spell single-handedly removes a whole player from encounters around them for a long duration of time
Dimensional Rift: Chasing down Teleporters or Blinked Assassins that can’t end their Insub near you and forcing them to die is incredible to remove flankers, and also will remind them to stay away.
Icy Blast & Shatter: Mentioning these two together is important- a whole engine of Sorcery CC and kill spells is wild. It is so difficult to be immune to Sorcery and it is easy for you to remove this immunity, force them to be unable to do anything, and kill them for being in that state.
Wounding: Wounding has many uses amplified by chasedown potential, such as wounding running targets to prevent their speed, removing limbs to prevent combat, or removing the ability to fire arrows for bow users.
Finger of Death: Unlike Warlock or generalist builds, FoD on Battlemage is excellent as a strong threat; you can make people run away by starting to cast at them
Evoker
Playstyle: The sacrifice Evoker makes is, well, all of your verbal versatility, in order to use spell balls at a ludicrous frequency. Evoker does one thing, but it does it very well- you throw spellballs without having to first cast them. This is for both your CC balls, as well as your damage balls. It is notable that due to the nature of how this works, you can even continue to throw your spellballs while you are suppressed; the wording and intent of Elemental Barrage is that you have cast one ability to use spellballs- they are active without actually having been cast.
Spell Synergy:
All Spellballs: Most of your list should be Evoker, Elemental Barrage, and your cavalcade of spell balls. All spell balls become much more useful when you no longer have to incant the ball name. Iceball is powerful CC you can machine gun, and Force Bolts are a barrage of magical beams you can launch en masse. Phase Bolt ignores enchantments and punishes Monks. Sphere is a black void of death.
Innate + Steal Life Essence: Of note: when you die, Elemental Barrage ends, but since you can charge it, you can use SLE to regain your use of Elemental Barrage. Being able to quickly reapply your primary function is pretty nice!
Warlock
Playstyle: Warlock foregoes a huge portion of your utility to power to amplify your abilities as a death machine, and quite literally. Warlocks cannot dispel people, and their only suppression ability is locked behind a somewhat niche spell ball that deals no extra damage. However, their ability to utilize their doubled Flame and Death school verbals is absolutely ludicrous. The natively charged Wounding, the extra Fingers of Death, extra Pyrotechnics and Heat Weapon, etc. Sometimes an ability which is bad elsewise is made very good due to the nature of the amplifier, as well.
Spell Synergy:
Heat Weapon: The sheer amount of this spell you can have makes this strategy absurd. It’s very strong against any player not immune to Flame and very cost efficient in this archetype.
Ravage: Despite the clunky incantation, each purchase of this ability on Warlock gives you 4 uses per life. Given the Warlock restrictions, this is a very solid choice if you opt not to take a large amount of spell balls. This also sets up a kill-combo with Wounding.
Dragged Below: While your verbals are limited, your spell balls are not! Being able to Stop opponents with your CC balls, and follow up with your multiplied Death-school kill combo is a great built-in death machine, as well as letting you take advantage of the Stopped state inflicted elsewise, such as Healers or Assassins.
Wounding: Already natively chargeable, Wounding being more usable alongside a viable kill combo and the other uses for wounding opponents gives this far more value.
Pyrotechnics: Being natively 50’, this spell has a huge range. Getting double is more instances where a combat class no longer has their equipment to fight you back, outside of Flameblade. Even a per refresh ability can be made far more usable with the right setup in Warlock, akin to Dervish.
Steal Life Essence: Being able to charge your abilities more or recover your limbs, or simply Curse enemies, is always good. SLE provides much more sustain to you and your team.
Finger of Death: For a maximum of 8 guaranteed deaths if used correctly, doubling your 6th level spells is an absolutely huge win. It’s very simple- more death to the bad team, more win for the good team.
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