it's a useless spell really

i don't like rune magic at all it got crappy spells
only really usefull one is gift


and as for having rage+mana all the time just chainfight no worries about that;)

I can only suggest people try it for themselves, I love it. :)

Daniel.

If the unit is likely to be targeted with more debuffs in the next few rounds. Like when fighting dragons or spiders. that said, I haven't used it all that often either. If I had gotten it before the undead spider it would've been very handy for ranged stacks to minimize the web effect I'd imagine.

Chargers were very useful for rage early on my soothsayer, but now I can just as easily get a lot of rage by casting Blizzard instead.

Maybe that is it, I am using a Skald, and I'm still on the Viking Isles.

Daniel.

Rune magic: gift, blizzard, timeless (once working), runechain, ice ball (was the only tanky summon I had for a while) come to mind. Probably more that I don't think of right now.
Chargers lvl3 can regenerate quite a bit of mana, and generate rage so you can use rage skills more often or earlier. If you spend up to 60 mana in a single round as a soothsayer, mana regeneration can come in quite handy for the rest of the battle or to end the battle with full mana.

Well, as a Skald my rage worries ended once I got Edda. At least against undead, because that song provides huge amounts of rage/mana.

Magic Missile is extremely useful early on, at least as Soothsayer. Doesn't hurt that it stays at 5 mana regardless of level, makes it a good starter with High Magic (especially against Necromancers and Beholders). Dance of Winter was my go-to area spell until I got Blizzard, Ice Snakes isnt too shabby either but I didnt get that one until much later. Both are handy for dealing (mostly) physical damage, too.
Runic Word is useful here and there to replenish Runes you might need for other spells aswell as those needed by Runemages (yes, they have their own spell, but if you dont have a lot of unused hero runes it'll only restore 2 for the cost of 1)

About the only rune magic spell I dont get at all is Snowstorm. there arent that many opponents with a lot of ice damage, so its mostly just a mediocre buff for your units that requires them to stay in one place. And good luck getting more frost res on your troops to beef that up. Sure it can also weaken enemies with a lot of fire res, but at the same time they can move out of it easily and while affected also take less damage from my frost spells.

Yeah Undead is a lot easier but I still often like to use Chargers straight away as it gives me enough rage to use my most powerful ability before my enemies get a go.

Daniel.

I forgot magic missile... I think the damage on dance of winter is somewhat low, and ice snake is ok, but I got it pretty late (after blizzard, fireball, etc). Runic word is good if you use the runes for something, but that would mostly be other rune magic spells.
I never used snowstorm either. I learned it because I thought it could be nice in Demonis, with all those demons with fire resistance around. But then I saw that it only affects 7 hexes, so its usefulness suffers if the enemy is not clustered. Similarly, you need to cluster your own units to gain significant protection from cold. It just seems too much work and too situational to be really useful...

Yeah Dance of Winter falls behind greatly later on but it does deal physical damage, useful against black dragons and such.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Hoped it would expand the area of effect with higher spell level but no such luck.

I'm not sure Snowstorm works, it had 0 effect on my Ice Dragons... :evil:

Daniel.