Purple Dragon

[dashcunning]

Don't forget it shoots 3 times per actual skill use. So in comparing it to the other damaging skills, it costs a third or does 3x as much damage, however you want to look at it. Furthermore, it generates rage for you, which the other 3 damaging skills do not. It does not however generate extra dragon experience, which the other 3 do.

[Zechnophobe]

Yeah, the harder the difficulty, the more valuable it is. Impossible paladin game I'm playing, and it was even useful against a stack of 900 peasants on Scarlet Wind. Did significantly more damage than crushing blow... (Not that I level up crushing blow anymore, it ends up the worsed use of your dragon levels in the long run).

[KongMysen]

Only real downside is the rest after each cast.

Late game is where the Orb really shines the most, but my Warrior starts with much more rage than 1 orb casting costs, and rage will be maxed before round 2. -which makes it even more annoying, that you cant use the dragon in that round.

I usually awake the dragon, when I use the Orb.

[DGDobrev]

Well, the tactic: Lightning + Awaken Dragon + Fiery Phantoms is quite a blast for a warrior, since if both abilities are well upgraded, the ball of lightning will have +1 rest (2 turns) and the phantoms will be at rest 1 (one turn). This allows you to cast a second ball of lightning on the second turn without worrying about the rest time afterwards (because the enemy stacks have seriously diminished already), which is great.

[fable]

I'm not upgrading ball lightning with my warrior to keep the 1 turn rest. For 30 rage, I get about 30% damage and 50% shock. I'm casting a lot of stone skins in the early turns, so no time for awake dragons. When I can afford the 2 turn rest, I rather lay a Mythic Egg.
With my mage, the 2 turn rest was not a problem, and Mythic Egg is much weaker.

[ender]

As a mage, if you have 105+ rage at start of battle, you can do some damage with 3 Lightning in first round (tried in Reha Arena battles).

[N3MES1S]

As far as i know, ball of lighting is based on the ammounth of hit points your enemy troop has. If u can combine ball of lightning + any spell that increase health (i think peacefulness cant remember well), u can kill 2/3 from a troop (or the entire troop on higher levels) of 1000-1500 units (and if u use , like DGDobrev said, the mark of blood u can see how the light shine -.-).. This means ball of lightining is "designed" for big numbers troops.