Shattered Kingdoms

Not to mention, another factor nobody has yet mentioned is mana per damage dealt.

For instance, until warlocks get magma spray, their best single target damaging spell is lightning bolt.

Say lightning bolt does 20 damage to an enemy at the cost of 4% mana. Then we'll say that you're killing NPCs that have 100 HP each. A warlock could kill 5 of those NPCs spaming lightning bolt on them before running out of mana.

Now say fireball does only 10 damage to a target and costs 10% mana to cast. A warlock would run out of mana right as that 100 HP NPC died. Making it much less efficient on a single target, but the second you get more than 5 of those NPCs in a room it immediately becomes more efficient to AE kill them than single drop them with spells as AE spells don't increase in mana cost based on the number of NPCs in the room.

I know this wasn't really the question asked but just another thing to point out. You'll not only kill more NPCs faster, you'll do it with greater mana efficiency meaning you'll kill a greater amount of NPCs before you need to sleep to regain mana. Making any AE spell like spirit horde or fireball the win for leveling.

But you have to account for the Casters Art, If the spell that does 10 Damage to the room only does 8 to someone who has a saving through from it, and you pull those 5 people, chances are you will only kill 2, maybe 3.

So the best spell for leveling, then, would technically be recharge in a very crowded room, wouldn't it?

Well art applies to both AE and single target spells. :p Not to mention almost all AE spells, are reflex save, and that's the save most people have the least of. If anything the AE spells will have the least problem with saves against them.

Not to mention the whole point is you can keep pulling more NPCs until AE becomes more efficient. There's no limit to the number you can AE, but single target is always single target.

chain lightning gets more and more worthless the more people that are around, I would say 3 to 5 would be best for it?

Not for leveling's sake.

I've found that chain lightning does an obscene amount of damage if it's only arcing between two people.

To extend this forum to another question, getting better at a spell, is it just the number of times you cast it that it gets better, or the number of targets it hits. I imagine its just the number of times you cast it...

casting times

off subject, but where did you disappear to canni? haven't seen you on in a few weeks.