Boring but Practical/Video Games/Puzzle Game


 * For the most part, in Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, players will abandon their first three or four spells for the more powerful version learned later or for learned spells... with two exceptions: The Knight's Stun spell (L1 spell, low mana cost, quick recharge time, and sets up beefier spells nicely—and you can't learn it from captured Knights) and the Druid's Gemberry (L1 healing spell that grows stronger with Blue Mana levels).
 * Not necessarily. The Druid can eventually abandon all normal spells in favor of board manipulation and Entangle (Or Web) and create an infinite loop that ensures that no enemy player will ever take a turn after you take your first, turning those powers into ones a lot better then plain old Gemberry. Boring but Practical is eventually replaces with a pretty extreme gamebreaking build which pays off in the long run
 * The T-Block from Tetris. Sure, the I-Block grabs all the headlines with its ability to form Tetrises, and it may be the L-Block that won the 6th GameFAQs Annual Character Battle, but what piece saves you when the Ss and Zs start piling up? What piece can be spun into awkward gaps? What piece neatly fits into more holes than any other piece? T-Blocks are pretty much the Hypercompetent Sidekick of the Tetris world.
 * The key to a high score in Tetris Friends and other games compliant with the current Tetris Guideline? Making combos of single-line clears and T-Spin Doubles instead of Tetrises. That's also not made up. Look at any replay of the top 10 on the Tetris Friends Marathon leaderboard. The top player makes 443 Singles and a mere 14 Tetrises.
 * The Arika Rotation System in Tetris games and fan games, particularly when the Super Rotation System is also an option. It doesn't have all the crazy kicks of SRS—there's only 2 directions a non-I piece can kick, and the I-piece will either kick upwards once or not at all depending on what variation of ARS you're using. However, this is where ARS becomes practical: you can predict where a piece will go when you rotate it. In comparison, SRS is extremely complex (to the point where extensive studies have been done on it), and you have a much higher chance of a piece doing something unexpected, such as popping out when you didn't intend to make it do that.
 * While there is an incredible variety of things one can summon in Scribblenauts, glue, rope, and baskets (and all their variants) are astoundingly indispensable items.