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Not Completely Useless: Difference between revisions

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{{examples}}
* The [[Undead Slayer]] in [[Adventure Quest]] Worlds is amazing in Doomwood due to it's unique quality of quickly becoming well over 9000 by a Spirit Power system that only works when fighting undead. Its normal power when out of it's element is pretty Dismal
* The Viy fight in ''[[La -Mulana]]''. Going by how the rest of the game is set-up you are led to believe that Spears are your only option for this battle. However, as spears shoot directly downwards you must get right above the boss's eye to damage it, which also happens to be where all its most dangerous attacks comes from, making it one of the harder fights in the game. There is another weapon that turns out to be a savior; Throwing Knives seem pretty useless when you get them, so you tend to forget about them, as the shurikens do more damage and are faster horizontally and spears have better vertical damage and speed. However, the Knives property of "sliding" along the ground until they hit a wall allows you to just stand back (dodging some weak projectiles) and bombard Viy while coming under very minimal danger yourself, instantly turning it into a very easy fight. As a bonus, the Throwing Knives will damage the regenerating tentacles as well, making them much less of a hassle.
** The Throwing Knives did have one other big use-- Hell Temple. While the area may be filled with false floors, a thrown knife traces the actual path of the floor-- Passing right through the "gaps" to show the real path.
** Throwing Knives also make a small number of puzzles much easier than they would be with other, more obviously applicable weapons.
** The throwing knives are actually significantly stronger than shuriken, and can hit sufficiently large enemies twice (they go through most enemies). it's just that shuriken have a (usually) far superior movement pattern. And you can throw more shuriken at once than you can knives.
* The last boss of ''[[Mystic Defender]]'': it could be trivially defeated by using the weapon that bounces balls off walls and crouching in the lower right hand corner of the screen. The balls would bounce and hit the boss in just the right spot. The weapon was otherwise useless for most of the game.
* In ''[[Wild Arms 3 (Video Game)|Wild Arms 3]]'', a skill by Luceid called "Dark Luceid" pretty much deals very low damage, even when Luceid is using it against you when you need to obtain him. Afterwards, you can fight an upgraded [[Bonus Boss]] called Power Trask (basically, an upgraded "regular" Trask whom you defeated earlier). Now unlike regular Trask which can be defeated easily after knowing a trick, Power Trask suffers none such weakness. It is also highly defensive towards elemental magic (which your party has been relying on for a good chunk of the game). The non-elemental magic available doesn't hit hard enough and Power Trask is, quite simply, a pure [[Stone Wall]] that laughs at your physical attacks. Cue Dark Luceid saving the day due to its mostly heretofore unknown "deal damage according to how many elemental resistances the target has" property. This same property is what usually makes it deal pitiful damage: not many enemies have full elemental resistance thus making this skill useless for 90% of the game. Makes you think that [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything]] doesn't it?
* Completing a sidequest involving [[No Sense of Direction|directing an easily-lost scholar home]] in ''[[Star Ocean the Second Story (Video Game)|Star Ocean the Second Story]]'' earns you a stick called the Funny Slayer that [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|instantly slays any enemies with "Funny" in their name when you hit them.]] Of course, the only enemies that fit that description([[Funny Thieves]]) are [[The Goomba]] and pretty much go down in one hit even if you were Level 1 and unarmed. That is, until you hit the middle floors of the [[Bonus Dungeon|Cave Of Trials]], which contain [[Metal Funnys]] and [[Funny Thieflvl 99 s]] (one of which is a floor boss.)
* Vulcan Raven in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'': it is implied you must use your missile weapons for this battle, which he can easily shoot down if you don't use them carefully. Alternatively, you can lay claymore mines around the arena and wait for him to step on them; this is one of the only good uses of claymore mines in the game.
** In a similar manner, the relatively useless chaff grenades can be used to make the fight against the cyborg ninja much easier. They're also essential to taking out the M1 tank and can make the battle against Metal Gear Rex easier as well.
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** Shroooom! can be a rather tough boss...unless you use the otherwise nigh-useless PSI Flash Beta against him, which will either paralyze or kill him in one shot.
* In the ''Mega Man'' series:
** The last boss in ''[[Mega Man 3 (Video Game)|Mega Man 3]]'' goes down to one hit of Top Spin. Top Spin is otherwise considered one of the most useless weapons in the series, although with practice, it can [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPYHstNYOSM be] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwXOdXVNpTI mastered.]
** Also, starting with Bubble Lead against the final boss of ''2'', the most unwieldy weapon is often the final boss's weakness, except in {{spoiler|''1'', where Wily is vulnerable to all the weapons, and the [[Good Bad Bugs|Pause Trick]] works just as well as it does elsewhere, and ''5'', in which Beat turns Wily into an [[Anticlimax Boss]]}}.
** ''[[Mega Man 2 (Video Game)|Mega Man 2]]'s'' Bubble Lead is also one of the only weapons that can take out those darned floor crawling spring enemies, and can show you where there are disguised holes in the floor by falling though them.
** In ''7'', you remember those Wild Coils? You will when you fight Wily!
** In ''8'', one of the boss's weaknesses...well, the only thing you could probably use against it save for Astro Crash, is the mostly neglected Mega Ball.
** The Mega Ball also permits you to perform [[Double Jump|multiple midair jumps]] if your timing is good. [[Not Completely Useless]]!
** Actually averted more often than not with Sigma in the ''[[Mega Man X (Video Game)|Mega Man X]]'' series. In X1, he was weak to Rolling Shield, the charged version of which is extremely useful; in X2, he was weak to the Strike Chain, which had limited weapon use but was a good tool in several situations; and in X3, he was weak to the X-Buster only.
** ''[[Mega Man Battle Network (Video Game)|Mega Man Battle Network]]'' brings a really odd one to the table. The Minibomb chip in the standard series games is useless - you can't hit with it worth a damn against most things and it barely does more damage than any of the many chips you do have that are way more accurate. For the series' platformer [[Gaiden Game]], however, it became a [[Game Breaker]] that went largely unnoticed because of its terrible history in the other games. For this one game, it was extremely easy and efficient to use, cheap to maximize your stock of, available right from the moment you hit [[Disk One Nuke|New Game]], and because the explosion damaged enemies multiple times, was capable of one-shotting half the enemies in the game; and everything else could be taken down with a second one if it wasn't a boss or had an aura (as enemies in two endgame stages did).
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'': In the early days of raiding, hunters received a new ability, Tranquilizing Shot. It's only use was to remove frenzy effects found on some of the bosses (which would make them much stronger). Ironically, due to issues hunters had, this one trick made hunters much more likely to even get into raids. The second expansion finally gives it a broader range of uses, even against other players. A similar case was the Mage spell Detect Magic (shows active buffs on the target) which was very helpful on some bosses that required the raid to dispel certain effects otherwise hard to see, but in this case, the spell was eventually removed (and buffs made always visible).
** Another classic case of this is the Warlock spell Detect Invisibility. Until Mages got a corresponding skill this was completely useless (Rogues use ''Stealth'', which is a different mechanic) with a few select locations that have invisible enemies. Even there it's not necessary to use the spell, but it avoids nasty surprises (especially in Naxxramas where the first player the monster spots usually gets killed in one hit.
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** The ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh Card Game]]'' had a few blatant examples of this, such as Gryphon Wing, White Hole, and Anti-Raigeki, whose ''only uses'' were to negate specific overpowered cards. Then they discovered banning, and these counter cards quickly became dead weight. A less blatant example is Kuriboh, a mostly-underpowered card that for a while was the only effective way of stopping several one-turn-KO combos.
** The card game ''[[Doomtown]]'' was especially bad at this. In one of the later expansions, the cards in question really ''were'' Magic Bullets--"Bullet" type cards were designed to insta-kill various character types.
** ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering]]'' had the card One With Nothing, whose entire effect was "discard your hand." It was completely useless until a competitive deck came out that relied on giving the opponent a stream of cards and using spells that dealt damage based on the number of cards in an opponent's hand compared to yours.
** The [[Pokémon (Tabletop Gamegame)|Pokémon Trading Card Game]] uses "Magic Bullet" cards in place of banning. One recent example is Machamp, who could [[One-Hit Kill|instantly KO]] any non-evolved Pokémon at a time when non-evolved Pokémon was the norm in tournament play. Most cases are subtler than this, however.
* ''[[Diablo 2]]'' features a Paladin ability called "Holy Bolt". Virtually useless unless you're focusing on healing teammates or damaging Undead. Of course, only a 1/4 of all the monsters in the game are Undead so you're helpless against everything else, but Holy Bolt does smash the daylights out of Undead.
** If you spec out a Paladin to maximize Holy Bolt's healing properties, you won't be able to hit any monsters past Act 3 Normal. On the other hand, with the right gear (Faster Cast Rate rings for the win) you can heal 500+ HP a second. Not bad for a game that allegedly doesn't have a healing class.
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** Cielo has mediocre stats and a weakness to any skill that inflicts status ailments. Virtually every enemy has an attack that inflicts status ailments, so Cielo is often times a bad choice, even against electric enemies who he is supposed to be most useful against. The one time he is legitimately useful is in the same fight where the aforementioned Null Sleep is required. The reason is because his weakness to status ailments means he is almost guaranteed to be hit with the sleep status ailment.
* In ''[[Persona 4]]'' there are items that deal a fixed amount of damage, low even for the early parts of the first dungeon (and you don't find them till you get near the end of said dungeon!) make short work of [[Metal Slime|Metal Slimes]]. Also good for exploiting elemental weaknesses without burning SP. Later on, however, you get the Magatama items, which deal 150 damage to all enemies; you'll likely find them useful on the bosses for the striptease and [[Retraux|Void Quest]] dungeons.
* ''[[Team Fortress 2 (Video Game)|Team Fortress 2]]'' does this with several weapon choices. For instance, the Flare Gun is a replacement for the Shotgun as a Pyro which fires single-shot flares that do minor damage and ignite targets over long distances. However, at those distances, flares are hard to aim reliably and enemies can see them coming from a mile away and dodge them easily, while at closer rangers you may as well simply use your Flamethrower since the single-shot nature of the weapon renders it useless compared to the Shotgun when you need to pump repeated shots into your enemy. As such, the Flare Gun is normally relegated to a minor support role in distracting enemies from a distance, softening down crowds of enemies before your teammates engage them, or heckling Snipers trying to take potshots at your teammates. However, the Flare Gun's saving grace comes in its ability to land a guaranteed [[Critical Hit]] on enemies that are already on fire, so, if you need to provide heavy support fire for a friendly Pyro who's already torching enemies in the distance, or take down that revved-up Heavy in three shots, or simply hold down a long, narrow chokepoint like the 2Fort sewers alongside another Pyro, the Flare Gun is a man's best friend.
* ''[[Ancient Domains of Mystery]]'' hangs a lampshade on this with the "potion of uselessness." When drunk, it's...useless. But if thrown in the [[Slippy-Slidey Ice World]], it propels you along like any other thrown object... {{spoiler|and your god is impressed enough to give you an artifact for finding a use for it.}}
** Oh, it gets better. It's not merely useless if you drink it. It's useless if you throw it at a monster. It's useless if you dip an item in it. It's never an alchemical ingredient. And many, if not most, potions are useful for more than one of those reasons.
* In ''[[Iji (Video Game)|Iji]]'', the Resonance Reflector is normally too slow to recharge to be much use for you; you'd be better off [[Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him|blasting the enemies with a]] BFG instead of trying to reflect their own projectiles back at them. You'd think it would be good for a [[Pacifist Run]] (They're killing themselves, right?), only for [[Friendly Fireproof|gameplay reasons]] the reflected projectiles count as yours, so no it isn't. Then comes the final boss, who has immensely strong armor... [[Playing Tennis With the Boss|and a weapon that does far more damage than anything you've got, and that can be reflected.]]
** Version 1.6 changed the reflection mechanic so that deflecting an enemy projectile no longer counts as your kill. Unless of course, it's a projectile they reflected back at you, but with the reflector's load time, you probably won't be able to reflect it again anyway.
** The Resonance Reflector is an upgraded version of the Resonance Detonator, which is even more useless since it shares the Reflector's absurdly long reload time but its effect is identical to your kick attack (which is always a keypress away and doesn't require you to switch weapons). Kicking also takes a lot less time than charging the Detonator does. The only advantage provided by the Detonator is that it fires instantly when you press the button, while the kick only deals damage about half a second into the attack animation. Enter Tasen Shredders, vehicles that both Iji and the Tasen can use. Most of them spawn with a Tasen rider, but you can kick them off without destroying the Shredder - if you manage to hit a fast-moving vehicle with your foot in the split second before it knocks you down. Resonance Detonators make this feasible.
* The Tractor Beam spell in ''[[Tales of Phantasia (Video Game)|Tales of Phantasia]]'' is largely useless. In practice, it's supposed to be a useful spell (being the only non-elemental spell Arche can learn for a good long time), but it only works on enemies on the ground. The problem is that many of ''ToP'''s enemies (roughly about 1/3) are flying enemies that are NEVER on the ground, while most of the rest are fond of jumping around like rabid monkeys. The result is a spell that so rarely deals damage that most players will turn it off so the computer-controlled Arche doesn't end up wasting half her turns. There's only ONE case where the spell is useful, being in Gnome's Dungeon against the Clay Idol monsters, land-based creatures that take damage from only one attack in the game. Care to guess which one?
** In ''[[Tales of Vesperia (Video Game)|Tales of Vesperia]]'', Estelle can potentially give you an item called the "Mother's Memento." It theoretically grants you unlimited healing, as it is never consumed when used, except that the healing it grants per use is incredibly small, and given that any item use in the game comes with a cooldown, there are far more efficient ways to heal. Eventually, you have to fight {{spoiler|a brainwashed Estelle as}} a boss. Using the Mother's Memento during the battle grants {{spoiler|her a brief moment of self-awareness, lowering her defenses and earning}} you the Secret Mission for it, which you can't get in any other way.
* In ''Dink Smallwood: Mystery Island'', you learn a spell called Duck Magic through a subplot involving a human-to-duck transforming magic fountain. This spell does nothing at all except summon ducks. {{spoiler|The final boss is the only thing they work on, because it "forgot to put on feet armor".}}
* In ''[[MedievilMediEvil (Video1998 Gamevideo game)|Medievil]]'', one of the earlier weapons you get is a wooden Club, which [[Cardboard Obstacle|breaks boulders]]. The Club is unfortunately also the game's only [[Breakable Weapons|breakable melee weapon]], is almost as weak as the Short Sword you start with, and the Warhammer can also break boulders while being stronger, with a longer range and an awesome [[Ground Pound]] attack. However, the Club can also be used as a torch, and the [[Gang Plank Galleon]] level at the end of the game has cannons with fuses...
* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' has the Rasp spell, which eliminates enemy magic points. While stronger at this task than the Osmose spell (the latter also gives you the magic points, saving on Ethers), most players overlook it for spells that do hit point damage - killing things the old-fashioned way. However, there are several enemies (including both iterations of the Atma/Ultima Weapon and literally every enemy in the Fanatics' Tower) that die if all their magic is depleted. On top of that, they usually have [[Taking You Withwith Me]] magic attacks; if their magic is drained, they can't do the attack and leave you untouched as they die. And in Atma's case, using Rasp will prevent it from using its most dangerous attacks, which are activated when it has low HP.
** Then there's Relm's Sketch command, which most people ignore, given that, well, it sucks. However, it's a [[One-Hit Kill]] against a few foes. Similarly, you won't use Celes' Runic very often, but there are a few bosses that are significantly incapacitated by it.
** X-zone is a spell that removes enemies from combat. Like most instant death spells it rarely works on anyone you'd care to kill instantly. It works a lot better if you cast vanish on an enemy first (this may be unintentional), but it also works on the boss known as Wrexsoul, ensuring a quick end to an otherwise annoying boss fight (though you miss out on a reward).
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*** The Fanatics' Tower messes with your character's command windows so you can only use magic spells or items in combat. Since Umaro doesn't have a command window, he completely ignores this restriction and will simply attack anyway. This can be a lifesaver-when fighting the [[Magi Master]] in the Fanatics' Tower, most players will Berserk him to stop him from constantly changing his elemental weakness. Unfortunately, you might end up Berserking him when he's only vulnerable to an element you can't target with your magic. If you don't have a spell like Flare, and you don't have the ability, much less the patience, to use Rasp, the fight can become [[Unwinnable]] unless you can find some other way to damage him. Even if he has to do it all himself, Umaro can still destroy the [[Magi Master]] for you.
*** Cyan is frequently seen as a [[Crutch Character]] because you have to charge up his Bushido attacks before he can use them. You can't input any commands for your other party members until Cyan is ready...but since Umaro has no command window, he can and will attack while Cyan is powering up.
* Across the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' series in general, there are many enemies that trigger [[Taking You Withwith Me]] attacks - either machines that self-destruct, or living bombs that blow up when hit with enough attacks. These enemies are, across the board, rather vulnerable to Slow and Stop, which do [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin]], allowing you to take them out without having to worry about them taking out your party.
** Similarly, the status buff, Reflect can get this treatment. Reflect returns most magic spells back at the caster/caster's party. However, some enemies will cast Reflect on the player's party so that their healing or buffing spells are reflected back at the enemy party. Not only that, but most enemies that use elemental magic absorb what they are casting, thus reflecting magic back at them would just heal them. That is the main reason why Reflect is hardly used by the player, but if enemies cast Reflect upon themselves, the player party can cast Reflect on themselves and cast magic on themselves to bounce it back at enemies without a counter reflect (except for [[Final Fantasy VII]] where if the party and enemies have reflect, the spells will keep bouncing back and forth until Reflect fades for someone).
*** Alternately, sometimes you can dispel the enemies' Reflect spells and let them get blasted by their own spells. One particularly funny instance is against the fight against Seymour on Mt. Gagazet in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'', where he tries to bounce a Flare spell off his Reflect barrier to hit you. If you dispel his barrier before he gets the chance, he'll hit himself and then the game will snarkily note that the "Combination Failed".
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* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' has many combat items that are mostly useless (due to the existence of skills and/or other items that make far superior alternatives), until you reach the final quest. There are 24 different [[Puzzle Boss|Puzzle Bosses]] (originally 6 before ascension was implemented, then 12 until the NS13 expansion), of which the game will choose 6 randomly; each one can only be defeated using a specific combat item.
** There are many other items with similar unexpected usefulness, like the Antique Hand Mirror; using it normally just breaks it and gives you [[Bad Luck Charm|7 turns of "bad luck"]] (which [[Subverted Trope|does nothing]]), but using it while fighting the absurdly powerful {{spoiler|[[The Worm That Walks|Guy Made Of Bees]]}} will kill him instantly. The Chaos Butterfly normally has minor, random effects, or gives a seemingly meaningless message. Yet, not only is the Butterfly one of the special deadly combat items mentioned above, but using it in any combat allows you to [[Guide Dang It|complete a certain unrelated quest in half the usual amount of time, if you choose exactly the right multiple-choice options]].
* In ''[[Wizardry (Video Game)|Wizardry]] IV'', the most useless summoned monster in the game is also the only thing that can kill the final boss.
* ''[[Champions of Norrath]]'' and its sequel have several spells that either only work on undead, or are much more effective on undead. For example, the dark elf shadowknight's Convert Undead is absolutely useless ''unless'' you're fighting a horde of undead. The high elf cleric has several [[Holy Hand Grenade]] spells that are only useful against undead.
* There's a Disney game for the Sega Genesis called ''The Great Circus Mystery.'' In it you get several suits that allow Mickey and/or Minnie to solve puzzles, get items and open pathways. You know how you tend to forget about the first one or two weapons you get as the game progresses? Well, nothing will take down Level 5's boss except for the vacuum cleaner-suit from WAY back.
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** The sequel had Mira's unique power: while she was your active character, your party wouldn't trigger mines. Normally mines in the KotOR series are widely-spread and easy enough to simply walk around (or ''through'' -- they don't do very much damage). However, precisely one area in the game, not long after you recruit Mira in the first place, has ''dozens'' of mines in thick clusters, entirely unlike the usual arrangement.
** The sequel also emphasized this with skills through the crafting mechanic. Usually you could rely on your party's skills, rather than your own -- and a few, like Awareness and Stealth, were not very useful to begin with. However, they were the basis of the crafting system, and most of the time you were forced to use your own skills when determining what upgrades you could make.
* ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering]]'' in general. For starters, we have One With Nothing. Which goes from useless to [[My Hero Zero]] if you have cards with madness (pay less if you're discarding cards). Lifegain cards are almost completely useless, unless you have a card like [[Game Breaker|Yawgmoth's Bargain]], which lets you turn life into cards (though [[Deal Withwith the Devil|you can't draw cards the normal once-per-turn way]]).
** Lifegain also became nasty when they began adding specific cards that let you win the game if your life passed a certain extent. [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=185743 Felidar Sovereign] springs to mind.
*** Additionally, due to lifegain's percieved weakness, you can gain ''tons'' of it for very cheap with a number of black, green, or especially white cards. Then you have certain creatures like Serra Ascendant and Divinity of Pride, which both become ENORMOUSLY overpowered for their costs if you have 25-30 life on hand, and both have the powerful lifelink ability to convert any damage they do into more life. Combine that with an artifact recently spoiled from Innistrad that can tap every turn for 5 damage if you managed to get to 30 or more life and the aforementioned Sovereign...
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** Avoid the harsh penalty for death, since a secondary effect of Mijin Gakure is to remove all penalties for dying and being raised back to life.
** A poor man's Warp, since you can return to your home point after you die and again there is no death penalty for doing it this way. This has become less useful due to how easy it is to Warp through higher level spells and items.
* Fina in ''[[Skies of Arcadia (Video Game)|Skies of Arcadia]]'' has a special move called Lunar Glyph that does a little damage and has a chance of petrifying the enemy. As you'd expect, all the enemies worth petrifying are immune to it...except for ''one boss'' that it's almost 100% effective against.
* In theory, [[Arrows Onon Fire]] are an advanced attack in ''[[Trine (Video Game)|Trine]]'', doing more damage in return for a bit of magical energy. In practice, normal arrows make up for quality with quantity. However, max-level fire arrows explode to damage nearby targets, allowing you to quickly take out the [[Goddamn Bats|bat swarms]] that are hard to hit with most other attacks.
* ''[[Starcraft]] II'''s campaign features one new unit in most missions, and typically the mission revolves around that new unit to a greater or lesser extent. This can make a number of these units [[Not Completely Useless]], though which ones will depend on a given player's style. Battlecruisers, for instance, are generally held to be [[Awesome but Impractical]] in terms of resources, but are essential to "Maw of the Void", the mission which unlocks them, since their health lets them weather the environmental effects better than other, more efficient units.
* * The 'mutate' perk in the ''[[Fallout]]'' universe. You can re-pick your traits, how grand. Too bad you pick your traits yourself in the beginning of the game and there are few, if any, traits that it would be worth a perk switching to mid-game. Meanwhile, in ''[[Fallout Tactics]]'', your team-mates have pre-picked traits, and getting [[Game Breaker|Gifted]] ''is'' worth the perk slot.
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