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{{quote|"Wait, what's this? You only have status-inducing magic spells? Why, those ''suck!''"|''[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/169933 Final Fantasy VII: All About Random Battles]''}}
 
A staple of [[Role Playing Game|RPGs]], your characters can learn attacks or skills such as [[Standard Status Effects|Instant Death, Poison, Confusion, Paralyze, Silence, and Petrify]], or [[Percent Damage Attack|Percent Damage Attacks]]s that at first glance seem incredibly useful. However, in reality these spells are usually anything ''but'' useful, for any of the following reasons:
 
# [[Boss Battle|Bosses]], [[Sub Boss|sub-bosses]], and other types of enemies that actually pose a threat to the player are always extremely resistant or [[Contractual Boss Immunity|immune to such attacks.]] If they weren't, the [['''Useless Useful Spell]]''' would [[Game Breaker|make things far too easy]], and may even be a form of [[Disc One Nuke]].
# Common enemies that the attacks ''are'' effective against can easily be disposed of by use of normal attacks, which means there's no sense in wasting time and magic power on fancy maneuvers. Who's going to waste 36MP to cast Instant Death on the local harmless [[Underground Monkey]]? Or wait for Poison to kill your opponent when often other methods do damage much faster? This is perhaps one of the most common examples of this trope - in some games it's quicker to just beat them up in a couple rounds instead of spending a round or two inflicting debuffs or status ailments and ''then'' beating them up. (Sometimes this varies for bosses or an [[Elite Mook]] that requires more strategy)
# They may simply have a very low success rate in the first place. (Or may be hurt a lot by a glitch)
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Most character classes made up of [[Status Buff|buff]]/[[Standard Status Effects|debuff]] effects like this tend to be much [[Spoony Bard|less popular than others]] for these reasons. However, it's averted with relative frequency; many games do allow for some very effective use of traditionally "Useless" spells. One trick is to pair up the effect with a normal attack, meaning that if the spell misses, the player still deals damage. Other games, especially the more strategic ones, make these spells useful by having genuine [[Elite Mooks]] who are dangerous in battle but without such immunities, or simply by having base [[Mooks]] be more credible opponents.
 
These attacks are also far more useful in [[MMORPG|MMORPGs]]s due to generally stronger [[Mooks]] and player controlled enemies that are very vulnerable to such tactics. [[Useless Useful Spell|'''Useless Useful Spells]]''' are often hated among [[MMORPG]] communities for their ability to handicap player characters (often even better then when used on [[Mooks]] due to [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|the computer cheating]]). However, in [[Player Versus Player|PvP]], ''that'' is a different story!
 
Judging by the way this has been going away in recent years and is less and less accepted, it seems to be on its way to becoming a [[Discredited Trope]]. May however be an [[Acceptable Break From Reality]] regarding some; because it would not make a boss (especially the [[Final Boss]]) very challenging to be able to just hit "Instant Death".
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[[Super-Trope]] to [[Contractual Boss Immunity]]. Compare [[Awesome but Impractical]]. Contrast with the [[Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality]], where the more powerful something is in combat, the less it is outside of it.
 
The opposite of this trope is [[Not Completely Useless]]. In fact, if an otherwise [['''Useless Useful Spell]]''' is redeemed by being used against a specific boss, it may become just that.
{{examples}}
 
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** Although one boss-level opponent (Chastity, a [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Slayer]] type, can be one-shotted with Vision of Death, ''if'' you catch her before she's braced for combat (and a Malkavian can). If you're not putting points towards guns, don't have Bedlam yet, and are ''[[Stealth Run|still]]'' feeling violent, there are also ambushes where it's a solid alternative to trying for stealth kills.
* Nearly every ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' game has a few of these. There are some exceptions, of course - [[Universal Poison|the Bio spell]] is occasionally the only way to deal steady damage to an opponent, and the final boss of ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' [[Revive Kills Zombie|practically requires Zombify]] (unless you took a short side trip to the [[Game Breaker|Omega Ruins]]).
** The Gravity/Demi spells in almost any ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' suffer from a similar, if not quite identical, problem. Gravity spells cannot traditionally kill your enemy -- itenemy—it deals a percentage of their current health as damage, usually in increments of 10% or 25%. Theoretically, this is very useful for bosses and strong enemies -- howeverenemies—however, both of these tend to be resistant or immune to gravity. When they're not, though, it's often quite effective. It was also one of the best spells in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' since it could work on several enemies in close quarters and would pull them to the ground and immobilize them; in the sequel, however, it was removed and replaced with the Magnet spell, one with somewhat more obvious uses.
*** The Demi series, surprisingly, works against [[Final Fantasy VII|Emerald]] [[Bonus Boss|WEAPON]]. Since Emerald has, literally, [[Marathon Boss|a million hit points]], you'll do [[Cap|9,999]] damage with it on nearly every turn, and when it starts inflicting less than 9,999 it means you're almost there.
*** Several monsters in [[Final Fantasy VII]] ''absorb'' gravity—using it on them ''restores'' a percentage of their HP instead! With the right combination of [[Green Rocks|materia]] (Elemental paired with Gravity on your armor) and sufficient [[Level Grinding]] (you need 40,000 AP on an Elemental materia), you could do this to your party as well.
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*** In a similar fashion, Steiner's Thunder Slash skill is supposed to cause lightning damage to an enemy, but it would always fail because of a programming glitch that mixed up its success rate with Iai Strike. When you fight Beatrix ( {{spoiler|and later when she joins as a guest member}}), her version of the skill never fails because her skill isn't under the same programming like Steiner's. If Vivi is in the active roster with Steiner, you could get a similar effect by having Steiner use Thunder/Thundara/Thundaga Sword attack.
**** A notable exception was Kary/Maralith, who was actually quite vulnerable to several useless-useful status spells. Possibly the most hilarious way to deal with her was Confusing her into attacking herself for several rounds. So much for the Legendary Fiend of Fire.
** Most spells in ''[[Final Fantasy II]]'' were useless aside from Cure, Life, element Magic, Flare, and Osmose. The reason for this is that any spell you picked up needed to be [[Level Grinding|ground from scratch]], which was painstaking even if you used the [[Good Bad Bugs|glitch]] that allowed you to speed it up by several orders of magnitude. You needed to cast buffs ''several hundred times'' before they'd reliably land on ''one person'', much less the whole party. Debuffs needed even more ludicrous grind, since foes already have a propensity for resisting or being immune. The [[Sword of Plot Advancement|plot-central]] Ultima not only [[Can't Catch Up|started at level 1 and came into play near the end]], but nearly scaled worse than the spells you bought at the beginning of the game -- andgame—and certainly worse than normal attacks.
*** However, if you did take the time to power up spells, they turned out ''extremely'' useful. A high-powered Teleport spell is relatively easy to get and kills a surprising number of creatures reliably. The Berserk and Haste spells make your physical attackers walking death machines, and proper application of the Toad spell makes much of the game a complete joke. (remakes of the game also significantly cut down on the grind needed to level up) Ultima still sucks, at least in the original release. It's meant to scale in power depending on every other spell and ability you've leveled up, but a glitch means that it, in a word, doesn't.
** Kimahri picks up quite a few of these in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' if you find his Blue Mage-like ability to be interesting. For example, you can have him master the Stone Breath attack of an enemy...except that then we ''guarantee'' that whenever you use that particular Overdrive attack, the target will be immune to petrification. Even if it's a random encounter. That doesn't have petrify effects.
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* Most ether effects in the first two ''[[Xenosaga]]'' games were virtually useless, with the notable exception of spells to change a character's attack element that were available in Episode 2. Episode 3 largely remedied this issue.
* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion]]'' the spell/poison effect "Burden", which reduces the carrying capacity, potentially over-encumbering the victim, is only really useful for opponents to cast against the player, not the other way around, since the player is the only creature in the entire world who regularly (OK, always) carries enough stuff to ''almost'' max out their capacity. The player would have to inflict enormous amounts of the "Burden" effect on opponents to slow them down or stop them - and that only works on humanoid opponents who actually carry any equipment, unlike the numerous animals and monsters.
** That said, the game is otherwise almost completely devoid of "it only works on the player" spells. It just makes the really useful effects either nearly inaccessible or extremely costly (not that this prevents players from finding [[Game Breaker|Game Breakers]]s).
** Until later in the game, the Chameleon spell is entirely worthless, because it lasts a short time for a high cost, and only makes you partially invisible. That is, until you infuse 5 pieces of armor with 20% Chameleon effect, making you 100% invisible, ALL THE TIME. It utterly destroys the enemy AI's response mechanics, allowing the player to hack down everything with impunity because nothing would even attempt to attack you.
** Drain spells for the most part affect enemies in ways that they would never use anyway. Drain personality and drain luck, anybody?
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** Warlock's Infernal and Doomguard were like this for a long time. Infernal summons a powerful demon, but the spell keeping it in control broke after 5 minutes, causing it to attack the user. It also replaces the Warlock's normal minion (which has to be resummoned with a long cast time) and could only be used outdoors. Doomguard was even more useless: The ritual required to summon it killed one party member at random, it had to be enslaved by the warlock and wasn't really much stronger than the normal minions. In the new expansion, the spells got retooled to make them more useful (both demons had their damage increased and now despawn instead of breaking free. In addition Infernal can now be used indoors and Doomguard no longer kills a party member when summoned). They're still situational at best, but no longer completely useless.
*** The warlock spells Detect Invisibility and Breathe Underwater also border on useless. The latter was quite useful for lower level underwater quests (which weren't really popular), but the expansions have cut back on those and provided players with consumables for the same effect. The time a player can breathe underwater unaided was also tripled. The former suffers from [[Crippling Overspecialization]], as it only helps against actual invisibility, not stealth. Only a few mobs in the game use invisibility, and on the player side it's only the succubus pet and a mage skill added much later.
** Shadow Ward, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward are also rather useless useful spells. They absorb shadow, fire and frost damage, right? Well unfortunately; you had to ''know'' when you were gonna take Fire or Frost Damage otherwise you're just wasting mana, potions could do what Fire and Frost ward did and better (And could bypass class barriers; mages could only use it on themselves) and a lot of enemies dealt shadow or nature damage, making them useless anyways. They also absorbed a set amount of damage, too, so they didn't scale. They've been retooled in Cataclysm though: Fire and Frost Ward were merged into [http://www.wowhead.com/spell=543 Mage Ward], which absorbs Arcane, Frost and Fire damage.<ref>1. ''It scales!'' 2. [http://www.wowhead.com/spell=44395 It empowers Arcane mages when absorbing damage.]</ref>. [http://www.wowhead.com/spell=6229 Shadow Ward] is still there, but there's a Destruction warlock [http://www.wowhead.com/spell=91713 talent] that makes it [http://www.wowhead.com/spell=91711 absorb any kind of magic damage].
** ''World Of Warcraft'' also had a useless useful weapon skill: Unarmed and fist weapons. It should be rather obvious why people don't even bother to level Unarmed unless they're looking for an achievement or the occasional "naked duels". Fighting without a weapon pretty much gimps your stats anyways, so why bother? Fist weapons on the other hand use the same skill as unarmed, but it's not commonly used for one main reason: Lack of selection. You could actually count on ''one hand'' how many fist weapons were in the classic game, and could see why people didn't even bother leveling it. Things improved a little in ''Burning Crusade'', but even then, the dual-wielders picked daggers, swords, maces, and axes more solely because there were way more.
*** Additionally, several of the best rogue attacks require daggers to be used, so using fist weapons would leave you short several excellent damage options, making them even less desirable.
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* In the RPG ''Sailor Moon: Another Story'', using a Holy Grail to transform Moon or Chibimoon to their Super states gave them increased attack powers. It also took away their healing powers and kept them from using Team attacks with the other Senshi (besides one team attack with each other). Not to mention the attack boost didn't put them that much above Saturn or Uranus (The game's designated tanks)
* In [[Odin Sphere]], one potion leaves behind a toxic cloud that kills anything after a short delay, regardless of how much HP it has left. Unfortunately, this has a tendency not to work on boss enemies, but always on you. Sure, it kills slimes, but you've always got Napalm for doing that cheaper.
* ''[[Etrian Odyssey]]'' manages to mostly avoid this trope (see Aversions below), but the Beast class suffers from a severe case of this trope with their Loyalty skill, which makes a Beast take a blow for any other available party member. The problem? Loyalty makes Beasts take damage depending on the Defense-stat of the character they're defending, as opposed to their own Defense .<ref> So if your Beast is defending, say, an [[Squishy Wizard|Alchemist]], they'll take more damamge than if they were blocking a [[Stone Wall|Protector]] from the same attack</ref>. This ends up damaging the Beast-class as a whole, as some of the Beast skills require mastery of Loyalty to some degree.
** The [[Whip It Good|Dark Hunters]] can learn a skill named Ecstasy: when maxed out, it has a 100% chance of automatically killing any enemy that is affected by all three kinds of Bind effects (Head, Arms, and Legs). This ''would'' be an aversion, as surprisingly few enemies are resistant to OHKO-moves, except that all four of those skills need to be maxed out to be reliable, and by the time they are, you can just outright kill a monster using the individual skills as opposed to depending on Ecstasy. Fortunately, there's Climax...
* In an odd RTS example, in ''[[Command & Conquer]]: Red Alert'', a few missions from the end the allies acquire the ability to use the Chronosphere, a teleportation device. However, in game (more powerful in [[Cutscene Power to the Max]]), you can only teleport a single tank at once, and cannot teleport air units or APCs with people, with the given reason that the people in the APCs will die, which really doesn't make sense because the tanks have to have people in them (and a known cheat can disable it). This is largely corrected in Red Alert 2, where the Chronosphere has the power to teleport up to 9 small tanks, including vehicles with people in them, as well as some air units. In fact, you're able to teleport land units into the sea and sea units onto the land, making it somewhat of an offensive weapon too. Unshielded infantry still die in Chronoshifting.
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** Technically, he's cheating {{spoiler|because he's not even using "Projection" magecraft in the first place, as he's actually using an application of a Reality Marble.}}
* Nondamaging spells in ''[[Breath of Fire]] II'' are especially guilty of this, for all three of the listed reasons, but especially the third one. The one that was supposed to lower agility doesn't work on anything.
* The pocket watch in the ''[[Castlevania]]'' games is largely a Useless Useful Item. Paying 5 hearts to stop time for 5 seconds sounds like a good deal -- untildeal—until you realize that almost all the bosses, ''and even some of the stronger normal enemies'', are still able to move during the watch's use. The watch is occasionally useful in some of the game's more [[Nintendo Hard]] segments, and does quite well against Medusa, the second-level boss in the first game (and the only boss in the entire series who is vulnerable to its effect), but it's largely useless, and hardly ever more useful than any other weapon you can carry.
** It is, however, very useful in the game's many platform sequences where you have to make precise jumps and enemies fly around you trying to knock you into the [[Bottomless Pit]].
** ''Haunted Castle'' makes the watch cost only ''two'' hearts, making it actually efficient.
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** Although they do give nice experience even when they miss.
** In Radiant Dawn, the Sleep Staff is a definite aversion: You're given one in an Info Conversation on [[That One Level|Chapter 3-13]]... given the [[Rogue Protagonist|boss of that chapter]] [[Game Breaker|is the strongest unit in the game]], [[Hopeless Boss Fight|and he gets much stronger back up on turn 10]], you pretty much have to take him out, before he kills you horribly, but has a very low RES stat, meaning he can be hit by the staff... it's pretty much your only hope.
** FE 4's "Berserk Sword"-- a—a sword with a chance to inflict the [[Brainwashed and Crazy|Berserk Status]] upon foes. Seems useful, right? Well, it's only got a range of 1. Which means: Either the enemy is still going to attack you on their turn or, have already used it. So it's kinda pointless. However, the Staff has a 100% chance to hit if the enemy's MDEF is lower than the caster's MAG stat... which is an aversion. [[Hilarity Ensues]] when that hits the right target, like say, [[That One Boss]], when she's next to the [[Final Boss]].
* ''[[Mega Man X Command Mission]]'' suffers from this greatly, although spells are relegated to items. None of them will ever work...EVER unless they are attack or healing items.
* ''[[Skies of Arcadia]]'' plays this straight with the silver-magic "Instant Death" spells. Bosses use these (with [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|such high levels of success]]) so often that you must use Aika's magic-nullifying Delta Shield every single turn... which renders all your ''other'' spells useless! You're better off just using items, since they can replicate magic effects, cost no SP to use, bypass the Delta Shield and are [[Money for Nothing|piss-easy to acquire]].
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** Inverted, even, with certain hexes that have an effect if they end without being removed, since they end faster. In particular, Wastrel's Worry (Which deals damage after a certain amount of time if the target hasn't used a skill) becomes spamable and does quite a bit of pain.
* Nearly every offensive spell in the first ''[[Harvest Moon|Rune Factory]]'', as the player character only has 100 [[Mana|RP]] per day to work with (for the most part) and the spells have a fixed RP cost. Fixed in the sequel, where magic costs decrease with practice just like every other ability.
* The ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' [[Updated Rerelease|Final Mixes]] seemed to be bent on making the respective games' [[Useless Useful Spell|useless useful spells, abilities, and forms]] into actually useful skills: Stop is necessary to defeat most of the added monsters in the original Final Mix, and the same for Aero (which was not so much useless as too costly for its benefits). In Final Mix+, a whole slew of [[Bonus Boss]] fights and [[That One Sidequest|sidequests]] became either significantly easier or even possible in the first place by cunning use of Wisdom Form, the by-far least useful of Sora's forms in the main game, or various kinds of magic (including [[Limit Break|limits]]), often eschewed in the main playthrough or the original versions as it is generally easy enough to off the mooks with regular attacks.
** Vexen can be ''incredibly'' trivialized in Final Mix 2+. You can attack while moving so you can avoid the trap that collects data and summons a Shadow Sora while you destroy his shield...then what do you do after that? FIRAGA SPAM!!! Lexaeus also likewise requires you to pretty much spam reflect unless you don't wanna get crushed by tons of boulders.
*** However, Reflect is an ''extremely'' useful skill even in the original Kingdom Hearts II. It not only prevented enemies from damaging you, but it could be cast three times in succession and [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|reflects damage back to the enemies.]] It was also essential if you want to win a tough fight quickly or didn't want to be hit by [[That One Boss|Xaldin's]] hurricane sweep in Beast's Castle.
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** The same happens in other ''[[Valkyrie Profile]]'' games. In the first, Might Reinforce and Sap Guard are two of the best spells in the game. There are very few spells that afflict just status, but they are capable of damaging so they are not entirely worthless. And in ''[[Covenant Of The Plume]]'', moves such as Suspend Motion are very useful (just not on bosses), and it's possible to Sap Guard or Sap Power the bosses.
* ''The Spirit Engine'' has a really vicious one. At first, the Life Drain spell seems really great - it deals the highest damage in the game, doesn't take too long to cast and completly bypasses any protection an enemy may have. And it really IS great for the majority of the game. {{spoiler|And then you come to the final two bosses. Not only are they two the [[That One Boss|worst difficulty spikes]] I've EVER seen, they're also completly immune to this spell. Since you likely sunk all your skill points into this spell, what with it looking like a gamebreaker, you'll be left with at least one useless character.}} Since combats are luck-indepentent in The Spirit Engine, you may have rendered your game unwinnable.
** Fortunately the skill system is set up so that unleveled skills are still ok if used in an appropriate situation, and you can't put more than half your points in one skill (unless you count putting the rest in HP/MP). The shield spells are still useful for the semifinal boss and the final boss's first and third forms. The problem is if you were so foolish as to rely on the spell that completely ignores armor as your main method of beating armor, because the final boss's ''second'' form has obscenely high damage resistance that half the game's attacks can barely dent, and shields are only useful as a backup plan if you fail to stop secondary attack--onceattack—once. The game throws you a bone with [[The Cavalry]] showing up if you're losing with a strong attack... except there's no real way of protecting the guy and his health will not last through the battle. The author learned his lesson and in the next game the only boss that has damage soak higher than the stronger normal enemies is an optional fight.
* Bombchu in the Gameboy Color ''Zelda'' games. In the N64 games they could ''sometimes'' be useful to hit far-off bomb sites that a normal bomb can't reach, and ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass|Phantom Hourglass]]'' made their use essential, but ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages|The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games]]''? You'll never need them. Ever. They're completely pointless. Worse, you can only get them by completing ALL of one game and at least a significant portion of the other. By the time you get them, you don't need them.
** The Bombchus in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]'' are equally useless...What they work best for (hitting far away or otherwise hard to reach targets) could be handled much more easily and quickly by just combining regular bombs with arrows for exploding arrows.
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** It's worth noting, however, that the very few enemies against which the shock element is genuinely useful are the ONLY type of enemy present in the penultimate stage of the game...which happens to be the best grinding area there is. The worth of grinding in Borderlands is debatable, but if you plan to attempt it holding onto a good shock weapon pays dividends.
** In addition, shock weapons have the second highest critical hit damage bonuses, to balance for them having such a small variety of enemy's weak against their element. This makes shock SMGS and sniper rifles very good weapons to have with shock, given that both classes have very high critical hit rates.
* ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]]: [[Strange Journey]]'' has a series of spells that hit all enemies for "heavy" damage and have a chance to inflict status ailments--aailments—a Ma-dyne spell and a all-targeting status spell rolled up into one, if you will. However, the status doesn't always connect, each spell costs 65 MP (enough to cast Megidolaon), and worst of all, the damage output ranges from on par with Ma-dyne spells at best to ''no better than first-tier spells at worst.''
* In ''[[Baten Kaitos]] Origins'', you can get a variety of artifact magnus that do things such as ward damage off, display enemy health, or slow the opposing party down. However, most of those are too limited to be of any real use, and given how the battle system in this game works, it's much smarter to just pack weapons and armor.
* ''[[Civilization]] IV'' has several Civics that are of varying usefulness. Probably the most notorious for this trope, however, was Environmentalism. In its original form, it gave your cities a small Health boost, plus one Happiness for each forest and jungle within your culture's borders. The problem is that you got a production bonus for ''clearing'' jungles and forest, and you can't use Environmentalism until very late in the game, so by the time you can access it, it gives you almost ''nothing''. Fortunately, Firaxis retooled this with the ''Beyond The Sword'' expansion - in it, Environmentalism gave a substantially larger Health bonus, another one for building Public Transportation, and a ''money'' bonus for Windmills (which are useful anyway) and Forest Preserves (which give Happiness on their own). This made Environmentalism a very useable late-game Civic.
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** [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=2900 Apocalypse Chime] destroys all Homelands cards. If Homelands cards other than Autumn Willow and Baron Sengir were actually useful, this card would be.
** [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=19665 Common Cause]. Pointless since ''all'' Nonartifact creatures must be the same color, even your opponents. Stupid errata...
** Spells and abilities that endow creatures and to a lesser extent other permanents with specific abilities (including but not limited to the aura subtype of enchantments) may fall under this. Consider [http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?id=83088 Flight]. From the enchanted creature's perspective, it's potentially a great effect -- iteffect—it gains flying if it didn't have it already, allowing it to bypass most non-flying blockers and/or block flying attackers itself. Get to the point where you actually want to put the card into a deck, though, and you'll soon realize that if having flyers is important to your strategy, you'd best include a number of creatures that have the ability in and of themselves already in case you don't actually ''draw'' that Flight card...yet the more of those you have, the less good the card actually does you in the first place! (This logic does not, of course, apply to abilities that actually have a cumulative effect. However, many of the more commonly granted abilities -- likeabilities—like flying, first strike, or trample -- dotrample—do not fall into this category.) Then there's the issue that the empowered creature isn't necessarily any harder to ''kill'', potentially taking the entire investment in extra cards, mana, and/or other resources to the graveyard with it...
** ''Magic the Gathering'' also has a fair share of "instant win" cards - as in, they actually SAY "You win the game" or "Target player loses the game". However, they're either highly situational, require a certain action that will almost certainly get interrupted, or are just ridiculously expensive.
** And finally, we have [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=1615 Great Wall], generally considered the worst card in the game. All it does is let you block creatures with plainswalk, of which there are only four that no one uses, only ''one'' of which was around when Great Wall was released.
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== Aversions and parodies: ==
* All Force type character classes in later versions of [[Phantasy Star Online]] have particular technique specialities, techs that they have a higher level cap for than other classes. The [[Magic Knight|FOmar]]'s speciality are the buff and debuff techniques, which at max level make an enormous difference to the affected stats and have a massive area of effect. Having Shifta and Deband maintained whenever possible is standard procedure for PSO, and the [[F Omar]] is generally the preferred caster of choice for the task.
* Dervishes in [[Guild Wars]] have enchantment (buff) stacking as their gimmick. Typically any given one only has minor effects, but given that many of them synergise well and Dervish primaries gain energy every time an enchantment ends, it tends to be essential to maintain a lot of them.
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** Stone is very good in random encounters in [[Makaitoushi Sa Ga]]. Best of all, it works on an entire group of enemies.
** In ''[[Dragon Quest I]]'', almost all combat spells eventually become nigh-useless near the end, thanks to the proclivity of magic-immune monsters and the dearth of MP-restoring items. The only spells that stay useful are Sleep and Stopspell, for the few enemies not immune.
** ''[[Dragon Quest IV]]'' did have one example of [[Useless Useful Spell]], but that was due to your allies playing [[AI Roulette]]. Specifically, [[Combat Medic|Kiryl]] turned stupid the moment he learned [[One-Hit Kill|Beat / Thwack]], constantly casting that instead of concentrating on fighting or healing. This was so prevalent that it's even [[Mythology Gag|referenced]] in one of his specials in ''[[Dragon Quest]]: Monster Battle Road''. Luckily, the re-release let you change tactics (you could do this in the original game, but only to a limited degree -- thedegree—the tactics were character-specific, and there were some things you just couldn't actually stop your characters from doing, regardless of setting) or take direct control, so even though the strategy for "Show Now Mercy" is still just spamming the [[One-Hit Kill]], it's not the only options.
* Many relatively early [[RPG|RPGs]]s, like ''Wizardry'' and ''Might & Magic'', were created before this trope came into vogue, and are noticeably lacking it. By inheritance, games modeled after them, like ''[[Etrian Odyssey]]'', also tend to lack it, for the most part.
** In ''Wizardry'', the easiest way to kill Werdna was a critical hit from a Ninja. His escort of Vampire Lords tended to give you more trouble.
* The ''Bard's Tale'' games pretty much have no immunities or even significant resistances at all. The [[Big Bad]] of the first game can be killed by a relatively simple death spell, which is only fair considering he and his cohorts are flinging one-hit kills right back at you.
* Averted almost entirely in the ''[[Pokémon]]'' series. Most status-changing abilities are usually effective. If they aren't, it's either because it's a One-Hit KO move (Fissure), or it's because the status effect is an unexpected bonus (Ice Beam). Not only that but the "bosses" in Pok&Atilde;Pokémon are simply leveled-up versions of those you find in the wild, meaning that Confuse Ray will work just as well on the Gym leader's level 50 Alakazam as it did on that level 3 Abra you found in the grass. Provided the Abra don't immediately use 'Teleport' after you attack it, [[Metal Slime|little bastards]].
** Unfortunately, the Stadium sidegames do have a rather awful variant of this, where the odds of it working and wearing off have been altered severely, as have the hit accuracies of everything, and the evasion chance, and the critical hit chance. Worse, [[Finagle's Law|they've been altered both in your opponent's favor and against your own at the same time]]. [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|Opponents can slaughter your team with moves that are supposed have 30% hit chance, and any status effect they hit you with will generally last the max duration or kick in far more than it should]] (or both, in the case of confusion. It can last up to eight turns and has an on-paper one in four chance of causing the Pokemon to attack itself rather than the opponent. Naturally, many of the later opponent Pokemon have a move causing this.) Meanwhile, in the unlikely event your status effect move hits, the effect rarely activates or the Pokemon shakes it off within a turn.
** There are still actual Useless Useful Spells, though; one move in particular (Feint) is intended to specifically bypass moves like Protect, the problem being it doesn't really do anything but bypass Protect, etc. Since so few Pokemon use those moves to begin with, you're better off giving up on it.
*** Although Feint is still a high priority move, like Quick Attack and the like, moreso, it deals more damage than Quick Attack.
** Due to [[Game Breaking Bug|Game Breaking Bugs]]s in the first generation Focus Energy, instead of quadrupling your chance of a [[Critical Hit]], ''quartered'' it.
*** The reason for this was a typo in the game's code - it was meant to increase the chance of a critical hit by 25%, or in other words multiply it by 1.25. Instead, the code used multiplied the chance of a critical hit by 0.25, quartering it.
** There's also a move called "Attract", which sets a status that makes the opponent fail to attack 50% of the time. However, the move only works on Pokemon of the opposite gender, it doesn't work at all on Pokemon with no gender (like Porygon or most legendaries), and is cured by removing the affected Pokemon or the one that used the move from battle. Attract can be useful, but only in combination with with other moves (that also decrease the chance of successfully moving) it stacks with. At least one official match, Venus in Colosseum, uses it to good effect.)
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** Case in point {{spoiler|the second Sanctuary boss is vulnerable to Paralysis, making that whole cave a rush to beat him, then taking advantage of the cowardly enemies to level grind Paula}}.
** The useless ''Pray'' spell that more than often cursed your party with a negative ailment? {{spoiler|You need to use it during the final fight with Giygas.}}
** ''[[Mother 3]]'' maintains this tradition, and every boss is always vulnerable to at least ''one'' status effect. You can frequently put these to great use to defeat them. Plus, Sleep--throughSleep—through either PSI Hypnosis or Duster's amulet--hasamulet—has one of those most useful effects in the game. It reveals an enemy's "heartbeat," which is the special rhythm you need to press the buttons in when attacking to [[Action Commands|rack up massive amounts of damage.]] For some songs, which are made deliberately confusing or difficult, this is a ''massive'' help. Plus, his Wall Staples, which paralyze an enemy for a turn or two, are quite effective.
*** Furthermore, using spells and abilities that raise your stats and lower the boss' stats are quite effective on most bosses and practically required for some of them. Even if they can negate the changes, that's a turn spent not blasting you with powerful multi-targeting PSI attacks.
*** Almost every boss in the game can be frozen or lit on fire, but it's somewhat rare to do so.
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* The [[Heroes of Might and Magic]] series has both, and sometimes the spell's usefulness is directly related to the hero using it. Most of these classics are best in the hands of Might oriented heroes to buff their troops, while a Magic hero is better advised to use his turns to sling damage spells or spells like Puppet Master. Most spells also work regardless of the enemy faced, though the undead are immune to a number of debuffs and some other creatures are highly resistant to magic in general.
** Creatures with spells are a special case as the spell effect doesn't scale well with the size of the stack. A couple of mages have relatively strong spells, but when you get into the hundreds it's generally better to just have them attack instead.
* The Dominus Glyphs in ''[[Castlevania]]: Order of Ecclesia''. The two attack ones are quite powerful... but also damage you heavily every time you use them. You can put all three together for a combination attack that deals obscene damage -- enoughdamage—enough to one-hit kill anything short of a boss, and even some bosses... {{spoiler|But if you use it any time before you're supposed to, it kills Shanoa instantly, rendering it useless.}}
* Most status-inducing spells in the ''Avernum'' series by Spiderweb Software, particularly ones that impair combat ability (Slow, Sleep and Charm), are ineffective against opponents, while the player is very inconvenienced by them. This is more due to tactics than game mechanics, however: The player tends to be outnumbered by a horde of inferior opponents (except for rare boss battles), and naturally incapacitating one of a dozen mooks is useless compared to slowing or incapacitating one of four high-level killing machines.
* ''[[Gaiden Game|Sailor Moon: Another Story]]'' has the spell "Time Stop" which can freeze enemy actions for three turns. You'd think this spell would have severe limitations, but no, casting it freezes all enemies at once including the final boss with 100 percent accuracy. With judicious item use it is possible to keep Time Stop in effect throughout the entire final boss fight ...
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*** One of the bosses in the Final Dungeon is a Blue Mage. If you attack him with Exploder, he will use it on his next turn, effectively committing suicide.
*** You can't talk about FFV without menthoining the insanly overpowered "mix" ability. Now, there are a few examples that stand out. One combination of items, I forgot what it's called, gives you berserk, image, and haste. not quite useless, but towards end-game you are using special skills that do more damage than a normal-super powered attack. Here are a few pre-cursors to this info. First, berserk over-writes any A.I. scripts. So anything a boss would normally do, he doesn't. transforming, final attacks, yadda-yadda. second, the combination bypasses any immunities a boss might have. {{spoiler|After you think you beat the final boss in the game, he transforms into a stronger form. Unless, of course you use the combo on him. he'll just die. no transforming, no death soliloquies, nothing.}}
** ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' will rarely let you land a status effect on bosses, but features several random encounters that showcase your immobilizing status effects. Most standard enemies that counter your attacks are vulnerable to Stop, Hold, or Edge's Pin -- andPin—and many (such as the instant-death-happy Coeurl) will demolish you if you don't.
*** Additionally, Reflect will usually land on bosses -- usuallybosses—usually because it's ''their'' strategy, but you can apply it to them yourself. This seems counterintuitive, but it bounces heals and buffs as well as offensive spells. This is in fact the key strategy to defeating Asura, who spams high-level heals on herself and counters hard enough that you ''really'' want them landing on you instead.
** ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' has Wreksoul, a [[Puzzle Boss]] whose gimmick is that he disappears mid-fight and "possesses" one of your party members, and in order to damage him you have to kill your party member thus forcing him to reappear. The two [[Mooks]] he leaves behind when he disappears are unkillable by normal means but are, however, vulnerable to the instant-death spell X-Zone - so if you cast it and kill both of them at once, the game glitches and views it as a victory.
*** [[Final Fantasy VI]] also has both magic and random encounters and magic that are more powerful than usual, and one counters the other. Single status effects aren't practical, but AoE spells like slowga, banish or graviga, and the flash tool can be quite useful. In addition, many bosses are vunerable to slow, including the mighty Ultima/Atma Weapon.
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** Believe it or not, [[Final Fantasy IX|Quina's]] LV5 Death spell is actually much more useful than most people give it credit for. It won't work on bosses, of course, but there are a surprising number of enemies that can be mass-killed with the spell...including ''every single type of enemy in the Desert Palace except those electric cat things.'' LV3 Defenseless also comes in handy against a couple of bosses, including the Meltigemini and the Earth Guardian.
*** Similarly, what is normally [[That One Boss]] in ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'', the {{spoiler|Earth Guardian}}, is a pantywaist if you hit him with Quina's Bad Breath spell. He subverts this trope heavily, being vulnerable to most of Bad Breath's effects, making it much easier to kill him. As the icing on the proverbial cake, said boss can also be eaten.
** The various modes of {{spoiler|[[Final Fantasy X|Seymour]]}} tend to be just as immune to status effects as any of the other bosses. However, most of {{spoiler|his forms}} (first, second, and third fights) are trivialized by using Yuna's Nul-spells carefully (since Scan tells you what order he spams elemental spells), abusing Reflect (which {{spoiler|he}} doesn't dispel in a fight until the third fight, and then only every fourth turn), and Lulu's Bio spell--poisonspell—poison is incredibly effective in this game, taking out a fourth of the target's maximum HP (unless the 1/4th of the target's HP is ''still'' more than [[Cap|9999]]) if they can be affected by poison at all. Other than that, just keep whacking away like you would with any normal enemy.
*** Also, poisoning the "pet" in fight 3 is an easy way to get the boss to kill itself.
** In ''[[Final Fantasy X-2]]'', the Songstress's dances afflict a status ailment on every single enemy or major buffs on all allies. They will always work, barring total immunity to the status, have a set duration (which makes timing easier), and better yet, you can also Stop them in their tracks, guarantee crits for you, put them all to sleep. It's less effective as the game goes on, since bosses start gaining immunity to the ailments Songstress provides, but surprising few regular enemies are immune to ailments that absolutely cripple them.
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** Magnet meanwhile in ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'' is ''obviously'' a very good way to grind - some heartless don't just stay still, Magnet remedies that.
*** By the time you've got Magnega, there isn't a single basic enemy that will honestly last more than 5 seconds against you if you use it right. And it actually affects {{spoiler|Sephiroth}} ''and'' {{spoiler|Xemnas}}. Magnega = Broken.
* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]] Birth By Sleep'' inverts this trope vis-a-vis status effects so hard it may be subverting it. Status effects on any of your three heroes make for a rare, mildly annoying experience. Meanwhile, the myriad status spells available to the player from very, very early on in all three modes will utterly devastate the vast majority of [[Mook|Mooks]]s, turning, say, a quartet of the toughest the game has to offer into helpless punching bags. And while lots of the bosses have some form of [[Contractual Boss Immunity]], few of them are immune to ''everything''. {{spoiler|Vanitas}} getting you down? Magnet or Zero Gravity. Braig being a [[Jerkass]]? Burn him up, poison him, or just put him to sleep. Zack making you frown? Freeze him solid. Hook causing problems? Give him a whole host of them, he's only immune to ''three''. In short: Having trouble with ''Birth By Sleep''? There's a status for that.
** And yes, if you are playing Proud Mode or higher, YOU. WILL. NEED. ALL OF THEM. Seriously, it's almost a requirement to deal with tougher Unversed and bosses.
* Most bosses in ''[[Touhou Project|Labyrinth of Touhou]]'' are pretty vulnerable to debuffs and status effects (though some are immune and some are more vulnerable than others). A good thing, as you really NEED those debuffs and statuses to stand a chance at winning most of the time... Also, random encounters on later floors can be difficult enough that it's imperative to have a fast character paralyze them before they can act so slower attackers can dismantle them without worrying about getting hit.
* [[Sands of Destruction]], although it tends to go in and out of this trope. Buffs are ''highly'' useful. One of the best abilities in the game, though? Naja's Cleansing Cry...because when the enemies buff ''themselves'', they can get to be ''VERY'' annoying and wipe out an unbuffed party while dodging ''everything'' that gets thrown at them. Debuffs? Meh...you can just wipe 'em out.
* In ''Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon'', most opponents are vulnerable to status effects -- soeffects—so far only the "guardian" bosses seem capable of making those spells miss. Naturally, those are the ones you really wish you could find a guaranteed weakness for.
** Addendum: Magic Pots also appear to be resistant/invulnerable to status effects (as well as resistant to magic in general).
* The Stasis skill in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' may at first seem like a useless useful skill: it freezes the intended target, but also makes them invulnerable. However, this can be useful in situations where there is one very strong enemy--perhapsenemy—perhaps a boss or just an [[Elite Mook]]--and—and several regular [[Mooks]], where (especially on the [[Nintendo Hard|higher difficulties]]) the stronger enemies can kill [[Player Character|Shepard]] in one hit. Additionally, the Bastion [[Prestige Class]] gains the ability to damage enemies in stasis, which (especially combined with upgrades which drastically reduce the cooldown time on abilities) makes the skill an utter [[Game Breaker]]. (Your squad becomes fairly useless when you can render the final boss immobile and kill it by yourself with just a dinky pistol.)
** The [[Mass Effect 2]] version of Stasis also gets pegged into this trope, despite actually being one of the most devastating status effects if used correctly. There are three reasons for why Stasis is good. The first is it is one of the few non-damage oriented abilities in the game that actually works without removing enemy defenses first. The second reason is that enemies hit with Stasis take significantly more damage between the time Stasis wears off and when they get back on their feet.<ref>This is an intended effect, when Stasis wears off the enemy ragdolls and falls to the floor, both of which cause damage x2 while in effect for a total of x4</ref> You can legitimately one shot many enemies in this time period. The third is a bug which for a brief moment causes the difficulty level to not be taken into account when dealing damage meaning that enemies take damage as though the game were at Easy difficulty regardless of the actual difficulty, so while it is supposed to allow you to deal massive damage to enemies as part of the design it ends up being [[Beneficial Bug]] overkill and one hit killing them. The major point is that none of this is listed in the game so most players look at the immediate effect of the ability, which isn't that useful most of the time, without ever realizing about the damage boost when it wears off.
* In [[Gothic]] 2, there is a spell that does truely massive damage cheaply, but only to undead. The [[Big Bad]] is undead. Three casts of this spell kill him in seconds. I'd be disappointed if it wasn't for the fact that it's an undead dragon that fights exactly the same as the 5 dragons you already beat before this point, just with a bit more hitpoints.
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