Useless Useful Spell: Difference between revisions
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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 [https://web.archive.org/web/20120814103227/http://www.wowhead.com/spell=543 Mage Ward], which absorbs Arcane, Frost and Fire damage.<ref>1. ''It scales!'' 2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120731043534/http://www.wowhead.com/spell=44395 It empowers Arcane mages when absorbing damage.]</ref> [https://web.archive.org/web/20130513111036/http://www.wowhead.com/spell=6229 Shadow Ward] is still there, but there's a Destruction warlock [https://web.archive.org/web/20140210074342/http://www.wowhead.com/spell=91713 talent] that makes it [https://web.archive.org/web/20130331010456/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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