It's entirely possible to be fairly impressed by Lightning initially, and then find your usage of it dropping off without really understanding why. It also actually scales poorly (Aside the bouncing being added), increasing by 70% instead of the usual 100%, which makes it less appealing when you're comparing Level 3 Spells against Level 3 Spells than when you're comparing Level 1 against Level 1. I actually like it overall, that Order Magic has a competitive damaging Spell balanced by a combination of its high cost (Compared to Fire Rain, at Level 3 it costs nearly twice as much Mana) and the friendly fire problems holding it back, but thematically it's fairly unusual. It's a bit of a surprising choice for Order Magic to have one of the most chaotic, difficult-to-control damage Spells in the game. except that at levels above 1 it's difficult to get it to fry your enemies without frying your own, especially as battle lines close. It's actually the only generic attacking Spell that uses Magic damage (There's others that do Magic damage, but always with some usage caveat), and it's by far Order's best attacking Spell too (Which, to be fair, is because there's only one other general-purpose option), able to actually compete pretty decently with some of Chaos' best. Lightning is an interesting Spell on a few levels. unless it was rolled by a Book of Evil Random Spell cast, in which case good luck) I still don't entirely understand Lightning's 'bounce physics', honestly, but thankfully the game provides extremely clear feedback on what all is going to be hit and for how much, so you don't have to fully understand them to use Lightning while avoiding frying your own units. Higher Levels of the spell will also 'bounce' to additional targets, doing half damage. Hits a single target for Magic damage, with a chance to Shock. Level 3 Statistics: Strikes up to 4 additional targets within 4 tiles of first target Damage: 240-480 Shock: 45% Level 2 Statistics: Strikes up to 3 additional targets within 4 tiles of first target Damage: 170-340 Shock: 30% Level 1 Statistics: Strikes one target Damage: 100-200 Shock: 15% So for one thing something like mass Bless will usually be a better way of improving your Physical damage output. (Black Dragons, enemy Phoenix and Books of Evil) Gremlins are basically the only thing with significant Magic resistance Magic Pole Axe can actually provide coverage against. A Magic-heavy army is the main plausible exception (It's not possible to make a pure Fire damage army, and only barely possible for a Poison one, sorta, and not sensible to pursue), and that's hampered by the biggest Magic resistance exception being straight-up Spell immunity. Magic Pole Axe's other problem is that Physical damage is very much the default for troops, and so it's usually not a useful supporting tool for working around your army's flaws.

Particularly in cases where a non-scaled Talent is involved, such as Scoffer Imps Sneering) (eg finishing off a weak stack so you don't have to attack it directly with some stack that does six times their Health in damage. If you're a Paladin all-inning on Order Magic, Magic Pole Axe is the closest thing to a staple damage Spell you've got, but in that scenario you're probably focused on leveraging Order's excellent army-supporting tools, with damage output being a more opportunistic thing. Level 3 Magic Pole Axe is basically directly inferior to Level 3 Ghost Blade, costing 50% more to do 20% more damage, which will be negated as an advantage by even minor Physical resistance. It's occasionally worth using really early in the game, if for instance you're trying to kill Fire Dragonflies and you don't have Ice Snake or the like, but as your Spell list rounds out it's almost never justifiable. I'd find it more annoying, but it's honestly pretty rare for Magic Pole Axe to be the most sensible attacking Spell in a situation, so it mostly don't crop up anyway. In actual implementation, it just affects the animation, making it take longer. I've always wondered if the 'number of axes' parameter was meant to do something meaningful at some point. Hits a single enemy unit for Physical damage.

Kings bounty the legend heal troops