How would you rate the schools of magic (from a wizard/sorcerer standpoint) on a scale of 1-10 and why?
Mine:
abjuration=6(with energy resisting spells, dispel magic, and utility spells it's a useful school)
conjuration=10(offers offensive and defensive spells, and through summon monster you can even heal. It's a well balanced school)
Divination=4(Fun; when it's useful, it's useful, but it's usefulness is outside of combat (mostly))
Enchantment=6 (fun; some buffs, many defuffs and plenty of utility spells, lacks offensive power and cannot affect many creatures)
Evocation=8 (A strong, steady school of magic. It allows you to participate in most or all combat encounters. Not a lot of utility spells)
Illusion=9 (Another balanced school of magic, capable of replicating conjuration and evocation. plenty of offensive and utility spells)
Necromancy=7 (Plenty of debuffs, some damage and defensive spells, few utility spells, and many of it's spells do not affect many creatures)
Transmutation=8 (Lots of buffs and utilities, but limited in offensive magic. Useful, but not as much as some schools)
My rankings are similar.
abjuration=6 too many good spells to dump but not enough to specialize in.
conjuration=10 in my opinion this is the best school with great spells in every category.
Divination=3 great specialist power but not enough really good spells that you'd cast on a daily basis.
Enchantment=5 Lots of great spells but many types of critters are immune and a low level spell blocks several of the best Enchantment spells.
Evocation=5 I'm not a blasting fan. Its good to keep one or two memorized but I'd never build a character around them. Rolling to hit, Reflex saves, SR and Energy resistance just give way too many ways to avoid the damage.
Illusion=8 Great utility and control spells. In the hands or a creative caster one of the best schools. If there was an uncapped version of color spray this school would be awesome.
Necromancy=8 One of my favorites. While this school doesn't have a ton of spells most of them are great. Nobody can debuff like a necromancer. Spells levels 5-7 are a bit weak or I'd give this a higher rating. I don't like the circle spells.
Transmutation=7 Best buffs and utilities. I would never dump this school but probably would never specialize either.
My rankings are similar.
abjuration=6 too many good spells to dump but not enough to specialize in.
conjuration=10 in my opinion this is the best school with great spells in every category.
Divination=3 great specialist power but not enough really good spells that you'd cast on a daily basis.
Enchantment=5 Lots of great spells but many types of critters are immune and a low level spell blocks several of the best Enchantment spells.
Evocation=5 I'm not a blasting fan. Its good to keep one or two memorized but I'd never build a character around them. Rolling to hit, Reflex saves, SR and Energy resistance just give way too many ways to avoid the damage.
Illusion=8 Great utility and control spells. In the hands or a creative caster one of the best schools. If there was an uncapped version of color spray this school would be awesome.
Necromancy=8 One of my favorites. While this school doesn't have a ton of spells most of them are great. Nobody can debuff like a necromancer. Spells levels 5-7 are a bit weak or I'd give this a higher rating. I don't like the circle spells.
Transmutation=7 Best buffs and utilities. I would never dump this school but probably would never specialize either.
Agree with Vaellen, so just bump.
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From Treantmonk's definitive guide to wizards
Abjuration School: As a school, Abjuration is for the most part a one-trick-pony. Weighted heavily in resistances and defensive bonuses, interestingly though, many of the best defensive spells in the game are not abjuration spells at all. That means that the greatest strength of the Abjuration school isn't unique to Abjuration, which is a bit of a letdown. All in all, Abjuration is a so-so choice.
Conjuration School: The best selections of spells for a God Wizard, conjuration has the largest range of effects included, has spells
that target all three saving throws, and lots of spells that offer no save or spell resistance. In addition, the conjuration list is more centered on Battlefield Control than any other list. When it comes to spells, which is really what being a Wizard is all about, you can't go wrong with a Conjuration Specialty
Divination School: My main problem with Divination Specialty is redundancy. Lots of divination spells do very similar things with different ranges, or perception types, or casting times, but to a large extent, the whole school is built around finding out what is around the next corner without having to go there. That's a bit extreme, divination does other things as well, but by and large, that is what much of the school is built around. Filling one spell of every level in divination can actually be a bit daunting. Divination is a great school to have, but a weak school to specialize in.
Enchantment School: My problem with specializing in enchantment is that Enchantment Spells are very much confined to Will-Save Mind-Affecting type spells, so when you fight something with a high will save, you are disadvantaged, and when you fight something immune to mind-affecting spells (which is pretty common), you are hooped with pretty much your entire specialized school. This is a big Achilles heel, and why I don't particularly recommend enchantment specialization.
Evocation School: Yeah, I don't like blasts, however, Evocation is far better than its reputation. Evocation is the home of Force spells, which come in more shades than Magic Missile. In fact, I'm a fan of the Bigby's Hand Spells (I know, Bigby is a D&D term, but to me, it's a name tied to the spells in my brain), and force makes great walls too. Add in some wind spells, protection spells, light and darkness spells, and more, evocation is actually a very good battlefield control school. Not a bad choice at all.
Illusion School: There is much more to illusion than Silent Image and it's progression. Invisibility spells, mirror image spells, all kinds of defenses. Illusion is good for Battlefield Control and defensive buffing, weak on debuffing. Overall, not a bad choice for specialization.
Necromancy School: Not my first choice, but Necromancy is a good debuff school, in addition, if you like undead critters, this is the school for that (though Clerics are probably better). Battlefield Control and Buffing are pretty much non-existent in this school, which is a problem for the God wizard. Still, there are a good number of good spells in this school.
Transmutation school: Transmutation is the school of the buff. There are some nice debuffs to, but no real battlefield control spells. Nevertheless, Transmutation is a very nice school, and a decent choice for specialization.
Universalist School: What can I say? Give up one spell casting of every level you can cast, so that spells from 2 schools of your choice don't take double slots to memorize? This is an absolutely terrible, awful, dismal deal. Being a generalist in Pathfinder is a practice in masochism, don't do it.
Universalist #1, metamagic on the fly, along with a 2nd unrestricted spontaneous spellbook casting with the APG item.
Divination #2, information and initiative are power. There's no greater weapon for a wizard than knowing what's going to happen and being able to prepare for it. Numerical initiative helps to be in the proactive rather than reactive seat.
Conjuration #3, something for everything, and the best at stuff the wizard does the best.
Abjuration/Transmutation #4, everything else a wizard needs to be able to do, never go without it, never have to specialize in it.
Illusion/Enchantment #5, powerful metagaming strategies possible, but too dependant on being able to affect a mind.
Necromancy #6, some of the greatest debuffs, and if I ever saw a world where getting a decent minion horde on didn't bring down the fires of civilization and heaven it would be incredible.
Evocation #7, DPR is easier and more fun when done by combat.
Ranking in order from Best to Worst (my opinion):
Conjuration - There simply isn't much this school can't do. It's a powerful school, and also a powerful option for not-so-full casters.
Transmutation - A very powerful school built on buffs & crowd control. Love it.
Illusion - Excellent school, perfect for creative types. Relies too heavily on a single save (Will) and some monsters have blanket immunity to the school.
Evocation - Surprisingly versatile once you get past the "I fire magic missile" levels.
Necromancy - Flavorful and fascinating, excellent for debuffs. Struggles to be relevant at certain levels and has a heavy emphasis on fear based magic & undead, making it more circumstantial as the levels rise.
Enchantment - A classic archetype, and devastatingly powerful during the first ten levels. For some reason Enchantment spells get weaker as the game progresses, and creatures end up being entirely immune.
Divination - An entire school devoted to "what's behind door number 2?" Surprisingly useful at times, but the list is pretty stagnant.
Abjuration - This school is impressively redundant. You end up seeing the same spell effects at different levels throughout your career, and this school is hard to play on the offense. 3.PF is designed around a philosophy of offense being stronger than defense, which keeps this guy in last place.
From the perspective of a classically built wizard. . .
Abjuration - 7 - Many people discount the effectiveness of abjuration. PCs would be advised to ignore this school at their peril! While many effects can be put in scrolls, a lot of abilities are tied to caster levels. . . so you really should prepare them. As a GM, I judge the effectiveness of a wizard by how well they use abjuration spells. It's not the strongest school, but all in all, it's a good overall school and not worth getting rid of.
Conjuration - 10 - I hate it that conjuration is the best school. I really wish that more functionality was spread out. There's just too much power here, with summons, teleportation, and a bunch of anti-SR spells. The only negative I see is that after 6th level spells, it begins to even out. But the 1-6th levels are just so amazingly good, I'd never dump this school with any build (a good sign it is too good).
Divination - 3 - I'm torn on divination. Most people discount it due to not much wiz-bang power. But a lot of parties depend on a wizard to have this school's spell at their disposal. With PF allowing you to cast spells in an opposition school using 2 slots, my opinion of the school itself is pretty low. You can always get the functionality of the school's spells from scrolls. And in 3.X this was a required school that you could never drop. The spells themselves and the school specialization powers are great though.
Enchantment - 4 - This is always a school that seems to get dropped. Initially enchantment is very powerful. But as the game progresses, the monsters become stronger and stronger against mind-affecting spells. While it is possible to build a character around enchantment, it's a bit of a one-trick pony. This is the opposite of the conjuration school -- non-diversified, must make a save to work, punished by SR, not a lot of spell diversity. There are a few spells (particularly the heroism buffs) that are interesting but really not enough. But early levels + suggestion is just so nice ):
Evocation - 5 - Sometimes you just need to deal damage. When it comes to dealing damage, evocation is the way to go. Yes there is energy resistance. Yes it is often save/SR dependent. But I rank it above enchantment because the variety of evocation spells is actually quite high. There's effective wall spells, "talk to the hand" spells, light spells, defensive spells, and some rather handy utility spells. But at the same time, I tend to dump this school if the party is full of combat-focused PCs.
Illusion - 6 - This is always a school that I'd like to dump but I really can't. There's so much utility in illusions that I can't bring myself to do it. The one major drawback to this school is dealing with GMs and figments. GMs almost never run figments fairly, so watch out trying to be creative with them. I had a GM render figments effectively worthless once -- and I had a GM who made figments godly powerful. Poorly worded rules combined with open-ended powers can make figments really annoying to deal with.
Necromancy - 4 - I generally lump necromancy and enchantment together in terms of effectiveness. There are some great spells in both schools. But I just don't like the gameplay of necromancy. Touch attacks can be a real bear to get off for a classic wizard (who typically wants to be as far away from melee as possible). There's spectral hand to balance it out, but that's kind of a clunky mechanic. PF has introduced a lot of fear-hate. There are some good utilities (like enchantment) and the debuffs are strong (like enchantment), but I always consider this school for dumping. I inevitably miss horrid wilting though ):
Transmutation - 8 - Similar to conjuration but with a lot more fluff, this school is loaded with all kinds of spells. In fact, I'm a little annoyed about how many spells this school has. There's so much stuff all over the place that I really can't imagine dumping this school and not regretting it.
So really, a classic wizard dumps either enchantment, necromancy, divination, or evocation. Dumping illusion is really tough. Dumping abjuration is even more difficult. Dumping transmutation is bordering on ridiculous. Dropping conjuration is ridiculous.