Why is it that Walk Through Space is such a painful spell to deal with?
For one, It's pretty slow when dealing with the sort of speed you would want from a 14-15th level character. Various flight spells, Haste, and even Boots of Striding and Springing pretty much blow this put of the water, speed wise. Though, I do concede that when teleporting to avoid AoO's, speed isn't the issue. Still, it is frustrating.
Furthermore, that spell level. A 7th level spell to move around enemies?! I think that is a tad extreme, at the very least. This spell seems to be modeled after one taken from 3.5 called Dimensional Jumper, which even had a Greater version, if you like that sort of thing. Are you telling me that the express ability to stand up from prone is worth an extra two spell levels? Keep in mind that Walk Through Space does not have a listed casting time, so if we're expected to use a standard action for this thing, my mind reels at how hard this was nerfed.
Does anyone else feel this sort of frustration over this spell? Or am I alone here?
Meh. It's like dimension door, but persists for several rounds. It doesn't let you travel as far in a single round, but being able to move over multiple rounds seems much more valuable IMO.
If it's a home game just change the distance capable of being moved to be equal to the characters movement speed instead of 30 feet. I think that was probably the intention in the first place, and they just wrote 30ft feet as the normal medium creature movement speed instead of specifying the creatures movement rate.
Alright, I guess I could live with that logic for speed. But why the two level jump? Getting up and having a cooler name than Dimensional Jumper do not a justification make.
And why the no casting time specification? So many people say it should have the default standard action because it says nothing different. Why should we pay more for a less powerful spell? It just seems weird and frustrating.
I doubt Paizo looked to existing 3.5 sources when creating that spell, as that could lead to charges of copyright infringement.
So, it's more likely a case of separately designed spells, where the Paizo version happened to end up at a higher level.
As for how useful the spell is, I'd agree that it's not particularly good at 7th level, and 5th level might be more appropriate.
5th level goes with my thoughts exactly.
Though, Pathfinder was built to be compatible with 3.5. A lot of spells were brought over from there, albeit nerfed. That's why these days spells like Finger of Death, Wail of the Banshee, and Implosion do ten damage per caster level instead of outright killing targets. Force age didn't allow a save in 3.5, so it was added in PF to balance (though some people have issues there, that's another story).
I'm just saying that so many spells did get ported and nerfed, but Walk Through Space/Dimensional Jumper got the worst I've seen to date. I don't expect the team to know EVERY spell from 3.5 off the top of their heads when making PF spells, but the wordings of WTS and DJ are so similar, it's hard to believe there wasn't some knowledge of the older spell. And that's why I ask why?