A Stinking Cloud anecdote for you.
In book 1, there's an assault on a keep. Midway through the assault, the GM informs us that we level to 5 and are "blessed" with the ability to immediately re-prepare spells. We went during the big concert, so most of the encounters thus far had been relatively easy, but we had the concert hall left. Little did we know, there were about 80 NPCs in there, 7 or so of them named. We sealed all but the roof access and the main door, opened the main door, and nearly crapped ourselves as the GM added all the tokens in Roll20.
We split the encounter with a Feather Token boat, which barely fit in the hall. Most of what was on our side was mooks, which we disabled with Web + Stinking Cloud (failed save on the cloud means you can't attempt to escape the Web). This also prevented the named NPC archer fighter from sniping us from on top of the boat. What few enemies were not in some way fastened into the room were quickly dispatched, at which point we started coating the room with flasks of oil. The alchemist then ignited it all with a bomb and we sealed the main door with a Feather Token tree. Only 3 named NPCs escaped the blaze onto the roof, which we dealt with by Ki Throwing them down to the ground while within a Darkness effect after climbing the tree and having a murder party at the bottom.
So yes, with judicious use, there are incredible tactical benefits to the LoS breaks. The key is knowing the right situations for them. Archers are a great one because they have to start guessing squares. With enemy casters, it's less good sometimes because you don't necessarily know what they'll do about it. If you Fog Cloud and they just Fireball through it, you've probably ended up on the short end of that stick. At the same time, maybe you end up disrupting his placement for Summon Monster or cause him to blunder into a bad position while you have Goz Masks.
I'm much more willing to say that this is a good investment of your spell slots if you're using it on archers, followed by melee, followed by casters. As you noted, casters are the most likely to have the tools to address this issue, while archers typically start sipping coffee and hoping they don't get ganked in the meantime.
These type of spells are also extraordinary in that they scale quite well even into higher-level play (relative to their spell level). Again, it depends on savvy situational applications by the caster. But being of the No Save / No SR variety, their penalization effects will be tactically-effective *way* more often than traditional Yes Save / Yes SR spells.
Well don't forget that there are quite a few class features, especially the Oracle that allow you see through certain effects. That being said don't forget that some enemies can possess these abilities as well, my personal thought is that they are in fact quite worth the risk.
Oh I agree with all that is being said above. Stinking Cloud is one of my favorite spells, because you can't beat effect; especially against casters since it targets fort. But I worry that I negate the rest of my party for a while; I still think they can be incredibly useful, but I feel like melee characters hate when you do it unless they have special items.
This is the case if you blanket the entire encounter, but if you split an encounter, it's a totally different story.
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These provide a relief for people.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/a-b/boots -tremor
I set up a BBEG encounter where the BBEG had a pair of these and cast obscuring mist. The party had a tough time targeting her while she was casting all sorts of targeting spells on the various members of the party