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So my experience of casting in 2e is that 75% enemies make their saves against my spells. Obviously thats mostly my luck but the odds don't seem to be in my favour.
Given all my enemies save which spells are worth their action and resource cost when enemies succeed their save?
Here we go again. It's not mostly luck that's how the game is more or less designed. Focus on buffs, spells with good 1 turn debuffs (fear, slow, etc) and spells that force actions to deal with or don't interact with saving throws (illusory object, wall of stone, maze, etc).
Aside from the above try:
Hideous laughter
Phantasmal killer
Synesthesia
Faerie fire
Silence 4th (put it on your martial)
Agonizing despair
Magic missile
A couple of additional things to note:
1) Enemy's stats, including their save bonuses, scale with their level. So if you are fighting one or two difficult enemies (where the 75% save success is at), stick to the spells that have good effects even on a save. If fighting more than a few enemies of approximately the same strength they are (hopefully) a level or three lower than you, so you should be able to break out the feast or famine spells a bit more, but don't expect too much of them (about 45% - 60% save success). If fighting one strong enemy and a bunch of less powerful assistants, AOE damage has a much better chance to land on the groups of mooks (30% - 50% save success) and can prevent them from doing their not-very-trivial amounts of damage to your party.
2) Enemy save bonuses aren't all the same. Generally there is at least one defense (AC, or one of the save types) that is lower than the others (and sometimes at least one that is higher than the others). Spending an action or two finding out which one that is can really save you some wasted spell slots and/or casting actions. They don't even have to be your actions. Swashbuckler having little problems using Tumble Through against that enemy? Reflex spell coming up. Similar with Trip, Shove and Grapple. And of course you can try a Recall Knowledge action.
Phantasmal killer and Synesthesia are pretty great. The list above is solid.
One spell that is better than it appears Agitate. It can set up AoO triggers or do damage.
It's good to try to set up spells with Intimidate or Bon Mot if you can. You use a 1 action Intimidate or Bon Mot, then cast and it can get a slightly better result.
True Strike with attack roll spells like acid arrow. You can even use true strike with attack cantrips if you have a lot of first level slots. ]
Sustain spells can be good too so you have multiple chance from a single casting to do damage for one action. I like to combine say a flaming sphere or a control sand with an attack cantrip or save spell or weapon attack.