| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As a Conflux Spell, it also recharges srecharging. Unlike other early Conflux Spells, there's no atrack involved. It lets you squeeze in some extra damage without accruing MAP while recharging. It isn't a showstopper, but can be handy.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah it's one of those effects that isn't all that flashy, but it's quite economical in how it works. It's not so good that you'll never use a different focus spell again. But it's good enough that you'll often find it the right spell at the right time.
There's two parts to it that are good:
1. Guaranteed damage; it's pretty common for the GM to kinda spill information like "oh, you almost killed the monster with your spellstrike but you were just 1 damage short". Force Fang will take care of that and it doesn't miss.
2. It recharges spellstrike without MAP. So compared to just spending an action doing nothing but regaining spellstrike, Force Fang at least gives you some extra damage.
Like I said, it's not amazing but it's solid value for a level 2 feat.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Here are a few of the benefits besides the Focus Point:
While I agree that there are sometimes better uses for that Focus Point, force fang is one of the few conflux spells you can plausibly use on the turn where you Spellstrike to recharge the ability and do something else on top. I'd thus rank it among the better conflux spells out there.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
For a 1-action damage spell, it is pretty good. It is effectively Force Bolt, but for Magus instead of Wizard.
A comparable 1-action damage spell would be Clinging Ice. The damage is roughly comparable assuming that the enemy succeeds at the Reflex save. Also, since it is dealing cold damage, it is more likely that an enemy will be resistant to it... or weak to it.
Overall, Clinging Ice is probably the better spell, but Force Fang isn't terrible. Especially considering that it also recharges Spellstrike.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I thought it sucked reading it too. When you use it, you figure out that a moderate amount of guaranteed damage for 1 focus point combined with a 1 action recharge you would spend anyway is a good use of a focus point. It makes for a good round of damage and a smoother rotation.
|
As others have said, it's a form of pseudo-action compression. Magus suffers a lot from being squeezed tight given all the actions you have to take to keep spellstrikes coming. Being able to do a bit of extra damage and recharge your spellstrike gives you some more options that some other focus spells just don't.
You can manage without it, certainly, but it's still very good.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
having guaranteed damage in your pocket for when you run into low hp enemies can be pretty great, tbh. More than a few times bad MAP or just luck has given like a 2 hp enemy an extra turn.
And while the damage looks abysmal on paper, it's actually not quite as bad as it looks when you normalize for accuracy.
Also being one action just makes it kind of a convenient for helping manage action economy.
I guess the ability to use it after a spell strike and ignore MAP is an advantage I had not thought of.
I guess in that particular niche, it is better than the other conflux spells.
I thought about Force Bolt, which is comparable damage-wise, but it is also ranged, which, in most cases, Force Fang is not.
I realize that the recharging spell strike is an advantage, but that is not really fair to use that as a comparison to other focus spells, because that is such a unique thing to the magus.
It just seems weak compared to other conflux spells. Perhaps I am just not weighing the disregarding of MAP as much as I should.
I thought it was worse than other conflux spells too. I found that it is one of the better conflux spells mostly because it requires no setup. It's super easy to use. No area, no teleportation, not situational, just do some extra damage with no map and recharge your spell strike for 1 focus point. Very efficient, effective, and easy to use in nearly any situation.
I guess the ability to use it after a spell strike and ignore MAP is an advantage I had not thought of.
I guess in that particular niche, it is better than the other conflux spells.
I thought about Force Bolt, which is comparable damage-wise, but it is also ranged, which, in most cases, Force Fang is not.
I realize that the recharging spell strike is an advantage, but that is not really fair to use that as a comparison to other focus spells, because that is such a unique thing to the magus.
It just seems weak compared to other conflux spells. Perhaps I am just not weighing the disregarding of MAP as much as I should.
It really just is the guarenteed MAPless damage on top of your regular spellstrike. This does assume you are hitting the ideal of spellstriking nearly every round though. If you're in a bad situation like getting slowed while needing to move and recharge, then force fang isn't much good compared to one that lets you strike as well.
There really are a lot of situations where you just want to churn out damage as fast as possible, and that's exactly what force fang helps you achieve.
If you are instead trying to get the most total dmg out of your focus points, which is very real thing for a wave caster at times, then you'll likely want to use your normal conflux spell and split turns between SpStrike and recharge because of MAP.
But when you just want to redline your damage output... it's hard to compete with force fang's "it just works" nature. And not just for 3A offense turns.
If you're Prone and need to escape, that's 2A and a MAP action. Being able to throw out FrFang a bit of damage while recharging is a very nice luxury, and honestly worth the class feat slot for the options it brings to the table.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I was using force fang to very high level. I did start to adjust my focus point use on my magus when I picked up imaginary weapon around level 6 to 8. Then I would split the points. I did sometimes use the weapon rune feat with a focus point if exploiting a weakness.
Magus has some good focus point options. Force Fang remains useful even to high level if you have a round where you want to recharge and do some single target damage.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I realize that the recharging spell strike is an advantage, but that is not really fair to use that as a comparison to other focus spells, because that is such a unique thing to the magus.
So what? It's a magus focus spell. No one here is suggesting you should multiclass to get it. Force fang doesn't need to be as good for a wizard as force bolt is, it just needs to be good for a magus.
It just seems weak compared to other conflux spells.
As gesalt notes, there will be situations where your hybrid spell will be better, but it's not like you lose that spell to gain force fang. You just have another tool to utilize when the situation arises. And you can use either tool twice now, as opposed to once, because of the extra focus point.
Perhaps I am just not weighing the disregarding of MAP as much as I should.
Remember, spell strike counts as two strikes, so if you use a shield strike or dimensional assault afterwards you're burning your focus point on a -10 strike. If you use such a spell before you spell strike, you've saddled your big damage strike with a -5. Force fang lets you bypass this problem while still adding damage. It's just good to have.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Something to also keep in mind is that Force Fang has a reach equal to your weapons reach OR the first range increment of your weapon if you can use ranged spellstrike. This means sparlight span magus can use Force Fang at more than 3 times the range as they could Force Bolt [100' with a longbow in hand vs 30']. the fact that it matches your weapon range can be a pretty big boon. Considering that it's competing with Shooting Star only makes Force Fang look even better the majority of the time.