Keeping up with the trend, today aims to discuss the five best and worst spells for consideration during your ongoing Return to Drangleic run.

Note- heal Miracles in this game are so bad, that they are a running joke in the community. It would be effortless to just choose five heal Miracles and slap them on here for our worst five spells. To encourage diversity and a smidgen of brainpower, I have opted to ban the likes of Heal, Med Heal, Great Heal Excerpt, Great Heal and Soothing Sunlight from this list. They are just that bafflingly bad in this game.

Let’s begin.

Fifth worst: Cast Light

I thought long and hard about just the type of situation one would need to find themselves in to justify turning to this spell. In the end, all I could come up with is being an emergency light source for a brand new player who somehow managed to go through more than an hour’s worth of Torch duration, and still somehow needs a light source after doing so.

So… yeah, unless your geriatric grandmother is booting the game up for the first time, this spell simply isn’t useful.

Fifth best: Heavenly Thunder

This Miracle could be a little more consistent, but it at least definitely hammers down a niche that the Miracle catalogue would be completely starved of otherwise. This spell is a big boss killer, something you pack in large quantities to go and vanquish the Ancient Dragon, Aldia, or some other boss that’s really, really big. Conveniently, many of them happen to be weak to Lightning, which helps.

4W: Sacred Oath

This one is a strange case. This is basically a way clunkier version of Golden Vow from Elden Ring. Golden Vow is one of the most valuable buff spells in that game, yet its older cousin struggled to make the same impact. The reason for this is simple- this mad lad has the audacity to demand a whopping F-O-U-R spell slots for use. Four! In return for such a ridiculous demand, this spell simply does not provide enough value. The buff is fair and fine, but it doesn’t last long enough. Again, for four spell slots, the spell in question had better be strong enough to turn the player into god himself, and this spell simply doesn’t produce.

4B: Magic Weapon

It’s important to note, Great Magic Weapon and Crystal Weapon do provide strictly superior values to this spell, apart from the latter having less duration. Why does Magic Weapon appear on this list when they do not? The answer is simple – accessibility. This spell only asks for one spell slot and 10 Intelligence in return for a permanently, freely refillable melee weapon buff that is never anything less than pretty darn useful anywhere you go. It can be applied to a surprisingly great deal of melee weapons, even some you’d think wouldn’t be able to receive it. So, the argument for Magic Weapon going on this list over its brethren is that it’s available to any and all builds, not specifically Intelligence casting ones only.

3W: (Great) Lightning Spear

This one is unfortunate, as these spells are at least quite fun to cast. That said, the pair may have the absolute worst damage:available cast ratio out of any spell in the whole entire game, Miracle and not. The damage output is underwhelming, the player can’t cast too many of them, and they don’t get to buy too many regular Lightning Spears until quite late in their playthrough.

3B: Climax

This is **the** spell to use for players who like living on the edge and chasing that next thrill. Climax will, on one single cast, completely and totally embarrass every spell in the game on how much damage that one cast does. This can easily touch the quadruple digits without breaking a sweat. Some may point to the draw back as being equally powerful – indeed, forfeiting all of one’s Souls is not something that should be taken lightly. However, consumable Soul items like Boss Souls or high quality currency Souls can be attached to a player’s hotbar, allowing them to cast Climax, then quickly refill their Soul count to cast it once more. This spell has obscene potential in PvP, where it can be used to deliver a clean one-hit kill to unsuspecting assailants.

2W: Hidden Weapon

Because of how things tend to go when trying to 100%/Platinum this game, this will actually tend to be the very last thing needed to check off the very final box. Hidden Weapon is an unbelievable pain in the neck to get a hold of. So surely, the juice is worth the squeeze, right?

Not even close. This spell is flawed in ways that actually hurt to think about. Yes, the novelty of turning one’s weapon invisible actually does have practical value. However, Hidden Weapon does not actually provide a tangible bonus to weapons, yet it counts as a weapon buff, so it’s completely incompatible with Resins and other buff spells, like Magic Weapon. In addition, not all weapons can actually receive Hidden Weapon, and back-breakingly, most of the weapons which could actually benefit a fair bit from this spell are incompatible with it.

Therefore, this spell is a headache-inducing journey to acquire, that just isn’t remotely close to worth the baggage.

2B: Great Fireball

Ultimately, there are a lot of spells in this game which try to deal damage in all manner of fascinating, flashy little ways. However, the practical value tends to be at its best from the simple stuff, exemplified by Great Fireball here, which I’m completely comfortable labeling as the best Pyromancy in the game. It is simple, it delivers hard hits, it can be farmed and infinite amounts acquired of. There aren’t any downsides to Great Fireball worth mentioning. It shows up, clocks in to work, does its job, and goes home.

“Dis”Honorable Mentions

Blinding Bolt – If you tell me I need a 65 in anything, to accomplish anything, then that 65 had better be going towards a show-stopper, something I can single-handedly use to basically kill God. Blinding Bolt is basically a Heavenly Thunder that’s harder to use, and straight up does not function in-doors if there’s a ceiling nearby. Reminder, Heavenly Thunder takes 17 Faith to cast.

Repel/Twisted Barricade – It’s really tough when spells are asked to compete with simple base mechanics that the player always has access to. Why would you go to the trouble effectively learning to cast these spells, when a simple dodge roll accomplishes the same thing they do?

Lifedrain Patch: I firmly believe anyone who casts this spell should have their accounts endlessly flagged for griefing. Let’s be honest, we both know why you have any sort of interest casting this spell. It isn’t the ordinary, mundane damage output, slow cast speed and middling effective range. Don’t lie.

The Worst: Guidance

In a world of spells which try to make a living pumping out damage, filling a utility-based niche, or even trying to be some kind of novel, this Miracle exists to let the player read more messages on the ground. Nine out of ten times, casting this spell will let the player read yet the fifth copy/pasted message some yahoo put in an area trying to trick you into hitting a wall, promising it to be illusionary. In slightly more obscure areas of a given map, casting this spell can potentially cause quite literally nothing to happen. If players don’t leave messages in an area, or if the messages they do leave are silly and/or pointless, this spell is completely useless. And for a ceiling, the best you can ever get out of this spell is still completely trumped by spending about five seconds on Google.

Honorable Mentions

Dark Greatsword- This spell is incredibly stat demanding, and the player doesn’t get too many casts of it. But if cast properly, this spell can absolutely destroy a room of enemies or put a huge dent into a boss health bar.

Flame Swathe– This Pyromancy carries basically the exact same profile as Dark Greatsword does, minus the intense stat prerequisite.

Forbidden Sun – This spell is similar to Sacred Oath, eating up a stupid four slots. It isn’t always deserving of this upkeep, especially in PvE, but it’s PvP where this spell earns its stripes. This is the best choice for a fight closer in the entire spells catalogue, hands down.

The Best: Dark Orb

Trust me, I’m rolling my eyes too. Remember that this was not a list promising to be contrarian, to provide some kind of a fun story for the underdogs. This was a simple list conveying the best the game has to offer. So it would be plainly stupid not to have Dark Orb here. It is by far and away Dark Souls 2’s most defining, memorable spell. It provides by far the best damage:casts available ratio in the entire game, it is super duper easy to access numerous copies of, it is not very demanding stat-wise, and it’s super easy to use. Going any further with why Dark Orb belongs at #1 is like making a case that you should drink water if you’re thirsty.