History Main / UselessUsefulSpell

* Averted almost entirely in the ''{{Pokemon}}'' series. Most status-changing abilities are usually effective. If they aren't, it's either because it's a One-Hit KO move (Fissure), or it's because the status effect is an unexpected bonus (Ice Beam). Not only that but the "bosses" in Pokémon are simply leveled-up versions of those you find in the wild, meaning that Confuse Ray will work just as well on the Gym leader's level 50 Alakazam it did on that level 3 [[ComMons Pidgey]] you found in the grass.

* In {{Gothic}} 2, there is a spell that does truely massive damage cheaply, but only to undead. The BigBad is undead. Three casts of this spell kill him in seconds. I'd be disappointed if it wasn't for the fact that it's an undead dragon that fights exactly the same as the 5 dragons you already beat before this point, just with a bit more hitpoints.

* Dogmeat, the player's canine companion in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', is extremely death-prone at high-level play due to his low hit points. Since [[KilledOffForReal death is permanent]] in Fallout, Dogmeat therefore became of extremely marginal use. To counteract this, the Puppies! perk was added in a DLC expansion; this perk allowed Dogmeat to respawn (replaced by one of his puppies) any time he died. Trouble is, that same DLC expansion also made Dogmeat level with the player; thanks to his explosive HitPoint growth, Dogmeat became [[TheDeterminator all]] [[NighInvulnerable sorts]] [[MadeOfIron of]] [[ImplacableMan invincible]], almost completely obviating the need to have him respawn. At best, you'd use the perk once[[hottip:*:because the leveling-with-the-player feature doesn't kick in if you install the DLC after finding Dogmeat unless you use the perk to respawn him]] and then never take advantage of it again.

# The spell is incapable of actually killing an enemy. PercentDamageAttack and HPToOne attacks, for example, require a follow-up normal attack to deal the killing blow.[[note]]In some games, a PercentDamageAttack can kill if the enemy is already at 1 HP, but why use a percentage attack instead of a normal attack in that case?[[/note]]

* ''VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' has the ''Dementation'' discipline "Vision of Death" and the ''Dominate'' disciplines "Suicide" and "Mass Suicide", all of which kill human and lesser Sabbat {{mooks}} instantaneously. They do not, however, have the same effect on tougher foes, and using such powers against them is pretty much pointless.

* Dogmeat, the player's canine companion in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', is extremely death-prone at high-level play due to his low hit points. Since [[KilledOffForReal death is permanent]] in Fallout, Dogmeat therefore became of extremely marginal use. To counteract this, the Puppies! perk was added in a DLC expansion; this perk allowed Dogmeat to respawn (replaced by one of his puppies) any time he died. Trouble is, that same DLC expansion also made Dogmeast level with the player; thanks to his explosive HitPoint growth, Dogmeat became [[TheDeterminator all]] [[NighInvulnerable sorts]] [[MadeOfIron of]] [[ImplacableMan invincible]], almost completely obviating the need to have him respawn. At best, you'd use the perk once[[hottip:*:because the leveling-with-the-player feature doesn't kick in if you install the DLC after finding Dogmeat unless you use the perk to respawn him]] and then never take advantage of it again.

** MassEffect3 turned Stasis into a full blown GameBreaker against the Cerberus faction. A fully evolved Stasis Bubble in a chokepoint is able to stop an entire army of enemy units, as it only does not work on enemies with armor. As the only armored Cerberus unit is the slow Atlus, this led to a player with Stasis Bubble and a sniper rifle to utterly trivialize Cerberus. In Multiplayer, the tactic was made less effective by giving Cerberus Dragoons, who possess armor while moving relatively quickly. The real Useless Useful Spell is Sabotage, when fighting the Reaper or Collector forces. Both of those enemy types lack "synthetics", making the hacking portion of the ability worthless. In addition, most of the Reaper forces prefer to use melee, meaning they don't have guns to overheat.

* Both the ''SaGa'' series and the ''DragonQuest'' series avert this trope; random encounters are generally much more difficult than in most [=RPGs=], and some powerful bosses '''aren't''' immune to status effects or instant death, making using them a valid tactic. You have spells that double your attack power, double your defense, halve the bosses' defense, and can give the boss less than 10% accuracy or prevent them from casting ANY spells. And these, as a general rule, will work on 99% of all bosses in Dragon Quest games, including the Final Boss and Bonus Boss. Some bosses cast a spell that removes the buffs on your party or on the enemy party, but if they're wasting a turn removing buffs, they're not attacking.
** In fact, [[spoiler:the final boss of Final Fantasy Legend--the world's god--]] is actually weak to the chainsaw, which can [[spoiler: OneHitKill kill him in one hit.]]
*** This is actually a bug. The chainsaw was only supposed to work on opponents with a lower strength stat than yours. Instead, it only works on opponents with a ''higher'' strength stat.
** Stone is very good in random encounters in MakaiToushiSaGa. Best of all, it works on an entire group of enemies.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' in general is an aversion, since only a couple enemies in the game are immune to all status ailments. [[spoiler: Both forms of final boss Orphan are shining examples. The first form, which otherwise treads into ThatOneBoss / LuckBasedMission territory with its ability to instant-KO your leader, can be utterly destroyed with Poison. And in an homage to ''[[VideoGame/MakaiToshiSaGa Final Fantasy Legend/SaGa]]'', if you can get the final form to stagger, and have Vanille use her full ATB-gauge ability, Death, on it...it ''actually works''.]]
*** To clarify, in the first ''SaGa'' game, the final boss could be killed with the saw, which was an instant-death item. It was only supposed to be used on weaker enemies than the player, but a GoodBadBug made it work on stronger enemies.
*** In fact, it's probably safe to say that if an enemy's [[EnemyScan Libra scan]] says it's "susceptible to [Insert Status Name Here]", it roughtly translates as "if you don't use said status, [[ThatOneBoss YOU. WILL. DIE.]]"

** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', the thu'um Elemental Fury ("SU GRAH DUN") increases the speed of your weapon swings temporarily (i.e. you can attack more times in the same period). And it has no effect on enchanted weapons, which is the only kind most players will use.

* For all its other issues, nearly every boss in ''LordOfTheRingsTheThirdAge'' is vulnerable to ''something'', and Elegost's EnemyScan skill displays their entire resistance list in very convenient spreadsheet format.
* Averted in ''Heroes of Might and Magic 4'', where clever use of these spell allow a lone hero to defeat entire legions of enemies.

* In ''LegendOfLegaia'', one of the Seru whose powers you can absorb is Nighto, and when used by one of your characters, has the power to either confuse or kill a single enemy. Sounds pretty good, right? Well...the chances of confusion actually working are fairly low (compounded by the fact that confusion, although doing exactly what one would expect in that it causes monsters to attack fellow monsters, tends to last only one turn on stronger beasts, much like other status changes in this game), and the chances of actually killing an opponent are almost nil. But, there's one glorious exception, and that's the ''very'' difficult mid-game boss Berserker, where Nighto's chances of instantly killing Berserker are actually quite good.

* MightAndMagic VI is a weird mix of aversion and using this trope. For one, most mind spells are useless against almost all tough enemies, which is where you would want to use them. There is a spell called Finger of Death which instantly kills a foe but has small rate of success ([[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard however your foes have much higher rates than you]]) and it's completely ineffective against tougher foes; plus you don't have access to it early on. On the other hand, there is a percentage damage spell which is extremely effective against powerful enemies (mass distortion) and other feels-like-cheating spells join the chorus as well, such as Fly, Town Portal and Lloyd's Beacon (instant teleport, by placing gates wherever the hell you want). And again, on the other side of table, you have spirit magic, a whole school of magic, which becomes completely redundant when you acquire light and dark magic, save for the life sharing spell, because there are three spells in these schools which cast all of the protective and boosting spirit ones, at a much higher level (they also send a fair amount of the other schools to the trash). There are also spells like fear, petrify, paralyze, etc, which only work on very low-level foes, making them redundant (by the time you acquire them). There's a resurrection spell on spirit magic, but after you become master of water it becomes redundant, since you can town portal to a temple and have them resurrect you.

* The HeroesOfMightAndMagic series has both, and sometimes the spell's usefulness is directly related to the hero using it. Most of these classics are best in the hands of Might oriented heroes to buff their troops, while a Magic hero is better advised to use his turns to sling damage spells or spells like Puppet Master. Most spells also work regardless of the enemy faced, though the undead are immune to a number of debuffs and some other creatures are highly resistant to magic in general.

* Dogmeat, the player's canine companion in VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}, is extremely death-prone at high-level play due to his low hit points. Since [[KilledOffForReal death is permanent]] in Fallout, Dogmeat therefore became of extremely marginal use. To counteract this, the Puppies! perk was added in a DLC expansion; this perk allowed Dogmeat to respawn (replaced by one of his puppies) any time he died. Trouble is, that same DLC expansion also made Dogmeast level with the player; thanks to his explosive HitPoint growth, Dogmeat became [[TheDeterminator all]] [[NighInvulnerable sorts]] [[MadeOfIron of]] [[ImplacableMan invincible]], almost completely obviating the need to have him respawn. At best, you'd use the perk once[[hottip:*:because the leveling-with-the-player feature doesn't kick in if you install the DLC after finding Dogmeat unless you use the perk to respawn him]] and then never take advantage of it again.

*** Earth based magic and techniques tend to fall to the wayside due to a good amount of bosses and large enemies hovering above the ground, which makes all earth based attacks miss.

* A number of moves and abilities in the ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeon'' series are virtually useless in the hands of the player, and exist mostly for the purpose of letting enemies make your life miserable. Some examples include Embargo, which denies the usage of items (Enemies are almost never holding items and even fewer actually use them), Bug Bite/Pluck/Incinerate, which are weak and use or destroy an edible item in the target's possession (Pointless for the same reason as the previous move), and Heal Block, which prevents any HP recovery for its duration (Enemies go down too quickly for it to be worth using on them).

* Dogmeat, the player's canine companion in VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}, is extremely death-prone at high-level play due to his low hit points. Since [[KilledOffForReal death is permanent]] in Fallout, Dogmeat therefore became of extremely marginal use. To counteract this, the Puppies! perk was added in a DLC expansion; this perk allowed Dogmeat to respawn (replaced by one of his puppies) any time he died. Trouble is, that same DLC expansion also made Dogmeast level with the player; thanks to his explosive HitPoint growth, Dogmeat became [[TheDeterminator all]] [[NighInvulnerable sorts]] [[MadeOfIron of]] [[ImplacableMan invincible]], almost completely obviating the need to have him respawn. At best, you'd use the perk once [[hottip:note:because the leveling-with-the-player feature doesn't kick in if you install the DLC after finding Dogmeat unless you use the perk to respawn him]] and then never take advantage of it again.

* Dogmeat, the player's canine companion in Fallout 3, is extremely death-prone at high-level play due to his low hit points. Since [[KilledOffForReal death is permanent]] in Fallout, Dogmeat therefore became of extremely marginal use. To counteract this, the Puppies! perk was added in a DLC expansion; this perk allowed Dogmeat to respawn (replaced by one of his puppies) any time he died. Trouble is, that same DLC expansion also made Dogmeast level with the player; thanks to his explosive HitPoint growth, Dogmeat became [[TheDeterminator all]] [[NighInvulnerable sorts]] [[MadeOfIron of]] [[ImplacableMan invincible]], almost completely obviating the need to have him respawn. At best, you'd use the perk once (because the leveling-with-the-player feature doesn't kick in if you install the DLC after finding Dogmeat unless you use the perk to respawn him) and then never take advantage of it again.