Quote Originally Posted by Petrocorus View Post
This is indeed where we disagree. I don't think there are enough interesting spells in those schools, at least not in Evocation. Or, rather, not interesting enough for the EK, at the level he gets them.
Why does it have to be evocation? What is wrong with just taking all of the interesting level 1 Abjuration spells, and the mostly-Abjuration interesting level 2 spells?

And that's why i don't think blasting is interesting for a Fighter. Yes, the Fighter is lacking in crowd management, and a fireball is pretty good for this. But you get your Fireball at level 13.
At this level, what kind of crowd are you facing? How tough are this crowd compared to the 28 average damages of the Fireball? And what is your normal ressourceless damage output per round? What about your party's ressourceless damage output?
Going with the previous example, at level 13, 12 Githyanki Warriors are a Deadly fight, and an Action Surged pair of Fireballs is a good way to wipe out a huge chunk of them before they can Misty Step over and kill somebody squishy. Yes, you could rely on weapon damage instead, but that's ~600 HP worth of githyanki you're looking at--if you rely on weapons, you'll be lucky to take down 2 of them this round. This is exactly the kind of scenario Fireball is designed for: cleaning up mobs.

Could someone else do even better with a different spell, say Hypnotic Pattern? Sure, maybe! But you might be the only one in the party who wins initiative, or their concentration might be busy with something else. (Maybe there's even more bad guys in the fight than just the twelve Githyanki, and they need their concentration for Wall of Force.)

If you face 12+ enemies of CR 1 or lower, Fireball is perfect. But against 5+ enemies of CR 2, this is already less worthy of the spell slot and of your action probably. And both encounter are classified as "easy" for 4 level 13 PC..
So don't use it in the easy fights then. Use it in the Deadly fights.

At this level, the Fireball is very situational. And it's by far the best 3rd level damage spell.
Right. Most of the time you'll be better off doing something else, and you probably don't want to even learn more than a couple of blasting spells. Evocation is good for Darkness (especially if you're Alert) and for the occasional Fireball, and maybe a Wall of Fire or Sickening Radiance, but for the most part EKs are about Abjuration spells and your handful of free pick enhancement/mobility spells.

So, yes, you probably want Fireball in your spells known. But you have 9 spells known, do you need 3 or 4 situational blast spells in your spells known?
Nope. Take Abjuration instead. There's plenty of good ones, more than you can actually afford to learn.