The recent Spell Rework have created a new way to upgrade spell level: the spellbook. Previously, upgrading a spell level was compulsory in order to evolve it to a higher rarity (and vice versa), but now both processes are independent of each other so we can evaluate their worth separately. Upgrading 1 spellbook from lvl 35 to lvl 50 requires 63 spell glyphs, which is really expensive, so an important question arises. Is it worth it? Or is it better to spread the glyphs around different character’s spellbooks?
To answer this I will first analyse the workings of spells and their effects. If you want to know more about spells and how they work this might help you. Otherwise, you can skip the explanations and directly go to the conclusions.
Rarity vs Level
First, we have to understand that spells tend to have 2 types of effects: tied to rarity and tied to level. For example, channel spells have a rarity-tied gem creating effect, and a level-tied debuff chance effect.
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Rarity effect: it is usually either a percentage or a one digit number of turns, gems… It can be recognized by having the same color as the rarity of the spell (grey for common, green for uncommon, blue for rare, purple for epic, orange for legendary and red for mythic). The value of this effect is fairly straightforward since it only depends on the rarity of the spell. For example, all channel spells create 3 gems at common, 4 at uncommon, 5 at rare, 6 at epic, 7 at legendary, 8 at mythic and 9 at ancient mythic.
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Level effect: it is either a percentage or a bigger number always in a light blue color. Its value always depends on level, but in most cases also count power and mastery, and in some cases healing boost too.
Knowing if you want to evolve a spell should be easy enough. Just evaluate the rarity effect of a given spell and decide if it is worth upgrading it or not. The effect of spellbook level on spells, however, is more complex so I will try to explain it into detail.
Level related effect types
Now, let’s see what kind of level related effects we have. Making this as simple as possible, I will define 4 broad categories of effects according to their level related effects:
- Damage: effects that do damage.
- Heal: effects that heal (or substract) health, armor and resistance, using healing boost.
- Chance: effects with a chance to do something.
- Power: effects that increase or decrease power
How level related effects work
The next step is understanding how the final number of these effects is calculated for each type:
1) Chance effects
These are the easiest since it only depends on the level of the spellbook. The general formula would be:
- Chance% = base chance + (top chance - base chance) x spellbook level x 2 / 100.
So, for example, Channel spells have a base chance of 50% and a top chance of 100%, so a lvl 35 spell would have a 50 + (100 - 50) x 35 x 2 / 100 = 50 + 35 = 85% of debuffing the opponent, while a lvl 50 spell would have a 50 + (100 - 50) x 50 x 2 / 100 = 50 + 50 = 100%. In a simple way, you start at 50% and you get + 1% increase per spellbook level.
Another example would be well of anger, with a base chance of 20% and a top chance of 120%. So at lvl 35 you would have a 90% crit damage bonus and at lvl 50 a 120% crit damage bonus. Meaning you start at 20% and you get + 2% increase per spellbook level.
2) Damage effects
These effects count not only level, but also power and mastery. The general formula would be:
- Damage = Level x level multiplier + power x power/mastery multiplier + mastery x power/mastery multiplier.
The multiplier values depend on the spells, but mostly they are around x1-3. So let’s take vampiric touch as an example in a build with 100 power and 500 mastery. It is a spell with a damage effect and x1.5 multipliers. Therefore, at lvl 35 spellbook it would do 35 x 1.5 + 100 x 1.5 + 500 x 1.5 = 52.5 + 150 + 750 = 952.5 damage, and at lvl 50 it would do 50 x 1.5 + 100 x 1.5 + 500 x 1.5 = 75 + 150 + 750 = 975 damage.
If I increase power to 500 and mastery to 2000 for a lvl 35 spellbook the damage would be 35 x 1.5 + 500 x 1.5 + 2000 x 1.5 = 52.5 + 750 + 3000 = 3802.5 damage, and at lvl 50 it would do 50 x 1.5 + 500 x 1.5 + 2000 x 1.5 = 75 + 750 + 3000 = 3825 damage.
3) Power effects
These effects work exactly like damage effects but the power/mastery multiplier is much lower, around x0.05-0.1
For example, divine steed’s power increasing effect has a level multiplier of x0.5 and a power/mastery multiplier of x0.05. Therefore, in the previous example of 100 power and 500 mastery it would mean gaining 17.5 + 5 + 25 = 47.5 power for lvl 35 spellbook and 25 + 5 + 25 = 55 power for lvl 50.
With a 500 power and 2000 mastery it would mean gaining 142.5 power at lvl 35 and 150 power at lvl 50.
4) Heal effects
These effects count level, power, mastery and healing boost. The general formula would be the following one:
- Result = (level + power + mastery) x heal multiplier x (1 + healing boost / 100)
For example, divine steed’s armor gain effect has a heal multiplier of x0.5. Therefore, in the previous example of 100 power and 500 mastery and with a healing boost of 20% it would mean gaining (35 + 100 + 500) x 0.5 x (1 + 20 / 100) = 635 x 0.5 x 1.2 = 381 armor for lvl 35 spellbook and 650 x 0.5 x 1.2 = 390 armor for lvl 50.
With a 500 power and 2000 mastery it would mean gaining 1521 armor at lvl 35 and 1530 armor at lvl 50.
Impact of increasing spellbook level on spell effects
Then, using the previous examples we can calculate how much of an impact upgrading spellbook level has on these kind of effects.
1) Chance effects. These are the effects that benefit most from level increases, getting between a 0.5 and 2% increase per level upgraded. So from lvl 35 to 50 we will be getting an increment of between 7.5 and 30%, which is fairly beneficial.
2) Damage effects. These effects hardly benefit from level increases. If we take the previous examples, upgrading from lvl 35 to lvl 50 would increase vampiric touch damage by 2% for the lower power/mastery build and by 0.6% for the higher power/mastery build.
3) Power effects. These effects have a higher benefit from level increases than damage effects but this benefit is still really low. If we take the previous examples, upgrading from lvl 35 to lvl 50 would increase divine steed’s power buff by 16% for the lower power/mastery build and by 5% for the higher power/mastery build.
4) Heal effects. As with damage effects, these effects hardly benefit from level increases. If we take the previous examples, upgrading from lvl 35 to lvl 50 would increase divine steed’s armor healing by 2% for the lower power/mastery build and by 0.6% for the higher power/mastery build.
So in summary, upgrading the spellbook gives a clear benefit to chance effects, a small benefit to power effects and no significant benefit to the rest of them.
Impact of increasing spellbook level on Mastery
Finally, there is another benefit from upgrading spellbook level: +2 mastery to each spell per level.
As we have seen mastery has a significant impact on damage and heal effects, the ones hardly affected by level. An increase of 30 mastery per spell (120 total if you use 4 spells of same color) can be quite significant at low mastery levels. For example, those 120 extra mastery would mean a +20% vampiric touch damage in the low build, although This effect can be further enhanced by citadel extra elemental mastery, and you also get the increased mana gains.
However, the higher your Power and Mastery the lower the effect of this extra Mastery will be (you would get only +5% vampiric touch damage in the high build from the increased mastery), and its impact will be lower in builds with different color spells (having only one purple color spell would cut down the extra damage of vampiric touch in the last example from 20% to 5% for the low build and from 5% to 1% for the high build). Furthermore, chance effects won’t benefit at all from this and Power effects hardly. Therefore, the benefit from the extra Mastery will depend a lot on the specific build of each player and the type of spells they play.
Conclusion
So let’s go back to the initial question, is this enough to be worth spending 63 spell glyphs to max one spellbook?
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In order to upgrade one spellbook from lvl 35 to lvl 40, 8 spell glyphs are required. This amount seems low enough for me in exchange of the slight increases in chance effects and mastery, so it seems fair to get the spellbook of any character that is used frequently up to level 40.
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In order to upgrade one spellbook from lvl 40 to lvl 45, 15 spell glyphs are required. This is nearly twice those needed before, so the cost starts to increase a lot compared to the benefits obtained. In my opinion, level 45 spellbook should be reserved only for the main characters and only if they rely heavily on chance effect spells and/or high mastery.
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Lastly, upgrading one spellbook from lvl 45 to lvl 50 costs 40 spell glyphs. This is clearly an insane cost and makes me believe that it is only worth doing the upgrade if you fullfil all the following: you rely heavily on one or two classes and don’t truly care about the others, you really need the extra chances on your spells and you can fully take advantage of the extra mastery with a monocolor build and all citadel points in that color’s mastery. Otherwise, I believe it would be better to spend the spell glyphs on upgrading other character’s spellbooks.
Discussion
I want to finish with something that has been discussed a lot regarding spells: how little impact level has on most spells. In fact, from 148 spells only 29 (20%) are chance effect spells that significantly benefit from upgrading level. 9 spells (6%) are power effect spells that get a slight benefit and the rest (74%) are damage and heal effect spells that work practically the same at any level, specially at high level builds. We are saying that 3 from every 4 spells hardly benefit from upgrading their level!
This is clearly the main reason why upgrading spellbooks to the max level feels like a waste of resources. Imagine a player with 4 different color damage spells spending 63 spell glyphs to see their spell damage for each spell has increased (counting mastery) in… 100 damage? When a hard enemy has nearly 10k resistance?
If the impact of level on damage and heal effects were to be increased I have no doubt that we would be more motivated to upgrade our spellbooks further, and it could also address another common complaint about spell damage being too weak as compared to skull damage. But right now, upgrading a spellbook past level 45 seems more like a luxury and waste of glyphs than a good deal.