Word of Faith changes

[WanderingPoet]

Word of faith is simultaneously one of the best spells in the game, and one of the most useless.

1 round AOE saveless blind
1 round AOE destroy all summons
Just as good from a scroll as from a cleric, minus when fighting against spell resistance.

I propose the following changes:
1) Make the summon deletion happen by caster level. 1 summon per 6CL (2 from scroll, 3 from loremaster, 4-5 from cleric). Deletes targets closest to target.
2) Kill any enemies 15levels lower than your CL, like blasphemy.
3) Change blind to a save versus Divine. On success, blind for 6 seconds. On failure, blind for 3 seconds per 6 CL. This would be 6 seconds on a scroll, 9 as loremaster, 12-15 on a priest. Reflex Save. 30 second immunity to further word of faiths.
4) Add a VFX for those affected with the blind for the duration of it.


Explanation:
1) WoF is very powerful against summons, wiping them all from existence. This makes it very hard to use Elemental Swarm and the multi-undead summons in PvE, or even summons in general, because they can all be deleted by one person with a scroll. Sure you can use sequencers to buff them, but that's expensive when you are summoning 4-5 summons that aren't even that good. This makes WoF scrolls exceptionally powerful.

However, this nerf to it would allow animators and elemental swarm to be stronger against scroll users, who might have to use a few to remove them; making summons actually useful again in PVP. It will also make it better on invested clerics, especially monoclerics. It still retains full potency against the strongest summons in Gate, Ancient elementals, planar conduit and 1-2 summon undead streams.

2) WoF is basically useless in PVE because it blinds them for one round and that is it. Unless they're level 4 or less, then they die, and 5-11 they get some short term issues. Blasphemy which is utterly useless in PVP, is great for the PVE aspect of exploding low level PVE enemies that poke you on the road. I don't think it'd make the spell any more powerful making it have a use in PVE beyond level 4 enemies.

3) A 9 second blind is a good long time, but it'd be nice if this had a save to be more effective. As it is, in the current state, ignoring SR it is as useful to use from a scroll as from a spellbook. There is no scaling, no save. Giving it a bit of scale so that monoclerics are really good at blinding wouldn't unbalance it, especially as remove blindness potions are used in 3 seconds. This would only be 3 seconds longer for clerics than it is currently, same duration for loremasters and a bit shorter for everyone else; and only if they fail the save.

4) It's hard to tell when you can actually make use of word of faith because blindness is an invisible effect. It'd help the team play of the spell if it was visible that the enemy has been debuffed by this spell, and also help you realize which enemies have been effected and are immune to further castings. Since you have no idea if someone has been affected, and they're immune to you even if an ally has hit them, it can mean you entirely waste a spell with no knowledge that it was wasted, or that it would be a waste.