I appreciate the need to balance this ability, but the recent nerf was devestating and renders the ability next to useless. The damage is fine, but the fact that the spell now impacts the first thing it comes to makes it almost unusable in most situations. 80% of doors you open present you with enemies in melee range. Your choices are: a) Fall back, meaning some form of teleport basically becomes REQUIRED to use this ability effectively. b) Don't use the spell. c) Use the spell and blow yourself up in the process. If you're not actively blowing yourself up, that's fine - your pet wyrmling will take the brunt of 90% of the fireballs that don't hit you personally. The pet is now effectively useless when combined with this skill, because it's either behind you doing nothing or in front of you dying immediately to your Obvious Fireballs. Should have reduced the RANGE and damage, not made it hit intermediate targets... it's a crap spell now especially with a pet.
It didn't hit objects before? I just assumed it did, and never lobbed it when objects might interfere. xD
You could also combine it with the ridiculously useful Psychokinetic Shove from the psionics line, which is basically a weak fireball that has knockback. Or use concussion grenades, or knockback skills from the unarmed and mace weapon lines (though granted most fireball slingers are going to be using staves if anything).
Also, lockpicks plus sneakiness means that monsters aren't likely to notice you when you first open the door. Invisibility would do similarly. Not so useful for preserving your pet, but eh, his life expectancy wasn't so good anyway. "Skill A can't be used in all situations unless you also have skill B, C, D, E, or F! Ruined forever!"
Honestly, there are a lot of ways to get range to use Obvious Fireball. Ninja Vanish and Move in a Mysterious Way(both from Burglary); the 2 Mathemagic Teleport spells; Inky Hoglanterns; Knightly Leap (from Artful Dodger); summoning a Pet (By the time you have Fireball you have the Wrymling) next to the nearest monsters; and abusing the double-click bug, among others. Be honest: 1.0.3 Fireball was so broken it trivialized the whole game. I dominated GR/PD with that one spell alone, throwing in the odd Nerve Staple from Psionics just to pretend like I needed a second spell. The fact that you could coat an entire Monster Zoo in flames without moving from the spot you started firing from was just ludicrous, and combined with Blood Mage (if you were smart) you could kill 100 monsters in 20 turns -with a single spell, no less - and end up at 100% mana when you were done. It was amusing, but in a not-so-funny "I can't believe the game is letting me do this" sort of way. I need to try that Promethian/Psionic/Blood Mage in 1.0.5; it sounds like it plays more like it should, now, if it acts like AoE Bolts do and explodes on impact. Means you need to "combo" it with movement abilities or summons, and maybe *gasp* cast other spells now and again.
Why is it so unfair for Obvious Fireball to be unusable (without backlash) at point-blank range? There are many, many good ways of putting distance between yourself and an enemy, including distracting them with a summon, which Promethean Magic provides. Promethean Magic has no fewer than two other spells that can safely deal direct damage to adjacent enemies (not counting Dragon's Breath because it's awful). Obvious Fireball is still great at weakening or killing groups of enemies more than one tile away. Where's the problem?
