Ryzom

Currently there seems to be no point in taking an affliction spell above level 1

They seem to work just as well in Prime Roots as they do on yubbos.

And both the initial cost , and link costs are much lower than the higher level versions.



Spell effects:

Fear ; Makes the target mob run away .
Problems; a dammaged mob that runs near its friends may bring them back to see you.
Mobs dont just run away from you , they often have a very deffinate idea about where they want to run to.


Root ; Makes the target mob stand still , it can still attack.


Blind ; [not personal experiaence] Mob stops dodging , fighters hit rate goes up as does fighter dammage.


Stun ; [not personal experience] Mob Stands still and dosent attack.


The other's I havent heard reliable reports about yet .So please list your experiences of ,

Sleep,
Slow move
Slow attack
Madness


Kestrel

I also only have experience with the 4 you describe. You do eventually need to move beyond the first level spell - the link rate definitely improves if your spell level is closer to the target's level, and they seem to resist a lot less the initial cast when you use the higher level spells.
Another trick which seems to work (don't actually have any hard numbers for either of these, so I might just be fooling myself) is to overcredit the spell slightly, which also lowers the resist rate.

Overcrediting deffinately improves your own cast chance. And unless improving the level of the affliction makes more of difference than Ive seen, the loss of cast chance from upping the level makes it pointless.


As for improving the chance of forming a link , I really dont know. I gennerally use them solo where the link dosent get a look in.



Kestrel

Stun 4 seems to link about 3 or 4 times as often as Stun 1 on mobs dropping q100-150 mats.

The linking text doesn't work perfectly currently so it always says that you break your link even if graphically its quite clear your not linked (ie mobs attacking, no affliction animation on mob, no bubble over casters head). This makes it a bit harder to give firm answers.

I must say that my most positive experience with affliction came last night during the escape to the matis forests, I was almost solely using madness 4 on the torbaks and the other evil lurking beasts we came across, this ofcourse I couldn't have done alone in anyway, the 4-5 tanks helped alot, but I did manage to create quite a few links on those evil stinking hounds, not always in my first try though. Once the link was established I would stand and wait, until somebody needed healing, and hence breaking the link.

the cloud effect on madness, gives an clue if the mob has gone mad or not, but I would like to see a system message telling me that the mobs actually attacked itself ( it's hard to tell as it is now )

xps seems to come as affliction and sometimes melee


... Tzix the Tryker

I just spam my affliction spells, blind mostly, until my group has finished the job. I don't worry about how long they will hold because I just keep re-casting them. With proper stanza adjustmet, this can be done with less consumption than holding the link. Yes, i'm sure this will be nerfed in the future, but currently blind 1 is the best spell in the game for groups.