for MOST people, no, there is no point to them. Regardless of KI's intent, I dont think most people use mutates or shift spells generally speaking. Of course, now that I said that, I know somebody will come forward saying how shifts/mutates are the cornerstone of their strategy lol Personally, I dont waste my time with them. If I need to "transmute" a spell, I'll use a prism :)
Phoenix -> Phoenix The storm version gives 3 universal traps each +30% after it hits
Kraken -> Kraken Divides up the damage of kraken to deal some damage and the rest as an overtime
Banshee -> Banshee No Effect
Sprite -> Midnight Sprite Changes to a damage spell that gives a +20% universal trap after it hits
Locust Swarm -> Locust Swarm Divides up the damage of locust swarm to deal some damage and the rest as an overtime
Wyvern -> Wyvern No Effect
Minotaur -> Minotaur No Effect
It really depends which mutates you train according to your school as some of them can create really nice combos for hitting! I would definitely suggest experimenting and buying your training points back when you can if you want.
Hope to see you all in the Spiral! Nathan GreenEyes 120 PvP Commander Main Nathan GreenEyes 110 Couch Potato Hoarder Ryan HexPyre 104 Always Dying Nathan GreenEyes 80+ Hot in more ways than one (lol)
Only if you have a Mastery Amulet for the school you are mutating a spell to. If it is mutating from fire to storm, you need the Storm Mastery. I don't use mutates myself but some do.
The Moon school isn't generally useless. Maybe it is for you, but not for others. People have their own opinions.
I'm with Fable Finder on this one.
-Shifts cost 3 pips; power pips do not benefit the caster. They add little utility and are enormously inefficient.
-Polymorphs change your deck into something for which you gain no gear benefit. The health totals are level-independent, making them age poorly.
Conceptually, is pretty cool, but the implementation makes training the spells very suboptimal. The only benefit to these spells is if the player likes the shapeshifting graphics.
Mutate spells are very problematic. While they can give you access to some exotic spells, the cost in training points and gear is substantial; they also slow down your deck and prevent other enchantments from being used.
Note that these enchantments are usable only on trained spells. This means that a wizard looking to benefit from the Mutate must also sink enough Training Points into another school to get the spell they want to mutate.
Unlike most enchantments, Mutate may only be used with one specific spell. If you use these, they will clutter and slow down your deck while you wait for the matching spell to surface.
If you mutate a spell from your own school, it will do subpar damage and have essentially no chance to critical.
Thunderbird- Of great use in max lvl pvp. An open shot using standard meta gear deals 1200+ while leaving three 30% traps that can be used in future combos and burst strikes. It is also a good answer to shields due to the buffs it leaves back.
Deadly Minotaur- Used from magus to max to allow death some ability to spike damage from second and around shields while making good use of it's blades
Midnight sprite- Great for blade stacking and dark nova centric strategies. It removes universal debuffs such as weakness/tower shield while keaving your blades intact for 5/7 schools. Plus it leaves a 20% trap. All this for one pip.
Storm Elf- Storm lacks a trained DoT and really struggles vs shield spam. Elf helps to address that.
-> Phoenix 
The storm version gives 3 universal traps each +30% after it hits
-> Banshee
No Effect
-> Locust Swarm
Divides up the damage of locust swarm to deal some damage and the rest as an overtime
-> Minotaur
is pretty cool, but the implementation makes training the spells very suboptimal. The only benefit to these spells is if the player likes the shapeshifting graphics.