Honestly, I find this spell pretty useless. With the high amount of pips needed and the fact that the damage is so low and is only a single target, compared to other spells you'd have in your arsenal (some you mentioned), the spell makes no sense. It's a bad trade off.
Sure, it gives a pip and a Icespear, but I'd rather an Iceblade instead and a power pip. A topic for another discussion. At that point in the game, not gaining Power Pips can be your detriment.
In fact, I don't use any of the King Artorius spells, on any of my wizards, they're never added to my spell deck for the reasons I noted earlier.
You can do more damage with two enchanted Wyverns for the same amount of pips!
Well, the Balance version of King Artorious leaves a 40% weakness, which I actually have found to be a literal life saver. Also, it's a potent hit for Balance that can effectively use a feint, compared to Chimera which is painfully useless at such a high pip cost.
Also, my Storm is using it a lot in Khyrsalis because she kept getting killed when try to wait for Storm Owl. It's a potent spell, to be sure, but waiting for 10 pips was proving too dangerous. Anything that can shorten the length of exposure is what it takes to get a Storm out of a battle alive and Artorious hits for 1120, 1-2 rounds earlier than the Owl. (The 10% accuracy buff is thoroughly pointless, however.)
So not all of the Artorious spells are useless.
As for the Ice version, it does seem tragic that it only leaves a regular pip instead of a power pip. Not sure what KI was thinking there....
Alia Misthaven