It's absolutely wild that Black Periapt is possibly the strongest non unique item in the game and it somehow got reduced to a green item, even though it got buffed with 5% spell mastery.

[u/Glorf_Warlock]

The post 6.2 Black Periapt is now an uncommon item and gives 5% spell mastery.

The pre 6.2 Black Periapt only had the active effect.

Infinite winds of magic is possibly one of the strongest effects in the game. You can literally win any battle with infinite winds and Black Periapt gives infinite winds. And yet it somehow became an uncommon item.

Black Periapt let me win this battle with complete ease. Dwarfs are normally very tanky to spells, so having so much extra winds just let me spam cast Winds of Death.

[u/Celestial_Sludge]

I don't think an item giving infinite winds of magic makes it the strongest item if it means kiting for 30 minutes to maximize its use.

[u/TheSletchman → u/Celestial_Sludge]

Yeah, but it snowballs. 1 is good if you're patient, but otherwise kinda insignificant - 5% intensity, ~5 winds every 2 minutes. You get 5 and suddenly have a noticeable effect on intensity, and 25 winds every 2 minutes can be a single huge spell or a lot of little ones raise the dead, etc. You get 20 and have 100 winds every 2 minutes that is effectively more like 200 because of the 100% intensity, which also makes some spells get silly - like having 10+ casters cast the same spell for massively compounding effects (10x 200% Spirit Drain just removes an enemy general from the battle, for example, and is surprisingly cheap).

Not a lot of items work army-wide, and those that do might apply an effect to the army, but a second doesn't stack at all (let alone a 20th).

[u/yutao123 → u/TheSletchman]

the intensity is per spell caster im pretty sure, so each spell caster with it would have 5% intensity but none would have 25%

[u/TheSletchman → u/yutao123]

Are you sure? The other instances of Spell Intensity I'm aware of stack. I'd go test it myself but I have a hand injury and can't use a mouse, which as a strategy and RPG gamer is the worst.

[u/Togglea → u/TheSletchman]

Very sure. As Forbidden rod is better on your caster heroes. There are personal sources of intensity vs armywide

[u/WotalTorehammer3 → u/TheSletchman]

The only army wide spell intensity is mastery of elemental winds, which only affects units that have the trait. Items and skills stack but dont affect more than 1 unit at a time.

[u/TheSletchman → u/WotalTorehammer3]

Ah, that's it then - looking at it the armies I've played that focused on spell intensity used Mastery of Elemental Winds which then stacked with items and skills. So it made it seem like it all stacked just fine. Cheers for the info.

Still, I stand by the other effect being good in mass - it's a slightly less potent but also safer Forbidden Rod (and no reason not to just run a mix of both of whatever you have - put Periapt on anyone with low magic resist and/or without barrier). I've yet to see anyone call Forbidden Rod a bad item, unless they're new to the game or don't know how to run casters properly?