Your points are all valid but you clearly don't understand my tactics. Orb of Force is a valuable spell for most of them which focus on antimagic fields. Antimagic fields are ABSOLUTE! Nothing short of an initiate of mystra, a warblade, or that 9th level spell can help you when you are inside one (and you can pretty much take out the iron heart maneuver and 9th level spell because they aren't immediate actions).
Once you are inside an antimagic field you have no buffs and no magic items so I don't have to worry about hitting you with a touch attack since your touch AC will likely be below 20. I also don't have to worry about anything else (like displacement) which may prevent me from hitting you. The only thing I have to worry about is a natural 1. At that point I will probably do a greater arcane fusion (yes I was already aware of this, although I use orb of force instead of wings of flurry). One of them is maxed normally and another is maxed with a rod. Guess what, I do it again by quickening it with a rod. That's 240 points of force damage you just took, and since your magic items are gone (which means any temp HP you get from con items and such) you most likely don't have enough hp to survive....oops, you survived, well I just use a celerity and do another one...even most barbarians (not that you would have to resort to this if you were fighting a non-caster) without magic items can't survive 360 points of damage. Just in case you want to argue with me on that lets do the math quickly 12d20 = 240 hp (assuming you rolled max on all your HD) and lets say a 20 con (without magic items, which is very unlikely). That's still only 340 hp (and that's assuming you rolled max hd).
The only spell, you say? I cast telekinesis and deal 240d6 damage.
I knew someone would bring this up...just keep in mind you need an object around that's big enough to do that much damage, which won't always be available...and you cant do it if you do the forcecage/antimagic combo...so OoF still wins.
Oh no, my point was blasting sucks. I defeated the god by casting a twinned avasculate, followed by a full round attack using arcane strike and all my spell slots.
60d6 in 6 rounds.... (and btw, your example is kinda biased by the fact you account for metamagic in one case and not in the other) do fights even last 6 rounds? at mid-high levels? Really? What kinda game you playing? I've yet to meet a fight that lasted more than 3 rounds!
Or better yet, as TML pointed out double, triple or even a quadruple threat spell is SO MUCH BETTER, spells that not only damage, but also debuff. Yes wings of flurry is awesome, because it has a chance to daze, not because of the uncaped force damage.
Mainly: you don't need orb of force, because it's a straightforward damage dealing pointless spell. You want to deal force damage, get a force quarterstaff, take the arcane strike feat, cast heroics to get power attack, cast wraithstrike, go to town!
A wizard has no place learning Orb of Force because if you're playing a wizard and focusing on dealing damage... well then, you're not really playing a wizard.
You're right, blasting does suck...but I'm not useing OoF to blast, its simply used as a strategic damage dealer after a universal debuff (antimagic field); its a bit different. Do you honestly think I'm going to use that spell for my normal damage dealing...fuck no.
My example is not biased since you can't extend a wings of flurry, if you could I would have gladly included it. But even so, you are right, you probably don't even have to extend it since most battles don't last longer than 3 rounds. That's still 30d6 vs 20d6...I still win.
Also, I would like to point out. I don't know if you guys have this mentality but I always do when I'm optimizing...I ALWAYS assume my enemies will make their save, therefore, by that logic, wings of flurry is not a triple or quadruple or whatever threat spell. The mentality I have when I'm optimizing is this, I don't know what my enemy will be capable of, therefore, I use as many
universally sound tactics I can as to ensure my victory. Any spell that has a save and sr is not universally sound; I usually ignore them. Unless they at the very least disallow one of the two I don't bother (yes there are exceptions like manyjaws; but that's mainly for the purpose of dealing with weaker enemies that I don't want to waste high level spell slots on).
I guess I don't have to defend maw of chaos since you guys already did that...lol, it would be great if they stuck around to take 20d6 each round lol, but even upon casting it still gets 20d6 damage in.
I don't hate wings of flurry (as I said multiple times before) so you don't have to defend it. I fully understand how good it is and I would probably take it if my spell list wasn't so strained as is (sorcerer).
My ultimate point is this...my tactics with the antimagic fields are pretty much foolproof. If I catch you in an antimagic field you are DONE (yeah I know the gate tactic as well, but I would rather not have to use one of my 9th level spells if I am a sorcerer to learn gate). Whereas, tactics surrounding wings of flurry are not. Your enemy could save, they could have evasion, you might not beat their SR, they could have magic immunity, etc. Even without the antimagic field my OoF, on average (like an average of using the spell thousands of times on multiple different enemies over the course of an entire campaign), will likely end up doing more damage than wings of flurry because there are only a handfull of ways to escape its damage; even though wings of flurry does more damage in a single shot (assuming they don't save).
P.S. You never answered my question of how you got past the God's SR. Avasculate still allows SR...it must not have been a caster god...which god was this?