Agree with everything you wrote and I so appreciate your giving me some idea. I got a number from my pal and he made me feel a little better. lol I think I'm just burnt out with experimenting with too many spells. A lot of my wasteful deaths is related to that an when I get stubborn with the syndicate. For example, I just did another reconfig a moment ago, two insta-deaths! XD
So lost re the spells atm...
Thanks for dropping by ratt, I know you're busy with your little princess. hehe
I just killed the syndicate mastermind for the first time. cost me about 40-45% of a level's experience in deaths, but got the job done with 1 portal to spare... Will certainly need better chaos resist for it next time around!
One of the things with reconfigs, often you're going from well leveled gems, and so more powerful spells, to level 1 gems with their basic level. I often shove a thing I want to test out into one of the slots of things I don't use much/at all just to get it up a few levels before actually trying it even