I found an Explosion user at Castrum once, he said he loved the new visuals, I personally think it’s equal. They both looked too disconnected, which is the same problem that Ash has. I feel like there’s a slight improvement just because it actually looks like a picture of an explosion instead of a picture of yellow smoke stretched to shape an explosion.
The big problem is that it’s imaging a whole explosion in one picture, but still moving like it has to pretend to be one.
Explosion is decent, it’s intended to be a Water alternative for heat magic and the 1.3x size is unique enough.
As a standalone magic, it’s mid at best. Size gets boring rq when you get better, still a nice noob magic tho.
Synergy and build diversity wise, it’s niche. Either double down on size and power or compensate it with a fast magic/enchantment. For a magic with heavy emphasis on size, it’s quite disappointing to see it’s most effective when used as a 2nd-mind catalyst.