[Ranylyn]

Personally, I see Divine Shower and Shine Knights as useful PVE tools, but useless in PVP due to being invocations. Divine Shower is less useful overall than Wretched Oil, sure, but it's still a full-field blast without a damage penalty at range that can make Spacey Dungeons not a chore. And you can have 5 ranks in Shine Knight pretty early, giving a lower level character a great equalizer; a somewhat more support-based class being given a way of dealing with enemies above their level.

My biggest issue with Shine Knights is their Movement OCD. With the Alondite Upgrade, they have a range of 3. Yet, they insist on moving after they attack. This means that instead of actually protecting the Priest or nearby allies, it turns into an infuriating game of musical chairs (SK moves next to enemy, Enemy moves next to player, Player moves next to SK, repeat) and is completely idiotic and often makes their Protect ability completely useless. They need an AI tweak to only move if not within range in order to become anything beyond just extra damage for PVE. This could even make them not useless in PVP if the opponent has Single Target attacks, as Protect + 330 hp x 2 is a very significant buffer - and you can heal them with Graft (Malmelo does half to them, so forget Malmelo.)

You do have valid points on every front, of course, but that's just my two cents. I think it's okay for spells to be bad in PVE if they're good in PVP, and vice-versa. Kind of like how Knockdown is huge in PVP but almost nonexistant in PVE, making a drastic effect on if Kip Up is worth investing in or not based on which you're focusing on.