I don’t know how many times I’ve accidentally activated the ability of the wrong troop either because I used to have them in a different part of a previous party or I get ahead of my own plan, but…
Being able to go back after selecting an ability to use but before you’ve chosen a target (if there is one, if not well that kinda sucks to be you) so that you don’t royally screw yourself just because you jumped the gun a bit on your plan.
This has been requested a few times I think. There are rumors that it’s fixed in 2.0…
I definitely heard that the issue of picking an ability with no valid target (specifically Soothsayer) was fixed - ideally / hopefully that is in the form of a deselect?
This suggests that if there are no valid targets that you will not be able to activate the spell.
However, if you activate the spell and you didn’t mean to but there is a valid target(s), you still screwed yourself.
Well I would assume that a fix for the ‘no valid targets’ would come in a form that would apply to both cases. I could be wrong.
I kind of hoped they would never fix it, because if you get so excited over using a spell that you activate it “early”, then you deserve the consequences.
I can see your point of view, but mine is that my brain assumes I always picked the right one, so I accidentally skip the card portion and then suddenly I’m not poisoning people with Serpent but now only going to deal two true damage with Wolf Knight.
This happens because the ‘go-to spell’ (the one you want to use first) always changes position on my team, and for the same reason that I sometimes go into a quest with the wrong team.
Regardless, it would be nice for absent-minded people like me to have a way to go back from pressing the wrong button due to some sort of distraction. 
Generally in user interface design, it is considered bad practice to present the user with choices and not also allow them to cancel their decision. This leads to feelings of being trapped by the game into making one of several bad choices, despite the “teaching a lesson” aspect of planning carefully before selecting. I am in favor of a game design that supports canceling of half-cast spells, even if it gives an “unfair” opportunity to cancel a targetable spell when a similar untargetable one would not have such an opportunity.
I hope people will be more sympathetic to you in a context where you don’t excel than you are to people who don’t live up to your expectations.
I’ve fat-fingered a spell or two while playing on my phone. Hit the wrong troop, then hit cast while trying to back out. There’s always going to be a point where it’s too late to take it back, but I don’t see why the interval between pushing cast and selecting a target would be less reasonable than between picking a troop and hitting cast.
But perhaps you’d like to suggest that the cast screen be removed entirely, with spells being cast the moment you select a troop, so that players are required to memorize what all the spells do, and keep track of the relevant numbers outside the game. It would speed up battles a little for hardcore players, make things a little more convenient for them. But that’s an argument against it, isn’t it? You seem awfully opposed to convenience.
Part of game design is determining which skills you actually want to affect the player’s performance, and which shouldn’t be relevant. This isn’t a game that revolves around manual dexterity or reaction time. It doesn’t require the player to memorize abilities, or do a lot of math. The game provides that information, even during battles. Allowing players to back out of spell before selecting a target isn’t going to make them win games they’re not otherwise prepared or skillful enough to win. It just removes a little frustration, and minimizing frustration is one of the key components of interface design.
Is this thread asking to cancel a spell (after you hit Cast)? 'Cause I asked about that a couple of months ago in general
And no one could give a reason why it was never put in the game from the get-go. So the conclusion is that if it hasn’t been put in the game after all of this time, it’s either difficult or not supposed to be an option or just not a high priority with everything else being worked on.
I honestly suspect it’s this:
Features, tweaks, fixes, these all take time to implement and come at a cost to other improvements the dev team can make. They have a lot on their plate and what sounds like a minor quality-of-life improvement is likely to remain unchanged unless either (a) they get a large outcry for change or (b) they’re in the process of revamping other things in the area, and the cost of fixing this flow is lost in the noise.
Right, but if it hasn’t been considered since game release, then it most likely will never happen by now.