It is a joy to use and contains strength of many different mechanics.

• Moving damage to enemy is (virtually, not really) both fighting and healing at the same time. You can progress the scenario faster by using your health elsewhere (e.g. Taking attack of opportunity to do things) and throw the damage away later. A simple play is when trying to prepare Arcane Initiate to get defeated exactly, you would put the damage on you and 1 horror on it on taking the first 1/1 enemy attack.
• Enemy can have damage counter greater than its health before it gets defeated, so even if you are trying to finish 1 HP enemy you can move up to 2 damage and get the card's worth.
• Parley not requiring the engage, skips AoO, and no risk of friendly fire. You are free to choose the best enemy for the job if you are grouped up and opens up choices of turn ordering.
• It patch up those with low health, and/or low (therefore got hit by more damage treacheries), but could access cards like Daisy Walker, Sister Mary, Sefina Rousseau, Norman Withers. If you have Arcane Initiate you can put one in the deck and expect your effective health to +2 as it now functions like a searchable soak.

The flexibility and value felt similar to Spectral Razor (0) which has many useful bits for same 2 cost to play : high boost, free engage, 3 damages. This box also came with Spectral Razor (2), so even if you have RCore only in addition, Shrivelling + Drain Essence + Spectral Razor (2) can defeat a lot of enemies.

Blinding Light gets dunked on once again. You can clearly see the contrast of Evade's inconveniences vs. Parley, just so you can exhaust and test with enemy's . (And also having to deal with the rebound condition.)

This card is perfect for Parallel Agnes, especially in the first few scenarios. You can now safely run In the Thick of It and put the trauma to HP as you now have another reliable way to pseudo-heal (aside from Hallowed Mirror of course).

The biggest upside to this card is ability to hit aloof enemies or enemies engaged with other investigators. The biggest downside to this card is the need to carry around some damage in order to be able to play it.

One good option could be use of Azure Flame (and of course then Azure Flame) as your primary attack spell. Azure Flame can be pretty risky for low health Mystics, but that risk can be mostly offset with this provided you have multiple enemies to take care of. Another option, to visit an old card, would be to take the Smoking Pipe and move some of the Mystic's horror (you know you've got some!) as a fast over to damage so that you can then offload it onto the enemy.