[Samhain]

There would be no point if your mage knew the level of Astral of his opponents. But, the coders may not have written the AI code with the premise that your mage would know that. This could still be true, and consistent with some coherent concept of how battle magic in Dom3 works, even if the AI is written so that he targets the highest level opponent Astral first.

On the other hand, if Deathblob is right and that gem boosters don't help, then this could actually be a bug. I just can't think of any reason other than increasing the likelihood of success, even when the exact probability is not known, for your A9 Oracle to use Pearls for Magic Duel.

It is a good case for testing. I would be particularly interested if you set up a test with A9 astral mages on both sides of the duel but only one having the cache of Pearls. Run the test a few times and we should have a pretty good idea if the Pearls affect who wins.