Borderlands – How useful is Spark

the 20x6 simply means each shot has 6 bullets, which has a spread. If all 6 of your fragments hit the target, then the damage will be 120, or more/less depending on critical, level difference etc.

On some guns, like the Wave, the rounds come out parallel to each other, making this significantly harder to hit with all your shots.

As yx. says the damage they deal isn't 12, the 12 is just an arbitrary number to make it easy to gauge how much of an improvement any given level is.

In practical terms, Phoenix has a real chance of killing weak, unshielded enemies on its own; stuff like Bandits. It does rather heavy fire damage to enemies all around you. I strongly recommend Phoenix. The fire wings you get also look really sick; you won't be seeing them but they're cool to show off in multiplayer.

BTW, the real power in Phoenix's not using ammo skill is that it makes you reload less often, though I've noticed it also glitches reloads so sometimes you have to manually reload, especially with revolvers.

Radiance is actually pretty weak. It does mediocre damage against shields and almost no damage at all to health.Even against Guardians I found it extremely underpowered, and your Phasewalk is often better spent moving to a better position rather than standing near enemies. I think the problem is more in how extremely underpowered Shock is as an element.

It is important to note that Radiance does damage over time very slowly; apparently it lasts minutes unlike standard Shock effects, so if you hit and run a lot it could be useful. This is probably why the damage seems so weak; it's spread over a long time. Phoenix does its damage very quickly.

Remember respecs are cheap in borderlands, respec to try out max level Radiance and Phoenix , I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by Phoenix.