[Detective100]

Yes, the suggestion being 'hey let's make crystals cute gimmick of spawning crystals not spawn crystals' is... Weird. I'm not sure if it needs to be toned down considering I've seen all of one crystal mage the entire game cycle, meanwhile I've seen an absurd number of meta mages (getting really tired of fighting clones on half my enemies) and other assorted shenanigans.

there is an absolute chad wrecking people with like 60 dangers under his belt using crystal, but im pretty sure its also a healthy mix of misdirection still doing half of someone's health bar when they get stuck in it so its probably a mix of the AP bonus and that in that specific circumstance

From what I've seen, misdirection is bonkers for a basic spell in illusion.
Let's briefly compare it to blazing wave from the fire tree, who is meant to be all about damage.

Having done some testing with an alt, this is the result following the comparison:

Size? Misdirection has it beat, 2 tiles wider.
Damage? While the initial tick from misdirection is 0 damage, the ground damage hits quickly enough to be considered as the actual intial hit.
By comparing damage using a boar to test the difference, I came to this conclusion: While the ground AOE damage of blazing fire is only 1 SD, the ground AOE damage of misdirection is at a high 5 SD per tick, and the damage ticks apply faster than the blazing wave, around 1.5x to 2x the speed? 

Misdirection can easily beat blazing wave in terms of damage with, going even on two ticks (including the one that comes right after the initial hit), becomes over the damage potential of blazing wave at three, and it keeps rising up the longer the person stays inside.
Keep in mind, Misdirection confuses the opponent too. Blazing wave is meant to be only about damage, and Misdirection can deal much more damage quite easily.

Their stay duration appears to be about the same icon wise, and the only real advantage blazing wave has is that it has a slighty shorter cd of 20 instead of 25.

Spatial Misdirection is indeed bonkers, I can not deny it.