Let's say you are an Aquam specialist. You've spent about 10 seasons studying it and got it up to 16. Those 10 points pushed your Auram to 4.
When you cast Lungs of the Fish, you use your full MuAq score and not your weak MuAu. That's 12 more Penetration and now you can force your enemy to breathe underwater!
If you somehow manage to find a concept where element requisites are important, maybe you can find some value there. 8)
Now, Secondary Insight brings no other value but the 2-4 extra xps that you could get from lab work, if an extra point was that important.
Many Virtues offer 50 xp and open some abilities, Skilled Parens gives 60 xp and 30 lvl. So from a purely accountant POV, you can take 60 xp as the base value of a good Virtue.
Affinity with (Art) will match this around score 18 in about 10 seasons,
Puissant (Art) will match this around score 18+3 in about 15 seasons,
Affinity with (Art) and Puissant (Art) will match this {77+46 saved} around score 21+3 in about 15 seasons,
Book Learner takes 20 seasons of reading (getting 2 Arts to 14) to match this,
Free Study takes 30 seasons of raw vis to match this,
Study Bonus takes 30 seasons of study to match this,
Secondary Insight takes 45 seasons of studying Techniques (getting all 5 Tech to 13) to match this,
Secondary-Insight-as-minor takes 15 seasons of studying Techniques (getting all 5 Tech to 7) to match this,
Secondary-Insight-on-all-TeFo takes 18 seasons of studying Techniques (getting all 5 Tech to 8 ) to match this,
tl;dr
As you can see, Secondary Insight is not even in the run.
I don't think Elemental Magic is anything great, either. I can certainly see a lot of opportunities for using the lack of requisites with Terram effects, like ReTe to move a solid object not needing a good score in Herbam for plant products, Animal for animal products, etc. But the experience part is even more limited. I also see this one being closer to the strength of a Minor Virtue than a Major Virtue.
My opinion. Elemental Magic sucks hard, and it's obvious, so I don't think people feel as much of a need to point it out. Though bad Secondary Insight is actually the better of the two. It's close enough to not bad to be deceptive. Also like you it's a favorite of mine even if there are better choices, so I think a lot of people want it to be better and it catches more criticism that way to.
For what it's worth I think there are a couple of way's to use Secondary Insight. It's never going to be a best choice but you can still have fun with it without feeling like you crippled yourself. It is not as good as other learning bonuses but it does stack so there's that. I did a Free Study, Secondary Insight, Study Bonus, and Study Requirement, Generalist for my 1st Ar5 character on the theory that enough wrongs make for some fun.
Elemental Magic is also a Very Lousy Virtue. But SI is cited as Very Lousy in this thread because some people actually think it isn't half bad, or is even good.
Elementalist as Major Hermetic Virtue: You have a single Form that represents and replaces all four elemental Forms, due to your superior understanding of all the elements. You may not take Puissant Art or Affinity with Art with this Form, and the scope of a Focus still is based on distinct elements.
Secondary Insight as Major General Virtue: You gain four xps every season to use freely. You also gain normal experience for that season. (Seemingly not so great, but awesome for magi who get lots of exposure, and always applicable.)
Elemental admixture weather mage is the best I've ever come up with. Rains of fire, or acid, or boulders. CrAu specialist with Elemental Magic and a focus in unnatural weather. An in-effecient but very cool army killer concept.
Edit: Oh and you can also make it rain beer. (or money)
If you can write 4 summae with that, you'd be the Conciatta of the Elements. Might be too good with Puissant/Affinity with Creo or something but it'd be a nice concept.
Definitely good. Still 45 seasons but all of them count instead of just reading ones. And pushing Exposure to 6 xp is nice! 24xp a year for a lab rat is almost as good as the basic 30xp per year.
Probably as good as Affinity, but for a generalist.
Now I wonder if allowing any Puissant/Affinity with those would be pure munchkinism. :mrgreen:
"Level 2: Fill a container with water (or some other natural liquid, with appropriate requisites)."
The spells in the core rulebook then go on to violate this principle (most of the oil spells should have Animal, Herbam or Terram requisites), but that's normal, given how they ignore their own guidelines half the time anyways (for example, the second sentence in "Aquam Spells" is "They cannot affect liquids in a body, such as blood, that requires a Corpus spell." Then in the PeAq guidelines: "Destroying water that is part of something, such as the fluid in a human being, requires a target of Part."
Anyway, wine is made from grapes, and beer from barley, both of which are herbam. It's just a casting requisite, though, no extra magnitudes should be involved.
In generaly I assume Aquam covers all liquids regardless of source. My attitude is probably a holdover from earlier editions but I think if you don't the form becomes overly complicated with req's. There are almost no liquids except for pure fresh water that couldn't be argued to require a req alcohol (He), amonia (An or Co) Salt Water (Te) It might be a house rule but most spells in RAW seam to follow the liquid is Aq only principle.
Edit: On the same note you don't need an Aquam Req to create plants, animals, or human bodies that contain liquid.
I'm perfectly pleased to ignore incidental matter when dealing with Au/Aq/Ig/Te; salt water is still mostly water, and moist earth is still mostly earth. When things contain significant proportion of other Forms, though, the requisites should start coming out. Mud is a significant mixture of Te and Aq, a cloudy puddle is not. A hearty stew is Aq with An and He requisites.
He/An/Co assimilate the other elements into something other than crude matter (Au/Aq/Ig/Te), that's why they are different forms (the fact that Co and An are different arts clearly indicates there is a hierarchy of material form). Anyway, point of fact the guidelines call for the requisite for natural liquids that are not water. Water is still 95% of the liquids you'll have to deal with, so I don't think it's a big issue unless you intend to drown all of England in ale.
Well beer is mostly water too. (or maybe that's just cause I live in America) A cloudy puddle might have have a higher mineral proportion of in it then Beer has a plant proportion.
Do you think the Elemental forms can only deal with Crude Matter?
Well yes I admited I'm potentially in the realm of a house rule. But if you want to get into points of fact, the guidline you quote calls for "appropriate requisites" only. Can you cite a RAW CrAq spell that can illustrate when it is appropriate? Cause like you I see spells that I would assume require req like Creeping Oil but apparently it wasn't considered appropriate. Maybe it's only appropriate if there are solid bits of another form floating around in it like your beef stew example. If oil doesn't require a requisite why should beer? As you said natural oil usual comes from plants and animals or rarely (if at all in 1220) mineral sources. The same with the poisons known at the time most of them came from He or An sources. Acids come from mineral usually.
Also point of fact reading the rules on ArM5 pg 121 strictly only non-water natural liquids created within a container require a requisite. Reading it that strictly doesn't make a lot of sense but does explain why no CrAq spell in RAW needs the type of requisite that you think RAW says CrAq spells need. There is really only one CrAq spell in RAW that fills a container with liquid. And that spell does requires a Req, for the container? (Lungs of Drowning CrAq(Co) Projects pg 85) Since it creates water we can't tell if the spell would have needed another req if it created a different of natural liquid.
All in all I don't think there is enouph evidence in RAW to say definitively that beer or wine must be Creo'd with an Herbam Req in ArM5. Not that it clearly doesn't require it either. I would still fight against it if it came up in play.
Total newbie here, so be gentle with me, but my understanding was that all of the Form definitions and other guidelines were created based on a (supposed) Medieval understanding of how the universe works, rather than on a modern one. So, if the (pseudo-)Medieval mindset understands wine as being similar enough to water that it would fall completely under Aquam, then that's how the rules were written. Just seems like breaking things down based on the players' modern scientific knowledge is a deep rabbit hole. At what point do you need to start checking quantum physics books out from the library?
No, but it's rare that any substance in the same format falls into an "either/or" category of more than 1 Form.
Blood in the human body is Corpus, as soon as it is in a vial it is Aquam. Same with wine - if we're talking about squeezing grapes to produce juice, or Rego'ing them to produce Wine, it's Herbam, but as soon as that win is liquid and separate from the grapes it's Aquam.
However, some of the Rules state (or at least imply) that with close relationships liker those, the "obvious" Form has to have a requisite to account for the undeniable and intuitive connection tor a 2nd Form. Ymmv if you enforce those req's, but the reasoning makes some sense.
But it's a HR to address a clear paradox in the RAW, where one section says one thing but the examples (almost as a whole) indicate another. Not the only instance of that, and it's only once you understand both the Hermetic and Game system that the contradiction becomes obvious. But it's undeniably there, so if you care (and many won't), it has to be settled one way or the other.
(or money) 
