Borderlands Lilith's talents Radiance and Phoenix explanation?
Solution 1:
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.
Solution 2:
They're not really just 12 damage. Its rather hard to explain, but weapons can have up to level 5 elemental damage. Your radiance and phoenix skills can have up to level 12 elemental damage. The amount of actual damage it deals to enemies depends on their level compared to yours, but its definitely more than just '12' damage. Other than the fact that phoenix causes all nearby barrels to become hazardous to your health, its does do a lot of fire damage to any enemy that's near you.