Scrying?

[Toliudar]

Over and over, I hear about "scrying" as a great way to avoid being surprised by an event later on. Want to find out what you'll be facing today? Scry ahead!

What am I missing here? Except in those instances in which you know an individual you'll be facing, scrying is useless. Clairvoyance only works if you've already seen the place, AND is stationary. Divination (the spell, not the school) gives little cryptic hints. Prying eyes is lovely, but foiled by a closed door or a dark room (I've always wanted to have a BBEG notice a Prying Eye and then cast an illusion around it so that it records a bunch of false information).

Is this a case of "scrying" being used as a catchall for a group of other divinations (presumably ones that I'm not thinking of), or am I perhaps mis-reading the spell?

[brakisaurus]

The big one that is abused most often is "Contact Other Plane" to ask gods about the future.

[mostlyharmful]

Indeed, Contact other plane reduces the future to playing twenty questions. With a supergenius intellect and a class design based around being ever more powerful depending on how prepared you are it gets a little silly to be able to suck answers out of the ether about what is going to happen a day from now, a week from now, who's following you, if anyone wants you dead, what types of enemy you're likely to face in the dungeon your diving today, if anyone is trying to assassinate you, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, until you know EVERYTHING of relivence or value.

[Eldariel]

Scrying is more useful once you know that you have some hostiles to deal with. It's very useful for making people go poof. Scry, Teleport, end person, Teleport away. Rince and repeat. Forbiddance is so forbiddingly () expensive that Core really lacks efficient answers to that.

But yeah, Contact Other Plane and sufficient Int to never fail the skill check tends to be the real awesome of Divination.