Are the Shock Zappers and Elemental Weavers worthless pieces of crap? (OMD1)

Ceiling Trap: costs 800 money, and wars have been started and finished in the time it takes this trap to refresh. It gets worse. Based on what I've researched, each trap only contains a handful of charges, period? Also, its primary use and damage form are against flyers and lightning, respectively; two of the three flyers have strong resistances to lightning damage.

Elemental Weaver: in trying to do something different, I used this in combination with the Wind Belt and Barricades on an acid pit map to blow orcs into them; other than this really specific use, I have not found or conceived of a situation that one of the other two weavers doesn't do better.

Extra credit: what type of deaths do orcs thrown into death pits count as? Thankses.