Sandman25 wrote:Is the rod of striking that good? I found one early but wasn't impressed, it seems to require high Evocations to be useful.
Yes, it absolutely does. I am mostly interested in it because I watched someone playing with it online. I want to say it was someone extremely good like 78291, but I can't be sure, it was a month+ ago. It does require a huge skill investment - your maces (or is it staves? I really should know this) needs to be enough for min delay (I think that's around 12-14 or so) and evocations is ideally 27, although it's obviously pretty good in the teen's and higher. And then you need a backup weapon if the mana on the rod runs out, so you have a backup demon whip or something.
But in exchange for all the pain, it's stronger than any normal 2H weapon, at least that's my understanding of it. It has to have higher damage, because there's a time limit on it and then it shuts down. Which I think is a wonderful mechanic...that you have the option of possibly using in up to 1% of your games. Hence why I'd like things like rod of striking and boots of jumping to be a lot more common. Boots of jumping aren't hugely powerful in the no-brainer sort of sense like boots of running, but they really reward proper tactical play, which is something I'd like to be able to use in a lot of my games. But they actually spawn in 1%...I had them on my GrMo of Chei that I 15 runed in the tournament, I wish that game could never have ended, blade hand jumping mobs is really fun
Again I've never actually gotten it going myself, mostly because it's so difficult to find. One of my mummies found one, but then it died because it was a mummy, so...