Chei abilities besides Slouch

[jaega1]

So I recently won a game as a Naga of Chei (and found it super fun). One thing I noticed it that during the entire game I NEVER used anything besides Slouch. Sure there are some tricky defensive abilities that you can use with Chei but why would I bother with them? Just use Slouch and kill everything in sight. I am curious if people have found good uses for other Chei's other abilities. So when is a situation where you would use a different Chei ability?

[duvessa]

Bend time is Chei's best ability. It's a functionally irresistible slow. Step from time and temporal distortion are really only useful if you screw up but it's pretty easy to screw up with chei.

[bel]

I use Bend Time the most. It's great that you get Bend Time immediately after joining (it used to be at 1*).

[VeryAngryFelid]

I almost never use Bend Time. I am sure I would use it more if it displayed success chance like spell Slow does. Probably I am not Chei expert after all.

[bel]

Actually, I was recently trying to win with Chei in hellcrawl; I needed every last bit of help I could get - this made me appreciate Bend Time more.

In normal crawl, probably the power curve ramps up fast enough that you don't need to use it too often. It's still good though - the success rate is pretty high. With 5 invo, you can slow two-headed ogres > 90% of the time, which saved my butt a ton of times.

[VeryAngryFelid]

With 5 invo, you can slow two-headed ogres > 90% of the time, which saved my butt a ton of times.

Bend time problem is that I don't want to try unknown tool when I am in danger. If a monster is not dangerous, I don't need to spend piety. If a monster is dangerous, I don't want to waste time doing nothing (that's what happens when I don't see success chance).

[bel]

You can calculate probability here.

In general, you can assume that you'll succeed 100%; you won't be too far off the mark (of course, don't do this if you're one turn from death). As I said, the rate is very high with half-decent invo.

For instance, with 5 invo, you have almost 60% chance of slowing a death yak. A more reasonable invo, like 10, will give you 85% probability of slowing a death yak.

[NhorianScum]

Slouch is Chei's weakest power by far.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Every Chei's ability is the best, it all depends on situation. Teleport landed in the middle of killer bees swarm? Slouch. got adjacent Hill giant? Bend Time. Going to die no matter what? Step from time.

[NhorianScum]

TD is an often unsung hero.

[tasonir]

Temporal distortion gets overlooked a lot and has so very, very many uses which aren't obvious at first. From a post of mine in 2014 (my how time flies):

* Temporal distortion has a number of powerful tactical uses which may not be obvious at first. The most direct one is to pull in ranged attackers so that melee characters can fight without having to walk towards monsters or take damage resting. It can also be used for the opposite effect: if you are resting on stairs and monsters are in melee range, distortion can be used to possibly move them away from you so that you can escape up the stairs without being followed. Additionally, it can be used to dodge enemy orbs of destruction, which will pass through you and likely hit a wall or another monster if you are not in a wide open area, making orb spiders much more trivial to face.

Also it will break up stacks of slime creatures.

It would have saved the life of my ziggurat octopode, who was critically wounded and in melee range with a hell sentinel. I controlled blinked away to max range, but it was able to move back into LOS and hellfire me for the kill. If I had used temporal distortion to put it at least one tile away from me first, then controlled blinked, I would have lived.

The most important thing to remember is temporal distortion is instant - this is very powerful. You may need to use it a few times for the best result.

[mattlistener]

Yeah Temporal Distortion is what I remember most from my Chei win. I had become an Unarmed Combat shredding machine, so the only thing I feared was things that could kill me from range. Solved.