Dithmenos noob questions

[Zargon]

Hello fellow crawlers

This is my first time out with Dithmenos. As far as I can see he/she totally rocks as a god, turning my flaky OpIE into a killing machine.

So before I die of hubris I thought I'd better ask a few questions:

1) Does shadow mimic always use shards if you use conjurations on a target? If so, what's the damage and accuracy of this spell?

2) I've tried smacking things my long blade of protection, but I don't seem to get shadow mimic messages for melee attacks - am I doing something wrong?

3) If you shadow step to an inert creature, does it keep you out of LOS of other creatures (if it's possible) and/or maximise the distance to them?

4) Does the accuracy malus to enemies in your umbra scale with piety, or does piety just affect your umbra radius?

5) Do people use Dithmenos for non-stabbers? Because as far as I can see Dith abilities would kick ass with just about any character (except FEs of course!)

Cheers

[bel]

5) Do people use Dithmenos for non-stabbers? Because as far as I can see Dith abilities would kick ass with just about any character (except FEs of course!)

Sure. Dithmenos enhances stabbers' main skill but doesn't complement them. Stabbers often want something to handle stuff which resist hexes and can see invisible etc. Other characters can benefit from Dithmenos because it can complement their build.

[Hurkyl]

1) Does shadow mimic always use shards if you use conjurations on a target? If so, what's the damage and accuracy of this spell?

It has to be a targeted conjuration. Also, there's also shadow bolt if you use a bolt spell. As I recall, the damage is pretty good, and proportional to the level of the conjuration (although there is a cap on this, which I believe is based on your XP level)

2) I've tried smacking things my long blade of protection, but I don't seem to get shadow mimic messages for melee attacks - am I doing something wrong?

Your'e just not noticing them. Also, I believe they get more common as you gain more piety.

[and into]

The umbra gives enemies within it a flat malus to accuracy; the size of the umra increases with piety, but not the malus it gives enemies. The umbra also doubles your stealth factor, but again this bonus does not scale with piety.

I am not sure how shadowstep placement actually works.

[wheals]

The stealth factor actually does scale with your piety.

[linear]

Addressing 5)

I've done a demonspawn stealthy stabber with nightstalker and Dith. On the advice from a forum post here, just yesterday I did an ogre hunter of Dith. Ogre mid-game can be dicey due to the trouble of finding and slotting resistances and AC, but the ogre was far more effective in the late game once I got more large rocks.

You can run Dith just for the passive damage boost (mimic acts 50% of the time at full piety, though can still miss), never shadow step, and only use shadow form in an emergency. Large rocks do !! - !!!! damage, and when you kill an enemy with your throw, the mimic can kill the enemy behind the first one like a beam. When you enter a zig with 100+ large rocks, you can stand in the back on many floors and lob rocks until everything is dead. If you take big damage, Dith pops smoke to give time to recover, and anyone who gets close eats a giant spiked club.

[Zargon]

Cheers for the replies, dudes

[celem]

The recent change whereby statues/plants dont cast a shadow hurt my usage of this god a bit. I won FoFi with Dith using shadow-step as a pseudo-blink, but never used it much beyond running from hydras in lair by stepping to plants. The stealth boost I find just saves you some Stealth skill levels but the Umbra accuracy effect is nice for a squishy type or anyone with decent Fighting.

I actually leveraged the shadow mimic most for my greatsling, its quite a powerful effect with any physical ranged user.

[and into]

The stealth factor actually does scale with your piety.

Really? Did this change recently or have I been completely incorrect in my understanding of this feature for some time now?

[Siegurt]

The stealth factor actually does scale with your piety.

Really? Did this change recently or have I been completely incorrect in my understanding of this feature for some time now?

  Code:

commit 02ec649b3a17ac849a900f4d5e1c0090235bd97b
Author: Steve Melenchuk <smelenchuk@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Feb 10 15:10:06 2014 -0700

    Scale umbra stealth bonus with piety for gods that can generate umbra.
   
    ...that is, directly (Dith) or indirectly (Yred, through profane
    servitors).
   
    At 200 piety you get the old double stealth bonus; at 0 piety you get no
    bonus; in between it scales linearly


I wouldn't say "recently"

[rchandra]

There was also that period where the scaling was 0 bonus at most piety, double stealth at 200 piety due to an integer divison error.

[Siegurt]

Yes, that was fixed more recently (although inefficiently, I should point that out)