Good weapon to brand with distortion?

[phloomp]

Suppose you're following Lugonu and can now brand a weapon with distortion. Which weapon to brand? Probably the answer is "whatever weapon you are already using," but there are some more plausibilites. Maybe you should trade down to a weapon with lower min delay? If you're only going for a low skill weapon anyway, maybe switch from staves to polearms, since your enemies are about to be blinking around a lot? Maybe switch from maces to axes, so the brand has more opportunites to activate?

[Baldu3]

The distortion weapons I've had the most fun with were quickblades daggers and polearms. With most other weapons I found distortion to quickly flip between awesome and rage inducing, while those were a bit more consistent in making me enjoy playing crawl.

[and into]

Remember that Lugonu lets you freely swap among distortion-branded weapons and other weapons. You can choose to put distortion on a high base damage weapon, but you can also put it on the fastest weapon you have skill in and swap.

Distortion is fun with cleaving. It also goes well with reaching.

If I had found a quick blade before hitting six stars, I would train little bit of short blades and brand that. Otherwise, it works well on whips, spears, daggers, so you shouldn't have to train a separate weapon category much, if at all, to hit mindelay on a 0.5 delay weapon. In any case, don't wait for the "perfect" weapon, put distortion brand on something when it becomes available.

[goodcoolguy]

It depends on whether you're out to banish things or kill them the usual way. If you want to banish things, you want something that strikes fast. Quick blades are the best way to go. Spectral weapon helps too, especially on polearms. Using distortion to banish magic immune/high mr monsters is not very reliable, but it works okay and you'll at least teleport things you can't kill.

Distortion damage is pretty good and if you can take things down in a reasonably small number of hits, it gives your melee a lot more punch. Any big weapon is good, but polearms are especially good because you lose fewer turns to blinks.

[ajon]

if you're axes and don't want to blink things with your normal weapob, put it on a hand axe for a bit faster attacks

[nago]

. Using distortion to banish magic immune/high mr monsters is not very reliable, but it works okay and you'll at least teleport things you can't kill.

This is not correct, banishment by distortion weapon can't be resisted in any way

[genericpseudonym]

. Using distortion to banish magic immune/high mr monsters is not very reliable, but it works okay and you'll at least teleport things you can't kill.

This is not correct, banishment by distortion weapon can't be resisted in any way

I thing what he meant was "Using distortion to banish monsters is not very reliable". As in, it's only a 1 in 20 chance on each hit, so it's mostly a bad idea to distort a low base-damage weapon and just use it as a swap for banishing things. (Obviously against monsters without high MR you can just use the god power to banish them instead of hitting them 20 times with a hand axe.)

I don't have a ton of lucy experience but given the choice between branding a 0.5 delay crappy weapon (like a regular whip) and just using it for banishes vs branding a 0.7 delay good-damage weapon (like eveningstar or great mace) and using it for damage plus occasional bonus banishes, I'd rather choose the second option.

Of course quick blades' 0.3 delay is a way bigger bonus than whips' 0.5 delay, so if you actually find a qb in a reasonable amount of time it's probably worth branding it and investing the 6 skill for mindelay.

[MainiacJoe]

. Using distortion to banish magic immune/high mr monsters is not very reliable, but it works okay and you'll at least teleport things you can't kill.

This is not correct, banishment by distortion weapon can't be resisted in any way

I think the immunity cited in regards to the god ability, not the weapon ability. As in, if you want to banish it but have to use the weapon because it's immune to your ***.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Banish isn't the only way the distortion brand can help with dangerous monsters. Tele is usually almost as useful. Blink can create distance, but can be annoying too.

Let's assume something dangerous (and faster than you I guess) hits you in melee. Your chance of improving your situation per hit is:

  Code:

   5% banish, best case!
+ 10% tele (instant), has a high chance of removing monster from LOS, good!
+ 10% tele (delayed), walk away two or three steps and the monster will likely disappear from LOS, decent!
+ 15% blink, good chance to increase distance (terrain dependent), giving one or more 'free' actions, still decent!
-----
40% total, not bad.

In reality it is a bit less than 40%, because tele and blink can keep monsters close to the player. Sometimes they can make things worse too, like blocking an exit. Still, the chance of getting a good result is likely better than 1/3. With a 5 aut delay weapon assuming 33% it often works. Over 20 aut (i.e. 4 hits) that's close to 80%.

[dowan]

Blinking or teleporting a monster with decent ranged attacks is usually much worse than not blinking or teleporting them. Even worse if they're actually weaker in close range, like centaurs/yaktaurs.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

No doubt. Using a distortion weapon against an enemy you need to keep close is a mistake.

[MainiacJoe]

I've found with the amulet of dismissal that the tele away wastes consumable buffs. I suspect this is an issue with distortion weapons, too?

[njvack]

It depends on whether you're treating "this monster is out of LOS" as "this monster is functionally dealt with." Teleported monsters will come back to see you, but if you're somewhere else you can usually avoid them.

But yeah, quaffing might and haste and then teleporting Mennas when he's almost dead is frustrating af.

[and into]

Right, you can put distortion on a big damage weapon, or you can put it on a fast weapon. Either route is effective, really, although regardless you want a weapon with good damage that is not distortion, because blinking enemies can be bad, and (less often) the other distortion effects aside from damage can be bad too.

As 4Hooves points out, using distortion to get a monster out of LOS with banish/tele is actually pretty dependable, however there is the risk of hitting a streak where you just blink them around a bunch, so take that into account.

[all before]

I'd generally put it on the highest damaging weapon I have, because if tele or banish don't trigger, I'd prefer the monster to be dead.

[MainiacJoe]

It just occurred to me that distortion + riposte might play well together. Riposte in this case is a way to boost effective weapon speed, making a heavy LBl more attractive distortion targets, and LBL more attractive for AK in general.

[BabyRage]

I'm doing AK now for the first time. Is it worth to use distortion brand on my endgame weapon? How good is it in terms of dps? Or is it better to go for more traditional elec/vorpal/whatever?

[njvack]

Disto is good for DPS, when space warps around a monster you're doing extra irresistible damage to them.

[goodcoolguy]

This is not correct, banishment by distortion weapon can't be resisted in any way

As others have pointed out, I meant that you would use the banishment ability against targets it would work on rather than try to use distortion.

I'm doing AK now for the first time. Is it worth to use distortion brand on my endgame weapon? How good is it in terms of dps? Or is it better to go for more traditional elec/vorpal/whatever?

The DPS is very good, better than electrocution. The problem is that if you can't kill things in a small number of hits, you'll get a lot of blinking and teleportation which extends encounters and can expose you to more damage and spell effects.

[Reptisaurus]

I tend not to brand my Very Best Weapon because distortion is such a pain in the ass. I'll try to carry something with decent min-delay (quick blade is optimal) for getting critters out of melee range.