Guardian Spirit for Mages

[MainiacJoe]

Is this amulet etc. useful for characters with MP-based killdudes? I've been shying away from it on such characters after a memorable time when an "ouch! that really hurt!" took all my MP and I had nothing to use my escape spells with (early enough in the game that I had no ?Blink, died before ?Tele kicked in). I've noticed though that there isn't a consistent message in the Tavern, "Spirit is bad for blasters," so I'm revisiting my aversion to it. Might it be as simple as setting the threshold of MP depleted before resetting a fight to be higher than normal?

[ydeve]

Usually with blasters, you use low mp instead of low hp as a sign to run from a fight...

I don't see Spirit Shield as being very helpful to a blaster.

[Mackerel]

I think it's very helpful.

If you just took a big hit in your mana pool, that absorbed a lot of damage that would have drained your hp pool instead. So, you're low on mp, but you're not dead.

It may only give you one extra turn, and you might not be able to escape with just one extra turn. Often, though, that one turn will make the difference. And for sure you can't escape if "You have died ... "

[and into]

Avoid it in the early game on characters that care about MP (not only "mages," strictly speaking)—your experience was pretty representative, there.

However, later on, it can be worthwhile even to characters that use MP. It just depends on how your character developed. Once you are well established and have some good escape options (a few !haste, ?blinking, etc.), try it out and see if you end up needing to run away more often, or less.

[Reptisaurus]

What? No! Of course not!

[vergil]

It's worth having as a mutation with demonspawn though. Having increased magic regen + guarding spirit + 90 mp == great increase in survivability.
I think it goes this way - if it's a common amulet - it's not worth having with small mp pool\blasters since it's just a waste of usefull amulet slot. But if it's on hat and you've got magic regen somewhere+huge mp pool - then it's decent.
Otherwise I would've chosen regen\reflect\randart with rC\rF\rNeg, or all in one, since it offers far better utility.

[advil]

I've never tried it but I've been led to believe that it is actually ok, because you do much of your damage from a distance as well as for the reasons expressed above (if you take enough damage to drain your mp pool, you would probably want to have reset the fight anyways without spirit). Presumably you wouldn't want to do this on a DEFE glass cannon, you would want a hybrid of some kind. One way to find example characters is to look at VS book starts. Some of these drop casting, but some don't; here's one I found via sequell that's doing damage both with blades and with fire conjurations; I suspect in extended they were doing most damage with melee+bite, but up to that point there's a lot of casting.

I'm not suggesting it's an obvious thing to try if you've got a lot of amulets, but I can at least see wearing spirit for a while if you're doing most of your ranged damage with spells, and that's the only amulet you've seen.

[Sar]

Well it can make a "DE glasscannon" much less glasscannon-y, so here's that.

[ydeve]

If you just took a big hit in your mana pool, that absorbed a lot of damage that would have drained your hp pool instead. So, you're low on mp, but you're not dead.

It may only give you one extra turn, and you might not be able to escape with just one extra turn. Often, though, that one turn will make the difference. And for sure you can't escape if "You have died ... "

Depends where you are. If you're fighting jackals and adders, extra hp isn't useful if it means your ability to fight is gone.

[Mackerel]

I don't see the logic behind the argument against guardian spirit. Yes, there are better amulets; if you find something better, wear it. But I cannot see a situation in which guardian spirit would be a bad thing to have.

In general, since guardian spirit splits the damage proportionally between your hp and mp, if you are getting hit while you run away you will run out of mp at about the same time you run out of hp. If you are taking damage at a rate that will drain your mp, it will kill you in another couple of turns. So you should not be fighting; you should be escaping.

Say it is early in the game, you have 30 hp and 15 mp, and you have gotten yourself attacked by 3 orcs. With lucky rolls they hit you for 30 damage. If you had found an early amulet of guardian spirit, but decided not to wear it in order to save your mana, you now have 0 hp and 15 mp: you are dead. If you decided instead to use the amulet, you split the damage between hp and mp at the ratio of 2 to 1 (because that is the ratio of your 30 hp and 15 mp). So you lose 20 hp and 10 mp. Now you have 10 hp and 5 mp. You don't have much "ability to fight" at this point, it's true. Still, you're alive and you can keep on fighting, if you want to; you couldn't do that, if you saved your mp by refusing to use guardian spirit. Better to escape, if you can. You can blink. You might blink badly and still die. But with 5 mp, you could even blink twice. You might blink well, and get up the stairs. You have a chance. But if you are not wearing that amulet, you are already dead.

Can you give me an example of a situation where you are taking damage that is going to kill you in a turn or two, but it makes sense to preserve your mana so you can fight?

[Hands]

I also think guardian spirit is pretty good on almost all characters. It's probably my favourite regular amulet.

[ydeve]

Can you give me an example of a situation where you are taking damage that is going to kill you in a turn or two, but it makes sense to preserve your mana so you can fight?

Spiky damage isn't usually what kills pre-S-Branch blasters. Getting into a situation when you run out of mp is.

For example, you finished a fight with 50% mp, retreated a bit, and started resting up (but not on the upstairs). A killer bee pack rounds the corner. Since you can't beat them in melee (assuming no venom/elec weapon), you are in trouble if your mp isn't enough to take them out. In normal circumstances, blasters will run out of mp before hp (unless you get surrounded) fighting killer bees. So diverting hp loss into your mp becomes detrimental, since if you run out of mp while bees are still alive, you're likely to die regardless of whether you're at 75% or 55% hp.

Yes, this is why it's better to retreat to stairs when possible before fighting, but scenarios like this can happen as you retreat. I'd rather be able to attack a blink frog pack than have hp but good way of dealing damage.

[jwoodward48ss]

...then you just take the useless amulet off for the fight, right?

[genericpseudonym]

Can you give me an example of a situation where you are taking damage that is going to kill you in a turn or two, but it makes sense to preserve your mana so you can fight?

I agree that it isn't a bad thing if all you're using your mana for is damage.

But it can potentially be bad if you have powerful escape/emergency abilities that use MP while also having relatively low max MP.

Taking a big hit and being too low to use cblink, ddoor, sanctuary, lucy self-abyss, etc can potentially kill you where you would have barely survived without spirit shield.

[Hands]

That's when you quaff your potion of magic, or use one of your non-mp dependent escape options. If this isn't enough then either the RNG is seriously out to get you or you screwed up a long time ago.

[ololoev]

Can you give me an example of a situation where you are taking damage that is going to kill you in a turn or two, but it makes sense to preserve your mana so you can fight?

You are a blaster with 30 hp and 15 mp. You have 2 orc priests in your vicinity that will smite you for 9 damage each.
During the first turn you are smitten for 18 damage, then you cast fball and kill one. Next turn you are smitten again and with 3hp kill the 2nd priest.
With gspirit you will be left with 18 hp and 9 mp after the first smite and will be able to kill only one enemy. Second priest will finish you in 3 turns. If you don't bother to fight, you are killed in 3 turns too. Tele won't kick in and as a defe you are not able to finish anything within 3 turns without conjurations. You can't run form the priests because there are no corners near you.

Theoretical situations exists only in theory. You have to play with gspirit to find it being good.

[Sar]

You are a blaster with 30 hp and 15 mp... then you cast fball

uhhh what? what race has fireball easily castable with 30 HP?

You have to play with gspirit to find it being good.

well I did and I thought it was pretty neat???

edit: "as a defe" - I don't think even a DE will have 30 HP and a Fireball at a good casting chance (because if you cast it with bad chance you're just gambling and Throw Flame should be good at killing priests anyway)

[nago]

The TRUE DEEP ELF MASTER ELEMENTALIST has firestorm castable before having 30HP.
ANd TORNADO at 10% FAILR rate

[ichbins]

You are a blaster with 30 hp and 15 mp. You have 2 orc priests in your vicinity that will smite you for 15 damage each.
During the first turn you are smitten for 30 damage. You die...

[Mackerel]

you finished a fight with 50% mp, retreated a bit, and started resting up (but not on the upstairs). A killer bee pack rounds the corner. Since you can't beat them in melee (assuming no venom/elec weapon), you are in trouble if your mp isn't enough to take them out. In normal circumstances, blasters will run out of mp before hp (unless you get surrounded) fighting killer bees. So diverting hp loss into your mp becomes detrimental, since if you run out of mp while bees are still alive, you're likely to die regardless of whether you're at 75% or 55% hp.

I don't see why I'd want to fight in a situation like that. I am at a terrible disadvantage, fighting 3 or 4 bees in the open, starting at half mp. I want to get out, recover to full mp, come back, and pick off the bees one at a time from a corridor entrance. So if I see I can't make it to the stairs, I would read a teleport scroll, and run and blink until the teleport kicks in. And I'd be glad I have that amulet, which left me low on mp and low on hp after I teleport, instead of dead in a bee swarm.

Yes, I might teleport into more trouble. There's lots of ways to die. But trying to fight in the situation you propose, instead of trying to get away, doesn't make sense to me at all.

[Siegurt]

you finished a fight with 50% mp, retreated a bit, and started resting up (but not on the upstairs). A killer bee pack rounds the corner. Since you can't beat them in melee (assuming no venom/elec weapon), you are in trouble if your mp isn't enough to take them out. In normal circumstances, blasters will run out of mp before hp (unless you get surrounded) fighting killer bees. So diverting hp loss into your mp becomes detrimental, since if you run out of mp while bees are still alive, you're likely to die regardless of whether you're at 75% or 55% hp.

I don't see why I'd want to fight in a situation like that. I am at a terrible disadvantage, fighting 3 or 4 bees in the open, starting at half mp. I want to get out, recover to full mp, come back, and pick off the bees one at a time from a corridor entrance. So if I see I can't make it to the stairs, I would read a teleport scroll, and run and blink until the teleport kicks in. And I'd be glad I have that amulet, which left me low on mp and low on hp after I teleport, instead of dead in a bee swarm.

Yes, I might teleport into more trouble. There's lots of ways to die. But trying to fight in the situation you propose, instead of trying to get away, doesn't make sense to me at all.

There are early situations where you can't get away (let's say you just haven't gotten any escape consumables yet) if you are forced to fight from a bad situation, gs might be bad (since it could reduce your ability to kill things) once you have any reasonable amount of options for handling a bad situations without mp (either by escaping or winning), this no longer applies.

[jwoodward48ss]

If you don't have any escape consumables, than you're probably on D:3 or above, and "oGS is useless because you have less than five magic points. We aren't talking about "super early game". Most of the game, "oGS is somewhat good.