Hexes do not become useless late game.

[Shard1697]

I don't believe they're useless, I believe they're kind of annoying to use compared to simple melee character who can also kill everything no problem

[VeryAngryFelid]

You can have 15+ Weapon/Armour/Dodging/Fighting and still use Confusion/Invisibility.
As Mummy with 3 runes.

  Code:

* Level 23.6 Fighting
 - Level 9.3(14.3) Short Blades
 - Level 17.3(18.0) Long Blades
 + Level 15.6 Armour
 + Level 15.7 Dodging
 - Level 11.4 Stealth
 - Level 13.7 Spellcasting
 - Level 14.4 Hexes
 - Level 3.9 Charms
 - Level 4.0 Necromancy
 - Level 10.1 Translocations
 - Level 2.9 Ice Magic
 - Level 6.0 Air Magic
 - Level 14.0 Invocations
 - Level 10.0 Evocations

Difference between Armour/Dodging 15 and 27 is not that significant so you are better to learn some spells.

[dowan]

As an experiment I intend to try to treat hexes like I used to treat charms, something to try to train up on almost any character once I found a few worthwhile spells.
I'll let you know if/when I get any characters going, because it'd be interesting to see how a non enchanter/AM does with backup hexes as an option.

Maybe we'll learn something. Maybe not.

[nago]

Hexes, differently from charms, highly benefit from spellpower and therefore from int, so I highly doubt you're going to find them worthwhile with many melee chars.

My rule of thumb is that I may train hexes, if I miss any better skill to raise (e.g. evo, charms) only if my char has at least 20ish int.

[VeryAngryFelid]

dowan, I hope you are not serious. MiFi of Qazlal with battleaxe in CPA should not use any Hexes.

[WingedEspeon]

MiFi of Qazlal in CPA should probably not be using charms either.

I feel think the root of the disscusion is that hexes like confuse drop greatly in power in a 3 rune game but there are dual school hexes that don't check MR/HD that are quite strong (spectral weapon, mana viper, silence) Personaly I don't like silence because it takes my blink/tele scrolls offline but that is more personal preference.

[VeryAngryFelid]

It is recommended to have a wand of tele and lure monsters back into explored territory before casting Silence. Yes, it can be annoying when you can just charge with antimagic/vampiric weapon instead but the point is to guarantee you won't be hit with LCS, banishment or summoned fiends.

[Lasty]

In my experience, Confuse is the absolute best hex, bar none. It's a lot like getting Banish for less investment and without taking a god. It's like banish in that landing it is essentially the same as killing the target. It's actually better than killing the target in many situations because you can use the confused monster to obstruct others.

It only takes 4-8 Hexes to get it to a good fail rate, and that's enough by itself to reasonably reliably land confuse on MR 20 monsters and somewhat reliably MR 40. If you have middling intelligence (12-15) you can even get 60s pretty reliably. If you have good int you can reliably hit up to 100 MR, which covers most of the game's monsters.

Also, scroll of vulnerability is a thing.

By somewhat reliable I mean 25% or so. By fairly reliable I mean 33%+. Compare with melee: how often do you kill anything substantial in one attack? How often two or three?

[Siegurt]

In my experience, Confuse is the absolute best hex, bar none. It's a lot like getting Banish for less investment and without taking a god. It's like banish in that landing it is essentially the same as killing the target. It's actually better than killing the target in many situations because you can use the confused monster to obstruct others.

It only takes 4-8 Hexes to get it to a good fail rate, and that's enough by itself to reasonably reliably land confuse on MR 20 monsters and somewhat reliably MR 40. If you have middling intelligence (12-15) you can even get 60s pretty reliably. If you have good int you can reliably hit up to 100 MR, which covers most of the game's monsters.

Also, scroll of vulnerability is a thing.

By somewhat reliable I mean 25% or so. By fairly reliable I mean 33%+. Compare with melee: how often do you kill anything substantial in one attack? How often two or three?

I think part of the dichotomy here is the difference in perception. An experienced player knows that a confused monster is handled, you just walk away and you don't have to deal with it, but that presumes you know you aren't on a quest to visit every square and kill every monster.

If your quest is to kill everything you meet, then confuse helps, a lot, but it isn't the end of the story, and it doesn't last long enough for you to reliably kill something to death every time while it is confused.

Also there is the slightly smaller impact, once you have confused something and walked away, it is still out there, and might obstruct your way again. Because it isn't *permanent* removal, things that don't die might pile up and potentially end up revisiting you at an inconvenient moment, possibly being more dangerous than they were before.

It is also significantly harder to deal with a large group (e.x. yaks) with it, being both single target and non permanent you can use it to assist, but it isn't going to solve all your problems for you.

I think that's another issue, is that people take hexes on their own and say "well that does not solve all my problems" and don't acknowledge that as an adjunct to other problem solving tools it can actually be more beneficial than by itself, or than those other "works on everything" tools are by themselves.

[VeryAngryFelid]

You can retreat into a corridor before casting Confuse on Yaks.

[Midn8]

Note that yaks are early game enemies. I feel like if you are learning hexes to deal with a specific threat, like tormentors, then sure, that works. But you better have a pretty high int, because tormentors come with a whopping 60! mr, and beating that is not that easy if you have int in the 10-15 range (unless you overtrain hexes).

[VeryAngryFelid]

Tormentors don't see inv so you are better with Invisibility spell or potion. I mean it is better to use 100% way to avoid torment when you have choice.

[Midn8]

Basically the only reason I would use invis is if I wasn't playing a spriggan (I play a LOT of spriggans. Like over 50% of my 100+ offline games are spriggans.).

[VeryAngryFelid]

Even for Spriggan Invis is great when you cannot run away.