The Tavern

I just wanted to ask, since I find myself not using them that often. Maybe it's the DEFE playstyle (Which i play pretty exclusively) and maybe I'm just doing it wrong...

However, wands, I do not find that useful in general. Some are good for when you are stuck without any MP and something is about to die... Or for when you only have fire spells and you need some ice magic.

However, things like polymorph, enslavement and pretty much anything except Acid, Iceblast and digging I find almost useless.

I generally find that a lot of the hexing ones simply don't work against the kind of enemies you'd want to use them on, and the turn trying (And generally failing) to use it is invariably better to spend trying to kill everything than it is trying to enslave it or something.

Interested to hear what everyone elses mileage is...

I use Para/Poly wands against Nessos, Sonja, Psyche and Maurice. It takes 2-3 tries usually, but once it works, they're done.

I use Enslave against Orc Warriors and other pack leaders.

I use that little flame wand in Shoals to make a bit of steam to block LoS.

I use scattershot against Agnes.

I use Clouds in Depths and Zot to abuse packs.

If I am playing a caster, I will always carry a couple nuke wands for Silent Specters.

Wands are great and everyone should use them unless they sacrificed artifice for Ru.

In addition to what was already said: I tend to polymorph shock serpents. Wand of flame kills electric eels usually in one or two hits. At the same time it blocks LOS.

Sprucery wrote:Wands are great and everyone should use them unless they sacrificed artifice for Ru.

This.
Most probably a DEFE is one of the char that benefits less of wands because he can easily get online ranged attack spells and hex spells with good success rate, which are the two things wands "mimick", except digging.

However they're still a strong support early at 0/low Evo and later as backup/emergency support.

Also, elemental evokers are very strong and box and sacks are OP

About the only wand I don't use as much as I should is polymorph, not because I don't think it's powerful enough, but because I would want to memorize what type of things I could polymorph stuff into (to know which things I might make more dangerous rather than less), and I don't have the patience for that kind of nonsense.

Since I don't use it very often, I tend to drop it earlyish in favor of some consumable I will use, so the later opportunities are typically lost to me as possibilities.

My favorite use of paralysis over enslavement is to stuff up a corridor when I want to flee from something nasty (like an early pack of bees)

enslavement is basically a wand that kills a low MR monster and gives you a ally. for example try enslaving a hasted and mighted deep troll

Siegurt wrote:About the only wand I don't use as much as I should is polymorph, not because I don't think it's powerful enough, but because I would want to memorize what type of things I could polymorph stuff into (to know which things I might make more dangerous rather than less), and I don't have the patience for that kind of nonsense.

Since I don't use it very often, I tend to drop it earlyish in favor of some consumable I will use, so the later opportunities are typically lost to me as possibilities.

My favorite use of paralysis over enslavement is to stuff up a corridor when I want to flee from something nasty (like an early pack of bees)

Agreed...so I decided to polymorph Sygmund to see what happens since that was the only wand I had.
I got a Sygmund the worm! YaY, I'll take that any day 8-)

Next time try it on Grinder!

(seriously, don't)

nago wrote:Next time try it on Grinder!

(seriously, don't)

from the 0.22 tournament Grinder was polymorphed 6 times and killed the character:

Grinder the apocalypse crab
Grinder the crimson imp
Grinder the demonic crawler
Grinder the doom hound
Grinder the ice devil
Grinder the ynoxinul

if your interested in other uniques, take a look at: http://dobrazupa.org/tournament/0.22/killers.html

I like that someone got a crimson imp and it still killed 'em.

Sigmund the naga

Sigmund the porcupine (shapershifter)

Sigmund the steam dragon

Sigmund the wolf

The naga is really interesting. You would think that would be quite the favorable polymorph... But the others are so bad. Sigmund the wolf is probably more deadly on D:2 than Sigmund the Sigmund.

Pikel the basilisk

Pikel the black mamba

Pikel the harpy

Pikel the harpy

Pikel the meliai

Pikel the raiju

Pikel the sky beast

Pikel the spriggan

Pikel the warg

OTOH, apparently polying Pikel is a TERRIBLE idea. The only survivable option here is a skybeast (or a raiju if you happen to have rElec.) Pikel even comes with a pack to make the basilisk deadly.

Crazy Yuif the porcupine

What's more deadly than a speed 10 unique behind a runed door? A speed 12 animal that's no longer behind a runed door...

Really, there are very few uniques on the death list that look at all safe to polymorph. I know we're looking at worst case results, but the worst case results are often so much worse than the unique.

There are a couple notable exceptions though...

Sonja the big kobold

I'd love to know the story behind this. Probably just a curare kill, since kobolds can use blowguns. But Sonja certainly looks like a good poly target if worst case is 'speed 10 humanoid'.

Joseph the ice beast

Unless you're a draconian, a straight upgrade.

And that's about it.

I'm betting some of these deaths involved the polymorph happening once the player was already low health. Sonja the big kobold won't make matters better if Sonja the Sonja lethally poisoned you and you don't have curing.

Pikel's table is pretty nasty.

Flame seems weak but it is useful to hit enemies in water to create steam clouds that both block LOS and kill them quickly. Usually for electric eels.
Clouds is just big (resistable) damage in a large area (or confusion with the poison one). Once you train evo and get freezing, fire, draining clouds it is a thing of beauty
Scattershot completely blasts low AC monsters like Hydras and two headed ogres
Paralysis is easily one of the most useful wands in my personal experience. Shuts down Sonja and Nessos very hard.
Disintegration is actually harder to resist than other MR-check wands so it's often a nice source of damage.

The only wand that I think is actually garbage is random effects. If a good player can tell me a potential reason to keep them in the inventory I would be quite surprised.

lansh wrote:The only wand that I think is actually garbage is random effects. If a good player can tell me a potential reason to keep them in the inventory I would be quite surprised.

Wand of random effects is usable in situations where you don't mind hasting the enemy and/or turning it invisible. So for example, if you are standing on upstairs and the enemy is far away, you can zap it and if it gets hasted, retreat upstairs and use some other downstairs. If you happen to have Yara's Violent Unravelling (a rare case though I guess), it's a big bonus.

Random effects is good early on if you use it while on the stairs, so you can freely nullify its bad results.

Later there are far better and not annoying to use consumables so it's 100% legit to drop it, but potentially it could be kept and used until there's space in the inventory.

wand of random effects is also good all game for destroying trees

Your basic take on wands is mostly correct. Only a few of them are consistently useful on a regular basis. However, as you gain more experience with the game you find more uses for the other wands over time. Even though some of the other uses may present themselves as opportunities less frequently or in less obvious ways, with more advanced tactics besides only brute force of iceblast/acid, etc. you can pull off much more devastating and effective things.

I'm not going to go into a long posting about everything you can do and when to do it with wands, but I'll leave you with an example to chew on. Take paralysis for example, you say - it only works on a lot of enemies that you don't really need it for that often. Consider if you use it on a weak target that you don't care about actually killing, but that will cause a large pileup of enemies behind it (and they cannot swap places with it), leaving a host of other powerful tactics.

lansh wrote:Flame seems weak but it is useful to hit enemies in water to create steam clouds that both block LOS and kill them quickly. Usually for electric eels.
Clouds is just big (resistable) damage in a large area (or confusion with the poison one). Once you train evo and get freezing, fire, draining clouds it is a thing of beauty
Scattershot completely blasts low AC monsters like Hydras and two headed ogres
Paralysis is easily one of the most useful wands in my personal experience. Shuts down Sonja and Nessos very hard.
Disintegration is actually harder to resist than other MR-check wands so it's often a nice source of damage.

The only wand that I think is actually garbage is random effects. If a good player can tell me a potential reason to keep them in the inventory I would be quite surprised.

If you can't be malmuted you can cast it on yourself before going downstairs until you get good outcomes from it.

Easily the worst wand and I often dump it for inventory space pretty early. Other wands are very respectable with evocations and can often carry otherwise annoying encounters through lair/orc/S branches at minimum. A few are good all game, along with the recharging evoke items.

The Tavern

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