Anti-magic: Useful or just filler?

[thriftshopmusketeer]

I've spent most of my short time in crawl refining my Beserkers. My major playstyle is the AC-monster, 2-handed-axe MiBe (although hilariously, my best char by far was a human, short blades/evasion beserker. Yes, a KoBe except no gourmand.). Anyway, something I've found over time was that I found myself discarding antimagic weapons in favor of pretty much any other brand (assuming roughly equivalent enchants, of course.) My reasoning is thus: Anti-magic works by occasionally triggering on a successful melee hit to an enemy, doing mana damage based on the attack's damage.

This gives me 3 points: 1, you must close to melee distance for the brand to be effective, which is like 90% of the difficulty when fighting spellcasters; 2, it's not a guaranteed shutdown, or even a guaranteed hinderance, to the spell-caster, as the ability doesn't always proc (does anyone know the exact rate?); and 3, its brand is useless against non-spell-casting enemies.

These points, especially #1, lead me to believe that anti-magic vs other brands is soething like shields vs 2-handers: In this case, the better option is to simply gank him but quick. Am I doing it wrong? Or is antimagic genuinely subpar?

[evilmike]

Early in the game magic users tend to have low HP and die fast. This is not the case in the later part of the game. Many magic users have high HP, and antimagic is very useful against them. This includes several high level undead, demons, orbs of fire, etc. A lot of these things are immune to silence, too.

The only spells it doesn't block are ones from "divine" sources (which tends to mean any monster with "priest" in its name).

[pratamawirya]

Whipping a Hell Sentinel with a demon whip of anti-magic is fun. Whipping the monster with anything else (excluding holy wrath) is a pain in the rear.

EDIT: Good to know that anti-magic works on fire orbs!!!

[Deimos]

On the other side, a demon whip of anti-magic isn't nearly as powerful as, say, a demon whip of electrocution. In a 3-rune game you probably won't come across too much until Zot that you'll need antimagic for; maybe the occasional unique, orc sorc, etc. Almost everything else before that point is better off being taken down with with a different brand.

I'd obviously choose anti-magic over a number of brands in a 3-runer (namely vorpal, poison, and pain without necro skill), but if I only have the choice of one weapon you can be assured I am going to pick one of the elemental brands. Orbs of Fire or Ancient Liches might be cake with antimagic, but I'd rather have something better suited to surviving the other 90% of the game.

[galehar]

Orbs of Fire or Ancient Liches might be cake with antimagic, but I'd rather have something better suited to surviving the other 90% of the game.

You can also carry more than one weapon and switch to the most efficient one when needed.

[Grimm]

You can also carry more than one weapon and switch to the most efficient one when needed.

Building a strong quiver of weapons is in fact an essential part of good xxBe play. By the end game my MiBes are usually toting 3-5 axes everywhere, depending on drops and resist overlaps. Antimagic is always one of them.

[Scalding Steam]

Whipping a Hell Sentinel with a demon whip of anti-magic is fun. Whipping the monster with anything else (excluding holy wrath) is a pain in the rear.

EDIT: Good to know that anti-magic works on fire orbs!!!

Actually, they can even work on electric golems according to the learndb.

[rebthor]

Anti-magic allowed my recent MiBe absolutely tear through Pan lords, named or not as well as all sorts of other casting threats like lichs, uniques in general, etc. Honestly I would have been better served on the demonics by doing 2-3 hits with the anti-magic exec axe and then 2-3 hits with the holy exec axe but I was too lazy since at most it was 1-2 extra hits and the continued pummeling by anti-magic forced the dangerous casters to hit my heavily armoured character with their relatively weak melee attack. The absolute best thing is when Cerebov or Lom Lobon simply lose turns because they tried to cast but were shut down by the effects of anti-magic.

[crate]

For &s the best play is probably to stack up some antimagic debuff, and then switch to holy wrath for damage while the antimagic ticks down. But antimagic alone is usually better than holy wrath alone.

[thriftshopmusketeer]

Alright. Thanks, guys; I don't exactly have a surfeit of late-game experience, so this advice is really helpful. (Incidentally, how does one go about giving thanks for posts?)EDIT: NEVERMIND, found the button.

[mikee]

as long as you aren't fighting several at once

I would like to stress this point so people don't get an overly simplistic idea. Keep in mind that a lot of the time you are not going to be fighting one thing at a time (especially if you are not experienced with tactics or just don't care to use them).