Question about balls... of lightning

[Griever7x]

I've had this idea for a while, of a gimmicky build centered around exploding/electrocuting everything with balls of lightning as a tengu.
Okay, tengus have awesome air and conjurations aptitudes, so what's the problem you might ask.
Well, I want to make them detonate with stuff.
Basically I want a tengu that fights with fists and javelins, maybe use some support magic, but no other offensive magic other than ball lightning.
So I wanted to know which items can detonate the balls since last time I used them with a caster they seemed pretty much immune to magic...

[Bloax]

Slouch would do the trick, if you're willing to not do it too often and actually go Chei.

[Griever7x]

Well, if str really boosts javelin damage, then it wouldn't be such a crazy idea to go chei as a tengu for the stat boost
But yeah, I want to use conjure ball really often it's a fun spell

[Bloax]

If you're playing 0.13 then I can tell you that high strength throwing is really, really bad compared to high strength melee.

Source: here and here

Though it's not so bad if you want to soften things up anyways.

[One-Eyed Jack]

chei is a bad god for tengu (or anyone but especially tengu)

ball lightning is immune to magic and has 1hp 0ac 10 ev: http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/bots : so you can throw rocks at them basically

it seems dumb to me to learn a level 7 conjuration/air spell and not use any other conjurations. just play a teae normally and pick up some javelins/learn UC at some point

[Arrhythmia]

I know you don't want to use any other combat magic, but magic dart would pop your ball lightnings every time, guaranteed.

[Griever7x]

Well as I said it's just a gimmicky build!
It'd be boring to play as a tengu ae/cj... I really don't like it.
I imagine an angry constipated bird with claws and a quiver full of pointy javelins ready to be thrown at anything that moves, with exploding balls of lightning everywhere much cooler than the usual caster... But maybe it's just me.
That's why I usually start the game as a wanderer with every species...

Anyways, I think I will go jiyva and mutate the hell out of me so I can get all sorts of uc auxiliary attacks... yeah.
Sad to see javelins can't be used as a primary source of damage, I really like them early on...

Thanks for the advice, didn't know rocks worked on them

[Griever7x]

I know you don't want to use any other combat magic, but magic dart would pop your ball lightnings every time, guaranteed.

Really?
I can make the exception, maybe I'll start with a conjurer afterall...
Thanks!

[Siegurt]

I imagine an angry constipated bird with claws and a quiver full of pointy javelins ready to be thrown at anything that moves, with exploding balls of lightning everywhere

[Baldu]

For blowing up ball lightning: magic dart, mystic blast and it's explosion, iron shot, crystal spear, the explosion from deconstruction, any melee or ranged attack (including penetration javelins and bolts), fire/ice storm, possibly explosion from explosive darts (never tried), i think throw icicle (been a while, might be wrong), probably the shot from battlesphere.

The best support for gimmick conjure balls builds i found were LRD and penetration bolts/javelins, that way it's possible to blow up multiple balls per turn. Also works well with fire storm but it takes too long to come online. One fun gimmick is taking earth to 10 for LRD and also use summon elementals, you can then use LRD on your earth elementals to blow piles of balls.

As you can probably tell i've played many ballers, but after balling myself so many times to death i ended up petting my balls aside and havent used them for months. The problem is once you start down that path the tendency is to go for more and more blow, and successfully blowing 20 balls at once to take down the big guys is something alright, but also taking myself down is much less exciting.

[prozacelf]

That is one filthy metaphor right there.