Quick blade of <your choice>

[Hurkyl]

On my SpEn, I've taken to acquiring quick blades. It works pretty reliably if you've trained Short Blades up (and nothing else), and you usually get an unbranded one of decent enchantment.

This, of course, frequently leaves me with a question -- what do I vorpalize it with? Stabbing ensures that I get a bonus against everything, but flaming/freezing are more powerful when not resisted. The wiki (FWIW) suggests freezing is more generally useful, OTOH flaming is stronger against undead which are annoying due to their immunity to sleep, and my current tendency is to eventually memorize Freezing Cloud so I already have a powerful option against cold-vulnerable enemies.

And, of course, I have the option of leaving it unbranded, and using Fire Brand / Freezing Aura at my leisure -- or even Warp Weapon should I feel the need to send things to the abyss (I play more caster focused, so I can reasonably expect to have spell slots available for this).

Or... is there even a semi-reliable way to affix electrocution to my QB?

Opinions?

[Sandman25]

Electrocution is bad for stabbers because of additive damage and noise. I usually go for Freezing. Undead can be confused/silenced while Demons cannot.

[Siegurt]

There's no semi reliable way to get elec brand permanently affixed to a quick blade (Xom and a blade card are the only ways I know of, both of which are very very random)

However permanent distortion branding (via lucy) works just about as well damage wise (Although there's some weird randomness with the whole blink/teleport/banish thing which may be an advantage or disadvantage) and is certainly reliable if you are willing to worship Lucy.

Fire/Frost do decently well, but aren't quite as good as electricity and distortion damage wise. Frost is probably slightly better in the long run than Fire.

Alternately if you are playing trunk you can get a branded quick blade and play brand roulette with successive vorpal scrolls (Which may or may not be a good thing)

Honestly though, leaving it unbranded and using the branding spells isn't a bad way to go.

[Siegurt]

Electrocution is bad for stabbers because of additive damage and noise. I usually go for Freezing. Undead can be confused/silenced while Demons cannot.

Electrocution doesn't add noise. (It's supposed to, but it doesn't due to a bug) Successful stabbing never makes *any* noise regardless.

[Hurkyl]

Electrocution is bad for stabbers because of additive damage and noise. I usually go for Freezing. Undead can be confused/silenced while Demons cannot.

Doing more stabbing damage can always be achieved by training more Stabbing; additive damage on a QB is excellent for those things you aren't stabbing. (unless it's one of those games where you find a lot of extra slaying bonuses)

I feel like I'm far more often in the disable-stab scenario than the stealth-stab-a-whole-group scenario, but I've not paid that much attention to the relative frequency; I'll have to think about it. But I guess that matters less if it's not actually noisy in the latter setting.

(I've only won a 3-runer and have done very little exploration of Hell and Tomb, and none of Pan, so that affects my actual experiences)

[Sandman25]

Electrocution is bad for stabbers because of additive damage and noise. I usually go for Freezing. Undead can be confused/silenced while Demons cannot.

Electrocution doesn't add noise. (It's supposed to, but it doesn't due to a bug) Successful stabbing never makes *any* noise regardless.

I didn't know about the bug. But if stabbing fails (tier 2+ stabs are not guaranteed), the noise happens, right?

[Siegurt]

Electrocution is bad for stabbers because of additive damage and noise. I usually go for Freezing. Undead can be confused/silenced while Demons cannot.

Electrocution doesn't add noise. (It's supposed to, but it doesn't due to a bug) Successful stabbing never makes *any* noise regardless.

I didn't know about the bug. But if stabbing fails (tier 2+ stabs are not guaranteed), the noise happens, right?

Normal weapon attack noise does happen if you fail stabs (Which just counts as a normal attack), yes.

[Sandman25]

Doing more stabbing damage can always be achieved by training more Stabbing; additive damage on a QB is excellent for those things you aren't stabbing. (unless it's one of those games where you find a lot of extra slaying bonuses)

I feel like I'm far more often in the disable-stab scenario than the stealth-stab-a-whole-group scenario, but I've not paid that much attention to the relative frequency; I'll have to think about it. But I guess that matters less if it's not actually noisy in the latter setting.

(I've only won a 3-runer and have done very little exploration of Hell and Tomb, and none of Pan, so that affects my actual experiences)

Freezing adds 50% damage on average, to compensate it with additive brand you would need to have about 50% higher stabbing skill (I think, the formula are not that straightforward).
I have different experience, many stabs are done by stealth/invisibility, even late game. Here is my only SpEn win (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8430&p=116468)

  Code:

     Ensorcelled Hiber |    30 |    41 |   102 |   323 |   520 |   235 |   185 |   100 |     9 ||  1545

 Stab: Sleeping          |    26 |    28 |    75 |   337 |   439 |   207 |   328 |   205 |   275 ||  1920
       Confused          |       |     3 |    13 |    10 |    89 |   125 |   175 |   161 |   145 ||   721
       Invisible         |       |       |     3 |     7 |    35 |    78 |    40 |    47 |    27 ||   237
       Distracted        |       |       |       |     4 |     9 |    13 |     8 |    15 |    23 ||    72
       Fleeing           |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |     5 ||     5


[Siegurt]

Freezing adds 50% damage on average, to compensate it with additive brand you would need to have about 50% higher stabbing skill (I think, the formula are not that straightforward).

This is incorrect, Stabbing bonuses are tiered, and for shortblades both additive and multiplicative. 50% more skill doesn't directly correspond to 50% more damage. Depending on which 50% you're talking about, 50% more skill translates to something like 300%-500% more damage, The bonus damage on stabs for a freezing brand equates to something like 5-15% more skill.

The additional damage from freezing is not a factor in the effectiveness of your stabs, and by the time you have a quickblade, and have the opportunity to vorpalize a brand on it and should be using it for stabs, it's pretty much completely immaterial to killing things (i.e. you should be able to kill nearly everything with 1 stab regardless of whether your weapon is freezing or not)

Since the brand really doesn't matter when stabbing, the only useful question for branding is how effective the brand is when you *aren't* stabbing, and for all such cases additive brands (elec, distortion) are better than multiplicative ones.

[Amnesiac]

I like electrocution a lot, I use it on short blades until I get the same damage from a branded quickblade because of slaying bonuses and it's speed, but if I would find a qb of electrocution I would use it for the whole game, because there probably wouldn't be any better weapon. Of course I would need a backup weapon for resistant monsters or monsters who have a bit more HP than I can deal damage with a stab from a quickblade. Anyway, a qb of electrocution is a pretty awesome weapon that can allow you to train just 8 short blades and all other exp you can spend on dodging and other defensive skills and you'll be ok for the most part.

[Hurkyl]

I'm playing 0.12, so electrocution also fails against flying enemies.

Anyways, I found yet another strike against vorpalizing Fire Brand: it conflicts with my current trend of dabbling in Ice magic by preventing use of Ozocubu's Armor.

[Amnesiac]

Well, whatever, electrocution is a great brand, no arguing that. But I didn't say "freezing" and I was talking about qb vs other SBs, so wouldn't you get a comparable damage with a qb of, say, holy wrath with some slaying or not (I won't bother doing math). You can also brand it with pain and distortion. Those brands are at least easier to get than electrocution, considering that I made some and found one in HoB, while I've never seen a qb of electrocution in my years of playing DCSS. Hopefully new branding will help me to make a qb of electrocution, one day.