So I am running around with a wand of warding +3 and a wand of warding +2 on a gladiator file. It is a useful wand, but is it really the top-tier wand that some people on the internet seem to say it is? The Greater Sentries can be killed, and they even lose health by firing. I could see them being OP if they did not cost health to attack. But the way they are now, if you want them to survive, at least at deeper floors, you have to feed them charges to try and maintain their health. You could have spent those turns directly attacking the enemy instead.
Is there something that I am missing on how best to use the wand of warding? What are the best strategies to take advantage of it?
You can use the sentry to block attacks toward you; by putting one directly in the line of fire. They can also delay mob movement towards you if you already have the mob’s agro. A sentry can also set off traps, as well as pass through enemies; like a corrosive gas trap behind a mob; that you wouldn’t be able to set off with an item in your inventory.
With a bunch of challenges enabled, particularly Into the Darkness, or just on dark levels, the increased sight and scouting provided is quite helpful.
As the huntress, sometimes I like to camp in a garden to heal, level up a bit, and stomp grass with Rejuvenating Steps. Again, a sentry gives me scouting, so I don’t have to watch the doors to the adjoining room as closely for enemies to bow down from within the garden.
If given a choice, I would typically pick any other wand over warding but it is versatile and I think is underutilize.
Maybe I wouldn’t pick it over living earth, magic missile or prismatic light, but in every other scenario I’d choose the other wand. I’m currently debating with myself if I’d pick it over grassy grass wand or not.
I’d always pick the wand of regrowth over any other wand. It’s the most useful in my opinion. But I do play with a few challenges so that probably skews my choice. If there’s a wand that could do with a slight nerf perhaps, I think it’s regrowth.
Prismatic is useful for finding hidden rooms and somewhat high up on my list. And I would also generally take magic missile over warding.
That’s my tier list, maybe a bit outdated (have thoughts of putting higher both wand of transfusion and grassy grass, and I don’t know where to put corrupted, maybe I lower it of tier…) What challenges do you play with, by the way?
I’d swap regrowth and lightning.
Are you insane? (It’s a joke, said joyfully, no harm intend) Lightning is the wand that has the most base damage of them all and that scales the most (with frosting) with upgrades. It is objectively the best wand to upgrade for highest damage per shot. And, yeah, I might’ve been too tough with grass wand (as said) but it’s definitely not A tier
I guess because the lightning-wand can cause self-damage, I mostly skip using it, and never upgrade it.
Didn’t know about the highest damage rating, thanks for that.
I’ll try an upgraded lightning build, the next time I see it.
Also, I preference spear/glaive weapons for the range (augment stone to enhance speed).
Re-growth can root a non-flying enemy and give 3-4 free hits with these two weapons.
Can usually be zapped to block line-of-sight for enemies with ranged attacks, and provide the equivalent of 1 health potion every 2 levels from dew drops.
Ok, with the spear strat is decent, but I didn’t rate the wands on the synergies they have, I just rated them on how good they are by theirselves.
Hostile Champions, Badder Bosses, On Diet, Swarm Intelligence, and Forbidden Runes for challenges.
The corruption wand can be powerful but the randomness makes me often prefer the simple magic missile over it.
I hate to steal the thread but how good are gardens really?
I never learned how to make proper advantage of them. Obviously they have some loot, and there’s the invisibility thing but every time I wanted to use it as a resting place mobs always found me what felt as just as easily as anywhere. But the fact that they get auto marked in the list of visited places tells me they should be valuable enough to return to, similar to alchemy labs, but they don’t seem to be. But then again, maybe I’m just missing something.
(The Rejuvenating Steps part is great but any patch of grass can do that.)
The invisibility helps in avoiding enemies. Walk away twice from a mob that’s spotted you and they’ll lose sight of you. Every time that you back away from a mob, while you’re in the garden, you can make a sneak attack, so it’s easy to kill enemies there.
With the huntress and her bow, ideally you want to bow down enemies before they reach the garden. Without a wand of warding, I just pass turns while keeping an eye on the doors in the adjoining room. A door that suddenly opens may indicate an mob entering the room and ready to be shot at. I’ll start shooting once I think they’ve reached my line of fire and if there’s no hit after a few shots, it could be that a mob spawned in the room and was exiting instead.
For other classes, resting in the garden may be a detriment. The time spent holing up in a garden could’ve been used to explore; potentially finding useful items. It’s rare that I eat and heal in the garden with the other classes.