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?
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That’s my tier list, maybe a bit outdated (have thoughts of putting higher both wand of transfusion and grassy grass, and I don’t know where to put corrupted, maybe I lower it of tier…) What challenges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?
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’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.