Of an item in general? Example, a plate mail. +3 from grave, +2 from smith and +15 upgrade scrolls. Same for wand, except you actually have to get the wand from the old wandmaker. Lightning, freezing and disintegration are stronger. (Disintegration is technically equal, but it’s instant and piercing, which I’d rather use)
You can’t +2 something that is already +2 from smith. Also, a wand is not a staff, and the upgrades don’t transfer. So it would be basically useless and you don’t get the meaningful upgrades from it being imbued in your staff.
And ward is stronger, you just need to use it correctly (it has to be in your staff). Easily hundreds+ damage per round if you’ve set things up correctly. The other wands can’t remotely compete. Hypothetically you can do something like 2000 damage in one round with ward staff (not realistically though, this would be an extremely contrived scenario).
If you set upgraded wards to level 2 each and set out like 8 of them. You’ll literally do something preposterous like 400 damage per turn, ever turn. Since strike with staff recharges the wards (and elemental blast), you can run this indefinitely. I one shotted king of dwarves this way (both stages).
While hypothetically you could get a level 20 wand if you got lucky enough to get a level 3 from wandmaker, this would be an absurd waste because a ward build only makes sense when its imbued in your staff. And I should have screen capped it, but there is also no combo where you can do a very consistent 400-500 damage per turn indefinitely.
But you don’t need that damage, 400 per shot is just wasting charges and 4 turns of setup which, might I add if you invest everything into your wand 4 turns of letting the enemies damage you are quite noticeable. With a Wand of Lightning, frosting or Disintegration you can just kill you enemy with no setup whatsoever on one shot. Is those two differences what makes it worse. The setup needed and the charges wasted.
Or just get a wand of blasting wave, a pit and you can spend those upgrades elsewhere because that’s a one hit ko.
A wand of warding is still far superior. I can set up two high level wards blocking a corridor, and just take nap while they do the work for me taking basically 0 risk. And because I can effectively fire/ look around corners, my ability to do crowd control and keep distance is orders of magnitude improved.
Wand of warding gets slept on because its so weak early game/ not imbued. Imbued and properly used, its improves on all other wands in almost every aspect. It has more damage per round, no other wand even comes close. Better crowd control. Easy to re-supply your wards with either horn or element blast. Wand of warding leans into the ranged aspect of Mage and improves upon it in all aspects.
Of an item in general? Example, a plate mail. +3 from grave, +2 from smith and +15 upgrade scrolls. Same for wand, except you actually have to get the wand from the old wandmaker. Lightning, freezing and disintegration are stronger. (Disintegration is technically equal, but it’s instant and piercing, which I’d rather use)
You can’t +2 something that is already +2 from smith. Also, a wand is not a staff, and the upgrades don’t transfer. So it would be basically useless and you don’t get the meaningful upgrades from it being imbued in your staff.
And ward is stronger, you just need to use it correctly (it has to be in your staff). Easily hundreds+ damage per round if you’ve set things up correctly. The other wands can’t remotely compete. Hypothetically you can do something like 2000 damage in one round with ward staff (not realistically though, this would be an extremely contrived scenario).
If you set upgraded wards to level 2 each and set out like 8 of them. You’ll literally do something preposterous like 400 damage per turn, ever turn. Since strike with staff recharges the wards (and elemental blast), you can run this indefinitely. I one shotted king of dwarves this way (both stages).
While hypothetically you could get a level 20 wand if you got lucky enough to get a level 3 from wandmaker, this would be an absurd waste because a ward build only makes sense when its imbued in your staff. And I should have screen capped it, but there is also no combo where you can do a very consistent 400-500 damage per turn indefinitely.
You don’t need to deal 500 damage consistenly but only at a spot at a time and with +5 turns of setup, you need to hit 100 consistently and on the fly
Even without that, the ward when maxed is superior.
Its irrelevant because I can only fire those other wands/staffs at 1x/ turn.
The staff of warding I can have as many or as few as I need.
Its quite obvious: no other wand compares to the damage output of the wand of warding.
But you don’t need that damage, 400 per shot is just wasting charges and 4 turns of setup which, might I add if you invest everything into your wand 4 turns of letting the enemies damage you are quite noticeable. With a Wand of Lightning, frosting or Disintegration you can just kill you enemy with no setup whatsoever on one shot. Is those two differences what makes it worse. The setup needed and the charges wasted. Or just get a wand of blasting wave, a pit and you can spend those upgrades elsewhere because that’s a one hit ko.
A wand of warding is still far superior. I can set up two high level wards blocking a corridor, and just take nap while they do the work for me taking basically 0 risk. And because I can effectively fire/ look around corners, my ability to do crowd control and keep distance is orders of magnitude improved.
Wand of warding gets slept on because its so weak early game/ not imbued. Imbued and properly used, its improves on all other wands in almost every aspect. It has more damage per round, no other wand even comes close. Better crowd control. Easy to re-supply your wards with either horn or element blast. Wand of warding leans into the ranged aspect of Mage and improves upon it in all aspects.