Talk:Majang's Fire Elementalist of TSO Guide
So I'm reading your guide, and almost immediately I start wondering why the strategy isn't to start with Vehumet and switch to TSO for the late game. Vehumet's passive benefits are fantastic for a spellcaster, especially in the early- and mid-game, while almost all of TSO's benefits (restoration on killing evil foes, rN+++, see invisible, holy wrath weapon brand) come into play best in the extended game. Meanwhile, TSO penalizes your stealth horribly, making it much harder to avoid fights you'd rather not begin right now, and he disables two fantastically useful schools of magic: Poison and Necromancy. I also think you understate the damage of having a perfect shot lined up and being forced to delay it or re-aim to avoid injuring a sleeping foe you're about to murder anyway. Wasting turns can make or break a fight; that's why paralysis and slow are so bad. Vehumet, meanwhile, gives you spells all over the place, makes them deadlier than they'd otherwise be, and is fairly reliable at getting you the pieces needed to take on the final areas. Considering that you request the player to rely on luck multiple times in this guide, that's a significant bonus.
The downside to picking Vehumet early? You'll have to face his wrath when you switch to TSO, which is admittedly a nasty one (5% failure rate can be a pain), but you can easily grind out his wrath farming in the Abyss or the Hells, which you'll want to do anyway to get TSO fully charged up. Also, you'll have had no training in Invocations, but your Conjurations will more than make up for a weak Cleansing Flame, and besides, there's plenty of XP to be found. You mention yourself how quickly you can get Lehudib's Crystal Spear from useless to near-guaranteed.
Other points of contention: Pure melee can clear their way to 15 runes just fine. Trog into TSO is reliable and quite satisfying, especially since it forces you to play with evocable items and the like to fill the gaps. As for Sublimation of Blood, so long as there are chunks, it'll still be phenomenally useful; drawing MP from yourself is a sign that you're playing it wrong. Likewise, Death's Door is several turns of honest-to-goodness invulnerability. I can appreciate the value of killing off multiple demons in a single turn and getting full HP and MP as a result, but at the same time you can't knock actual invulnerability. All those gargoyle HP can go up in flames quick if a handful of hellions all decide to Hellfire at once. While I admittedly prefer the TSO healy route, Death's Door is still perfectly viable.
I'm not telling you you wrote a bad guide or anything, but it definitely seems like you need to state the argument for early-game TSO a little harder. Don't forget the power of angelic servants! You knock them for getting in the way of your late game spells, but they're fantastic allies before that point when things are ugly, and a whole lot more MP efficient than praying your half-strength spells will take down a rampaging unique. --MoogleDan (talk) 17:10, 12 August 2014 (CEST)
