PISORF

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PISORF.png
PISORF
4 Mana Points  Missing info
Effects

If the tile behind the target is:

  • a wall, the wall gets destroyed, the target is pushed back and gets 60% of your Base damage as physical damage.
  • another enemy, they both get 48%(80% as much as the above case) of your Base damage as physical damage. Neither monster moves.
  • empty, the target is pushed back.
  • otherwise occupied, nothing happens.
Hotkey

PISORF is the knockback glyph. It will send the target monster flying back one square (unless that square is blocked by a monster or an indestructible obstacle). Collision with a destructible wall will destroy the wall and the monster will be knocked back. Collision with a monster damages both monsters without changing their positions.


Unlocking the glyph

The PISORF glyph begins unlocked.

A free PISORF glyph is awarded when worshiping God: Binlor Ironshield Binlor Ironshield. Converting to Binlor's religion will not grant you the glyph.

Strategy

When using PISORF, positioning is critical. The target will always be pushed away from you in a straight line, if at all. PISORF specialists will want to keep an eye out for targets that can be PISORFed for damage several times in a row. You have two basic options for damage:

-You can push enemies into walls, which pleases Binlor and opens up the map, but this may be difficult to do repeatedly without careful positioning, and can run into problems with unwanted exploration. WEYTWUT can be a useful preparatory tool to place the boss at the end of a long wall.

-You can push enemies against each other, which can easily be spammed and damages a second monster, but deals slightly less damage per target than walls. In an ideal situation, you can kill both monsters without much/any exploration.

Note that if the tile behind the target is impassable but not a breakable wall or a monster (e.g. it is a pool, an unbreakable wall, or off-map), then casting PISORF will simply waste mana - the target will neither take damage nor get pushed back.

The damage dealt by PISORF is proportional to your base attack, making it the damage glyph of choice for caster Race: Orc Orcs. It has a low mana cost, and proportionally gains a huge advantage from the Class: Wizard Wizard spell cost discount. This makes Orc Wizards shockingly effective PISORF casters. For everyone else, it's a useful way to deal physical damage without having to suffer retaliation from monsters.

The PISORF glyph is the only targeted glyph in the game that will bypass a monster's magic resistance, allowing you to use it against bosses such as the Iron Man who are otherwise impervious to magic, or to clear out annoying magic-immune plants. Because it deals physical-type damage, it can allow you to very easily obtain the Specialist badge.

Additionally, PISORF does not trigger Retaliate: Fireball (or Blink, as long as the Blinking monster does NOT end its turn next to you - i.e., is the knocked into a destructible wall OR is the secondary target hit by another monster), making it very useful against late-game monsters like Djinns and Shades.

For raw damage output, PISORF is roughly equivalent to BURNDAYRAZ for mana efficiency when damaging a single target. A Guard with no religion or items will enjoy .75 damage per level per mana from PISORF when hitting an enemy into a wall, compared to .67 damage per level per mana for BURNDAYRAZ. This efficiency score improves to 1.25 when you connect two worthwhile enemies, but is effectively .625 when you knock enemies together with only one intended target. In any case, fine-tuning the mana spent is likely to be the overriding concern when you budget 8 mana or less for direct damage to a single enemy. When colliding two enemies, regeneration works against you double as well, all but erasing the benefits of PISORF in regen fighting and making it more suitable for spiking damage off of potions and the like.

Due to its low mana cost, PISORF is useful in some cases even if you are specializing in other things, and it's worth thinking twice before converting the glyph. If it can kill an enemy in one hit, it will save 2 mana over BURNDAYRAZ. Similarly, if you need that much damage to bring an enemy within first-strike killing range, 2 mana is saved over BURNDAYRAZ. Generally, two PISORFs cost 8 mana, usually doing more damage than one BURNDARYAZ. On the flip side, a single BUNDAYRAZ usually deals more damage than a single PISORF, at a cost of 2 additional mana. Fine-tuning your damage output can make a big difference for your mana budget, making two tools better than one.

There are a few good reasons to use BURNDAYRAZ over PISORF in some situations. The most obvious is that you can knock enemies into empty, black, or indestructible spaces, dealing no damage and/or making you explore when you'd rather not. Another reason is that burn stacks (from BURNDAYRAZ) will reduce monster healing, aiding most regen-fighting strategies and synergizing with Item: Whurrgarbl Whurrgarbl and/or Item: Venom Dagger Venom Dagger. Additionally, early God: Dracul Dracul worshipers may find that Blood Curse favors BURNDAYRAZ use, since that spell scales with levels, while God: Glowing Guardian Glowing Guardian's Humility boon will skew things in favor of PISORF. Finally, items like Item: Battlemage Ring Battlemage Ring, Item: Piercing Wand Piercing Wand, and Item: Witchalok Pendant Witchalok Pendant directly enhance BURNDAYRAZ, while it is more difficult to itemize for PISORF.

A Item: Fine Sword Fine Sword can make a difference for PISORF users at level 1, but otherwise not much is to be done other than increase your mana, which equally synergizes with fireballs. Most notably, perhaps, is Item: Crystal Ball Crystal Ball, which is most efficiently fueled by the PISORF spell among all spammable spells (only GETINDAYR costs exactly the minimum of 3 mana). Hybrid characters will, to a lesser extent, enjoy Item: Fire Heart Fire Heart for similar reasons. Item: Rock Heart Rock Heart also gets an honorable mention, managing to shine as a piety-farming device for God: Binlor Ironshield Binlor Ironshield or God: Mystera Annur Mystera Annur.

The reliability drawbacks to PISORF can be mitigated by WONAFYT or WEYTWUT. If you're doing this to fight the boss, you should use a high-level monster for the collision, and you should use that monster to achieve a level-up. Otherwise, you're not achieving mana efficiency on par with BURNDAYRAZ anyway (ignoring resists).

Technical details

!! This section needs review !!

PISORF is a bit finicky in its details, behaving not quite how one might expect when used against two monsters at once.

The first monster (i.e., the one targeted directly by the mouse click) is dealt physical damage, and any Corrosion stacks for that monster are added as typeless damage as usual. The total amount of damage taken after resistances (including Corrosion) is then applied as typeless damage to the second monster. The second monster will not be killed by the collision (instead dropping to 1 HP if it would otherwise die), but the first monster can be. The second monster's Corrosion is not taken into account at all.

The above scheme means that PISORF can be used to bypass physical resistances if you have a monster who will play the role of "que ball" for you. With some planning, it is possible to use only PISORF for the boss fight in such a case, but it is important to have healthy que balls with no physical resistance, such as a high-level Meat Man or Zombie. For a Class: Rat Monarch Rat Monarch, the ability to apply corrosion stacks to one or more "que balls" is also of great use, and to a lesser extent, any class can do the same trick with Item: Martyr Wraps Martyr Wraps.

Hints

The damage prediction takes into account the tile behind the target, even if you have not explored it. Hovering over a monster with PISORF can thus sometimes give useful information about that tile. Careful arithmetic even allows you to distinguish between an unseen enemy and an unseen wall.

Dedicated PISORF users should prepare God: Binlor Ironshield Binlor Ironshield to get this glyph. Otherwise, your initial strategy should be flexible enough to adapt to the presence or absence of this glyph as needed.

Use PISORF to uncover secret dungeons and otherwise unreachable black space. While ENDISWALL does this more reliably, PISORF can be aided in the task by WEYTWUT, WONAFYT, or plain old dumb luck.