I just tested it (attempting this run now using Mage for the warping beacon), and yeah, Phase Shift paralyses you for 10 turns even when you self-cast it. So that is not an option.
As such, Blink stones are probably the best bet, before or after a Warping Beacon to get to the stairs ASAP. I’ll update the post afterwards with how my run goes.
I’m currently doing a run as Huntress and doing quite well despite finding nothing but a +1 mail armor by the end of the caves. I can see imbuing the staff as pretty useful, but at best you would get 1 extra upgrade on whatever wand you find, right? (imbue a +1 wand, then imbue a +1-3 wand from the wandmaker). I suppose the recharge rate of the staff is much faster.
I didn’t know that the curse damage increases every floor. I’d only ever seen it at 1-2 damage a turn. That definitely makes things a lot tougher.
You think 2 blink stones trumps 6 phase shifts (assuming phase shift doesn’t stun you)? I feel like Phase Shift is pretty likely to place you within 16 tiles of the exit stairs. I mean, if I had a massive surplus of teleport scrolls from RoW farming then sure blink is better, but I hate RoW farming
Like the previous commenter, I basically fully agree with your points, and my experience has been largely the same. I will say that I think Cleric is the strongest hero in the game right now and it’s because the only thing they don’t naturally get an answer to is scorpios. They’re hardly the only hero with that concern though. I just look for a whip, crossbow, glaive, or projecting enchantment; so far at least one of those has appeared in every run, usually before or during caves.
The holy enchantments and instant armor spell carry you through the sewers basically without needing any other items at all. Bless curbstomps the prison. Cleanse curbstomps the rest of the game. And since investing in a good melee weapon is still the ideal play, particularly an extended range weapon, paladin curbstomps priest through much more efficient charge usage. 6 magic damage per hit is bonkers, and you didn’t even mention Lay on Hands. Being able to convert tome charges into 20 shielding each, up to 60 at once, I feel should not have an instant cast at all if it is going to grant that much shielding. I don’t think Cleanse should be instant either in its current state, and if anything, Mnemonic Prayer should be instant instead.
I like Trinity, even though it’s technically boring compared to pretty much all other armor abilities. It just gives you a free +6 wand or thrown weapon or infinite tipped dart, plus a +10 artifact that doesn’t even need to be equipped. Since it uses only your armor charge to cast once you’ve set the items, it’s 2 free extra tools for your arsenal (I haven’t bothered with the glyph/enchantment effect at all). As such, it’s easily my most used armor ability out of any of the other ones. You can just set the items in the shop after Dwarf King, rest one time to recover all the spent charges, and then never need to worry about it again. Ascended form feels so awful in comparison because you need to use tome charges at the same time to get good value out of it, even if it can basically grant you invincibility through it’s absurd shielding values.
So it’s weird for me; I think Paladin is cool and far better than Priest, but I don’t know if I would buff Priest to make it more enticing compared to Paladin, or nerf Paladin to balance it out with Priest, or frankly nerf both because I think both are crazy powerful already (even if one is more crazy powerful than the other). We’re probably in the minority of players though, even if we have a consensus here. Nerfs are also pretty risky from a dev standpoint.
I just finished the run successfully. Mage’s Warping Beacon is 100% the best strategy for this; I cleared every floor in under 10 turns. I updated the original post with my run
Enemies were no problem at all. If I ever got cornered I just used the warping beacon