Rat Monarch

[Lujo]

^ Can't work in VGT as the last floor was reworked to have knockback not work. You don't need dramatic screenies, thing is Rat's a high-effort high-reward pissorff spamer, and pissorff spam is a low-effort win-anything strat. This makes him more interesting and a changeup that actually good at it or good for it (compartively speaking, he's a very strong pissorf spammer taken individually). I repiled over there, Vicious Steel is the wrong place to measure him up against other stuff, places which fold to pissorff like DL and NL give him a run for his money (or rather, everyone else beats him a this own thing), since everyone and their grandma would prep binlor there just because Pissorff ridiculates the whole concept of those dungeons.

That makes him a STRANGE pissorf user, rather than necessarily a powerful one. He's brutal with it, sure, but he's fairly tame and balanced compare to... anyone without his penalties in many places. Not because he's not powerful, but because the whole concept of pissorf is wildly bugged and sorta dodgy anyway.

As for VGT, it's likely that a Drac + Dragonshield + Vampiric Blade approach might work, I've got about 14 more runs before I have full rainbows everywhere but VGT, I'll give it a shot then. I haven't explored other approaches with him much, the binlor thing just fit in with what I do with everything else, and Astral tipped me off about the lifesteal thing for Gaan'Telet.

A repeat - I'm not saying the rat shouldn't be a pissorf spammer - he's a ridiculously powerful DD build with it and I use it almost exclusively, just that just about any DD character using Pissorff has even less knobs, a lot less tbh, to fiddle with than him in my, by this point rather vast and extensive, experience with Pissorff (got a mountain of screenies if aynone's crazy enough to want them, and they're all in the bloggy playthrough thread anyway). That's the problem with the glyph, btw - everyone always discovers it through some specific/gimpy/narrow/sinergistic build and credits the sucess to the build, noone ever goes and does it on random PQI Dwarf Crusaders or whatnot and finds out that if you do pretty much the exact same stuff with just pissorff the end result is the basically the same... He has gameplay ha has to do in order to use pissorf, other people use it to dodge THEIR gameplay.

[MTaur]

The rat is so double-edged. If Martyr Wraps weren't in the game, a Rat with Cydstep would be the only class who could beat any boss except for poison/mana burn given infinite blackspace at level 1. But working out the kinks is hell, and to me at least, swiching to a different class feels like easy mode. I don't doubt that some of you have figured out how to do VIcious dungeons with the Rat, but it definitely is the sort of class that deserves to be a Vicious reward class. For once I would like to see a monster class that isn't hard mode, though. X-D

[Tinker]

[Blovski]

Loose discussion of gods. All matters of personal opinion.

Top tier for rats -

Binlor - Knockback, stoneskins, resistances, easier map access (a big deal given rats aren't good at clearing popcorn), pisorf, reasonably easy to escape from... what's not to like. Try to position bosses next to each other, corrode the less damaging one up and then blast them into the stronger one. Rats also tend to take less piety loss from Binlor, since they don't usually level as hard as other classes.

Jehora Jeheyu - while the very early game can be frustrating and force potion use, Jehora is a great choice for rats. Once you've grabbed Petition, health boosts will massively ease your particular type of regen fighting and make it easier to get to the point where you can soak hits from tough bosses, mana boosts will let you leverage that corrosion build up a lot more, Chaos Avatar's free level up is a big deal given rats don't level that much.

The more sneaky interactions include Weytwut letting you leverage knockback and the rat's low damage making them superb at 'peekaboo' piety generation.

Earthmother - Less straightforward than Binlor or Jehora but still a strong candidate. Stacking vineform will compensate for the rat's lousy health and, again, get you to the threshold where you can take a hit from high damage bosses. A few stacks of Greenblood will let you sweep up Popcorn relatively easy as well as amplifying your standard strategy. Entanglement is always great, and together with Imawal really suits the rat's approach of few, major catapults. Moreover, once you've stacked a ton of corrosion on a boss you can clearance them to death very easily.

On tight dungeons the plants can be a problem, and I'd consider a desecration if there are any good ones around to give you a little wiggle room.

Second tier -

Tikki Tooki - because Rats are abysmal first strike finishers TT's a bit counter-intuitive. You will need to corrode up your popcorn while not in TT to be able to make good use of him. That said, Rats do benefit a lot from Learning and Tikki's potions are great against certain bosses that would otherwise be unhittable. Additionally, the extra money will really help your shop scramble to refill in the end game.

Third tier -

Mystera Annur - Rats get a lot out of the increased mana pool and a little out of Mystic Balance. Flames doesn't actually hurt the rat much but then it doesn't actually help disproportionately either since you get extra fireball damage just from corrosion stacks. Weakening is... OK, but again, if you're doing corrosion stacking, resistances are not your big problem. This much is good. EM's clearance spike is a way better late-game spike than refreshment given the Rat wants to frontload conversions. Some definite benefits but nothing really astonishing.

Dracul - I'm sort of iffy on where to place Drac. He's universally a decent late-game god and resistances and refills are always useful. That said, his signature boon involves lowering health, which is not always what you want as a Rat and modest resistances tied to low piety generation. The slight increase to base damage will help a little and Lifesteal's overheal is rather useful. The rat doesn't really get as much out of bloodswells as other characters. Not bad per se but wouldn't be my first choice for a late-game God.

Taurog - Taurog's interaction's with the Rat are interesting. Your inventory space is usually at a premium, which kind of puts me off and losing yet more mana is often the difference between getting off two corrosion-enhanced spells or one. His gear does offer a lot to rats (Sword, one-hit popcorning, Shield, better ability to hit things, Armours are probably less valuable overall). Death Protections are probably not the way the Rat wants to be spiking things and honestly EM's vine form + greenblood are neater and less cumbersome than picking up Taurog's tools.

Fourth tier -

Glowing Guardian - nopenopenope. Humility is potentially good for rats but otherwise leveraging any GG boons is rendered impossible by the rat's inventory restrictions. Cleansing is irrelevant with your *terrible* melee damage, protection makes a smaller difference with your smaller pools, Absolution isn't worth a large inventory slot and Enlightenment will effectively just net you a boost mana boon and a half. Hard to see the appeal.

Other -

Pactmaker - Alchemist's Pact is really great for rats, Body Pact is OK if you've spare piety. Scholars is a bit useful if you just need that little extra health to stack more corrode on the boss.

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

Drac + Lifesteal + Damage resists got through regular Gaan'Telet rather easily, but I did score the Vampiric Blade and Platemail (and prep Dragonshield).

[MTaur]

Most of this I agree with. Binlor alone carried my Shifting Passages Rat Monarch DERP, as I said in the thread. Mystera is also obviously good with no real downsides.

I disagree about GG. Humility is amazing for big pings, and makes it worth starting GG for this (and literally only this) reason. GG is probably a bad prep, since the piety penalty will make it impractical to convert out as early as you'd like. But joining GG at 1 or 2 makes sense if he happens to spawn nearby. Humility is just that good, especially if you can convert out in time to farm piety for your next god.

Taurog I would probably rank lower than GG. Sword isn't that great - you could instead corrode your popcorn and then pop it later. Just eat every status ailment on the board before each ping and you're probably ok for one-shotting low-level creeps later on. Aside from that, Taurog gives you three defensive items, only two of which scale into the late game, and they shred your mana total. Trying to piety farm with Taurog might be a little challenging, since low-hanging fruit is hard to come by and he hates BURNDAYRAZ. I actually think full Taurog is likely to be the most viable Taurog, if you're playing against a Bleaty or some other one-shot monster and are going for shenanigans. Having only one permanent item slot to spare (and using the sixth to rotate items out of stores for refills and CP) might hurt, but at the same time, you'll necessarily have high Corrosive stacks, so it might be ok. I'm theorycrafting without testing on this one, so I could easily be wrong.

[Lujo]

Taurog's ok if you dump glyphs anyway, shield's the winner, and then whatever resists you want and swap off into someone else. If the someone else's Drac and you prepped dragoshield, you're a monster.

[Blovski]

@Tinker, yeah, you need a very precise setup for TT and I wouldn't plan a whole run using him, but if I saw him on the map early I'd be planning to leverage him big time in the end game. I might be underestimating Dracul. I used straight Taurog for a couple of runs (HHOS especially). I really like your conversion idea, I'd be tempted to dip into him late game, grab the sword and shield, clean all the popcorn that are just barely too strong for me otherwise, convert back and get more corrode.

Curious about MA being on the level with the others. There's really very little *wrong* with her and she's very easy-going, but I think other gods offer better early games (JJ, EM) and better late games (JJ, EM, Binlor).

@Lujo, Well, Drac's really good in that dungeon, and with that shop loadout he's an obvious choice. But then, that's true of any class, really.

@Mtaur, yeah, Humility's good but less so without absolution, and I'd usually rather be getting extra XP by hitting higher level enemies through health boosts.

[Tinker]