Frog - Wands versus Rods

[GrimaTheBold]

Is there some advantage to rods that I'm not seeing over wands? Whenever I look at the damage of a rod vs. a wand, the wand seems to come out similar, with the advantage of many more charges. And yet the price/score of rods seems much higher than similar wands. Is it just the fact that rods are electricity proof?

For example, my current Mage has:

Wand of Nexus Ball - 5/5 - damage 107 - score 5.88.

Rod of Sound Ball - 2/2 - damage 120 - score 10.2

The wand can put out a lot more damage in 5 turns than the rod, yet is score is half as much. Maybe not the best example because I assume Sound Ball stuns. So here's a more apples to apples example:

Rod of frost ball - 2/2 - damage 78 - score 4.46

Wand of frost ball - 9/9 - damage 82 - score 5.82.

Shouldn't that wand be a lot more desirable than the rod, not just a little?

I feel like there's an advantage to rods that I'm missing.

[Thraalbee]

Not sure, but I believe rods recharge faster. For instance, I clearly prefer a -heroic speed with 2 charges compared to a _speed with 10 charges.

[ThatFishNemo]

Rods recharge faster, and from my experiences, are immune to damage when in your inventory. So if you have the fail rate for a rod low enough, you can use it rather consistently without having to have a form of recharging. But wands are goo if you want to dump out all of its uses in a short period of time. generally though I'd put rods as more valuable if I'm ever exploring, the only wands I really bother with are rocket, tsunami and wall building

[Thraalbee]

I also carry a high power wand of annihilation and a teleother. annihilation works on teleresist monsters (not unique) although low powered annihilation wands are pretty useless

[Bostock]

I wouldn't say damage wands are bad, and in fact I use them all the time, but yeah unless you're resting a lot, a lot-lot (in which case you're either sitting around causing monster spawns in the dungeon, or running up a big game-day count in town), the bigger charge capacity doesn't mean that much in practice. I just shrug and judge by score, all things being equal; it's a flawed system but it frees up my mind for other more important things.