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Done for the day! Have 4 runes now, and thinking about how scary extended is with my teeny tiny HP pool. The ideology eater fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 16:42
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It's not straight 50% XP unless you literally never hit the monsters at all. That's certainly a way to play summoner (perhaps with sif?) but it isn't the only way.
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Feb 19, 2015 17:20
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How do I skill up a Naga Ice Elementalist Cheibro? I just reached Lair and made it there by slamming nerds with icicles and stabs. Not really sure what skills to invest in, in which order? I'm already 6* so perhaps getting slouch castable would be good?
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Feb 19, 2015 17:43
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Yeah, I'd get invo up to 13 or so as a cheibro. A bit more if you're paranoid about small failure chances. Slouch will be usable before then, but what that's gunning for is usable Step From Time. (aka "your most powerful panic button")
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Feb 19, 2015 17:45
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:It's not straight 50% XP unless you literally never hit the monsters at all. That's certainly a way to play summoner (perhaps with sif?) but it isn't the only way. If they started with like an unenchanted dagger and some skill in Short Blades they would be MUCH more palatable to play. Branching INTO summonings from something else is fine, assuming you find the spellbooks.
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Feb 19, 2015 18:09
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And it would probably do a decent job in guiding players the direction they should be heading. It's primarily a hybrid class not a casting class.
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Feb 19, 2015 18:12
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Okay, so why does a summoner played as a hybrid class get 75% of the XP that a skald or conjurer or whatever played as a hybrid class does? Are summons so much better than non-summons that you simply have to be penalized for using them in order to justifiably avoid them?
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Feb 19, 2015 18:17
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Davzz posted:The Summoner starting background doesn't start with any fighting skills or gear at all though, which is the issue. Great, now I'm going to lose my next 100 games trying to win a summoner without ever attacking.
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Feb 19, 2015 18:46
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Ferrinus posted:Are summons so much better than non-summons that you simply have to be penalized for using them in order to justifiably avoid them? Uhh...pretty much? A summon is a free massive damage buff, massive damage mitigation, hallway-clogger, potential source of distraction stabs... Not to mention the specific effects of specific summons (e.g Wolf kill an Unseen Horror you can't see yourself) It's also nice because the optimal play for Summoners is coincidentally the most boring. Having a push your luck element of you wanting to be as forward as possible adds something to it.
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Feb 19, 2015 18:58
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Okay, but on the other hand, a conjuration or a high weapon skill are also a massive damage buff. Statue form or just a decent armor rating are sources of massive damage mitigation. Stealth lets you stab stuff. None of those things vanish after a time limit or have a chance to turn on you either because you accidentally hit them or just as an innate risk of using them at all. If Summoning 27 is just inherently better than Translocation 27 or Conjuration 27, that should bear on the mechanics of specific summoning spells, not on the XP yield of summoning spells. Otherwise, poo poo, why bother buffing or nerfing anything else? Just give more XP for killing with weak options and less XP for killing with strong ones.
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Feb 19, 2015 19:36
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When someone says "X skill has this negative effect because it does so many things well", saying "but these skills don't have the negative effect and just do one thing well" isn't much of a counterargument
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Feb 19, 2015 19:44
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Response to Ferrinus' post Because it also has to take into account other forms of allies. Do you allow Beogh's perma-allies give you full experience for kills? What about Yred's undead army? Fedha's shrooms and oklobs? Evokers? It's not as simple a solution as you may think it is.
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Feb 19, 2015 19:48
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IronicDongz posted:When someone says "X skill has this negative effect because it does so many things well", saying "but these skills don't have the negative effect and just do one thing well" isn't much of a counterargument Those skills also don't have summoning's drawbacks. Summoning isn't as good as Conjurations at killing everything onscreen. It isn't as Fighting or Armor at keeping you alive. It's slow and fiddly and can go wrong in ways more straightforward skills never can. Now, maybe even with all the nerfs and changes it's had from its original "just summon sixty rats and let them kill things offscreen for you" form, it's still literally the strongest thing in the game. I seriously doubt this - you always hear about high level 15-rune mages spamming Fire Storm, not Horrible Things (maybe you should lose 50% of the XP from kills you score via Fire Storm) - but it's possible. Why doesn't it get brought in line with other schools of magic, rather than just shrugged XP-drained? How come other things don't get that treatment? They buffed Force Lance recently - why not, instead, leave it in its previous lovely state but make killing things with it worth more XP? Sage Grimm posted:Response to Ferrinus' post Is Yred's undead army stronger than Sif Muna's endless channeling and infinite library or Cheibriados's invocations? I don't think so. Even if it is, who gives a poo poo? How come you don't lose 25% of all XP for playing a gargoyle or berserker? Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 19:55
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I don't think it's a huge deal anyway. What level is a character that has 50% of the XP of a fresh lvl 27? My guess is like, 25. (genuinely just a guess) I'm guessing it sounds a lot worse than it is given the monster XP value distribution.
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Feb 19, 2015 19:58
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Rotting chunks weren't a huge deal either. Where did they go?
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Feb 19, 2015 19:59
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After a million d:1-5 splats I finally have a cool and fun OpTm going, and now I have no idea what I'm doing: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/LogicNinja/LogicNinja.txt When should I be using Dragon Form vs Statue Form vs Blade Hands? Does Blade Hands do more or less damage than Dragon Form? I have no clue. What should I be training? Back to dodging/fighting/UC, or should I buy a book of the sky and try to get DMsl online ASAP? e: should I be wearing a buckler even though it melds in most forms, for when I'm in statue form? e2: almost forgot about hydraform. Gonna use this for vaults I guess. Also, muts have been upgraded. Robust 2 like a boss. LogicNinja fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 20:01
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Ferrinus posted:Rotting chunks weren't a huge deal either. Where did they go? Rotting chunks literally didn't do anything except sometimes appear on the inventory screen, and be an interface nuisance to new players who didn't set auto_drop_chunks, unless you played as one of a few races. The XP thing does do something, however small, as it incentivizes actually fighting side by side with your summons and not just hanging out in the back (otherwise a really boring but perhaps optimal way to play summoners). I agree not much would be lost if the penalty went away, but I doubt it's something you would even really notice if you weren't told about it so don't stress it.
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Feb 19, 2015 20:17
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LogicNinja posted:After a million d:1-5 splats I finally have a cool and fun OpTm going, and now I have no idea what I'm doing: Honestly, as long as you're careful with your movements, you probably don't ever need to ever use Blade Hands or Dragon Form. Here's my uses of various forms from my Chei code:code:E: Called it a OpTm before remembering it was an OpMo that found early transmuter books.
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Feb 19, 2015 20:22
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Rotting chunks literally didn't do anything except sometimes appear on the inventory screen, and be an interface nuisance to new players who didn't set auto_drop_chunks, unless you played as one of a few races. The XP thing does do something, however small, as it incentivizes actually fighting side by side with your summons and not just hanging out in the back (otherwise a really boring but perhaps optimal way to play summoners). I agree not much would be lost if the penalty went away, but I doubt it's something you would even really notice if you weren't told about it so don't stress it. The penalty is pretty noticeable if you play something like MuSu, but I guess that's also my fault for going MuSu. I never did try that combo pre-nerf but I was curious to see how it's like nowadays.. 
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Feb 19, 2015 20:22
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apple posted:The penalty is pretty noticeable if you play something like MuSu, but I guess that's also my fault for going MuSu. I never did try that combo pre-nerf but I was curious to see how it's like nowadays.. Does the penalty also apply to skill XP? I don't actually know. That would certainly compound it on races like Mummy who have bad aptitudes.
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Feb 19, 2015 20:26
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Rotting chunks literally didn't do anything except sometimes appear on the inventory screen, and be an interface nuisance to new players who didn't set auto_drop_chunks, unless you played as one of a few races. The XP thing does do something, however small, as it incentivizes actually fighting side by side with your summons and not just hanging out in the back (otherwise a really boring but perhaps optimal way to play summoners). I agree not much would be lost if the penalty went away, but I doubt it's something you would even really notice if you weren't told about it so don't stress it. No, rotting meat did things, too. It differentiated between ghouls and other races and it gave you inventory problems to deal with in combat situations - you'd sometimes find yourself unable to grab something and run in the middle of a fight because there was suddenly rotting meat clogging your inventory up. A tiny bit of tactical/management pressure was lost with the loss of rotting chunks - you no longer have to be careful about just chopping everything you see, carrying piles of meat around, etc. It was worth it, though, because the behavior being removed was largely annoying rather than challenging - which is also true for being careful to order your summons to retreat before every kill in order to step in, last-hit, and slightly increase your XP yield. In general, Crawl - especially recently - has been characterized by never shrugging and going "eh, it's not that big a deal" about tossing distortion weapons into lava or throwing rocks at items to check for mimics or stopping to pray over every single corpse, so I don't understand why this particular annoyance gets a pass. It's only optimal to hang out in the back if summons are your only real combat skill. If they're not, it's not optimal to just wait in the back and let your summons kill everything, because they frequently can't. Depending on what you're summoning and what you're fighting, your summons can easily just die uselessly unless you're there to tank for or otherwise support them. After all, you can't have infinitely many out at a time any more, and many of the powerful ones last for very little time before vanishing. If summons are your only combat skill, then they should probably be a match for whatever you fight, in the same way that your conjurations or sword swings would be a match for whatever you fight if you A) are putting all your XP into them and B) are getting the drops (e.g. weapons or spellbooks) you need to put those XP to work.
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Feb 19, 2015 20:33
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I don't think it's a huge deal anyway. What level is a character that has 50% of the XP of a fresh lvl 27? My guess is like, 25. (genuinely just a guess) I'm guessing it sounds a lot worse than it is given the monster XP value distribution. For experience, receiving 50% experience would leave you just over level 22 when a "normal" character would hit 27. For skills, receiving 50% skill experience would put you about half way between 20 and 21 skill when a "normal" character would hit 27 in the skill. If you bump it up to an arguably more realistic 75% you end up level 24 and with skill level 24 instead of 27 in either. So it's a bigger difference than your guess, but it's not a huge difference by any means (it's not like you're level 13 or unable to cast basic spells/wield a weapon).
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Feb 19, 2015 20:37
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e: ^^^ Cool, thanks for figuring that out, that is more of an effect than I expected. I don't really want to debate something that's such a small thing, I'll drop it after this post. I guess I'll just say that it isn't an annoyance like those things because it doesn't change how many buttons you have to do things. You can play without thinking about it ever and be mostly unaffected, and the "solution" is going and fighting(a thing which is fun in crawl), whereas throwing distortion weapons into lava or whatever is super tedious and button-pushing heavy and not really a thing the game should encourage one to do. I think summoners are pretty tedious regardless but they are 10x worse when you don't go fight in the front lines with them. Discouraging that is the primary reason for the penalty as far as I know. The summon thing is not longer about last hitting - you get between 50% and 100% based on what percentage of the damage is done by you. Last hitting but otherwise not having to care was definitely worse.
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Feb 19, 2015 20:42
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Oh, I thought you got the entire 100% if you last-hit the monster, but if you didn't last hit the monster then you got a value between 50% and 100% weighted by your total damage dealt. It is definitely an annoyance like those things, though, because it still mandates a certain kind of careful, micromanagement-intensive playstyle for the sake of eking out small advantages that accumulate over time. Summon as little as possible, summon high-damage as opposed to high-defense creatures as little as possible, order your summons to retreat if you're winning a fight without them, find a non-summoning means of doing damage as quickly as possible. All for... around two levels. If you aren't supposed to "main" summoning spells as a killing tool, then they should delete things like Summon Hydra and leave in things like Guardian Golem. It's obvious, though, that you are meant to be able to use summoning instead of conjurations as your chief means of engaging with enemies, and given that summons aren't actually better than conjurations it does not make sense to give summons a weird, lingering, gameplay-distorting penalty. If summons are too much better than conjurations, make them commit a portion of the mana you spend to cast them or be unable to be recast immediately after death or whatever. The drawbacks of summoning should be built in to the mechanics of summoning, not deducted from your future skill points. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 20:57
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As a scrublord whose only wins were with pre-nerf summoners and is presently splatting wave after wave of current summoners, I have to agree thatDavzz posted:The Summoner starting background doesn't start with any fighting skills or gear at all though, which is the issue. is a way bigger issue than the XP thing right now. Give the summoner a dagger or spear and a little combat skill, maybe make Mammals slightly less garbage again, and things would be smooth. vvvv yeah also I thought the old Summoner was cool and fun, dropping hordes on dudes all day. I enjoy the new Summoner when I can actually make it work, but I never thought the "horde of manz" playstyle was boring. Benly fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 21:02
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Does the penalty also apply to skill XP? I don't actually know. That would certainly compound it on races like Mummy who have bad aptitudes. Might need to look at the source code for that, but I couldn't get a summoner past lair after actually winning with a MuFi, and being underleveled was one of the reasons. I could reach important summoning skill milestones in time by lair, but even after I realized branching out to complement summoning is a good idea you don't get much time to branch out after that initial summoning investment which makes it really rough. Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:You can play without thinking about it ever and be mostly unaffected, and the "solution" is going and fighting(a thing which is fun in crawl), whereas throwing distortion weapons into lava or whatever is super tedious and button-pushing heavy and not really a thing the game should encourage one to do. Maybe Crawl wasn't designed for this, and maybe it would take many, many changes, but I feel like summoning a bunch of poo poo in the front lines without actually touching your enemy can also be dynamic and fun; your job would be to make yourself as elusive as possible and this can involve creative use of the environment as well as whatever movement options you have. Hitting things and blasting things yourself is fun, sure, but I guess what I'm trying to say it's a bit of a shame pure summoner isn't more viable and interesting, there's already a wide variety of races/backgrounds/skills/spells designed to kill things yourself or help you in doing so. Maybe I just want to play Zot Defense. v  vE: I'd also be fine with summoner background being basically more of a "summoner skald", that way I can fight stuff like I already know but I also get to be a shithead and swarm susceptible enemies without lifting a finger 
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Feb 19, 2015 21:06
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Not My Leg posted:Honestly, as long as you're careful with your movements, you probably don't ever need to ever use Blade Hands or Dragon Form. Here's my uses of various forms from my Chei Hmm, interesting. Dragon Form does seem kind of... bad? Like, I'm keeping it for the rF++ (bad luck with resist rings this game), but... it doesn't really hit harder than blade hands/statue form as far as I can tell. Hydra Form has been great for chewing through Vaults mobs, though.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:08
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Actually now that I'm talking about Summoners why does Summon Small Mammal even still exist? Call Imp does everything it now does but better, can actually help kill things, and becomes available at level 2. Right now the only time to cast Small Mammal is before you find any weapon, mashing z-a and praying for a quokka. Starting with a spear and Summon Butterflies (or, hell a spear and no spell at all, but I understand that's not an option for a nominally-caster start) would kill those starting enemies faster, better reflect how the new Summoner is "supposed" to play, and even give me a starting spell that doesn't feed the first Amnesia scroll I read-ID. Am I missing something? Is there some reason to ever cast Small Mammal after either finding a weapon or hitting level 2? I mean the name is hilarious but it's kind of a cruel joke on level 1 Summoners.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:45
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apple posted:
That's how I like play summoner of Sif, get spectral weapon and haste with shadow creatures and mana vipers. It's fun, especially with a vinestalker. I usually stop training summons after those spells are ~15% and try to stay upfront and do as much damage as I can before walking behind summons and letting them finish while I regen. sometimes I like starting with necromancer as a background just to get animate skeleton from the start, even if I never put another point into necro. As a vinestalker, you can branch into summons/skalding easily with Sif.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:47
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Spammals are there to spam them before you have the MP/spell success to bring out Summon Imp or Call Canine Familiar reliably. And sometimes having a lot of little beasts surrounding an enemy helps getting in the hits from a stronger summon or yourself.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:53
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Sage Grimm posted:Spammals are there to spam them before you have the MP/spell success to bring out Summon Imp or Call Canine Familiar reliably. And sometimes having a lot of little beasts surrounding an enemy helps getting in the hits from a stronger summon or yourself. See, that's what it used to be good for, but now it's one creature per cast and a maximum of four. And with Summon Imp being only level 2 there isn't really a time where Small Mammal is "spammable" and Summon Imp isn't reliably castable - if you're early enough that you can't reliably cast Summon Imp, you're sure as hell not getting out enough Small Mammals to matter and gambling on getting one Imp will help you a lot more in the fight. edit For a demonspawn summoner who just hit level 2 and hasn't been focusing Summoning Summon Imp is 8% success and Summon Small Mammal is 4%. What's your threshold for "reliable"? There's the MP cost difference but an imp is way more useful than two Mammals, given that Mammals only have a 1/3 chance of being the semi-useful one to begin with - even a crimson imp, probably the least useful imp, is still better than a rat or bat and more durable than a quokka. Benly fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 22:01
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Benly posted:even a crimson imp, probably the least useful imp, is still better than a rat or bat and more durable than a quokka. 
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Feb 19, 2015 22:18
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Can Of Worms posted:Until it blinks away from the battle It's still more useful than the rat or bat, because it has a chance to come back to the fight and actually deal some damage. The rat and bat deal trivial damage and die in one hit, a little flakiness is better than a little deadness.
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Feb 19, 2015 22:24
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On a more serious note, there is an actual small margin than makes Call Imp worse than Small Mammal, and that is that they are evil/necromantic. Good gods (including TSO, who supports summoning based gameplay) forbid the spell and Fedhas makes black imps hostile. Not sure how Dith interacts with crimson imps.
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Feb 19, 2015 22:59
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Crimson imps are not actually fire-related beyond being resistant to it so I doubt he does anything. e: lmao I never realized that when greater mummies use torment, it fucks up their own emperor scorpion summons LazyMaybe fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 23:05
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Can Of Worms posted:On a more serious note, there is an actual small margin than makes Call Imp worse than Small Mammal, and that is that they are evil/necromantic. Good gods (including TSO, who supports summoning based gameplay) forbid the spell and Fedhas makes black imps hostile. Not sure how Dith interacts with crimson imps. Yeah but even a summoner who goes TSO at level 2 (for, um, some reason?) would be better off starting with a spear than Small Mammal. It takes a turn and creates a single creature that dies in one hit, dealing no meaningful damage (seriously, it takes multiple Small Mammal casts to reliably kill an enemy rat). It doesn't even get you the flanking bonus, because as a TSO follower you refuse to stab. Also, TSO doesn't really do much for the Summoner style as opposed to his own summoning abilities - he either blesses your summons (which will evaporate soon anyway) or extends their duration (but unlike TSO's own summons, they're designed to be quickly replaceable anyway) and in exchange you lose the extra bonus from your allies distracting enemies. Can we maybe replace Summon Small Mammal with Summon Small Turtle that creates a slow and offensively-ineffective wad of HP you can swap with to run away? That would be something at least. vvvv Right, so you lose the stab bonus damage as I said. You still get the attack but you're not getting the offensive benefit a summoner usually gets from having flanking allies. Benly fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 23:12
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Benly posted:It doesn't even get you the flanking bonus, because as a TSO follower you refuse to stab. Actually...
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Feb 19, 2015 23:20
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Just found an elemental vault with a "master elementalist". New unique? Seemed like a wizard with a unique spell list that included Ranged Sticky Flame. Didn't wake up and died in one dragon-form smack.
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Feb 20, 2015 00:11
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Now that flanking is gone I would like to try a TSO summoner, increasing duration on kills sounds fun. Getting piety early on seems like a pain though.
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Feb 20, 2015 00:16
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| # ? May 13, 2024 15:23 |
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LogicNinja posted:Just found an elemental vault with a "master elementalist". New unique? Seemed like a wizard with a unique spell list that included Ranged Sticky Flame. Didn't wake up and died in one dragon-form smack. Just a vault unique. Never seen him do anything worth mentioning.
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Feb 20, 2015 00:26
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