One for the beginners

[The Avatar]

I only take JJ if I'm converting in off 100 piety.

[Darvin]

Classic JJ you'd have petition almost instantly, followed shortly by a hit of boost health, then two to three hits of boost mana over the course of the level, and then you could save up for chaos avatar for your end-game and maybe a last chance if you really needed it. That was blatantly overpowered. Then they raised the cost of petition, meaning more time spent taking penalties at the start and you'd have a hard time getting chaos avatar if you took more than one level of boost mana, but it was doable. The trick with this setup was finding some way to slingshot past your early petition phase to quickly get your first shot of boost health; with a little luck you'd avoid any weakening, so he was still top-tier. Then they lowered his piety gain, and now you're spending way too much time taking punishments even if you do have a slingshot, and you'll be hard pressed to get chaos avatar at all if you're attaining his other boons. This payoff is generally not justified unless you have some way to mitigate his downsides or accrue some extra piety.

Desecration, convert in from another god or use concensus, or prep fortitude and burn cure. Otherwise it's too risky to worship him straight from level 1, but too low piety gain to worship him later. Unfortunately, I don't see a middle ground here, and I feel petition will need to be fundamentally reworked. The fact is, even with all these nerfs he still works well with proper planning so buffing him will just return him to a top-tier god again, but leaving him as is makes him a wasted altar to most characters. Because health drain and mana burn are game-enders in the late-game, you can't even use him for late-game conversion antics.


I'm thinking perhaps JJ should become more like patches, offering both benefits and penalties on random whims. Petition would go back to its 25 piety cost and it would turn off both the good stuff and the bad stuff.

[The Avatar]

I guess both at once, as to keep the balance. Otherwise, bad luck would ruin your character. Still, they would have to be VERY MINOR effects, or your character could become blatantly overpowered.

[Darvin]

I'm thinking his bonuses should be temporary once-off events, not permanent boosts. I'd agree this could easily become overpowered if you could stack bonuses in the long run. Oh, and happy 2000th.

[Joist]

I can't tell if the Vampire is broken or not. I can't quite pull him through any Vicious dungeons but I can do this with him in hard dungeons: http://i.imgur.com/baMcD.png

[The Avatar]

To bring him through Vicious (especially naga city) you need a Tri-Sword, so you can make full use of your 12 or so life steal.

[Joist]

How in the heck do you get 12? I've never got that high and I usually even convert my potions.

Converting every glyph and a conversion seal + 5 pots gets you to 5 lifesteal. Then you can get 1 or 2 out of shops, you might get lucky and get pactmaker, you might get lucky and get a vamp blade but 12?

Unless you are include the platemail, because that's "effectively" 2 lifesteal.

[Darvin]

Even counting platemail and vampiric sword, you'd still need 960 conversion points to hit an effective 12 lifesteal. I, too, am quite curious as to how Avatar is reaching these heights.

[The Avatar]

Are you including 3 from Drac? I haven't actually played him, but doesn't he start with 1, 3 from Drac, 1 from Vamp blade, and 6 from conversions (if you prep the stone). Okay, that's 11.

[gjaustin]