Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

[Lujo]

Ok, I'll proofread and finish up the "guide" tommorow, to tired to think now. Whole bunch of stuff came togather though, and a whole lot of stuff makes sense now. I have a whole lot more understanding for many situations where my reacion to someone's complaint was "whait, what?", least of which were the LEMISI complaints.

However Nandrews edit/comment about there being too much blackspace is probably spot on. You get blackspace in every dungeon in coupious amounts and as long as there are easy to use cheap preps that let you level ramp (slayer wand, STR potion and so forth), and low hanging stuff that lets players get more out of their blackspace than they are supposed to (and what that is needs figuring out) regen fighting as the end game focus will be optimal in every case where it's not directly countered or taken into account. I think I can sort of prov it by math, and also that it doesn't really matter.

3 things off the top of my head - the way -res guys compeltely shut down some classes and not others, the way poison against non undead bosses (not counting mana burn ones) can quite thrutfully be interpreted as a hack, the way regen fighting was always the only thing that could beat Gaan'Telet (even now with the Bloodmage). 4 - the way I used to measure the "sucess" of my varios old Gaan'Telet runs by how many bloodswells did it take, feeling more chipper every time I had less need to resort to spiking like that.

It's not unfixable though. Bosses who revealed random parts of the map when you hit them, for no regenerative effect to either you or them, would be hilarious. Monsters which did that, too. Plants like that would add an inconspicious, spiker friendly obstacle to the plant roster... Reducing the number of things that inadvertedly let geared up wannabe regen fighters get away with using all theit perk without actual blackspace (main reason why the current Drac feels realy wrong right now, his "free hit string" actually synergisez with stackign damage res/red, and requires far less effort than either TT's or Taurog's).

[Blovski]

Main thing with Dracul's free hit string is that his boons are a bit self-balancing and in exchange his other boons aren't too extravagant. You have to lose 5-10 hit points to gain any piety, +resists and lifesteal are generally in opposition. Additionally, health restore requires having enough health to take a hit from the boss, whereas Dodge and Death Protection don't (also means you have to start boss-fighting later if you're a level-up midfight kinda person). I mean, he's a phenomenal late game god against the right enemies if you can convert in with enough piety, but squeezing the most out of him means you have to kill most of the mooks and be able to hit the boss with 10 less HP than normal (crops up a surprising amount if HP->Attack is your thing) and also hurt your use of cydstepp, health potions and halpme.

I think he's maybe a easier to use than TT's potions, certainly, but a lower pay-off for it. Probably about par with Taurog. I suppose Dracul-users also benefit disproportionately from consensus, since lowish piety gain is a big balancer for Dracul (i.e. normally if you want to hop in you need to pick up some of the other boons to make your piety gain fuel the swell) and blood swell doesn't have any prerequisites. I like how Dracul works atm (and another god thread's probably unneeded), I suppose Blood Swell having a non-increasing cost but entailing a permanent -5 HP might be an interesting change to it (though I suppose that risks further pushing how late-game he is, or specialising him too much). I also think it's nice for newbies and aspiring vets (my first vicious win was due to DI swells from desecrations, back when Matron was serious-damage) to have a fairly easy-use late-game god like that in opposition to the trickier TT and more dedicated but more high-piety Taurog. I.e. Dracul is an introduction to that sort of spiking, helped by his late-game focus.

Agree that there's a lot more blackspace now, but then, there's a lot more stuff in general, I think. To some extent as well regen fighting feels to me like it gets proportionally stronger as you get more powerful, is promoted by extra blackspace and it isn't directly affected by vicious difficulty multipliers in the same way that spiking is, so it's also going to be promoted in unusually high-power dungeons like GT or NC. In a sense I think that for normal-game the spiking/regen/levelling interchange is very interesting and neatly balanced. For big and high-power vicious dungeons regenning will be king, for more claustrophobic ones like DL, spiking is necessary (that said, still haven't won it : p ).

[gjaustin]

I think you're underestimating Dracul. Especially his piety gain. He and Pactmaker are the two altars I want to see EVERY run because I'm absolutely sure I can always use them. Even if just for a single hit of Blood Tithe.

Dracul competes with Tikki-Tooki for best end-game boss. Convert into him and you can easily get about 400% healing off your starting 25 piety and what you get from drinking blood pools.

And Platemail combined with Blood Hunger is amazing. Especially when combined with TT's Poison!

[Lujo]

Fun fact: the only bit of "this might be broken" in the whole giant textwall that is the OP is related to Drac. ATM.

And yes, Drac is probably really, really busted right now. If we know you can compare him to Taurog and TT for funcionality, he comes ahead by several orders of magnitude.

And the thing abot drac being the best end game god, and my beef with him, is that he allready was the best end game boss because his end game phys spike actually synergized with stuff rather than be a whole separate investment.

Taurog can give you a string of 1 hit for physical damage per boon. It has heavy prerequisites, and cant relly be taken late (in theory, it can if you've left enough popcorn laying around, but then you lack levels, which are the main source of damage, so in practice, not so much). It has sinergy with damage only.

TT can give you a string of 2 hits for physical damage + one healthpool lest at the end of it, but he takes away a healing potion and tanking hits from the boss reduces your piety. And it mandates having popcorn and using it at the right time in the right way. Agan, it has synergy with damage only, and to a lesser degree your dodge rating.

Dracul can give you a string of (Your max health)/(effective boss damage) times your phys, for the same price of Taurogs boon, but without any effort related prerequisites. With "meta" sources of piety (consensus, desecration, previous piety farm), you can theoreticaly take just one level of sanguine and drink blood just for the non-exploration related piety. The formula which you use to calculete how much damage is a bloodswell worth shows tha a dedicated regen fighter (or rather resistances and dmage resistance focused char) can get up to 4-5 times as much damage from a blood swell than a DP or a set of potions (hell, much, much more).

The problem here is that while a string of non-exploratory full heals certanly turns into a spike, this particular piety based spike actually gives more power to dedicated regen fighters than dedicated spikers. So in essence you can play a resist stacking monk or berserker (or fighter, lol) use up all of your black space for "meta mid-fight heals" and still get all the benfits of a über noob-spike for no effort at all.

Dracul used to be sort-of balanced by the ammount of effort needed to asspull blodswells out of him (and meta-piety was still the only real way to do it, desecrations and consensus and piety farms). What he has in the current sanguine is "piety farm properties" which works best for a fully explored and XP drained map. EM has the same problem, but she doesn't do bloodswells, Clearance only refreshes 10 or so mana for me, mana based damage doesn't scale as hard, and you cant reduce glyph costs as much as you can reduce damage taken (hp cost). So you can't even in theory get as much damage out of a clearance as you can out of a bloodswell, even as a Warlord.

It doesn't help that Drac is one of the few reliable sources of damage resistance. I can sort of see the appeal of sanguines actual, non-piety effect, on large health pool DING! spikers, but the effect of bloodswells on dedicated resistance usesrs turns into a damage output orders of magnitude bigger. A good example would be picking up Tarog early with the monk, picking up all the boons once to fix your damage problems, and stack your resists, then joining up with Drac while still having exploration for more resistances and one level of sanguine for the piety gain. Staying in Taurog, using his final boon, would still result in a physical damage spike, a strong one, but going for Draculs spike would result in 2-6 times more damage. AFTER spending your popcorn, exploration and other resources on Taurog worship.

[Lujo]

Hmm, all this also accounts for me not tking bloodsteal - it messes with resistances, so it reduces the ower of bloodswells, and I'm sort of only in it for the bloodswells.

Plenty of potentially easy fixes, what part of what feature's the exact problem is the question though.

EDIT: and oops, that was the dreaded "Why Drac is OP" textwall right there. I owe someone a beer?

[Lujo]

Ok, got most of the gist in the compendium. Need info on dedicated DING! strats, although simply looking through Sidesteppers thread should be a good start.

And I know it needs mega formatting and proof reading and is full of typos, and stuff, but it'll never be wiki worthy without feeback, and I'd love to see if all this was worth it. Just about any addition so far was incredibly helpfull.

Oh, and I'll add an index at the beggining, and the "tanking" section needs work, and "healthmonster" and "resist stacker" approaches need clear separation as they play completely different as a tactic, even though they are both phys damage strats.

(and the final chapters might need arrogance/bias pruning and more math, but I'm never sure, so I need feedback on wheter my "theory" is sound, and more ino on the mishaps and risks related to dedicated DING! spiking, if any)

[Lujo]

Rewriting and reformatting the guide ATM.

Would love feedback on the two sections I'm happy with, the DAMAGE SPIKE and BEGGINER SPIKE ARTICLES.

The index and the glossary will need reworking in the end, but these two are ready for review by both pro's and vets. Cookies for feedback, as plenty of this stuff can be really good wiki material once done.

Don't bother with other paragraphs, "huge text wall" will grow more streamlined, literate and worthwile (and smaller) as I go through it an prune whatever is unecessary. And also more accurate and informative as more people chip in.

[The Avatar]

Great job Lujo! So far the guide looks AWESOME!

Here's a suggestion: Add Vicious to the glossary terms.

VICIOUS: The highest dungeon difficulty. These are much more difficult than all other hard dungeons and require maximum optimization and therefore a very high player skill level. It is possible, yet extremely difficult, to gain 100% completion, and they are not recommended for intermediate or worse players.

[Lujo]

Ty!

And I also think I will add "VICIOUS" and "sub-VICIOUS" terms in one way or another, possibly under some keyword for "Post-endgame" conetent. With a definition along the lines "beyond the skill level of what it takes to complete the game, with rewards not necessarily taken into account for balancing purposes. Includes ultimate trickshots with ridiculous difficulty of 100% class and badge completion."

EDIT: Also considering renaming the "Begginer spike" the "potion spike" and mentioning the "8 potion spike" as the most common and basic variant, to cut down on the "newbie bashing due to inefficency" stuff that might be interpreted as arrogance and off-putting.

[Nandrew]

Heheh, for some reason it tickles me to hear the phrase "intermediate or worse". Ag shame.