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Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

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Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

Postby Lujo on Thu Jun 28, 2012 10:50 am

I see a whole lot of strategies being discussed by the vets, but the basic tactics, approaches to one-on-one fights are something we all figured out at different times, and take the understanding of them for granted. The newbies don't, and probably have trouble following discussions. It's also a bit difficult to figure out the exact playstyles and preferences of various pros since you can be an expert at one thing while never ever bothering to figure others out.

Also, different bosses and dungeons require different end-fight tactics, and the strategy (preps, exploration, race, class) revolves around enchancing the chances of the folowing tactic working. A big part of learning how to be good at the game is learning which element fits where. But a big part of why this game seems to need a wiki is that it takes newbies a load of time figuring out what the basic end-game tactical approaches are at all.


CONTENTS AND KEY TERMS AT THE BOTTOM.


THE DAMAGE SPIKE:


It revolves around grabbing all the stuff that isn't nailed down, fighting the boss and using everything at your disposal to fuel the damage sources you apply. A completely dedicated approach would ignore exploration as a resource completely, and ignore mid-fight DING! for whatever reason. Most moderately experienced variants include combining it with the DING! and Regen Figting if at all possible. It can be thought of as an opposite of Regen Fighting, or Regen Fighting can be though of exploration fueled megaspike, depending on your perspective.

It's the cornerstone of DD endgame in every run. It always makes use of some combination of health, mana and physical damage, with different spikes focusing more one one stat. It can be fueled by potions (exclusively), piety, XP, or exploration. None of the approaches are mutaly exclusive, but optimizing them can be.


Spikes by general focus: - Dedicated spikes can differ in whether the damage you do to the boss is physical or magical in type. Almost every source of damage in the game takes its value from your physical damage stat, except damage from the BURNDAYRAZ glyph.

Physical damage spikes can revolve around simply attacking monsters, but can also revolve around heavy Glyph use, so physical damage spikes can use both mana and health as fuel. Their focus always involves incresing your physical damage in additon to any other stat.

The Magic damage spikes in almost all cases revolve around the use of the BUNDAYAZ glyph and their fuel is almost exclusively mana, unless the BLOODTOPOWA glyph is somehow involved. The focus can offer differ, but a dedicated magic damage spike doesn't have to involve physical damage at all.


Spikes by fuel: - differents sorts of fuel used to keep the spike going, it's finding, gathering and optimization are what makes different spike tactics stand apart from each other.


Begginers Spike - An exclusively potion fueled spike. It focuses on grabbing all the basic powerups, potions and gold for item purchases, and throwing all you have at the boss. Since all dungeons provide the players with 4 health and 4 mana potions total, it can be reffered to as the 8 potion spike.

Piety based spike - A spike which focuses repeatable boons as fuel. Some piety based spikes focus primarily on the physical damage stat, some of them can involve health or magic damage. Most of them can be used to supplement other styles, and most of them can profit from features which don’t necessarily involve piety (items, potions).

Tanking spike - A spike which focuses primarily on exchanging physical hits with the monster. It can use a combination of potions, items, boons or experience as fuel. It focuses on damage, health and damage reduction. Percentage based damage reduction is one of the cornerstones of the exploratory Regen fighting megaspikes.

Glyph based spike - A spike which focuses on glyph use as the primary source of damage. They use mana and sources of mana regeneration as fuel. Focus differs with different glyphs, although most of them can make use of features which reduces the mana cost of Glyphs, enlarges the mana pool, or increases the damage done with their respective glyphs.

Combining spikes - none of the spikes are mutually exclusive, although building up to them might make them. Inventory space restirctions make you choose between items optimal for one or the other, and so does your choice of which gods to worship and which boons to take. Many of the approaches can to some degree used during a single fight, and most of them can be used following exploration based regen fighting.


a) THE BEGGINER SPIKE:


Fuel: Potions and anything else you can use to regenerate your health and mana in a static manner. Anything which can be converted into potions in case you’re using Gnomes or Halflings.

Focus:: grabbing anything that is not nailed down and gaining levels and health to enable you to survive a hit from the boss and increase the effectiveness of your potions. Increasing the physical damage to reduce the number of physical hits it takes to take the boss down. Increesing your mana pool to increase the number of glyph uses, and effeciveness of mana potions. Gaining levels to increase your BURNDAYRAZ magic damage.

Dedication tax: - No specific one, other than missing out on a chance to make use of a more dedicated tactic. Looking for all the stuff you can freely grab costs exploration, and potions may have a few other uses other than spiking the boss with. Some Piety based spikes prohibit use of health and/or mana potions, so heavy reliance on them can cut you off from their boons or get you punished.

General thoughts:

It's simple, intuitive, counter productive, can work in easier dungeons, and is usually the only thing left once the more advanced options run out of fuel. You explore the map looking for bonuses items, boons and levels, then square off against the boss relying on potions and boons to get you through alive. It's the "throw all you got at him" approach.

Stuff it's good against - Nothing, really, compared to any other approach, or a decent combination of styles. I works against most EASY bosses though. The begginer resorts to it because the early dungeons are barren of features and it's the only really intuitive approach, and the lazy pro does it when he sees that it would be enough because it requires only exploration and picking up powerups and glyphs.

Stuff that it's bad against – Some of the NORMAL difficulty bosses, and most dungeons above that power level.

Stuff that makes it easier to pull off:

The Thief (because he has more stuff to pick up before you go fight the boss, and gets more out of potions), The Priest (because he gets more use out of potions[/u], Halflings and Gnomes - (because potions are the only sources of healing and mana, and healing and mana are what you pay to do physical and magic damage, respectively, and you can convert glyphs into them)

Advancing potion based spikes:

Certain classes can make good use of potions by combining, or relying upon, the basic potion + powerup spike into more advanced static spiking strategies. The focus of these more dedicated approaches is using advanced unlocks (items, boons, glyphs, classes) to increase the effectiveness of potions, and combining it with Halflings and Gnomes who increase the potion per run number by converting items and Glyphs.

A Halfling Piest combines well with Damage Tanking spikes against difficult Undead opponents, while a using a Gnome can significantly increase the damage output of certain Glyph based spikes which rely on gaining a large mana pool through other means. Elves and Dwarves, with large health and mana pools gained through conversions, can also make potions more effective. The Trisword and Alchemist scroll items synergize with many things generally associated with the beginner spike, and help keep the tactic viable in the more advanced scenarios as well.

When NOT to use it: - when you want to save the potions for: a second dungeon boss, conversion, Tiki Tooki’s piety based spike, poison and mana burn removal, or post dungeon plunder gold. Avoid using it to fight regular enemies if at all possible, unless you are fueling a Trisword, or an Alchemist scroll. Dedicated enough worship of the Glowing Guardian and Dracul makes most potion based spiking outright impossible, but the potion conversion races can still use their conversion benefits for piety gain with those gods.


b) PIETY BASED SPIKE


Key Mechanic: Some deities allow the player to use their piety to purchase boons which can be taken repeatedly. These boons provide either healing, ways of dealing damage without paying health for it, or a significant reduction of the health price you have to pay for dealing damage.

Fuel: Piety for specific boons which can be repeatedly taken; Specific other fuel (if any) varies between gods; Meta-piety.

Focus: Physical damage for Taurog, Tiki Tooki, Binlor and Dracul. Earthmother's boon fuels glyph based spikes, whether physical damage realted or magical ones. Binlor and Dracul provide Tanking Spikes, focused on health and damage resistances respectively. Glowing Guardian provides for both health or mana based ones if dedicated enough.


Piety based spikes by deity:


TAUROG - Dedicated worship of Taurog ends in a physical damage spike based on repeatedly taking the Unstoppable rage boon, which provides one Death Protection per use. The only base stat it focuses on is Physical Damage. It can be pulled of by simply fueling it with Taurog piety.


Key Mechanic: - Death Protections.

Death protection: - is a non-stacking status buff which lets you survive one killing blow, reducing your health to 1 instead of having you die. It is then spent. As long as you can chain enough "DP's" to kill the boss it reduces the health cost of making a physical attack to 0, but the end of a DP chain always leaves you at 1 health point.

Taurogs DP string: - once you acquire all the gear Taurog provides through his other boons, you can start taking his final boon for a chain of Death Protection fueled hits. You can combine it with other sources of Death Protection, and any other compatible spikes, as well as other sources of physical hits which don't let the boss do damage to you.

Other compatible sources of Death Protections: - The Badge of Honor item provides one DP if you consume it. The Fighter class starts with one as a class ability. The Yin Yang subdungeon, if sucessfully solved, provides for 2 items which can be consumed for a DP each. A post-endgame item, Namtar's Ward, provides one per level, as well as lets you start with one.

Non-compatible sources of DP: - The CYDSTEPP glyph effectively provides one DP per level, as it is restricted by not being usable if not at full health. Dedicated worship of Taurog taxes maximum mana, and sometimes prevents getting even one of use out of the prohibitively priced glyph. Casting one on yourself before Taurog destroys your mana pool through natural worship is fair game.

The Warlord Class can cast CYDSTEPP even when on low health, and is completely focused on a glyph based spike engame revolving around it's use. This focus is ussually means building a large mana pool and exploiting multiple casts of CYDSTEPP, so he isn't very well suited to dedicated Taurog worship needed to enable the piety based spike. Which is for the best, really.

Benefits of the Taurog piety spike: - since a DP chain gives an alternative source of fuel for a physical damage spike (instead of it being health), it also lets you ignore your max health pool or any concerns about wether you can survive a hit from a boss at all. On a sufficently explored map, with enough sources of Taurog piety saved for mid-fight consumption, and meta piety, it can allow you to take down certain bosses through use of just piety and physical damage. This removes the need to focus on and fuel any other apprach, and is ussually very good against high-damage low-health bosses.

Supplementing it: - You can combine it with any reliable source of First strike / slow (for the final hit), dodge (for one more free hit) or retaliation (for one more free hit). Prepping a Reflex and/or Quicksilver potion if able is really good if aiming for Taurog worship. Sucessfully combining Tiki Tooki's piety based spike with Taurog's one, if possible, can result in 10+ health-unrelated hits for decent damage. Since Tiki Tooki punishes death protections and provides a First Strike glyph if worshiped first, it is the best way to go about it. It also helps a bit that his spike doesn't require you to be worshiping him while you spike, while Taurog's one does. Since both get the most piety from monster kills, proper managment of popcorn and metapiey is both difficult and necessary, so it might me trickier to pull off than it sounds.

Dedication tax: - Taking other Taurog boons takes up your inventory space (4 large slots in total); reduces your max mana pool (which you can't enlarge naturaly), and Taurog worship gives small piety penalties for Glyph use. Taurog's piety gain revolves around killing things which robs you of popcorn in the long run, and glyph conversion which robs you off glyphs.

When not to rely on it: - With sources of DP being finite, any DP based string other than the Warlords one is badly suited to fighting bosses with high health and damage resistance. The style gives incredible spike potential, but it's indepence on other resources, and the dedication it requires can leave you in a very unoptimal situation if you run out of fuel.


TIKI TOOKI - Dedicated worship of Tiki Tooki focused on repeatably taking the "Potions" boon (name?), lets you excange Tiki Tooki piety and 1 Health potion per boon, for a set of 1 Quicksilver and one Reflex potion. Used properly, they can provide two physical attacks on the boss for no health cost at all (you don't get hit). It focuses on managing your popcorn to gain Tiki Tooki piety and set up confirmed dodges, and increasing your physical damage.


Key Mechanics: - Dodge, Dodge Prediction and Retaliate.

Dodge: - Dodge is a stackable statistic provided by the GETINDARE glyph (temporary +5%, stackable), Quicksilver potion (temporary, +50%), Tiki Tooki's Dodge boon (10%, permanent) and the Rogue class (20%, built in). It gives you a random % of chance to not get hit back by monsters which hit you.

Confirmed Dodge: - Dodge prediction granted by the GETINDARE glyph and the Quicksilver potion is a status effect which lasts untill you get a confirmed dodge. It shows up in the "Next hit" prediction box which tells you what will happen if you attack the monster (in pale blue letters, as !DODGE!). This means the next attack you make will be a dodge, and not cost you any health, and not apply any debuffs to you (like poison, mana burn, death gaze...). You still get hit for purposes of retaliation provided by the Reflex Potion.

Reflex Potion, retaliation and proper use: - Reflex potion gives you retaliation against the next hit you take from a monster. Since the next time a monster would hit you is also the next time you hit him, retaliation effectively gives you a second, "free", hit on the monster. Except in the case of fighting a first strike monster, it works like this: You attack a monster, it attacks you back, you retaliate for one more attack. In case you do all that on a confirmed !DODGE!, you hit the monster, it tries to hit you, you dodge, it misses, you still retaliate. Using one potion (Quicsilver) to get a confirmed !DODGE!, then drinking a Reflex potion and hitting the boss, results in two hits for 0 health cost.

Dodgestep: - Since CYDSTEPP was synonimous for Death Protection for a good while (With a DP spike Rogue strategy being called Cydstepp Rogue), I'm using the term Dodgestep (sucesfull comined use of Dodge and Retaliate potions) to differentiate between the two. The difference is that with Death Protection you do get hit back and status debuffs apply, as well as getting only one effective hit on the boss, while with Dodgestep you get two hits, and don't get hit at all. This is also important as using Death Protections while worshiping Tiki Tooki incurs a -10 piety hit, while using Dodgestep actually provides +3 TT piety for a confirmed dodge. Otherwise the spikes are compatible and simmilar in how they play out to a large degree.

Tiki Tooki's dodgestep string: - Requires using as many Health Potions and as much piety as you want or have, to fuel sets of Dodgstep potions from Tiki Tooki. You can use popcorn to gain piety even during the fight, and you quite probably must conserve hard candy. This is because the only way to get hit once you outlevel monsters is if the monsters have first strike. And in order to set up confirmed dodges, you need to get hit untill the !DODGE! tooltip comes up. With the guaranteed 4 Health potions and enough piety, Tiki Tooki's dodgestep spike provides up to 8 free hits on the boss, and can be made to do even more.

Other compatible sources of fuel: - Any dodges gained through the use of GETINDARE, dodgestep potions prep, any source of healing potions which doesn't hurt the physical damage focus, metapiety, fat high level monsters which can hit you to help set up dodges.

Benefits of the Tiki tooki piety spike: - much like a Death Protection string, it uses resources other than health and mana completely, and if opportunity presents itself it can be worked into supplementing any other approach. A big difference between Tiki Tooki's spike and most other piety based spikes is that all the fuel can be acquired and used after converting to any other god. Most other piety spikes require you to take the repeatable boons during the fight, while Tiki Tooki's potions can be acquired in moderate ammounts and used later. The nature of confirmed dodges makes applying a Whoopaz potion to the boss easier to hard hitting bosses or statuss debuff ones.

Supplementing it: - It's mostly self sustained, and the relative lack of dedication in applying it during the boss fight makes it an easy supplement to any other spike or tactic, piety based ot otherwise. If you can convert to another god to make use of any DP sources, you can add more "free" hits to the spike, and any set of potions you bring into a dedicated Taurog Spike make it stronger by 2 more hits worth of physical damage.

When to use it - Whenever landing big hits on the boss is worth it, and farming TT piety doesn't cost you too much fuel for other stuff. Used in moderate or modest ammounts whenever opportunity presents itself is pretty good. Go dedicated if virtual immortality just doesn't cut it, and you have to pummel the boss without even being touched.

Dedication Tax: - The central boon itself uses up your Health potions, and gaining Tiki Tooki piety revolves mostly around killing popcorn, which can rob you from using it for any purpose. Inability to leave Tiki Tooki at the right moment can possibly leave you unable to utilize Death Protections.

When not to rely on it: - When dedication to sqeezing all the potions you can get would hurt your focus on setting up other spikes, or approaches. It has maximum potential issues whit running out of steam simmilar to Taurog's Spike as well.


BINLOR - Dedicated worship of BINLOR can end in a physical damage Tanking spike based on repeatedly taking the Stoneskin boon, which can Provides % Physical Resistance per use. Another BINLOR's boon adds the Might effect (+30% attack, -3% enemy resists) to every use of Stoneskin. All Binlor's boons add stacking permanent Magic Resistance. The base stats it focses on are Physical damage and health. It is fueled by Binlor piety and revealed walls.


Key Mechanic: - Damage resistance.

Damage resistance: - Percenage based damage resistance reduces the damage you take when performing a standard physical attack. With one exception it has a cap of 65% (Monks cap at 75%). It effectively decreeses the health cost of making a physical attack, givin you more use out of your health pool.

Binlor's piety based spike: - Binlors Stone Skin boon provides 60% temporary physical resistance for the cost of 15 piety and 3 uncovered walls. Since it effectively reduces the health cost of making an attack, it can increase the ammount of hits you can get out of a full health pool, and works well with static healing sources. It can also allow you to make physical attacks against bosses which have a larger damage then your health pool. Another boon of his gives Might upon wall destruction, and if affordable, further increases the difference between the damage you deal and the damage you take with every stone skin.

Fueling issues: - The most easily available source of full healing, which Binlor's piety based spike lets optimize, is a DING!, which is the only thing Binlor makes you lose piety for. However, you can get repeatedly punished by Binlor and still be able to make use of his stone skin chain at any point. The two sources of primary fuel, Piety and Walls are also mutually exclusive - Binlor gives piety for wall destruciton not coming from his boons, and he destroys walls as a part of the price for his boons. Having enough walls around to fuel or optimize the spike with the help of his other boons might be an issue here and there.

Further fueling issues: - while the spike works on a fully explored map with no help if you farmed Binlor's piety in advance, the only source of Binlor piety requires mana. Unless prepared for as many 15 piety costs as you need, using metapiety, or havin good reasons to be able to rely on knocback - you will need sources of non exploratory mana regeneration. It can be accountd for by not being caugth witout a lot of Binlor piety gained by using wall destruction glyphs while you explore.

Benefits of the Binlor piety spike: - it's the only source of maximum physical resistances which can be taken ad nauseum, on a fully explored map, with no investment which taxes dedicated worship of other gods. You can mostly focus your efforts however you want. If measured to leave enough piety to convert to another deity, you might be able to not even feel like dedication taxed you at all, and can to a degree be manegeable even if converting into Binlor with enough meta piety. It also leaves you with plenty of permanent magic resistance.

Supplementing it: - It's pretty self sustained other than possible competition with other approaches to making use of Binlor. High damage, high health and sources of healing are pretty much all you need, although metapiety helps. Repeatable sources of poison lets you regen fight and provides exploratory ways of healing up which Binlor doesn't tax. So do any static, non-boon sources of regenerating health. Having early acess to the ENDISWALL glyph or a form of knocback to easily farm Binlor piety deffinitely helps.

What's it good against: - Any late game boss who does Physical damage and doesn't have enough health and damage resistance to take too many hits to kill.

Dedication tax: - dedicated approach prevents you from using Binlor as a piety farm, and causes a lack of meta-piety for another piety based spike. It also makes it difficult to make too much use out of other Binlor's boons as that costs you walls needed to fuel the spike. Actual ammount of dedication it takes to be effective, however, is debatable.

When not to rely on it: - When you are significantly better suited to other forms of dealing damage than Tanking hits, or other ways of Tanking hits. When you know you can or have to rely on exploration as a resource. Against magic damage bosses when a less spikey approach to worshipin Binlor would give more benefits. On maps with few walls on the same level as Binlor, or maps which make dedicated DING! fighting realy necessary. Wow, Binlor really doesn't seem to have too many downsides when you look at it. With guys who have enough resistances allready. Against bosses better fought through regen fighting. Help with this anyone?


GLOWING GUARDIAN - Glowing Guardians Protection boon heals 35% of both health and mana and can be repeatedly taken for 10 piety + 5 per helping. It also adds an unconvertible Prayer Bead to the players inventory, a small item which adds +1% Magic Damage resistance. Characters with a large health and/or mana pools can get more mileage out of a % based heal, and GG's Absolution and Englihtment boons serve to increese those stats. With a large enought health/mana pool it works as an improved potion spike which works off piety. Doesn't synergize with potion use, though!


Key Mechanic: - % based health and mana restoration.

Fuel: - GG piety; conversion fodder and metapiety

Focus: - Large health or mana pools, other GG boons.

% based restoration - Calculates the ammount of healthe and mana restored from the value of your max health and/or mana pool. The more you have, the more it restores. It also helps if you have damage resistance or glyph cost reduction, because you can get more hits and damage out off less health or mana restored.

GG's 35% heal piety spike - once acquire .

Other compatible sources of % based healing: -

Non-compatible sources % based healing: -

The Paladin Class -

Benefits of the GG piety spike: -

Supplementing it: -

Dedication tax: -

When to use it: -

When not to rely on it: -





KEY TERMS:


Fight: - an exchange of damage between a player and a monster with murderous intentions on the part of the player; a tactical encounter

Tactic: - a style or approach to a single fight

Strategy: - a planned or adopted combination of preparation, exploration, resource gathering, resource optimisation and/or conservation leading to a bossfight or applicable to other fights; gamplay leading up to a fight aimed to make most use of a tactical style, or a combination of tactical approaches.

Strategizing: - finding or applying ways to enable various tactical playstyles;

Static: - a series of actions which don't include exploration, opposite of Exploratory

Exploratory: - a series of actions which includes exploration, opposite of Static

Fuel: - resources needed to pay for actions specific to a tactic

Focus: - a series of conditions which optimizes the impact of a tactic

Popcorn: - a monster which a player has outleveled or gained enough advantage over that he can consume it for XP with little or no resource investment

Hard candy: - Monsters which make significantly less worthwhile popcorn under certain conditions; includes first strikers, monsters with Death Gaze, monsters with death protections and monsters with really high health or damage resistance

DP: - A death protection; status buff which lets you survive a killing blow

Physical Attack: - The default way of dealing physical damage, done every time you click a monster; reffered to this way even if the damage type is magical; uses Health as a resource; basis of physical spikes

Magical Attack: - Dealing damage to monsters using Glyphs directly; reffered to this way even if the damage type is physical; uses mana as a resource; basis of magical spikes

Spike: - a concentrated effort to kill a monster, using all necessary or available resource; involves resources other or over a full health and mana pool

Spiker: - a race/class/development approach combination which lends itself well to primarily static tactics

Regen Fighter: - a race/class/development approach cmbination which lends itself well to exploratory tactics

DING!: - filling up your expirience bar which causes you to level up, incresing certain base statistics and instantly healing health and mana to full, as well as removing certain debuffs

DING! fighting: - planned use of DING!s during a fight to replenish health and mana as more fuel for a spike.

Level catapult: - using higher level monsters XP on kill bonus to level up with less individual fights than killing equal level monsters or lower level monsters would allow; used erronously as synonimous wiht DING! fighting untill I edit.

Regen fighting: - sucessfully using exploration during a fight to regenerate significantly more resources than the monster you are fighting

Damage tanking: - trading hit-for-hit with your opponent

Blackspace: - unexplored map territory; exploring it regenerates your helth for 1 X Your level worth of hit points and 1 mana, per square; reffered to as black squares untill I edit.

Meta-piety: - piety gained through sources not related to worship of your deity - desecration of other deity's altars, Pactmakers consensus, or leftover from converting from another deity

(guide under a rewrite ATM, one section removed, running into forum post character numbers limitations. I've out-text walled myself, and need to get it to be more concise ^^)
Last edited by Lujo on Tue Jul 03, 2012 7:30 am, edited 46 times in total.
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Re: Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

Postby Lujo on Thu Jun 28, 2012 1:48 pm

Editing and formatting suggestion's really, really, welcome.

Am I going too much into strategy and specifics here? Am I flat out missing stuff?
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Re: Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

Postby berpdreyfuss on Thu Jun 28, 2012 3:57 pm

As a non-expert I really enjoyed reading this and am looking forward to future additions, thank you!
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Re: Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

Postby Lujo on Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:13 pm

Ty, and if you find out something isn't working or is badly explained or you find something else (a source of DP, a prep, or somehting that adds to a praticular tactic) be sure to speak right up!

UPDATE: added Dracul to the physical spiking. Started on the Level Catapults.
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Re: Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

Postby Blovski on Thu Jun 28, 2012 5:08 pm

Great thread.

On phys. damage spiking
i.e. there are three main (non-exclusive) approaches to physical spiking
free hits - you've covered excellently
death protections - likewise, with one addition below I can think of
health resource and restoration - Not so much (suppose it's in the basic spike, but as a semi-vet it has a lot of functionality in boss fights - in particular, Dracul's health restoration is often *better* late-game for damage spiking than Taurog's boon) guess the basic thing is 1) you need enough health to take a boss hit, 2) health-restoring non-exploration resources include: Bloodpools, Health Potions, GG's Protection, Dracul's Blood Swell boon (this one is critical), lifesteal, Fire Heart, Halpme, JJ's Last Chance. Health-boosting non-exploration resources include a plethora of items, but Lifesteal and Overheal (from Patches or Scholar's Pact) can give you an edge of up to +50% health (I think) over your maximum when starting. Halpme and Lifesteal don't scale relative to the health you have. The rest of them scale, so benefit high-health characters more. While I suppose these are fairly obvious independently, the combination of these features has some advantages that DPers and dodgers don't tend to get (i.e. you get to exhaust all your health resources on weakening minions if you have a full heal lined up, your attacks on the boss aren't randomly timed, you can combine a wider variety of features and combining in a level-up is a big boost). 3) bloodswells, overheals and priest potions can let you get a few hits on Stheno and other death-gazers.

Addition to DP section: Warlords using death protections as part of a phys spike can get a lot of functionality out of earthmother, since every single clearance boon (with sufficient plants) equates to an extra chainable death protection (and the entanglement boon you can use to create extra plants for it is incredibly useful as well - also slows MR enemies, so bosses you need that last hit on can get troubled), requires no exploration or levelling, while keeping your health low enough to maximise your damage.

EDIT: ooh, you got the Dracul in (he's the important one). Overheal's also worth mentioning, I think, rarely though it comes up.

And on the Magic Damage Spiking: Crystal Ball may not have the omni-destructive status it once did but it is a *hulking* prep or find for magic damage spikers. Rock Heart is an obvious thing for Pisorf users to want, since it makes it a 3MP glyph as long as you're hitting walls.
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Re: Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

Postby Lujo on Thu Jun 28, 2012 5:59 pm

Ooh, good stuff there! Getting right on it! :)

I'm sort of thinking that the overheal pact belongs in either the "level catapult" section, or in "Where Physical Spike Meshes with... more advanced styles". And this is exactly why your healthmonster strat was so interesting - you sort of pulled togather the whole bunch of stuff that was lying around unnoticed :)

Unnoticed by me, because that approach really really benefits level up's and I never thought to link the two. I obviously should've.

Rewriting the Phys Spike section, adding 2 new parts and rearranging it. Also putting your name up for direct health regen related stuff. no link though, don't want people pestering you :)

EDIT: Ooooh, and combining EM and Warlord also never occured to me, either, possibly because I've been relying on phys spikes as solely based off piety rather than any other resource. Nice one there.
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Re: Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

Postby Blovski on Thu Jun 28, 2012 6:45 pm

Ohoh - don't know if this fits here in these sections but you might want to stick in GG's Cleansing's Magical damage effect as a way dedicated phys tankers can take on bosses like Goo or (even if it's just an 'except with GG' in the bad against bit) Tormented Soul.

One typo: probably pummeling rather than pommeling.
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Re: Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

Postby Nandrew on Thu Jun 28, 2012 7:02 pm

Impressive thread. :)

I haven't been able to read it all in detail, but something that stands out for me is the core "max catapult vs max regen" issue (which I *love* as a gameplay consideration) -- have you considered incorporating LEMMISI (and, very soon, the revised B2P) as a way of hybridising these approaches for maximum benefit?

If the LEMMISI glyph survives until late game (which is quite practically possible as a gobbo, halfling or gnome, even if just left on the floor), its new algorithm should be good at identifying hidden popcorn and other valuables as efficiently as possible while leaving optimal space for regen. Better still: once you're into the "fully regen" section of your fight, it's great at squeezing out all of those little edge tiles that normal walkaboutery can easily miss.

Uh, this is just in theory, though. I admittedly tend to grab LEMMISI early and pump it for immediate benefit before converting. But a gobbo Transmuter played in the right way may yield something special, especially since it guarantees the glyph ...
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Re: Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

Postby Lujo on Thu Jun 28, 2012 7:16 pm

I almost got pwned by Shifty Brickwork!
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Lujo
 
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Re: Lujo's comprehensive tactics compendium

Postby Lujo on Thu Jun 28, 2012 7:35 pm

Oh, and thank you. (embarassed)
I almost got pwned by Shifty Brickwork!
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