Wiki Discussion - Dungeon Page Layout

[Lujo]

Well, true, true, but that's more because of how I feel like the tooltip and some assumptions cause people to think Fireball's the thing with the higher damage a pissorff is the one with the more utility or something, it's rarely ever stated that if you decide to play to it's strength rather that trying to make it a fiddly fireball it actually does quite a bit more damage. I you decide to conflate leveling and dmage dealing (or are comfortable with the concept of fireballing two bossess at once instead of one by one), you're doing the same damage for less mana. It's not balanced by the required positioning setup, as that's just the tradeoff for building up a different character and taking him or her through separate fights. Which means that instead of playing a regular run you play a bit of Soko Trolls which once done reduce potential complexity of a run by a lot. And there's no way Soko Trolls are not simpler than a proper DD run, that's absurd and we're not even talking about particularly difficult Soko Troll scenarios. But it is balanced by just being fine if you don't go an reduce the price further. What I meant by the writeup is that - pissorf is strong, quite a bit more solid than fireball when you understand the ins and outs, it doesn't need cheating and if it's cheaty (either by dodging resistance or further reducing the really favorable price when you look at it) it really does push out fireballs, and since it's already a glyph and those ignore the monsters attack it already has it's benefits compared to going just melee.

I mean Pisorff has traditionaly been seen as "only a Wizard" or "Only an Orc" or "only a specific build" thing, but it really isn't, when you side-by-side it with firebal it can quite handily mop the floor with it, as it's actually less build specific or buildup intensive than it. That's not common knowledge, and that's actually a problem because people are prone to use it in very strange ways instead of the obvious one. It's playstlye specific, but that's not MY playstyle, that's how you play pissorf to it's strenghts regardless of who you are, I just happened to do a lot of it lately. I actually did my best to push my playtesting in the right direction, which is "how little / how few specific things do you need to do / have with this to roll a map with it" to get "myself" out of it as much as possible and see what the glyph does with the least amounts of other elements involved. Does plenty, with almost any class/race, on most any map, it's legit.

As for what you play for with pissof as opposed to fireball, that's not all that OT. You play for 16 mana, damage buffs / corrosion and refills (mostly dings). Bossfight level is lvl 4 if you're being serious or it can be 1 if you land some sinergy. You're at favorable odds against fireballs even if you don't tack on all the sinergy in the world, if you do it'll quite comfortably beat anything and if it itself doesn't finish the job it's buildup unintensive enough that you'll probably be a perfectly capable melee guy or even a fireball guy on top of it to help out.

Wiki ought to say the last bit in some way.

[Tinker]

OT in a dungeon page layout thread. You do realize, though, that writing a lot of text about something doesn't in itself make it true, right?

[Lujo]

I do, but it is true and it just can't be said in a tweet. If it could there wouldn't be so many people confused by it. And this has sort of become the wiki page anyway, and I don't want to put textwalls on the wiki.

"Soko Trolls is more complicated than a regular DD run" fits in a tweet. It's insanely wrong, too. And you can write a few textwalls about why this isn't so, and when I see someone tweet something like that I get the urge to try to whallop them over the head with every single inch of why it's absurd, and there's miles of text of reasons. A tweet looks more composed, but I have a character flaw where I don't care about impressions and assume other intelligent people don't, either, which is wrong on my part. Sorry

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

Reply to tinker:



EDIT:

I GOT IT!

Tweet-by-Tweet form:

- If you are hitting two monsters into each other, the longer the fight goes the further ahead a Pissorf user comes out on damage vs. a firebal user. They do the same total damage, but Pissorf costs less to cast, so the more mana you spend on glyph use, the more Pissorf comes ahead.
- The most reliable way to keep a fight going on is to level up mid fight. Pissorf does damage to two things at once, one is leveling fodder, the other is the boss (they can both be bossess). You want to both level and fight the boss in every run, but it takes you less overall mana to do it this way and you get to use your refills for both leveling and dealing damage to the boss. There is also no burning to break by munching on popcorn.
- Since you're leveling and fighting the boss at the same time, and leveling up is what keeps it going, you want to start the fight early. But since the bossfight is also all your leveling, you don't mind exploring the map and moving monsters around so that when one dies you can slap something else into the boss (or moving bossess around for the same purpose). Prepping extra mana means you'll always be at 15 before the fight, with just 1 mana away from your 16 mana sweet spot (exceptinally low for a dedicated spellcasting approach).
- A good level to start fighting the boss is lvl 4. Because of the damage formula, Pissorff get's a built in +1 caster level compared to fireball every 4 levels. High ammounts of sinergy (Dmg buffs, corrosion, easy refills) mean you can even start at lvl 1.
- Once you've moved a few things around and started the fight, you just munch on popcorn, possibly move the boss to the next target (it's ussually so efficient that it's not a problem), refill in whatever way and even pad out the glyph use with melee hits.
- The benefit is very easy setup and buildup, and trading most of the gameplay and shop/god/monster RNG that goes on in DD for a bit of Soko Trolls. Once a few of your "Trolls" are in place (2-4 next to the boss/es), the rest of it is likely very straightforward. The complexity of Soko Trolls can be anywhere from "really easy" to "tricky" depending on the map and the rng, but never remotely as complex as playing most of DD profficiently is.
- It also removes fighting things above lvl 4-5 from a run - because you never have to actually level up properly. Everthing that would get you above lvl 4 is just a "Soko Troll" if you need one, and whatever you're slapping the boss into will drop anyway regardless of what it is or the level difference. So you will fight above your level all the time, but not feel it, and killing a soko troll will either fully ding you or get you really close to dinging. You will also kill a lot of stuff using a glyph that way which ignores their damage stat, a major part of difficulty scaling in DD, and you'll can kill more things for more XP than a fireball user generally would at higher difficulties with no effort past "Soko Trolls".
- Occasionally the map will spawn in such a way that you can't possibly Pissorf bossess into each other, but you can almost always just do it against one and kill the other once all that leveled you up. There'll likely be plenty of leftover resources and if you're high enough level you can use your mana to pissorf things into one boss while you get melee hits in on the other and then ding.

- Any gods on the board will also be easy to use because you can swap into them with easy Binlor Piety and desecrate him for indulgences. If you refilled with popcorn more - you'll have more potions, if you refilled with potions more - you'll have more popcorn. Or you can even restart the run - the setup is so minimal, and there's nothing to really be invested in before you start the "levelign bossfight", and you won't start it before you see where the bossess are anyway.

Is that it? Does that explain it? How to shorten this?

[MTaur]

I think if PISORF were balanced for Lujo, most of us wouldn't be able to use it that often. I think most of us agree that the damage should be physical in all cases and computed separately for each monster. And I think it's already balanced when you use it against walls. The main disagreement seems to be what the multiplier should be for two monsters. 80% damage per monster is 160% damage total. Should it be more like 60% or 70%? An argument could be made for 50%, but that would would be a pretty unsatisfying situation that would only be an improvement over fireballs in the case that the main monster has MR and both monsters are highly xp-valuable.

Anyway, one way you can use mana is you can line up PISORF shots for the late game with PO, WEYTWUT, and WONAFYT. But you can also spend mana on other things, including WONAFYT spam for xp. Recently I've beat the Library with Orc Wizard, but I beat some other Vicious dungeons in which I converted Wonafyt. My use was very limited in Naga City and Dragon Isles, 3 wins each.

[Lujo]

Hmmm, you can use mana any way you want during exploration you don't have to move everything around, just a few thigns here and there. As far as popcorn bowling goes, that's not a problem at all, I always spam wonnafyt whenever I find it. Heck, the only reason I don't drink a potion just to use Imwal while I pissorf is that it's getting me too much XP anyway and I'd ding too fast and miss a level.

But as far as balancing goes - I'm not against the current setup, except I think the wall damage is underpowered. It's terrible compared to hitting monster into monster any way you look at it. That's only really an option for a wizard, but never a good idea. Hitting a monster into monster is about 100% base for 4 mana against walls which don't dissapear and it refills you automatically, and hitting stuff into walls is 60% base against walls that do dissapear, positioning calculation changes with every pissorf mid fight, and it doesn't refill you.

If the layout isn't Dragon Isles, that's the only map where positioning is often enough difficult.

But I feel like pulling my hairs out - I'm not hitting things into walls because it's (demonstrably) more complicated AND a completely terrible deal damage wise, and people are complaining that they can't figure out how to do it the less complicated way. I do it like I do it because it's just infinitely simpler! And more powerful! XD If you can hit things into walls you can 100% certainly do it the other way, the other way is like a hack to not have to hit stuff into walls and remove that whole component of coplexity from using the glyph. I started doing that so to make my life easier - to remove the word "wall" and thus a million possible positioning issues completely from association with the glyph. And it works great! Pissorff has no postioning issues worth mentioning that way most of the time. If you could only hit stuff into walls, I'd never touch the thing, I'd use fireball. It's so conceptually terribe and narrow and fiddly, that whatever it takes to not have to use it that way would be worth it, let alone movng a few monsters around...

It's like there's a huge door you can enter a building with, but people keep climbing through the 3rd story window, think it's fine and freak out when you point to the door. "Yeah, but, you know, it takes skill to use a door, we're not that good, we'll just keep climbing to use the 3rd story window". And they think I'd want to take the window away so that they coldn't get in! Wut?

Why is this rocket science? For some reason it is, and I'd like to know this reason because I've seen weird things in my life but this is one of the strangest. How can you be intelligent enough to beat anything at all by hitting things into a wall, and yet not able to figure out just how bad that is compared to hitting monster into monster? And that hitting a monster into a monster would still be less complicated even if hitting things into a wall did 100% base? Why would you want your glyph to have an extra cost (walls) attached, that also increases positioning and planning in the middle of a fight millionfold, and the other way around is also more powerful and works fine with any character in the game and not just the Orc Wizard? Wth?

EDIT: Wall destroying is a remnant from back when the glyph did no damage, when the design document said "Burndayraz is the only glyph that does damage". It's just there to let it keep a bit of the "corridor declogger" functionallity. You're SUPPOSED to use it to hit monsters into each other, that's what makes it a damage glyph, a reliable one. I'm not using it in an extravagant fashion, I'm just using it properly -.- What I wonder is why the hell is completely misusing it in a way which complicates your life, works rarely and only really with 1 class in the game something people can figure out, while the obvious, simple and powerful way to use it anywhere with anyone isn't? Wall destruction is the utiliry, you only use it when you move a monster to another monster mid-fight if you can when you kill a "troll" and there's noting else around, so that you don't throw "empty" pissroffs. That's the last resort, not the main thing -.-

[Tinker]

Lujo, what you're describing is not PISORF, but a specific PISORF-based strategy using Binlor, early exploration of the map and no regeneration during the fight(s) which normally includes the boss fights as well. I know this strategy and I sometimes use it, but I find it too boring to use it too often (just like the Elf Assasin of TT strat, when you start fireballing the boss at L2 - effective but not too interactive). I wouldn't really mix the discussion between the glyph and specific strategies involving it.

If you're not basing your entire gameplay around utilising PISORF with the strategy you describe in great detail, then the Soko-Troll part will be a chore; making sure the collateral damage doesn't just get lost due to regeneration is a chore (and can be a limitation); having to prep Binlor to make sure the glyph is available can be seen as a limitation in case you want to play one of the other seven deities; etc. Yes if you have good skill and experience with this strategy, and don't mind the downsides (i.e. having to prep a specific altar), you will be able to mitigate most of these considerations, and will be able to use PISORF like you describe. Though in that case, if we assume a certain degree of skill/experience, and certain preps, you might as well assume a similar degree of skill and preparation for any other approach you want to compare against.

If you compare just glyphs, you have the following:
Fireball: 4 damage per level for 6 Mana (.67 damage*level/Mana), Burning (can boost damage up to 6 damage*level, or 1 damage*level/Mana, and reduces regeneration); always available on every map; can be magneted for a Mage Tower prep slot.
PISORF: damage based on base damage, normally equal to .48*5*level for 4 Mana (2.4 damage*level, or 0.6 damage*level/mana), does collateral damage to another monster (which helps when you move on to fight that monster, provided you have enough fuel to finish it / don't mind not regenerating until you do); can be used to move monsters around for utility/declogging purposes or to group them into a cluster for efficient collateral damage. Not guaranteed to spawn, requires specific altar preparation for that.

Now, assuming you want to compare damage spell strategies, and you prep Binlor to guarantee PISORF, you might as well prep Mystera as the reference BURNDAYRAZ user. Which means that you will get the guaranteed PISORF, but your Mystera BURNDAYRAZ user will be able to pick up up to +5 mana boost; Mystic Balance reducing casting cost to 5; Flames increasing damage to 5/level; Refreshment for restorations; etc. So then you compare your PISORF user to someone who can do 5-7 damage per level for 5 mana (1 - 1.4 damage per mana point), with an improved mana pool and extra restoration options. So even per mana point the altar-prepped fireball can do more damage than PISORF does to the two monsters together, and then you didn't consider that fireball is completely no-strings-attached, you can kill a monster and then regen via exploring to kill another. Most of the time you don't need to, and can just use the level-up restorations to keep blasting; but should you choose to do so, it's an option.

Now, if you're willing to scum (I wouldn't, mind you), you can say that yes, but you can just scum for PISORF and then you can have it without preparing an altar. Which is true! But then as a fireball user, you can also do the same, and scum for - say - a B2P.

You seem to base conclusions on comparing how PISORF works in a specific, PISORF-centric strategy, which you find trivially easy (even though most people don't), that involves Binlor prep, etc.; to what Fireball says on the glyph description, assuming no preps, no nothing.

If you want to deal damage using glyphs, and you're willing to dedicate your altar preparation to this, then prepare Mystera and pick up the BURNDAYRAZ and just blast everything to kindgom come one monster at a time. If you want a specific strategy that involves playing the level a certain way, and you enjoy Soko Trolls, by all means prep Binlor and go PoS.

[Lujo]

You are way off about this being a specific strategy. It's highly-non specific, it works equally well on most maps, against most enemies with most classess and most races, and Binlor is only there because he gives you pissorf. You always play a different god, because there's hardly any point to staying in Binlor so it's really unspecific even concerning the deity except as a magnet. And Crystal Ball is just overkill in most places anyway. Pissorff use is also highly unspecific about whatever else you do because it only takes a 16 mana pool and any sort of refills (which can be just dings) and you can devote all of your resources to being whatever - including a Burndayraz guy on top of it, which would take actual buildup. It's not a strat it's the default way to use Pisorf that doesn't treat it like a shoddy Burndayraz.

The Soko Troll's part isn't a "specific pissorf strat", like one among many, it's something that you should be in a puzzle pack or a tutorial. It's how you use that glyph. It's the whole non-utility point of that glyh. If someone finds that boring, and preffer using Pissorf in another way they're not bored with something specific, they just don't like how the glyph works at all and choose to ignore half of what it sayes. Some people always convert B2P on sight, some preffer not to use Apheelsick, and some only play Taurog guys. But as for how you use Pissorf, what the point of that thing besides utility is - that's what it is.

Orc Wizard of Binlor on a map with a lot of walls is a strat. Specific race, specific class, very self-imposed-challenge way of tackling the boss with an RNG affected additional cost added to glyph use. Only really works for that one class or for someone using Rock Heart. But there's maps with few walls, there's maps with postioning problems, there's all sorts of things which make that a really niche use. But the glyph itself works with no walls in the map whatsoever, and is only niche if someone will insist against a mountain of evidence that it's only meant to be used by one specific class or with one specific item on a select few maps. There's 0 point considering the glyph from that perspecitve at all! That kind of glyph wouldn't even be in the game.

If I want to kill something using spells, I prep pissorf, because fireball's always there, and because if I ever need fireballs I can build up the highly non-specific and non-build intensive pissorf guy into a fireball user. But in case I don't need fireballs the pissorff guy will deal with anything, using a glyph, with way less hassle. If that means I have to start in Binlor - whatever, the glyph is strong enough that you don't even mind that, it allows you to be a kick ass spellcaster anywhere with anything even if you don't prep a spellcasting god.

What I like has nothing to do with anything. I like them both. Lots of people don't like standard pissorf gameplay for whatever reason, but that is absolutely no reason for it not to be presented as default pissorf use on the wiki. If someone finds abhorent the idea that there's a glyph who's gameplay resembles Soko Trolls more than using something else, that's their thing. If the wiki's supposed to inform people about how you use the glyph - that's how you use it, not on a specific map, not with Wizards, Orcs or Rock Heart - those are extreme edge cases - but with anything at all. Taurog Gorgon in Vicious Steel with no Walls on the map starting the fight at lvl1 - it works, I saw for myself, same Pissorf routine as anywhere else with sinergy level adjusted for difficulty by an item. That's how you use it, and the glyph and how it works are the only relevant things in there.

[Tinker]

Which is all fine. I was just reacting with the comparison to the inaccurate statements you made about PISORF being strictly better than BURNDAYRAZ. Which it isn't, as illustrated 2 posts above. And as for PISORF, just like with BURNDAYRAZ, there are different ways to use it.

Among other things, you can use PISORF to i) declog maps; ii) access the secret subdungeon; iii) do casual spell damage to monster to finish them off by knocking them into a wall or another monster; iv) use it as part of a dedicated caster approach (i.e. as described several posts above).

You can use BURNDAYRAZ similarly in many different ways, like i) complement regen-fighting by reducing monster regeneration; ii) do casual spell damage to monster to finish them off; iii) use as part of a dedicated caster strat

(and probably a ton of other uses for both glyphs)