Thought experiment: what if PISORF would...

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

Availability doesn't matter, they're both preppable. They're both boostable, Pissorff damage gets boosted directly for way less investment in any cost involved and requires fewer kingdom unlocks, pissorf costs less and just using it results in automatic refills, and munching popcorn for more refills doesn't lower it's damage by breaking burning. It's way more spammable. Not that you can't spam fireball, ofc you can, you're talking to a guy who did way too many things with a Goblin Sorcerer, but as far as what takes less effort to spam and lends itself to spam better Pissorf wins so hard that you can use utility glyphs while you spam it and still get any the job done without missing a beat.

As for the second thing: It's not a question of how you did stuff or how I did stuff and wheteher stuff other than Pissorf is usable. Ofc it's usable, why shouldn't it be? The problem is that turning anything into a hardcore spellcaster while the PQI chooses the class/race/badge for you, one which also evades all the things that are meant to challenge spellcasters (not just "outguns them" or "outperforms them" but simply dodges them), with so few elements, so reliably, while not actually using much spellcaster stuff - isn't really meant to work. Not with a starting glyph and something you get for completing the den of danger, not this easily and not in this way. You don't desecrate EM on CO and walk around with 5 corrosion and still get to spellcast down one boss at lvl 3 and the other one at lvl idk with a halfling warlord who converted cydstep and 5 health potions for no reason and effectivelly played it faithless. Especially if that's in fact making it hard on yourself because the actually easy way would be to just kill the dragon at lvl 4. When something like that kills a 60% resist both lvl 10 blink guy at lvl 3 with no effort at all and that doesn't even contribute anything meaningful to winning the map, something's obviously wrong. Take a good look at that video - I even killed the Dragon in the most stupid way possible (because just munching on stuff and then slaping him into the next thing would've made it way easier).

Someone doing stuff while playing well and playing varied stuff and using features - fine and dandy. Pissorf spam being applicable everywhere and at least on par if not straight up better / easier than things like that - textbook degenerate strat. I'm not using it because I like using it, or because I prefer using it, or because I'm better at it than at something else - when I use it, I use it because it's a cheatcode that will win the map for me while I play around with other features independent of my chances at succeding or if I just want to fast forward runs because the PQI is streaking stuff on me. And kinda because after so many runs everything else just feels complicated right now, it caused skill decay in the middle of a binge, lol. Least ammount of elements, biggest margin of error.

Again - only thing wrong with it is the full-feature bypassing, and possibly CB refills. Whether fireballs or anything are more powerful or whatever is completely irelevant. Who cares?

[Lujo]

Right, srry for double post, I just wanted to try to see if you get it from another angle:

If Pissorff is meant to completely bypass everything, and you can prep it on any run, if it's not in fact just bugged/broken, how do you explain the following:

- Why does the Wraith boss in CO have only 159 health?
- What exactly justifies his lvl 10 status and him dropping a Dragon Soul?
- Why are is there a 75% resist physical and a 75% magical golems in Rock Garden, what was giving them those abilities supposed to achieve?
- What, if anything, is the actual reason why Itsssamna has as little health as he does? What justifies his lvl 10 status?
- If the resistance on the Goo Blob can be evaded by the glyph which always spawns, what is the point of the other damage glyph also alternatively evading or not evading it based on an essentially cosmetic differecne (who you hit into who)?
- Why does eloxia have low health or even change form if you can prep a glyph which guarantees that won't happen? How does her changing form ever make you change up your approach, if there's a glyph you can prep which makes it not matter?
- Why do you think the CO dragon send you to the curse world, or have retaliate: fireball? If Pissorff is the best tool there is against Wraiths in general (reduces them to just low health cannon fodder with no abilities), why does that dungeon's boss assume you'd try to use Fireball instead?
- And why isn't that boss protected against Pissorff in some way? Why isn't there a mechanism which makes sure it sends you to the curse world, too?
- What, if anything, is the point of Stheno's ability if you can prep a glyph which lets you completely evade it? Why do you think getting unstoppable without killing anything but the boss isn't a Steam achievemet even though it's obviously rather easy to do?
- What, if anything, is the point of Namtar's first form or the dungeon layout if you can prep a glyph which lets you spellcast against Namtar while at the same time spellcasting against the Wraiths/Goos/Trolls and comes attached to a God who destroys walls every time you take a boon from him?
- What, if anything, is the point of the abilities on Red Djinss if you can prep a glyph which lets you do the exact same thing against all of them without feeling any of the abilities? What is the justification for their heath/level ratios?
- What, if anything, is the point of monsters that resist both physical and magical damage?
- Why does Bycepss/Might remove only 3% resists? How about Piercing Wand? Or Weakening or Rock Heart, why do those even exist? Why did the developers think someone would want to use them if there's a glyph you can prep which bypassess resists entirely by default?
- If using monsters in place of walls is meant to allow you to bypass every ability on monsters while dealing the same total damage as you would with Fireballs, making it the obviously preffered option with who you hit into who being the biggest dilemma, why does it come attached to a God which clears the map of walls which then makes positioning the monsters any way you want somewhat trivial? And why doesn't this god's punishment or any other feature impede your ability to dedicatedly use Pissorf in this obviously maximal way?

Etc. Etc.

[dislekcia]

Lujo. I'm warning you. Treat forum members with respect or don't post at all. Your choice.

[Tinker]

Lujo, these are very good points, but please don't get banned over something silly! Despite the pseudo-competitive Dailies, DD remains a single-player game, so I recommend that if some component makes the game less fun for you, just avoid it!

[Lujo]

^ I know, I know - I'm really sorry. And I set out to try out all sorts of things in all sorts of places, and there's plenty of those where an unbugged Pissorf is really nice, or where a PQI class/race setup lends itself really really well to Pissorf strategies regadless of the whole problem with it, and dungeons where it'd be the best way to go even if it had nothing wrong with it... and when such an integral basic feature's got that big of a bug/issue it's hard to avoid it, and then you just develop a bad habit Plus, there's a lot of stuff where I'd love to recommend it, but it's causing me a lot of internal grief when I think I'd be pointing people towards acutal casual abuse

I hope I can appologize and offer this nice general Pissorf report/writeup for perusal and hopefully steering the discussion past the thing we can all probably agree on anyway:

--- Ye big textwall of Pissorf findings, hopefully accurate ---

There are things to be said about the glyph besides that, but let's, please, for the sake of all out love for the game, just look at it as it's own legit feature and not compare it too much to other stuff. Assuming the broken interaction mess is fixed, and the CB is reigned in, I've played it a lot with various things both in the past (but in the suboptimal wall-bashy way, moreso than most people) and lately (while exploring stuff I haven't before) and here's what I've found: (this is about the a hypotetical fixed version, for any considerations beyond that point):

Basics

- It does the same ammount of total damage as fireball, spread between two targets, disregarding burning. It's got it's own pretty legit playstyle without bundling it with anything overly sinergistic. It's also very cool to buddy it up with firebal so they help each other out with what the other is worse against (assuming it's fixed first). I like doing this a lot.
- It's doesn't interfere with popcorn munching (or rather, popcorn munching doesn't interfear with it, as it doesn't break burning), and the spread damage means you can pretty much always soften something (or several somthings) up while doing damage on the main guy making dings quite easy.
- Since it's damage is bumped by base damage, getting some of that also bumps your popcorn munching power (of if you're going non-res stacker hybrid with it it's kind of your dream glyph).
- As far as total damage is concerned, Fine Sword, Trisword an Skullpicker are all "+1 effective level on your fireball" . This has it's pro's and cons - it's damage boosts are very cheap, impactful and acessible (meaning if they're there it's easy to snag them), but a bit rare and spread out among different categories, so you can't just go "Quest Items" and call it a day as is the case with firebal.
- Any 2 points of global corrode are also an effective +1 fireball level for your spread out fireballs. Most corrosion is global anyway, but any 2 points of corrosion which get applied to the damage on both targets would be the same thing. If the Crystal Ball didn't just break it, Long Rant would be a really good prep with it (especially paired with the blacksmith sword), as that leaves the option of finding the other swords in the shop and picking up really cheap sinergy that way.

That's kinda the tame, but perfectly workable stuff wich I'm mostly using with it when I'm not abusing it. More advanced/overly sinergistic stuff would be:

Advanceds

- Pairing it with Earthmorther or Martyr Wraps. You don't have to push it hard enough to make the run all about that, but 4-6 levels of greenblood meas your "fireballs" get cast at quite a few levels above your level, and the bonus damage is also typeless. I haven't done much of that so someone else would have to consider that whole thing.

- Bloodtopowa. Pissorff is way more front loaded than fireball (or rather lends itself a lot better to front loading), and health boosts + B2P are also really front loaded. Being stuck with Binlor at the start kinda keeps it in check as you can't really prep the biggest abusers (JJ and EM), but getting out of Binlor is quite easy. Bloodmages are ridiculous with it if you don't mind picking up blood pools (or just score a blue bead), as it's one hit of B2P + 1 popcorn kill = 1 Pissorf, and that snowballs very fast. It's a cool machine gun, but it's not necessarily broken on it's own. it's got it's pro's and cons compared to fireball - doesn't get burning and spreads the damage, but doesn't need much setup and allows more dings and more spam.

- Orcs. Two conversions = +1 spellcaster level, and since you're always in binlor at the start it also sinergizes with all his damage stuff. Elves, Gnomes and Goblins are all good alternatives for more/easier/bigger refills, but if the class has any sinergy with spellcasting, Orcs just bring something very rare to the table seeing that there aren't too many damage boosts in the game otherwise. Goblins kind of give them a run for the money because their thing also combines the refills with a damage bump, while Orcs don't have built in refills so it can be a bit of a tossup. And while gobbos don't get as much XP from the level differences, if you're using Pissorf stuff drops left and right and it takes them a lot less CP to get a refill out of their bonus (and you also get more popcorn left on the board).

Orc + B2P, CB or EM, regardless of the class is pretty much broken outright, though. It lets the Orc use it's base damage for a really low mana price which it can semi-effortlessly refil (or rather pay a meaningless price for the refills). Pissorff Orc Fighters with CB are the closest thing to completely nuts without being the Assassin, and would be even with a more sensible priced refills on the ball (with the current ball and the current interaction they're essentially just straight up abuse - fun, but obvious abuse. Which I'm very about because I'd really enjoy them otherwise and they'd be one of the undiscovered gems and highlights of this playthruogh as the PQI set me up with a bunch and I loved it. They're also a prime example of how I can't avoid the the cheaty part even if I'd love to, because they just play the CB - PoS thing naturally, it's their THE BUILD, they'd be the face of "CB PoS Monthly" if there was one, and it's gloriously fun and wacky, making the buggy/exploity part of it just a big downer).

Stuff that outright breaks it:

Ye Hax0rs

- Crystal Ball. The Glyph is much cheaper than a Fireball, and it both incentivises less investment in gear, and has fewer things it even wants the player to get, meaning spending all/most of your gold on refills is what you're looking to do anyway, and there is generally always way fewer refills to buy on a map than you have gold. Pissorf charges the ball fast, gets more out of a full mana refill, and easily dings you while you're fighting the boss, that allows for more spam leading to more charges, which then lead to more levels, which lead to more spam, etc ad nauseum. The ball is otherwise too good of an item, Pissorf spam just makes that very plain to see - the price of its refills is way out of wack with what refills cost otherwise, and with Pissorf it's always just abusive.

- Wizard. Even if the abusive feature ignoring part is fixed, the Wizard will still break it because of maths. It's not just sinergistic with it, it's flat out broken unless you hit things into walls (allthough I haven't done that in ages so I don't know how well it works, but I think it's not mathematically broken while the other thing is). It's fairly simple - Pissorf does 2X half fireball damage for 4 mana, while the fireball costs 6. Wizard makes it 2X half fireball damage for 3, half the fireball price. Which then makes it 2X fireball for the price of a fireball. So what you're doing is fireballing 2 things at once at the same price. As long as you're not just using the other guy as a perma-wall-anvil-thingy, meaning that the point is that they both drop, this alone breaks it really, really hard. You're efectivelly "munching popcorn upwards" while also fireballing the boss. As long as the silly feature bypass stands, the Pissorf Wizard isn't even funny as you're casting 2 fireballs for the price of one against featurelss monsters.

But it doesn't stop there! Wizards are the only guys who can get the Orc bonus while keeping their junk, and can also get refreshment benefits on top of that occasionally. This means Orc wizards get their "2X fireballs for the price of one" easily bumped in effective level, which then means more XP because of the difference and more refills for the otherwise refill hungry Orcs. In fact, it's actually a bit difficult to keep from "overdinging" and wasting refills that way. Not to mention that the Wizard knows where all the glyphs are so you don't waste exploration/time getting that Orc bonus up (or finding positioning glyphs etc).

But it doesn't stop there! Pissorf is cheap anyway, and Wizard Pissorf is even cheaper, so you get more out of any refill you get, which then breaks any mana-reffil that doesn't take meaningful effort to get. It also breaks the CB really, really hard, as charging the ball is even more trivial for them, allthough it shows it's fullest potential the most at higher difficulty dungeons where you drop bossess like flies and get money for it. This is also because the more abilities Pissorf evades, the more ludicrous it can get if the bossess hit points are adjusted to account for the abilities.



---- Ye 5 mana Pissorf ---

EDIT: One more interesting thing to note is that I've had no problems with dedicatedly using Pissorf at 5 mana as long as the race has any spellcasting mojo. I've had a VT Berserker Camp win with a Gnome Berserker and a Slime Pits win with an Elf Berserker, and at least a few "accidental Mystic Balance screwups" in other places. I think they all involved the Crystal Ball, but it's interesting to note that it's semi-decent even in very unfavourable setups and situations like that. Whatever possible things can be taken away from that, one thing is sure - the Wizard is very far beyond overkill with it.

----

EDIT2: Oh, oh, 2 more things:

1) Runts. The only two classess which need actual help while using it are the Monk (because his low base damage) and the Berserker (because of the price increase). Mystic Balance helps the Berserker admirably (VT sub-vicious wins with dedicated PoS, without cheating etc). The Monk has serious issues, though and while Corrosion is the obvious way to go, any discussion about corrosion and pissorf interactions (and anything done about it) will affect the Monk (and the Rat), obviously. Everybody else uses it fine, with extra sinergy, or without.

1.1) Oh, and funnily enough, the Bloodmage is probably the only guy who has a penalty which puts a bit of a cramp on Crystal Ball abuse. The facepalmy thing about that is that he starts out with B2P. Also see edit3.

2) Unless tings are fixed, hitting stuff into walls is always a bit of a raw deal, even more so becase walls are a finite resource and if you prep the glyph you're in a god which consumes them if you take boons. And you can always keep hitting your target into an enemy who'll just remain at 1 hp. The +10% you get seemingly increases the damage from 2 per level to 3 per level, so hitting something into an actuall wall does seemingly increase your damage a bit, but at a net loss and you lose the opportunity to kill something while damaging something else which is quite tangible - and the heart and soul of that thing.

Not to mention there's way less positining hassle if you just ignore walls alltogather: once you've got the boss/es in place, that's that. Truly abusive Pissorf runs have me removing all the walls with Stone Heart (boon) spam before I kill a single thing (not that it's necessary for anything, it's just a "why not magic resists might come in handy, and it makes munching on random popcorn easier"). A lot of people think Stone Heart (item) boosts something that's allready good, I'm pretty sure it's there because wall-bashing is bad and needs an item to help it out as an approach. I've also not used it once in the entire playthrough, it still didn't make wall-slapping look significantly more appealing. The Wizard doesn't need it (he doesn't really need anything and there's 3-4 equally silly things to pile on top of just being the wizard which are all better than it), and I just can't seem to figure out what it's for. Making the Pissorf cost one mana less if you're just using it to damage one guy isn't an improvement. Three mana pissorf hitting 2 guys = broken, 3 mana pissorf with 3 dmg per level - meh, slightly stronger fireball with positioning issues and an additional resource cost. Just something to consider.

---

EDIT3: And one more thing:

--- Ye prep/mana minimalism ---

Because you prep a God to perp Pissorf right off the bat, you can always safely prep extra mana. Anyone prepped for PoS, once they sufficiently explore the map, has 15 mana. This further reduces the need to buy particular items, as you're just 1 mana away from 16 (4 pissorffs) which is allready plenty hardcore, and any old bit of junk gets you there (leaving more money for CB). Hero's Helm, Pendant of Mana, whatever...

If you wanted to do all that damage on one guy (meaning fireball) you'd need either 24, or 20 with Mystic Balance, or various features which help. For PoS almost any class at all is just 1 random +1 mana bump away from what it wants on every run (Except Thieves, who have it, and Sorcerers who are Sorcerers). If you want 2 Pissorfs per mana potion, the sweet spot is 20 (you get 8 mana), which is easy to get on any casual Elf, and it's also the 5 pissorff per pool number which you may or may not care for. Generally, the buildup for an over-the top PoS pool (whether 16 or 20 for an elf) is rather breezy with the funny exception in form of Gnomes. They're generally prone to invest more in their mana pool on random runs just because they're Gnomes, than an average dedicated hardcore spellcaster Pissorf spammer does ever (as they're just a guy with just CB, Pissorf, Extra Mana and whatever spawns if anything and a useless god). Gnome PoS is still fine enough with just 16, though. If nothing spawns, you just hit the ball for less than a 100% refill, or use the leftover to pad potions out or just don't mind it at all.

Another thing is that you don't need your god past the point where you got your glyph, and the god is a piety farm which you farm piety for by clearing out the map (making it somewhat trivial to position stuff later, if it looks like it'll be tricky). That means that whatever deity you swap into, if any, you'll probably start off with 25-50 piety + 30 from desecration + 3 indulgences. There's not all that much you can get for all that piety that significantly improves your initial minimalist prep setup, mind you, and the punishment is meaningless to a straight caster so you can just stay in Binlor.

---

So beyond the obvious, that's the non-obvious / advanced. Anyone has any thoughts on that?

[Astral]

I agree with you Lujo on the part that indirect KB's resistance ignoring is broken, but the rest isn't.

Whenever you speak about PoS you always highlight the glyph, but usually forget to mention the other necessary parts: spamming potions and using CB.

PoS isn't as effective or even viable without these easy refills. While it's true that Pisorf deals more overall damage while knocking targets into each other, generally there's no need to do so. In the leveling phase it's more effective to kill target 1 with 60% base damage Pisorfs, heal up, do the same to the next guy, pull a level catapult in between and continue as opposed to trying to trigger the ding with 1st kill and using measly 48% Pisorfs.

The ability of Pisorf to hurt 2 monsters is only useful if you use it against bosses, the ineffectiveness still remains, so you need to amplify it with additional refills. In a way we could say Pos is not a 'strat' for abusing Pisorf, but is rather a way to get the most value out of potions by merging the leveling phase and bosskill phase.

Without this potion dumping (or similar refill abuse) how else could you benefit from the 2 target hitting ability? Using walls can also trigger Might bonus, earn Binlor piety and activate RH.

Btw RH should not be underestimated. Mana side it does the same as CB for free (in case you do wall hits), on top of healing you. Best used with hybrid approaches, where you utilize melee KB and Binlor's SS as well. It's amazing on Wizards: a combo of SS, hit, Pisorf perfectly covers the cost of the glyph, you heal 3 tiles and only receive 40% incoming damage on each hit. And overall it costs only 5 piety.
RH is also fantastic for pure casters if you have B2P, allowing you to 'reduce pisorf cost by not 1 but 2'.
I wonder what you meant by better items than RH on a Binlor Wiz.


Kinda off-topic, but since B2P + health boosting was brought up, have you thought about the usefulness of health boosts from a damage perspective? A flat 60 HP boost when using fireballs translates to 10 casts at lv1, 5 at 2... 1 at 10 while damage-wise they are always +40 magic damage (burning not taken into account). That extra damage means a lot for early kills, for boss battling you should level-up somewhat to save blackspace though.
Corrosion, or base damage for Pisorfers obviously mixes it up.

On Tinker's points:
1. That would be the ideal way for all KB to work.
2. This is redundant, the 'bug' behind 1 is what causes this. If that's fixed this will be gone too.
3. I wouldn't mind additional counters, but they are unneeded. Also putting Crystalline on the magical resistant golems and Iron Man seems like a bad idea.
4 If the resist bug is fixed there will be no need for this. You will barely scratch Shades, and wall hits already counter blinking.
5 I oppose this. Pisorf is supposed to be the MR counter glyph, this would make the glyph too unreliable.
6 That's a useful and neat idea. My addition is that it would be nice if the battle predictor showed the result of multiple Pisorf casts, not just one.

[Lujo]

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

That's actually why I couldn't say whether the corrosion bit needed any fiddling with, because you can weaponize it that way, but you can't really abuse it. Two reasons - one you allready noticed, you can't really use the same "loaded" monster too much because it'll drop, and the second is that the only two ways of non-global corrode* are Martyr Wraps and The Rat, as far as I know, and, well, that feels more like a feature than a bug, tbh. If you're stacked enough to get enough corrosion on something to matter, you're winning anyway. Or?

*And if everything is equaly corroded then whatever, right?

*Also, yeah, Pissorff should be rather good with the Rat, I'd say. Stack corrosion on the less hard hitting boss, slap him into the other boss. Still, you can't really PoS properly, because that indeed does only really work if you hit bossess into each other, as any other tool would drop too quickly, and PoS is about playing the fact that you're doing fireball damage for 4 mana instead of 6 (one target drops for a ding, other target gets semi-whoopazed).

Or? Could you possibly make the Rat a reliable PoS guy?