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Races wiki page

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Races wiki page

Postby Tinker on Wed May 13, 2015 8:20 pm

So one of the top contributors fleshed out the Races wiki page, and I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I think it's an improvement, as more content has been added; and a lot of really cool stuff was thrown at the page. However, I kind of disagree with some of the classifications/conclusions. Now, I'm hardly the most experienced player, and the last thing I want is an edit war or discouragement of contribution, so I thought I'd rather make a post to start some discussion and maybe see where the consensus lies.

I really like the explanation of how early converters ("front-loaded"), late converters ("back-loaded") and "timed" converters work. Excerpts:

Human (back-loaded)
Dwarf (back-loaded)
Elf (front-loaded)
Halfling (timed)
Gnome (timed/back-loaded)
Orc (front-loaded)
Goblin (timed)

My cents:

I'm not sure about the terminology, but I think there are 2 main types of races, those that grant a permanent bonus, and therefor convert "as soon as possible", and those that grant a one-time bonus, and therefor convert "when they need it". So maybe this is equal to "front-loaded" and "timed".
Within front-loaded there is the Orc who is literally very front-loaded to the point that it's actually a good idea to mass-convert at Level 1; and the other races who are more gradual, i.e. benefit from early conversions, but will gain more and more power out of those early conversions as they level up.
Within timed there is Goblin, which is very specifically timed in the sense that you don't want to convert earlier, but just at the right moment; and the potion races, who generally don't mind converting earlier, but are normally fine to put converting off until they need the potions (which can be quite late in the game, considering the starting and standard loot potions).

1. Damage Races
Both Orc and Human benefit from early conversions. Orc very visbily, and Human much less so, but still I would call both races "front-loaded" in the sense that yes, you can put off conversion for a human by a few leves without massively losing out on damage, but when you're starting to get into town - around level 3-4 - their conversion is also starting to become significant. Unless you're in a situation where you want to use glyphs to level, and melee damage to fight the boss(es), you'll be converting latest in the mid-levels also with the Human. I would call the Orc "extremely front-loaded" and the Human "front-loaded" in the gradual sense.

2. Bar-boost Races
Both Elf and Dwarf are front-loaded in my opinion. The idea behind these races is that you become a little bit stronger with each conversion, and then you can leverage that bit of extra strength during each level; but there are very few cases when one of these races would actually benefit from holding off conversion until late in the game. It's true that their power increases exponentially with level-ups, but this only makes them gradual, but still front-loaded.

3. Potion Races
These would be both timed according to the terminology. Sure, in most games you can safely not even worry about converting before sometime the boss fight, maybe using up standard issue / loot potions earlier to pad gameplay. Then again, you can easily convert as early and often as you want, and just lug the small item potions until you need them. So I would say they're "timed" according to above terminology. Or, we could re-define "back-loaded" as those guys who are generally safe to put off conversion latest until they need the refills, which is usually the boss fight, and call them "back-loaded" instead.

4. Goblins
Very specifically, they need to time conversions just right, so too early is also not good for them. I would say they are "specifically timed" or something.

Specific point about Humans and Dwarves, who are listed as back-loaded. I fully agree that these races benefit a lot from levels, and only show the true benefit of conversions later on. That said, they need to convert early, to benefit from their bonus during the leveling phase, even if the bonus looks smaller initially. Consider that if all you want to do is spike the boss, and you put off conversions until the end, then invariably these races will look very poor in comparison to a Halfling, who gets a massive benefit from his conversion if he only cares about the boss fight. The only way a Dwarf can be remotely as effective as a Halfling is by converting early, and leveraging the extra health along the way.

Thoughts?
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Re: Races wiki page

Postby Lujo on Wed May 13, 2015 8:27 pm

Well, since I wrote it, I can explain it. The point of Dwarfs and Humans as being back loaded is that it's the way you play them most of the time. You can convert early, but you're much better off not dumping your glyphs and using them to help you level instead. Dwarves don't have to convert early at all, in fact that's how I figured out how to play them at any difficulty - dumping stuff before you have to is bad for them, if you want early health you buy/mooch it off a god. Humans simply don't have to convert before - you don't use your bonus to level, you use your conversion fodder glyphs. You can if you want, but you don't have to and you still cash in on your bonus (and you don't have to overexplore looking for them), which a very, very important difference between them and orcs.

I choose this terminology and division very, very specifically in place of what you suggest such as grouping damage races and potion races and making halflings look simmilar to gnomes and stuff was causing me problems and leads to problems with getting nice and smooth with using each race as it comes up. If I thought anyone would go messing with it I woldn't have written it, and if it's gonna be edited in that way can I request it rather be removed entirely? I did a lot of testing for this, tons of stuff started really working once I adjusted to thinking about it that way, and I didn't initially. If someone would mess with it, I'd seriously think they don't understand enough for me to even explain why not to do it, which is why I edited it without setting up a discussion, which was also very deliberate.
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Re: Races wiki page

Postby Tinker on Wed May 13, 2015 9:11 pm

Well, if what you wrote seems counterintuitive to me, I wonder how it seems to a newbie... Anyway, the reason I made the post (instead of editing even a single word) is not so much to argue or debate, but to get a feeling for how other vets feel (I'm certainly not one), maybe it's just me being slow and simplistic.

Btw the race groups I put up as arbitrary, I wouldn't group the races in any way on the wiki, I think 7 is few enough to talk about them individually. I just made the post this way because I do see a parallel between Elf and Dwarf and Halfling and Gnome. I didn't want to over-complicate things, but I normally think of them in a matrix, i.e. health races and mana races on one side and gradual and spike on the other. And Damage races have L1 spike and gradual. Goblin I don't so much think about, but if I do it's having it's own little group somewhere ;) Anyway, I digress.
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Re: Races wiki page

Postby Lujo on Wed May 13, 2015 9:23 pm

I know, and I was thinking the same way, but it was causing me problems untill I figured out how to look at them all individually. And also how to present them in a way that takes each of them as their own separate thing, which is actually rather good for getting comfortable with them. You might remember me being confused about why you hoard potions with gnomes? I'm not anymore - it makes perfect sense now, gnomes and halflings are very different because health and mana work differently. Thinking of Dwarves and elves as simmilar - that's a trap, they're not, again because of how different health and mana are. Orcs and Humans are also really different from each other, when you come down to it, humans have more in common with Dwarfs and Orcs with Elves, which looks counterintuitive, but it's actually true.

A class which works well with Elves can be very difficult with Dwarves or cause pointless resource spillover in the oposite case. Elves mostly help stuff level up or get more powerful from fight 1, that's their best use in all but a few specific cases, Dwarves help stuff cash in on leveling up. Elven thief kicks ass, Dwarven thief... not so much. You'd have to overexplore like mad and make investments and prep up and whatnot to make use of an Elven Warlord, Dwarf Warlord simply rewards a Warlord for being one with little extra effort. Etc Etc. Elf can convert all his glyphs but one and still get his part of the job done, the Dwarf is much better off using leveling glyphs to level and boss fight glyphs (Bycepps, Apheelsick, whatever) to fight the boss - converting early means sacrificing one or the other and that's just not a good way to play them (not to mention overexploring, which if you don't have to do - why do it? more blackspace means more B2P or just plain regen for the later big pool).

I might've gone a bit long in the paragraphs, it could use some trimming and a nice icon of the race for each section, but when someone gets a PQI with any of the races, more often than not, what I wrote up there is likely to work. The main point about front loading or back loading is when to use your race to level the class and when to use your class to level the race, and figuring this out and getting a hang of it lets anyone develop skills that can be applied on any run whatsoever and should let them play almost any PQI without fear.
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Re: Races wiki page

Postby Darvin on Wed May 13, 2015 9:36 pm

Bonuses in Desktop Dungeons either scale with level, or they don't. Bonuses that don't scale tend to have disproportionate benefit at low levels (think Fine Sword, which almost doubles your damage on a 1st level character!) but become less significant as you level up. As a result the non-scaling bonuses tend to be disproportionately powerful at low levels, while scaling bonuses don't become relatively significant until higher levels. This is what is meant by frontloaded or backloaded.

A classic example of frontloaded versus backloaded is the orc and human. Humans only gain 1 point of damage for every 2 conversion thresholds at the 1st level, so the orc's bonus is 2.5 times better value. This means humans have less impetus for early conversion, since the benefit isn't nearly as high as it is for orcs. This means the opportunity cost of forgoing possible use for glyphs will often exceed the relatively minor damage boost. Orcs, on the other hand, with their immediate and large bonus are under strain to leverage that early frontloaded advantage.
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Re: Races wiki page

Postby Lujo on Wed May 13, 2015 9:47 pm

What you discover when you play a lot of Dwarves, too, is the back end of that thing - you're much more likely to convert an end-game glyph if you convert early, but since you don't have to with a dwarf, you'll be able to convert the leveling glyphs (wonnafyt, imawal, wheytwut even getindare) when you're semi-done with them and make great use out of other ones which seem useless at the start (and you probably don't even have inventory space). Bycepss scales with levels! If you've got an odd number of +10% boosters, +30% is +1.5 per level (and if rounding does stuff then it's +2 - +16 damage at lvl 8, that's a lot!), that thing's actually pretty great if you don't just dump it and if you've got the health. And Dwarves being Dwarves, if you shoot for enough CP to have your bonus relevant in any way before, say, lvl 5 you'll probably convert everything you run into unless you overexplore or rush cp fodder instead of leveling gear etc. You just get so much more out of them if you do it the other way.

Converting glyphs and buying cp junk early on has an actual cost, for front loaded guys it solves enough stuff that it's often worth it (orc get virtual levels, elves get extra fireballs/glyphs per pool), back loaded guys want to get mileage out of that stuff, both the early and the late, and they ussually can. Halflings and gobbos just get more opportunities to get a hefty advantage from a well timed CP pop (gobbos naturally, halflings simply because of how large and cheap health boosts are everywhere and they and B2P work at low levels), while a random Gnome is really better off saving the potions for the end spike / spikes because the one firebal he can reliably get isn't necessarily gonna be worth blowing a glyph or gold on it (and he might be saving for refreshment, too), especially at low levels.

EDIT: Oh, crap, I forgot to mention that the Rogue is a consistent exception to the general Dwarf outlook :lol: He's one dwarf you want to convert whatever on pretty early, which is actually quite rare.
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Re: Races wiki page

Postby Tinker on Thu May 14, 2015 4:57 am

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Re: Races wiki page

Postby Darvin on Thu May 14, 2015 7:18 am

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Re: Races wiki page

Postby Lujo on Thu May 14, 2015 10:16 am

I put them down as Frontloaded because of how hitting the thresholds early is quite meaninful. The threshold doesn't have to be 18 mana (allthough you can do that, too), but the more fights you do while having optimal (not necessarily maximal) mana pool size the more you get out of being an elf. It made me appreciate them hugely on random runs, and had me choosing an Elven Berserker a few times for completion runs. And also, because most reported pure caster elves seem to have been played almost orc-like frontloaded.
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Re: Races wiki page

Postby Tinker on Thu May 14, 2015 11:28 am

Well, it all seems quite arbitrary.

If you want to focus on theory, then there's math to show that if you convert just for the end, nothing beats Halfling or Gnome. So the only way and Elf or Dwarf or Human or Orc can stay relevant is by converting earlier, and benefiting from their bonuses during several levels (as opposed to just the boss fights).

If you want to bring anecdotal evidence, it might be different. I can only speak from my own experience, which is:
Orc: aggressive early conversion to get a head start on the map.
Elf: varies by build; some builds convert as Orcs, some go more relaxed, and there's even some that can put off conversions until the end. But in, let's say, 80% of the builds I want to convert with them as early as possible (not as aggressively as an Orc; I would keep a utility glyph and try to get its benefits during first few levels and then convert latest around L5-ish).
Dwarf: almost always want to convert early, again latest by L3-5s or so, to enjoy the increased health pool for multiple level-ups.
Human: bonus starts to show by L3-5 so I normally convert most of the stuff by then. Sure, I'll keep something that's worth more than 10% attack bonus, but this is not a timing thing.
Gnome: I normally don't bother converting until the boss fight. Any mana spike I need before can be done via the standard issue / loot potions. Again, some builds require early conversion, but 80% of the time I'm fine not even thinking about it until bossfight.
Halfling: similar story as Gnome, except there are more builds that favor early conversions (Alchemist Scroll / Trisword tricks, etc.). That said, played straight up, I don't worry about conversion until L6-7+ (or maybe even as late as the bossfight).
Goblin: timing is critical, I think we all agree on this one, I usually keep most of the stuff for a mid-fight level-up against the boss, but spend some resources to pad leveling along the way, or to get out of a tough spot if I'm stuck.
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