Regen Fighting vs DING! sipike enablers/disablers/support

[Lujo]

+1 regen sounds fine for an item though.

There, an item that added a level to your existing level for regeneration purposes (or even 2, possibly), could put regen fighting as a concept into a spotlight in no unclear way. Anyone trying to figure out exactly how to make use of that item would look at how eating blackspace works at all. He'll certanly end up pleasantly surprised when he discovers tier 2 classes which mostly have a good sinergy with it.

We got somewhere, unless someone can come up with how this is theoreticaly and practicaly broken. I don't see one, though.

And I'd deffinitely like it on an item rather than a boon, since boons are allready the main source of % based regen stacking antics. Wouldn't like to lose the current Troll Heart though, I love that thing to death. Having one more source of cheap early CP for gold-happy runs wouldn't hurt either, probably...

[The Avatar]

Agreed. It's too bad there's no troll boss, or we could make it an item for beating that. If it has to come in early, how about the reward for Beginner's Brigade?

[Lujo]

Agreed. It's too bad there's no troll boss, or we could make it an item for beating that. If it has to come in early, how about the reward for Beginner's Brigade?

Would be nice. A really early easy to deal with troll boss with fast regen might be a good idea. Nandrew was talking about considering a fast regen boss anyway. Not sure where to put him to make him easily acessible though.

Begginers brigade reward wouldn't be a bad idea either, although the item does muddy up the pool for newbie spikers a bit, unless the CP's good. I might not even mind it increesing the inital shop pool, though, to put in the game really early and get people wondering about how it fits in the grander scheme of things.

Making him the boss of Hobbler's Hold would also be awesome, though ^^

[The Avatar]

Where would it be? I personally like the idea of a quest that just stuffs him Venture Cave right after you beat BB. It would unlock 2nd gen ion completion.

[Sidestepper]

I think you're drawing to strong of a dualism here. There are plenty powers and items that enable regen fighting, and just because something helps you spike doesn't also mean that it isn't also a regen tool. Anything that increases your damage per square impacts your regen fighting ability. This includes (examples are meant to be representative, not comprehensive):

Base Damage (Fine Sword, Orcs, Tuarog)
Attack Bonus (Humans, Powerups, Priest v Undead, Rogues)
Resistances (Tower Shield, Blood Shield, Monks, Bersekers)
Damage Reduction (Earthmother, Platemail, Tuarog)
Mana to Damage (Fireball, BYSEPS, PISORF, HALPMEH)
Poison

So really, there's lots of early game content that supports regen fighting (BYSEPS in particular is a glyph for people who prefer efficiency over burst power). The thing is, regen fighting is only possible when you have a huge mathematical advantage over your opponent. Ding! Fighting only requires you to be able to do slightly less than half of the monster's health in one pass, which is a very common occurrence. Regen fighting requires you to do more net damage per square than your opponent does. In the absence of resistances and magic, this boils down to having the product of your damage and level by higher than that of the monster. Since you're only regen fighting things that are higher level than you, that's not very common. At low levels, even a one level difference is huge (that means that a monster-2 heals TWICE as fast as you), and you haven't picked up as many powerups and items yet.

At higher levels, level difference starts to mean less, and you've acquired enough boons/items/conversions/powerups/magic to be operating at a power level that exceeds your nominal level. That's when regen fighting starts to become viable. Even then, I think very carefully before trying to regen fight a boss. Once I've started in on the boss, it is no longer possible to kill of any more non-popcorn monsters (I mean, I could, but that would put me hopelessly far behind and would require me to start over with the already invested resources lost). I keep a mental checklist of the highest level monsters (there are 2 9s, 3 8s, and 4 7s), and if there is enough high level experience hiding in the blackspace to enable one more ding, I will usually forgo the regen option and instead pick the map clean of resources.

More commonly, I use regen fighting to get early-ish takedowns on high level monsters, using the blackspace to load the catapult for when I find the boss.

[The Avatar]

Agreed. Basically everything helps both. The concept of regen fighting is basically using tiles as a resource. Just another resource like potions, bloodpools, hp, or mana. The only reason it is viewed differently is because it is more complex than other resource because it isn't just helping you and it has a threshold. Still, it's a resource, and it's part of optimization.

[Darvin]

Math should be done to figure out wether this turns them into monks at some point, and which point.

The tricky part is to acquire CP you have to explore to find shops and glyphs, which reduces the amount of remaining exploration available. I'm sure you could get monk-ish results at low levels, but at a certain point your CP just won't be able to keep up without tapping your exploration space early. Monks don't have to "find" their class feature by exploration, and thus can better conserve exploration space throughout the game. The dwarves I've suggested do not have this luxury.

If for no other reason then figuring out would that make Dwarf Monks megamonks

Not quite as concerned about Monks. So long as the bonus stacks linearly, I suspect damage will be more preferable for them since their health regeneration is already high enough and they want to pack a bigger punch with each hit.

I do agree that a +1 regeneration item would be nice, though.

[Sidestepper]

Agreed. Basically everything helps both.

Well, not quite. Max Health and max mana have little bearing on regen fighting, although they do let you start closer to the finish line.

[Lujo]

I think you're drawing to strong of a dualism here.

It's true, except I'm not really saying the two are mutually exclusive. Just saying that there is a lot of stuff which helps only spike approaches, while stuff which helps regen ussually helps both. Except paired with poison (which instantly turns anyone into a regen fighter if applicable) and %Res (which is basicaly the only supported way of regen fighting besides poison and doesn't need further support as it kicks ass).

I'm sort of looking for either stuff that's allready there and I've overlooked, like your nicely pointed out BYCEPSS, or potential Regen Fighting tools that could theoreticaly exist, like the +1 effective level thingy. Trying to see if depth could be added to the concept without hamfisted stuff.

There are plenty powers and items that enable regen fighting, and just because something helps you spike doesn't also mean that it isn't also a regen tool. Anything that increases your damage per square impacts your regen fighting ability. This includes (examples are meant to be representative, not comprehensive):

Base Damage (Fine Sword, Orcs, Tuarog)
Attack Bonus (Humans, Powerups, Priest v Undead, Rogues)
Resistances (Tower Shield, Blood Shield, Monks, Bersekers)
Damage Reduction (Earthmother, Platemail, Tuarog)
Mana to Damage (Fireball, BYSEPS, PISORF, HALPMEH)
Poison

Blood shield? Otherwise nice list that helps with making that compendium, thanx.
EDIT: oh, Drac's boon, figured it out.

The thing is, regen fighting is only possible when you have a huge mathematical advantage over your opponent. Ding! Fighting only requires you to be able to do slightly less than half of the monster's health in one pass, which is a very common occurrence. Regen fighting requires you to do more net damage per square than your opponent does. In the absence of resistances and magic, this boils down to having the product of your damage and level by higher than that of the monster. Since you're only regen fighting things that are higher level than you, that's not very common. At low levels, even a one level difference is huge (that means that a monster-2 heals TWICE as fast as you), and you haven't picked up as many powerups and items yet.

And this is a very good summary going for the "no way to do it otherwise than the ones we allready got" argument, which is also fine - I can't think of any ATM either, because of the same logic.

However, maybe I have to restate that by "early game" I ment early kingdom development. When you apply it during the run matters little to me, because about what you said - %Res based regen fighting shows that once you can efectively use it the mathematical advantge over the monster is allready huge. Any approach based on the same principe would would either be broken as all hells (if introduced in a single serving like the poison boon, when appllicable), or need exploration and circumstance to assemble "critical mass" like the %Res go.

I was looking for more small, moderate stuff ideas like BYCEPSS and the +1 item, which could be more available from the start to help introduce regen fighting as a concept in small ways before the Monk and TT show up. Platemail is one such thing, say, but my own overreliance on it last profile again points to the seemigly inherent "if it works it's too damn efficent" quality of regen fighting.

Otherwise nice writeup

[Nandrew]

*Not* going to make any promises here, except that there's one or two interesting ideas here and I'm going to bring something up at today's design meeting regarding this matter.