Chaos Theory

[Lujo]

I think my and Avatars point needs a bit of clearing up, for academic purposes.

the problem we have with this kind of stuff is the following - even though you can pretty much beat everything with everything (and Avatar certanly can and has, and what he hasn't I probably did and so can a bunch of other guys), you still need to use your brain to do so, keep track of different parts of the playing screen, different features, altars, whathaveyou.

The Monkrog approach is just one of those where your gameplan is devolved to near-mindlessness from the get go - and it works. It works where it works, but that's a lot of places, and since it's an entirely preppable strat, every time you run into a phys challenge you can prep it. Every time you have any reason to try it, you have every reason to try it unless you're specifically looking to chalenge yourself. Nothing beats it in terms of investing the least ammount of brainpower in the game atm. Even if some other stuff beats it in sheer damage output, very little beats it in terms of realiablility and efortlessness.

I know this, and Avatar probably does, because we know that we need to pay attention to whats going on on the screen a lot more in other cases - yes, we can do crazy stuff with most anything, but at least it takes some effort. I can always probably finish a Gaan'Telet run with a Tinker, but it will take me an hour and involve a whole lot of features, while a Crusader run will take me half as long and require a lot less effort. When you tape it it's quite visible. That kind of thing.

What happens here is: You prep Taurog, pick monk, prep either the wraps, platemail or whatever, and all the other preps are unnecessary cheeze. Then you worship Taurog. Every glyph that appears on the screen - conversion fodder, no thought invested, every shop - ignore for most part, your inventory'll be full, or buy and convert, other altars - naah, I'm cool with the one I prepped, phys monsters - youre a resistmonster with 2X regen and Taurogs gear, too many magic damage monsters - either you've typed in the wrong cheatcode or you can beat them up for more piety.

Executing it perfectly can be summed up into a rather short algorythm.

So in essence youre prefectly set up against almost any phys dungeon with a few preps, can safely not waste a neuron thinking about almost all gameplay features in a dungeon. Being a good player is sort of required to know when you can play like a total noob and get away with it, this allows you to play like a total noob and get away with it far too frequently and sucessfully

[gjaustin]

[Lujo]

And you'd probably win. Which is why there ought to be a tweak to Taurog rather than anything else, and that nerf could be taking away the % bonus on Unstoppable Fury, or at least on subsequent casts. If what I wrote was why we didn't like something like that happening and what exactly it was, your post is 100% accurate in how it came about.

There's other places to tweak him sure.

And as for the monk not being top tier - he still "walking hack" tier in any scenario that doesn't involve a LOT of curse and magic damage. Sure, there's levels where he's unuseable, but where he IS usable nothing comes within a mile. All the nerfs did to him was make him play the game like the rest of the guys instead of lolstomping just anywhere, which is why I don't mind him anymore - as long as I have to work for my hackery, I don't mind the hackery all that much.

[Abraxas]

I might be mistaken, but I get the feeling that what you call "walking hack" tier is just what I would call an experienced player playing a class they're comfortable with. The same argument can be made about virtually any class by players familiar with them enough.

As far as Taurog is concerned, don't forget that one of his main appeals is the very fact that he's so straightforward to use. An experienced player may feel like he just enables "dumb" strategies, but he's definitely not the only culprit of this, and you can't underestimate the worth of his effectiveness even when played straightforwardly. I still remember how fundamental Taurog was to even get me to play around with gods back when I was a beginner.
As for the bonus damage in his boons (unstoppable fury included), I don't see the point in removing them. I really don't think it's going to make Taurog strategies any less efficient in easier dungeons, but it will remove an edge that he very much needs to be competitive on harder dungeons.

[Lujo]

I think I can show what I mean without further spamming. I'm comfortable with Fighter in VICIOUS, I'm not comfortable with Monk in sub-vicious at the victory screen. There's a difference. I'll make a vid on it, probably, its quite obvious when you can see it.

And the last point could be right - I really don't know whether it would help or not. Issue got too much coverage, I'll spam no more.

[Fran]

I'm with abraxas and gjaustin here, especially the point about monk not being top tier anymore.
Curse management depends heavily on popcorn usage, and that is one of the last things a new player is capable off, so this really makes things difficult. Also, when the bosses are random, there is more than a fair chance that you end up with a magic damage boss anyway.

Just compare the taurog monk to a mystera sorcerer. With a little practice you can fireball almost everything within the hard dungeons to death with the fireballs and it doesn't require "much thinking" either. It works on more bosses than the taurog approach and even on dungeons with more than one boss. I'd say it's even easier to play as you don't even need to consider all those status effects you can get by attacking the enemy. Still no one would complain about burndayraz being too powerful to use or nerfing mystera.

[The Avatar]

@gjaustin: People tend to focus on the monkrog because Taurog removes his two big weaknesses: -% bonus AND -base damage. People don't talk about the rogues and berserkers to much, IMO, because the Monk has the capability to far surpass both of them. While a plain Monkrog losses to berserkers and rogues of the aforementioned god, a monk who converts in from Binlor (with some hefty magic res) and preps elite items (to get more magic res or the gauntlets) will surpass them in most situations. You just have to preserve your popcorn.

I have gotten 75% resist all and I prepped platemail. That is incredible. 45% from Binlor, 15% from guanlets, 15% from Taurog. 50% starting, 15% from Taurog, 10% from Tower Shield. If I had happened up on the dwarven gauntlets it would have been broken. While I acknowledge that's a VERY infrequent situation, it illustrates how an ideal monk is by far the most broken thing (except maybe a Vamp with incredible damage and life steal) and that itself could be more ideal. Sorry, I kind of rambled there.

Here's a summary:

People focus more on the monk because he can reach a much higher level of power than other classes and people focus on Monkrog cause Taurog fixes his weaknesses.

Grats on post 900 gjaustin!

@Fran: I disagree. Mystera Sorcerers cannot fireball everything to death. Most bosses and higher level enemies will have too much hp. Of course if you play smartly and mix in well timed physical hits it's an entirely different matter, but fireball only is not going to be enough for a new player.

[Fran]

[The Avatar]

I know, people complain because they know what he can become.

I concede points 2 and 3.

[gjaustin]