First!

[GoatBot]

Discussion - First!

[gjaustin]

Glad to see the change that reduces APHEELSIK to 5 mana. I think that'll be about where it belongs.

But I'm not happy with the Gorgon change. It's better at higher levels, but terrible at lower ones. And the ability to kill a level 3/4 monster at level 1 is the only thing that kept the Gorgon as a decent class. Even with this change, she's still clearly the worst class.

[Lujo]

Liking the update, looking forward to getting on with my playthrough

[paplaukes]

Not really a patch comment but I always enjoy reading the news/blog posts

Might start using APHEELSIK more often with this change. I like how it works with assassin, useful for monk, other than that, felt bit on the expensive side. Assassins lightfoot change... bummer, but makes sense.

[Darvin]

Well, poison is still horrible for low-level characters. I'll give APHEELSIK another shot, but I somehow doubt this will rescue it from the "convert on sight" status it had as of the last version. I still say the glyph needs some heavy front-loading so it's useful for low-level characters.

On-attack poison looks like it's balanced on the presumption that you're a Monk. I can't see non-monks getting any use out of numbers this low. The Gorgon's current numbers look like a bare minimum low-ball. If she keeps these low numbers, she'll need to lose her attack bonus penalty.

Also you'll need to buff mystic balance now, since it affects too few glyphs. It only benefitted five glyphs (two of which it only has half-effect on), and you just removed one of them. In fact, APHEELSIK arguably had the strongest synergy with this boon of any glyph to begin with, so that's a pretty significant reduction in its utility. Mystic Balance was already borderline underpowered to begin with, so it definitely needs help now.

Finally, please don't let the Transmuter fall through the cracks. Stacking strength bonus was a core class feature and he needs a counter-buff now that you've taken it away.

[subanark]

If we compare poison to fireball, we have poison winning out when fighting enemies when you have tiles to explore. If you are the same level and you try to out regenerate an enemy, you will get a 1:1 ratio on poison (you explore 5 tiles and get back the mana you spent just as poison runs out) vs fireball with a 2:3 ratio plus the healing debuff (you spend 6 mana to do 4x damage while 2x is recovered by the time you finish exploring before the healing debuff). Ultimatly I guess the healing debuff and burning effect cause fireball to win out most times.

Some suggestions:
Remove the healing debuff from fireball, it is complex enough without it, and it ends up being too similar to poison.
Although I haven't played in a while I assume poison is still binary resist. If you make it partiality resistant instead it may help things out. E.g. with 40% resist, a monster only receives 3 stacks of poison per level instead of 5.

[ChasGB]

Remove the healing debuff from fireball, it is complex enough without it, and it ends up being too similar to poison.

This would be a massive nerf to caster classes, especially the wizard.

Also you'll need to buff mystic balance now, since it affects too few glyphs. It only benefitted five glyphs (two of which it only has half-effect on), and you just removed one of them. In fact, APHEELSIK arguably had the strongest synergy with this boon of any glyph to begin with, so that's a pretty significant reduction in its utility. Mystic Balance was already borderline underpowered to begin with, so it definitely needs help now.

What kind of buff did you have in mind? One thing that I hate about Mystic Balance is when playing as sorcerer it gimps the class's ability to heal from spell casting at higher levels. Lowering the balance point to 4 would help all of the other classes, but the Sorceror would take a small hit. Maybe if it stayed at 5 but introduced an increased mana regeneration effect?

[subanark]

Fireball is already useful is most situations, I don't really think it needs to be more powerful than other glyph in most of those. Wizard already got a buff it damage anyways. Fireball has burst, while poison should be better for taking out strong enemies at the expense of having to explore more tiles. If fireball would need a buff it could be something like: 3 mana for 2 damage per level (although this would mess up various puzzles, and be a nerf to counter-fireball abilities). That would put first strike as the ultimate burst glyph (seeing as you really can only use it once pre fight).

[gjaustin]

Fireball is already useful is most situations, I don't really think it needs to be more powerful than other glyph in most of those. Wizard already got a buff it damage anyways. Fireball has burst, while poison should be better for taking out strong enemies at the expense of having to explore more tiles. If fireball would need a buff it could be something like: 3 mana for 2 damage per level (although this would mess up various puzzles, and be a nerf to counter-fireball abilities). That would put first strike as the ultimate burst glyph (seeing as you really can only use it once pre fight).

The reason that Fireball has the anti-regen functionality is that the devs were looking for ways to encourage regen fighting earlier in the game. And around that time I made a suggestion that burning should turn off Troll's fast regen, which seems to have inspired them to do this.

It's a pretty minor bonus and is actually harmful in some situations (e.g. removing death protections on AAs for your popcorn bowl). And the flavor makes perfect sense, so I hope they keep it around.

[Darvin]

If we compare poison to fireball, we have poison winning out when fighting enemies when you have tiles to explore.

I ran a few tests for a level 1-2 assassin on Den of Danger.

vs level 2 Dragonspawn
10 HP, 4 damage, 10 MP, first strike finisher
Fireball requires 12 tiles exploration
Poison requires 12 tiles exploration

vs level 2 Dragonspawn
13 HP, 4 damage, 13 MP, first strike finisher
Fireball requires 0 tiles exploration (can spike for kill)
Poison requires 9 tiles exploration

vs level 2 Warlock
13 HP, 4 damage, 13 MP, first strike finisher
Fireball requires 0 tiles exploration (can spike for kill)
Poison requires 6 tiles exploration

The bottom line is that the Assassin is a pretty piss poor regen-fighter, and he's much more likely to be able to find a way to damage-spike to victory at the 1st level than use poison to any such effect. I was unable to find any level 3+ enemies that the Assassin could take down (without boons or items or other glyphs [I found BLUDTUPOWA, which blows new APHEELSIK out of the water], which I'm not considering for this test). Needless to say, compared to old poison this is a massive nerf. So, moving on to level 2 assassin:

vs level 3 Gorgon
26 HP, 10 damage, 13 MP
Fireball requires 0 tiles exploration (can spike for kill)
Poison requires 6 tiles exploration

vs level 4 Warlorck
26 HP, 10 damage, 13 MP
Fireball requires 12 tiles exploration (just shy of a spike; only needed to the 2 extra points of burning to pull it off)
Poison requires 12 tiles exploration

And this is with the 40% damage bonus for attacking a poisoned enemy (which I made sure I capitalized on for the poison test). I can see Monks using new APHEELSIK, but characters without serious resistances can chuck it in the conversion bin. Even with a 40% attack bonus tacked on it's of questionable value.

So in its current state APHEELSIK is borderline usable, but it's down there with WONAFYT as one of the weakest glyphs in the game. I'd hate to see it left like this.

What kind of buff did you have in mind? One thing that I hate about Mystic Balance is when playing as sorcerer it gimps the class's ability to heal from spell casting at higher levels

It has no effect on the Sorcerer. Your spells cost less mana, but you can cast them more frequently so the effect cancels out completely. The only case it could cause a problem is if you hit an unfavourable threshold, but you're just as likely to hit a more favourable threshold.

A piety cost decrease would probably work best (I think 35 would be reasonable). Reducing the balance point to 4 MP would be cool and add the game's huge number of 5-MP glyphs to the list of those that benefit, while also sparing PISORF from the penalty box. Unfortunately, it'd probably be serious overkill for BURNDAYRAZ (effectively a 50% damage increase, equivalent to having both the flames boon and the battlemage ring). If there was some way to deal with the BURNDAYRAZ problem, then I'd say the 4 MP balance point would be the perfect solution, but that one glyph would definitely benefit way too much.