About the priest...

[Darvin]

Woah, now you're talking about reworking two classes? One of which is working just fine as-is? Not only do I have to disagree with this, but it's almost certainly a non-starter at this stage. Frankly I'm amazed we got the wizard rework.

[Lujo]

No, no, that wasn't serious, I was just throwing it out there as the most radical approach to the whole thing.

I'd be happy if they just spruce up the Priest a tiny bit somehow, they've been hesitant to touch him because of how "straightforward" he is for beginners.

But as far as hypothetical theorycrafting goes - that there's the core of something I've been thinking about for months and months whenever I had a DD binge. Also the "big health likes dings" thing is the essence of the healthmonster - and the priest looks like prime healthmonster material - except he cant get good with GG, can't really get good with Drac, doesn't have damage or resists and cant ding (or fill up the fire heart). And if he could ding he wouldn't necessarily need the potion spike.

(Also, I'm privately growing more and more alienated with the fighter - his ding power really ran away with his "generalist" thing and turned him into a spellcaster, but that's just me. The +1 XP per kill thing couple with the "needs less XP" is strong enough to make a class with practicaly no other features top notch).

[Blovski]

It's really weird seeing everyone hyping his GGness at the moment given he's exactly the same as when I used him tons and everyone else ignored him and went gooey for Tikki, Drac and Binlor. I think the power balance of those four gods is pretty good at the moment (Tikki poison needing a small buff aside). GG Rogue is preposterous, but that's really the Rogue's fault rather than GG's.

Edit:

On topic, sense undead would be a really good little improvement... I've always kinda liked the priest but I think that'd make him better in non-undead-heavy dungeons.

[Lujo]

@Blovski: Well, I think when you came up with it we were just coming off a collective relief that GG was nerfed after being more broken in every possible way than anything in the game now (and up there with ever) EDIT - nerfed and still playable and strong. Plus we were really happy about you making dvarwes work.

But the dwarven paladin layed waste to anything I put him against lately, and I had 5-10 runs during the playthrough (any run I picked up GG) which can only be summed up as "GG won it for me". And everythign else has sort of been brought in line - Bloodswell got it's curses limitation, TT took several much needed nerfs (poison might still need a small buff), and Mystera seems to be handing a bit too much piety ATM. Darvin's complaining about JJ, but GG being too front loaded has become the obvious power peak these days.

It's not just the Rogue, even though it incidentally breaks balacing on the Rogue big time, and whenever something does that you can take the Rogue with a Triswrd or Dragonshield and beat VICIOUS Gaan'Telet.

EDIT: @Blovski: Come to think of it - you explained all this to me back then - healthmonsters ding!, if they can't they just stop. Fire Heart, Drac, GG or Dings! I was asking about how he'd fare in VICIOUS GT, and you said that if a big health guy can't ding - you're done.

EDIT2: Not saying any of this should be done (excep maybe scout undead of some sort), but it's really telling that the paladin is beating the priest at the health game big time, while the priest is practicaly nothing but healthmonster material in theory - in practice, he doesn't have any real traction with relevant gods (heck, he has deterrents with those, and no traction with any gods but Taurog) and plays like a weaksauce/situational powerhouse... fighter guy. While the fighter on the other hand is riding the 10% XP / TT discount into secure spellcaster territory because there isn't really anything else to build him for.

And dings is all a first tier class can have - hence my theoretical and unimplementable solution to making a big health based class work. Because all the other stuff requires resists or unlocks, and that's too advanced for the first tier.

[Lujo]

Having textwalled all this (some of it in 3 iterations -.- at myself) - I'd settle for sense undead (I also think it'd be a huge buff in practice), and possibly a way to help him with getting XP. Being able to fight higher level undead and find them IS a way to help him with XP, but again - he's so ill suited to what he's focused on (or unattractive compared to other options) that he could use a substantial buff.

Having a functional healthmonster material would also have me playing dwarves in the early game more, and my PQI less flooded with them. I mainly used them for Rogues, because I wanted to avoid GG for the longest while.

And in case it's not obvious - i'm really interested in the possiblity of the devs reducing the number of classes/combos which naturally benefit too much from the current trisword. it can't be fiddled with too much right now, and you sort of have to keep it lockered for quests/PQI/completion with classes for which it's the only real option (or seems like).

[paplaukes]

Flavour wise fighter is good, and can still be fun to play - tried it with a balancing dagger yet? Quite a different experience.
Simple, but works. Same could be said about all 1st tier classes. It's just the undead bit for priests is random.

Why the discussion about 1st tier without resists/unlocks? Why does the class have to have a strat to it? I don't recall priest being hard to play early on.

[Blovski]

The Paladin vs. Priests as Healthmonsters thing is interesting. That said, GG priest is still workable (desecrate someone) and a Taurog->Drac Priest is usually pretty solid.

The healthmonster Dwarfadin is delightful and more or less a perfect storm of class features, items and god boons - if you took away any of those he'd kind of crumple on vicious - but he's still only a some-maps solution. He's really strong on high-XP, high-gold maps with loads of debuffers (so Dragon Isles is his perfect map, Naga City is very good) but not especially good on low resource maps (I will get you yet Demonic Library...). I think as a strategy it's probably less indiscriminately good than either the Binlor MR builder, the GG Rogue or the end-game Drac-swell-a-tron.

As with basically any vet-used combo at the moment, the healthmonster will destroy a hard map...

But then, I just did a (goblin for quest reasons, so suboptimal) bloodmage, fireball, Mystera (no other preps) run on Creeplight and I started the 3-stage boss at level 4 and finished at level 6-7 with no potion use, no refreshment, no mystic balance, half the map and both subdungeons unexplored... so, I sort of think that if you're competent more or less anything will flatten a vicious.

The GG Rogue is and always has been a bit daft in terms of power level, though I think he's kind of just replacing the old Rogue-with-alchemist-scroll and trisworder-TT-rogues are equally monstrous. Taurog Rogues aren't bad either, Binlor Rogues are solid, JJ Rogues aren't a bad proposition... shame the GG monster's obscuring the others.

[Naoya]

Undead sensing sounds like an good idea - its a bit too conditional otherwise.

How about drinking H-Potions boosts something , similar too Bloodmage?

[Lujo]

Flavour wise fighter is good, and can still be fun to play - tried it with a balancing dagger yet? Quite a different experience.
Simple, but works. Same could be said about all 1st tier classes. It's just the undead bit for priests is random.

That isn't necessarily true - Fighter is the king of ding, up there with the Assasin and Bloodmage. People were complaining about him being too plain (and he sort of was), so he got what turned out to be a huge buff.

The thief used to be one of the strongest classes - and sort of still is. He was so good he made everyone else look bad by comparison (potions worked for health and mana simultaneously for full effect, was ridiculous).

Wizard was only bad in the beggining - once you unlocked a bunch of stuff, he was top notch, and still is (he might lose the faster burn stacking soonish, he's a bit overloaded ATM).

Those 3 are strong! They just seem a bit worse than the other guys because you get to play them in a limited unlock environment. They work with anything - fighter can work in any dungeon, thief was built to be a generalist as well, and the wizard is the byword for flexibility.

And then you have the priest who is totaly single minded, off flavour and isn't all that good at what he's supposed to be if you take his abilities at face value. And stuff he builds into later works good enough on other guys that I assume, and others have confirmed, that he could use a bit of a buff.

So I suggested several variants to see what people think. Then talking with you made me come up with a moderate variant - set him up with a few indulgences - let him hook up with GG and Drac but only to a degree. Then I though about a realy radical variant and just put it out there for discussion.

The GG Rogue is and always has been a bit daft in terms of power level, though I think he's kind of just replacing the old Rogue-with-alchemist-scroll and trisworder-TT-rogues are equally monstrous. Taurog Rogues aren't bad either, Binlor Rogues are solid, JJ Rogues aren't a bad proposition... shame the GG monster's obscuring the others.

This is true, but it's also true of any health boosting approach, which means GG is just the easiest to use way of boosting your health. Heck, a Dvarfadin would still probably be good enough if Absolution gave 2 health per level, or cost 4, or whatever. And yes - there are too many ways to make a Rogue work - the big question isn't even whetehr Rogues should be nerfed but whether reliance on this has led to feedback/situation where there are dungeons which are considered "fair", but are in fact impossible or way out of tier for a lot of classes (NL comes to mind).

And as for the BM comment - that thing is broken. Introduces too many extra resources into any dungeon he walks into - why this is so, I do not know...

How about drinking H-Potions boosts something , similar too Bloodmage?

Having mana potions do something for him would be even better. And 3-4 indulgences wouldn't hurt anyone. Indulgence upon drinking a mana potion? Anyone?

[q 3]

It might be interesting to give the Priest one or more deity-related abilities, since oddly the Church lacks those generally. (Paladin's monotheism, and that's it. If we count the Crusader as an honorary Church member then we also get the extra altar, but if we do that then I get to complain about how the Fighter's Guild needs a fourth tier member. )

What if the Priest got Scout: Altar? Not the really powerful one that was formerly a prep, just show the one tile for each altar in the dungeon. Maybe a built in Agnostic Collar? Call it "Sanctification" and let him desecrate rival altars for free. That'd get the indulgences and piety covered. Both would also maybe be useful teaching tools for the power of deities / the power of desecrating.

(I actually don't think the Priest has a significant problem worshiping GG. Now, yes, the Halfling Priest has a tough time, but that's more because Halflings, like Gnomes and Goblins, don't get along too well with the old man. Those of us who aren't obsessed with the various "drink a ridiculous number of potions" strategies make do just fine by keeping a careful eye on available piety and altars to convert into or desecrate.)