Bug Stomper

[Blovski]

New Stheno text is nice btw (acid caster assassin hoarder *cackle* - like the strat)

[Sidestepper]

I think that the effect of a large potion start on the trisword has been magnified in people's minds. I've been saying since the beginning that it was the sword, not the potions. My gnome tinker had +42 damage one level 1. Okay, now he can only have +38. It doesn't even touch the problem while completely shutting down moderate and reasonable strategies.

Bleh. This feels like the Rogue problem all over again. The Rogue was getting too much power out of CYDSTEP. Solution: make the CYDSTEP hard to use for classes with high health. Absolution was giving too much burst health all at once. Solution: Price it so only low health characters get significant value out of it.

Problem: Trisword was giving unreasonable amounts of damage at low levels: Solution: shut out utility potions and decrease the trisword's power by 10%.

o_O

[gjaustin]

I think that the effect of a large potion start on the trisword has been magnified in people's minds. I've been saying since the beginning that it was the sword, not the potions. My gnome tinker had +42 damage one level 1. Okay, now he can only have +38. It doesn't even touch the problem while completely shutting down moderate and reasonable strategies.

Yeah, I personally save most of the potions to the end anyway.

But I think it's still a good change in that getting 3 bonus potions is just a little too much for one prep.

[Darvin]

Problem: Trisword was giving unreasonable amounts of damage at low levels: Solution: shut out utility potions and decrease the trisword's power by 10%.

That just makes it even more focused on the gnome and halfling. For those guys health/mana potions can add up to 15 quite easily (+30) and losing out on +10 or whatever from other potion types isn't a big deal. For humans, you're rarely going to get more than 9 potions (+18) and this means what you get from utility potions is a fairly large chunk of your total. In fact, with 5 starting utility potions and 4 from an apothecary, it will make up more than half of all your potion use.

Anyways, I do agree with you that individually a few extra hits on the trisword don't add up to much, so I don't think there's a huge harm in combining the burn cure and fortitude potion into a single prep slot.

[Sidestepper]

Yep. It's one of those changes that devalues an approach that was marginal for most classes while basically not affecting the classes that were being problematic.

[Blovski]

I think that the effect of a large potion start on the trisword has been magnified in people's minds. I've been saying since the beginning that it was the sword, not the potions. My gnome tinker had +42 damage one level 1. Okay, now he can only have +38. It doesn't even touch the problem while completely shutting down moderate and reasonable strategies.

Yeah, I personally save most of the potions to the end anyway.

But I think it's still a good change in that getting 3 bonus potions is just a little too much for one prep.

I have to admit, if I was going trisword I'd take Str-Reflex-Dodge, kill a level 5 or whatever at level 1, have +6 (maybe even skip to +10 with mana potion and burn salve or something) damage for the whole game, skip the difficult early levels and leave a prepped TT lying around for the end game. Now, if I want to hurl all my conversion and potions and gold into triswording to get a ridiculous attack score, that's a specialist build and doesn't bother me. What seems to have been the case is that people were using Trisword on most any race and class combo instead of other preps because it lets fairly low-effort early power use translate into substantial long-term generic boosts... this change doesn't completely disable that, but it might lead to a bigger variety in prep use.

Edit:
The power thing for trisword munchkins and the power thing that led to triswords being used on just about EVERYONE is a different deal though. I don't mind having a few trisword munchkin classes kicking around, I kind of mind it superseding most other prep combos just because it was so good without even trying.

[Darvin]

Yep. It's one of those changes that devalues an approach that was marginal for most classes while basically not affecting the classes that were being problematic.

Trisword is not marginal for humans. Not in the slightest; a human trisword wielder is quite powerful. It's not in the same order of cheese as the halfling/gnome variety, but it's still a very strong approach.

I have to admit, if I was going trisword I'd take Str-Reflex-Dodge, kill a level 5 or whatever at level 1, have +6 (maybe even skip to +10 with mana potion and burn salve or something) damage for the whole game, skip the difficult early levels and leave a prepped TT lying around for the end game

This is also a completely workable approach.

[Sidestepper]

I'd really rather just see a level cap put on the sword. That solves the problem for all cases without having secondary effects.

[Darvin]

I'd really rather just see a level cap put on the sword. That solves the problem for all cases without having secondary effects.

Agreed; maximum effect +3 per level and the problem is solved.

[Sidestepper]

Anyways, grousing aside, I do appreciate the burning fix. Almost got vicious Hexx Ruins with the acid caster. Probably could have done it if either:
1) I hadn't forgotten to pack a Schadenfreude
2) I didn't get stuck with Super Meat Man as the secondary boss
3) I had bricked more midlevel monsters at the beginning.