Any hope for a tweak patch?

[Tinker]

[Astral]

@sitnaltax
Lol

@Blovski
I think there are more reasons for dwarfs being bad. To start with, max health is only useful in brawling, it's meaningless for strikers and regenfighters. Doesn't increase your spellcasting power either (unless you find B2P, which can't be prepped and still the Elf CP bonus is more convenient for spellcasting matters).

So dwarfs have to be used as brawlers. Which is one of the weakest method of fighting.

For humans and orcs it's not so much of a problem, they can shift to regenfighting, so if an opponent's health is too high, they are still capable of taking it down. They also use combat glyphs very well. Anything that lets them take more hits on a monster via a health independent method benefits them greatly. In case of dwarfs it's diminishing results. Also dwarfs are the only race with an antisinergy to a glyph - Cydstepp.

It is also important that the human and orc bonus is good even in small amounts. No matter how little you boost your damage, it ups your attrition. At times you'll see a nice high level target you can almost take down, but he survives by a small fraction of HP. Convert something and you can earn that kill.
With a dwarf you can't do that. And it's bad enough that additional health only helps in big chunks, if you can't take one more hit due to it, it was pointless.

Since humans and orcs only gain efficiency by CP, they still heal up as fast as normally. Dwarfs gain size, the bigger they are the more painful it becomes to regenerate.

I haven't even mentioned that brawling in the way dwarfs do it - with lots of small hits - is really bad when facing guys with debuffs. It's also wasteful for combining it with 1 time hit effects (Stone Skin, TT Potions, Unstoppable Fury etc.)

Dwarfs are badly supported by gods, only a few of them have dwarf centric boons. Humans and orcs can't find an unsinergistic god.

Dwarfs badly need additional damage, and no source gives enough for them. No wonder, since that amount would make orcs and humans flat-out broken.

[Blovski]

It doesn't help that Dwarves have to regen their conversion bonus once they convert. I do think Dwarves have a couple of edges. Most of the counter-points to your thing are kind of mooted by the preponderance of available health boosting items for humans/orcs and the number of strategies reliant on regen fighting. Dwarves fare slightly better in purist scenarios than in prepped ones, I feel, but not enough so to justify their use.

The GG Healthmonster build as mentioned above works since it cancels out much of the above (+damage, variety of % based hp refills, makes spellcasting more synergistic) and does very well at maps that are designed to scupper conventional regen fighters through curse and poison/mb debuffs (i.e. Dragon Isles).

[Lujo]

Funny story, before Absolution got nerfed (like just before) I was doing the "one last full-PQI" checkup, and by some point I was ass-deep in dwarves because I've neglected them (might've been those reports which got he dwarf and goblin friendly quests on the map for tinkers and transmuters).

Warmonger Dwarf WARLORD of GG was working out. That's basically a guard with an occasional random and unleverageable damage buff and a 100 cp at the start. And Fire Heart doesn't work there because of Warmonger, and if I remember correctly I basically only prepped GG and nothing else. Sure, old absolution, but again, no preps and and a warmonger warlord. GG Dwarves are good.

Also, the Dwarf assassin isn't nearly that bad, and big health isn't really suited only to regen fighting. In fact it's kinda meaningless for that. It's ok for resist stacking, but those two things aren't the same. Big health is for spiking, as it allows you to get hits in sooner, or get 2 hits in through health off a ding, or if you've stacked resists more hits in off a ding. Regen fighting is not a health spike, so much as a blackspace spike. If the monster isn't regenning (say you load enough poison on it), your health pool size becomes == the ammount of blackspace on the board, you just have to move around to pick it all up in parcels. It makes the dwarf bouns completely irrelevant or at least overkill.

What they do well is get the most out of potions, % based boon spikes and dings. Also lifesteal and B2P obv. The also let you overheal quite a bit more than other guys do if you've explored enough and converted a bunch of stuff. If you put some resists on them, they don't become better regen fighters, they become better spikers, provided you're playing a spiker class. You can play a good Taurogzerker Dwarf, mind you, and if you're up against a magic damage boss you've got both spike and regen fight covered.

Also, Drac is really, really good w Dwarves. Some kind of Vampiric Blade Drac Dwarf is probably quite silly. Not to mention lifesteal stacking B2P casters, Dwarf Bloodmage, Dwarf Transmuter (scummy I know, but works really well).

I'm also beginning to think Naga Cauldron might be rather good with them, too.

[Blovski]

Well, pre-stacking absolution was pretty superpowerful... not sure how much the Dwarf part was helping you there. The thing with % based restores is that there aren't many and they tend not to play nice together and are all chucked on miserly gods (health potions/protection/sanguine; level-ups, overheal from Scholar's Pact; Fire Heart), to the extent that halflings with buffed health are usually flat out stronger.

Hadn't considered the overheal... that Scholars pact in NC is pretty useful with the Healthmonster.

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

2 things came up on the new playthrough:

1) Trying to run BM silver without Burn Salve can screw you over even if you're basically doing everything right, should probably something be done about that, as in unlock it only after you can buy burn salve in the potion shop or something.

Bigger deal:

2) Bear mace IS overly powerful, and ALSO overly useful. I'm spontaneously overusing it, it adds more damage than the seminal auto-prep elite item Dwarven Gauntlets, doesn't compete with other locker preps as a prep (and gets prepped in additon to them), and allows for so many shennanigans it's not even funny. It also lets you kill 2 bossess at once on 2 boss runs by only fighting one all the time, is way better than any other blacksmith prep etc. etc.

It also kinda breaks the blacksmith subdungeon, especially if you already have one on yourself.

It would be really strong, fun and useful even if it only gave you +10% knockback, and all things considered, even then it would make a better apex Blacksmith tech than RBS.

[Darvin]

[MTaur]

I usually underestimate the mace because it's so situational. At my peril, I'm sure. But I want my damage to be damage... Sure, you might get Weytwut or you can even spend a ton of mana on Wonafyt in a pinch, but still, something about me mistursts the chance factor. Like if your boss spawns on the edge of the screen by himself...

[Darvin]