Thought experiment: what if PISORF would...

[Tinker]

So since the birds are chirping quite persistently about how PISORF this and PISORF that, (ok, make that one bird doing most of the chirping, but anyway ), I wanted to make a little thought experiment on how would PISORF look in an "ideal world". I'm not saying anything about PISORF (most notably I do not want to imply that it is br00ken or needs a nerf or anything). As I said, it's a thought experiment. I especially don't want the little angels the Devs are to spend their time on hacking hard-coded stuff for slight improvements!

Terminology: "First monster" is knocked back into the "Second monster".

So, in a hypothetical, potentially more ideal world...

1. Knockback "strength" would be calculated independently of the target, and then the damage would be calculated separately for both monsters. Amount of damage taken would depend on each individual monster's resistance to physical damage.
2. The second monster would not take extra damage based on the first monster's Corrosion stacks. It would, however, take extra damage based on its own Corrosion stacks.
3. Monsters would have traits that interact with Knockback. Couple of examples off the top of my head: Unfilching (immune to knockback and knockback damage) on Minotaurs, Wraiths, Goos and Acid Blobs; Crystalline (if damaged by knockback, returns the same amount of damage to the source of the damage - first monster of player) on Golems and their ilk.
4. Monster traits like Blink, would trigger if they end up next to the source of the damage, even if it's not directly the player (i.e. knocking something into a blinking monster would activate blink).
5. Magic resistance on the first monster would carry a chance to fail each casting.
6. Tooltip for PISORF would indicate in parentheses after the mentioned % amounts, how much the unmodified knockback strength currently is when knocking into a wall, or when knocking into another monster.

Thoughts?

[Darvin]

PISORF, like many other things in this game, is fine or even on the weak side if used casually. It only becomes "broken" when you start using it in unusual ways or chaining it with other effects for broken combos.

Having monster traits/abilities that interact with PISORF, or making it fail on magic resistance, seems like a terrible idea. It keeps PISORF every bit as abusive against monsters or bosses that lack those traits while taking away one of its less abusive niches: the ability to reliably bypass secondary effects. So I disagree with points 3-5.

Points 1 and 2 make sense. I'd add another one to that list: JJ only grants piety for revealing any specific monster once.

[Lujo]

[Darvin]

So then, Lujo, what would be your suggested fix for PISORF?

[Lujo]

Make it's present but disfuntional counters actually work against it? So that it's not always a guaranteed solution to everything? Because it's not just bossess, if phys res and blinking and whathave you actually worked against it, various monster rosters wouldn't allow you to efortlessly chain dings while also doing damage on the bossess, you'd have to think a little and mix it up and stuff. You couldn't just slap whatever into whatever, back when I thought you couldn't I didn't abuse it at all. I find the rare situation where stuff actually works against it pleasantly challenging and involving now.

The only other thing is that CB just gives too many schadenfraudes, that's the only thing I consistenly pair up with Pissorf (allthough only if I want to go overkill). You can use it with Fireball strats but there are other options and even that takes pairing it with a sinergistic race/god whatever and fireball casters have actual items they'd like, PoS just needs refills and this thing just hands out refills. Pissorf has lower sweet spots - 16 mana is plenty, and Pissorf charges the ball faster etc.

EDIT: Oh, and I agree with JJ not needing to give you piety for Peekaboo. Once you get into the hang of spaming Byceps, Getindare and stuff, he rains piety anyway. Also he gives piety for muching popcorn, there's all sorts of ways to get it.

[Lujo]

As for Tinker's ideas concretely:

1. Yes, knockback if you hit stuff into a wall, plan old physical damage on both targets if you hit them one into another. That's how it should work, and it's also how everyone intuitively assumes it works anyway.
2. I suppose each of them applying their own corrosion to it would also be good, even though it would cut the current rat from using (or rather abusing) Pissorff. This is far fancier stuff than I generally do with Pissorf, though, so I dont know about it, whatever works.
3. Monsters don't actually need new stats which interact with pissorf, there are allready quite a few which would make particular monsters bad pissorff fodder if they actually worked. Physical Resistance, Blink and Cowardly making stuff difficult to either kill or keep still would do wonders, and I think the reason Pissorf abuse isn't and wasn't rampant is that very few people understand the actual blinking rule and just assume you can't evade it with pissorf (or realize that bypassing Physical resistance is just a matter of clicking on a different target). The reason it's not all over the wikis and stuff is because everyone allready thinks these work, when they actually don't.
4. Yes, it makes no sense that you can use a blinking monster as a "wall" for the purposes of pissorf, which is why it's so difficult to realize that you can. It's part of why it's hard to grasp the otherwise really simple blinking rule - it's just looks like it can't work like it does, otherwise Pissorf would be just broken, and the whole wall destroying part would be irellevant. Which it currently is.
5. I wouldn't mix magic resists with Pissorff. I'm fine with it being a spellcasting solution to stuff that counters fireballs, what makes no sense whatsoever is it being a counter to stuff that would counter IT too. That's kind of the only real problem with it.
6. Yes, displaying the actual damage you do on the glyph tooltip would be very helpful (especially if the mobile version loses hovering tooltips as then your base damage would be even more obscure). My preffered solution to it would be to have Pissorff only use the current typeless knockback mechanic if you hit a wall, and otherwise just do a physical attack for half your base on both targets, and then we could have a very nice and clear tooltip.

EDIT: And that's basically all there is to it, and judging by the daily scoreboards the whole thing might as well just be a result of a bug. Nothing else to say about it that I can think off, it's pretty clear. Unless.. anyone know of any edge cases, unforseen concequences, screwy interactions? There's accidentaly setting Stheno off that ought to be handled in some way, but is there anything else anyone can think of?

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

[Tinker]

[Lujo]