Wiki Discussion - Dungeon Page Layout

[Lujo]

Err I just read the "throw Lujo a bone to make him go on endlessly" and the "discuss it vs Burndayraz" posts, and I'm kind of getting tired of disussing it with Tinker because she seems to think Burndayraz needs defending or legitimizing and I get the feeling that I'm banging my head against the wall (she might too).

Here's the comparison, and there's no "me" in it and it's got nothing to do with my preferences or recent binges or anything, except I did playtest it a lot - this is just considerations and I wouldn't ever write it like this on the wiki:

Burndayraz is in most circumstances stictly inferior to Pissorf in almost any category you'd care to name. I don't want to put that on the wiki, because it seems to me to not be an intentional thing in all aspects.

- Burndayraz costs 6 mana and does 4 damage per level + burning, and applies the burning regen debuff. That's all it does.
- Pissorf costs 4 mana and does half your base damage to two things, totaling at about 2X(5/2) per level, so about the same as Burndayraz. It also destroys walls so you can move around the map, and move the monsters around. It also evades all abilities on monsters including any abilities meant to hinder either spellcasting or phyisical attacks (magical, or physical resistance, blink, whatever) except in rare cases where both your targets have some form of relevant protection.

What follows from this is -

Now if it was "always an option, but never the best option" it would even make some sense in regards to comparing it to Fireball, but it's not worse than fireball, it's better than it because:



Then it gets even better:



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Right, so pissorf wins in terms of everything, cost, pool, opportunity costs, reliablity (in terms of what it's naturally good against), what does fireball even have going for it?

You need fewer casts of fireball to kill an individual monster which is vulnerable to fireballs and you don't mind where the monster is standing.

The standing part

But fireballs do in fact do more damage to a single target which don't have relevant protections. However:



--- So if you take 2 random shmoe's with just 12 mana pools and have one throw Fireball and the other throw Pissorff, then ding/schadenfraude to refill (anyone can do that), and empty that pool, what you get is:



And where it gets bizzare is

In short, fireballs are a complete joke compared to Pissorf unless you go out of your way to make them sorta legit, but the ammount of stuff it takes to make Fireballs legit in comparison is rocket science compared to just even bothering to play an actual spellcaster using Pissorff instead of using any old thing with 16 mana and maybe Crystal Ball.

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However, using Pissorf does require you understanding 3 things -

Fireball, in a sense, has a niche application - it helps you deal with stuff that you can't position, and if you really need to burst down/finish off one guy, and in the few situations where a map is made knockback proof (like the last floor of Gaan'Telet).

Other than that it's just there for really careful and good players to busy themselves with and show off how they managed to, IDK, beat VT Naga City with it, as a self imposed challenge. Or for very very very specific builds which work with it's specific plugs. One such thing is what Tinker likes doing, another would be what I like doing and that is stacking Whurgarble on a resists stacker regen fighter so burning bumps both melle and magic hits (often also involves Martyr Wraps).

And it has it's own uses as the default magic damage source, always spawning glyph, regen fighting helper, low-unlock prep, easy DP removal via burning etc. Or if you want to avoid the difficult to avoid bugged part of Pissorff for personal prefference reasons. But in terms of raw power, applicability and stuff, Pissorff (especially currently) leaves it very far in the dust.

---

All of this makes objective sense, but how it came to be might also make sense if

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So anyway, that's probably facts right there, how much of this if anything being on the wiki makes sense - beats me. Right now, with the "goes through phsyical resistance" thing, making a comparison to Burndayraz makes no sense, because there's little non-subjective point to Burdayraz, tbh. Any "use glyph instead of melee" situation can be solved by either Pissorf or Burndayraz, except most "can't use glyph, use melee" situations are currently still "use the cheaper, stronger glyph instead of burndayraz OR melee, OR use the cheaper, stronger glyph in addition to melee".

Only tangible pro to using Burndayraz (besides regen fighting) is if you don't understand how Pissorff works (which is sorta legit what with the tooltip and requiring you to understand dings) or for variety, or when you can't position monsters. Use fireball rather than Pissorff when you feel like it? Use either when you're bored with the other? Use either depending on what the PQI sets you up with? Use fireball when you feel like prepping a god other than Binlor? Use fireball with gnomes because they are sorta more fun to play that way, power and logic be damned? Use fireball to get to lvl 4 then go PoS stuff? Use fireball all the time since it's always there if you want to just spike one guy? Use Pissorf to ding while you kill one boss then fireball the other guy if they spawned each in his own corner? Use fireball to make that blinker move somewhere else where you can PoS it properly? "Prep" for PoS, run into Mystera, swap, pick 2-3 mana up, use both? Make love not war, who cares?

[Darvin]

As the de-facto editor in chief of the wiki, I'm now afraid to look at that article

Will get around to proof-reading it later today.

[Lujo]

I didn't put that on the Wiki, I'm not mad! I just put that up as a writeup of the whole experience with both glyphs, What MTaur wrote is fine and concise, just needs a few things adjusted. If someone can find the most relevant bits or conclusions from what I wrote (or is just interested in the whole subject) they can go up there, but for the love of god lets not make that article a crazy Lujo textwall. XD

[MTaur]

[Lujo]

What restrictions do you mean? If you mean in theory, if physical resists actually resisted it, then yes, that'd make perfect sense. As it stands it doesn't have any, as far as we know there's no "exploit" and it "working as intended" even though whoever got that intention must've been temporarily possessed by Jehora Jeheyu or smoking something (even if it was us testers bumming a way to evade resists from the devs, in which case we're the worst testers ever, lol). I'm certainly playing it as it if it's intended until it gets fixed if it ever even does, no matter how obviously ridiculous it is. It's like a horribly creaky door I can't fix myself, but I can keep creeking then someone who can might get annoyed enough to actually fix it.

But as for any actual restrictions, it doesn't really have them. Positioning can occasionally be a bummer, but not that often. The numbers might look weird (or like they're not really there) but they're quite a bit better than the ones of Burndayraz when you get down to it. And the Wizard makes it a straight "2 stronger Burndayraz for the price of 1 Burndayraz". Any Wizard that is. Most of the stuff you can tack on to Burndayraz doesn't even make it much stronger, if it makes it stronger at all, and if you want to catch up with Pissorf it's not very difficult.

I mean, it's really simple when you get down to it - you do the same total damage with a 4 mana glyph that you would do with a 6 mana glyph. And the damage on the cheaper glyph is easier to bump. You have to do way more than just move a few things around (if even that) to get the numbers to be in favor of the 6 mana glyph. That's all there is to it, tbh.

And I think Avatar doesn't spawn more avatars if you hit something into him (which is different than how the guy in Western Jungle works). What level did you start fighting the Djinns at, and did you move them around?

For a place to get really good with it, I'd recommend Slime pits. You start off very early (like stupidly early) after you've moved SMM and the Goo next to each other and a bunch of easier to drop stuff where you can hit it into SMM. Then Whoopaz SMM and just hit him with stuff untill his health is about as equal as the Goo's and then just kill them both. Or do it any number of other ways, the health of the Smm lets you try out what variety there is to approaching dedicated Pissorff use. Move into a god that helps you munch popcorn, go nuts, feel free to get hits in on the fat man when you can, just take the Ball if you're going at it early and are just looking to practice. Once you can beat that place, you just know you can roll just about anything with it.

[MTaur]

Almost everyone else thinks that positioning is an actual restriction or opportunity cost of some sort. The damage isn't better unless you're doubling up or dealing with MR. The exploit is an exploit IMO, but you *will* kill your queue ball in the process, so even that has limits. Good job at being better than 99% of us at milking it, though.

[Lujo]

I can't believe moving things around on something that has to prep Binlor is a restriction that has people trembling.

The damage IS better if you need to do it to 2 targets, and you never mind doing it to two targets, except when you do it with fireballs you do it one by one. And the mana rate is so much in favor of Pissorf that you can (and I often do) kill one que ball and just move to the next by throwing up to a full bar of pissorffs for no damage just to move something mid-fight and not even miss a beat. And you don't have to be either an Orc or a Wizard, either.

In other words, I'm not even BOTHERING to milk it most of the time. I'd love to see a video of someone failing at it, because by this point it's an absolute mistery to me why do people find is so complicated. I've seen people come up with and pick up way more complicated things in a blink of an eye. During the beta, on a daily basis. People have even come up with Pissorf strats before - except those were all more complicated than this, this is like taking a cog out of several more complicated strats and then beating the game over the head just with the cog.

I couldn't pull of an Acid Caster to save my grandma, I've no idea how to get more than 4 or so Greenbloods - I see that piety cost go up, I can't for the life of me pick it up. It took me 10 tries and Tinker holding my hand to remember how you get a Gnome Sorcerer of Mystera up to lvl 8 on Naga City topside. People find hitting things into walls with Pissorff easier and have no problems with that, this is the exact same thing except both simpler and stronger. It's still confusing people somehow, and I'd pay good money to see exactly what the problem is.

It's some psych thing, I'd love to know what it is. I bet most folks who play regularly do more complicated stuff on any other run. In fact, I'm sure of that. It think it's just so blatantly stupid, unfair and simple that it's alien to the rest of the game and you have to go against instincts the game instills into you to even believe something that stupid could even work, let alone be stronger than something that takes actual skill/knowledge/whatever. And I'm sure at least a few people never tried very hard to discover it because it's so lame that it takes away what usually provides the sense of achievement in the game for them. But far as math and field testing which both brought forth the math and tested it goes - it's cheeze that puts hardcore cheeze to shame.

C'mon, I'm honestly to believe folks who discovered the Plant Cannon, beat VGT, beat triple quests (I can't beat the 3rd one), routinely clear stuff with Vampires (can't for the life of me rememeber how you actually play that thing and I might've invented the blood cow milkning), were willing to farm Binlor for 65% resists with everythign on Namtar's Lair, came up with Cydstep Gnome Rogue (and then lowering and keeping your health at 1 so you can still do it after it was nerfed to make it impossible to do), consider Orc Wizard brutally strong if you hit things into finite Walls (and will even spam extra walls with Imawal and level up regularly before they start the fight), and did a bajilion things which are hugely obscure and complicated find moving things around a tiny bit with a move-things-around-glyph and prepped Binlor so that you can have walls that only get removed when you want (and give you xp) complicated or taxing?

How does that make any sense? People will move things around for any old gimmick and that'll get called a strat. "Punchomancer", that's what just using Pissorf was called originally. That's all it was, using Pissorf with the most sinergistic thing there was and way overdoing on the preparation for it. It works without so much sinergy, it works without so much prepwork, because it's just using Pissorf, and it happens to be bloody strong.

Would you be willing to make a video of you trying out PoS so I can see what's going on there? Doesn't have to be any though place or anything. For science? Even better if you fail, as long as you play the way you'd play it, you don't have to comment while you play or anything.

[MTaur]

It's like lining up a shot with two balls when you could just poke one ball directly into the pocket in the first place. It's more complicated, and the only reason it's better is that sometimes you have two worthwhile enemies close to each other. I'm pretty sure your idea of a "balanced" PISORF would be one that was balanced for you that most other people would mostly use just for utility.

What would the damage numbers be if it were balanced, anyway? Would hitting two enemies simply split the phyiscal damage for hitting a wall evenly between the two, or is any bonus whatsoever "broken"?

[Lujo]

I think there was a misunderstanding which caused me to freak out out of frustration.

I think we agree that the only part of it that's really problematic is the "exploit" part, what we don't agree on is irrelevant. Seems that you think Pisorf is balanced by the positioning requirements, and I'm quite sure it isn't balanced by that - but I don't mind it's power level if it didn't go through physical resistances. It wouldn't matter if it's better or worse than fireball in terms of damage if it wasn't at the same time a viable alternative to both (more resource intensive) glyph use and physical attacks about 100% of the time. The current numbers are fine, I suppose, even if the wall breaking part worked on resistances and the other part just split the the base 50-50 like it does now (but both attacks physical).

However, it's still > firebal, because moving stuff around is less complicated than soko trolls, let alone actually playing even a comparatively nooby game of DD. I wrote the comparative analysis up there for anyone who cares to understand it, stacking burning somewhat helps Burndayraz, but it's not really a contest, and it doesn't have to be. And the basic setup it takes for a Pissorf strat to work at any difficulty and almost any dungeon is so minimal, and pre-bossfight gameplay likewise, that if you find yourself unwilling to deal with how the bossess spawned, just restarting the run is trivial even if the likelyhood of them actually spawning in a completely unworkable position is rather low in my experience (and I've got plenty of it). Without the exploit, it's just another strat with places it's better in and places it's worse in if you care to use it, because that would add places where it's worse than fireball. Fine by me.

If it's overall power makes it still be better than too many other things... Crystal Ball would still be a cheat even if it was nerfed, it's just way off even if it was meant to be something to let a vet just mindlessly grab badges, or give newbies something to make them feel like they're getting somewhere to keep them hooked, so just fixing that thing would do the trick as far as balancing Pissorff goes as far as I can tell.

[Tinker]