Geomancy vs. School Spell Damage

[Fubar Obfusco]

Someone commented a while ago that Geomancy seemed overpowered. I did some digging through the spell spoiler and came out with some comparisons ....

The damage dice for Channel Elements at Fire school level 50, on a square of lava, is 30d15. That gives an average of 210 damage. Fireflash, at spell level 40, does a flat 420 damage, in a ball of radius 4.

The much-mocked Water spell, Geyser, at spell level 50 does 10d38 -- an average of 190 damage. Channel Elements on a deep water square, at Water school level 50, does 5d50 -- an average of 125. The Geomancy effect does have a guaranteed beam effect; Geyser's maxes out at 85% chance.

The best squares to Channel are, by far, ice and abyss. Ice, again at Water level 50, does a ball with a flat 340 damage. Abyss, at Earth 50, does 250 nether damage.

How about Geomancy's Vaporize on flowers, compared to Noxious Cloud? The Geomancy effect, maxed out, does a flat 155 damage in radius 5 for 30 turns. The Air school spell at level 50 does a flat 157 damage in radius 3 for 45 turns. So those are pretty much equal. Vaporize only does more damage than that on sand or abyss, where it does a flat 205.

The Water spell Tidal Wave does a flat 240 damage and grows to radius 16. Geomancy's Elemental Wave has it well beat on deep water (flat 310 damage) but really wins on sand (flat 410 light damage) and is directed rather than circular, extending to radius 26.

... and that's before counting in Spell-power.


The only part of this I regard as a problem, really, is the Channel Elements effect on water squares. Since Geomancy spells take effectively two turns to cast -- one to snag a square and one to cast -- there should be some reason to prefer Channel Elements on water over Geyser.

[Ben-San Arizona]

Doesn't water Channeling also have a knockback effect, or has this been removed without my noticing? Immediately after Geomancy was introduced, I had great fun going south of Bree, channeling the water, and watching a hydra get knocked back several times along the path of the beam until it was finally either launched out of my field of vision or slammed into the "wall" of the map square.
I don't know the damage from a wall slam, but if the chained knockback does full damage each time, that gives it a significant advantage over Geyser, at least in situations where the attack lines up squarely.

[Fubar Obfusco]

Doesn't water Channeling also have a knockback effect, or has this been removed without my noticing?

You are, of course, right. It does indeed do "wave"-type damage, which causes the amusing and beneficial effect you describe.

[Tachyon]

Ice? You haven't mentioned the best part: ice attacks create vast quantities of ice on the floor, so you can keep bombarding opponents. The same is true with lava, though not nearly to the same extent.

[Aphael]

Tell me please something more about vaporise attacks. Do they stack? Can one square have more than one vaporised element? Does noxious cloud "extinguishes" ice or fire vapors? How often monster will be hit (every turn?) by vapors?

And one thing more. Why, oh why there is no damage counts listed in geomancy attacks???

[Fubar Obfusco]

Tell me please something more about vaporise attacks. Do they stack? Can one square have more than one vaporised element? Does noxious cloud "extinguishes" ice or fire vapors? How often monster will be hit (every turn?) by vapors?

I don't know, but there seem to be some odd interactions between monster speed and cloud damage. My current Geomancer (with Speed +20) dumped a bunch of clouds on a couple of vampire lords a few squares away, then waited for a few turns. The vampire lords seemed to take damage four times at once. "The vampire lord is hit hard! The vampire lord is hit hard! The vampire lord is hit hard! The vampire lord is hit hard!" all within the space of one turn.

(Incidentally, bone golems are, how do they say these days, teh evile.)

And one thing more. Why, oh why there is no damage counts listed in geomancy attacks???

Presumably because the damage depends on what square you're on. Though it certainly could be calculated and displayed based on your current square.

[Aphael]

I've investigated closer what you were saying about multiple messages about monster getting hit by clouds. Thing is that when you don't see monster, it is still hurting, in case of noxious cloud that message will be displayed when monter gets into your los, then you see all poison hits at once.

OTOH, it *might* be that clouds damaging monsters works on very similiar rule to regeneration. When you inspect, f.e., regenerating SP closely, you'll notice that every few turns, a few points regenerate, not 1 or more points every turn.

Question about clouds stacking is important cause if you cast 1 ice cloud, then 1 water cloud from adjacent square (the two balls are, say, radius=6 ), and if they do not stack upon each other, then there is a huge waste of mana here.

[Ben-San Arizona]

When persistent-damage areas overlap, only the newest applies, in my experience.

Incidentally, what nobody's mentioned about ice is that in addition to spreading itself around, it stuns. Vaporise-Ice can be your best friend against anything that can be stunned; they have a very hard time walking through it and you can fire on them freely while they struggle towards you. Then use Channel-Water to knock them back to the far end of the cloud, and let it start all over again.

[Atarlost]

Pure damage is not the most important statistic for most of the game. What is more important is damage/mana, and I think geomancy costs remain flat unlike school spell costs.