Slingers

[greycat]

I played a Hobbit Slinger under 11b, and died to the Carn Dum boss, then again to a skeleton mage in Tol Falas.

Overall I think the balance was really good. The new skill set was helpful. Being able to jump back a few square came in handy several times. Being able to carry more ammo -- yes! But the crowning jewel of the new skill set for this class is definitely Track. That is so amazingly useful.

The character was fairly strong in the Trollshaws; nothing seriously threatened me. I lost a little power (compared to the monsters) in the Old Forest. Granted, I tend to go there early (I don't finish the Trollshaws before switching). I forgot I would be able to use the boss's shield later, and sold it. No big loss, though.

I took out the Shade next, for the staff, to unlock the mage town for rings and amulets. Found a nice regen (HP) ring early, and used that a lot. Then I went back for Bill, looking for escort quests. Never got too many of those done, but I picked up Identify somewhere (don't recall where).

I dipped into Carn Dum a bit, but not too deep. It's grown more dangerous there lately....

Took the healing talent set (0.2 stamina/turn and 0.2 hp/turn) at level 10.

Took out the Sandworm queen, though I ended up using almost all my healing potions as I was surrounded by her entourage; ended up having to phase door out of the room, then teleport (since the PD landed me in a temporary tunnel). Worked my way back, got the gland, then worked my way out of there. Archers and slingers don't do particularly well in the Sandworm hole, since you pretty much have to charge into a room (lest the tunnel fall on your head), monsters or no monsters. Took the sand drake talent set at level 20, and took Swallow or whatever it is, but never used it. Never really had much willpower either (wasn't investing points there). There wasn't really any better talent set to take at level 20, though. What was I going to take, bows? Right.

Did the Maze next, and didn't have any trouble with that. Track helped me stay out of the boss's reach even though I had to traverse 90% of the final level before finally finding the passage that went up to that part. By this point I was dropping iron shots on the ground, keeping only steel or better.

Carn Dum was... far more challenging. Drakes summoning other drakes, plus hatchlings, made for some intense battles. At this point, the Slinger is at a serious disadvantage, because they have very little ability to deal area damage. There's a 3x3 area spell which stuns, which is great, but you can only use it once every 20 turns or so. After that you're back to plinking one by one. The Archer gets a beam effect (penetrating shot) which would have been quite welcome in those long corridors.

I ended up doing a lot of stair dancing (area shot, go down stairs, rest, back up, another area shot). Even then, there was still one point where I had nearly run out of teleport scrolls, and had to leave the zone to go restock. Failed an escort quest or two (they're very hard at this point, with so many dangerous monsters around), but I think I managed one.

Somewhere around here, I started having trouble keeping my ammo replenished. I had 2/5 in Ammo Creation, but that second point no longer seems to increase the chance of producing ammo (it appears to have been changed into a chance at ego ammo instead). On many occasions I found myself resting, casting Ammo Creation, getting nothing, enabling and disabling Aim and resting until the Ammo Creation cooldown was over, then trying again... and again... and again. I did find a couple piles of steel shots, though, which helped a bit.

Also, I was running close to my carrying capacity nearly full time (70/72 or so). I didn't have the points for the max encumbrance raising talent just yet. That came later.

On the boss level of Carn Dum, I used Track (of course) and saw it, but it was awfully close. I don't recall whether I met it in an open area, or let it come around a corner at me. In any case, it was about 3 squares away when we established line of sight. I went for an Eye Shot, which failed to blind it. Then I watched my HP go all the way down until I got my Blood of Life prompt window. I checked the log file to see what happened; near as I can reconstruct, I was frozen, then ganged up on by the boss and a snow giant (who also died to one of the boss's attacks, and who I never actually saw on screen). Resurrected next to the boss, within its ice storm or whatever, and phase doored away. Met it again, a little farther away this time, and was able to take it down without dying again.

By this time I was doing something like 200 points of damage with a steady shot, or half that with a regular shot, depending on the monster's armor (sometimes quite a bit less). I was level 20 or 22 or something around there. Got a ring of Constitution (+6) in the mage town jewelry store. Found Ulmo's ring later, and used that instead. Kept the HP regen ring on pretty much full time. I also had a mana regen ring (0.2/turn) that I'd swap in when my mana got low, so I could cast more Identify. That was the only mana-using talent I had, so I didn't need it much.

Tol Falas got interesting, fast. Track was indispensible. I switched primarily to dwarven-steel shots after the first level (they were becoming more common). Picked up a mighty hardened leather sling of power somewhere, to replace the cured leather sling of power I'd been using. I had a steel shield of deflection, which I think I found in Carn Dum. Couldn't use a dwarven steel shield (not enough Strength), so that was fine. I think I had hardened leather armor of nature resistance. Something like that, anyway.

My final death came in a vault in Tol Falas, on level 3 or 4, approximately. I got a little greedy, I suppose. After clearing out a chamber full of monsters, I went in to pick up the loot, and my trap detection talent informed me there was an alarm trap. I couldn't tell WHERE, though. Presumably under one of the objects. (I also know there was a fire blast trap in there SOMEWHERE, because one of the monsters triggered it and finished off the room.) Sure enough, I tripped the alarm, and undead started coming out of the other chambers -- mostly high level skeletons. I thought I was doing well enough, but then a skeleton master archer and a skeleton mage hit me simultaneously from opposite directions (never saw the mage, didn't know he was behind me...).

The Slinger's strength is its one-on-one damage output and debuffing, at range. Pounding out 200-250 damage every third turn, half that in between, and an occasional area stun or blinding or knockback, makes it a very strong class against single opponents (though I didn't make it to the Master, and he probably would've been MUCH harder for this type of fight, with his Rush and his mana beams and so on). Its weakness is crowd control. When surrounded, there's really nothing you can do but use a scroll to get out of there. Even against a pack of monsters in an open area, if you can't finish them off before they reach you, you'd better retreat. Against a strong summoner like a cold drake, you probably need to run. Like, completely off the level. Unless you're much higher level than it is.

Tactically, it is very much like the Archer, with one notable exception: no beam attack. An Archer is going to want to line up monsters in a tunnel and fire a penetrating shot through the whole row. A Slinger doesn't have that option; its only area attack is a 3x3 with a medium-long cooldown. That means a Slinger needs to be much more cautious in its tactics, using more retreats and blind corners.

As I said up front, the balance was really good overall. There were only a few places where I felt I was too strong (very early game), and they didn't last long. There were a handful of places I felt I was took weak (packs of drakes in Carn Dum, surrounded by undead in Tol Falas), but I didn't feel that it was a fault of the class. Rather, it felt appropriate for the zone and for my level and equipment. There was some tedium required (scumming Ammo Creation), but it wasn't excessive. (I would recommend raising the chance of success a bit, though, especially if the player's investing points in it.)

[Feanor.81]

Current formulas for Ammo Creation are:
10 + 10*TL chance of success
5 + 5*TL chance of ego

They don't seem to have changed.
TL 2 (-> effective: 2.6) implies a fair 36% chance of success; this means once in 600 turns you should be able to create 140-170 ammos, which is enough IMO. I'd suggest as a best practice always using AC as soon as the cooldown expires, and simply investing one more talent point (-> 49%, once in 400 turns, it's the optimum talent points spent / success chance ratio you can achieve) if you still think fail rates are too high

[Shoob]

well, I guess it is enough, but egos are nice to have to and you can get better ammo faster with higher ammo creation, at low levels this is more important because you miss more

[Feanor.81]

The way AC works, success chance and ego chance are independent events. The probability of obtaining an ego ammo is then the product of the single probabilities:

TL 1: 23% success, 11,5% ego -> 2,6% ego success -> once in 7600 turns
TL 2: 36% success, 18% ego -> 6,5% ego success -> once in 3000 turns
TL 3: 49% success, 24,5% ego -> 12% ego success -> once in 1600 turns
TL 4: 62% success, 31% ego -> 19% ego success -> once in 1000 turns
TL 5: 75% success, 37,5% ego -> 28% ego success -> once in 600/800 turns (better approximation would be 700 but that can't be)

[edge2054]

Yeah, with the slinger I'm playing now I maxed it out simply to get egos more often.

Also been playing a Nandor, crippling shot plus Grace of the Eldar just sounded to good to pass up.

Has anyone tried out Slow Motion yet to see how that does? Might be a nice bonus for a fighter.

[Feanor.81]

with the slinger I'm playing now I maxed it out simply to get egos more often.

Well, given the results shown in the table above, adding a fifth point to get more ego items is almost a waste, you roughly gain just an AC roundtrip.

[greycat]

I haven't had Slow Motion yet. It sounds useful for classes that are a bit fragile, but Fighters already have insane Defense even without going all Matrix.

36% chance of success? Hmm... it sure felt lower than that. Maybe I just had a run of bad luck.

I'm not terribly excited about ego ammo, to be honest. If I'm doing 200 points with a Steady Shot, adding 6 points of fire damage is pretty unnecessary. But I guess, if you can get a Freeze effect (can you?) then that would be worth pursuing.

[Zaive]

Slime-Covered arrows are definitely useful (Slow with every shot?).

[Elliott]

Try pumping multi-shot.

[darkgod]

AHh I am quite happy that you find the balance better with the new talent trees
The lack of AOE was indeed part of the design, I do not know if this should be changed yet ot not, maybe some high level slinger in the east will tell us

[Fela]

There wasn't really any better talent set to take at level 20, though. What was I going to take, bows? Right.

Maybe you forgot that you can also increase another category by .1 instead of taking a new one?

I know i'm frequently forgetting that

[greycat]

Try pumping multi-shot.

I thought about that. I figured that if I targeted a monster that's behind some other monster, I'd be able to fire off two shots, and then if the first shot killed the front monster, the second shot would continue on to hit the rear monster. It didn't seem to work like that in practice. Near as I could tell, the targeting "stopped" at the first monster, and even if the first shot killed it, the second shot wouldn't go any farther.

Maybe I was misinterpreting what I saw on the screen. It's very hard to tell what's going on, half the time. Even post-event log file analysis is subject to error, because there's no clear demarcation of "user pressed a key HERE". Especially with ranged attacks that now don't travel instantaneously to their target, you might see the hit *after* the monsters have already moved, so you can't even tell which command caused which log file lines.

[Feanor.81]

Mmm looking at the code, I'm pretty sure multishot is intended to target a single creature (it's of type bolt, while dual arrows is ball and piercing arrow is beam).

[greycat]

The way damage absorption works in this game, I can't imagine ever wanting to fire two half-power shots at the same monster, except for the rare case where a half-power shot will kill it (presumably because it's wounded; a monster whose HP are naturally that low probably wouldn't be a threat), and I want two chances to HIT it without letting it get an action in between. Otherwise, if the monster is healthy enough to take both shots, two half-power shots are going to do far less damage than one full-power shot.

I understand that it scales up (three shots at 62% power or something like that at level 2), but if it's really just a single-monster damage increaser that takes several talent points and uses up ammo 4 or more times as fast as Steady Shot, it hardly seems worthwhile.

So I guess the question is: is multi-shot supposed to be able to hit multiple monsters, or not?

[darkgod]

Multishot is intended to fire at a single creature indeed