Saving CON! And undead while we're at it!

[donkatsu]

Leap is only useful for meleers

Whoa whoa wait, no, Leap is a perfectly controlled LOS teleport. Ranged classes love Leap, probably even more than melee. It's on par with the tier 4s of most other races.

[HousePet]

It's not artifacts that are the problem.

Voratun Plate Mail: 60 strength. Can show up from floor chests as early as the maze and usually shows up in the Vor armory. Even if that's your primary stat it's a problem if that requires base stat. Vorutun Longsword: 48 strength. Vorutun Dagger: 48 dex. You don't think that's just a bit impractical for two weapon arcane blades and even marauders? Even leather armor gets up to 20 strength and is usually intended for classes like rogue that have pretty much no use for the stat.

A character pursuing an even three way stat distribution won't even be able to qualify for prodigies at level 30 without items or a heroism infusion.

And that would take about 5 minutes to change all of them.
Disaster.

Anyway, I'm getting the impression that the negative life bonus on Heroism infusions should be halved. If its way out of line with every other bonus in the game, it should be nerfed, instead of everything else being buffed to match it.

I won the game with a Lich Necromancer on the weekend, and it was rather easy, even without Celestial/Light (Vile Life is a fun alternative). I almost ran out of lives from being careless, because it was easy.
Those status immunities you get are really useful. Yes you can max out stun resistance at level 30, but as a Lich/Ghoul it only takes 2 items instead of 4. It gives you more freedom on what equipment you use, which is valuable. The poison and bleed immunities also mean that when you want to cure a stun effect, they aren't there to make it a chance to cure the stun.
Silence wasn't much of an issue. A certain artifact belt with 30% silence resist (and a free shield) and Endless Pursuit worked pretty well.
Spell Feedback really hurt. Unbreakable Will helped beat that.

[donkatsu]

Anyway, I'm getting the impression that the negative life bonus on Heroism infusions should be halved. If its way out of line with every other bonus in the game, it should be nerfed, instead of everything else being buffed to match it.

I would normally agree, but heroism infusions have been really good for the playability of this game. The number one thing that people hate is getting killed in one turn from full health. For some classes, this isn't as much of a problem, but heroism infusions are a crutch that go a long way towards supporting the weaker classes. Furthermore, because heroism infusions don't actually give you more hp, they specifically target the "get killed in one turn" problem without making characters much tougher otherwise, unlike shielding runes. So in this case, I really do think that everything else should be buffed to match. Players having more max life in general will make the game more tactical, and less a game of "try not to get oneshot".

[grobblewobble]

Furthermore, because heroism infusions don't actually give you more hp, they specifically target the "get killed in one turn" problem without making characters much tougher otherwise, unlike shielding runes.

Heroism makes you stronger in every way. It does not only protect you against one-shot, it also helps you survive damage over time (or anything else), just like a shield. It does not matter whether the extra HP are above or below the zero point. Especially because your health is reset to 1 if your Heroism runs out while below zero.

[donkatsu]

The reason heroism specifically protects you against damage spikes isn't because of positive or negative health (not sure why you would think that), it's because heroism is a loan that you have to pay off with actual healing. Letting Heroism run out with negative health is suicide. What are you going to do if something taps you after the tick but before your turn? Die, that's what. Maybe not this fight, or the next fight, but if this is your strategy then it will certainly happen before you manage to clear the game. Hell, just lingering in the negative health region even with heroism is suicide.

"But you can use a damage shield right before it expires to protect yourself even at 1 HP!"

No. The only class with damage shields large enough to reliably survive further burst with only 1 HP is Archmage, and they 1.) get a full heal when they make their strongest shield, 2.) don't need heroism's extra health capacity anyway.

Think of it this way. Let's say you're in a fight where the enemy has a 10% chance to hit you for 1000 damage. Let's also say you have 1000 health, and a heroism infusion that gives you 1000 more effective hp. Without heroism, any healing/regeneration you have is worthless. With heroism, you survive a 1000 damage hit, but then you're also responsible for healing as soon as possible. If you think you can sit at negative hp because hey, heroism will set you at 1 when it expires, then you'll be in for a nasty shock if you happen to take another 1000 damage hit, which in our scenario has a 1% chance of happening twice in a row. In a roguelike where you have to fight thousands of dangerous enemies, any strategy that gives you more than a 0% chance of dying is not a good strategy.

If instead of a 10% chance for 1000 damage, you're getting hit for 100 damage every turn, then there are much better options for survival than gambling on not getting bopped with your 1 HP.

[Zonk]

It's important to keep in mind that bugs can be good or bad. The fact that something wasn't intended by the developer doesn't automatically make it bad. The added tedium of hoarding items may be bad, but it's also optional, and frankly I don't even find it that tedious. I'd rather just get rid of the stat requirements in general, but I know many people would object to that.

Quite a few things that were tedious but optional (and made the player character better off in the end) have been changed though, to make the game anti-grinding. Consumables for example. Also, haven't there been attempts to encourage NOT doing all zones, for example?

Really, I think just not having stat requirements (while extreme) would make more sense than the current situation, since most items have their power scale with the relevant stats anyway.


As for heroism - what if heroism infusions were indeed nerfed a bit, but they could show up earlier in the game too?

[grobblewobble]

The reason heroism specifically protects you against damage spikes isn't because of positive or negative health (not sure why you would think that), it's because heroism is a loan that you have to pay off with actual healing. Letting Heroism run out with negative health is suicide.

The point is: It not only protects you against single shot damage, but against anything that could kill you. The most common cause of death for me is not being one-shot, but having too many bad statuses and too many heal/escape abilities on cooldown. In such a situation, Heroism will protect you just as well as another shield.

And heroism has a long duration, about twice as long as a shield. By the time the duration runs out, the fight is long over, and even in the rare cases when it is not, you have more than enough time to escape. When there are no monsters around, the health reset to 1 hp guarantees survival, even in the rare cases where all of your heal options are still on cooldown. I did not mention the health reset as something to rely on in the middle of a fight, because yes, of course that would be crazy and suicide.

[darkgod]

You're making me ponder deaht upon removal of heroism if < 0hp .. hum
*evil smirk*

[Effigy]

Heroism is beside the point for this discussion. People aren't suddenly going to start stacking Con if Heroism gets nerfed. Looking at Heroism just exposes how bad Con is by comparison.

[HousePet]

It is relevant for the discussion about how Undead need a buff.
Nerf Heroism, buff Con.

[donkatsu]

The point is: It not only protects you against single shot damage, but against anything that could kill you. The most common cause of death for me is not being one-shot, but having too many bad statuses and too many heal/escape abilities on cooldown.

Why would you go back into a fight when all of your escapes are on cooldown? Why would you not escape if you're about to get whittled to death and you have at least one escape? If the things you're fighting can't even break through the health of a heroism infusion before "the fight is long over", then a regeneration infusion would serve you just as well. Better, actually, since you would have full hp instead of 1 hp at the end, and they have like half the cooldown of heroisms.

Really though, it doesn't matter if the max health is coming from Con or Heroism, as long as players can reach 2000-3000 max hp by endgame one way or another, I think it'll be fine.

Edit: Why was Heroism buffed to restore your hp to 1 anyway? That always felt unnecessary to me. I liked watching orcs drop dead after their heroism ran out.

[grobblewobble]

My point was that heroism protects you from any sort of near-death situation just as well as a shield does, regardless whether we're talking about a one-hit kill or not.

You were saying that heroism protects you only from one-hit kills and supposedly would not help against any other sort of danger, while shields make you generally stronger. But I don't understand why that would be the case. What sort of danger is there, where heroism does not help but a shield does?

So far you mentioned that heroism is a loan, where a shield is a boost you do not need to repay. That's true, but you have a really long time to repay the loan (10+ turns). That is the main reason why having to repay the hitpoints later does not make a practical difference: you have a lot of time for that.

I don't see any situation (except very contrived ones) where a typical shield of say, 400 HP helps you in a way that a typical 700 HP heroism doesn't do better, unless you have a way to boost shields, like archmages.

[donkatsu]

I don't see any situation (except very contrived ones) where a typical shield of say, 400 HP helps you in a way that a typical 700 HP heroism doesn't do better, unless you have a way to boost shields, like archmages.

In literally any situation that lasts longer than the cooldown of your shield, your example shield outperforms your example heroism in terms of damage mitigation. A fight lasting longer than 18 turns is hardly contrived unless you only play Reavers on Normal difficulty or something.

[edge2054]

I'm sure there's some odd artifacts with ridiculous stat requirements but a grep in the object files should be able to track those down without much issue. The other outstanding issue I see is with MAD classes that have stat boosting talents such as Brawlers.

It's not artifacts that are the problem.

Voratun Plate Mail: 60 strength. Can show up from floor chests as early as the maze and usually shows up in the Vor armory. Even if that's your primary stat it's a problem if that requires base stat. Vorutun Longsword: 48 strength. Vorutun Dagger: 48 dex. You don't think that's just a bit impractical for two weapon arcane blades and even marauders? Even leather armor gets up to 20 strength and is usually intended for classes like rogue that have pretty much no use for the stat.

A character pursuing an even three way stat distribution won't even be able to qualify for prodigies at level 30 without items or a heroism infusion.

Woooh.. Tier 5 massive armor takes capped strength to wear?!? Who'd have thunk.

Sarcasm aside leather armor should lose stat requirements anyway or have a way of substituting dex for str. Halfling rogues shouldn't be starting with one stat to spend so they can wear leather. That's a subject for a different thread though. Literally, it's in another thread i started talking about mobility trees.

As far as prodigies, you can't unlock tier 4 talents by level 12 if you're not prioritizing a sinlge stat. And we're talking 14 more points over 18 more levels. Either way I think put points into stuff you want is a lot more intuitive for new players then the hoard stat boosting gear mini-game we currently have in place and if it needs some balance tweaks so be it.

[Atarlost]

As far as prodigies, you can't unlock tier 4 talents by level 12 if you're not prioritizing a sinlge stat.

Yes you can: because stat prerequisites use current rather than raw stats and that's a good thing. Especially if con becomes an important stat again.

Getting rid of stat prereqs would also be swell, but making them use raw values without cutting them dramatically is going to remove a lot of build variability.