ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I've said it before, but I may as well say it again: the Rod of Spydric Poison is too good for ranged characters. If you use LoS tricks to trap an enemy behind a corner, and spam it three times (25 power out of a max 75), that's (6-1)*3 = 15 turns of free damage with no chance of retaliation. Reducing its maximum power down to 25, so that you can only use it once before it has to recharge again, would make it more fair.

This is more due to LOS tricks than the rod. If you're an archmage/alchemist/necromancer you can use LOS tricks to wipe out entire rooms without any chance of retaliation, rod or no rod.

Even class doesn't matter; anyone can do it with a volcano wand given enough patience. The difference is that Spydric Poison just makes it so much easier. Without it, most bosses will still walk towards you and you're not going to be able to just one-shot it with Fireflash, you'd have to actually maneuver a bit. Not so with Spydric Poison, you just sit there and spam away. The difference is a free 2,000 damage (enough to kill everything but bosses) versus a free 30,000 damage (enough to kill everything but Atamathon).

Here's how to use it so that the enemies don't walk toward you. You can spam fireflash there all you want, the mob won't come. Bosses have boss telepathy so it doesn't count.

I'm not against nerfing Rod of Spydre, but the problem with LOS abuse is...well, LOS abuse, not specific items you can use to make it even better, that might have legitimate uses.

donkatsu wrote:Even class doesn't matter; anyone can do it with a volcano wand given enough patience. The difference is that Spydric Poison just makes it so much easier. Without it, most bosses will still walk towards you and you're not going to be able to just one-shot it with Fireflash, you'd have to actually maneuver a bit. Not so with Spydric Poison, you just sit there and spam away. The difference is a free 2,000 damage (enough to kill everything but bosses) versus a free 30,000 damage (enough to kill everything but Atamathon).

And what do you mean by "it doesn't count"?

Look, you want to nerf Spydre because it allows ranged chars to use LOS abuse on bosses rather than just normal mobs and elites. Spydre is fine when you don't use it for LOS abuse. IT IS NOT SPYDRE THAT IS THE PROBLEM. It is the LOS abuse.

They are both problems. The rod exacerbates the existing LOS problem, which is probably not going to go away. Simply nerfing the rod, however, is easy, and better than nothing.

I cannot see how the Rod is that much worse any other talent or item that can target out of sight enemies. An argument like yours could be used to advocate nerfing every ranged attack to the point of complete uselessness.

donkatsu wrote:They are both problems. The rod exacerbates the existing LOS problem, which is probably not going to go away. Simply nerfing the rod, however, is easy, and better than nothing.

LOS abuse is cheesy to the point of cheating. If someone wants to cheat in a single player game, what can you do? Nerfing spydre, which is an item that has legitimate uses, is not an answer to anything.

Being able to fire 3 shots in a row from the rod is pretty powerful in its own right, mind. There are few other abilities in the game you can spam numerous times in a row. Reducing its max power to 30 or 40 would put it more in line with other tools in the game.

But I agree that better AI behaviour when being attacked from outside LOS is more important.

The poison doesn't stack. You can chain durations thanks to the extra power, but for the most part, people could get the same effect by escaping and waiting for a recharge rather than chaining it. There's nothing really meaningful in changing how it functions, except making it marginally better against grunt enemies(see below for how I feel about it vs grunt enemies generally).

LoS tricks need to be fixed, not one of the more interesting options in the game. There's very nearly no other good options for a frail mage to keep some of the heavy hitters in the game off of them. Teleporting isn't always an option, you know-sometimes it can easily produce more dangerous situations than the one you're in.

Maybe, in the future, skills like Tidal Wave or Repulsion Field could see buffs enough to not get instantly punched through with boss level saves and your mage die...but that's not now, and while it's only a few classes that have this problem, they're still in need of a good answer.

As for the "2000 being enough to kill everything but bosses"...if you're taking over, say, two turns to drop your average grunt enemy, you need to be a tank, by the time you get Spydric. There's no excuse for not having slugfest damage that breaks enemies in two or three hits on average. Spydric does negligible immediate damage and does not prevent the enemy from retaliating with high damage. Outside of LoS abuse, this is purely a boss/rare/elite tool.

(If you have a single grunt enemy you're chaining Spydric Poison on by popping in and out of LoS...good for you, you weren't in any danger anyways. Have I mentioned that every single Orc in the game has status healing as a racial skill? No?)

Finally, as to relative abusiveness, there are at least three skills on classes(Gravity Well, Bone Grab and Pinning Shot) that can easily reproduce the exact same effect. All three can just do the same thing, right now. I don't think this was in mind when they were made, but the ability to pin an enemy at a distance and attack it clearly was-all three are on ranged attackers(Though, realistically, I think Bone Grab was more to pin people at melee range for Reavers. Still can be used for LoS abuse though!). This confirms that it's not just me that thinks pinning on ranged characters is inherently cheesy, I think.

I really would love LoS to be symmetrical. Hate that this abuse exists. But that abuse is definitely the problem.

Grey wrote:But I agree that better AI behaviour when being attacked from outside LOS is more important.

yufra and I are on it!

SageAcrin wrote:I really would love LoS to be symmetrical. Hate that this abuse exists. But that abuse is definitely the problem.

A symmetric FoV addon is available, and I'll have the kinks worked out for the next release.

I actually did not know that. I should probably be using it.

None of these other things pin for 18 turns. They're all in the range of 5-8 turns, ie one cast of Spydric Poison. The 18 turn pin is a huge outlier.

...Gravity Well's over a dozen turns of reapplying ...three or four turns? Pin attempts.

...So no.

Edit: Scratch that, apparently it caps out at 10 turns. Been a while since I played PM.

It's theoretically two turn pin, but crosstiering will raise it.

Still not precisely five to eight though.

Edit 2: There's also sorta a problem with your logic, about linking skill casts.

I mean, you could utilize Pinning Shot twice in the same span of 15 turns and get ten turns of Pin or so, it just wouldn't produce complete lockdown. After you empty the Rod, though, it's 10~ turns before it'll get another shot back, and another 25 after that(It'd recharge while you're spamming it). And 75 to get its full stock back.