YASD: I knew it was a bad idea


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Swamp Slogger

Posts: 136

Joined: Thursday, 7th February 2019, 14:02

Location: Australia

Post Monday, 26th August 2019, 03:29

YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

...but I did it anyway.

Ran into Sonja in Lair and saw that she had a distortion weapon. Put an exclusion zone around her and snuck away without waking her up.
Then I went and cleared the rest of the level.

I was just about to move onto the next level, leaving Sonja undisturbed (as I should have done), when I thought, "I wonder if I can disable her with Dazzling Spray."
I couldn't. Abyssed. Dead. So stupid. A completely avoidable death.

Morgue:
https://crawl.project357.org/morgue/MrD ... 135729.txt

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6454

Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Monday, 26th August 2019, 03:52

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

FWIW:
1. Dazzling spray doesn't have a great chance of working (less than a decent-skill confuse)
2. If it *does* work, it doesn't really "disable" the creature, it leaves them 'dazzled' which means that they "can't see you" similar to you being invisible, in particular this means they have a penalty to hit you, but have full access to their abilities, also you can stab them, should you be a stabby type.


For future information, some good ways to deal with Sonja (presuming you can't simply overpower her):
Polymorph/Paralyze her with a wand, Throw curare at her and run away, meph cloud her, Kill her with ranged attacks (airstrike and disintigration work well to bypass her EV) with a way to blink away when she gets close, (preferably with rPois, because her needles get annoying) Note she moves and attacks quickly so "adjacent" is too late to blink,
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bel

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Monday, 26th August 2019, 09:14

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

Not sure why you tried Dazzling Spray. Just fireball her from afar. Also, you can use the various things Siegurt listed above.

Dazzling Spray is an enchanter spell. It has conjuration school tacked on, but conjurer types have very little use for it.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Monday, 26th August 2019, 14:28

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

bel wrote:Not sure why you tried Dazzling Spray. Just fireball her from afar. Also, you can use the various things Siegurt listed above.

Dazzling Spray is an enchanter spell. It has conjuration school tacked on, but conjurer types have very little use for it.

Well, it's actually not a terrible damage spell if you're a Cj and you're using it from your starting book when it's level-appropriate. It's an Ok spell if what you want to do is hit 3 things arranged in a way that dazzling spray can hit them, and you don't yet have any better option.
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bel

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Monday, 26th August 2019, 14:36

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

I basically never learn Dazzling Spray on Cj, or if I learn it, I never bother to use it. Maybe I'm missing out, but the damage sucks IIRC. I would much prefer to use Fulminant Prism for AoE on Cj.

Anyway, in this case, OP had a lot of other ways to handle Sonja.

Blades Runner

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Post Monday, 26th August 2019, 15:03

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

Even IMB is usually more practical for multi-hits than dazzling spray, in situations where you can't make good use of prism like corridors/odd terrain. I spam searing ray the most in the early goings as Cj though.

Dazzling spray is a viable stabbing tool and it's odd to have it in the Cj playbook, since Cj use magic that can't be resisted. Still, no currently existing level 2-4 spell would make MORE sense in its place, and making up a new pure damage spell in level 3 is also silly. I can see why it's still in this book. The other route would be to drop it and add battlesphere back, but I think that was deemed too strong?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Monday, 26th August 2019, 17:05

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

TheMeInTeam wrote:Even IMB is usually more practical for multi-hits than dazzling spray, in situations where you can't make good use of prism like corridors/odd terrain. I spam searing ray the most in the early goings as Cj though.

Dazzling spray is a viable stabbing tool and it's odd to have it in the Cj playbook, since Cj use magic that can't be resisted. Still, no currently existing level 2-4 spell would make MORE sense in its place, and making up a new pure damage spell in level 3 is also silly. I can see why it's still in this book. The other route would be to drop it and add battlesphere back, but I think that was deemed too strong?


FWIW, IMB has a 1:6 chance of hitting more than one creature if the one you're targeting is adjacent, it's better when your target is further, but it's not ever really reliable as a multi-target spell (Also dazzling spray can hit things that are spread further apart than can be targeted with IMB, which is more likely when they are further away from you). Also IMB's damage is really inferior to f.Prism's, and if you're going to use f.Prism, you aren't spending any XP you wouldn't otherwise, so it only costs spell slots (which you can recover later with amnesia)

However searing ray is *really really* good for it's level, so it's totally feasible to skip dazzling spray, with only minimal loss in power.

It's worth pointing out that dazzling spray does more damage than searing ray per-hit (obviously at a much larger MP cost per turn) so if you're looking for *strictly maximum damage per time* dazzling spray is better (it does damage comparable to stone arrow but to more than one target, and only slightly less damage than IMB, although at the expense of another school) Also, searing ray is obviously only single-school, so it takes more XP to get dazzling spray online.

For the curious:
Spoiler: show
Searing ray: (2/2/3/4)d(5-7ish)
Dazzling spray: 2d(13-20ish)
Stone arrow: 3d(7-11ish)
f.Prism: 3d(12-24ish)
IMB: 2d(11-23ish)
Force lance: 2d(11-23ish)
where "ish" implies enough spellpower to cast the spell at the minimum (20 for the level 3 spells, 30 for the level 4 spells), and a not-over-the-top investment for the high side (100 spellpower, or spell cap)

The real loser of the bunch, damage-wise, is force lance, it's the same as IMB but takes an extra spell school (and one that's not shared with the rest of the starting book).

Dazzling spray is actually pretty good as a damage spell, it's not as efficient as searing ray for the majority of cases where you can draw the group you want to kill into a nice line, and it's not as much damage as f.Prism for the large chunk of cases where you can employ it reasonably (and don't mind the noise), but it's fine as an in-between spell for those two.
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Blades Runner

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Joined: Tuesday, 11th December 2018, 19:14

Post Monday, 26th August 2019, 18:26

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

Interesting, dazzling spray is more damaging than I thought it was. Pretty decent value if hitting 2-3 enemies with it, more so if blind prevents some damage too. Not bad. Still a bit odd thematically for Cj though.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Tuesday, 27th August 2019, 06:49

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

Siegurt wrote:The real loser of the bunch, damage-wise, is force lance, it's the same as IMB but takes an extra spell school (and one that's not shared with the rest of the starting book).
It does an additional 2d(1+floor(power/10)) damage if the monster collides with something. But if you don't get a collision then it sucks yeah.

Blades Runner

Posts: 593

Joined: Tuesday, 11th December 2018, 19:14

Post Tuesday, 27th August 2019, 14:24

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

I've tried using force lance a few times and have always come away disappointed. It sounds like a cool utility spell; position well and you push monsters into other monsters while increasing the number of turns it takes one of them (or several) to reach you.

In practice, it seems to either miss or simply not push the monster. Maybe the push is more consistent at high power? Right now this spell is very high on my list of "spells that sound better than they actually are when used", but maybe I'm missing something.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Tuesday, 27th August 2019, 21:27

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

No, the knockback really isn't enough to be useful for repositioning monsters. It's only practically useful for the collision damage (and even that isn't great).

Swamp Slogger

Posts: 136

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Location: Australia

Post Wednesday, 28th August 2019, 14:33

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

TheMeInTeam wrote:In practice, it seems to either miss or simply not push the monster. Maybe the push is more consistent at high power? Right now this spell is very high on my list of "spells that sound better than they actually are when used", but maybe I'm missing something.

It could be my imagination, but I think the push back used to be more reliable once upon a time. I used to use it to push away nasties like hydras, but I stopped doing it once I noticed that it wasn't as reliable any more.

Anyway, getting back to my dead Fire Elementalist. It seems from the above replies that I was doubly, or even triply, stupid:
1. I should've left Sonja alone
2. If I wasn't going to leave her alone, I should've blasted her with Fiery Flames of Death (tm) instead of fiddling about trying to disable her.
3. If I was going to fiddle about trying to disable her, dazzling spray wasn't a very good way to do it.

Zot Zealot

Posts: 1004

Joined: Thursday, 16th August 2018, 21:19

Post Wednesday, 28th August 2019, 16:42

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

That seems about right :p

Blades Runner

Posts: 593

Joined: Tuesday, 11th December 2018, 19:14

Post Wednesday, 28th August 2019, 19:18

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

Sonja has terrible MR so casting confuse or using paralysis/polymorph wands are reasonable moves. Dazzling spray itself isn't a very good disable, it doesn't inflict it very reliably and it's not long-lasting when it does. Can be useful to add stabbing damage or per above just direct damage, but it's not something you put on monsters then feel safe.

Swamp Slogger

Posts: 182

Joined: Monday, 2nd July 2018, 16:47

Location: United States

Post Wednesday, 28th August 2019, 19:42

Re: YASD: I knew it was a bad idea

Paralysis or polymorph wands are very good against Sonja, but this character didn't have either of those. Confuse was in the spell library, but no exp was in Hexes. I think fireball spam would have been the best way for this particular character to engage Sonja. Disintegration wand might have been okay, but probably not as good as fireball.

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