Sandman25 wrote:There is a serious error in the analysis.
When you deal damage 29 and get 0.5 it's much much worse than dealing damage 58 and getting 1.7. You should NOT divide attack by defense.
If you doubt, assume for a second that you deal 10 damage and get 0.1 damage. Is it really better than dealing 100 damage and getting 2 damage?
This is somewhat too simplified from the "big picture" to be accurate. Let's stick with x2 multiples, as that seems about close. Would you rather deal 20 damage and take 1, or deal 40 damage and take 2 damage? AKA: First one = statue, second one = dragon form.
We're missing information. How many monsters are you fighting? Let's say you have 10 max hp, and no regeneration. If you're fighting 4 monsters in the open (you bad player) that have 20 hp, you'll live in the first one, and die after your second attack in the second. If you're fighting in a hallway and monsters have 40 hp, the second is much better as you'll one shot the monsters as they get into melee range, and depending on timing, may even never be hit.
What I find is that in general in the late game since I do NOT want to bother with luring - I'd rather take on monsters in packs and breeze through the late game - I need to lower the damage per hit that I take. This combines especially well with regeneration, which is something else people are overlooking. If you take half the damage, you double the value of your regeneration. With a regeneration item and the regen spell, you can often heal off nearly all the damage statue form takes from even what are generally dangerous monsters. As a very simple model, imagine you heal 2hp/turn and you have a choice between taking 3 damage per turn or 6 - the 3 damage per turn will take 4 times longer to kill you because of your healing. This is why I generally consider regen to be the strongest spell in the game (I'm also generally prohibited from learning haste, the other contender).
All the extra damage from dragon form is likely to be overkill. In fairness, a lot of the extra AC in statue form is also likely to be overkill, but again I'd personally rather overkill my defenses than my damage. Statue form (unarmed) damage is already roughly twice as high as "fighter with great mace/sword" damage tends to be*. You hit VERY HARD. I don't need to hit VERY EXTREMELY HARD as well, if it comes at the cost of actually having to pay attention to my life.
The reason the debate is silly is largely comes down to preferences about how you prefer to play, how much attention you like to spend, and both forms come online after you're over the hump anyways. But we all love pointless debates anyways
*sample fsim:
weapon:
http://i.imgur.com/wKRr5rj.pngunarmed:
http://i.imgur.com/nNuW21o.pngTo be fair I think this was a +9 demon whip of freezing, so a great mace would be a bit higher, but unarmed is still higher damage than 2h's in statue form, counting the slow.
Sunday, 9th August 2015, 20:44 
