Damage Output

[snow]

I did some testing in wizard mode and learned a few cool things.

1. A +9 sabre of electrocution is slightly better than a +9 sabre of speed. They each average ~32 and ~31 damage with maxed skills per 10 units of time respectively. These numbers are ~89 and ~73 per 10 units of time while berserked.
2. Stone arrow, iron shot, and crystal spear averaged ~16, ~41, and ~73 damage with maxed skills per 10 units of time respectively.
3. Trolls averaged ~56 damage with maxed skills and ~149 damage berserked per 10 units of time.
4. By far the highest damage output came from blade hands. At maxed skills a player using blade hands will do ~72 damage and ~196 damage berserked per 10 units of time.

Now these numbers presume your enemy has 0 AC. Cerebov for example has 30 AC which lowers crystal spear to ~58 and berserked blade hands to ~136.

[snow]

I have more things to test then.

Also what do you mean by maxed stats? I'm averaging ~308 damage per 10 units of time with 23 strength (boosted to 38).

[smock]

Interesting tests. Some other thoughts on the subject:

Regarding weapons, quick blades, demon whips and tridents whips of speed, pain and elec are likely to outperform sabres and possibly blade hands. Danr's spreadsheet suggests that +9 quick blades of pain are the stronger than any other weapon, even at 8 short blades skill. (This observation is one reason why I think the current way that speed and skill interact could use be improved.)

I assume you're sticking to one-handed weapons, but the comparison really could be two-handers versus blade hands, since you don't get to make use of a shield with blade hands. That means the chance for resistances from artifact weapons. So +1 for weapons. Blade hands and other transformations have other downsides, like melding and spellcasting success penalties and restrictions to lighter armour, that can easily make up for the difference in damage output. Those could be substantial minuses (or not!).

[snow]

Can those stats ever be achieved? I couldn't imagine ever getting my strength that high in a real game.

[mageykun]

Comb the abyss or Pan long enough, and collect mass stacks of stat plus potions. Worship Nelmelex, and use spare junk collected to spawn decks of dungeons and then baileys to find more stat plus potions. Switch to Chie for his stat boosts on top of those. It can be done, though we're talking grinding of orders of magnitude on the Disgaea scale, here.

@smock: the problem with with pain though, is that all the truly terrifying things in you want to do massive amounts of damage to are immune to it.

[KoboldLord]

Chie bonus is +15, and the potion bonus caps at +14. To get the Chie bonus, you have to have five pieces of non-artifact gear, so the only bonus possible for these five is gloves of strength/dexterity and hat of intelligence for another +3. Then you have +6 from your artifact shield, your artifact weapon, your two artifact rings, and your artifact amulet. That's a total of +62, so it's totally doable with a single stat, but you'd basically have to wizard mode up the perfect gear. Mere Ziggurat scumming won't do the job before the super-secret Bad End occurs.