Amulet swapping with reflection

[Shtopit]

About reflection: correct me if I'm wrong, but I think its effect grows stronger the more SH you have. This means that the amulet, alone, isn't that powerful, and that its effects only become relevant if it's accompanied by other equipment or spells or abilities which increase SH. So swapping an amulet doesn't make that much of a change, unless you have already invested in SH sources and have them active.

[duvessa]

The meaningful part of amulet of reflection is that it gives you SH. The actual reflection property is usually inconsequential.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

The anti-magic brand is usually inconsequential too, but we don't call anti-magic meaningless because of it; it's strong despite not doing anything most of the time.

[Shtopit]

The meaningful part of amulet of reflection is that it gives you SH. The actual reflection property is usually inconsequential.

Interesting, I suppose that's true for characters without shields (reflection < SH). Once you have a large shield, returning to sender crystal spears and killing yaktaurs by being shot becomes very consequential. Without an already large SH pool, I'd probably look for regen or something else.

[Shard1697]

Both "the meaningful part of amulet of reflection is the SH" and "amulet of reflection is less worthwhile without other sources of SH because of the low block chance by itself" can be true(I believe they are).

The anti-magic brand is usually inconsequential too, but we don't call anti-magic meaningless because of it; it's strong despite not doing anything most of the time.

Anti-magic is much stronger than reflection, though.

[duvessa]

The anti-magic brand is usually inconsequential too, but we don't call anti-magic meaningless because of it; it's strong despite not doing anything most of the time.

I'm really struggling to see how this comparison could make sense to anyone.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

In what way is reflection "usually inconsequential" and how is that different from the way anti-magic is usually inconsequential?

In one case I stop the monster from casting LCS at me, in the other I destroy it with its own LCS.

[gammafunk]

Reflection is usually inconsequential because the effect rarely triggers in a way that would be meaningful if you had the SH but no reflection. This is different from anti-magic because that effect triggers frequently in a way that has a meaningful outcome. These things are easily apparent when you actually try using them in-game.

[Arrhythmia]

e: don't any of you fuckers dare make this a discussion about amulets of harm or some other bullshit

how fucking dare you people

[gammafunk]

Well I can't really see your thanks to posts ratio, so I can't accurately judge whether your rules are worth listening to.

[dynast]

Well I can't really see your thanks to posts ratio, so I can't accurately judge whether your rules are worth listening to.

Its the person who locked crazy yiuf inside a runed vault, dont listen to it!

e: don't any of you fuckers dare make this a discussion about amulets of harm or some other bullshit

how fucking dare you people

sorry arrhy.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

Reflection is usually inconsequential because the effect rarely triggers in a way that would be meaningful if you had the SH but no reflection. This is different from anti-magic because that effect triggers frequently in a way that has a meaningful outcome. These things are easily apparent when you actually try using them in-game.

this seems to be a rewording of Shard's "Anti-magic is much stronger than reflection" and a wordy way to say "lol noob"

Ru's aura is also meaningless then, I guess?

[Sandman25]

Reflection amulet increases SH, that alone is better than antimagic vs most monsters. Reflection ego is just a fun bonus.

Edit. I mean are you going to use antimagic instead of electro or vampiric vs most casters? Notable exceptions are monsters where vampiric/electro does not work or extremely dangerous casters with high HP so you will be hit with spells no matter how high your damage is.

[Siegurt]

Edit. I mean are you going to use antimagic instead of electro or vampiric vs most casters?

Dangerous ones? Yes, every time. (Note that vampric is a particularly poor choice there) Non dangerous ones i probably won't bother to swap whatever happens to be in my hands out, because it isn't important.

[Sandman25]

Dangerous ones? Yes, every time. (Note that vampric is a particularly poor choice there) Non dangerous ones i probably won't bother to swap whatever happens to be in my hands out, because it isn't important.

I see. I prefer vampiric vs monsters like Deep Elf Annihilator/Sorcerer.

[nago]

Dangerous ones? Yes, every time. (Note that vampric is a particularly poor choice there) Non dangerous ones i probably won't bother to swap whatever happens to be in my hands out, because it isn't important.

I see. I prefer vampiric vs monsters like Deep Elf Annihilator/Sorcerer.

Why?
Usually a DE is killed in 2 or 3 hits if you using a 2 hander. If you hit them with a vamp weapon you give them at least a couple of turns to damage you much more of you can heal back with the vampiric effect - it's enough to be hit one time with iron shot, lcs, ligh bolt and so on.
With AM, your first hit has a good chance to disable them and kill them good without suffering other damage - this is particularly good against a DE annhilator who keep blink around and throw things to you.

Then I obviously never swap to AM if using vamp - heck I often don't do even against liches and similar - because it's annoying as hell to eat to get vamp back. But that's bad habit.

[Sandman25]

Why?
Usually a DE is killed in 2 or 3 hits if you using a 2 hander. If you hit them with a vamp weapon you give them at least a couple of turns to damage you much more of you can heal back with the vampiric effect - it's enough to be hit one time with iron shot, lcs, ligh bolt and so on.
With AM, your first hit has a good chance to disable them and kill them good without suffering other damage - this is particularly good against a DE annhilator who keep blink around and throw things to you.

Then I obviously never swap to AM if using vamp - heck I often don't do even against liches and similar - because it's annoying as hell to eat to get vamp back. But that's bad habit.

I have tried AM vs them too but still prefer vampiric. I died (or almost died) with both vampiric and AM, none of them guarantees anything. Vampiric is great when you have to fight several monsters in a row which is common in Elf.

[Siegurt]

Why?
Usually a DE is killed in 2 or 3 hits if you using a 2 hander. If you hit them with a vamp weapon you give them at least a couple of turns to damage you much more of you can heal back with the vampiric effect - it's enough to be hit one time with iron shot, lcs, ligh bolt and so on.
With AM, your first hit has a good chance to disable them and kill them good without suffering other damage - this is particularly good against a DE annhilator who keep blink around and throw things to you.

Then I obviously never swap to AM if using vamp - heck I often don't do even against liches and similar - because it's annoying as hell to eat to get vamp back. But that's bad habit.

I have tried AM vs them too but still prefer vampiric. I died (or almost died) with both vampiric and AM, none of them guarantees anything. Vampiric is great when you have to fight several monsters in a row which is common in Elf.

Typically in elf, if i have both, i swap to AM to kill the nastier spellcasters, then back to vamp to kill everything else to regain hps between them.

[duvessa]

Reflection is usually inconsequential because the effect rarely triggers in a way that would be meaningful if you had the SH but no reflection. This is different from anti-magic because that effect triggers frequently in a way that has a meaningful outcome. These things are easily apparent when you actually try using them in-game.

this seems to be a rewording of Shard's "Anti-magic is much stronger than reflection" and a wordy way to say "lol noob"

Ru's aura is also meaningless then, I guess?

This is really not complicated.
SH prevents attacks from hitting you.
Ru's aura prevents attacks from hitting you.
Reflection only affects attacks that already didn't hit you because you blocked them with SH. Yes, this CAN result in the monster dying faster and therefore getting fewer attacks, but this doesn't happen very often unless you are failing to use corners against archers (which is sloppy play), and it especially doesn't happen often against ancient liches - why you would mention crystal spear in a pro-reflection argument is beyond me, since reflecting a crystal spear requires putting yourself in a spot where you can potentially get hit by a crystal spear.
Also note that reflected projectiles keep their original to-hit, which means the projectiles you are most likely to reflect (ones with low to-hit) are also the projectiles that are least likely to actually hit a monster after being reflected.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

OK, back to reflection.

Ru's aura prevents attacks from hitting you.

So the lich-touches-itself part, the redirection, is irrelevant?

Reflection only affects attacks that already didn't hit you because you blocked them with SH. Yes, this CAN result in the monster dying faster and therefore getting fewer attacks, but this doesn't happen very often unless you are failing to use corners against archers (which is sloppy play), and it especially doesn't happen often against ancient liches - why you would mention crystal spear in a pro-reflection argument is beyond me, since reflecting a crystal spear requires putting yourself in a spot where you can potentially get hit by a crystal spear.

a spot where you can get hit by LCS? Such as... right next to the lich, where you would need to be in order to be applying anti-magic to it? Monsters don't refrain from casting projectiles at you when you're adjacent! Reflection working at range is a perk, yet you somehow twist that into a weakness?

Also note that reflected projectiles keep their original to-hit, which means the projectiles you are most likely to reflect (ones with low to-hit) are also the projectiles that are least likely to actually hit a monster after being reflected.

i'm a little confused... the ones you are most likely to reflect are just the ones you are most likely to block, so that doesn't say much about the value that the reflection ego adds to existing SH.

You reflect inaccurate projectiles more often, but they hit the monster less often. You reflect accurate projectiles less often, but they hit the monster more often. The effectiveness ought to even out.

stone giants and yaktaurs have poor EV; liches have good to-hit; what you're talking about requires poor accuracy and low EV. Are monsters really that bad at hitting themselves?

We talk about enslavement being really good. Reflection is like periodically enslaving some monsters around you, against themselves... and it's bad?

[gammafunk]

Mod note: Split from the GDD post about reworking amulet of rage since these have become off-topic to that thread. If someone wants to make a proposal wrt reflection based on discussed ideas, please following the GDD guidelines.

[duvessa]

We talk about enslavement being really good. Reflection is like periodically enslaving some monsters around you, against themselves... and it's bad?

All right this one's on me, I really should've figured out you were trolling before I got to this line

[BabyRage]

I don't know what you're talking about, anti-magic is totally useless.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

SH prevents attacks from hitting you.

I should have figured out you were trolling by the time I got to this line.
*slap*

[Shard1697]

We talk about enslavement being really good. Reflection is like periodically enslaving some monsters around you, against themselves... and it's bad?

It's not really like that at all.

[dowan]

PSA: Having a different opinion isn't the same as trolling. Making inflammatory statements just to cause trouble is trolling.

Stating your honest opinion in the most inflammatory possible way is Duvessa-ing. I've tried to emulate the style since it's such a big hit around here, but it's NOT easy. Go a little light on the venom, and you're just being informative. Go too heavy, and you're an asshole. Get it just right, and people feel like they're learning something, but feel vaguely insulted at the same time. It's an art.

[TonberryJam]

All I know is when I encounter packs of ranged or big things with big rocks I just wait in spot and they all die fast from reflection. Of course shields leveled up at this point.

I think reflection is great for shields users.

[dynast]

There is these things called "unnecessary" and "situational" that both of you just decided to throw out the window in order to drag your arguments to one extreme for the sake of... hell, i dont even know, you guys are not even arguing changes to the game. having reflection against a enemy doesnt mean much if you can just beat it to a pulp, except when you are a spellcaster, so you can save mp and exploit the fact blocking applies before dodging and stand still with dmsl.

[Siegurt]

So this comes down to what you consider a meaningful impact and what sort of combat is plausibly dangerous.

Reflection, as an ego, basically boils down to "does a little bit of extra damage to in response to a subset attacks from a subset of creatures (those with blockable ranged attacks) that scales with SH"

One side's argument seems to be "the amount of damage done isn't enough to make a noticeable difference in your ability to survive in any plausibly dangerous combat, particularly when weighed against the effect that the SH by itself has on such combats, also considering that the SH works on many more attacks than the reflection ego does (aka melee attacks)" while unstated, i assume the above is qualified with "while using good tactics"

The other side seems to think either a larger subset of combats are plausibly dangerous (possibly due to using bad tactics) or that the damage done in the combats where it applies are more meaningful.

So lets look at a couple possibilities:
1. Does reflection change optimal tactics in any cases? - i would argue that it does not change it for non trivial combats, it might be optimal to walk out and let a pack of centaurs plink you with arrows if you can't take any damage from the ones that get through (reducing your turn count? ) but for any mildly dangerous combat the optimal tactics remain the same.
2. Does it change your level of danger? - again my opinion is no, the lich that can cast lcs is still just as valid of a threat, you still need to maintain the same hp buffer, and your odds of dying from any given attack with a given amount of hps aren't changed, so the threat level remains the same throughout the combat.
3. Does it mitigate the damage done from a given combat? - i would say yes to this, at the end of a combat you can look back and say "that critter died a little more quickly because of reflection, and hence did less damage" the significance of having more hps at the end of a combat is highly variable, and depends a lot on play style, generally speaking the more paranoid you play, the less significant this is (as you have more ability to simply rest back to full) but it is never totally irrelevant.

By comparison, SH does not change optimal tactics, *does* reduce your danger level, and also reduces damage taken.

[duvessa]

Oh come on, he can't honestly believe that reflection is like periodically enslaving some monsters around you.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

the significance of having more hps at the end of a combat is highly variable

what the... Oh, I did not know that ending a fight with negative hps is often insignificant :/

[Siegurt]

the significance of having more hps at the end of a combat is highly variable

what the... Oh, I did not know that ending a fight with negative hps is often insignificant :/

There is never a situation in which reflection would rationally cause you to not have hps below 0, unless you are really really bad at crawl.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

How can I take what you're saying seriously? Try: "There is never a situation in which anti-magic would rationally cause you to not have hps below 0, unless you are really really bad at crawl." I mean, what are we talking about here? It is not uncommon that e.g. your best anti-lich weapon has a brand that is not effective versus liches at all, because you enchanted it and trained for it and don't have a good alternative. You should not die even with crap loot. Nevertheless, AM and HW are good against liches, for example. Good =/= can't win without!

The most meaningful difference I can see here is that having reflection does not make you less likely to die to the reflected monster's very next action, whereas applying anti-magic does indeed reduce your chance of dying to it. But this neglects all the turns before and after, to focus on an atomic shit-could-die-next-moment turn, which you should have been avoiding and preventing for most of your game-time! From such a perspective, Agony is a useless spell since it can never deliver the finishing blow to keep you from dying!

[dynast]

There is never a situation in which reflection would rationally cause you to not have hps below 0, unless you are really really bad at crawl.

Man, thats dynast's level of "git gud" argument. Come on man ,you are better than that.

[Siegurt]

There is never a situation in which reflection would rationally cause you to not have hps below 0, unless you are really really bad at crawl.

Man, thats dynast's level of "git gud" argument. Come on man ,you are better than that.

Well, I'm serious, if you're so bad that you stand there and hope that something that could kill you dies from reflection instead, there's something seriously wrong with you.

So here's how it breaks down: A critter could kill you, you should've escaped turns ago, but let's presume for the moment that you've like, read teleport and are hoping it will go off before the lich LCS's your face, does reflection provide a cure for this disease? No, it does not, SH might, if you manage to get lucky enough to deflect the shot, it might keep you alive, but reflection is only useful *after you've already survived*

If you're hoping reflection will kill something before it's done enough damage to kill you then you're fighting the wrong fight, the only rational move when you're in danger is to assume reflection will not happen, since you can't use it as a defense or as a reliable offense, it doesn't help except retroactively. "I did some extra damage last turn" doesn't make you any safer on the next turn or the one following, until the critter is dead, at which point you can look back at how much damage you took and if there's more critters around say "gee I'm safer" (Which is the way in which playstyle effects how much reflection is useful, by virtue of how likely it is that there will be other stuff around)

That's why it's foolish to say that reflection will prevent you from having less than zero hps, because there's no situation that a rational person would get into where you could die that would be mitigated by presence of reflection.

[Shtopit]

The thing I like of the AM vs Reflection argument is that they do not exclude each other (although I understand the meta implications of the discussion).

I get what is being said about SH saving your hide and Reflection not doing that. At the same time, one could say: but don't attacks also have a slightly randomized chance of hitting? I personally see Reflection as giving an auxiliary ranged attack which triggers only in certain circumstances. It has its uses, for example, in the Snake Pit, where you can poison nagas without even noticing, or in the Shoals, where a melee build could have problems advancing in water, or blowing up spiders while they keep their distance. Yes, if it saves your life by shortening the time the javeliner spends throwing stuff at you, then it means that you did something wrong. But it still is a helpful mechanic which makes the game faster and, to me, funnier.

[Siegurt]

The thing I like of the AM vs Reflection argument is that they do not exclude each other (although I understand the meta implications of the discussion).

I get what is being said about SH saving your hide and Reflection not doing that. At the same time, one could say: but don't attacks also have a slightly randomized chance of hitting? I personally see Reflection as giving an auxiliary ranged attack which triggers only in certain circumstances. It has its uses, for example, in the Snake Pit, where you can poison nagas without even noticing, or in the Shoals, where a melee build could have problems advancing in water, or blowing up spiders while they keep their distance. Yes, if it saves your life by shortening the time the javeliner spends throwing stuff at you, then it means that you did something wrong. But it still is a helpful mechanic which makes the game faster and, to me, funnier.

Well, yes, it's beneficial, in the same way an aux attack or Minotaur retaliation is, extra damage is always good, but isn't something that will save your life. (Except in a long-term "be able to kill things at a reasonable rate" sort of way.

[dynast]

Reflection is good at not letting you get to your described situation. This happens a lot when im doing vaults/depths, im trying to fight off fire giants and a yaktaur pack is recalled or shows up, i have no time to deal with them because that requires position which causes me to take both free fireballs and bolts from both sides and reflection deals with them for me, they end up dying in two shots instead of staying there shooting until they run out of ammo. Replace yaktaurs with stone giants, merfolk javeliners, and so on.
Final point: I once killed a DECj ghost with the brooch of shielding i found on d:4 where i would have died otherwise because i had no damage source against that ghost.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

Again, you're neglecting everything that leads up to an emergency.
We're not comparing Reflection to scrolls of teleportation (although it competes with Dismissal now, lol).
It is an offensive trait - it helps you kill monsters faster.
Do you mean to say that nobody would die from low slaying/enchantment unless they were really really bad at Crawl? Well then, I guess, slaying sucks!

extra damage... isn't something that will save your life

This is downright radical.

you can't use it as a defense or as a reliable offense

Elec is also not reliable but it's considered one of the best brands.

does reflection provide a cure for this disease?

By the way, the only reason I brought up Anti-Magic is because Anti-Magic, like Reflection, does absolutely nothing against the majority of monsters, which I originally thought was the main point of the "reflection is usually inconsequential" side.

All I know is when I encounter packs of ranged or big things with big rocks I just wait in spot and they all die fast from reflection.

That's not as good as corners, though. All you need to do when there's a corner is wait in a spot and the corner kills everything for you. You can even take corners everywhere with you!

[Siegurt]

It is an offensive trait - it helps you kill monsters faster.
Do you mean to say that nobody would die from low slaying/enchantment

That's exactly what I'm saying, no one has ever died from not doing enough damage, they've died from running out of HP, that's how you die.

Well then, I guess, slaying sucks!

Not doing enough damage prevents you from being able to kill things, it forces you to escape from more things, which in turn makes you use consumables (things you actually use to get you out of emergencies) more quickly, which might eventually kill you. I've been stuck with a cursed blowgun with no needles as my only source of damage for 5 levels, and it didn't kill me, in fact it was only after I'd gotten it uncursed and was using a decent weapon again that I ultimately died, with a quite excellent offense, because I ran out of consumables.

No one said that slaying, or even reflection "sucks" or is even bad, only that it doesn't prevent you from dying in the immediate sense.

[gammafunk]

No amount of posing rhetorical questions is going to make reflect equivalent to every crawl game mechanic far and wide ("reflect is like anti-magic, reflect is like enslavement, reflect is like agony, reflect is like slaying..."). Trying to argue that strong effects are weak ("the elec brand isn't reliable") and therefore reflect is equivalent to those is also not going to work. The property doesn't trigger frequently and reliably enough versus the subset of dangerous monsters with ranged attacks, so it's a weak effect in practice. Since a quite large portion of dangerous monsters with ranged attacks use spells and since anti-magic is both reliable and effective at neutralizing those spells, anti-magic is a strong effect in practice.

Reflect has a "fun factor" to it when it makes popcorn monsters kill themselves. Where you've gotten into a bad situation, fighting too many ranged attackers at once, yes it can buy you a few more turns at that bad position, but a better solution is to move to a better position. It can be fun property for the lazy, but yeah you want the amulet because 5 or more SH is a good defensive boost, not because of the one time in the game where you'll get to see an ogre magic LCS itself.

[duvessa]

reflection sucks and is even bad

[HardboiledGargoyle]

I'm not the one engaging in mental gymnastics here. I'm dismantling the absurdity of arguments on display by showing that they don't make sense in any other context: "X doesn't matter because it only works when a monster can target you", "X doesn't matter because it is unreliable", "X doesn't matter because it doesn't kill/disable the monster before it gets a move", etc. are normally laughable, but mysteriously convincing when we're talking about reflection.

Supposing an amulet raises your chance of blocking from 20% to 30%, that 10% increase is the significant portion, and the 30% of the time that you're suddenly reflecting is the insignificant part, and fluff? Especially considering that monster defenses are lower than player defenses, so they're likely to harm themselves more than they'd harm you?

...why is seeing an ogre mage LCS itself so much rarer than seeing popcorn kill itself? On my side, I often get monsters casting straight through antimagic; still, I don't bash it. Maybe leaning on personal experience screws with one's opinions like that? double-damage bug

No one said that slaying, or even reflection "sucks" or is even bad, only that it doesn't prevent you from dying in the immediate sense.

So you only care about whether it saves you "in the immediate"? you don't care about it sparing your consumables? this distinction is useless. We were looking at an artificial "given combat" (having to reset is worse than pwning everything, agreed?) and you started with this:

3. Does it mitigate the damage done from a given combat? - i would say yes
...
By comparison, SH ... also reduces damage taken.

under the assumption that the player won't die (or use consumables). I think it's fair to assume the "given combat" begins at full HP, but then you focused only on the turn where the player really needs to escape (a turn which, as you've already assumed, doesn't occur!), to show that reflection is irrelevant, instead of looking at the whole "given combat" that you were supposedly examining.

[gammafunk]

You're engaging in the mental gymnastics by creating the absurd arguments. "X doesn't matter because it is unreliable" is a good argument for a reasonable definition of unreliable. Here X is "reflection kills/damages a dangerous monster in a context I care about" and reliable is "often enough for me to consider it a significant effect". Yet you try to simply assume that reflection must be reliable because other effects in crawl are reliable, or that reliable things like the electricity brand are as unreliable as reflection (they aren't).

I believe seeing an ogre mage LCS itself is so much rarer than seeing popcorn kill itself is because crawl is a game with an awful lot of popcorn monsters and very few LCS ogre mages.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

It's also a game with lots of popcorn monsters and very few Lom Lobons.

there is nothing absurd about my arguments; they are, at worse, uninformed. The foundation of your argument comes down to "what I'm saying is easily apparent, so, yeah, I'm right." To see that, forget your vast experience with reflection for a second and read yourself objectively. But hey, it beats Siegurt's approach of not caring whether you can kill monsters or need to flee and use consumables ("it depends on playstyle").

Help me see how some extra SH is reliable, but reflection is unreliable, when the chances of blocking and reflecting are the same.

Mod note: Split from the GDD post about reworking amulet of rage since these have become off-topic to that thread. If someone wants to make a proposal wrt reflection based on discussed ideas, please following the GDD guidelines.

What was your thought process here? This thread is pure Advice.

[Wahaha]

Reflection is not bad. Many things are better than reflection when competing for the slot/ego.

[ydeve]

This thread reminds me of the other one about luring somehow not being an intuitive tactic.

[dowan]

I got an amulet of reflection early on with a FOFi who was using a shield. I ran into a pretty early centaur in an open area, and it killed itself via reflection. A bit later on, a different centaur was able to take almost half my hp in one turn when it shot two arrows at me in one turn. My point being, those arrows were dangerous, and there was at least a fair chance I wouldn't block them. While obviously a situation that doesn't come up extremely often, it's not that rare to find oneself in a dangerous situation with a monster whose attacks can be reflected, and to do so, and have the monster die earlier than it would have otherwise, neutralizing the threat. Of course it's silly to just stand there and let yourself get pelted just to let reflection kill a monster, it's just bonus damage that happens occasionally to some dangerous monsters. If it happens to popcorn too that doesn't somehow make it worse.

Other effects are often better than reflect, and may be useful in a larger variety of situations, so comparatively it can be a weak effect, but it's pretty silly to pretend ranged monsters killing themselves at range instead of needing to be approached isn't a very handy effect. Of course you can run around a corner quickly sometimes, but not always.

I don't think there is ever a time when one has to choose between anti-magic and reflection, so that's a rather odd argument to have in what was supposedly an advice thread.

[Sandman25]

Wow, what a ridiculous thread...
Ok, situation: you open a door and see Ancient Lich who is adjacent to the door and hastes itselfs immediately, your actions?
You have no place to blink, you have no silence scroll/spell, closing the door won't help because the lich will open the door and will do it faster than you.

With SH and reflection:
Ancient Lich casts Lehudib's Crystal Spear (3d48) and dies (71-144 max HP), you are still at 100% HP.

Now please tell me what you are going to do as player who is not "really really bad" and has character who can die in 1-2 attacks (that includes most characters because two casts of LCS can deal 288 damage).

Edit. To make it clear. Ancient Lich casts Haste and then 3 LCS, first of them is blocked with SH (and reflected if ego is present), two others are not and deal 144 damage each. Let's prove reflection does not save your life here because you are not "really really bad" and survive via ... via what?

Edit2. To make it eaisier for some. If you want, you can assume that you have less than 144 max HP and Lich casts just 2 LCS, both with max damage roll. First is blocked (and kills lich if reflected), second is not (and kills player if lich is still alive at this point). Don't you see that "reflection does not guarantee anything" (true, you still can die to very first LCS, it's not different from AC/EV here) and "reflection can save you" (it can save you from second LCS because it does not happen) are not exclusive things, both can be true.

[genericpseudonym]

People aren't saying that reflection is worthless or that it never does anything.

People are saying that it isn't consistent enough to rely on. If you do have escape consumables but have no non-reflection ways to easily kill that lich, sticking around and hoping to nail him with his own LCS is a worse plan than burning a ?silence or ?blink or something.

In that specific situation reflection would save the player. However, because players can't actually see the rolls in advance, a good player even with reflection would burn the same number of consumables (if available) as a good player without reflection.

A more realistic situation would be something like "You are playing a naga or chei character with poorer-than-usual defenses. You run into a pack of yaktaurs while you're in the middle of the room. Because you have reflection you end the fight at 3/4ths hp instead of half hp, (disclaimer: numbers not accurate) and are safer in case any enemies find you while you're resting.