DCSS TrunkWatch™: "Dismissal dismissed

[WingedEspeon]

Now that I think about it, wearing Harm on a normal-ish HP character is sort of like being a VS. Except you can heal, and don't have regeneration, or pseudo-vampirism. But you're frail(er), and do more damage. I'm not sure if this makes it a good item to use, though. I can't think of many situations where, assuming good play, that the effect of Harm will help you survive a situation where you would have otherwise died. In a game with permadeath driven by wide damage distributions, defensive play will almost always be the best strategy.

It is a lot worse than being a Vine stalker because a lot of a vine stalkers power come though the Pseudo-vampirism. Also, even though you can heal , your healing power is effectively reduced due to harm, not to mention that you won't have GS at all (unless you are lucky enough to find a hat of spirit shield) to give you the extra effective HP that VS has.

[kuniqs]

How's Harm different from choosing a 2h over shield?

If you have a vamp weapon, then wouldn't harm be more optimal? 30% more healing in exchange for 20% more damage seems good to me.

Anyway, y'all bitches: http://underhound.eu:81/crawl/morgue/ku ... 074026.txt

[VeryAngryFelid]

How's Harm different from choosing a 2h over shield?

If you have a vamp weapon, then wouldn't harm be more optimal? 30% more healing in exchange for 20% more damage seems good to me.

Anyway, y'all bitches: http://underhound.eu:81/crawl/morgue/ku ... 074026.txt

Yes, if an item allows to win a DDNe in GDA, it is clearly a very useful item because it is a very weak combo and you need all the help you can get

Edit. I would use amulet of the Air {Inacc +Fly rElec EV+5 RMsl} and the ring of Robustness {AC+8}, maybe even the amulet "Paol" {Faith rElec rF++ rN+ Str-3}

[Elitist]

If Harm took vertigo upon taking off as a downside, and the other amulets gained an on-swap loss of attributes, even minor, I'd probably use it. Penalizing for swaps sounds good in my head and as it stands, I swap between reflection and rage regularly if I have them.

[dowan]

If you were trying your hardest to win, and an amulet dropped that caused you to take 25% less damage, but also deal 25% less damage, would you wear it? I certainly would! At least, most of the time.

This is why it's a no brainer to never wear amulet of harm as is. Make it +25% outgoing, +10% incoming, then it gets interesting. Alternatively, leave it 25% in both directions, but give me a big benefit for taking that additional risk, say for example, 25% extra XP. Obviously this would need to be a slowly ramping effect so I don't just use it to get extra XP from popcorn, the draining penalty certainly isn't enough to prevent that.

I don't think the amulet of harm is unsalvagable, but efforts to make it a worthwhile amulet to wear need to realize how far from usable it is at the moment. It's a no-brainer to not wear the current harm, just like it's a no-brainer to not play mutation roulette. That doesn't meant it's not something some people will do, but it's not a good idea if you're trying to win.

[Sar]

Harm is +30% damage dealt, +20% damage received currently.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Also the argument was provided by duvessa in that last year thread he linked to.

[kuniqs]

If you were trying your hardest to win, and an amulet dropped that caused you to take 25% less damage, but also deal 25% less damage, would you wear it? I certainly would! At least, most of the time.

Isn't that what shields currently do? Don't you people consider shields unoptimal or something?

[VeryAngryFelid]

Shields don't give Robust 2. Also shields don't weaken spells, evocables, throwing etc. so they are optimal for many characters.

[WingedEspeon]

Also, shields are not consistent. You can still take a max damage LCS while wearing a shield.

[Floodkiller]

the *Fragile solution is a bit odd in that it could conceivably cause someone to want to collect more than one amulet of harm, using them as consumable damage boosts right before using powerful and limited damaging effects.

I could see the argument that the player could technically be encouraged to collect multiple amulets of harm with *Fragile if the player considered Harm valuable for individual situations like you suggest, but technically that problem already exists and is worse with the Drain effect. Any player considering to swap Harm for only certain situations is pretty much free to do so with the current drawback an unlimited number of times, treating the drain cost of removing it similar to using a Ru power. It just isn't showing up as an issue because the majority of players don't feel the increased risk is ever worth the benefit, much less also dealing with the Drain every time (and the players who do feel it is worth it will just keep it on instead of being fiddly with it). I think *Fragile would bring it closer to the direction that amulet reform was aiming for, and would also remove it from being an identify trap for those not interested in the increased risk.

[dowan]

If shields gave a guaranteed 20% incoming damage reduction, I think everyone would use them. Remember, the value of this is that it makes spikes less extreme, and conversely, harm's problem is that it makes spikes more extreme.

20% less damage on average is much less valuable, because what you care about is that 1 time out of 100 that the ettin hits you with both weapons for max damage. The difference between having 20% of your health and 0% of your health remaining is the difference between dying or not dying.

I also don't really care if once in a while I kill a stone giant in 2 swings instead of 4. I can't depend on that, it's nice if it happens, but it's not worth dying in situations I would otherwise have not died.

Harm makes you die in situations you would have survived without it. If you're depending on doing 30% more damage to survive, you're playing dangerously and suboptimally, and an extra 30% is no guarantee you'll kill an enemy before it kills you anyway.

The fact is from day 1 people have been noting these issues with harm, so it's weird to see anyone trying to pretend that isn't the case, especially people who participated in those discussions.

[dpeg]

dowan: Have you happened to understand continuity? I mention it right in my first reply in this thread. This is not a question about power, the amulet's effect could be arbitrarily strong.

[dowan]

I read your initial post a few times now, trying to see what you're talking about in this post. I have apparently failed.

Nevertheless, I think after your initial replies people have re-stated their issues with it, and the initial problems are still relevant.

This is a bad item that for some reason has been forced into the game, and to say "Yeah it is useless but lets figure out how to make it not useless" is a strange approach to design.
Why does there have to be an item that increases incoming and outgoing damage, knowing full well the fact that it's a bad trade? Is it intended to mostly be a wear-id trap? I guess if that's the intent, then it serves its purpose, but I don't think that's the intent.

I mean, in a month if it is changed to 19% more incoming damage and 31% more outgoing damage, do we need to rehash this whole conversation for another round?

[archaeo]

I've removed a comment. I'm still leaving this unlocked, but so help me if you guys create any more trouble I will turn this thread around.

Edit: I am not kidding I will come back there!!

[scorpionwarrior]

Harm is +30% damage dealt, +20% damage received currently.

Interesting. I'm going to have to try wearing it on a xbow focused HO or something.

[Sar]

Large rocks Tr or Og? Wear harm after you get a good armour, probably.

[Doesnt]

Is there a particular reason amulet of harm doesn't just lower your max HP instead of increasing the damage you take by a magic percentage?

For current behavior, it's about equivalent to a -16.66...% penalty, which is pretty terrible in my opinion.

[zxc23]

At least harm has a beneficial side to it which sometimes makes it interesting if you're not concerned with playing perfectly. Inaccuracy is bad and entirely uninteresting. Inaccuracy should be removed instead.