My background ranking

[Sprucery]

As I did with species earlier, now that I've won all (current) backgrounds I'm posting my background ranking. Controvesially VM is my best book background. I can't understand why I haven't done better with IE, En and Su. In total I've played 657 games and won 48 of them, so 7.3%.

  Code:

                      played  won   win%
 1   Gladiator            21   4   19,05
 2   Venom Mage           22   4   18,18
 3   Berserker            18   3   16,67
 4   Wanderer             12   2   16,67
 5   Abyssal Knight       12   2   16,67
 6   Hunter               25   4   16,00
 7   Monk                 30   3   10,00
 8   Fire Elementalist    21   2    9,52
 9   Fighter              32   3    9,38
10   Necromancer          22   2    9,09
11   Earth Elementalist   23   2    8,70
12   Artificer            12   1    8,33
13   Wizard               25   2    8,00
14   Conjurer             26   2    7,69
15   Arcane Marksman      14   1    7,14
16   Reaver               14   1    7,14
17   Healer               15   1    6,67
18   Ice Elementalist     18   1    5,56
19   Warper               21   1    4,76
20   Skald/Crusader       22   1    4,55
21   Chaos Knight         23   1    4,35
22   Air Elementalist     24   1    4,17
23   Assassin             25   1    4,00
24   Enchanter            30   1    3,33
25   Summoner             33   1    3,03
26   Transmuter           38   1    2,63
27   Death Knight         23   0    0,00
28   Stalker              20   0    0,00
29   Thief                19   0    0,00
30   Priest               13   0    0,00
31   Paladin               4   0    0,00


[papilio]

My background ratings

S: Be

A+: Fi
A: Gl, Ar, FE, EE, Cj, En
A-: IE, As

B+: Hu, Ne, Wz
B: Sk, Wr, AE, Su, Tm
B-: Mo

C+: AM, AK, VM
C: Wn, CK

[Magipi]

A+: Fi

You really think that Fi is better than IE, FE, Ar, As? Or even Gl? What the fuck?

[NhorianScum]

VM is a lot stronger than the taven suggests.

On the other hand IE has some really spoilery skilling if you want to avoid the midgame dropoff.

So the disparity between your winrate an taven talk isn't terribly jarring. Though I am suprised to see VM over FE/EE/Be.

Fi can be stronger than Gl or even Be/Hu on some races. The early shield is really strong. Pretty sure nothing is better than Ar though. That start is sorta busted.

I would also rate the strong books and skald on par with Gl since they're all very very strong just prefered by different races.

Something like..

DgWn
Hu/Ar
Be
Strongbooks/Fi/Gl/Skald
Everything else

Feels a tad more accurate as an on-paper background tiering.

[bel]

The numbers are ok as impressions, but such a small number of wins in each background is not sufficient to draw conclusions in general. For instance, one loss->win in Wn would make it the best background, which is absurd.

[NhorianScum]

Lucky Wn's are the best background though.

[bel]

Sure, but that depends on the general winrate. If winrate is low, anything that increases variance is good. If winrate is high, it is bad.

[Sprucery]

I guess I should have said it straight up, but of course not much can be concluded from my personal statistics. First of all, it covers all my Crawl games since Linley's Dungeon Crawl 3.20 in 1998 and the game has changed quite a bit since. This is just a retrospective look at my games.

[severen]

Fi is a very good background. Early shield is very strong. I don't consider it better or worse than As or Gl just different. As and Gl get their nets/blowgun to deal with certain early threats like ogres more reliably. What works better or is more desirable depends on species and luck.

IE is a very strong start but requires specific skilling to be so. Su is a strong start but requires specific play style to be so. Not all strong starts are as straightforward as Be.

Skald is now a very strong start if you do it right and have a good species for it. IMO it may be the easiest melee start if you use polearms especially as merfolk. But in older versions it could be a very hard start.

[papilio]

A+: Fi

You really think that Fi is better than IE, FE, Ar, As? Or even Gl? What the fuck?

Sure, shields are most OP item in this game.

Oh, yes, if you play only DE or suchlike for every game then Fi would be worse than IE/FE.

[zxc23]

Some quick but serious background tiers, for a human character:

SS: Be
S: IE Ar
A: Fi As Su
B: Gl Wr
C: FE EE Wz AK Cj
D: En Wn Mo Sk Ne AE Hu AM
E: Tm VM
F: CK

Ranking backgrounds is harder than ranking species. SS, S and F I am confident in but the rest depend on the time of day.

[TrumpTrain]

Some quick but serious background tiers, for a human character:

SS: Be
S: IE Ar
A: Fi As Su
B: Gl Wr
C: FE EE Wz AK Cj
D: En Wn Mo Sk Ne AE Hu AM
E: Tm VM
F: CK

Ranking backgrounds is harder than ranking species. SS, S and F I am confident in but the rest depend on the time of day.

yes, I agree with this.