The Tavern

It's quet boring to play a GrBe, DDFi or a MiFi. They are fucking unstoppable killing machines. I think that 0.20 is good time to fix this problem. How can we do that without removals?

Make berserkers mesmerised. It's realy obvious in terms of flavour and doesn't affect the game so much.
Add monsters that are immune to physical damage. It encourages to learn some spells or invest in Evocs/Invocs.
Add immortal monsters. So MiBe cannot simply enter in every battle. These monsters could be binded to their vaults or dungeon levels.
Add slowly, VERY SLOWLY monsters that kill the player with 100% probability in melee.
Make heavy Armour penalizing movement speed and MP regeneration rate.

It's time to make the life of speedrunners and fans of "effective playstyle" a little bit harder

"remove Trog, give berserkers an amulet of rage". If Trog weren't so important for first wins, I'd suggest this one. Plus, in spite of being repetitive, it's actually fun.

I think there are some attempts at these things. One is making Juggernauts as a "one punch killer", and, in general, as opponents you don't want to melee. Iron giants also were there.

Heavy armour making you slower is IMHO the best thing to do, but it should be playtested a lot. See how much XP should alleviate slowness, and also see how it plays with Cheib. Easily variable movement speed would make Cheib a bit more complex, but it would also add one more level of decisions to be taken by the player, and I don't know if that's something to wish for.

duvessa wrote:

But I'm serious

StupidBerserker wrote:But I'm serious

An unfortunate case of "does not know how to make an OP actually LOOK serious". We get all kinds of suggestions at a variety of seriousness here, long-time readers develop very fast filters to not waste time on 'distractions'.

Yo, why the hell *aren't* berserking players subject to mesmerization? That seems like the easiest fix in the world to a ridiculous tactic.

PowerOfKaishin wrote:Yo, why the hell *aren't* berserking players subject to mesmerization? That seems like the easiest fix in the world to a ridiculous tactic.

It's not a trivial thing to do. Imagine there are a couple monsters on screen, on opposite sides of your LOS. They both mez you. Now you can't move towards any of them.

Berserk fades off faster if you do things that aren't killing monsters, so you already are mesmerized for practical purposes.

I ironically thanked for post content but pure melee is actually OP.

Moved to CYC because post doesn't meet GDD requirements.

this is what happens when you try to speak truth to power OP. You get mocked and jeered at by the snobbish ruling elite, the orange name caste. If they cant dispute your scientific truths then they employ more cunning means, silencing you for the "crime" of not having memorized all 48264 edicts of Proper GDD Etiquette.

dont feel too bad though. Socrates and Galileo met similar fates at the hands of censorious bureaucrats. You fought the status quo and lost, but at least you are in admirable company.

I'm pretty sure a slow but sure tweaking of the Ai to not charge dick first through doors and corners would be a more impactful change. Also not fucking awful to play.

Stopped reading at "100% damage in mele" because that's bad and you should feel bad.

It's not melee that is OP. it's high stats that leads to high AC/Dodge/Shield that is OP. And, it's linked to monster stats. Generally speaking, if I can manage to keep armour/dodge/shield gains at one level per floor; then I'll typically have a very easy time because i'm beating the power curve. This typically works with +2 apt skills. Not so much now-a-days.

The fastest way to diminish melee power is actually to spawn more monsters with shields. They are the only counter to melee that actually works at all levels.

Shtopit wrote:The fastest way to diminish melee power is actually to spawn more monsters with shields. They are the only counter to melee that actually works at all levels.

No, archers and casters will suffer more than melee warriors if there will be more monsters with shields.

That will even raise the "relative tier" of melee warriors.

how about we make casters less shit instead

Okay so, let's say the "melee is overpowered" complaint is serious. What methods of damage dealing are melee overpowered compared to? Because the term is a relative one.

Ranged weapons? I don't believe that. I'm under the impression that the general consensus is that ranged combat is better. A longbow is a glaive that reaches 7 squares instead of 2, and ranged combat characters can take equal advantage of Trog.

Direct damage spells? I can see the reasoning, and as usual, would defer to informed top player consensus. I think a good deal of this has to do with a weird property of Crawl's races: the ones with good effective HP (usually the most impactful racial property other than speed) tend to have properties that bias them away from damage spells (Ce, Tr, Mi, HO, Og, and VS all prominently fit this description). DDEE is still probably the best combo in the game, and I don't at all believe that Hu is better off with melee than with damage spells.

Stabbing? Sure. SpEn is prominent but stabbing on pretty much anything else is a bad investment compared to regular melee. It's also a bad investment compared to ranged combat or conjurations or summonings or...

Allies? I won't ever believe that unless Crawl's ally mechanics change massively. Even if you ignore Fedhas and Kiku, summoning is still nuts.

Melee in [insert version here]? Unless you have evidence that [insert version here] is the Definitive Balanced Crawl Version, that's a stupid thing to complain about. Versions before 0.6 had far more powerful heavy armour than now, berserk+rSlow that doubled your max hp while active, broad axes that attacked at double speed, and Detect Creatures which was sort of like if ddoor was a level 1 spell and made you invincible forever instead of for like 20 turns. 0.8 had berserk that doubled your speed even though haste didn't. Might as well complain that melee is underpowered compared to those versions. Don't get me wrong, spectral weapon was a colossally fucking stupid addition, but changing melee damage output by like 50% isn't unprecedented; plenty of nerfs came before and after it.

Obviously berserkers are extremely overpowered and need to be nerfed, and they happen to be forced into using melee for at least a little while, but berserkers aren't melee, they're a background. Any other background can just as easily pick Fedhas or Kiku who are as overpowered as Trog and revolve around allies, not melee. The problem there isn't melee, it's Trog and Be.

It's correct that Be, DD, and Mi are fucking unstoppable killing machines, but why are you focusing so much on the killing part and not the unstoppable part? To me, characters being unable to die sounds like a much bigger problem than characters being able to kill! Sounds a lot more like Crawl is too easy with strong combos, and the blame lies with strong combos and not with melee in general. You don't really think that DDFi is better than DDNe, do you?

duvessa wrote: and ranged combat characters can take equal advantage of Trog.

Ranged weapon cannot be shot while berserked. Check some basics before saying something.

About OP, I think the biggest difference between melee and other build is that,
obviously, pure melee's control is fucking comfortable/easy and other's not.
Just o, tab, rarely use other keys.

One can win pure-melee 15 rune within 3 hours pretty easily.
No one can ever win pure-summoner 15 rune within 3 hours. That's the point

papilio wrote:About OP, I think the biggest difference between melee and other build is that,
obviously, pure melee's control is fucking comfortable/easy and other's not.
Just o, tab, rarely use other keys.

I am not sure what you mean as "easy" here, it looks like you agree with OP: it's harder to die as melee character because you don't need to manage MP and have higher defense.

papilio wrote:
duvessa wrote: and ranged combat characters can take equal advantage of Trog.

Ranged weapon cannot be shot while berserked. Check some basics before saying something.

Early game, berserking kills things fine with 0 skill melee weapons, and by the time that stops working you're getting ammo gifts.

Calm there, satan. 100% one shot kill and immune to physical monsters are just terrible ideas.

Saying that, I agree that melee is op and also that armour giving slower movement and less mp regen are pretty good ideas. Some suggestions I have:

- Lower the maximum bonus from melee weapons to +5 or +6.

- Make the bonus AC from armour skill a little lower.

- Make the cleave deal 30 or 40% damage instead of 75%.. Axes are so OP I cant believe this wasnt nerfed yet.

- Increase the melee damage of some monsters like orb guardians (by the name they should be fearsome monsters instead of pushovers), dragons and giants. The late game needs to be harder. When I see a fire dragon I should be "holy shit the game is ON" like when i see a oof instead of just tabbing while chatting with my girlfriend about the sex last night.

- Increase the chance of casters using their damaging spells. Liches, aliches and elves are much less threatening than they should be because half the time they do useless shit like trying to melee you instead of blasting you non stop with iron shots. That wont change much to ranged dudes or casters but a melee dude would feel the pain if blindly tabbed a lich from the edge of los. In fact a mage monster should never melee unless silenced just like a caster player normally do.

f0rbidden wrote:...
- Increase the chance of casters using their damaging spells. Liches, aliches and elves are much less threatening than they should be because half the time they do useless shit like trying to melee you instead of blasting you non stop with iron shots. That wont change much to ranged dudes or casters but a melee dude would feel the pain if blindly tabbed a lich from the edge of los. In fact a mage monster should never melee unless silenced just like a caster player normally do.

It depends how tactically and strategically smart you think they should be, too. And are they there to play a long or short game:

Getting paralyzed can be pretty nasty too, if there are multiple other heavy-hitting mobs around. At least in that case, it might make sense for a lich to try for a melee hit.

Getting drained repeatedly can add up to a strategic disadvantage (also serves other mobs in the dungeon), so if you imagine the lich means to protect the orb more than necessarily go for a killing shot (particularly if the player has a big shield to block missile spells), again melee or a similar debilitating spell could make more sense. If one also assumes liches should be smart enough to look at things like does the player bring a shield, do they resist negative energy, do they bring high MR and EV.

papilio wrote:
Shtopit wrote:The fastest way to diminish melee power is actually to spawn more monsters with shields. They are the only counter to melee that actually works at all levels.

No, archers and casters will suffer more than melee warriors if there will be more monsters with shields.

That will even raise the "relative tier" of melee warriors.

Another option are spines, but AC actually is really good against them.

I would argue that the problem is not that 'melee' is too strong, but that heavy armour is too good. And given the cuts to spells over the last few versions, there is very little incentive to wear anything but heavy armour unless you're training a ton of conjurations. The only reason to not wear heavy armour, if you haven't already decided to focus on conjurations, is if you can't because your species + background has tiny strength, or it is unavailable.

Heavy armour is a no-brainer these days. Most of the good non-direct-damage spells are level 3 or less so you can have your spell-cake and spell-eat it too.

wait 4 it

f0rbidden wrote:100% one shot kill and immune to physical monsters are just terrible ideas.

It's good actually. That'd be an upgraded version of what neqoxecs, cacodemons, tormentors and greater mummies are meant to be = monsters designed to punish you if you refuse to invest in strategies, options and most importantly, focus.

ONIchinchin wrote:
f0rbidden wrote:100% one shot kill and immune to physical monsters are just terrible ideas.

It's good actually. That'd be an upgraded version of what neqoxecs, cacodemons, tormentors and greater mummies are meant to be = monsters designed to punish you if you refuse to invest in strategies, options and most importantly, focus.

There's focus and then there's focus. Heaven forbid one wrong keystroke in thousands of turns? If it's really near 100% that is.

zackoid wrote:I would argue that the problem is not that 'melee' is too strong, but that heavy armour is too good.

I would argue that there are a little bit more "too good" melee-things in Crawl.

Axes. Cleaving with holy exec is similar to casting cleansing flame at 10-20 level of Invocs.
Berserking. As Duvessa said, it can kill even at 0 level of investment in skills. There is no god, no amulet that can can be compared with Trog's "a" + "a".
You won't run out of your MP in the middle of battle and become useless in terms of damage dealing.
The best "caster-race" has +1 in all skills, the best "melee race" +2.
Crosstraining. It helps to kill hydras, when you train swords or sometimes polearms/staves. The FE should run away, if he sees a monser with rF++ or more in middle-game.
Silencing doesn't prevent melee.
Armour doesn't affect (un)armed combat in newer versions. Already OP thing becomes even more OP!
Antimagic weapons are realy imbalanced, they make every caster harmless.

I think I have forgotten a lot, but I wanna sleep. May be tomorrow I'll write more.

StupidBerserker wrote:There is no god, no amulet that can can be compared with Trog's "a" + "a".

are you sure about that

duvessa wrote:
StupidBerserker wrote:There is no god, no amulet that can can be compared with Trog's "a" + "a".
are you sure about that

Amulet of Rage is much more dangerous than Trog's ability. You'll become exhausted with no option to continue strike.

At what point in the game is Melee more unstoppable or more of a killing machine than direct damage casting?

I can see people saying early and mid game, but for a 15 rune game or even past 2 runes and you are vehumet I don't think this is true at all. I have had multiple characters get glaciate online with MP replenishing tactic of some sort (staff of eneergy or mahk SOB or w/e) by sometime around mid-vaults. Vaults is much easier as a caster with glaciate online than most melee, even strong melee. Pand/Hell seems pretty easy as well and the casters tend to almost always get necromutation online for extended and I rarely see pure melee people who are not chei/transmuters get necro online as melee.

I don't really play Be ever as I find it kind of boring but I have 15 runed multiple melee guys and while I feel they are strong, I really don't think they are better than direct damage casters after about vaults.

I am purposely ignoring other aspects of casters like summoning, necro etc simply to constrain this to a narrow comparison. You can make a fairly sturdy caster that kills very fast and very safely with spells alone and that kills large spawns of things far faster than any melee guy even a Be with an ideal axe.

Maybe Be early and mid game is too easy, I dunno, I bow out of that. But I don't think its better after about level 20 or so vehumet pure damage caster that has some kind of ok MP replenishment and certainly not better once that character has matured into extended. I understand that level 9's are often considered a poor investment XP wise by some people. But that has nothing to do with anything. You CAN get level 9's working well by mid-vaults as a Vehumet person and once you do a lot of content becomes quite easy. Maybe there is better way to do things. Doesn't matter that is not germaine. Fact is you can just mow tons of stuff down before it can do jack to you and do it for similar MP cost to the good single target spells (Iron shot/LCS,OOD). As long as you run at the right times you are mostly good.

zackoid wrote:I would argue that the problem is not that 'melee' is too strong, but that heavy armour is too good. And given the cuts to spells over the last few versions, there is very little incentive to wear anything but heavy armour unless you're training a ton of conjurations. The only reason to not wear heavy armour, if you haven't already decided to focus on conjurations, is if you can't because your species + background has tiny strength, or it is unavailable.

Heavy armour is a no-brainer these days. Most of the good non-direct-damage spells are level 3 or less so you can have your spell-cake and spell-eat it too.

This pretty much explains why melee is OP imo, or rather, obviously more powerful than other choices in most cases.

All the best spells in the game are level 3 or less and don't check spell power much. Direct-damage spells require significant Int to be effective, as well as sacrifices in armor weight, as does the stealth-stabber playstyle. This is less true of summoning, but you still need to be able to cast the spells... and some gods can generate allies for you if you want to play that way, with miscast protection too. Hybridization away from melee tends to make your character weaker, whereas hybridization away from conjuration is overwhelmingly recommended by good players and is at worse power-neutral once you've reached your level 6-7 spell, due to the enormous XP gap between Bolt of X and your level 9. I think this is an obvious indictment of spell-based playstyles. If anything characters using no spells are more adaptable, since they can use any armor that drops, and a good body armor can be an enormous swing in power in a way that a book will almost never be.

You also need significant XP investment. In contrast you can get a lot of AC without much XP investment, and if you go for a large shield, you can get a delay penalty of about 0.05 at 16 skill or so, while investing almost all stat-ups in strength and having roughly as much damage output as you would have otherwise with a 2-handed weapon and stat-ups in dex. This does leave you more vulnerable to elemental bolts but that's what resistances are for. SH still blocks LCS/OOD. I used to think this strategy was crap then I watched dynast win NaWn's 19 times in a row with it, so I concluded it was actually good.

At least in older versions you could shore up your defenses a bit with charms. But those are being purged for being Tedious. With that said, Crawl's miscast-percentage based system combined with a moral opposition to buff spells, short durations, and large number of fights make charms unwieldy. In my view there is nothing wrong with buff spells, but it would be better if they didn't run out, which sort of clashes with the miscast-percent system (which I think was a mistake, I think it would be better to just have a skill breakpoint based on strength and armor weight, but there has generally been a moral opposition to breakpoints in crawl)

tabstorm wrote:... If anything characters using no spells are more adaptable, since they can use any armor that drops, and a good body armor can be an enormous swing in power in a way that a book will almost never be...

You also need significant XP investment...

At least in older versions you could shore up your defenses a bit with charms. But those are being purged for being Tedious. With that said, Crawl's miscast-percentage based system combined with a moral opposition to buff spells, short durations, and large number of fights make charms unwieldy. In my view there is nothing wrong with buff spells, but it would be better if they didn't run out, which sort of clashes with the miscast-percent system (which I think was a mistake, I think it would be better to just have a skill breakpoint based on strength and armor weight, but there has generally been a moral opposition to breakpoints in crawl)

I enjoyed this post as it was detailed and gave me so much to think about. Personally, I don't really know spells or even combat mechanics (for all the melee characters I've played!) as well so this won't be so meaty but...

More anecdotally: I do usually find that heavy armor early on can make a melee game more likely a breakthrough for me. Even the artifact medium armors like scale or chain have a huge amount of kick with the right stat drops (a touch of luck) over the course of the game.

And by end game, you can often pick up one or two schools of high-utility spells even in chain or plate on several races. Repel Missiles has pretty much gone without saying... For a more ambitious mid-range example, some Deep Dwarves or even Orcs can reasonably work up Earth 10-15 and get Lee's Rapid Deconstruction online by Vault 5. It becomes almost easy if there are some nice Int items in the drop/shops mix. I don't always do this because I tend to get obsessed with all their weapons training, but I haven't usually regretted it (above lowest Int characters).

I also feel the purging of Charms is making things less colorful -- although one could probably argue that it was quite easy for many melee characters to use the Charms at end game, as well? i wonder if there couldn't be some happier medium here. (Are potions of haste becoming any more common?)

The Tavern

Nerf pure melee!

Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!

Re: Nerf pure melee!