duvessa's unironic tier lists

[Wark]

Naga is amazing with mage backgrounds, it has good magic aptitudes AND poison spit AND high HP.

I fail to see how Nagas are "amazing" considering that they're, like, one of the two species that cannot easily run away to regen MP in case something goes wrong (more enemies unexpectedly show up or you spells just miss several times in a row because RNG decides to have some fun). Granted, you can mostly avoid these situations by playing carefully, not fighting near unexplored territory, etc., but if you use such tactics, a lot of species will have easier, or, at worst, similarly difficult game.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I fail to see how Nagas are "amazing" considering that they're, like, one of the two species that cannot easily run away to regen MP in case something goes wrong (more enemies unexpectedly show up or you spells just miss several times in a row because RNG decides to have some fun). Granted, you can mostly avoid these situations by playing carefully, not fighting near unexplored territory, etc., but if you use such tactics, a lot of species will have easier, or, at worst, similarly difficult game.

Well, when I die as caster I usually do it at zero MP and Naga is better than other species at 0 MP. Or maybe I am overestimating them indeed.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Na get to pick their fights more in the early D because of their stealth. That always feels significant for me. Didn't wake up Sigmund? Great. Gnoll pack there, still snoozing? Slither away.

They also have pretty good magic apts, although for individual book backgrounds there's always a better choice.

Na have more health, which is quite important early, and on D:2 or so they start getting additional AC.

Poison spit is incredibly strong in the early game and can often be used twice in a fight.

But yes, there are situations when too much stuff comes and there's no way out. Without consumables or a god to lean on that is often death.

[nago]

I fail to see how Nagas are "amazing" considering that they're, like, one of the two species that cannot easily run away to regen MP in case something goes wrong (more enemies unexpectedly show up or you spells just miss several times in a row because RNG decides to have some fun). Granted, you can mostly avoid these situations by playing carefully, not fighting near unexplored territory, etc., but if you use such tactics, a lot of species will have easier, or, at worst, similarly difficult game.

Well, when I die as caster I usually do it at zero MP and Naga is better than other species at 0 MP. Or maybe I am overestimating them indeed.

Na at low levels are worst than most races at 0 mp, considering their HP apt hasn't still become relevant, poison spit is highly unreliable, they can't move to get a better positioning, have no constriction\aux attack, etc.

Personally I'd have rated them much much higher at Lair+, because at that point they get huge HP, good AC (very good with a barding) and a huge damage bonus in form of constriction, and their movement penality is a bit less relevant - because they can take much more damage thus positioning better and having a lot of escape options.

But before that oh god how much they suck

[VeryAngryFelid]

Sorry, I couldn't stop myself from thanking nago who blames naga

Ironically I no longer enjoy playing Felids either, I am getting too angry

[MainiacJoe]

This suggests that Na backgrounds that begin with stealth are better than those that don't Which do? As I'm guessing. En?

[UPDATE] got a chance to check the wiki. Hu and Ar start with Stealth 1, Mo and all book starts with Sth 2, En with Sth 3, and As with Sth 4. Not wizmode, rather a calculation and the attribute formula, but this looks like and end result of 1.6, 2.2, 4.8, 5.6.

[tasonir]

Likewise on the extended tier list, would you rather have Yred or Chei?

Yred
that's like...exactly what the list means

I understand that, but I have to think maybe you just need to consider it again, because you're clearly wrong

Also as far as nagas go, they get decent once they have constriction, and fairly good at roughly level 20+, but that's a very long time to deal with slow movement in the early game. They're still one of the top (although probably around 3rd or 4th) races for doing mega zigs - I cleared 4 zigs with one before getting tired of zigs and escaping instead. But I completely agree with the whole "who cares" if they're good at ziggs, that isn't really the main goal of crawl. I'm not entirely sure who I'd rank at #1 for ziggs, but I might be tempted to go with new ogres.

[Ultraviolent4]

I'm still a little (pleasantly) surprised that any part of my Og nerf proposal went through at all. Their melee is less ridiculous now, although it's still very good due to high Str. While throwing is really broken once you have some skill, early-game throwing is pretty fishy and definitely worse than bows. So what earns Og this spot is that it still has the highest HP in the game.

Out of curiosity, where would you have put 0.19 Ogres? The changes were overall a nerf for them, right?

[duvessa]

added unrandarts really quick

old Og might have been one or two places higher

[Sprucery]

I think calling robe of Clouds (Mf, Fedhas) and skin of Zhor (early D, Ice Cave swap) as 'always useless' is a bit too much imo.

Gonna fix the double Fe on D:1 bug?

[ZoFy]

Amulet of Vitality not being great sounds very odd. Are you into amulets of faith?

[n1000]

15 HP is certainly good but guardian spirit is a regular amulet that gives even more health (faith is also extremely good)

[tasonir]

I'm surprised you'd consider wizardry to be the best octopode king's ring. Wizardry is great when you're nearly at the next useful spell, but that's a pretty narrow timeframe, which sounds like exactly what the category below (Not great, but narrowly useful) is meant to be for. I'm guessing you really value getting that next spell castable?

[Lasty]

Regarding artefacts, I think you underestimate robe of vines and arc blade. Regarding the former, I think you generally underestimate regeneration. Regarding the latter, I expected it to be awful, but my experience is that the damage is absolutely insane, to the point where I considered nerfing it. It's possible I had an incredible all-game luck streak, but it seems unlikely to me.

Also, no rating for Kryia's?

[gammafunk]

Also no ratings for Sword of Cerebov, Sceptre of Asmodeus, Staff of Dispater, or Horn of Geryon.

Staff of Dispater is so amazingly good that merely finding it means that you're incredibly likely to win. Sure, that may be 100% due to the fact that you found the last rune you could possibly get, but why get hung up on technicalities.

[Majang]

Staff of Dispater is particularly good if you happen to worship Makhleb. Then it is just fun to hang around a bit longer in the game, just for spraying around damnation.

[tasonir]

Regarding the value of regeneration, I'd also agree duvessa is underrating it somewhat, although it's complicated because you can't assign a single value to regeneration independent of the character you're playing. The better your character's defenses, the higher the value of regeneration. Example with math:

Let's say you're in a fight where the monster outputs a steady* 10 damage per turn, before defenses.

A low defense character reduces this damage to 5 per turn. Assuming 100 max health, and a base regen rate of .2 hp/turn, adding an amulet of regeneration gives you .6 hp/turn. Instead of dying after 21 turns, you now die after 23 turns, which is roughly a 9.5% improvement.

A higher defense character reduces the damage to 3 per turn, with the same health and regen values. Now instead of dying after 36 turns, they die after 42 turns. Those extra 6 turns is a 16.6% improvement.

If we want to be really silly we can pretend a very high defense character only takes 1 damage per turn, with the same health/regen values, and get 125 turns vs 250 turns, for a 100% improvement. Although really at that point, you're just talking about popcorn.

In short amulets of regeneration may just be the best (base) amulet in the game for a gargoyle, but isn't nearly as good for a spriggan who either has not taken damage or is one hit away from dying. This also relates a lot to damage spikes, which the above simple model ignores in favor of computing average damage over time. The spikiness of crawl combat is one of the major limitations on regeneration being useful, so if you have a character with good defenses it really helps improve regeneration.

*HAHAHA, as if any monster in crawl has a steady damage rate. Haha.

[watertreatmentRL]

The robe of vines circa .17 was fairly good, I thought. Current version seems much less so. Regeneration from amulets is highly overrated though, significantly worse than spirit and reflection with a reasonable plus. Very small impact except from the perspective of turncount speedrunning.

[duvessa]

Regarding artefacts, I think you underestimate robe of vines and arc blade. Regarding the former, I think you generally underestimate regeneration. Regarding the latter, I expected it to be awful, but my experience is that the damage is absolutely insane, to the point where I considered nerfing it. It's possible I had an incredible all-game luck streak, but it seems unlikely to me.

Well, in the best case (minimum delay and never missing), it's casting static discharge on 1/3 of delay 5 turns at 75-149 power (mean and median 112). Casting the actual static discharge spell casts static discharge on 3/3 of delay 10 turns, which is 50% more frequent, and at some spellpower up to 100. Now, Static Discharge's power scaling is slightly superlinear due to higher power linearly increasing arc damage and logarithmically increasing the number of arcs...but that superlinearity is VERY slight, and offset by the constant factor in the damage. I seriously doubt the increase in power is better than getting 50% more discharges, even with the added damage of a +4 dagger. (I would like to make a cool graph or whatever for this, but the formula for Static Discharge's damage is convoluted and changes depending on the number and locations of monsters in the chain.)
So the case for arc blade is basically "spamming static discharge with rElec is better than melee". Which is true. However, while this is a good case for arc blade, it is an even better case for actually casting Static Discharge.

Also no ratings for Sword of Cerebov, Sceptre of Asmodeus, Staff of Dispater, or Horn of Geryon.

These aren't rated because they don't generate randomly.

Let's say you're in a fight where the monster outputs a steady* 10 damage per turn, before defenses.

Then +2 AC will reduce that damage by an average of almost 1 per turn, which is like +1 hp/turn, which is 250% of an amulet of regeneration. As for Robe of Vines, potions of curing and heal wounds offer much higher HP regeneration per turn and don't prevent you from wearing archmagi or something with good AC.

I missed Kryia's somehow, I'll add it.

[papilio]

So the case for arc blade is basically "spamming static discharge with rElec is better than melee". Which is true. However, while this is a good case for arc blade, it is an even better case for actually casting Static Discharge.

No, because arc blade spamms static discarge without turn loss

[tasonir]

I agree if there was an amulet of +4 AC, I'd wear that instead of regeneration. But it's quite hard to find an amulet with AC, so regeneration is usually fairly good for that slot. Old brooch of shielding was one of the best amulets in the game, but it isn't available now. The new one is pretty good, but not nearly as good as 4 AC/EV.

I always try and stack as much AC as possible. I thought it was generally clear from my example saying that regeneration gets better the more you reduce incoming damage that I'd consider AC+EV to be rather important. I play so many statue form characters because getting 30+ in both AC and EV is one of the few ways to make a character so error-proof that even my laziness won't kill them off too often! Once you're up around 60+ total defenses, though, having at least one source of regeneration is a pretty big help - it could be the spell, doesn't have to be an equipment ego.

No, because arc blade spams static discharge without turn loss

It's being argued that attacking with a dagger for non-stab damage is essentially a lost turn. The non-static discharge component of the damage is largely meaningless, it's not high enough to matter. It is greater than zero, but still...

[papilio]

It's being argued that attacking with a dagger for non-stab damage is essentially a lost turn. The non-static discharge component of the damage is largely meaningless, it's not high enough to matter. It is greater than zero, but still...

Rapier mindelay is small (0.5). Yes, the damage of rapier itself is small but it allows you to spam possibly multiple static discharges per 0.5 turn.
Have you ever used it with SBl characters? Arc blade is just insane, broken cheating.

[Siegurt]

It's being argued that attacking with a dagger for non-stab damage is essentially a lost turn. The non-static discharge component of the damage is largely meaningless, it's not high enough to matter. It is greater than zero, but still...

Rapier mindelay is small (0.5). Yes, the damage of rapier itself is small but it allows you to spam possibly multiple static discharges per 0.5 turn.
Have you ever used it with SBl characters? Arc blade is just insane, broken cheating.

His point is that at *best* arc blade is a 1:3 chance twice per turn (so an average of 2 every 30 aut) *actually casting static discharge* is a 100% chance of 3 every 30 aut.

[Rast]

I think in general -- items, gods, monsters -- Duvessa is too heavily invested in the usual Optimal Crawl Play tavern meme stuff, and not enough in just having bigly HP, AC, damage, healing, etc that will let you stomp the dungeon, or at least keep you alive long enough for teleport to kick in.


So: Felid is trash because it has barely any hp or defenses. Spriggan is not a top four character. Fo is worse than human because no teleport blink haste zerk.

Ba is actually pretty good. It's just a tiny bit slower than monsters but it has controlled blink and minotaur-like apts.

Robe of the night is a robe. Your AC will be bad.

Most of the melee fixedarts are worse than a +9 vamp broad/battle axe.

[duvessa]

I think in general -- items, gods, monsters -- Duvessa is too heavily invested in the usual Optimal Crawl Play tavern meme stuff, and not enough in just having bigly HP, AC, damage, healing, etc that will let you stomp the dungeon, or at least keep you alive long enough for teleport to kick in.


So: Felid is trash because it has barely any hp or defenses. Spriggan is not a top four character.

Every race with a positive hp modifier, except for naga, is above human. A big part of the reason naga is at the bottom is that it has terrible AC. It sounds like you just don't value movement speed very much. Like, if I was making a list for bots it'd look different obviously, but when I, a wet fleshy elf, play DCSS, I find Gr harder than Hu and Sp easier than Mi, and I don't exactly play slowly and carefully.

Robe of the night is a robe. Your AC will be bad.

Robe of night is bad for Be, sure. A +20 gold dragon armour is bad for SpEn, but it's still a ridiculous item.

Most of the melee fixedarts are worse than a +9 vamp broad/battle axe.

My list already puts the majority of fixedart weapons at or below the "not great" category...

[tasonir]

As someone who wholeheartedly loves wyrmbane and won a game with it in the .20 tournament, do you really think punk is stronger than it? Is this just/mostly because punk is ranged? 2d4 extra damage doesn't seem that impressive over a normal fustibalus, especially since it's locked in at +3 enchantment. I suppose taking off 8 monster AC is also significant, but having +6 enchantment and another brand like velocity or freezing seems like it'd be just as good?

I haven't actually seen punk since it became acid to test/know how good it is, though.

[njvack]

His point is that at *best* arc blade is a 1:3 chance twice per turn (so an average of 2 every 30 aut) *actually casting static discharge* is a 100% chance of 3 every 30 aut.

Remember that arc blade lets you use tab to cast static discharge at a cost of 0 MP/turn, so you can cast it like a million times in a row. Even if this is objectively weaker than casting static discharge, it's gonna feel strong af.

Also it's a cool name.

[Rast]

Every race with a positive hp modifier, except for naga, is above human.

Yeah, but so are low HP, low AC races like Fe and Sp.

I value movement speed, but not when it comes on a body that lacks HP and AC and a bunch of equipment slots.

A ridiculous robe is still a robe. The opposite example of extreme AEVP armour does not make robes good. Both are generally worse than your basic +10 randart chainmail with a couple resists.



@Tasonir I had Punk during tournament and it felt super strong. I suspect the acid stacking is actually really good, would have to code dive or fsim to be sure.

[Doesnt]

Shots from Punk inflict 2d4 acid damage (after the physical component) and have a 2/3 chance to induce corrosion status, which lowers monster AC by 8 regardless of intensity. This is pretty good; on average every hit after the one that inflicts corrosion will do 4 more damage if the monster had 8 or more AC to begin with. It's also a ranged weapon to boot and duvessa loves those.

[duvessa]

The unrandart launchers are on top entirely because they are launchers, yes. The unrandart longbows aren't even much better than +9 flaming/freezing longbows; the longbow base type is just better than any other base weapon type in the game by a disgusting margin.

Both are generally worse than your basic +10 randart chainmail with a couple resists.

Ah yes, the basic +10 randart chain mail, can't play one game without practically tripping over 5 of those. (I also don't think a +10 randart chain mail would be better than a +10 GDS, or better than robe of night on characters with spells)

[nago]

Sorry, I couldn't stop myself from thanking nago who blames naga

Ironically I no longer enjoy playing Felids either, I am getting too angry

Well I do enjoy a lot to play Naga (sometimes, after I got greater Naga) as their early game is quite unique. But that doesn't mean they aren't extremely bad!

Regarding arc blade: I don't know the number but from my experience I killed in 2 hits things like dire elephants and liches (!) and oneshot things like Kirke.

Sure it isn't 100% reliably as the static doesn't trigger always and the damage seems quite swingy, but are that also normal melee weapons.
It is also 100% useless against reelec enemies, However there aren't many dangerous reelec enemies and if you find it early on you have all the time to find and use a normal good long blade against them.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Was arcblade changed recently? I remember a game where I ignored it and then everyone told me it was a mistake. I did run fsims after that and found that it dealt crazy damage to monsters without rElec indeed (something like 216 max damage, average damage was better than +9 demon blade of electro too)

[MainiacJoe]

I think the only minotaur that killed me in recent memory was wielding arc blade.

[duvessa]

Ok...so I misread the arc blade code, and I'm pretty sure the original author did too. (I really should have noticed this from its messaging.)
Like static discharge, it creates up to 1 + random2(random_range(1, 3) + pow / 20) arcs. However, static discharge creates at most one arc for each adjacent monster. Unlike static discharge, arc blade takes this number of arcs, and applies all of them to the same monster. So it's not like casting static discharge once on 1/3 of hits; it's like casting static discharge multiple times (about 4 on average) on 1/3 of hits.
I can't imagine that this was intentional, and I expect it to change shortly, so I won't bother adjusting its placement in the OP for now.

Also it doesn't really work properly in fsim in the first place.

[papilio]

ok, so don't judge tiers under obsessions in 'tavern theoretical optimal crawlplay meme' or code digging without actual playtests

[prozacelf]

15 HP is certainly good but guardian spirit is a regular amulet that gives even more health (faith is also extremely good)

To be fair, the 15 HP is considerably more relevant on low HP races. Still not all that much better than a plain regen amulet though.

[Doesnt]

good to know, i was wondering how i managed to one-shot a caustic shrike with the dumb knife on my first character to use it

[VeryAngryFelid]

The lowest HP species (Fe, Sp) still don't want vitality often, they are much more comfortable with spirit shield (unless they are pure casters I guess).
I think the best species for Vitality is Gr, HP is naturally more valuable with high AC and rTorment.

[n1000]

ok, so don't judge tiers under obsessions in 'tavern theoretical optimal crawlplay meme' or code digging without actual playtests

Ridiculous. Code digging is the best way to figure out what something does. Faulting duvessa for misinterpreting the unique behavior of one out of hundreds of fixedarts is to hold such a project to a pointlessly ridiculous standard.

I mean it took one day to figure out this mistake so I think your criticism is out of line.

[duvessa]

Kinda hard to effectively playtest something that is only available in about 0.5% of games

[VeryAngryFelid]

Kinda hard to effectively playtest something that is only available in about 0.5% of games

It is not even that simple. As far as I remember I tried arcblade in 1 fight in that game but I wasn't impressed by the low damage. The 1/3 chance to trigger cannot be discovered via playtesting, you really need to code dive for that. I think displaying the chance in the weapon description might be useful but I am almost sure devs would be against it.

[papilio]

Kinda hard to effectively playtest something that is only available in about 0.5% of games

you could do actual playtest quite easily by turning on wizmode and generate arc blade and some bulky monster if you want

[duvessa]

Funny how the default assumption is to assume I didn't try it and come in with the anecdotes, when the truth is I did try it and didn't find it that godlike. (Hard for a human or elf to approximate the mean of a roughly log-normal distribution just by looking at a few trials with bad resolution - remember, this game doesn't tell you how much damage you do.) Looking at the code is how I found the bug, although it did take me 2 looks rather than 1.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

The best thing about regeneration really isn't that it helps in fights. The effect is tiny. Prolonged fights are rare without previous mistakes, or extended/zig slaughterfests.

The nice thing about regeneration is that it saves piety, because it reduces resting. It would be interesting to estimate how much it saves, but I'm struggling to come up with a reasonable set of assumptions.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I believe piety is overestimated by some players. If you rely on spamming divine abilities, something is wrong with your character IMHO (the only exception is Chei who can ruin your character at low piety: heavy armour with low Str or high level spells with low Int).
Some gods don't have piety at all (Ru, Gozag), some almost always make you have full piety (Vehumet, Ash, Makh), even for gods like Oka and Trog do you really spam Finesse and BiA? With some other gods you still can run into special limitations (max 3 Bone Dragons/Servitors with Yred, dependence on XL with Beogh, fruits with Fedhas)

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I agree with you, which basically makes amulet of regeneration even worse. I suppose it has some point in Hell, or any other place where resting is particularly problematic.

[Shtopit]

Regeneration may be better with some playstyles than others. You can e.g. use it to wear off a more powerful opponent than you by disengaging and regenerating faster than he can. And I suspect that it's more effective on shield characters than 2h, because the fights last longer and you take less damage over time, so the % of lost hp you get back is higher.

I think that vitality would use having some special gimmick, although I have no idea of what that could be. Regeneration becoming stronger the more HP % you have lost, up to 1?

[VeryAngryFelid]

Amulet of powered by death:)

[Majang]

Amulet of powered by death:)

Oooh, I would pay any price for that. It's the one reason I like playing DS, and you get it only about a quarter of the time...

[duvessa]

Vitality's special gimmick is that it increases your max HP. The problem is that guardian spirit already effectively increases your max HP and your HP regeneration. If you remove guardian spirit then Vitality's existence will make sense. (You could probably get away with removing spirit as an amulet, ego, and fixedart property and leaving it on Ds and VS.)