Tuesday, 28th August 2018, 16:13 by Siegurt
Some of these I haven't actually heard repeated enough by enough people to qualify as Memes, a lot of these are hyperbole, and certainly some of these have been repeated when they probably shouldn't have been.
For example I've heard both "Necromancy is really strong" and "Summons are really strong" but it's been years since I've heard anyone claim that playing a 'pure necromancer in a robe' was extremely powerful (robes can have pretty good egos, depending on what you're doing, but there's honestly not much point in staying in robes later in the game if you don't need one of the robe-specific egos, which necromancers and summoners don't particularly) sitting behind an immense cloud of undead and never having to actually deal with any enemies yourself was a pretty reliable playstyle back when they were permanant and could attack things offscreen, but that's long since over.
Transmuters are ok, but are fiddly early on, there's a few players in particular who are overly attached to the play style, and who will recommend it to everyone, but I don't think a few players repeating something makes it a meme.
Ranged weapons are pretty good, I have only heard one person say that they are OP, but they have said it more than once.
Animate skeleton is very very good for how cheap it is, if you cast spells, you can cast it, and for 1 MP it's pretty useful even late game, a high level skeleton can serve as a distraction or blocker at pretty much any point, and since you can get the spell for 1 spell slot and 0 XP, it's very very frequently worth it. I'm not sure *everyone* should learn it. If you go back far enough, Animate skeleton was optimal on every character, as it would let you butcher corpses even if you had a cursed unbladed weapon in hand, so even if you didn't care about the (at the time permanant) ally, having it memorized was a very useful thing even if you didn't actually care about the spell's effect, none of that applies any more of course.
Summon butterflies is a poor, but unlimited fog, sometimes you don't have a fog scroll, or don't care *that* much about preventing things from hitting you at range, but it's rare that you don't care at all, or have enough fog scrolls that you could use one in every situation in which it would provide an advantage, for 0 XP and 1 MP+1 Spell slot, it's again very frequently worthwhile, as long as you remember to use it, and don't always have more important things to do when ranged critters aren't adjacent to you but are on screen (Which is true for a subset of characters) It's notably useful to lower the odds of hexers from using their abilities on you for a short while (It's less reliable against damaging attacks)
The mid/late game thing is weird to me, I've looked at my own loss history, and I'm pretty consistent in my odds of dying on a level by level basis, but I'm pretty sure that varies by type of player, to me this feels pretty meme-y as it's been repeated more than once from more than one player.
I don't recall people saying you can rank gods by how strong they are at 0* or 1* (Although I have heard players say that gods that give you something useful almost immediately on joining are good, I haven't heard it said that if a god gives you something powerful *later* that they aren't good, I suspect this goes with the 'early game is hard' meme, if you believe the early game is hard, getting a benefit early is better than getting one later, I believe that most people who actually "rank" gods would take both types of usefulness into account, but there aren't that many so who knows..)
Necromutation was once upon a time overrated, in that there was a meme that it was "required for every player to get and be able to cast necromutation before entering extended no matter what kind of player they were" because at the time there were several players who believed that it was essential to be able to cast level 9 spells hungerlessly to survive in extended. Following that was a lot of debunking of both that spell hunger was a serious limit and that you couldn't survive in extended if you weren't torment immune, which is about when you started posting on the forums, some people still repeat that Necromutation is overrated (Or really more frequently now, it's labeled as 'not worth the XP investment, unless you've already for some weird reason invested into these two schools that have no other overlap') but I think most players who read these forums now have a realistic understanding of what the benefits of necromutation are, and have a vague understanding of when the costs are worth it.
The suggestion to cast DMSL at 0 skill came up recently, I don't know why that's a specifically good idea, as it's hard to cast with even a small amount of skill, and it's chance of breaking is directly proportional to your skill, so more spell skill for DMSL is always beneficial, although, of course, having it up is always better than not having it, even at 0 skill, I suppose if you have it and have more pressing things to train for right now, and can actually succeed, it's still worth *casting* as it'll do something and you can try as many times as you need to, but I don't know that it's *optimal* to always cast it with 0 skill.
Hyperoptimal scumming is something that it's unlikely to ever be completely eliminated in this sort of game, however it is one of the stated development goals to reduce the impact of scumming wherever possible, I personally think, like anything else, taking a frequently beneficial course of action and turning into a dogmatic absolute extreme is rarely a good idea.
It's possible to fight *most* enemies in 1v1 battles, something like 95% of all fights can be 1v1 battles, and probably 85% of the non-popcorn fights *should always* be 1v1 battles, optimizing for the 15-25% case isn't typically the best solution unless it doesn't cost anything for the 85-95% case, or if the cost is very minimal. If anyone says "every fight is 1v1" then that's probably hyperbole, as even if you're standing in a corridor, sometimes something comes up behind you, even from an already cleared area. If you're fighting less than 85% of your hard fights in multiple-vs-1 you're probably playing suboptimally, which is fine too, not everyone needs to optimize your win chances. This "meme" comes up frequently when someone suggests that axes are better than every other weapon type. Is the ability to hit secondary enemies worth the reduced base damage? Everyone has an opinion.
I have never heard "Noise of a spell is irrelevant" I have heard "Spell noise isn't the primary consideration when deciding how good a spell is" the truth is that spell noise can be mitigated in the same way that fights can be made 1v1 much of the time, with lots of tedious luring, the more disinclined you are to lure stuff, the more important spell noise is, but it's always more important to kill something before it kills you, than it is to worry about how much noise you're making.
Shatter is definitely the worst level 9 spell in terms of it's offensive power, but it's still not bad, it does pretty good damage against most things (It's weakness against fliers is not really worse than fire storm's or glaciate's weakness against rF+ and rC+ critters), and hits the whole screen. In a subset of (non 1v1) fights, this is a useful attribute. The wall breaking is sometimes useful (when you want to break into dig proof vaults) but it mostly just makes life harder. Again this is a spell whose detriments can be reduced by robust positioning.
Glaciate isn't *weak* it's just not *as strong as* firestorm, I'm not sure saying "this spell isn't as powerful as the most powerful offensive spell in the game" is really qualifies as a meme.
There is plenty of XP in the game, and enough for blaster mages to train offensive skills they didn't start with (It's a bit like switching weapon types for weapon users, except it doesn't cost anything to use a differently-elemented spell from turn to turn in combat, and different spells have different qualifications for when they're most worthwhile, so it's more worthwhile) That doesn't mean it costs *nothing* to use allies, only that the costs and benefits are comparable (presuming you continue to use allies) Nobody says that there's 0 cost to diving, only that the costs as a percentage of the whole get to be insignificant the later in the game it is. If anyone says there's exactly 0 costs to these activities it's certainly hyperbole.
Statistics and evidence aren't irrelevant, but they can misrepresent, they can be used incorrectly and can contradict the truth, that doesn't mean that they're bad, it just means that the presenter *and their audience* needs to be aware of exactly how they are being presented, and what conclusions you can actually derive from the facts being presented. Expertise is also not irrelevant, but (while it's not very common) it can happen that an expert can be wrong, and a novice can present an idea that happens to be correct, that's very very unlikely, but it's possible, and it's important to actually look at ideas for what they are, rather than swapping the reliability for the source for the reliability of the idea.
This high quality signature has been hidden for your protection. To unlock it's secret, send 3 easy payments of $9.99 to me, by way of your nearest theta band or ley line. Complete your transmission by midnight tonight for a special free gift!
- For this message the author Siegurt has received thanks: 3
- Berder, pedritolo, Utis
