Am I missing something, or does tornado suck?

[Tiktacy]

I've used glaciate, fire storm, shatter, and even dragon call before AND after the nerf, and all of those spells have been completely game ending. They have all been so strong that other spells pale in comparison, they obliterate everything in their path, yet tornado doesn't seem to do jack shit by comparison.

It deals decent unavoidable damage every turn, but it allows enemies to live several turns giving them the opportunity to deal more damage. Shatter might not deal as much damage, but it also breaks virtually any wall in the game which is extremely good and well worth the minor decrease in damage. Dragon call might not deal instant damage, but it does provide powerful meat shields.

So I must ask, why is it that tornado is a level 9 spell if it sucks so hard compared to shatter and dragon call(the other 2 single school level 9 spells)? it feels like I'm missing something.

[Sar]

Am I missing something

Defenses?

[Tiktacy]

Am I missing something

Defenses?

My defenses are pretty bad, I'm playing a felid so I'm a little lacking in that department. Not only that, I'm playing a felid of Ru who sacrificed dodging just for a little added self challenge.

[Sar]

a felid of Ru who sacrificed dodging

Your character sucks. Also, Felids don't have the best Int and can't use enchancer staves or wear a lot of Int gear. In my (limited) experience, direct-damage 9s suck without good spellpower.

[duvessa]

all of these spells suck equally bad, except for glaciate which sucks even more than the others

[Wahaha]

Damage per mp and damage per turns spent casting.

[Hurkyl]

Tornado requires little MP to do damage; nearly everything dies in one casting. TRJ dies in two.

You can spend the time Tornado is doing damage to do other things, such as bash things with your (extremely powerful) staff of air, cast more direct damage spells, or use consumables. An option I use a lot, especially on Spriggans, is to move away from the enemy in a vaguely counterclockwise direction, ideally keeping them about two squares away so they take near maximum damage but can't hit you in melee (or have to waste time catching up if they're faster than you).

[crate]

Just going to check, but you were using tornado in open spaces right? It is pretty much completely useless if you're in a corridor or such.

Anyway it's pretty clearly deserving of being level 9 (remember it is half the xp of glaciate or fire storm, so it should not be quite as good as them).

[Tiktacy]

I think I'm starting to see whats the fuss about it, but I am still very annoyed by the fact that its so weak compared to to shatter.

[JFunk]

Shatter is basically useless against flying monsters, which is a lot of monsters.

[Tiktacy]

Shatter is basically useless against flying monsters, which is a lot of monsters.

Earth has iron shot though, among other things. Air has airstrike I guess, but not much else.

[edgefigaro]

Shatter is lackluster in hell and pan, but it -wrecks- tomb.

Air has Chain Lit and Conjure Ball Lightning. CBL has killed every character I have ever learned/used it on, so +1 for it being in crawl. Maybe if we move it down to lvl 5 it will kill more players.

Edit: The worst CBL death was when I was jiyva. I cast CBL, it is on the field. Next turn, I get hit for enough damage to spawn a jelly. CBL goes off, hitting the spawned Jelly, incuring penance. Newly spawned Jelly turned on me and killed me the following turn.

[advil]

Personally, tornado is my favorite of the L9s (except for singularity rip) because it is extremely powerful and works well with hybrids who have multiple means of damaging and ok defenses. I much prefer it to shatter. Shatter does a lot of damage when it works, but it is MP hungry and often doesn't work, especially in the parts of the game where you can actually reasonably get it going (bad with flying monsters, including practically everything in hell; useless in like 2/3 of zig floors; also doesn't work well on jellies so useless in slime). Damaging dungeon walls is also sometimes not at all a good thing, because it prevents you from using terrain to manage los. Using shatter in pan can be quite risky for this reason. It's even pretty risky in tomb, as much as destroying walls can be helpful there -- for example, in my experience it substantially complicated the tomb 3 entrance.

Though, shatterninjaing for actually getting runes is amazing.

[njvack]

Tornado is good (insofar as any L9 is good) because it keeps damaging the dudes while you also damage them more or channel or move or whatever. The best thing about it is the super-short-duration flight which will, every great once in a while, remind you that drowning is an instadeath.

[dowan]

On a HEAE I had, I played as a 'hybrid', and by extended I was really enjoying being able to turn tornado on, then just beat guys up with my sword while tornado beat on them as well. It's very efficient MP wise, but not so much efficient for damage per turn. It's only good if you have something worthwhile to do while the tornado does its thing, like for example airstriking flying enemies, or throwing chain lightnings around.

Come to think of it, it's pretty darn good. Just don't expect it to do everything itself.

[tabstorm]

"Tornado sucks on my Felid of Ru that sacrified DODGING (!)"
"Why is this spell so underwhelming?"
Come on man...

[bcadren]

I will agree though; Tornado is about the worst level 9. It might do more total damage than the others; but it's less damage a turn, Chain Lightning is a significantly better Air Capstone than Tornado for most uses.

[lethediver]

My only problem with Tornado is the cooldown. The cooldown is the part where ur over-invested into Air Magic, non option-having char is at his weakest and the part where he's liable to get killed.

[kuniqs]

I will agree though; Tornado is about the worst level 9. It might do more total damage than the others; but it's less damage a turn, Chain Lightning is a significantly better Air Capstone than Tornado for most uses.

You're kidding me? 1 school, damages everything (dangerous), takes care of summons on it's own...
Shatter deals more damage per aut, but has the amorphous-flying weakness which limits it's usefulness (most important, OOF are immune to Shatter)

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

Of the 9th level spells, Tornado requires better defenses than Fire Storm; I've had a couple of deep elf glass cannons that had Fire Storm online in Vaults and that combo is somewhat feasible because one can Fire Storm anything dangerous from the edge of LOS and still have time to flee.

Tornado is a great buff for a melee char, but those should preferably wear heavy armour and if they do, there are few characters that have enough Str and Int to get it castable until late in the extended game if even then. Would anyone wear a robe just so they can cast Tornado?

[Sar]

If you have good defenses in robe, why not?

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

If you have good defenses in robe, why not?

I almost always consider the defenses to be better in a heavy armour. So IMO the consideration is between good AC/GDR+EV and worse AC/GDR+better EV+Tornado. I don't think Tornado is worth going for the latter.

[ydeve]

Not everyone has good defenses in heavy armor, especially if you don't have the strength to use it.

If you have the choice between good defenses in robe + tornado, or slightly better defenses is FDA but not being able to kill enemies as fast, which is safer?

[Sar]

Well, I also used to play lots of Nagas.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

I recently played a HESk that I specifically built to be able to go for Tornado by mostly raising Int instead of Dex or Str. HEs can pull it off if any.

I wore PDA and had great defenses, and also a holy wrath great sword for extended. Even with a decent Int I had to raise Armour quite high before I was even close to being able to cast Tornado, and I also maxed Fighting first. This meant that I was able to reliably cast Tornado only in Hells, and even then it wasn't really necessary; Haste, Spectral Weapon, Regen, holy weapon, and good defenses would've been just fine. I don't think this particular char would've been better off had I worn a robe and trained for Tornado instead of Armour.

This was the kind of choice I was thinking about, earlier Tornado would've required me to compromise on the defenses and I think it would've been a bad tradeoff.

[ydeve]

I wore PDA