dragon form-its really weak


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Lair Larrikin

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Post Monday, 15th December 2014, 19:52

dragon form-its really weak

dragon form is an extremely unsatisfying spell.Most Transmuters go the whole game using blade hands, a level 5 Tm spell. Statue form, ice form and even lichform have their own appeal as far as Tm goes, but dragon form is extremely unappealing.
Anyone have any ideas that would make the form more attractive?

Personally, I feel like it ends up giving you ogre syndrome (youre large with a large hp pool,but weak defenses and easy to hit)
Ifeel like cloaks and hats shouldn't melt for dragon form. a cloak wouldn't inhibit flight or restrict movement (same as garg) and a hat should be able to sit fine, considering they don't have horns mutation.

What d yo think could make this form more appealing?
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Lair Larrikin

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Post Monday, 15th December 2014, 19:54

Re: dragon form-its really weak

It's really good on Draconians and Octopodes, though.

Spider Stomper

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Post Monday, 15th December 2014, 20:20

Re: dragon form-its really weak

haha lichform what no one would want lichform if they were mostly transmuting
anyway, the real question IMO is whether blade hands is too strong rather than DF being too weak, the damage is ridiculous and it gives you 50% HP (ie: the best defensive stat) sure you have bad other defenses but does it really matter when you killdozer everything

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Monday, 15th December 2014, 20:20

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Dragon form become extremely good since it had been changed to single school
screw it I hate this character I'm gonna go melee Gastronok

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 15th December 2014, 20:33

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Dragon Form's main problem is that it's an extremely pretty expensive xp investment that only works with the most xp-intensive melee build in the game. After you've got Blade Hands, it's a really long time before it's worth spending even more xp on transmutations to get a power that is only conditionally better.

Leaving aside the tremendous cost of that much xp training just to get it working, Dragon Form does kill things really well. It's one of the simplest ways to safely kill post-game uniques with as few turns spent with them in LOS as possible, if for some reason you care about actually killing them. You do have to manage LOS carefully to ensure you're not fighting more monsters than are safe to fight, but this is something you should really be doing anyway.

Making Dragon Form a more appealing investment is probably never going to be possible as long as Blade Hands remains as strong as it currently is. Anything clearly stronger than Blade Hands in the general case is clearly too strong, and anything situational is not going to be affordable because you've already mortgaged your build on unarmed combat.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 15th December 2014, 20:40

Re: dragon form-its really weak

well it's better than statue form

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Barkeep

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Post Monday, 15th December 2014, 20:43

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Nearly all transmutation spells tend to be somewhat niche, and perhaps Dragon Form is niche even by the standards of transmutations, but I don't think it is so bad that it needs to be majorly changed. In part because, at least every time I have used it, it has been extremely satisfying. Was it the most optimal use of my experience, considering I had blade hands at low spell failure? Probably not. But then again, seldom is it the best use of one's experience allocation to get fire storm up and running (even more so glaciate). I'd consider dragon form more useful for late game Tms, and certainly more satisfying (subjective, I know), than ignite poison and statue form, so there is that.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 15th December 2014, 21:07

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Is the power of any transformation ever affected by the level of transmutations skill? Does TM skill only determine the length of time the transmutation form will last? If so, what does Spellcasting add to the mix?

I think form capability scaling with spell power might make a little better incentive (especially if all forms start out slightly weaker than they do now, but end up in better shape than now with a minimum 15-20% higher skill investment).
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Shoals Surfer

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Post Monday, 15th December 2014, 22:01

Re: dragon form-its really weak

hydra form gets more heads with Tm skill, but as it is using that spell is just asking for a YASD.
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Post Tuesday, 16th December 2014, 03:52

Re: dragon form-its really weak

XuaXua wrote:Is the power of any transformation ever affected by the level of transmutations skill? Does TM skill only determine the length of time the transmutation form will last? If so, what does Spellcasting add to the mix?

I think form capability scaling with spell power might make a little better incentive (especially if all forms start out slightly weaker than they do now, but end up in better shape than now with a minimum 15-20% higher skill investment).


In general I think it's kind of awkward that forms scale better with unarmed skill than transmutations. It's unintuitive, results in transmutations being by far the most experience-intensive form of melee in the game, and makes transmutations incredibly niche.

Extreme proposal, but at the very least I'm interested in hearing someone tell me why it's a bad idea: make melee in all forms except blade hands scale with transmutations, but not with unarmed skill. The experience investment to use transmutations effectively is now comparable to any other form of melee and blade hands stops obsoleting other forms (blade hands is awesome for characters who kill things in unarmed, but other forms can be a more efficient use of experience if you'd rather train more transmutations instead of unarmed). Essentially, turn transmutations into a pseudo-weapon school, instead of a spell school full of spells that scale more on your unarmed combat skill than your magic skill.

Spider Stomper

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Post Tuesday, 16th December 2014, 04:26

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Quazifuji wrote:
XuaXua wrote:Is the power of any transformation ever affected by the level of transmutations skill? Does TM skill only determine the length of time the transmutation form will last? If so, what does Spellcasting add to the mix?

I think form capability scaling with spell power might make a little better incentive (especially if all forms start out slightly weaker than they do now, but end up in better shape than now with a minimum 15-20% higher skill investment).


In general I think it's kind of awkward that forms scale better with unarmed skill than transmutations. It's unintuitive, results in transmutations being by far the most experience-intensive form of melee in the game, and makes transmutations incredibly niche.

Extreme proposal, but at the very least I'm interested in hearing someone tell me why it's a bad idea: make melee in all forms except blade hands scale with transmutations, but not with unarmed skill. The experience investment to use transmutations effectively is now comparable to any other form of melee and blade hands stops obsoleting other forms (blade hands is awesome for characters who kill things in unarmed, but other forms can be a more efficient use of experience if you'd rather train more transmutations instead of unarmed). Essentially, turn transmutations into a pseudo-weapon school, instead of a spell school full of spells that scale more on your unarmed combat skill than your magic skill.


While the non-form, non-blade-hands transmutations aren't super significant right now, I think those should be taken into account before Transmutations also becomes a pseudo melee school; it might be too much to allow transmuters to have their punching and CC/blasting from one school. Irradiate is pretty strong (basically an undodgable, debuffing Iron Shot on everything in melee range at the cost of minor glow), ignite poison has solid use in lair branches, and I think I recall a proposal to make Gell's Gravitas transmutation, which would give them a long range (minor) nuke+battlefield control.

Still, if transmutations are already pretty weak, it might not hurt to let them have that as well.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 16th December 2014, 04:28

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Still, if transmutations are already pretty weak

They're not.

Spider Stomper

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Post Tuesday, 16th December 2014, 04:33

Re: dragon form-its really weak

crate wrote:
Still, if transmutations are already pretty weak

They're not.


Fair enough, I don't play a lot of transmuters, and from what I've seen, the not-lichform, not bladehands spells seem to be universally considered super situational. Are the other transmutation spells currently better than I've been led to believe, or are those two spells enough to carry the school?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 16th December 2014, 04:39

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Sticks to Snakes, Spider Form, and Ice Form are also very good. Blade Hands eventually makes lower-level forms mostly obsolete, but higher-level spells often do that to lower-level spells that are similar.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 16th December 2014, 04:48

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Situational is not the same as bad. Transmutations appeal to a small set of characters but they are absolutely not weak for those characters. Compare ice form to phase shift or something; it's not unreasonable to argue that ice form is more powerful, and possibly by a significant margin. And phase shift is far from a bad spell itself.

Spider form and ice form are probably on-par with blade hands, more or less (personally I like ice form more than blade hands, though I seem to be alone there). Dragon form is quite good for certain characters (I went over this in a topic in DCA not too long ago; not coincidentally good dragon form characters are basically the same as good ice form characters, so you can think of it as a bigger ice form!). I'm convinced that the main reason for blade hands's popularity over other form spells is because it is more straightforwardly useful than the other form spells. For blade hands you just build a regular character and then cast blade hands and you're good to go. Ice form and dragon form and statue form are not good for that type of character, but they're perfectly good for characters where you train skills in a different fashion because you have the spell.

(I don't know about hydra form or the other recently-added tm spells, since I haven't played a tm in a while, but probably my next crawl character will be a tm and hopefully I'll get a chance to try the new spells.)

Yes, it turns out that very few characters other than transmuters will ever learn transmutation spells. I don't think that's a problem.

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Post Wednesday, 17th December 2014, 02:51

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Let dragon form throw large rocks.
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Post Wednesday, 17th December 2014, 03:47

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Spider form is basically +2 unarmed with a poison brand,
Ice form is +9 with a freeze brand, (edit: it's +9, not +6 god damn it)
Blade hands is +5+(str+dex)/3 [+15 @ 15 str/dex],
Hydra form is -1 + 3*Heads + !!Cleaving!! [+1.5*Heads for extra heads past 10, but getting >100 spellpower on this spell is extraordinarily hard.]
Statue form is about +9%*str effective damage at 12 unarmed, +7.8%*str at 27 unarmed
Dragon form is +15+(10+str)*(2/3) [actually more than +15 actual unarmed skill at 19 str and 12 unarmed]

Spider form is a level 3 dual-school spell,
Ice form is a level 4 dual-school spell,
Blade hands is a level 5 single-school spell,
Hydra form is a level 6 single-school spell (and the only one that is really expensive in terms of investment for it to be useful),
Statue form is a level 6 dual-school spell,
Dragon form is a level 7 single-school spell.

Now, what do you think would be more expensive in terms of exp investment: Getting unarmed from 12->22, or getting enough transmutations to cast blade hands?
Because they're about equal in terms of how much more damage you do at 19 str/dex (which I happened to be testing with)!

Personally then I like statue form, but I've pretty much mastered the whole "who needs running" playstyle and the Hp/AC/EV you get is certainly impressive at times.
It's pretty worthless against blade hands if you have plenty of AC/EV without it, and at that point it's reduced to a torment-shield if you're stronk enough.

Hydra form is the only spell on this list that is exceptionally expensive on the investment side, requiring 17 transmutations/12 spellcasting at 17 int to breach 6 heads - and thus +17 damage + cleaving.
Last edited by Bloax on Wednesday, 17th December 2014, 18:44, edited 1 time in total.
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!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Halls Hopper

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Post Wednesday, 17th December 2014, 15:24

Re: dragon form-its really weak

crate wrote:personally I like ice form more than blade hands, though I seem to be alone there


You're not alone! I won an OpTm recently that used Ice Form far more than the other Tmut spells in the later game. It provided helpful rPois, had better armor than Blade Hands especially with Ozo Armor, and had no hunger cost. I was Gozagging it up, and at times was low enough on food to merit using nutritionally cheaper spells.

IDEA: if Blade Hands actually deserves a debuff to damage, what if it gained Sblade-level stabbing?
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Snake Sneak

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Post Wednesday, 17th December 2014, 21:56

Re: dragon form-its really weak

My favorite transmutations spell is Ignite Poison. :D
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Snake Sneak

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Post Friday, 19th December 2014, 00:34

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Dragon form really shines when you combine it with a bunch of buffs to offset the bad defenses, e.g. haste + phase shift + rmsl + ozo's + regen. It's not hard to get these buffs online when you have no armour penalty. Obviously this requires some degree of luck with finding the spells.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 19th December 2014, 01:04

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Rumbleguts wrote:
crate wrote:personally I like ice form more than blade hands, though I seem to be alone there


You're not alone! I won an OpTm recently that used Ice Form far more than the other Tmut spells in the later game. It provided helpful rPois, had better armor than Blade Hands especially with Ozo Armor, and had no hunger cost. I was Gozagging it up, and at times was low enough on food to merit using nutritionally cheaper spells.

IDEA: if Blade Hands actually deserves a debuff to damage, what if it gained Sblade-level stabbing?


I have no idea why, but every time I've seen that crate quote in the last couple of days I misread it as "Ice cream form"
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Barkeep

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Post Friday, 19th December 2014, 15:37

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Ice Cream Form could inflict an "ice cream headache" stun status on intelligent monsters. But you'd be vulnerable to lick damage.
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Barkeep

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Post Friday, 19th December 2014, 15:38

Re: dragon form-its really weak

also is that an ice cream-scented air freshener? I don't know if that is the best idea ever or the worst idea ever
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Spider Stomper

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Post Friday, 19th December 2014, 17:24

Re: dragon form-its really weak

no, it's a new race planned for pizza tornado, dev twelwe confirmed this to me in pm

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 05:21

Re: dragon form-its really weak

I've never really liked ice form that much, but I would certainly concede that Op is the perfect race to use it long term. It used to only allow 2 rings which made it weak for them, but now that it allows 8, I can certainly see that being a powerful, end-game viable build. I'm still sticking to statue form personally :)

I don't like dragon form, but that's primarily because I like to build defensive characters, so a spell that centers around extreme offense isn't one that is appealing to me. But that doesn't mean it has to be changed for me. I'd like to see a defensive form added that didn't come with slow, as right now there's only one defensive form option (statue form). You could argue ice form has some defensive boost, but I think it's really only viable (in the long term) for Op and felid. It's fine as a transitional form for most races, but I personally tend to skip it and go straight to blade/statue/hydra forms.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 05:27

Re: dragon form-its really weak

My current tm actually has better defenses in all three of dragon/ice/hydra form than in blade hands form, but I guess other people get more than 11 AC in blade hands form or something. It's now starting to be clear to me why no one sees these other form spells the way I do.

20 AC in blade hands sounds like some mythical super-tm to me. Or a naga, I guess.

Also today I learned: if you get badform statue form, it's cast with max spellpower. 35 ac with no items, actually pretty good.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 06:18

Re: dragon form-its really weak

crate wrote:My current tm actually has better defenses in all three of dragon/ice/hydra form than in blade hands form, but I guess other people get more than 11 AC in blade hands form or something. It's now starting to be clear to me why no one sees these other form spells the way I do.

20 AC in blade hands sounds like some mythical super-tm to me. Or a naga, I guess.

Also today I learned: if you get badform statue form, it's cast with max spellpower. 35 ac with no items, actually pretty good.

what is your setup that you can't get 20 ac with blade hands? Seriously even in (enchanted) mottled dragon armor you'll get around 15 ac, and then you could have +0 accessories to reach 20 ac with blade hands and roughly 10 armor skill....I'd usually end up around fire/ice dragon armor, some +2 secondary armors, and be at roughly 25-30ac. Or use statue form and stoneskin and get around 40 ac, depending on spellpower.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 06:22

Re: dragon form-its really weak

My most common tm armour is robe.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 06:51

Re: dragon form-its really weak

And you consider anyone not using a robe to be mythical super-tm's? You know, it isn't that rare to find some armor higher than robe in your average game :P

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 07:17

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Well obviously I'm not being entirely serious (I have almost as many mda transmuters as robe ones, though it takes pretty special circumstances for me to wear anything heavier than swampDA now or MDA before the EVP->encumbrance change) but I do think that for a tm sticking with a robe all game is perfectly reasonable and often better than getting more blade hands AC, since I mean non-blade-hands forms are pretty good and robe egos (plus lower encumbrance, though that's less of a big deal) are much better for walking around untransformed than extra AC is in most cases (you're mostly scared of things like hexes (MR) or fireball/bolt spells (rF/rC) since nothing else does enough damage to ruin you before you actually get to fight) and then you change form to actually fight and your AC doesn't depend on your armour so....

I really haven't found that my MDA transmuters feel stronger than my robe ones in general (except for things like naga or centaur, where you obviously want to use blade hands instead of any other transformation for a few reasons so you then do want the extra AC from something like MDA).

So it's not that I'm wearing a robe because I can't find the armour I actually want. I wear robes because they are the armour I want.

edit: anyway here's the game I just won, was actually very easy for most of it, though some of that was Ru + good sacrifice choices luck. Dragon and hydra form are so good.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/crate ... 075849.txt

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Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 11:49

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Talking about Dragon Form and Hydra Form - where can I get 0.16 tiles?
And when it come as stable release? )
Sorry for off-top.
English is NOT my native language.

Spider Stomper

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 11:53

Re: dragon form-its really weak

you can get it online
it will be a stable release some time around 2029

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 12:03

Re: dragon form-its really weak

I have trobles with regard to the technical stuff, so "on-line Crawl" sound illusionary.
2029? I would like to get the game before the war. :lol:
I think it means "it will not be soon"?
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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 12:07

Re: dragon form-its really weak

You can get the current development builds here: http://crawl.develz.org/trunk/
The builds are usually updated daily as far as I know. Bugs and crashes are a lot more likely to happen than in stable builds, but it's usually not too bad. Remember to report bugs here: https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/

Edit: oh, and 0.16 will be released sometime next year. The dev team tries to release a stable version about every 6 months, so most likely 0.16 will come in the first half of 2015.

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Post Saturday, 20th December 2014, 13:37

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Galefury wrote:Bugs and crashes are a lot more likely to happen than in stable builds, but it's usually not too bad.

0.16 Trunk is actually the first time there have been a lot of bugs/crashes in trunk builds over the last couple of years.
Probably because 0.16 is also changing around (and rewriting a bunch of code here and there) a lot more than the versions before it used to do.
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!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Post Friday, 26th December 2014, 18:29

Re: dragon form-its really weak

Depends on what you mean by "a lot". There have always been more bugs and crashes in trunk than in stable builds. Most of them get fixed quickly. It has rarely bothered me, but other people may have less tolerance for it. To me, 0.16 doesn't really seem more buggy on average than previous versions. In my experience how buggy a certain version is changes very quickly, so I may have just missed the buggy times. Getting Crawl to build on windows with C++11 and SDL2 was annoying, but when it finally worked, it worked well.

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