iron rod

[radinms]

How good is iron rod?

[Jeremiah]

Very good if you train a lot of evocations.

It's mostly good for doing a lot of damage to a single adjacent, low-AC target, as AC is counted against each shot separately. Works great against jellies etc.

[Sandman25]

I am not sure it is limited by AC that much. I tend to underestimate the rod but recently I spectated a Ko with maxed Evo who used the rod to kill dangerous monsters in 1-2 shots. As far as I remember the player even killed TRJ with 2 evocations of rod of ignition and 2 evocations of iron rod, the most unusual way I've ever seen.

[Jeremiah]

TRJ is one of the best things to use it against, although because of the way the beams spread out you have to be standing next to it, meaning you will be surrounded by spawns.

I wouldn't use it against an OOF or iron dragon though.

[Lasty]

It's fine against OOFs at high power (18+ Evo or so). It won't kill them outright, but it does pretty solid damage. At a similar power level, two shots is reasonably likely to kill an ancient lich.

edit: fixed invo->evo. Thanks, bel.

[bel]

You probably mean 18+ evo, but it is interesting. I tried it against Ereshkigal a long time ago and wasn't impressed. Will give it another go if I find one.

[quik]

I left a Lv 26 GrFi in Comborobin account on the Korean webzook.net server with 5 different rods and 19.6 in Evo. Feel free to play it if you guys want.

[Sandman25]

Evo 27, +9 iron rod (monsters have triple HP in the test)

  Code:

The burst of metal fragments hits the six-headed hydra.(damage 29)
The burst of metal fragments hits the six-headed hydra.(damage 20)
The burst of metal fragments hits the six-headed hydra.(damage 17)
The burst of metal fragments hits the six-headed hydra.(damage 25)
The burst of metal fragments hits the six-headed hydra.(damage 22)
The burst of metal fragments hits the six-headed hydra.(damage 20)
The burst of metal fragments hits the six-headed hydra.(damage 21)
The burst of metal fragments hits the six-headed hydra.(damage 24) x2
The burst of metal fragments hits the six-headed hydra.(damage 21)
You kill the six-headed hydra!

  Code:

The burst of metal fragments hits the orb of fire.(damage 0) x3
The burst of metal fragments hits the orb of fire.(damage 18)
The burst of metal fragments hits the orb of fire.(damage 0) x5
The orb of fire is lightly damaged.

  Code:

The burst of metal fragments hits the iron dragon.(damage 0) x6
The burst of metal fragments hits the iron dragon.(damage 9)
The burst of metal fragments hits the iron dragon.(damage 0)
The burst of metal fragments hits the iron dragon.(damage 7)
The burst of metal fragments hits the iron dragon.(damage 19)
The iron dragon is lightly wounded.

  Code:

The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 18)
The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 1)
The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 12)
The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 14)
The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 4)
The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 9)
The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 0)
The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 8)
The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 6)
The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 11)
The burst of metal fragments hits the titan.(damage 5)
The titan is moderately wounded.


  Code:

The burst of metal fragments hits the Enchantress.(damage 22)
The Enchantress blocks the burst of metal fragments.
The burst of metal fragments hits the Enchantress.(damage 23)
The burst of metal fragments hits the Enchantress.(damage 10)
The Enchantress blocks the burst of metal fragments. x2
The burst of metal fragments hits the Enchantress.(damage 10)
The Enchantress is moderately wounded.

[duvessa]

It's fine against OOFs at high power (18+ Evo or so). It won't kill them outright, but it does pretty solid damage. At a similar power level, two shots is reasonably likely to kill an ancient lich.

Have you actually tried this? It's not especially frequent to even damage an orb of fire with an iron rod evoke, let alone do "pretty solid" damage, at 18 evo. I am pretty sure meleeing the orb of fire with the rod will do more damage if it's well enchanted.

To answer the actual question, as rods go it's okay, just be aware that it is completely useless at range (and against an orb of fire) and relatively inconsistent. I'd rather have it than lightning, certainly, probably ignition or destruction too but not by a lot.

[Lasty]

I have, actually, thought possibly not at exactly 18 Evo. It was somewhere in the upper third of possible skill. It's possible that I got lucky a few times and did more than normal damage. Subjectively, I got the sense that it was doing about 10-20% of the OOF health per shot.

[Rast]

If only the game provided some sort of numerical feedback so you would know how much damage you were doing...

[Sprucery]

Why don't we get exclamation mark indicators for all kinds of damage?

[Sandman25]

Aren't players supposed to read messages about "lightly/severely/heavily wounded"?

[Sandman25]

Why don't we get exclamation mark indicators for all kinds of damage?

By the way do you know ranges for all those exclamation marks? They are non-linear, correct?

[Sprucery]

By the way do you know ranges for all those exclamation marks? They are non-linear, correct?

Quick and rusty source-diving from attack.h and attack.cc (from 0.15.2 source, I don't have more recent one with me):

  Code:

const int HIT_WEAK   = 7;
const int HIT_MED    = 18;
const int HIT_STRONG = 36;


  Code:

string attack::attack_strength_punctuation(int dmg)
{
    if (dmg < HIT_WEAK)
        return ".";
    else if (dmg < HIT_MED)
        return "!";
    else if (dmg < HIT_STRONG)
        return "!!";
    else
    {
        string ret = "!!!";
        int tmpdamage = dmg;
        while (tmpdamage >= 2*HIT_STRONG)
        {
            ret += "!";
            tmpdamage >>= 1;
        }
        return ret;
    }
}


So if I'm reading that right it's
. = 1 - 6
! = 7 - 17
!! = 18 - 35
!!! = 36 - 71
!!!! = 72 - 143
!!!!! = 144 - 287
!!!!!! = 288 - 575
!!!!!!! = 576 - 1151
etc.

[Siegurt]

Sequell: ![1/2]: If you hit something and the message ends with !, that means you did 7-17 damage. !!: 18-35. !!!: 36-71. !!!!: 72-143. !!!!!: 144-287. !!!!!!: 288+; and so on. Yikes!

Or if you prefer:
https://loom.shalott.org/learndb.html#!

[linear]

Besides the advice already given, the iron rod is especially good against low-AC high-EV enemies: elves, spriggans, etc. It's ideal vs a deep elf blade master next to you.

[Sprucery]

Have you actually tried this? It's not especially frequent to even damage an orb of fire with an iron rod evoke, let alone do "pretty solid" damage, at 18 evo. I am pretty sure meleeing the orb of fire with the rod will do more damage if it's well enchanted.

Now I'm confused. From a recent YAVP (SpEn of Gozag):

Iron rod was good too, with 2-3 shots killing an OoF at point blank.

[Nobuharu]

Have you actually tried this? It's not especially frequent to even damage an orb of fire with an iron rod evoke, let alone do "pretty solid" damage, at 18 evo. I am pretty sure meleeing the orb of fire with the rod will do more damage if it's well enchanted.

Now I'm confused. From a recent YAVP (SpEn of Gozag):

Iron rod was good too, with 2-3 shots killing an OoF at point blank.

Tried it on my last high evo character. Barely scratched it in 3 shots. I think 22 evo. Anything with more than 2 or 3 pips of ac the damage falls off a cliff

[duvessa]

Have you actually tried this? It's not especially frequent to even damage an orb of fire with an iron rod evoke, let alone do "pretty solid" damage, at 18 evo. I am pretty sure meleeing the orb of fire with the rod will do more damage if it's well enchanted.

Now I'm confused. From a recent YAVP (SpEn of Gozag):

Iron rod was good too, with 2-3 shots killing an OoF at point blank.

If you happen to be really lucky it can still do huge damage. The maximum damage of an iron rod evoke is very high, but the average against an OOF is still bad. Feel free to try it in wizmode if you don't believe me, if you do enough trials you'll get lucky evokes, but at 18, most will do bad damage or none at all.

[Sandman25]

There is a dump with iron rod vs OoF in this thread...

[Sprucery]

There is a dump with iron rod vs OoF in this thread...

Yes, I was very puzzled by the statement about killing OoFs with 2 - 3 shots. You would need to do 75 damage per shot for 2 shots, 50 damage for 3 shots, on the average. Even if the damage has high variance, you would have to roll 2 or 3 very high damage rolls in a row. Compared to 0,0,0,18,0,0,0,0,0 that seems just unbelievable.

[byrel]

Well, I've got to admit to only using it on them twice, both times with summons also on the job. But both times emptying my iron rod into the OofF ended with it dead from nearly full health, while my dragons weren't really able to kill it that fast.

I did have 25+ Evo; maybe that helped? I suppose maybe I was actually getting 75% of it's HP in 3 shots, so maybe it would have taken 4.

Edit: One of those times there might have been caustic shrikes involved, which would have reduced AC. However, note that this lines up with Lasty's experience. It's entirely possible that Sandman just got unlucky in his 9 tries. There's clearly a high variance.

[Lasty]

To be fair, I never got anything close to "orb of fire dead in 4 shots" -- I just did not-terrible damage.

[Sandman25]

It depends on the way AC applies. If it applies just once as for most attacks, then yes, my test was unlucky.
You can see it vs hydra who luckily has 0 AC so we know iron rod with 27 Evo deals 17-29 damage per shot and there are 7-11 shots. Orb of Fire has AC 20 so it is expected to reduce damage by 10 on average and get 7-19 damage per shot.
But if AC is applied thrice like for Sandblast and LRD, then OoF is expected to reduce damage by 30 on average and then expected damage is close to 0. In this case you and Lasty were lucky, not I was unlucky.

[byrel]

Oh, so each line of that test is one instance of damage from the rod? So one evocation killed the tripleHP hydra?

To be fair, I never got anything close to "orb of fire dead in 4 shots" -- I just did not-terrible damage.

Sure, but your Evo was 18+; mine was 24+. It's quite plausible that that would take the damage from 10-15%->25%.

[Sprucery]

Note that Sandman25's test had Evo 27.

[byrel]

Note that Sandman25's test had Evo 27.

Yes, and was a single cast of the rod. There's a lot of room for variance there.

[byrel]

OK, I went code diving, and while I couldn't find the AC reductions, I did find out that the damage per pellet at 27 Evo is 0-39, very strongly biased toward 20, and it launches 20 pellets at 27 Evo (randomly distributed through the angle, but significantly more dense in the center.) Sandman's tests had the added variance that halfish of the pellets are missing (most probably off to the sides, though it's possible for the beams to actually miss as well. I learned that rod enchantment actually impacts accuracy BTW; I thought it had no impact past charge rate.)

OoF have an AC of 20; that means on average they block 10 damage. Ignoring the randomness of the variables, that should result in a total of 200 damage getting through if all beams hit. If <half hit, you're looking at <100 average damage, which is 2-shot range.

OTOH, if it triple reduces, we would very rarely do damage, and I lucked out a lot.

[Sandman25]

Can you please share file name and line number for the rod damage and AC effect?

[Hurkyl]

most probably off to the sides, though it's possible for the beams to actually miss as well.

(and orbs of fire have lots of EV too: 20)

[Lasty]

It should be applying AC once per pellet.

[byrel]

Can you please share file name and line number for the rod damage and AC effect?

Like I said, I couldn't find the AC effect. The rod pellet system is calculated here: spl-damage.cc:3040 Ignore the comment about pellets being O(Beams^2); the code indicates that pellets = beams.
The definition for the damage per scattershot pellet is in zapdata.h:1186
Interpreting that line can be done at beam.cc:345

Err number of pellets = beams. They're randomly distributed among the beams with a strong center bias, so some beams do no damage, while center ones carry multiple pellets (each with independent AC reduction if I understand right).

[Sandman25]

By the way it's possible to click on line number to get a link like
https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/cf6 ... e.cc#L3040

[byrel]

That's handy.

[Hurkyl]

I just did an empricial test: with Evo 27, I took several tries at blasting an orb of fire with a pair of iron rods (+9, 17/17, 6 shots total). I couldn't even reliably get it down to half health.