M&F weapon choice

[BugHunter]

For a XL:7 MiBe with Maces & Flails at 10.9, which would you wield:

- a +2 mace of venom
- a +1 whip of venom
- a +1 whip of electrocution

Obviously the mace of venom does more damage, but it's slower. Once my M&F skill is higher, it's the obvious choice. But it has a base attack delay of 1.4, vs. a 1.1 for the whips. So that makes each swing .3 auts slower. The whips are currently at .6 aut, and the mace is at .9. So if I understand correctly, the whips would swing about 1.5 times as often. Also, the mace has a base accuracy of +3, and the whips only have +2. So the mace will hit a bit more often (but I'm not sure how much more often). How much effect does +1 base accuracy have at this point in the game? I'm pretty sure it's completely unimportant later, and suspect it's probably pretty trivial now.

And if one of the whips looks better, which one? Either venom or electrocution is nice on a fast weapon, since they don't depend on the weapon's damage. Electrocution only takes effect 1/3 of the hits (if I have that right), while the venom takes effect 3/4 of the time. The wiki says elect does an extra 9 + 1d15 HP when it fires, but I have no idea how much venom damage is done. Anyone know?

Also, the elect damage is immediate, the venom takes effect over time. So if you can hit and run, the venom can take effect, but if you need to kill something quickly, it's not so good.

Advice is welcome.

[Sar]

Assuming similar level of enchantment, there is no situation where elec whip isn't hilariously better than both other options. Drop the venom weapons, keep elec.

[Witidek]

Electrocution brand has a 1 out of 3 chance to deal 7+1d13 damage that ignores AC each hit. On a fast hitting weapon like a whip, elec is simply amazing.

[BugHunter]

Ok, Now I've found a +2 flail of draining (and my M&F is up to 11.3). At some point I assume a heavier weapon will start being better than the electric whip, but I'm not sure how to judge when that happens.

I've read the rule of "whichever does more damage/time", and I know how to figure out the time factor, but I'm not sure how to get a handle on how much damage I can expect per swing, given:
- weapon (and fighting) skill
- weapon base accuracy
- weapon base damage
- weapon enchantment plusses
- weapon brands

A very simple rule could be to take base damage, add enchantment, then add however much damage one can expect from the brand, and just ignore the base accuracy and skills. Is that too simplistic, and if so, what's a better rule for comparing expected damage from different weapons?

Then there's also the consideration of different brands having different usefulness, apart from the basic quantity of damage they do. A weapon that does X points of electrical damage is probably more useful than one that does X points of venom, since there are plenty of monsters that ignore poison (undead, for instance), while very few ignore electricity. I'm guessing that's a major reason for Sar's advice of sticking with the electric whip (but it would have been nice if he'd given his reasons). But what about oddballs like draining?

What I'm looking for isn't just advice for making the choice between my current weapons with my current character, but rather to learn how to make similar decisions in the future as well. This situation just seemed like a good place to start the discussion.

[partial]

Elec whip ALL DAY

Then use the first decently branded great mace or morning/eveningstar that you can find

I prefer 2H but I've won with a +9 non-artifact branded evening star + shield no prob

[partial]

General rules of thumb for brands:

* elec, pain and disto are best on fast weps because their damage is additive (it adds a flat amount to your hit so more hits = more brand damage)
* flame, freeze, vorpal are best on big slow weps because their damage is multiplicative (it adds a % of damage dealt as brand damage on top so bigger damage per hit = more brand damage)
* venom is strong early game but loses it's luster by Lair (also bear in mind that it stacks so 3-4 hits will more severely poison the enemy than just 1-2, which makes it a little better on fast weps)
* I think drain is underpowered but I'm sure someone can tell me why it isn't
* protection is (imo) best on a decent base wep for mages as a statstick
* holy is key for extended

[njvack]

At some point, yeah, you might want a great mace or something. But! You can train your whip to mindelay at 12 skill and spend your XP on other things for a long, long, long time. Maybe forever, if you spend your XP on something that deals with monsters with rElec (say, ranged or conjurations or Qaz invocations or something). You're not gonna clear Zot with that whip, but you can use a bow or something for that.

Draining is good. Big weapons are good. But it's hard to pass up a fast weapon that does flat, AC-piercing damage to the vast majority of monsters, and does so with a very small skill investment.

The biggest reasons (to me) that elec is better than venom are 1) less stuff has rElec and 2) elec makes things dead now while venom makes stuff dead later. Dead now > dead later.

I'd stop training at 12 skill, maybe grab a shield if you find one and don't want to use 2-handed ranged, and keep an eye out for a weapon that's obviously better than an elec whip (maybe a great mace with a good brand or a demon whip or a lajatang) and spend the XP on defenses and/or ranged offense.

If you want to compare weapon damage, use wizard mode and fsim. Guessing will make you go mad. Compare against monsters you're actually fighting at your current depth (AC will make a big difference for things like elec). Or, hit stuff with a weapon and see if you're finishing fights with more or less HP than you were with another weapon.

[nago]

General rules of thumb for brands:
* elec, pain and disto are best on fast weps because their damage is additive (it adds a flat amount to your hit so more hits = more brand damage)
* flame, freeze, vorpal are best on big slow weps because their damage is multiplicative (it adds a % of damage dealt as brand damage on top so bigger damage per hit = more brand damage)
* holy is key for extended

Actually elec\pain\disto will still exceed flame\freeze on slower and big weapons most of times. Anyway it's true the former are much better than the latter on fast weapon for the reasons described.
In most situations, antimagic is better than holy in extended - but it's real holy is very very good against anything is vulnerable.

Actually, there are situation (at least pre-lair) where I prefer a foo of venom over a foo of elec. This mostly involves heavy melee hitters, like ogre or orc warrior with big weapons, who are safer to kill if kited with poison. However I tend to do that with squishy mage, a MiBe shouldn't need to rely on that (but that would still be a good thing to do)

[BugHunter]

This character is certainly finding an interesting variety of weapons. Lying around on Lair:5, he found a +2 demon whip of flaming (the whip was lying around, not the character). Seems like a thematically appropriate brand for a demon whip, but is a base damage of 11 high enough to make flaming worth it? Or should I use a brand weapon scroll on it, hoping for something better? And what are the odds of getting something better, rather than something worse?

That level of Lair seemed to be the place for demon weapons, I also encountered Maud, wielding a +5 demon trident.

A little earlier, I had read an unknown scroll, which turned out to be brand weapon. My heart sank, thinking I only had the electric whip on hand, but luckily I was also carrying a +7 hunting sling (velocity). It's now a +7 hunting sling of venom. Lesson learned: always have a weapon on hand that you're willing to (re-)brand when reading un-ided scrolls.

[nago]

From learnDB

  Code:

Brands melee weapons to: 19.0% flaming, 19.0% freezing, 15.8% vorpal, 12.7% venom, 9.49% drain, 9.49% electrocution, 7.59% protection, 5.06% vampiricism, 1.90% chaos.

I'd say venom and protection are outright worse than flaming, vorpal pretty much equivalent, drain I suppose likewise so, all the others better.

[BugHunter]

Hmmm, the wiki gives different percentages. So I looked at the code (it's in _rebrand_weapon() in item_use.cc). It assigns weights to each type and does a weighted choice.

Here are the values from the source code (fraction and percentage are what I calculated based on the weights):

  Code:

Brand     weight   fraction    percentage
flaming     30      30/158       18.99%
freezing    30      30/158       18.99%
vorpal      25      25/158       15.82%
venom       20      20/158       12.66%
draining    15      15/158        9.49%
elect       15      15/158        9.49%
protect     12      12/158        7.59%
vampire      8       8/158        5.06%
chaos        3       3/158        1.90%
total      158                  100.00%


(the above is from trunk, I have no idea if they have changed since 0.16)
So it looks like learndb is right.

Of course, that assumes that the weapon didn't have a brand (and that your god doesn't hate any of the brands).

Starting with flaming (and worshipping Trog) you would get:

  Code:

Brand     weight   fraction    percentage
flaming      0       0/128        0.00%
freezing    30      30/128       23.44%
vorpal      25      25/128       19.53%
venom       20      20/128       15.63%
draining    15      15/128       11.72%
elect       15      15/128       11.72%
protect     12      12/128        9.38%
vampire      8       8/128        6.25%
chaos        3       3/128        2.34%
total      128                  100.00%


(is there a better way to do tables on this forum than just using [code] and tediously adding spaces to make it come out right?)

Using nago's definition of what is better, worse, and equivalent, I calculate a 43.75% chance of better, 25.00% chance of worse, and 31.25% chance of equivalent.

And since I just found another brand weapon scroll, I guess I should use it on the demon whip. I'll wait a little while to do so in case someone wants to disagree with my math/source reading or nago's classifications.

[partial]

totally forgot about antimagic

[partial]

General rules of thumb for brands:
* elec, pain and disto are best on fast weps because their damage is additive (it adds a flat amount to your hit so more hits = more brand damage)
* flame, freeze, vorpal are best on big slow weps because their damage is multiplicative (it adds a % of damage dealt as brand damage on top so bigger damage per hit = more brand damage)
* holy is key for extended

Actually elec\pain\disto will still exceed flame\freeze on slower and big weapons most of times. Anyway it's true the former are much better than the latter on fast weapon for the reasons described.
In most situations, antimagic is better than holy in extended - but it's real holy is very very good against anything is vulnerable.

Actually, there are situation (at least pre-lair) where I prefer a foo of venom over a foo of elec. This mostly involves heavy melee hitters, like ogre or orc warrior with big weapons, who are safer to kill if kited with poison. However I tend to do that with squishy mage, a MiBe shouldn't need to rely on that (but that would still be a good thing to do)

venom dagger is pretty clutch before you find a blowgun

[WingedEspeon]

Starting with flaming (and worshipping Trog) you would get:

  Code:

Brand     weight   fraction    percentage
flaming      0       0/128        0.00%
freezing    30      30/128       23.44%
vorpal      25      25/128       19.53%
venom       20      20/128       15.63%
draining    15      15/128       11.72%
elect       15      15/128       11.72%
protect     12      12/128        9.38%
vampire      8       8/128        6.25%
chaos        3       3/128        2.34%
total      128                  100.00%


I assume you mean Dith? Trog doesn't hate flaming/fire (BURN SPELLBOOKS! BURN THEM ALL!)

[Pollen_Golem]

Trog doesn't hate flaming/fire

nor does he hate any other brand, so none of the other percentages are zero.
But a scroll of brand weapon will not affix a brand that is on the weapon already: if you brand a flaming weapon, the chance of it becoming a flaming weapon is (~?)0.

Dith hates not only the flaming brand, but the chaos brand too, because it occasionally becomes flaming.

[greedo]

Isn't the right answer both whips? Electro-> general use. Venom Whip-> High hp low armor (animals/giants), slow, or ele immune. Pretty sure nothing is ele-immune with high armor early game, so mace is probably tossable.

[Pollen_Golem]

Venom Whip-> High hp low armor ... ele-immune with high armor

What does armor (or hp for that matter) have to do with it? Both venom and elec brands process independently of the damage done by the hit.

[daggaz]

High hp is what negates the use of venom. Eventually the big monsters have so much hp that poison (at least as applied by a quick melee weapon) has a negligible effect and you had better be using something else or they will bash your head in. Elec is a clear winner in this case, the damage is AC-irresistable and stacks up much faster than the venom will. Draining also does the trick, though undead become more and more common after Lair as well.

[Pollen_Golem]

High hp is what negates the use of venom.

Is this because monster regen is proportional to its hp, but venom doesn't care about its hp, so regen is high enough to catch up to poisoning degen among higher-hp monsters? Because that's the only way I can make sense of what you're saying.

[Hurkyl]

High hp is what negates the use of venom.

Why? Superfically, that looks exactly backwards: what negates the use of venom is things dying before the poison runs out. High HP monsters are precisely the monsters for which venom is most effective.

The rest of your argument reads more like "venom is an ineffective brand, and when a monster has high HP, you can't afford to use an ineffective weapon".

---

That said, I am under the impression there's a limit on how poisoned a monster can be? If true, then I suppose you're more likely to reach that limit with high HP monsters.

[daggaz]

Im just speaking from experience having run about a zillion melee-focused assassins. Poison is awesome in the early game, even with no skill to speak of in your weapon (assuming its a SB or whip). All you have to do is hit something two or three times and it is going to drop dead in another couple turns or less no matter what else happens. Great for orc wizards, especially, but works just fine on orc warriors as well. When you hit lair, it is no longer so hot and not just because so many monsters in there have rPois. It is still quite nice on blink frogs, assuming you can get enough hits in. When they blink away at low health they will die. But it still takes a lot more work than earlier. But things like boring beetles, you really start to notice that even tho its better to have poison than not to have it, it takes an obscene amount of time in melee to get these things to die. And in the meantime, they can get some really nasty bites in. By the time you hit depths, the problem is dangerously obvious. Stone giants and orc warlords and such will barely notice the poison, and they will be dishing out the hurt on you as best they can in the meantime. Maybe their regen is a factor, could be I dont know how it works exactly. It just becomes far more apparent that if you have to stand toe to toe (which is going to be forced on you more than once as the game progresses), a weapon with some other proc tends to put them down much faster and you die much, much less. Elec or draining on a fast weapon here? Yes, please anyday.

[njvack]

High HP monsters are precisely the monsters for which venom is most effective.

Poison is still very efficient as far as "number of times a monster gets poisoned versus the number of HP it loses" all the way through the game. But as monsters have more HP, it just takes a lot more turns for them to die. I remember death yaks as kind of the point where venom weapons / sting / needles start to get impractical.

Monsters with more HP also tend to have ranged attacks -- PCloud will kill yellow drac annihilators just fine, but while their HP is ticking off, they're still corroding you and nailing you with LCS.

nago is right, though: for melee-only monsters, getting some poison in them and walking away is outrageously strong.

[greedo]

Well, venom just keeps stacking, so you just need to hit a high hp monster down to slightly more venom than you would a less hp monster before it'll drop after running. I remember fooling around in explorer mode and dying 5 times waiting out a single batch of poison once. The issue with high hp monsters is that if you underestimate this amount they completely shrug it off, so just overdo it a bit.

Either way, it's pretty insane at level 7, it's not like you'd want to take on a death yak with a whip of anything anyways I find venom less useful end game because even if it could kill an enemy in less hits, you don't want to be kiting 24/7 and switching weapons for ranged enemies and the increasing amount of rPois monsters.

Edit: As for poison limit, I believe there is a theoretical hp/per turn limit of about 10/turn I think (maybe it's a percentage?), which would never be reached anyways apart from trying to poison maybe ironheart preservers or using a venom executioner's axe (lol), so I don't know why it's there. There's no duration limit AFAIK

[byrel]

There's a max of 4 stacks of venom. Duration is random, and expected value is not impacted by anything but number of stacks I think.

[greedo]

Oh it works differently on monsters? Because I'm fairly certain that's not how poison works on the player. That's really unexpected o.O Either way I've found it to kill even hill giants, so it's pretty useful at this point in the game.

Edit: Yeah it does seem to only be based on degree at least for monsters with no cap or anything, but I don't see anything about a stack limit anywhere when looking up ENCH_POISON or poison_monster or SPWPN_VENOM, so if it's there it's seriously buried.

For some bizarre reason it seems to do 1 gauranteed damage if poison >= 4, and about every other turn it does a crapton more.

  Code:


 case ENCH_POISON:
    {
        const int poisonval = me.degree;
        int dam = (poisonval >= 4) ? 1 : 0;

        if (coinflip())
            dam += roll_dice(1, poisonval + 1);

        if (res_poison() < 0)
            dam += roll_dice(2, poisonval) - 1;

        if (dam > 0)
        {
            dprf("%s takes poison damage: %d (degree %d)",
                 name(DESC_THE).c_str(), dam, me.degree);

            hurt(me.agent(), dam, BEAM_POISON);
        }

        decay_enchantment(en, true);
        break;
    }



Poison damage is, however, seriously scaled down for monsters, which I guess makes sense since they down have a giant stack of cure all your poison damage potions. So yeah, don't try to venom/retreat something with a venom brand lol:

  Code:


bool monster::poison(actor *agent, int amount, bool force)
{
    if (amount <= 0)
        return false;

    // Scale poison down for monsters.
    amount = 1 + amount / 7;

    return poison_monster(this, agent, amount, force);
}



[Hurkyl]

High HP monsters are precisely the monsters for which venom is most effective.

Poison is still very efficient as far as "number of times a monster gets poisoned versus the number of HP it loses" all the way through the game. But as monsters have more HP, it just takes a lot more turns for them to die. I remember death yaks as kind of the point where venom weapons / sting / needles start to get impractical.

Yes, but poison is not unique in that regard; the same could be said of every source of damage, except for Agony, Torment, and similar things I'm not thinking of.

HP makes poison-kiting take longer, yes, but that's somewhat of a different issue.

nago is right, though: for melee-only monsters, getting some poison in them and walking away is outrageously strong.

If this is stronger than hitting them with a comparable weapon of electrocution the same number of times, then venom would also be stronger than electrocution in a straight-up fight with a high HP monster... at least if it weren't for the cap on how poisoned a monster can be.

[Sojiro]

There's a max of 4 stacks of venom. Duration is random, and expected value is not impacted by anything but number of stacks I think.

I'm pretty sure the poison stacks don't max at 4. If a monster has more than 4 stacks of poison he's supposed to take 1 extra damage per turn. Duration is random, each turn there's a chance of a stack of poison disappearing. Damage is basically 1d(stack level). That means that faster weapons inflict more damage over more time.

Or at least that's how it worked last time I checked. I don't think it has changed significantly since then.

[byrel]

Turns out the stack limit of 4 is practical, not theoretical. Any damage above 1 per turn is divided by 7 and you hit 1 per turn at 4 stacks

Edit I'm confused. Ignore me.

[Bart]

Elec brand has a potential disadvantage in early game - sometimes it just doesn't proc at all and you are killed by an orc warrior who had probably 3 HP left. It might seem like a rare case, but most of deaths are caused by rare cases.
Poison is your more reliable friend - put two or three stacks, retreat, victory.

[mrthehoople]

I can certainly see that poisoning a monster and running is good I.e. When using a blowgun on an ogre or something. But when venom is on a melee weapon, this will only work if you run faster than the monster, surely. And have a safe place to run to

[Laraso]

If you're the same speed, inflicting poison with melee and then running works perfectly fine.