Why not GSC for Trolls?

[MainiacJoe]

Here are fsim results against orb guardian, with a troll with fighting 20 using wither claws or a +9 GSC of freezing, average damage / aut.

  Code:

Skl   UC     GSC
 0    1.1    5.0
 1    1.4    5.3
 2    1.7    5.7
 3    2.1    6.0
 4    2.5    6.4
 5    2.9    6.9
 6    3.3    7.1
 7    4.1    7.5
 8    4.5    7.8
 9    5.1    8.9
10    5.8    9.3
11    6.5    9.6
12    7.5   10.2
13    8.1   10.7
14    9.0   12.3
15   10.0   12.5
16   10.9   13.0
17   12.1   14.0
18   12.4   15.3
19   13.4   16.7
20   16.1   17.4
21   16.8   19.1
22   18.3   21.2
23   20.0   23.0
24   21.4   24.5
25   22.0   26.1
26   24.9   25.8
27   27.4   25.7

The GSC wins by a healthy margin at all skills except 27. Yet it would seem that nearly everyone chooses claws for trolls, and I noticed this even before the body armour speed penalty was removed. Is it because you don't have +9 GSC of freezing in the early game, and claws are so much better than the M&F alternatives you do have? Ogres appear soon enough though that you can get a GC or GSC pretty early, so that doesn't seem to be the reason.

[CanOfWorms]

Well usually at the beginning of the game claws don't have delay 1.9 and an accuracy malus.

[triorph]

a) You don't have 20 fighting at the start of the game
b) Aptitudes... its much easier to get UC than M&F as a troll.
c) GSC early still isn't a +9 GSC of freezing

[daggaz]

Start out a few games swinging a GSC at low skill and let us know how you do.

[MainiacJoe]

Guys, give me a break: I know claws are good in the beginning. What I'm talking about is:

• starting as an M&F gladiator
• using your claws at 0 skill for early dungeon combat but carrying the flail and investing skill points in that instead of UC
• carrying a GSC as soon as you can for enchant weapon and brand weapon scrolls
• transition to some M&F weapon once it's better than 0 skill claws

So using claws to ease transition to M&F, not looting the first dead ogre and swinging away. That is why I was comparing an end-game GSC against claws with an end-game monster, to see whether M&F was worthwhile then. And -1 isn't that much different from 0 aptitude, after all.

[duvessa]

That is why I was comparing an end-game GSC against claws with an end-game monster, to see whether M&F was worthwhile then. And -1 isn't that much different from 0 aptitude, after all.

Your own test shows that end-game GSC is worse than end-game claws with an end-game monster...at least with the str/dex you picked, which you forgot to specify.

[WingedEspeon]

Because I don't start with a +9 GSC of freezing. First I have to get the GSC while using a much weaker weapon, then I have to find 9 enchant scrolls and a brand scroll and roll freezing, then I have to train M&F up to a resonable level. Due to the difference in Apts by the time I get 24 (min delay) M&F I would have 26.55 UC if I put the exp in UC instead, and your table shows 26 UC being better than 24 M&F. So in the end I end up with terrible early game to get a weapon that is just slightly worse than my claws. Not a good deal.

Also, picking M&F while using 0 skill claws is just bad. UC is highly skill level dependent even with claws. Also, if you really want to go for late game damage pick TrTm and learn blade hands. Blade hands with 20 UC and reasonable stats will blow 27 M&F GSC out of the water. Trolls don't even meld anything when using blade hands.

[radinms]

blade hands disable shield

[MainiacJoe]

Okay, thank you everyone for your help.

[WingedEspeon]

blade hands disable shield

So does using a GSC...

I use 2h combat so much I didn't even think about melding shields though.

[Sar]

Shields are pretty good for Trolls IMO. Relatively cheap and patch up the lacking defenses if you've found one in early/midgame (or started as a Fighter).

[Eyesburn]

recently I did play ogre with axes, if fyou want troll with maces then just go for it

[njvack]

Well, yeah. If you want to ascend a troll with a spear you can probably do it; people ascend insane challenge characters all the time. In Crawl, strong tactics > strong strategy.

The OP was asking "why don't trolls use GSCs more often" and the answer is "troll claws are better."

[Gerad]

How does the GSC damage in your initial sim go down as skill goes from 25 to 26 and 27? Is there any reasonable explanation for that?

[tasonir]

fsim is a simulation which runs a trial X number of times, there's some random variance in it. Once you hit min delay the increase is pretty small and was apparently lost in the noise...

Also while blade hands will increase your damage over claws, try an fsim of statue form if you want to see it really beating GSC's

edit: Got unlazy, ran a few.

Because ctrl+F fsim isn't working for me, here's some single results from f with fighting, unarmed, and maces and flails all at 27:

20 str, 10 dex, vs stone giant
unarmed: 102.0 average hit, 312 max hit, 7.5 auts, effective damage: 131.3
GSC: 108.4 average hit, 461 max hit, 10.5 auts, effective damage: 96.7

30 str, 20 dex, vs stone giant (same order as above, auts omitted, it doesn't change)
unarmed: 149.5, 523, 190.5
GSC: 136.5, 618, 122.4

40 str 30 dex vs stone giant (go go chei powers)
unarmed: 188.1, 684, 240.4
GSC: 161.6, 830, 145.1

So when going with chei, and using statue form as you properly should, claws can be around 55% more (30 str) to 65% more (40 str) than a +9 freezing GSC. Also, since you're slowed in statue form, claws attacking at 7.5 auts means you won't see double actions from monsters (unless it's something very, very fast). Shields would remove the offhand hit, but these tests were done in a melded robe/no shield.

Bonus: Necromutation, 40/30 str/dex:
unarmed 95.2, 371, 184.0. Not as good as statue but hey, decent damage still. I'd do 152.4 in base troll form, so I assume most of that damage is the draining brand, which wouldn't work in extended anyways. Ah well. I am still playing that troll lich...

[Elystan]

Wondering if there's any point at which a troll might want to consider M&F. Let's say a +1 whip of electrocution drops on D:1. Does it beat out UC at 0 skill? what about 14 UC vs, say, a +5 dire flail? And if UC wins, would it be outperformed by branding the flail? Presumably a pain brand on the flail would with sufficient necromancy (but how much?) be superior against living enemies and with a holy brand superior against undead/demons. Assuming 27 in all relevant skills against an enemy with no negative resistance, blade hands vs +9 giant spiked club of pain? At that point, does it even matter? You're definitely going to kill the thing.

[bcadren]

Am I the only one that thinks you'd probably want to go statueTroll or dragonTroll before lategame anyways? I'm sure statueTroll UC > statueTroll GSC...or if you go the armour route instead; blade hands > GSC.

[tasonir]

Am I the only one that thinks you'd probably want to go statueTroll or dragonTroll before lategame anyways? I'm sure statueTroll UC > statueTroll GSC...or if you go the armour route instead; blade hands > GSC.

The numbers for this are two posts above yours Granted I only ran them for 27 due to my fsim issues, but if you've gone statue/dragon form, you're going to be fairly highly skilled by then, so it should be enough data.

[WingedEspeon]

If the raw data on badwiki is correct, Blade hands deals 8+(Str+Dex)/3+UC base damage and statue for deals 6+(Str)/3+UC base damage and increases your Str by 2 at the cost of 2 Dex. This means that Blade hands will deal a LOT more damage the statue form if you pick dex on level up like you should and especialy if you go chei. Keep in mind this is just raw damage without accounting for the other changes of statue form. I am counting the armour piercing effect of statue form as negligible because by the time you have that much damage 25 AC means nothing to you.

[Sar]

Blade Hands will do much more damage, yes, but you have failed to evaluate the many incredible defensive benefits of Statue Form, such as complete poison immunity (!), rElec, rPetrify, rRot and increased GDR.

[stoneychips]

Blade Hands will do much more damage, yes, but you have failed to evaluate the many incredible defensive benefits of Statue Form, such as complete poison immunity (!), rElec, rPetrify, rRot and increased GDR.

White weapons in hand can also come with awesome defenses, when you finally get to levels/piety that provide them.

[njvack]

Blade Hands will do much more damage, yes, but you have failed to evaluate the many incredible defensive benefits of Statue Form, such as complete poison immunity (!), rElec, rPetrify, rRot and increased GDR.

You jest (I think?) but AC is actually pretty good at reducing damage and statue form gives you a bunch of it. HP is also nice and statue form gives you a bunch of that, too. I've played statue troll ^ chei and it felt pretty good.

[njvack]

I am counting the armour piercing effect of statue form as negligible because by the time you have that much damage 25 AC means nothing to you.

Huh. I'd always thought the AC and HP boosts for statue form were useful so you could move even with enemies on screen and not be murdered.

[WingedEspeon]

Blade Hands will do much more damage, yes, but you have failed to evaluate the many incredible defensive benefits of Statue Form, such as complete poison immunity (!), rElec, rPetrify, rRot and increased GDR.

My point was that blade hands will do more raw DPS. I specifically pointed out that I was ignoring the defensive benefits and drawbacks of statue form because I'm lazy and the defensive benefits of statue for vary widely from character to character, even for the same species. (the guy with a randart +18 PDA with Slay+5 isn't going to like melding his body armour as much as the guy in +3 swamp dragon armour)

[tasonir]

Statue form is especially good on trolls because they have no boots or gloves to meld. You do give up the body armor, but statue form is 'balanced' against giving up 3 slots, so giving up only one slot is fairly overpowered. This is why it's especially overpowered for octopodes and felids, to the point I'd call it almost mandatory for melee builds; non-melee builds don't need it as much. Berserkers are still possible because they're berserkers.

This means that Blade hands will deal a LOT more damage the statue form if you pick dex on level up like you should and especially if you go chei.

This is somewhat poorly worded - let's break down the claims:

1) Blade hands does more damage with higher dex (and statue doesn't). This is true.
2) Trolls (and most melee characters in general) should take dex on level ups, raising blade hand damage without changing statue form damage. (generally true, some exceptions)
3) Chei gives dex and thus improves blade hands more than statue form. Technically true in terms of damage output, but misleading, as the main point of statue form is the defenses and not the damage. Statue form gets +5 base damage, blade hands gets +10.

The part that's unclear is if you're suggesting 2&3 apply to the same character - Is it "blade hands will deal more damage especially if you go chei" or "you should pick dex on level up especially if you go chei". The first is true but possibly unimportant, and I'd argue the second one is a mistake. You should likely take int on nearly all chei characters, especially naturally dumb characters who could use it most. Your dex will be over the 24 soft cap, your strength is ~30-40, and closer to 40 for a troll, more than you need for any purpose. Int makes casting easier and by picking it in addition to the +15, you'll have enough int to learn any spell you want. In the case of trolls it's still an investment due to their aptitudes being terrible, but on most other races learning spells becomes pretty easy.

TL;DR: Yes blade hands will do more damage than statue form, but for many (not all) races, and especially for trolls/ogres/felids/octopodes, statue form is much better. I include ogres here but by this I mean unarmed transmuter ogres, you'd probably just want to use a GSC and no transmutations. I play unarmed ogres sometimes.

[WingedEspeon]

This means that Blade hands will deal a LOT more damage the statue form if you pick dex on level up like you should and especially if you go chei.

This is somewhat poorly worded - let's break down the claims:

1) Blade hands does more damage with higher dex (and statue doesn't). This is true.
2) Trolls (and most melee characters in general) should take dex on level ups, raising blade hand damage without changing statue form damage. (generally true, some exceptions)
3) Chei gives dex and thus improves blade hands more than statue form. Technically true in terms of damage output, but misleading, as the main point of statue form is the defenses and not the damage. Statue form gets +5 base damage, blade hands gets +10.

The part that's unclear is if you're suggesting 2&3 apply to the same character - Is it "blade hands will deal more damage especially if you go chei" or "you should pick dex on level up especially if you go chei". The first is true but possibly unimportant, and I'd argue the second one is a mistake. You should likely take int on nearly all chei characters, especially naturally dumb characters who could use it most.

I defiantly didn't think that 2&3 apply to the same character, although I would still probably pick dex because I am not an optimal player and casting most spells takes too much real time. It probably is poorly worded.

I was just comparing damage because the game hides how much damage you are doing very well. I figured anyone smart enough to play crawl can figure out that statue form does more stuff than increase your melee damage and that stuff is a lot more transparent. I also didn't feel like starting an argument about how bad being slowed is (bad can be anything from bad but probably negligible going form 72 AC to 71 AC to getting banished though a >1% chance to get though your MR, landing next to 3 A-Liches is the abyss, having all three use LCS, Having all 3 LCS hit, and having all 3 LCS deal max damage killing you from full HP).

[tasonir]

Oh yeah, I didn't really have any problem with your post aside from claim 2/3 being separate characters, I just wanted to clarify. I'm one of those people who could talk about crawl for hours, and as you might expect, there aren't exactly a ton of crawl players I know in real life, hence the 4000+ posts here But aside from clarifying not needing to pump dex on chei characters and statue isn't primarily for damage (which you know, but I wanted to make it explicit), we mostly agree

Really the main point I wanted to make with regard to the OP is that just comparing unarmed vs GSC isn't the whole picture, as transmutations are very strong for trolls, at least if they aren't berserkers. And in statue form unarmed is about 50% stronger than a GSC (also wielded in statue form), which is a huge margin.

[radinms]

Players who say "Chei is bad, Statue Form is bad, Chei+Statue Form is extremely bad" don't understand anything about Chei or Statue Form.

[Sar]

And players who say Chei and Statue Form are good don't understand anything about the rest of Crawl!

[radinms]

The fact that Chei is good and statue form is good, so Chei+Statue is extremely good shows current DCSS is not well designed.

[majesstic]

The fact that Chei is good and statue form is good, so Chei+Statue is extremely good shows current DCSS is not well designed.

If I pull the string again, will you spit out any stock phrases other than "current DCSS is not well designed"?

[Sar]

I agree, in a well designed game gods and spells would be actively disadvantageous!

[duvessa]

I agree, in a well designed game gods and spells would be actively disadvantageous!

Luckily, in DCSS, some of them are. Like Chei and Statue Form!

[scorpionwarrior]

y'all are forgetting to mention how much fun it is getting gifted speed and vamp randart GSCs from Trog. Mace trolls suck with every other god and are suboptimal no matter what but mace TrBe are a lot of fun if you like constantly getting big shiny weapons.

[WingedEspeon]

y'all are forgetting to mention how much fun it is getting gifted speed and vamp randart GSCs from Trog. Mace trolls suck with every other god and are suboptimal no matter what but mace TrBe are a lot of fun if you like constantly getting big shiny weapons.

True but I would rather just play OgBe at that point.

[tabstorm]

I agree, in a well designed game gods and spells would be actively disadvantageous!

Luckily, in DCSS, some of them are. Like Chei and Statue Form!

Chei/SF is good for getting a high score, though. Anyway I think it's fine for things like Chei/Statue that are bad for winrate but interesting for score runs to be in the game. DCSS is so trivial that it's good to have these features for players who want to do things other than lure enemies to safespots.

[njvack]

Actually, the thing about Chei and statform that make me think they're well-designed is: there are people who hate them and think they're worse than nothing, and people who love them. Both sets of people seem to win characters pretty well.

My own take is: they both come with sets of rather orthogonal drawbacks and advantages, which balance differently on different character builds. That's kind of interesting.

Contrast this to Makhleb or Yred or Fedhas, who are just extremely strong on any character who can take them. Maybe a system being polarizing is a hint that it's good design...?

[asdu]

M&F vs claws aside, if I really wanted a mace on a Tr, I'd rather go GC over GSC since that would save me 6 (!) levels of m&f at -1 apt.

[Sar]

Eh, IMO if you want to play suboptimally might as well go all the way.