Damage vs Resistences

[Plantman]

Is it worth giving up a randart weapon weapon with nice resistances for a weapon that can deal more damge as a character that makes heavy use of conjurations? (In my particular case, a +11 scimitar of freezing w/ rf+ rc+ rm+ vs a demon blade of pain. And yes, I have trained necro.)

[edgefigaro]

Demon Blade of Pain on a necromancer? yes please. Fun games like that don't happen often.

Never* wield weapons for their resistances. Always wield weapons for damage.

(there are vanishingly rare edge cases where weapon based resistances are a better option)

[duvessa]

Here is how to pick a weapon:
Step 1. Figure out which weapon does the most damage.
Step 2. Pick that one.

[Sar]

If you have two weapons that you want to be using, assign one to a slot, another to b slot (use = to assign stuff to letters) and then you can switch between them by pressing '

[Wahaha]

Scimitar is better if you're fighting something that 1. Does fire or ice damage, and maybe whatever rm+ protects against. and 2. Is not affected by pain. You can easily swap weapons when needed.

Another case where the scimitar is most likely better is if you're fighting something that does fire or ice damage and you have 0 resistance of that type.

Also note that if you mostly use spells, you might end up having the scimitar wielded most of the time in the endgame, for convenience because a lot of enemies do fire or ice damage and if you're using spells you might as well have extra resistances. And only swap to the demon blade when you want to hit something. This last advice depends on your playstyle so it's not necessarily the best way to play.

[ydeve]

You need to decide if your weapon slot is a weapon or auxiliary armor that happens to kill popcorn.

If it's a weapon, go for the demon blade.
If it's armor, go for the scimitar.

It sounds like your weapon is conjurations, not a melee weapon, right? That scimitar looks great for popcorn killing to me. Sar and Wahaha's suggestion of using both is good as well.

[edgefigaro]

Scimitar is better if you're fighting something that 1. Does fire or ice damage, and maybe whatever rm+ protects against. and 2. Is not affected by pain. You can easily swap weapons when needed.

Another case where the scimitar is most likely better is if you're fighting something that does fire or ice damage and you have 0 resistance of that type.

Also note that if you mostly use spells, you might end up having the scimitar wielded most of the time in the endgame, for convenience because a lot of enemies do fire or ice damage and if you're using spells you might as well have extra resistances. And only swap to the demon blade when you want to hit something. This last advice depends on your playstyle so it's not necessarily the best way to play.

You need to decide if your weapon slot is a weapon or auxiliary armor that happens to kill popcorn.

If it's a weapon, go for the demon blade.
If it's armor, go for the scimitar.

It sounds like your weapon is conjurations, not a melee weapon, right? That scimitar looks great for popcorn killing to me. Sar and Wahaha's suggestion of using both is good as well.

This is all bad advice. See duvessa's post for details.

A demon blade of pain on a char with necro trained is amazing unless you are in extended. Stop clouding the issue with talk of how that scimitar could be the rational choice.

[ydeve]

edgefigaro, can you explain how it's bad advice to use the scimitar as a resistance stick until you actually get within melee range of monsters, then swap to the demon blade?
Yes, wacking things with the scimitar is suboptimal, but swapping weapons mid-fight is a thing.

[edgefigaro]

A demon blade of pain on an [undumped] character that already has necromancy (and presumably long blades) trained opens up the character -significantly- during a 3 rune game. Your character just got -way- better, with room to grow as any last ?Enchant weapon trickles in. There is a real chance his character has access to existing ?enchant weapon scrolls, having use a +11 randart for a period of time.

Anyway, the weapon makes further training into necromancy better. OP doesn't specify how much necromancy he has or for what purpose, but death channel, simiracalcum, bolt of draining, dispel undead suddenly become very attractive. Necronomicon spells (borgs, DDoor) become very attractive. Demon Blade of pain on this character sets it up for the endgame. It is like finding a randart ring with +invis on a felid.

OP also doesn't specifiy where he is in the game. Finding it on U3 matter much less than O2.

Back to the matter at hand, in this case, as a poster, when the OP is talking about a demon blade of pain vs a scimitar +rf, +rc, +MR, I really don't think the relevant thing to be talking about is how you can use the scimitar as a swap or using spells as a main kill dudes or asking yourself if you need armour or killdudes due to your mageyness. The dominant piece of information is he just found a weapon that is a major boon for the character, and his old weapon will be about as useful as a blowgun after lair (not useless, very situational).

Focusing on the situational usefulness of the swap and omitting the raw value of the DBofP is misleading.

[Sar]

I can think of quite a few characters whose dumps I've seen here (described usually as "blaster caster" and the like), for whom a scimitar of resists would be a better weapon slot item than a dblade of pain. I probably wouldn't build my character in that way, but I didn't build the character in the OP so

[Hurkyl]

The demon blade does absolutely nothing for the character when it is blasting things with conjurations. Or when reading scrolls, quaffing potions, retreating on foot, and a myriad of other things. The scimitar does, against a number of different dangers.

The demon blade is only good when you're meleeing things. If you're not meleeing things, it's worthless. If you're only meleeing things for which being even better at melee is unimportant, then 'upgrading' to the demon blade is unimportant.

Finding the demon blade is only a 'boon' if the character is engaging in melee at times where doing good melee damage matters, or is considering transitioning to such a character, and it may well be worthwhile to consider making such a transition. However, it is a mistake to become be blinded by a shiny weapon and forget about all other concerns.

[duvessa]

The resistances also do absolutely nothing against the overwhelming majority of monsters in crawl, and the "you can just swap weapons" argument works both ways.

[Rast]

edgefigaro, can you explain how it's bad advice to use the scimitar as a resistance stick until you actually get within melee range of monsters, then swap to the demon blade?

Because it's incredibly tedious, and if you try to keep that up all game you will eventually fuck up and die.

[Plantman]

I just wanted to thank everyone very quickly for the advice, and I have found that carrying both has been the best option for my character. I've found that demon blade has made several encounters throughout depths and zot far simpler. I'm new to this forum so I will learn how to post dumps for future posts.

[Siegurt]

The demon blade does absolutely nothing for the character when it is blasting things with conjurations. Or when reading scrolls, quaffing potions, retreating on foot, and a myriad of other things. The scimitar does, against a number of different dangers.

The demon blade is only good when you're meleeing things. If you're not meleeing things, it's worthless. If you're only meleeing things for which being even better at melee is unimportant, then 'upgrading' to the demon blade is unimportant.

Finding the demon blade is only a 'boon' if the character is engaging in melee at times where doing good melee damage matters, or is considering transitioning to such a character, and it may well be worthwhile to consider making such a transition. However, it is a mistake to become be blinded by a shiny weapon and forget about all other concerns.

I think the expectation is that if you are playing a character with some necromancy and some long blades at least reasonably proficiently, you will be meleeing most things most of the time, certainly more often than the resistances will come into play.

Also while it is probable that no matter how you play one weapon or the other is optimal from time to time, the question of "which weapon should I keep in my hand right now" becomes tedious pretty quickly.

If you are playing very well, the answer to which one is right is the demon blade a sufficiently high enough percentage of the time, and the price for not having the scimitar in hand when it would be optimal to have it is sufficiently small, that most people would choose not too add that degree of tedium to their game.

However it should be pointed out that the worse you play, the greater the scimitar both its utility and cost for not using it becomes.

It might be that this person doesn't use melee as often as they should, or that they aren't as good at avoiding being targeted with ranged elemental attacks as they should be, in which case the scimitar certainly increases in relative value.

[Hurkyl]

I think the expectation is that if you are playing a character with some necromancy and some long blades at least reasonably proficiently, you will be meleeing most things most of the time, certainly more often than the resistances will come into play.

Right; and I probably wouldn't have said anything if it weren't for the fact the OP's description that the character makes 'heavy use of conjurations' which makes me think it isn't a character resembling your description.

[KoboldLord]

Right; and I probably wouldn't have said anything if it weren't for the fact the OP's description that the character makes 'heavy use of conjurations' which makes me think it isn't a character resembling your description.

When one of the best possible equipment options for the specific character that you are currently running happens to spawn on the floor in front of you, you should go pick up that best possible equipment option and modify your plans to start using it. This isn't really an ambiguous scenario.

Sure, there are situations where non-damage weapon qualities can trump raw damage stats. It might be worth swapping down to a lower-damage weapon if it means you aren't running around with rF-, or -Cast, or otherwise something bad. This specific choice isn't a scenario where the correct choice should be unclear, or go against the good general rule of thumb that more damage is better. The scimitar is a pretty decent weapon to use on a temporary basis, while the demon blade is a fantastic weapon to take all the way to Zot. The scimitar's resists are nice but nothing special, and pretending this is a serious choice only fogs up what should be a really obvious choice. You might as well carry around the scimitar for the time being as a swap in case you get an Ice Cavern spawn or something, but eventually your inventory is going to fill up with things that are more likely to be useful.

[Hurkyl]

When one of the best possible equipment options for the specific character that you are currently running happens to spawn on the floor in front of you, you should go pick up that best possible equipment option and modify your plans to start using it. This isn't really an ambiguous scenario.

I agree. All of the controversy is over whether this is actually the best possible equipment option.

the good general rule of thumb that more damage is better.

Sure. And the demon blade is not the "more damage" option -- that title goes to Bolt of Draining or whatever upper-mid level conjuration the character is using.

As long as the character is blaster-oriented, the demon blade is merely the "have more chances to conserve MP" option.

The scimitar's resists are nice but nothing special, and pretending this is a serious choice only fogs up what should be a really obvious choice.

The fog is entirely due to the dogma that all characters are melee-oriented or should strive to be as soon as feasible. I don't doubt the demon blade of pain is extremely compelling when you have long blade and necromancy skill if you're blind to the other development options. I'm not even trying to say that going said route is a bad idea as compared to the other options. I simply reject the dogma that there aren't other options, and am evaluating the weapon in the context of those other options since the limited information in the OP suggests he is going down one of the other options.

[ydeve]

Many of the replies have been equating "weapon slot item" with main killdudes. These are not necessarily the same thing. As a contrived example, imagine you had a ring that could be evoked over and over like the disk of storms that had a 75% chance of instantly killing any monster next to you. Would you pick the demonblade or the scimitar? Your killdudes wouldn't be in the weapon slot anymore.

With blasters, especially blasters with bolt spells, conjurations are much more damaging than whatever melee weapon you happen to have. If you're playing optimally, you'd be using your most damaging option to kill your enemy. In addition, you want to avoid meleeing any dangerous enemies, or groups with dangerous enemies. If you see that you might not kill all dangerous monsters before running out of mp, you run away. If the OP has built a blaster build, he should (ideally) never be using melee in a dangerous situation.

Why would you ever want to be next to a potentially dangerous enemy with a conjurations build when it's much safer to run away? Why would you want to melee anything other than popcorn? The safest position is where you can run to the upstairs. Using the demon blade as a main weapon puts you into greater danger and doesn't even kill the actually dangerous enemies faster. It's good only when you made a bad mistake and ran out of mp. The rest of the time the scimitar is better for its (admittedly small) bonus to elemental (which a lot of ranged attacks are) defense.

Yes this playstyle is slow and won't win you lots of points. But if you're just looking to win and already have a blaster you should keep both weapons, wield the resistance stick most of the time, and swap to the demon blade when you actually need it. At least for the time being until your skills change. As to when that should be is a different discussion.

To repeat, we are assuming the OP has already built a blaster since that's what he suggested in his post.

[Wahaha]

Scimitar is better if you're fighting something that 1. Does fire or ice damage, and maybe whatever rm+ protects against. and 2. Is not affected by pain. You can easily swap weapons when needed.

Another case where the scimitar is most likely better is if you're fighting something that does fire or ice damage and you have 0 resistance of that type.

Also note that if you mostly use spells, you might end up having the scimitar wielded most of the time in the endgame, for convenience because a lot of enemies do fire or ice damage and if you're using spells you might as well have extra resistances. And only swap to the demon blade when you want to hit something. This last advice depends on your playstyle so it's not necessarily the best way to play.

This is all bad advice. See duvessa's post for details.

A demon blade of pain on a char with necro trained is amazing unless you are in extended. Stop clouding the issue with talk of how that scimitar could be the rational choice.

In the cases I described the scimitar is basically 100% the best choice*, although I used words like "most likely" because there can be some rare weird cases. I don't care if you're lazy and don't feel like swapping weapons, but don't tell other people that it's the best way to play (for winning), because you're the one giving bad advice.
Btw I said that the scimitar is better in those specific 2 cases, meaning the demon blade is better in all other cases (or pretty close) when hitting enemies. That's what I intended to convey but maybe it wasn't clear enough.

*small mistake: in my post in the 2nd case where you have 0 resistance, it should be "something that does significant fire or ice damage" rather than just "does fire or ice damage".

[Utis]

You might as well carry around the scimitar for the time being as a swap in case you get an Ice Cavern spawn or something, but eventually your inventory is going to fill up with things that are more likely to be useful.

Yeah. Though, the only resistance on that scimitar that I find interesting is the +rMagic -- in case the char has low rM as a situational swap.

What's this thing with "pure blaster builds", again and again? Is this a D&D inheritance? For unrelated reasons I have been reading on build optimisation in 3.5 d20. I understand the idea of "fullfilling one's role in the party" there. But in crawl?

[prozacelf]

The weird thing about this obsession with "pure blasters" is that direct damage magic is one of the least effective ways to make a wizard or other magey type in D&D unless you are playing a computer game. Transmutations, Alterations, Illusions, and Enchantments are all more broadly useful, control the battlefield, and make your allies better or make your enemies worse without having to worry about collateral damage from most of your best direct damage spells.

[ydeve]

You might as well carry around the scimitar for the time being as a swap in case you get an Ice Cavern spawn or something, but eventually your inventory is going to fill up with things that are more likely to be useful.

Yeah. Though, the only resistance on that scimitar that I find interesting is the +rMagic -- in case the char has low rM as a situational swap.

What's this thing with "pure blaster builds", again and again? Is this a D&D inheritance? For unrelated reasons I have been reading on build optimisation in 3.5 d20. I understand the idea of "fullfilling one's role in the party" there. But in crawl?

Some people just like the ability to take out enemies at range. With a toolbox of attacks, not just ranged tab. And once you've built that way it helps more for survivability to focus on that instead of branching out into melee skills. At least until you're defenses are up to par for mid-length melee fights and you have the xp to spare. (When 2 death yaks in melee will kill you, you worry about taking them out more than dragging the fight longer, especially since the way mp works you can only attack so many times before having to rest anyway)

Yes once you get to xp rich areas you train melee as a backup weapon, then if you do extended as a main weapon with magic for AOE effects or particularly threatening enemies.

Personally I find blasters easier to win with than other builds because I can't use tab to attack. When I play a melee character and get bored, I press tab tab tab tab, oops I'm in trouble and surrounded by 4 deep trolls, how did that happen? When I play a blaster and get bored, I press za. za. za. za., oops I have a deep troll pack heading towards me and I'm halfway out of mp, better run to the upstairs. There's more of a safety net for player inattention.

[Hurkyl]

What's this thing with "pure blaster builds", again and again?

It's a local optimum.

Training up your ability to blast increases your pool of burst damage, and is a way to improve your ability to win short fights against dangerous enemies.

If you can train your blasting ability enough, most significant fights are over before your reservoir of burst damage has emptied.

Your ability to do sustained damage -- i.e. melee -- only comes into play in prolonged encounters, and the ability to reliably withdraw from battle becomes comparatively much more important. And you get a vicious cycle where the diminished value of melee means you buff up melee less, letting you devote more of your build towards blasting and escaping, which further diminishes the value of melee....

And in some edge cases -- e.g. efficient blasts with a strong source of channeling or things like battlesphere+magic dart over moderate timescales -- your blasting might already do more sustained damage than you could do in melee, meaning that buffing up your melee is completely worthless unless you devote a lot of resources towards getting your sustained melee damage above your sustained blasting damage.

Similarly, but not as dramatically, you get a vicious cycle with defenses.

The importance of the purity in this regard is that you have to keep ahead of the threats -- once encounters start outlasting your burst damage, sustained damage and defenses suddenly become important again. Thus, you either have to focus on staying ahead of the curve, or make a transition to a more balanced type of character.

Things are exacerbated by the way magic training works -- your blasting/escaping strength tends to come in several large jumps around when you get new spells online. In terms of training, this means you should tend to either focus training exclusively on magic to get to the next jump, or you should ignore magic training entirely while you shore up other aspects of your character.

[edgefigaro]

If you build a one dimensional character, then blatantly non-optimal decisions become may become more attractive.

I daresay it is bad form to recommend building one-dimensional characters in DCA. I'm not saying it doesn't work, and you can't win crawl doing it. You are just giving poor advice to justify a playstyle which is entirely outside of the spirit of DCA.

By the way, I would take you seriously if you had mentioned the phrase "magical staff" in a thread that talks about blaster mages and weapon choices. This is DCA, the question is about weapon choice, you could have told him a staff of conjurations is a better weapon than either long blade. Instead, you are spending paragraphs defending a placeholder +rF +rC +MR weapon.

[ydeve]

This is DCA, the question is about weapon choice, you could have told him a staff of conjurations is a better weapon than either long blade. Instead, you are spending paragraphs defending a placeholder +rF +rC +MR weapon.

He was asking for advice about the two weapon-slot items he had. |conj was not one of the options. I agree that it's better than that resistance stick. But note that the stick does as much as the demon blade in most combat situations for him. And with |conj you still have to swap to the blade when you need to melee.

I daresay it is bad form to recommend building one-dimensional characters in DCA. I'm not saying it doesn't work, and you can't win crawl doing it. You are just giving poor advice to justify a playstyle which is entirely outside of the spirit of DCA.

I'm not sure what " a playstyle which is entirely outside of the spirit of DCA" is supposed to mean. Is DCA a game? I thought it was a forum about asking for advice playing crawl. We've explained how i you already have a blaster-type character it's optimal to keep building it that way in many cases. I was not aware that the definition of "bad advice" was "any playstyle that's unlikely to apply to a random start."

If you build a one dimensional character, then blatantly non-optimal decisions become may become more attractive.

This isn't a thread about how to build your character. It isn't a even a thread about whether that randart scimitar is better than the demon blade. It's a thread about which item is better for the character he has. Yes, the demon blade is usually better for most characters. But from what the OP said he very likely *could* be one of the edge cases, so it's not wrong to bring the edge case up.

[Sar]

I dunno why people still argue about which item is better like it doesn't take one turn and one keypress to swap them...

[Utis]

What's this thing with "pure blaster builds", again and again?

It's a local optimum.

Training up your ability to blast increases your pool of burst damage, and is a way to improve your ability to win short fights against dangerous enemies.

If you can train your blasting ability enough, most significant fights are over before your reservoir of burst damage has emptied.

Your ability to do sustained damage -- i.e. melee -- only comes into play in prolonged encounters, and the ability to reliably withdraw from battle becomes comparatively much more important. And you get a vicious cycle where the diminished value of melee means you buff up melee less, letting you devote more of your build towards blasting and escaping, which further diminishes the value of melee....

And in some edge cases -- e.g. efficient blasts with a strong source of channeling or things like battlesphere+magic dart over moderate timescales -- your blasting might already do more sustained damage than you could do in melee, meaning that buffing up your melee is completely worthless unless you devote a lot of resources towards getting your sustained melee damage above your sustained blasting damage.

Similarly, but not as dramatically, you get a vicious cycle with defenses.

The importance of the purity in this regard is that you have to keep ahead of the threats -- once encounters start outlasting your burst damage, sustained damage and defenses suddenly become important again. Thus, you either have to focus on staying ahead of the curve, or make a transition to a more balanced type of character.

Yes, that's a reasonable argument, thank you! I'd say it's just as well that we didn't get a dump for the OP's char, since this allows for this more general discussion.

The problem with maximizing burst damage at the cost of foregoing significant melee options rests in the fact that this strategy strongly depends on being able to treat encounters in isolation. While a player can do a lot to this end, it is never completely reliable. After depleting one's mana resources, the next engagement might come too early. Or an encounter that on initiation was deemed safe enough might be prolonged by new opponents unexpectedly arriving on the battlefield. Or, simply, unlocky rolls might mean that the mana bar is emptied before the encounter is resolved in favour of the player. The 'pure blaster' strategy relies on the characters ability to disengage and/or avoid. A player has to disengage or avoid more often than with a mixed strategy and each time bears a small risk of something unforeseeable going wrong. Like edgefigaro said, it can be done and you can win with this. (In fact, two of my first three wins followed a strategy like this.) But it's a strategy that is deceptively simple and, when done right, appears to be quite strong most of the time, while it is actually quite risky.

Having a significant melee option, on the other hand, does not -- in my opinion -- just mean that you can stay in a fight after your mana has been depleted. Or that you can resolve low-threat encounters ('popcorn') without using mana. In my opinion, it means that you engage encounters of a medium threat level with a mix of magic and melee and resort to short bursts of maximum damage output only against the few and far between top tiers of your current threat level. The effect being that the majority even of dangerous encounters leave the player with reserves large enough to sustain further even if the next encounter is forced on him/her early. Since developing significant melee always includes developing defences, encounters tend to unfold in a more steady and controlled manner and the char's survival tends to be somewhat less starkly dependent on the player correctly judging the threat at the very beginning of an encounter.

Admittedly, there might be corner cases, e.g. depending on species. From the top of my head, I could think of something like a FeFE^Sif Muna as an extreme case. Felids are very frail, lack armour and their only melee option is XP intensive. On the other side, their speed and stealth makes them good at disengaging/avoiding, while their extra lives protect them from what I see as the biggest problem with the 'pure blaster' strategy.

Things are exacerbated by the way magic training works -- your blasting/escaping strength tends to come in several large jumps around when you get new spells online. In terms of training, this means you should tend to either focus training exclusively on magic to get to the next jump, or you should ignore magic training entirely while you shore up other aspects of your character.

Actually, it's the very fact that blasting strength comes in large jumps that makes transitioning to a balanced character painless. Each major step in getting a new spell online, provided that it's a significant contribution to the build, is a significant boost to the character with regard to the current threat level and this gives the player ample 'time' to develop other options. Since -- again, IMO -- a mixed strategy comes with mixed tactics and crawl throws opponents at you whose threat level varies widely, developing melee is not a binary 'useless/useful' but something gradual in the sense that gradually more and more opponents at one's current threat level become 'melee-able', which gradually contributes to preserving mana in encounters. Very good weapon finds (such as an early demon blade of pain for a build that can use it) make this even more attractive.

[ydeve]

The problem with maximizing burst damage at the cost of foregoing significant melee options rests in the fact that this strategy strongly depends on being able to treat encounters in isolation. While a player can do a lot to this end, it is never completely reliable. After depleting one's mana resources, the next engagement might come too early. Or an encounter that on initiation was deemed safe enough might be prolonged by new opponents unexpectedly arriving on the battlefield. Or, simply, unlocky rolls might mean that the mana bar is emptied before the encounter is resolved in favour of the player. The 'pure blaster' strategy relies on the characters ability to disengage and/or avoid. A player has to disengage or avoid more often than with a mixed strategy and each time bears a small risk of something unforeseeable going wrong. Like edgefigaro said, it can be done and you can win with this. (In fact, two of my first three wins followed a strategy like this.) But it's a strategy that is deceptively simple and, when done right, appears to be quite strong most of the time, while it is actually quite risky.

Your mp bar should only ever empty if you're sitting directly on top of the upstairs. I can't think of the last time I played a blaster where what you described here actually killed me. You retreat while your mp is high. What you described here is an issue, however, if you don't lure.

[crate]

training some melee makes you less powerful in theory if you play perfectly but (if you use it properly) it helps prevents mistakes

crawl is almost entirely about preventing mistakes, because basically every single encounter is easy (this is a simple mathematical truth), so lowering the theoretical power of your character doesn't end up mattering much

[Hurkyl]

training some melee makes you less powerful in theory if you play perfectly but (if you use it properly) it helps prevents mistakes

I'm not sure I actually believe that -- trying to power through a mistake often just makes things worse when you should be looking for a way out or using your panic buttons. (unless you're secretly saying something like "train up a melee weapon so you can use might potions more effectively", which I don't think you are)

Furthermore, without a significant level of melee ability, the line between "I can handle this with magic" and "I can't handle this with magic and melee together" is very narrow, and arguably could have been covered by just being better at blasting anyways.

I have tried to follow the "use melee as a backup" advice a number of times on my blaster-oriented characters, just to see if I'm missing something. And every single time it has felt like a complete waste of skill points -- that there was essentially never a situation where I meleed something nontrivial and afterwards felt like it was a wise decision. Well, prior to late game anyways when you can get something relatively cheap -- particularly the corresponding enhancer staff -- and even then I usually feel like I've done so prematurely.

I could believe your comment if you really mean "become a hybrid character" rather than "use melee as a backup plan for your blaster-oriented character". Although I will add that even there, I usually feel like hybrids are less powerful than being either more melee/ranged-oriented or blaster-oriented -- at least through the part of the game I've played them; I tend to get bored quickly with such characters.

[ydeve]

training some melee makes you less powerful in theory if you play perfectly but (if you use it properly) it helps prevents mistakes

I'm not sure I actually believe that -- trying to power through a mistake often just makes things worse when you should be looking for a way out or using your panic buttons. (unless you're secretly saying something like "train up a melee weapon so you can use might potions more effectively", which I don't think you are)

Furthermore, without a significant level of melee ability, the line between "I can handle this with magic" and "I can't handle this with magic and melee together" is very narrow, and arguably could have been covered by just being better at blasting anyways.

I have tried to follow the "use melee as a backup" advice a number of times on my blaster-oriented characters, just to see if I'm missing something. And every single time it has felt like a complete waste of skill points -- that there was essentially never a situation where I meleed something nontrivial and afterwards felt like it was a wise decision. Well, prior to late game anyways when you can get something relatively cheap -- particularly the corresponding enhancer staff -- and even then I usually feel like I've done so prematurely.

I could believe your comment if you really mean "become a hybrid character" rather than "use melee as a backup plan for your blaster-oriented character". Although I will add that even there, I usually feel like hybrids are less powerful than being either more melee/ranged-oriented or blaster-oriented -- at least through the part of the game I've played them; I tend to get bored quickly with such characters.

+1. The only time I've found melee to be useful on Conjurations characters is after Vaults.

[crate]

You use melee to keep your mp high instead of using mp on killing harmless things, which reduces the chance of you getting caught with low mp. Now, if you are actually patient enough to always go restore mp on upstairs, this use of melee isn't particularly valuable. However, almost no one is that patient.

The xp investment involved in doing this is tiny (you don't even need 10 weapon skill for most characters, and through lair you can do it with like 5 in fighting and no weapon skill), so the rewards do not have to be large for it to be worthwhile.

[ydeve]

You use melee to keep your mp high instead of using mp on killing harmless things, which reduces the chance of you getting caught with low mp. Now, if you are actually patient enough to always go restore mp on upstairs, this use of melee isn't particularly valuable. However, almost no one is that patient.

The xp investment involved in doing this is tiny (you don't even need 10 weapon skill for most characters, and through lair you can do it with like 5 in fighting and no weapon skill), so the rewards do not have to be large for it to be worthwhile.

It doesn't take patience when you use autotravel

[Hurkyl]

It doesn't take patience when you use autotravel

Yes, but withdrawing to a safer area before autotravelling takes more patience than just autotravelling.

[crate]

Probably I worded my original post poorly, since it's maybe not clear that I mean skipping like, literally 1 level of dodging skill and instead becoming not completely incompenent with whatever weapon you are carrying. I am definitely willing to assert that being able to have more mp after fighting a single yaktaur (it's already next to you and not wielding a weapon, so meleeing it is ok) will win most players more games than having 1 more EV will.

[ydeve]

Training dodging and fighting gives you EV and HP which gives you more leeway for mistakes. Who doesn't do that? But it will only let you kill popcorn in melee. We're talking about sinking 12-14 levels in a melee skill when you already have good magic killdudes as being a waste of skill points.

Edit: This is pre-Vaults.

[crate]

12-14 is more skill than you need for what I am advising, by quite a bit. (Unless you're not training fighting, but most people do that anyway.) I often end up getting to 14 skill since it is convenient, but you only need like 6 or so to actually melee harmless things (and for in-lair, you only need 0 weapon + 5-ish fighting.)

[ydeve]

I do what you're advising. But what you're advising still uses a weapon for convenience as a popcorn killer, not for dealing real damage.

[bel]

I do what you're advising. But what you're advising still uses a weapon for convenience as a popcorn killer, not for dealing real damage.

The point is that using melee on popcorn allows you to save MP for killing non-popcorn, in case you get caught.

[crate]

Yes, I never suggested using a weapon on threatening things unless it is your main method of attack.

[MainiacJoe]

Please tell me whether I've gleaned the correct things from this thread:

1. A character's weapon choice depends on whether melee or magic is the method of choice for the toughest threats.
2. If melee is how the toughest threats are addressed:
   1. Pick the weapon that deals the highest damage
   2. Don't be tempted by good artifact properties to use a less damaging weapon, even for swapping
   3. Very bad artifact properties such as -Tele or -Cast may disqualify a weapon or may be worth tolerating.
3. If magic is how the toughest threats are addressed:
   1. The weapon becomes a mechanism whereby MP is conserved during combat in case a strong threat reveals itself after combat has been going on for a while. NB: most conjurations are loud.
   2. Don't be tempted by good artifact properties to use a weapon not adequate to this task.
   3. There's no reason to abide very bad artifact properties because adequate weapons are not rare.
   4. Because adequate weapons are not rare, you may have opportunity to take advantage of good artifact properties when choosing among several adequate weapons.

[ydeve]

And the point in the thread above is that the +11 scimitar^freezing kills popcorn ok. Popcorn by definition won't seriously hurt you. Plus it provides MR+, so it's better than the demon blade as a popcornbane.
Edit: this does depend on what point in the game you're at, but I think if the scimitar wasn't killing the popcorn, the OP would have said something.

Edit2: Maniac, that sounds about right. Although in the case of magic as killdudes, it's ok to carry around a badweapon resistance stick if you think it's worth the inconvenience. If you wack popcorn with it, you'll notice you aren't doing damage and swap, and the turns wasted are ok, since it's popcorn you're killing anyway.

[nago]

Please tell me whether I've gleaned the correct things from this thread:

1. A character's weapon choice depends on whether melee or magic is the method of choice for the toughest threats.
2. If melee is how the toughest threats are addressed:
   1. Pick the weapon that deals the highest damage
   2. Don't be tempted by good artifact properties to use a less damaging weapon, even for swapping
   3. Very bad artifact properties such as -Tele or -Cast may disqualify a weapon or may be worth tolerating.
3. If magic is how the toughest threats are addressed:
   1. The weapon becomes a mechanism whereby MP is conserved during combat in case a strong threat reveals itself after combat has been going on for a while. NB: most conjurations are loud.
   2. Don't be tempted by good artifact properties to use a weapon not adequate to this task.
   3. There's no reason to abide very bad artifact properties because adequate weapons are not rare.
   4. Because adequate weapons are not rare, you may have opportunity to take advantage of good artifact properties when choosing among several adequate weapons.

Too complex:
1. If you hit things to make things dead, you should use the available weapon which provides more damage. Never use a resistance stick as a weapon, because that is bad. There are no differences between a "squishy caster" or a "sturdy fighter" in relation to this.
1b. If you often kill things in a way different from melee, e.g. magic or throwing, you may keep a bad weapon as resistance stick, while killing things with those other methods. Afterall, swapping to the good weapon cost like 0.8 turns when it's necessary to melee .
Anyway, in most situation, most resistances doesn't matter really, so carrying or wielding a resistance stick is most often useless, albeit not directly detrimental, if you melee things with the good weapon and not that resistance stick.

[Hurkyl]

Anyway, in most situation, most resistances doesn't matter really, so carrying or wielding a resistance stick is most often useless, albeit not directly detrimental, if you melee things with the good weapon and not that resistance stick.

In most situations nothing really matters -- it's the situations that give you trouble you have to plan for. e.g. if fire/ice dragons/giants are the bane of your existence, then having an extra pip of rC+/rF+ is a good thing.

My favorite early game weapon to find for blasters is a trident of protection.

[Utis]

I'd like to note that "popcorn" is a relative term. For a character with a demon blade of electrocution and 10 weapon skill, "popcorn" covers a wider range of monsters than for one with a quarterstaff of protection and 0 weapon skill.

Also, to put this "waste of xp" into perspective: If you put 10 in a weapon skill, your Bolt of Fire might need (very rough, very quick calculation) on average 2.9 castings to kill your toughest foe rather than 2.8 if you had put all that xp into your magic skills.

[Sar]

training some melee makes you less powerful in theory if you play perfectly but (if you use it properly) it helps prevents mistakes

crawl is almost entirely about preventing mistakes, because basically every single encounter is easy (this is a simple mathematical truth), so lowering the theoretical power of your character doesn't end up mattering much

great post IMO

[Hurkyl]

Also, to put this "waste of xp" into perspective: If you put 10 in a weapon skill, your Bolt of Fire might need (very rough, very quick calculation) on average 2.9 castings to kill your toughest foe rather than 2.8 if you had put all that xp into your magic skills.

Or, it might mean you're casting fireballs because you still have a high miscast rate on bolt of fire. Or it might mean you don't have mephitic cloud reliable enough to help with escapes. Or you have a few less max HP than you otherwise would have had.

I usually advise that you don't train magic skills just for the sake of making mid or high level conjurations do more damage -- you train magic skills because you want to reduce miscast rates or get new spells.

[Utis]

Also, to put this "waste of xp" into perspective: If you put 10 in a weapon skill, your Bolt of Fire might need (very rough, very quick calculation) on average 2.9 castings to kill your toughest foe rather than 2.8 if you had put all that xp into your magic skills.

Or, it might mean you're casting fireballs because you still have a high miscast rate on bolt of fire. Or it might mean you don't have mephitic cloud reliable enough to help with escapes. Or you have a few less max HP than you otherwise would have had.

Oh, please, come on! I'm certainly not saying "rush to 10 weapon skill without regard for miscast rate". And I'm pretty sure you're not saying "rush to BoF without regard for non-magic skills". If a particular build needs BoF as soon as possible in order to survive (and you happen to find it), then by all means get it as soon as possible. But you know as well as I do that in most cases Fireball is more than good enough for a looong time. The same goes for other possible breakpoints. Sure, something like finding an early book with MephC would make me inclined to train melee later (I tend to do it waaay before Lair). But that works both ways: A whip of electrocution on D3 would tip the scales towards melee.

Since we're all adults here and nobody is suggesting to enter Zot without any weapon skill at all, this all boils down to a question of "when?" and maybe -- probably to a much lesser extent -- "how much?". People talk about "popcorn" vs. "threating monsters" as if these were discrete categories rather than names for points on a more-or-less continuous scale (youknowwhatimean). And people talk as if training melee were useless until you get min-delay in your chosen weapon rather than something that gradually decreases the time needed to melee a given monster and thus gradually increases the HP% left after killing that given foe with a weapon. More melee = more oppenents fall in to an acceptable HP% loss range = more MP preserved. If that significantly cripples your ability to do top tier damage, then you got too much melee.

(This is incendentally also, why I dislike terms like "hybrid" and "pure blaster". IMO there's also a continuum of strategically sensible weightings in the balance between melee and damaging magic, the details of which depend too much on things like species or floor finds to be discussed in the abstract.)

[nago]

I'd like to point out that no combo needs to rush to bolt of fire, or even fireball: you can easily clear Lair, D:15, Orc and at least Swamp, Snakes and Spider easily with just sticky and conjure flames.

And by that point, any race has gather enough exp both to cast a lv.6 spell and to get enough dodging\fighting and eventually a weapon skill.