Is summon ice beasts overpowered?

[Tiktacy]

Honest question. For the same investment as throw icicle, you get a monster that not only prevents you from being hit in 95% of battles, and allows you to retreat while still dealing significant damage, but also has a max hit of 19 damage completely unaffected by spellpower.

On the other hand, you have throw icicle, which has a max hit of 3d20 at max spellpower, which you are probably never going to get close to before finding a superior spell. Odds are, the spell is going to end up dealing less damage than a single cast of ice beasts, but not only will it deal less damage, it doesn't have any of the other benefits of summon ice beasts. I know throw icicle has other uses, its irresistible damage is critical for fighting cold resistant enemies as an IE, but my point still stands when comparing the spell to other level 4 spells.

There are a few other spells that can arguably deal more damage than ice beasts, but who needs extra damage when you can kill almost everything in the first half of the game standing on a staircase halfway across the screen?

It seems like a spell that deserves to be level 5, not level 4, but I guess thats just my. I'd love to hear other peoples thoughts on this, maybe I am just over-estimating the power of the spell.

[duvessa]

yes, most summons are

[Tiktacy]

Shit, I accidentally posted this in dungeon crawling advice, could a moderator move it to GDD for me?

[andreas]

Conjurations which you cast to instantly turn mp into damage mostly don't seem to be very good. If you compare summon ice beast not to throw icicle but to other lvl 4 spells like animate dead, sticky flame, passage of golubria, ice form, and summon lightning spire, the contrast looks less stark.

[Lasty]

Conjurations aren't the best way to turn MP or XP into damage, but they do tend to be among the best ways convert turns into damage, and unlike one of the main rivals (melee), they offer to do that from relative safety.

[Leszczynek]

Conjurations which you cast to instantly turn mp into damage mostly don't seem to be very good. If you compare summon ice beast not to throw icicle but to other lvl 4 spells like animate dead, sticky flame, passage of golubria, ice form, and summon lightning spire, the contrast looks less stark.

The contrast is very stark, level 4 has some outstanding spells that seem like they should be 2 levels higher when compared to other level 4 spells. There's this grey area with direct damage spells at level 3-4 where everything seems hopelessly bad; you need to hit 3-4 times to hit tougher enemies and miscasts or misses are a thing too, which coupled with low MP pool of characters using these spells makes for a very frustrating experience and a lot of regenerating/running between fights. With level 5 things start to look up (fireball sometimes, bolt spells except maybe for magma/lightning) and shine at level 6 (iron shot, poison arrow, freezing cloud), before that though, conjurations suck major ass, making you resort to semi-supporting spells like lightning spire, ice beasts and so on. The only good level 4 straight damage conjuration may be sticky flame, unless I'm forgetting something. There are decent level 4 spells conjurations IF you can kite back, namely force lance and especially fulminant prism, but if you aren't fast enough, they aren't strong enough.

[crate]

Ice beast at level 4 is fine. It's stronger than icicle at the moment you start using level 4 spells, it's weaker than icicle later (icicle is really very good). Summon spells in general don't really seem overpowered to me (there are some scaling things but I'm not going to discuss that at the moment). They are good early on because early on all enemies do is walk at you and hit you, except for orc priests, and not coincidentally orc priests are really terrifying for summon-users.

I don't agree that low-level conjurations "suck major ass" either. The only real problem here is that monster EV goes down as you progress through the game instead of up, and conjurations can miss, and this hurts them a lot more than other methods of attacking. Perhaps for the 3- level conjurations you could just boost accuracy to account for this (since they are low enough damage that you never use them after lair or so even if they had perfect accuracy), but starting at level 4 conjurations are useful for long enough that this isn't really solvable without fixing enemy EV.

edit: Conjurations are worse than ranged combat, but that's because ranged combat is just melee with extra range without penalties. The problem there is ranged combat, not conjurations.

[tabstorm]

All summoning spells are overpowered. Or maybe conjurations are underpowered (at least relative to summons). One thing most summoning spells have going for them, aside from improving your repositioning game, is that they're often 1 school, unlike conjurations which often have a second school (Conjurations) attached presumably just to soak up experience. Even if you play a pure summoner and are on half-XP, you end up getting your 1-school summon at the same time you'd get a 2 school element/conj, and the summon is pretty much always better.

[tabstorm]

Conjurations aren't the best way to turn MP or XP into damage, but they do tend to be among the best ways convert turns into damage, and unlike one of the main rivals (melee), they offer to do that from relative safety.

I don't really buy the idea that conj is relatively safe in general.
What people think happens in the land of hypothetical optimal play:

I can damage these enemies from a distance and avoid damage! Conjurations are really good!

What actually happens:

Wow, I just miscast that spell two times at 8%, missed another two times, and hit 3 times. Now, I still have a pack of enemies on me, and not enough MP to finish them off, and the spell noise I made will be drawing enemies from around the level to investigate, so I won't be able to rest up and recover MP/HP without being constantly interrupted. Good thing I trained backup melee for this situation! Wait, why am I using these spells in the first place, then - just to soften enemies up? I could just use evocations for that...

Let's compare this to melee:
What people think happens in the land of hypothetical optimal play:

Whoa, melee combat is really dangerous! I could take a lot of damage from this pack of enemies and have to retreat, and then die from energy randomization while escaping to the stairs!

What actually happens:

tabtabtabtabtabtabtabtabtabtabtabtab Oh hey there's a rune... tabtabtabtabtabtab oh hey there's another one... man, heavy armor is good. tabtabtab Oh, I should teleport...

Anyway, I think conj is good at the early and late ends of the spectrum - level 9s are very powerful and most of the book background are very good early on. But, midgame conj is not so good, in my view, outside of a small set of races who have high intelligence and decent aptitudes. Earth, especially, has garbage midrange spells.

[crate]

The biggest problem with conjurations is that the conjurations gods are awful and the melee gods win the game for you.

[tabstorm]

I would take my chances with an atheist Fi/Gl/As over a Vehumet/Sif caster unless I was Hu||Dr||DE||Te||HE.

[crate]

Ok so maybe it's a combination of gods and there being no good spellcasting races (except Dg, where the god thing is sort of irrelevant). I don't feel like human is an exceptionally good spellcasting race but if you claim it is then I guess I'm not going to argue. FWIW on human I think IE/FE/Cj are all more powerful than things like Fi or Gl.

[ydeve]

Dr and Hu are only "good" at spellcasting because they have decent apts without lousy hp. There is no spellcasting equivalent to Mi. (There doesn't need to be either. Good hp with good apts is a rather boring race design.)

[andreas]

Conjurations aren't the best way to turn MP or XP into damage, but they do tend to be among the best ways convert turns into damage, and unlike one of the main rivals (melee), they offer to do that from relative safety.

Fair enough on the damage per turn point. I also take the point that racial restrictions and aptitudes may tempt one to conjurations, and that doesn't show up in the analysis of the OP.

Still, overall my experience fits pretty well with tabstorm's, especially his note about conjurations sagging in the middle level ranges. Off the cuff, here's my guess about why (partially why?) this happens. In the early game, most books are strong indeed. And by the late game, you have plenty of XP to develop an MP cheap way to kill the large majority of things (usually, defenses + an adequate weapon). (I would put this stage earlier than tabstorm does; I hardly use lvl 9 spells anyway.) So in the late game you can save your big gun conjurations for the really dangerous stuff.

But in the middle game (like, lair and lair branches or so?) I find that my XP has mostly gone toward making sure my primary killing magic skills are up to snuff and I've just turned to defenses and a weapon, so less stuff can be dealt with without relying on MP costly spells. And then it does seem like a cost, just as tabstorm indicates, that you can only ''swing your weapon'' a few times before you need to leave and rest in safety. (I'm open to the observation that I'm just doing it wrong.)

On this point, It seems relevant that melee-focused characters don't have to develop two ways to kill things.

By the way, I don't say anything as strong as that conjurations-heavy characters are unplayable, or that they suck ass, or that you are gimping yourself by picking conjurations when you could choose something else. Let me put it this way: on a race with even aptitudes (say, Hu) that wasn't constrained by drops, I would guess that conjurations is decisively the weakest option of conjurations, melee (including ''hybrid''), summons, and ranged. (I would guess it is still better than stabbing on a Hu.)

[crate]

You're not mp-constrained in mid-game unless you play naga, worship chei, or refuse to walk away when you need to. When you see a yak pack, instead of starting to throw spells at it right away you first have to separate the pack somehow. The few fast enemies you run into either don't come in packs (so you don't run out of MP), or are blink frogs (so they don't really chase you very well), or are bees which actually are pretty dangerous. I might be forgetting a couple but clearly they don't kill me very often.

Perhaps the argument is that it's too annoying to have to do this, so you don't and then you feel weak, and that's a reasonable complaint, but I'm not sure what the right way to change this would be.

[andreas]

Sure, I do split up packs before fighting; but then one has to rest after killing each yak, which does feel weak. Strong melee characters can find a chokepoint and fight small groups at once; and even if you do split and lure anyway (I do; damage is spiky and unpredictable) you have to rest less which feels stronger.

I don't think it's just a matter of feeling, though, as if it doesn't matter as long as you can get through to the end of the battle to hit 5. Something can walk by while you're resting, and sometimes (for average players like me anyway) things go wrong and I end up fighting a group anyway. And being less sensitive to the mistakes of average players, after all, is one of the things that makes a build stronger.

[crate]

I think that conjurations gives you enough extra damage per turn and safety from range that that mitigates the drawback of being more long-distance-movement intensive and such. This might not be true for all players. Maybe I should stop arguing about this so conjurations get buffed and I can feel like a superhero next time I play HuFE or whatever (except that would probably be boring, so I guess I don't really want it to happen).

[tabstorm]

The powerlevel of conjurations is probably okay, at least for the more magic-affine races. I think it's fine that many races will want to move away from conjuration towards necromancy or summoning, that's what gods like Kiku are for.

Melee needs to be nerfed a little bit in the mid/late game, I think.

[andreas]

I think that conjurations gives you enough extra damage per turn and safety from range that that mitigates the drawback of being more long-distance-movement intensive and such. This might not be true for all players. Maybe I should stop arguing about this so conjurations get buffed and I can feel like a superhero next time I play HuFE or whatever (except that would probably be boring, so I guess I don't really want it to happen).

I don't know if anyone is arguing that conjurations need to be buffed.* Originally I just brought up the power of conjurations in regards to the comparison between a summoning and conjurations spell of the same level. (I'm sort of sorry I did, now, as it seems to have derailed the thread pretty well.) I think it would be nice if some conjuration spells were changed, but that has less to do with power and more to do with a few spells being awfully similar apart from elemental type. (Bolt spells being the main (maybe only?) offender.)


*edit: sorry, looking back it seems like Leszczynek might want that

[njvack]

The biggest problem with conjurations from my perspective is that missiles exist and while they're less varied and interesting, they do at least as much damage to more map squares at the cost of training only one skill.

To the OP: like crate said, ice beasts and icicle are both pretty baller.

[Hands]

In my experience single target direct damage conjurations are a bit underpowered for most of the game. They're relatively good in early D when there aren't many monsters and combat comes down to a few hits in either direction, but they fall off in the mid game. They're good in theory-crawl because in theory-crawl a dangerous monster doesn't wander into view when you go up the stairs to regen your mp, and you don't get surrounded immediately on entering a new level. Of course, these situations are generally survivable because crawl gives you enough tools to survive pretty much everything.

Conjurations are great when you want to deal high damage to a single target quickly, but there are ways to deal with the same situations that don't limit your armour choices, that don't take so much xp, that don't risk bad miscast effects, and that don't have an annoying interaction with food. Another thing to consider is that while on paper conjurations deal high damage, casting spells is slow relative to most other forms of attacking by mid game, and some of the most damaging spells have short range.

Conjurations based characters are obviously very winnable, but their main 'thing' is done with almost as much, if not more, power and far fewer drawbacks by non-magical ranged combat and evocations.

Ice beasts, on the other hand, are great.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

It's time for a god that gives spell power!

[Sar]

That god is called Chei.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

OK. It's time for a god that gives spell power before it kills you.

[njvack]

I think Vehumet should give spell power rather than wizardry.

[Siegurt]

I think Vehumet should give spell power rather than wizardry.

Well, that would probably be a fair sized nerf for him, and he is already not that great.

[crate]

if by nerf you mean buff, yeah

[Siegurt]

if by nerf you mean buff, yeah

Spell power's effect on damage spells is often overrated, and it requires a very large buff to have any meaningful impact, current enhancer staves give you something like 5-20% more damage with most spells, less as you train skills higher or get more int. (Compare that with okas or trogs boosts to melee)

Wizardy at least lets you use better spells earlier or with lower xp investment, which is a larger bonus than a few percent more damage on a spell you can already cast.

I would much rather be able to cast iron shot over stone arrow, than get a bump in stone arrow's spell power.

I guess since it is a god we could do something that is currently out of bounds, like add the bonus spell power after step downs and or let it flow over spell power caps or something, but even then, most spells *max out* at less than double the damage they do when you can first use them.

If we wanted veh to add more damage, we would be much better off just adding a direct percentage bonus than adding to spell power. (It would be a lot more controllable too, low level spells arent really designed to get higher than max spell power, you would get some really odd results in aome places)

[njvack]

I would much rather be able to cast iron shot over stone arrow, than get a bump in stone arrow's spell power.

High-powered Stone Arrow is not bad in my experience. It's also way quieter, takes up two fewer spell slots, and three fewer MP per cast. It's not like you'd never want Iron Shot (or LCS) (often you want a mob dead NOW and AC and whatever) but they're for different things. (Actually, a bit of anydice suggests that at power 50, two Stone Arrow casts deal a bit more damage than one Iron Shot cast).

If Veh directly buffed spell power, yeah you'd still need to be subject to spell power caps. Directly buffing damage (or something similar) is maybe more interesting. It would at least be a god power that isn't already duplicated in an item ego.

[crate]

Veh wizardry is overrated. You don't need it unless:

1) You are wearing heavy armour (almost no one does this with veh, though it's actually a good reason to take veh)

2) You are talking exclusively about level 7-9 spells.

3) Your race is really bad at casting spells and you found early veh.

4) You got lucky and found your level 6 spell before Veh could possibly gift it, or you found faith very early to get the gift very early.

I'm playing a huee of Sif right now and I have iron shot at ~20% fail on lair:1 (Sif gave me the book). At that point I think enhancer-level spellpower boost is already at least competitive with wizardry and possibly already better (enhancers are super good in lair since otherwise you miss a lot). The most recent Veh win in Sequell's db (link) took veh on d:2 and got offered a level 6 spell (coincidentially iron shot) for the first time on lair:5; I'm sure I'll have iron shot at like 10% fail by then. You don't need Veh to cast level 6 spells in normal circumstances.

He does help with higher-level spells, but those also come late and I'd prefer to be more powerful every step of the way there. It also makes Veh more powerful once you no longer need wizardry.

---

That said I don't think I would attach spellpower boost to veh instead of wizardry since there's not really a good reason to do that and veh being plate-caster-god is cool. (It's not like there is another spell success boosting god either, after all.)

[Sar]

Well Ash sorta-kinda does that too. And Chei, of course, is great for platecasting (assuming you don't die, yes).

[ajon]

Could just make throw icicle level 3 if its not considered as useful as ice beasts at 4. Id likely use it more If it was three mp instead of 4. Just seems to be a bad use of mp currently to me.

[njvack]

No seriously icicle is great, it murders things without rC and kills things that have it and it has good range.

[ajon]

hmm ill have to give it more of a chance. What about throw frost? seems kind of lackluster compared to freeze.

[njvack]

IMO it falls off in importance faster than freeze but I still learn it. Killing ogres and gnolls is more fun than avoiding them, but I'd rather do it while they're out of melee range.

Once icicle is up at a good failure rate and decent power it's a good candidate to amnesia.

[rchandra]

For Veh spell damage boost: ey could give half of the amulet of harm for eir spells.

[Azarkon]

Melee/ranged characters have it easy until level 8/9 spells, then conjurers take over. Fire Storm makes everything except for Hell/Tombs easy and once you get Necromutation up Tomb becomes easy, too. Ziggurat farming is best done with conjurers and my very first conjurer who got to a Ziggurat was able to clear the entire 27 levels, while that was never the case for my melee/ranged characters.

The middle game is, however, very hard for conjurers, and I've lost more than a few conjurers to, for example, Lair, because of a lack of damage.

Ice elementalists also must take summoning to be competitive in the middle game. Otherwise you just don't do enough damage, unless you go into another source of damage.

The strength of conjuration over ranged is area of effect. This is also why single target conjuration spells are not as useful when compared to melee/ranged. Sure crystal spear and orb are both solid single target damage, but they're not safer than what ranged characters can do from a distance with late game weapons. Fire Storm/Glaciate, however, are much safer and better than what ranged characters can do from a distance. Fire Storm is especially nice in that it blocks monsters' line of sight.

Vehumet is also an excellent god for this reason: he allows you to repeat Fire Storm/Glaciate against packs of monsters because of the magic return and allows you to cast them further than monsters' line of sight, allowing you to kill them even before they see you. This is critical for successful Ziggurat runs as you don't want to run out of magic when you have no where to retreat and you don't want to deal with five dragons/liches getting in range of you at the same time. Vehumet also allows you to get these high level spells up as soon as possible, and in today's Crawl I feel that there isn't enough experience before Pandemonium to not try for this, because conjurers are worse than ranged characters in every way without those spells.

But a late game conjurer is a force, and has one of the safest runs through Pandemonium/Ziggurats/Tomb/Slime/Abyss/Zot due to being able to take out everything from a distance before they mutate you, smite you, etc., with only Hells being a problem due to monsters appearing on top of you and miscast effects. Of course you wouldn't want to run most of these except for Zot in a normal game and I also wouldn't recommend a conjurer for a normal game, as the benefit of playing a conjurer is the ability to farm Ziggurats to prepare for a complete finish.

Personally I think ranged vs. melee vs. conjurer vs. summoner all have their advantages and disadvantages, and that it's races/gods where there's no balance. Demigods for example are terrible and so are Mummies. Minotaurs, gargoyles, and deep dwarves are monsters at melee. Centaurs cannot be beat as ranged. And for conjurers, my most successful conjurers have always been deep elves, simply because you need to hit a certain power level as a conjurer before a certain time in the game in order to get past the middle game. But I'm sure others have different opinions here because you can make an argument for draconians, humans, etc.

[Shard1697]

I don't think level 9 spells make conjurors "take over" in any meaningful way, I would pretty much always rather be running a strong melee guy than a strong damage-spells guy.

[ydeve]

IMO (and this is from someone who likes conjurors), lvl9 spells work best as a sometimes food. If you open every encounter will them you run out of mp when you need it, but when you're facing a huge crowd it's nice to have.
It may not be a free meal ticket but it's still nice to have in a non-3-rune game.

[Azarkon]

I don't think level 9 spells make conjurors "take over" in any meaningful way, I would pretty much always rather be running a strong melee guy than a strong damage-spells guy.

Depends on the enemies you're facing. Conjurers have an easy time with a lot of enemy groups that give melee trouble. It is especially obvious in the end game when you're trying to farm Ziggurats or trying to get through enemies with irresistible damage/mutations in Pandemonium, because conjurers can kill those before they get off anything. Juggernauts and iron giants can also be a problem for melee characters but are a walk in the park for Vehumet conjurers due to range advantage. Of course you can also do Slime a lot earlier than a melee.

The down side is that early game, Lair, and your first rune ends up being a lot harder. Orc however I've found to be easier with a conjurer because orcs have heavy armor/weapons which can be dangerous for all but the most well equipped melee and you need to take out high priests from range.

[Sandman25]

It depends. With enough patience conjurers have easier time than melee characters early game, Lair and first rune too (ignore berserkers here). The trick is to lure much and restore MP. Ogre, Orc Priest, Hill Giant, Hydra, Death Yaks etc. are much less dangerous when you can kill them at range or with Sticky Flame.

[tabstorm]

The actual effectiveness of this is questionable because of how high monster density is now. Also, if you have to lure much more as a conjurer than a meleer, as opposed to button mashing, you're using an interesting definition of easy.

[duvessa]

you don't need to lure more though, unless you're playing a bad conjurer like vm