Beogh smiting overpowered

[VeryAngryFelid]

I've noticed a recent 35k turns 15 runes win with Beogh and I don't understand how it works
The player trained Invo to 24 while having fighting 13, armour 13, axes 10, shields 8, spelcasting 3 and nothing else, used the ability 207 times during the whole game. Is Smiting ability that overpowered?

Player-usable smiting becomes more powerful with invocations if using Beogh. Damage at 0 Invo ranges from 9-12 (avg 10), and scales to 9-72 (avg 40) at 27 Invo

[HardboiledGargoyle]

it's really powerful and Beogh gives piety plentifully, so you can use it a lot. It has no way to fail (has a fair amount of guaranteed damage and bypasses MR, EV, AC, range, LOF) and your MP pool is usually large enough to get several smites off in a row. Getting invo to around 10 in the early game isn't very hard even if you're not HO, and as a HO it's very easy. I wizmoded Og^Beogh and it's hard to feel threatened by OoD monsters, since I have smite. Monster HP indicators, while I'd prefer they said "at least xx HP", are very helpful here.

[CanOfWorms]

at 27 invo smite usually kills orbs of fire in 2-3 shots

[duvessa]

and at 20-24 earth magic you get to cast shatter. what's the big deal?

[Shard1697]

invo users can wear heavy armor unlike lv9 spellcasters

[1158511]

Smiting seems to be the only thing going for Beogh. The followers are a joke after Lair. I'm not sure its that good considering the amount of invocations needed compared to a God like Trog. Okay well Trog is a bad example because Trog is better than everything but you get my point. But this is my second game as Beogh.

[Shard1697]

The followers are not a joke after lair. I usually have at least a couple orc warlords at the end of zot who've been hanging around with me basically all game. Multiple high level orcs standing behind you poking with polearms will shred basically everything in the game.

The secret, beyond careful play, is to always only have a few orcs with you so they level faster, and always give your warrior orcs polearms(preferably 1 handed polearms for the speed and chance at a shield). I always make a point of ditching/killing priest/wizard orcs as well(the trick of using wands of flame on yourself in shallow water then switching places with a weak orc so they die in steam if you don't want them is still a favorite).

[ZipZipskins]

The followers are not a joke after lair. I usually have at least a couple orc warlords at the end of zot who've been hanging around with me basically all game. Multiple high level orcs standing behind you poking with polearms will shred basically everything in the game.

The secret, beyond careful play, is to always only have a few orcs with you so they level faster, and always give your warrior orcs polearms(preferably 1 handed polearms for the speed and chance at a shield). I always make a point of ditching/killing priest/wizard orcs as well(the trick of using wands of flame on yourself in shallow water then switching places with a weak orc so they die in steam if you don't want them is still a favorite).

all hail beogh, lord of degeneracy

[sooheon]

Seriously. That is some terrible opaque micromanagement gameplay.

[Cimanyd]

I thanked Shard's post for the first half. You don't need to exploit to kill your own followers to play Beogh.

My experience with Beogh (all back in 0.18 though) has been that even if you try to keep the priests/wizards alive, they still die. The warriors>knights>warlords, the only ones who can stay alive, are great.

Beogh's recall recalls the strongest orcish allies first, which is how to keep only a few and let them level up. Before going down stairs to the next level, tell your followers to wait, then go down, recall (if it's not a dangerous situation), and stop the recall when you have everyone you want.

[papilio]

Even if all abilities related with orcish followers are gone, Beogh would be fairly good.

In CWZ we know a Beogh expert (http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/denpaotoko.html)

I think he can renew many current HO highscores with big margins (except HOAK, HOBe), maybe just he think it's a boring job.

[tasonir]

I wouldn't say it's overpowered, but it's definitely strong. I'm surprised denpaotoko's runs don't train somewhat higher weapon skill, but I'm guessing he lets the orcish allies do most of the fighting in order to save time and keep moving forward. And then just smite the really tough monsters as needed, of course.

But yeah, training 20 or 27 skill for only a single ability which is single targeted isn't overpowered, even if HO do happen to have +3 invocations. Flavor aside, I do wish more than one race could use Beogh, but ah well.

[stoneychips]

Even if you aren't stellar at leveling a great many orcs to red (warlord) or blue (mage) levels, the recall ability can be quite helpful as a panic button. If you time it right, simply flooding the area with a great number of orcs (some should be at least mediocre levels) can provide enough distraction and possibly do enough damage to help out in a pinch. And if things go moderately well, you should level some of them in the process. You'll lose some, but as long as you only call "the big horde" for big trash battles or short serious "keep them busy/push us over the edge" situations, you can afford to do this a few times when it counts. Certainly through Lair branches and somewhat deeper. Other times, you can try to boost a small squad before hitting the worst bosses. I find the orc mages awfully hard to keep back out of trouble myself (all they seem to do is Blink-charge everything), but the orcs do still help.

Oddly, I've rarely gone deep Invoc with Beogh when I played it. I usually enjoy all the various weapons that orcs can train, far beyond normally optimal I admit. Now it's getting interesting...

[severen]

Smiting seems to be the only thing going for Beogh. The followers are a joke after Lair. I'm not sure its that good considering the amount of invocations needed compared to a God like Trog. Okay well Trog is a bad example because Trog is better than everything but you get my point. But this is my second game as Beogh.

I have Beoh guy in lair atm I gave my orc warlord a +9 halberd of chopping artifact I found. He has 112 HP and regularly hits for 3 exclamation points, this puts him at roughly fairly close to a Hepl Battlemage buddy with the lajatang (which is 120 hp at lvl 27). There is no reason you couldn't run around with 3 warlords with even better weapons so even hasted they will do more damage than the Hepl damage profession.

So I would say Beogh warlord followers are easily comparable to a Hepl buddy. I guess the only question is can you keep resurrecting them.

[Shard1697]

Beogh's recall recalls the strongest orcish allies first, which is how to keep only a few and let them level up. Before going down stairs to the next level, tell your followers to wait, then go down, recall (if it's not a dangerous situation), and stop the recall when you have everyone you want.

It doesn't always recall them in the same order though and it doesn't always recall the ones you want, which leads to me repeatedly doing this until I have the right set of orcs. This is part of why I sometimes end up killing my own orcs, I get fucking sick of recall not giving me the set of orcs I want to have

So I would say Beogh warlord followers are easily comparable to a Hepl buddy. I guess the only question is can you keep resurrecting them.

You cannot, but they should only die rarely anyways.

Giving orcs polearms helps a huge amount because it means they don't need to be right next to enemies so they walk themselves into guaranteed death less often, and can attack over you(with no penalty, unlike the player attacking over monsters with a polearm)

[njvack]

You cannot, but they should only die rarely anyways.

Poison. Clouds.

Also: Can your warlord buddies not use crossbows anymore? I haven't played a Beoghvite in a long time, but Super Pincushion Brothers was a fun game.

[severen]

You cannot, but they should only die rarely anyways.

Poison. Clouds.

Also: Can your warlord buddies not use crossbows anymore? I haven't played a Beoghvite in a long time, but Super Pincushion Brothers was a fun game.

Not only can the use xbow but beogh sometimes will just give them one, but reaching is nice if you purposely block them from getting close to stuff so that you can tank

[JFunk]

I've noticed a recent 35k turns 15 runes win with Beogh and I don't understand how it works

Well if you don't understand how a player made a cool accomplishment, certainly it means something is wrong with the game, and not that another player maybe found a good strategy?

The player trained Invo to 24 while having fighting 13, armour 13, axes 10, shields 8, spelcasting 3 and nothing else, used the ability 207 times during the whole game. Is Smiting ability that overpowered?

You're suspicious of an ability used a measly 207 times in a 15 rune game? Do you have any idea how many hostile encounters take place over the course of a 15 rune game? That's fewer times than you used Upheaval with this character: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Sandman25/m ... 003407.txt . Is Upheaval overpowered, or was it carrying that character without support? You killed over 6,400 monsters in that game. Assuming, very charitably, that this Beoghite only killed 4,000 monsters, that means smite was used, on average, once per 20 monsters. (And if you doublesmite -- few dangerous lategame enemies have 40 HP, after all -- you need to up that to 40 monsters, etc). Is there something wrong with someone using a powerful god ability against the top 2-5% of dangerous monsters and that ability being somewhat successful?

Also, smite is a significant drain on piety, especially in early game. I know, I'm running a smiting Beoghite right now, partly inspired by this thread. Why do you think this player only used it once per 20 monsters or so? You simply can't spam smite, it doesn't work. It's an offensive panic button for killing troublesome and/or hard-to-reach monsters. It's not a primary offense, and no one is treating it like one.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Well if you don't understand how a player made a cool accomplishment, certainly it means something is wrong with the game, and not that another player maybe found a good strategy?

I am not sure why you are asking. I hoped someone would watch ttyrecs and would tell me how the game looked like since I am bad with console recognition.

Is Upheaval overpowered, or was it carrying that character without support?

Upheaval is OP indeed (and Qazlal too) but we cannot compare my game and that game because I wasn't speedrunning. I took my time to retreat, heal, optimize branch order, gear, spells etc. And more importantly, I was killing things with other means mostly (melee). While here we have a player with barely any weapon or defense.

Why do you think this player only used it once per 20 monsters or so?

Why do you think I know how many monsters the invocation was used on?

You simply can't spam smite, it doesn't work. It's an offensive panic button for killing troublesome and/or hard-to-reach monsters. It's not a primary offense, and no one is treating it like one.

Are you sure this is how the player used smiting? Because it's really different from Upheaval in my games which you are comparing to. Upheaval is not a panic button for me, it's a "kill that pesky mutator" or "orc sorcerer behind plain orcs". Qazlal does give a panic button but it cannot be used 207 times

[Vajrapani]

Well if you don't understand how a player made a cool accomplishment, certainly it means something is wrong with the game, and not that another player maybe found a good strategy?

Are you sure this is how the player used smiting? Because it's really different from Upheaval in my games which you are comparing to. Upheaval is not a panic button for me, it's a "kill that pesky mutator" or "orc sorcerer behind plain orcs". Qazlal does give a panic button but it cannot be used 207 times

I'm not a very experienced player, I only have 2 wins, but in my HO win I used smiting 141 times and I was barely using at all to kill monsters. I only started using it a lot more in Vaults:5, when it my primary way to deal with stair deniers, and Zot, to get rid of ancient liches,at the the edge of LoS, or dangerous draconians, even when I was doing this my piety dropped 2 levels. To use smiting 207 times, isn't really much of a stretch from 141.

  Code:

Invok: Convert to Beogh  |       |     1 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       ||     1
       Recall Orcish Fol |       |       |       |     2 |    26 |    57 |    24 |    39 |    45 ||   193
       Give Item to Name |       |       |       |     1 |     2 |     2 |       |     1 |       ||     6in
       Smiting           |       |       |       |       |     7 |    44 |     9 |    43 |    38 ||   141
       Stop Recall       |       |       |       |       |    17 |    23 |       |       |       ||    40
       Resurrection      |       |       |       |       |     1 |       |     1 |     1 |       ||     3