Help on making my air elementalists better

[LoopyLeo]

So -- I've been playing 0.20 a lot lately, and I've really been enjoying Air Elementalists now that they have Airstrike, I never knew how much I loved the spell (is my love unwarranted by the way, the spell doesn't seem to be wildly popular from what I've noticed).

I have, unfortunately, been splatting a lot of them -- stupidity moreso than anything else. Though I'm not exactly sure how one would "optimally" play one. I've generally been playing Draconians and Tengu, and it's been interesting going with Dith a fair lot -- seems to help offset the loudness of AE somewhat. It's around about the end of Lair/Orc that I get a bit lost though, I rarely find any more Air spells, so I just end up pumping fighting/dodging. Are there any specific schools I should try to branch into, any other gods? Any other tips in general?

Thanks Crawl fam.

[Utis]

Hi, LoopyLeo!

Well, here's my take on AE:

Airstrike is very good at what it's good at. It's a very situational spell though. It's mana efficiency is rather bad. But smite targeting means you can e.g. snipe out a boggart behind its summons. Or e.g. if a Dragon comes in (at the point when they're still dangerous) while its line of fire is blocked by some vanilla monster, you can soften it up before engaging in melee. It's a nice and welcome addition to the book, but otherwise not such a big deal.

In my opinion AE generally, like Wz, have to develop melee rather early. Lightning Bolt is MP efficient and more importantly very XP efficient. But it's extremely loud which makes relying on it even more dangerous than with other attack spells. It's bad accuracy doesn't matter statistically, but if you're relying on it, you run a substantial risk of ending up without MP in a dangerous situation. The noise isn't that bad if there are a lot of walls. But Lair is comparatively open and many of it's monsters have rather high evasion, making LB doubly bad. So, I recommend developing melee before LB. Shock is a very efficient spell and gives you the space necessary to do that. In addition, with normal speed monsters, you can use Swiftness to disengage from melee, if you get bad damage rolls (be careful, though!). Later, when you get LB online, you have a cheap way to get high damage/aut when you need it.

Draconians and Tengu are both good choices, IMO. They play very differently, though. With Tengu you have to train dodging like crazy basically right from the start and you have to go easy on your use of Static Discharge. Draconians are more straight forward. I'd also consider Demigods.

Speaking of which, I'd rather not comment on gods as I prefer playing godless recently.

Otherwise: Tactics, tactics, tactics! But since you enjoy AE, you already know that.

[Sprucery]

Try to setup double-zaps for Shock and LB.

[LoopyLeo]

@Utis, thanks, solid advice. I definitely haven't been giving my Tengu enough dodging then though; I was trying to get all my spells super-castable before I was focusing on
that

Also, I'll be sure to focus on hybridising more. I was doing that with all my characters, perhaps not enough though

And yeah, ofc I've been using the double-zaps (nb: auto-targeting is nice, though it doesn't always do so when it can, is that a bug?)

[Utis]

@Utis, thanks, solid advice. I definitely haven't been giving my Tengu enough dodging then though; I was trying to get all my spells super-castable before I was focusing on that

As a rule of thumb it's generally a good idea to focus on your killdudes in the beginning. There are exceptions, though, and Tengu are one of them. They have an HP malus and can't wear boots and helmets. AE, however, have to be in melee range most of the time, so it's important to set off that disadvantage by getting better defences. Their EV multiplier when flying makes dodging the natural choice more often than not. Because of their aptitudes they fortunately can afford to invest the XP. I think, a good rule of thumb is that your Tengu's spell progression should be just like a Human's, with the excess XP going into defence (including fighting, though).

[LoopyLeo]

@Utis, thanks, solid advice. I definitely haven't been giving my Tengu enough dodging then though; I was trying to get all my spells super-castable before I was focusing on that

As a rule of thumb it's generally a good idea to focus on your killdudes in the beginning. There are exceptions, though, and Tengu are one of them. They have an HP malus and can't wear boots and helmets. AE, however, have to be in melee range most of the time, so it's important to set off that disadvantage by getting better defences. Their EV multiplier when flying makes dodging the natural choice more often than not. Because of their aptitudes they fortunately can afford to invest the XP. I think, a good rule of thumb is that your Tengu's spell progression should be just like a Human's, with the excess XP going into defence (including fighting, though).

Ah okay, I'll keep that all in mind. Another thing, Static Discharge seems quite underwhelming, so maybe I'm not approaching it correctly? How is the spell supposed to be used? Does anyone actually use it?

[Siegurt]

Static Discharge seems quite underwhelming, so maybe I'm not approaching it correctly? How is the spell supposed to be used? Does anyone actually use it?

Static discharge is actually pretty bad when you first get it castable and you have low spellpower, a single shock from it isn't very impressive, it's much much better with high spellpower, as this increases it's chances of generating more shocks. It's optimally used against 2 adjacent critters (that is to say, adjacent to you and to each-other) with 3 and 4 adjacent critters being ok. It also completely ignores EV, so it's good against adders, killer bee's etc. It had a more much defined niche before airstrike was added to the starting book, since that also ignores EV.

In a pinch you can put a single critter next to yourself and a plant (Although even with higher spellpower that's only marginally better than shock), don't ever use static discharge against a single adjacent target, it's worse than shock for that case (Presuming you can double zap, which should always be able to do)

Generally AE is the most position dependent of the elementalists, you want to set up for double-zaps with shock and lightning bolt *every time* additionally you want to lure things further back into cleared areas to use lightning bolt, as it's loud.

Those two things together make exploiting movement speed bonuses (like tengu's flight, and the bonus from swiftness) very very useful. You want to encounter something, move into a position where it will have to approach where you can double-zap it. (This is one of the reasons why rMsl was a very appropriate spell for AE, as they have more incentive to lure things, and ranged missile users are more annoying to do that with)

Some incredibly easy to set up double zaps include:

Move to to the X:

  Code:

M
@
   ###

     X


So you end up with:

  Code:

   ###
   M
    @


Move to the X:

  Code:

#####
#   @ M
#X###


so you end up with:

  Code:

####
# M
#@##


Both of those let you target the square behind the monster for a double zap, and are extremely common scenarios.

Another useful but harder to set up scenario when you want to double zap things but it's not fun to get close to them (like say an ogre)) :

  Code:

    @
#Y###Y#


At many ranges you can double zap a critter at both of the Y positions and then move around in a circle until the creature gets to the next Y position, some loops have 3, 4 or sometimes more double zap positions, so you can double zap a critter that's 4 or 5 spaces away 4 or 5 times walking around a loop before they are adjacent.

Airstrike is unpopular because it's damage is really weirdly variable, and is very poor at low spellpower, you're better off using shock twice than airstrike once in many scenarios, particularly early on when it's damage is really bad for the cost. As a level 4 attack spell, it's damage is lower than many of the other level 4 attack spells, so it's really really hard to justify it's cost outside of the rare places where the smite targeting and extra flying damage really help, unless you have an overabundance of MP. It also gets much better later, both because there's more occasions where smite targeting is useful, and because it's damage gets less unreliable at high spellpower

[Utis]

Another thing, Static Discharge seems quite underwhelming, so maybe I'm not approaching it correctly? How is the spell supposed to be used? Does anyone actually use it?

You're going to love Static Discharge when you're getting caught by a swarm of killer bees in terrain where you can't get to a corridor in time.



I've never bothered to look at the actual numbers, so everything else I can say about it is rather unreliable: I think (!) that in one-on-one situations in the early game before Lair, SD is not as mana efficient as bizapped Shock. It does strike multiple targets surrounding you, though, so it's again, IMO, a spell that's very good at what it does: you need it in situations when you can't use Shock effectively. Generally you should avoid such situations, but it's not always possible. So, SD complements your spell set nicely.

It's worth noting: It always hits, regardless of enemy EV (even when they're invisible!). And I think it bypasses AC? It also scales better than Shock. So, maybe at a certain spell power it becomes more mana efficient even against single targets? I've seen credible people state that they regard it as their go-to damage spell for AE. I suppose with a non-frail species like Draconians it might be worthwile to explore that option. Personally, as I wrote, I prefer the route Shock -> decent Melee -> LB, in which case it's still very good, but situational.

In that latter capacity, it does stay useful for a very long time. I've found high powered SD situationally useful right into the endgame in a 3-runer quite often. There might be an opportunity cost with regard to spell slots, but not having looked at the numbers, I wouldn't know.

[njvack]

Airstrike is unpopular because it's damage is really weirdly variable

Isn't this another standard feature of AE spells? IIRC their damage is more like 1d(x) than 3d(x/3)...

[Siegurt]

Airstrike is unpopular because it's damage is really weirdly variable

Isn't this another standard feature of AE spells? IIRC their damage is more like 1d(x) than 3d(x/3)...

Airstrike's formula is even weirder than standard AE damage spells.

[LoopyLeo]

Thanks @Utis and @Siegurt for the really well written replies.

I must say, I didn't really realise that some spells, SC, would get much better than when first learned. Puts a whole new light on things when it comes to playing Mages.
I had also been luring a lot, though moreso to position enemies for double-zapping than to reduce the impact of LB -- I must follow through with that Also I now think I have been *grossly* underusing Swiftness, I only ever used it to run for staircases -- I'll definitely try it whilst luring as well now. I guess I've always just been scared of -Swift coming back to bite me really hard somehow. But yeah, thanks so much guys -- I really do love the Tavern-folk