Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 3037
Joined: Sunday, 2nd January 2011, 02:06
Value of translocation spells
roguelikedev wrote:I don't understand how the threat of Dispel Undead can be compared to that of torment; you may as well compare torment to bolt of fire or the possibility of stepping into a blade trap. Torment alone renders 9 of the game's 13 runes more dangerous to obtain than the orb of Zot, whereas Dispel Undead is just another damaging effect in the crowded late-game category between "deadly serious with 0 fighting" and a crisp hit from Cerebov.
AC, EV, and SH don't work against it, and neither do any other sources of damage mitigation work. You get the full Crystal Spear-level damage every round you're in range since it's the only valid attack the shadow fiend can use against you, and there's precious little you can do about it save kill the source or get out of range.
Torment, by contrast, is typically either coming from a fairly fragile monster (tormentor) or shares a spell list with several less-threatening effects (the four flavors of fiends). The AI is intentionally not smart enough to just spam Torment until they can one-shot you with something else. Those other attacks also have to breach your three cardinal defenses, which are likely to be rather high by this point.
roguelikedev wrote:This said, I don't think anyone's mentioned the real issues with it: no Regeneration (spell), no potions, no holy wrath. In short, it's a strong ability with serious downsides, i.e. interesting.
Agreed.
roguelikedev wrote:Controlled Blink, seriously? It's a strong spell, but it certainly doesn't belong in that company.
It is *the* ultimate perfect defense outside of divine abilities. It isn't quite as good as self-banishment or the Tomb card, but it's pretty close. It always puts you exactly where you want to go, and in two moves you will be completely safe from absolutely any situation that would otherwise be cause for concern. One cast is usually enough, but two is the absolute maximum. Since you can precisely move to a particular tile without any chance of error, you can simply shut down a dangerous enemy by moving out of sight radius, moving around a corner, or moving behind some less threatening monsters that will involuntarily tank for you.
Controlled Blink is as much better than semi-controlled Blink as semi-controlled Blink is over not blinking at all. It could be moved to 9th level and it would still be worth picking up. The control even works effectively in areas that specifically block control because controlled translocations makes them too easy.