Is Ru poorly designed?

[crawlnoob]

Or is it just me? I don't mean apocalypse because that is obviously broken, but Ru specifically in context of the design of the piety tiers.

Why do you get apocalypse at 5* and not 6* ? What is the point? Why would I ever take that last sacrifice, ever? Shouldn't the capstone ability be earned, at the capstone? As it is, you get a ridiculously broken ability for 5* and absolutely nothing comes after that, so Ru is a broken 5* god. This seems to me like just a gross oversight, or is there some hidden reasoning here?

Suggestion: Make apocalypse an actual capstone ability, and while we are at it, reduce the blast radius to something like 3 squares max (circular). It will still be absurdly powerful, but using it as your only source of killdudes would be a lot riskier.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Ru is not an OP god and even if it was, there is nothing wrong with having OP gods (see Trog, Fedhas etc.)

[crawlnoob]

Whether or not you think apocalypse is OP or not (its pretty much a win-button with only a restriction on the immediate rate you can mash it), the main question is why do you get it at 5* and what is the point of Ru continuing to offer you sacrifices afterwards when you have nothing to gain for taking them.

Ru feels you are powerful enough to make another sacrifice. You may:
Chop off your foot.
Chop off your arm.
Give up allies, friends, and loved ones for eternity.

Ru offers you : will clear sacrifice spam from the Abilities screen and never bother you again.

[Shtopit]

Your aura is stronger at max piety. Not a dramatic change, but it is there. Putting the best ability as a capstone to your last sacrifice would make sense, though.

[crawlnoob]

Ahh, I knew there had to be something.. but yeah, that is not very apparent is it.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Apocalypse becomes stronger at 6* too.

  Code:

Number of dice is 4 (+mute or paralysis) or 6 (+slow) or 8. Size of each die is 16.0 at min piety and 21.0 at max piety.

[crawlnoob]

Ah-hah.. I wonder what the dice difference is between 5* and 6*, and why do they even mention min-piety or do they mean the earliest piety you can get the ability at? For that matter, does the game tell you if you hit the natural piety cap/automatically cap piety the moment you hit 6*, or can you for example take a moderate vs a significant sacrifice, both of which get you to 6*, but the latter is at a higher internal level for that range?

Edit: The badwiki says piety caps the moment you hit 6*, so it seems like you don't necessarily get anything for taking a larger sacrifice, just need to hit the cap to max your abilities. Would be nice to know this without having to look up the god online. For example, a disclaimer any time at least one sacrifice is offered that can get you to 6*.

[CanOfWorms]

the game specifically tries to pick sacrifices to avoid overflowing 6* too much.

[Lasty]

Piety increases the power of literally every Ru ability, so 6* piety is significantly more power than 5* piety. That said, I think there are probably players and characters such that it might make sense to choose to stop your Ru awakening at a certain point.

As CanOfWorms said, Ru doesn't offer sacrifices that would waste more than a small amount of piety.

Most gods get their ultimate abilities at 5*, so in this respect Ru is similar to other gods.

Edit: More specifically, for each Ru power you gain about 25% power by going from 5* to 6*: chance stop enemy attack, chance to redirect enemy attack, chance to apply status to attacker and level of status applied, hp and mp restored by draw out power, damage dealt by power leap, damage dealt by apocalypse. Damage dealt by power leap and apocalypse also scale with character XL.

[nago]

I'd say that many other gods have the 'opaque' effect of increasing the strength of (some) of their powers according the piety level, e.g. Trog's BIA, Zin mut\hell effects protection, Dith's shadow mimic\smoke and so on, therefore the *5 capstone is kinda misleading, there's much to gain until 200 piety for many of them

[duvessa]

Piety increases the power of literally every Ru ability, so 6* piety is significantly more power than 5* piety.

As CanOfWorms said, Ru doesn't offer sacrifices that would waste more than a small amount of piety.

And as this thread shows, none of these things are communicated clearly to the player.

Most gods get their ultimate abilities at 5*, so in this respect Ru is similar to other gods.

I'm tempted to call this a false equivalence, since Ru piety gain is completely different from any other god's piety gain, and you can't lose Ru piety unless you abandon Ru.
Apocalypse should probably move to 6*.

[Lasty]

  Code:

# Ru
Draw Out Power ability

Taps into your inner power to restore health and magic, as well as freeing your
body and mind from external constraints, including nets, webs, constriction,
petrification, slowness, and confusion. The amount of health and magic restored
increases with piety.
%%%%
Power Leap ability

Performs an incredibly fast leap to a targeted location, causing an explosion
upon landing which damages all adjacent foes. The amount of damage done
increases with your piety and experience level.
%%%%
Apocalypse ability

Reveals Ru's truth to your enemies, dealing severe damage to all enemies in
your line of sight. Affected creatures may be paralyzed, slowed or have their
magic drained. The damage dealt increases with your piety and experience level.

I suppose specifically the * and ** passives don't have descriptions of their own and do not say this. Perhaps something to the effect of "all powers increase with piety" could be added to the Powers description.

[njvack]

I know the text is there, but I don't actually know how to find it in-game. (OK, I spun up a character, it's in the abilities menu description mode.)

I know the UI is what it is, especially in console. It's really hard to put this stuff in a place where it won't get in players' way but is still accessible enough that they go and read it in actual practice. So, things that are communicated to the player as clearly as the UI allows may still not be communicated clearly enough that they'll get it.

Adding a power meter the abilities menu might help with this — especially communicating that power is still a thing for religions that don't use Invocations.

[Blobbo]

Having apocalypse at 5* is good because it's often hard to pick the best low-yield sacrifice to get the last pip. So being able to refuse a couple of sacrifices and not be hurting is a good thing.

[Reptisaurus]

Having apocalypse at 5* is good because it's often hard to pick the best low-yield sacrifice to get the last pip. So being able to refuse a couple of sacrifices and not be hurting is a good thing.

IMO that makes the last pip of Ru into a series of boring non-decisions. Ru becomes vastly less-interesting after 5*.

I wouldn't mind a new 5* skill that didn't suffer from exhaustion, though. I think Ru is (actually) the best designed God but is fairly terrible over-all because you can't repeatedly use skills and using one skill means you can't use the others - and Apocalypse is the best of the three in 90% of all situations, another near-non-decision.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Having apocalypse at 5* is good because it's often hard to pick the best low-yield sacrifice to get the last pip. So being able to refuse a couple of sacrifices and not be hurting is a good thing.

IMO that makes the last pip of Ru into a series of boring non-decisions. Ru becomes vastly less-interesting after 5*.

I wouldn't mind a new 5* skill that didn't suffer from exhaustion, though. I think Ru is (actually) the best designed God but is fairly terrible over-all because you can't repeatedly use skills and using one skill means you can't use the others - and Apocalypse is the best of the three in 90% of all situations, another near-non-decision.

This is what makes Ru the best IMHO, decisions actually matter, both on strategy layer (what to sacrifice) and tactical one (what to invoke in a fight). I also like that it's a bad idea to abandon the god

[Blobbo]

Having apocalypse at 5* is good because it's often hard to pick the best low-yield sacrifice to get the last pip. So being able to refuse a couple of sacrifices and not be hurting is a good thing.

IMO that makes the last pip of Ru into a series of boring non-decisions. Ru becomes vastly less-interesting after 5*.

Well I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. By the same token wouldn't all gods become totally uninteresting at 6*.

My point is that with Ru, when you're rushing for piety, you want the option to overshoot 5* and still get something for it. The last pip and the final minor sacrifices to get it is the result of being able to overshoot by a bunch and still not lose out on your sacrifice value. If the best ability was at 6* then choosing sacrifices would become a horrible game of sacrifice blackjack where you have to pick the perfect set to hit 6* but not go bust. That would be annoying IMO.

[crawlnoob]

Yeah except as mentioned in this thread, the game purposely minimizes the final sacrifices so that you will only overshoot 6* by as little as possible.

I still think Ru should get apocalypse at 6*. I also think the piety power meter is a good idea (also for other gods).

[Reptisaurus]

Having apocalypse at 5* is good because it's often hard to pick the best low-yield sacrifice to get the last pip. So being able to refuse a couple of sacrifices and not be hurting is a good thing.

IMO that makes the last pip of Ru into a series of boring non-decisions. Ru becomes vastly less-interesting after 5*.

I wouldn't mind a new 5* skill that didn't suffer from exhaustion, though. I think Ru is (actually) the best designed God but is fairly terrible over-all because you can't repeatedly use skills and using one skill means you can't use the others - and Apocalypse is the best of the three in 90% of all situations, another near-non-decision.

This is what makes Ru the best IMHO, decisions actually matter, both on strategy layer (what to sacrifice) and tactical one (what to invoke in a fight). I also like that it's a bad idea to abandon the god

Except that usually you invoke Apocalypse, because invoking something else can kill you because invoking something else means you can't use Apocalypse if you need to clear the screen.

[Lasty]

[quote="Blobbo"]Having apocalypse at 5* is good because it's often hard to pick the best low-yield sacrifice to get the last pip. So being able to refuse a couple of sacrifices and not be hurting is a good thing.

IMO that makes the last pip of Ru into a series of boring non-decisions. Ru becomes vastly less-interesting after 5*.

I wouldn't mind a new 5* skill that didn't suffer from exhaustion, though. I think Ru is (actually) the best designed God but is fairly terrible over-all because you can't repeatedly use skills and using one skill means you can't use the others - and Apocalypse is the best of the three in 90% of all situations, another near-non-decision.

This is what makes Ru the best IMHO, decisions actually matter, both on strategy layer (what to sacrifice) and tactical one (what to invoke in a fight). I also like that it's a bad idea to abandon the god

Except that usually you invoke Apocalypse, because invoking something else can kill you because invoking something else means you can't use Apocalypse if you need to clear the screen.[/quote]Keep in mind that the exhaust timers for the different abilities are different. Using draw out power only locks you out of Ru actives for a short time, but apocalypse locks you out for a very long time. The calculation is whether using one of the lesser powers can get you out of trouble to a sufficient degree that you can get away with less drain and shorter exhaustion.

[Siegurt]

Keep in mind that the exhaust timers for the different abilities are different. Using draw out power only locks you out of Ru actives for a short time, but apocalypse locks you out for a very long time. The calculation is whether using one of the lesser powers can get you out of trouble to a sufficient degree that you can get away with less drain and shorter exhaustion.

It would be nice if there was an obvious exhaustion timer associated with each ability, presently you just kind of have to guess based on past experience and Ru's draining penalty discourages experimentation for checking timer lengths.

Even a simple bar so you could say "apocalypse exhausts you twice as long as power leap" would be helpful.

[Blobbo]

Keep in mind that the exhaust timers for the different abilities are different. Using draw out power only locks you out of Ru actives for a short time, but apocalypse locks you out for a very long time. The calculation is whether using one of the lesser powers can get you out of trouble to a sufficient degree that you can get away with less drain and shorter exhaustion.

Ok I seriously thought all Exh from all sources had the same duration and same effect. Learn more spoilery stuff every day I guess.

[Fingolfin]

Even a simple bar so you could say "apocalypse exhausts you twice as long as power leap" would be helpful.

Or maybe a colour code, like drain and contam.

[Shard1697]

I would love to have concrete numbers for things instead of more sources of ambiguity leading me to make conclusions that I find out are wrong 2 years later because someone went into the source code

[crawlnoob]

The correct answer is to always hit apocalypse and just put all your skill points into fighting

[Siegurt]

I would love to have concrete numbers for things instead of more sources of ambiguity leading me to make conclusions that I find out are wrong 2 years later because someone went into the source code

Yes, I think a literal number would be my first choice, an abstraction like a bar, my second choice, a changing colored status light as an abstraction my third choice, and no information at all my last choice.