vt wrote:Regarding giving whirlwind an EV bonus: seems to me the game already asks you to trade off improved offense vs improved defense in many places (shields, harm, spells vs armour, casting in armour vs archmagi). I think it would be good if something were said about about how this proposal does something interestingly new.
I am having trouble articulating this to my satisfaction, but I also suspect this sort of decision makes more sense as part of long-term character-building than as part of turn-by-turn tactical decision making. It's easy to get a "feel" for the difference between wearing robes and wearing plate. OTOH I suspect the game doesn't give you enough information about monster accuracy and how it interacts with player EV to make intelligent decisions about when to make tradeoffs between EV and damage on a monster by monster basis. (Assuming the bonus is not so good you clearly always want to take it against monsters that check EV, which would effectively make it not a tactical decision. I certainly feel like *I* would be a bit at a loss; maybe I'm just being slow on the uptake.)
With the EV bonus, wu-walking around enemies would grant both increased offence and increased defence, whilst wu-walking around a single enemy would give increased defence at the cost of increased offence.
My experience with Wu is that fights are engaging and enemies keep dying but I slowly bleed health and eventually I have to disengage in a somewhat anticlimactic manner. The evasion bonus would allow you to keep going a bit longer. Getting acrobat might make running away feel better, because you're "using the God power".
Aesthetically, Wu worshippers shouldn't be be standing still. That is, it should be better to to dance around than to stand in a corridor. As a player, I'll play like this regardless of whether it is optimal, unless martial attacks are completely unworkable. As such, getting bonus evasion when moving would feel (to me) like just getting a defence boost and knowing I'll lose the boost when standing still. I suspect you would still be able to use your game-feel, because standing still would feel like not worshipping Wu (as it currently does too). When you're doing martial attacks you're a proper wu worshipper, and when you're standing still you're not. You have plenty of experience of what non-wu feels like, and if you follow wu and wu gives a certain bonus, then you also know what that bonus feels like. Like with Oka you know what Heroism feels like and you also know what you feel like without divine buffs. I have very little insight in what heroism actually does to hit-chance and damage etc, but I still know what Heroism feels like.
FYI the magnitude of 15EV was based on the idea of "getting an amulet power" like some other gods give +berserk or +repel missiles