Rings of Ice and Fire

[XuaXua]

The descriptive text reads:

"He or she gains resistance to X and can use X magic more effectively..."

Which, to me, means cast them more successfully as well as enhance power.

I put on a ring of ice and my success rate with summon ice beast doesn't change, but the power level does.

I think if increasing power is the goal of these rings, then the text should be changed to better reflect this. I do not have an alternative text suggestion.

Discuss.

[twelwe]

"He or she gains resistance to X and can use X magic with more intensity..."

[snow]

I think most players just use them to swap for resistances because every time someone posts a CIP of a fire elementalist with a ring of fire on the first reply is always "take off that ring." The same goes for ice elementalists and a ring of ice. Very few actually try using it for the boosts and it usually gets them killed.

[JeffQyzt]

Hrm...if you wear one ring of fire + one ring of ice, do they exactly cancel, or is there a net benefit or malus?

[banei]

Wearing both cancels each other since the malus is both tothe resistance and the power of the opposite school. I think they should atleast give 2 levels of resistance to make up for the maluses.

[Galefury]

Wearing both cancels each other since the malus is both tothe resistance and the power of the opposite school. I think they should atleast give 2 levels of resistance to make up for the maluses.

Why? IMO they are fine as they are.

[tormodpwns]

Yeah, 2 pips of resistance makes them into a mini dragon armour. They're not particularly useful rings in my opinion, maybe remove them? They were interesting in 0.9 and earlier at least because wearing one unidentified came with the risk of taking extra damage from orc wizard puffs of frost/flame. But now that they auto-ID it's hardly interesting, except as a vanilla ring of protection from fire/cold that you can't wear at all times.

[greepish]

Or why not actually have them do what the text reads :/ Higher success rates is usually far superior to spellpower.

[XuaXua]

How about enhance both success and spellpower (at worst, spellpower to a lesser extent than currently).

[o_O]

If they improved both success and power it might be worth actually wearing them to get high powered spells castable earlier, balanced by the terribleness of rF- or rC-

[dpeg]

Those rings used to enchance both power and success, were considered too strong and thus nerfed. Since power is a conjurer's bread and butter, the rings are still useful. You cannot have too much power.

[KoboldLord]

When evaluating the value of a ring of fire or ice for your character, keep in mind that a spell power booster is really really good at what it does. If you're playing the appropriately-flavored conjurations caster, one of these rings will give you a massive boost in damage output. Imagine a +0/+8 ring of slaying before the slaying nerf, only for your magic.

The reason players are skittish about these rings entirely falls on the rC- or rF-. Unmitigated vulnerability is really, really bad as a consequence of the design decisions in the game. Monster power is designed such that any given character can plausibly be killed in two or three hits from a dangerous monster at any point in the game unless the player proactively handles the threat. A simple level of rC+ or rF+ doubles that to four to six hits from out-of-depth threats, which is much more manageable, but with vulnerability it is entirely plausible that you could die in one hit from the edge of LOS.

Once you've got a level of resistance to compensate for that vulnerability, there's absolutely no reason not to take advantage of your spell power booster. The rings don't really need any more of a carrot as long as that boost exists, although of course they're only ever going to be appealing to a fairly narrow subset of characters, which is conjurations-focused casters that didn't go earth or air magic.

[snow]

Spell power doesn't even matter. If you have enough skill to cast the spell reliably then your spell power is high enough as it is. Why waste a ring slot on a ring of ice when you could instead wear... well, anything else?

[KoboldLord]

Spell power doesn't even matter. If you have enough skill to cast the spell reliably then your spell power is high enough as it is. Why waste a ring slot on a ring of ice when you could instead wear... well, anything else?

No, this is preposterous. Killing a threat in one hit is preferable to killing it in two hits, because there's likely to be more threats around for you to kill after you've finished off that one. Being able to burn down a hydra as it approaches is very much preferable to damaging it as it approaches, and then trying to get some distance again so you can finish it off without getting chewed up. If you are playing an elemental conjuror, 'just enough to get to excellent' is nowhere near enough skill to be satisfied with your primary damage skill, with any spell except Freezing or Poisonous Cloud.

[greepish]

I think the resist drops are actually a major problem. These rings are fairly useless for end-game, since only spell success tends to matter once you get 8/9 level spells, and in the mid-game you can't cover resist weaknesses well. Maybe if there were a ring of earth or conjuration I'd use them for killing Orbs of fire or something, but there isn't.

[njvack]

only spell success tends to matter once you get 8/9 level spells

This is just not true -- spell power enhancers help a lot, even with maxed spellcasting, spell school skills, and oodles of int. You need at least one or two to cast at the power cap. I don't think you see benefit past three. The available enhancers are rings of fire/ice, staves, robes of the archmagi, and Vehumet.

Remember: spell power hashmark display is logarithmic, not linear -- being two hashes down is actually quite a lot of power down. More power improves both kills/turn and kills/MP.

[greepish]

Spell power past 100 is a milestone not too hard to get by rune-pickup time, so an end-game ring only improves damage by +12.5%. I suppose a fair amount, but I'd stick to nuking elemental resistants with iron bolt and IOOD. I guess they're good for mass-fiend smashing but I don't see them as useful in a normal game.

[njvack]

Spell power past 100 is a milestone not too hard to get by rune-pickup time, so an end-game ring only improves damage by +12.5%. I suppose a fair amount, but I'd stick to nuking elemental resistants with iron bolt and IOOD. I guess they're good for mass-fiend smashing but I don't see them as useful in a normal game.

Even with non-resistant enemies, 12% damage can be the difference between "drac caller almost dead after one cast" and "drac caller dead after one cast." And you may have plenty of the opposing resistance way earlier than rune-pickup time -- fire dragon armour and a ring of ice seem like pretty reasonable, attainable gear for an IE.

Really, the oddest thing IMO is that elemental staves don't have a similar drawback.

[greepish]

If you don't care about the power boost past 100 from the ring then you shouldn't care about getting that 100 power from skills in the first place.

But that's the point I'm making, rings are hard to use before that point due to the resist annoyance. They would be most useful by mid-game, but you won't have raided all the vaults that actually give you resists.

[snow]

Having tested this extensively in both serious games and wizard mode I can safely say spell power doesn't matter much. Spell success is far more important and once your spell success is high your spell power should also be high. By the time you can safely manage the negative resistances from the rings all of your spell powers should be capped except for maybe bolt of fire and fire storm... and at that point the bonuses from the rings aren't ever the difference between killing something in one or two shots.

There's a reason very few people use the rings. They just aren't worth the ring slot.

[KoboldLord]

Huh. That's odd. My own experiences suggest that for a character based around direct damage conjurations, the spell enhancer from a staff or robes of the archmagi make those two sorts of equipment extremely desirable, and possibly the most desirable standard piece of equipment in the game for those slots. Rings of fire or ice are less desirable, but that's partially because a level of vulnerability is a fairly serious drawback to work around, and partially because they're fighting for a slot with abusively overpowered monsters like teleport control. On a late-game octopode, for example, they're well worth equipping once you've worked around the vulnerability.

I have to confess that my own experiences are leading me to be skeptical as to the comprehensivity of your extensive tests in both serious games and wizard mode. Every single time I've used spell enhancer equipment, I've been more than satisfied with the degree to which my opponents start dying to it, and I have to assume that a truly thorough test on your part would catch the effect that is, to me, plain as day. Particularly when you also make the balls-to-the-wall crazy assertion that training spell skills for direct damage spells isn't important either.

[snow]

Well let's say you're playing an ice elementalist and plan on going into conjurations. By the time you have throw icicle at excellent you're able to kill almost anything in the game if a few hits and those slots should instead be devoted to MR or resistances instead of doing, say, 15% more damage. For a weapon I usually go for an extra resistance... staff of air is nice for the relec. Though to be fair with a spriggan I'd just use whatever good artifact weapon I find and a buckler.

Give me a second and I can give exact numbers in wizard mode. I haven't tested since I confirmed a while ago that enhancers not worth it in the least.

[snow]

Alright I did a quick in wizard mode as a level 15 deep elf wizard with all skills at 15 with throw icicle:

damage without the ring: 22,15,22,16,13
damage with the ring: 10, 32, 22, 16, 11

At that point I realized that the difference is so marginal I'd have to do a few hundred casts to show any noticeable difference at all and really I don't feel like it but if you want to then go for it.

Just cast spells targeting yourself and record the damage. 15% more damage isn't really noticeable considering how random the hits are.

These aren't crazy assertions. I try to win... and anything that would give me the slightest edge would be worth the effort to me. I've tested spells extensively in wizard mode and I have a general feel of most spells having won quite a few casters. So please don't act like I'm just pulling this out of my ass and making things up when I say spell power doesn't mean anything.

As a final note most spells have a base damage and damage based on spell power. Increasing spell power by 40% or 50% doesn't cause an increase in damage by 40% or 50% but actually a much smaller percentage. I can see where your confusion can come from but try actually looking at the formulas or hell hit yourself with a few spells and record the damage. Note that psychology plays a big role in "noticing the damage" while in an actual game. People tend to see what the want to see which I'm sure is the case in your situation.

If you think I'm wrong it'd be easy to prove... just make a chart of your damage with various spell power. I think after you do the research you'd agree with me though.

[galehar]

Alright I did a quick in wizard mode as a level 15 deep elf wizard with all skills at 15 with throw icicle:

damage without the ring: 22,15,22,16,13
damage with the ring: 10, 32, 22, 16, 11

The only thing that proves is that damage as too much variance to be able to tell anything by looking at the damage value of a handful of tests.

As a final note most spells have a base damage and damage based on spell power.

This isn't how it works.

try actually looking at the formulas

You should really do that yourself before suggesting other people to do it.

just make a chart of your damage with various spell power.

You might have learned something doing this yourself. It's very easy to do in debug mode. Let's consider a hypothetical DEFE at XL 15, with 27 int, 10 spellcasting, 15 fire and 15 conj.
He's firing bolt of fire at pow 72 for 6d11 damage (average: 36). With an enhancer, power is boosted by 32% to 95 which results in 6d13 damage (average 42, 16.6% increase). That's pretty good. Let's try a second enhancer. Power reaches 115 (+60%), damage is 6d16 (average 51, +41.6%).
And don't forget that increased power also means better accuracy.

[snow]

That is how it works though... looking at the exact formula's there's some base damage even at 0 power. And our tests are about the same... you have a 16% increase in damage which is in the same ballpark as my 15% estimate. I didn't try two enhancers though. Do they really stack that well? If they do then you can count me as mistaken... I didn't realize two enhancers could give 41% more damage which is rather amazing.

When I'm wrong I'll admit it as it's always nice to learn something new. I'm going to test multiple enhancers in wizard mode now.