I don't think there is that much of a problem—deep elves aren't overpowered, as dck points out they have clearly defined weaknesses in additon to their strengths—but even if there were, wouldn't that be a problem with DE? I mean you say this
Cinghiale wrote:So playing as Deep Elf once you get firestorm and icestorm you can spam it on everything and they die.
but your post and your proposal regards firestorm and icestorm, rather than Deep Elf. Usually if a certain strategy or spell ends up being too strong for a single, particular species, then it makes better sense for any changes to focus on that species rather than altering how that spell works for everyone.
Cinghiale wrote:I have heard that devs "dont care" about late game design, all of their decisions are based on "orb rushing" three runes with a spriggan and getting the f out, but honestly fire storm and ice storm completely ruin and break the game for anyone playing a 15 rune game, at least for those playing magical characters.
Well, what you heard is wrong, on several accounts here. I don't believe any important design decision has been based on speedruns, with spriggans or anything else, though that is one viable way to play the game. So is taking your time and getting 15 runes and clearing some ziggs. The "main" game consists of getting 3 runes then doing Zot and bringing the Orb up, exploring each level on the way down fairly thoroughly without rushing. Problems and improvements to the main game do take priority, because that's the part that *everyone* does. The fact that devs focus on that first is reasonable—and in any case it simply isn't true that they "don't care" about Pan, Hells, Tomb, etc. They care about all the game's content, including stuff like the tutorial, sprint, and zotdef. They simply have to prioritize for practical reasons.
Cinghiale wrote:It is very dissapointing to meet new, cool, esoteric enemies and bosses, read their cool descriptions about their cool powers, and then proceed to one/two shot them before they even attack or get out of your maximum range. Proposed solution: eliminate immunity piercing of these two spells.
Your solution would then simply cause the same problem you describe in *most* cases, just not all of them... I suppose sometimes you'd have to resort to something else, but I don't really think it introduces any new or interesting considerations. For the most part you'll just have to be more careful to e(x)amine everything to see if it has more than one level of resistance to the appropriate element. After you've put in the enormous experience cost associated with the storm spells, it is nice to just be able to blast everything with it. Otherwise what's the point? Fire/icestorm exist precisely in order to be exorbitant flashy spells that are overkill most of the time. Just let them be that, they have served that particular role really well for a long time. (Though there is a patch that switches out icestorm for a different spell, Glaciate, but that had nothing to do with balance, but with better differentiating the level-9 ice/conj spell from Firestorm.)
Also the fact that you talk about fire and icestorm this way but don't mention tornado is interesting. (Unless maybe you just aren't familiar with that spell?)
Cinghiale wrote:Another side issue, i've heard the reason mountain dwarfs were eliminated was because they "didn't add anything to the game" they were generic melee fighters without penalties or buffs and there was no place for them.
Again, maybe look up the reasons given at the time (search on the site or in the forums on Tavern) or ask a dev or something rather than repeating hearsay? The problem was specifically that the game had minotaurs, hill orcs, *and* mountain dwarves. Only a couple of small differences in aptitudes and other minor things distinguished mountain dwarves; ideas for how they could be changed were considered but nothing worked out, so ultimately they were cut. You might disagree, of course, but that (in a nutshell) was the reasoning, I believe.