Firestorm/Icestorm OP

[Cinghiale]

So playing as Deep Elf once you get firestorm and icestorm you can spam it on everything and they die. There is literally no strategy anymore and you can even squint your eyes while playing so you cant see what your blasting and youll still win. The only enemies that require a modicum of strategy are the fire themed PAN and Hell bosses and particularly annoying power of Hell spawns (two or three fiends spawning adjacent to you).

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. 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.

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. Too me that is hypocritical in regards to the deep elf, deep elfs are generic spell casters without penalties or buffs but they add a lot to the game. But that's a side issue.

[dck]

DE have the penalty of having godawful HPs and bad fighting.
The storm spells are far from op, because by the time you can even contemplate casting them you could've won already so who cares how you've decided to spend your evening?

[Sar]

Actually, Dwarves were removed because their niche (generic beefy melee) was already occupied by Minotaurs and Hill Orcs, and devs were less inclined to remove Minotaurs and Hill Orcs.

[Sandman25]

Very true, foo storm is not OP, DE of Vehumet is. If you go for foo storm with other combos, you are unlikely to have cBlink/Haste/Revivification before you win with 15 runes. My MfIE of Ash got 15 runes and Ice Storm was still at 8%, my current DsIE of Sif Muna has already 9 runes and Ice/Conjurations are still below 20.

[wizzzargh]

The storm spells are far from op, because by the time you can even contemplate casting them you could've won already so who cares how you've decided to spend your evening?

While you are absolutely correct in that Foostorm isn't overpowered in terms of winning, your response seems to be confirming Cinghiale's complaint that people

"dont care" about late game design, all of their decisions are based on three runes

. If nobody cares about the postendgame, why does it even exist?

I'm personally intrigued by the proposal to "eliminate immunity piercing of these two spells." That might help make the storms less of a cure-all offensive solution to Pan+Hell once you learn them, though Ice Storm would be even more inferior if this became the case.

[Sar]

But then you can just learn both spells because Pan has infinite XP.

[dck]

For the same reason ziggurats exist I would say.
A couple of changes have been done to post-end lately, but post-end as a whole is just much too different from the real game you see in a 3 rune game (and actively tries to make itself different from it) which is what makes it not really worth taking into as much consideration as the content of a normal 3 rune game.

[and into]

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

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.

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.

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?)

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.

[duvessa]

Well tornado and shatter are much worse at doing damage than fire/ice storm once you have them (which is good since they're easier to cast).

I don't think any of the four are that great in practice, even in extended; like several people have said, they're competing with controlled blink, the literal invincibility spell, and other things. In fact I'm tempted to say the best level 9 spell is actually shatter because of how good it is at breaking open rune vaults.
If you got rid of the irresistible damage on fire and ice storm then it would be extremely rare for me to learn them even in extended, bolt of fire/cold are level 6 and do just fine at killing things without rF/rC.

[and into]

I don't think any of the four are that great in practice, even in extended; like several people have said, they're competing with controlled blink, the literal invincibility spell, and other things. In fact I'm tempted to say the best level 9 spell is actually shatter because of how good it is at breaking open rune vaults.
If you got rid of the irresistible damage on fire and ice storm then it would be extremely rare for me to learn them even in extended, bolt of fire/cold are level 6 and do just fine at killing things without rF/rC.

I agree completely. Putting aside the quesiton of when and whether getting fire/icestorm castable is worth it, removing the irresistable component of the damage would in any case really defeat the purpose that those spells *do* have. As you imply, it would be akin to making Tornado two-school (even if damage were buffed to "compensate") or removing Shatter's ability to rearrange the dungeon dramatically.

[moocowmoocow]

Spell hunger is a weakness of level 9 spells as well. Late game branches are largely corpseless, and many mana channeling options cost nutrition. If your answer is Necromutation, that too costs huge XP investment and has its own downsides. If I'm not mistaken, fire/ice storm are also extremely loud, and that can get you in trouble as well (especially somewhere like Tomb 3).

Throughout the whole game, spellcasting can often one or two shot nearly everything you encounter. That's why there is counterbalance of large XP investment, hunger and noise.

[and into]

Throughout the whole game, spellcasting can often one or two shot nearly everything you encounter. That's why there is counterbalance of large XP investment, hunger and noise.

Yes—plus spell slots, MP cost, armor and shield penalties that can limit your defensive options (can be mitigated—but at cost of further XP investment), spell failure / miscasts, rarity of certain spells, needing to give a damn about the stat intelligence, etc. etc.

But to tie that back to OP a bit more explicitly:

The highest tier spells, because they are such a large investment and spell casting comes with a lot of drawbacks, should be very powerful, and indeed level 8 and 9 spells really need to be powerful throughout even optional content. Yes you can sometimes "rush" those spells and totally "pwn" the tail end of the usual 3-rune game content or whatever. But barring some really exceptionally lucky religion and loot combinations on the right species, you can only do that by making your character into a glass cannon, which a.) generally is a bad idea to have highest chances to win in a game with permadeath, and b.) is overkill on the offense anyway. However, overkill can be fun, so that remains an option for those who are into it, even if getting the big spells at the expense of more HP, EV, AC, and utility is generally a bad move in terms of making sure you win the game.

[moocowmoocow]

Throughout the whole game, spellcasting can often one or two shot nearly everything you encounter. That's why there is counterbalance of large XP investment, hunger and noise.

Yes—plus spell slots, MP cost, armor and shield penalties that can limit your defensive options (can be mitigated—but at cost of further XP investment), spell failure / miscasts, rarity of certain spells, needing to give a damn about the stat intelligence, etc. etc.

Haha yeah forgot about all that. Those are bigger downsides than the ones I listed I think. When I try and think about late game casting vs melee compared to early game, it seems surprisingly consistent. That's pretty good considering how much the monsters and player change.

[Cinghiale]

Well, I've beaten this game and am done with it. I have no use for games that are intentionally designed to be sleepwalked through if you have the audacity to clear all the levels or even half the levels. The idea of that being an acceptable outcome is baffling to me, but whatever :/

However, perhaps I will mention the one exception to the rule of complete, drool on my keyboard sleepwalking late game, in the hope that future devs may isolate what "worked" about the level and replicate it. I found myself extremely terrified and sorely pressed by a "Holy" themed level in PAN, in large part because I was denied necromutation. Now I was already maxed out enough to cast the storms without hunger, but my living form meant I was forced to use sif manas channeling with hunger, which quickly drained my food supplies, food supplies i didn't have a lot of because, yes, all my stat boosts went into INT not STR which meant I carried very little food. But beyond that the enemies seemed to be reinforcing each other and playing off each other very well, setting the whole environment on fire and regnerating and buffing each other synergistically. They were also strong enough and had enough resistance to fire that they were able to survive several firestorms and perhaps fully heal themselves and come back from the dead, especially considering that I didn't have the luxury of food. When you add the seraphs, holy dragons and the stars of zin that would occassionally lead attacks I was pushed back and forced to rely on potions several times, which had not happened since the deep elf level. It was a true army to fight and it took a lot of strategy to do it, in contrast to 3 of the 4 Pan lords which just...popped.

Whelp, that's it. Enjoy your 3 rune runs i guess!

[and into]

Yeah, holy pan is a pretty cool level. Ziggs are also pretty fun, if you want to give those a try. You could also attempt beating the game with other species, background, god combos, or without using spells etc.

But really, unfortunately I think someone who is so good at Crawl that they sleepwalk through the majority of it means you will have to do some self-imposed challenges to maintain interest. Balancing the game for someone with your savant-like abilities would make it nigh unplayable for the rest of us, surely.

Some ideas for difficult conducts you could impose on yourself:
1.) You mentioned something about squinting at the screen and still kicking demon butt, but did you try blindfolding yourself by any chance?
2.) "Sleepwalking" through Pan wasn't a problem, but perhaps if you were put into a medically induced coma, you'd have some difficulty with it
3.) Beat the game while clearing only half the levels (you claim this would still be trivially easy, after all). Indeed, if you manage to beat the game while clearing only half the levels while sleeping (or even just squinting tightly throughout) I think this would be widely acknowledged the greatest feat of dungeon crawling yet accomplished.

Good luck!

[duvessa]

I don't think anyone denies crawl is super easy, I just don't see what the fuck that has to do with fire storm.

[Klown]

I don't think anyone denies crawl is super easy, I just don't see what the fuck that has to do with fire storm.

*0 wins*

[Sandman25]

Other games have explicit difficulty levels, crawl has hidden difficulty levels: species, backgrounds, gods, spells, even weapons. Fire Storm is not OP at all, its cost is huge, you basically risk dying middle game but are more powerful late game, that's a strategic choice. DE is one of the easiest species (the easiest caster species actually), I stopped playing it a long time ago (except on tournament).

[Mankeli]

Now I was already maxed out

1) This is the part of your post you need to take a good look at. If you max out a character its going to be extremely powerful regardless of storm spells. Getting very good at many things is kind of a definition of "maxxxing out" This has nothing to do with the storm spells at all.

2) If you don't like the storm spells, don't fucking use them!

3) To mods: Lock thread, please!

EDIT. 4) Now that I re-read the OP's first post I have to ask: Deep down, was this just another Mountain Dwarf thread?

[galehar]

Mankeli is right on. The game isn't designed to challenge maxxed out characters. Also, the OP obviously failed to read the GDD rules. Locked.