Mines Malingerer
Posts: 32
Joined: Friday, 25th March 2011, 12:37
Tuesday, 29th March 2011, 23:05
Statue Form
This spell seems to have a bit of an identity crisis. As an unarmed-boosting transmutation, compared to using Blade Hands, you lose more item slots in exchange for AC, HP and some resists but get slowed, and your damage goes up but you swing slower so overall there's not a huge change. It has some utility when you really want the resists, but the slowness is a big drawback not shared by other forms, especially Ice Form which also gives rPois, and the spell itself is harder to cast for a Transmuter than either Ice Form or Blade Hands due to the spell level and dual school respectively. As an earth magic spell you're not getting the benefit from the increased unarmed damage so the caster's damage output goes way down unless he's focusing on unarmed combat; even though the form allows use of melee weapons it doesn't boost them at all to compensate for the slower attack speed.
What exactly is the design philosophy behind this spell? It seems overall somewhat lacklustre for forms specialists due to the strength of Blade Hands and Ice Form (which also have fewer drawbacks, though they don't give as many benefits) and the relative difficulty that pure Transmuters have in casting it. However, Earth mages are unlikely to make serious use of it as it effectively nerfs their damage in exchange for AC, a generally poor deal in a game where the most commonly given advice to new players is 'run away from stuff all the time' (though I'll admit it has some niche value for example vs. bees if you lack rPois from another source, similarly eels and rElec).
If the concept behind the spell is basically 'earth-flavoured blade hands that makes you slower' then the current design is fine, it could just probably do with being a little stronger overall, or other forms should be nerfed. If it's intended to be useful for a wider range of casters (a sort of mid-level Necromutation, I suppose) then its current implementation seems woefully lacking. Personally I think the flavour behind the spell is really cool for the same reason I like Chei as a god; intentionally making yourself slower in exchange for strength or utility is quite an interesting tradeoff (as an aside, this spell should really have amazing synergy with Chei just for flavour reasons but apart from the huge unarmed damage it doesn't really which feels like a shame).
Personally I'd like to see the spell keep its current role more or less and get boosted in overall usefulness, especially for melee hybrids. Earth magic already comes over as the 'melee friendly' or 'up close' elemental spell school (we have stoneskin which stacks with heavy armour unlike Ozocubu's, sandblast with its short range that encourages you to take a few hits, generally short range on earth conjurations compared with other schools and the highest earth apts are on deep/mountain dwarfs) so it would make sense for Statue Form to be useful for melee combatants in general rather than just unarmed fighters - this fits in with Statue Form already being one of the two forms that lets you wield melee weapons. It's also in melee range where the drawback of the spell is most obvious, since any enemy in melee range will be able to get extra attacks off on you, whereas if you kill them before they even reach you the slowness of the form isn't such a problem.
Allowing body armour and possibly all armour slots to remain unmelded would be great for hybrids using heavier armour as well as extending the spell's useful lifespan (more randart use) and could be compensated for by reducing base AC, or scaling it with body armour AC to prevent extreme AC stacking, and/or removing or nerfing the stoneskin synergy. Similarly, boosting non-unarmed melee damage while in statue form (compared to formless unarmed it adds +9 +str damage, though it's probably best compared to blade hands where it adds ~str/2) would compensate for the slowness in the same way that the heavily increased unarmed damage output is.
If the spell is still considered too weak for casters or in general then you could add an earth enhancer effect to the spell, would would again be under the concept of making you slower but stronger (your rocky form puts you in touch with the power of earth...). The negative synergy with shatter makes using this to get the spell castable earlier kind of dangerous which seems a nice already existing balance point.
Really I just want an excuse to cast this spell as an EE in more than a few extremely tight corner cases where I desperately need a particular resist, especially given the necessary investment into a second spell school. With some of the key earth/transmutation spells now being pure earth its accessibility has gone down significantly, regardless of its relative lack of use in its current implementation.
What exactly is the design philosophy behind this spell? It seems overall somewhat lacklustre for forms specialists due to the strength of Blade Hands and Ice Form (which also have fewer drawbacks, though they don't give as many benefits) and the relative difficulty that pure Transmuters have in casting it. However, Earth mages are unlikely to make serious use of it as it effectively nerfs their damage in exchange for AC, a generally poor deal in a game where the most commonly given advice to new players is 'run away from stuff all the time' (though I'll admit it has some niche value for example vs. bees if you lack rPois from another source, similarly eels and rElec).
If the concept behind the spell is basically 'earth-flavoured blade hands that makes you slower' then the current design is fine, it could just probably do with being a little stronger overall, or other forms should be nerfed. If it's intended to be useful for a wider range of casters (a sort of mid-level Necromutation, I suppose) then its current implementation seems woefully lacking. Personally I think the flavour behind the spell is really cool for the same reason I like Chei as a god; intentionally making yourself slower in exchange for strength or utility is quite an interesting tradeoff (as an aside, this spell should really have amazing synergy with Chei just for flavour reasons but apart from the huge unarmed damage it doesn't really which feels like a shame).
Personally I'd like to see the spell keep its current role more or less and get boosted in overall usefulness, especially for melee hybrids. Earth magic already comes over as the 'melee friendly' or 'up close' elemental spell school (we have stoneskin which stacks with heavy armour unlike Ozocubu's, sandblast with its short range that encourages you to take a few hits, generally short range on earth conjurations compared with other schools and the highest earth apts are on deep/mountain dwarfs) so it would make sense for Statue Form to be useful for melee combatants in general rather than just unarmed fighters - this fits in with Statue Form already being one of the two forms that lets you wield melee weapons. It's also in melee range where the drawback of the spell is most obvious, since any enemy in melee range will be able to get extra attacks off on you, whereas if you kill them before they even reach you the slowness of the form isn't such a problem.
Allowing body armour and possibly all armour slots to remain unmelded would be great for hybrids using heavier armour as well as extending the spell's useful lifespan (more randart use) and could be compensated for by reducing base AC, or scaling it with body armour AC to prevent extreme AC stacking, and/or removing or nerfing the stoneskin synergy. Similarly, boosting non-unarmed melee damage while in statue form (compared to formless unarmed it adds +9 +str damage, though it's probably best compared to blade hands where it adds ~str/2) would compensate for the slowness in the same way that the heavily increased unarmed damage output is.
If the spell is still considered too weak for casters or in general then you could add an earth enhancer effect to the spell, would would again be under the concept of making you slower but stronger (your rocky form puts you in touch with the power of earth...). The negative synergy with shatter makes using this to get the spell castable earlier kind of dangerous which seems a nice already existing balance point.
Really I just want an excuse to cast this spell as an EE in more than a few extremely tight corner cases where I desperately need a particular resist, especially given the necessary investment into a second spell school. With some of the key earth/transmutation spells now being pure earth its accessibility has gone down significantly, regardless of its relative lack of use in its current implementation.