Vestibule Violator
Posts: 1653
Joined: Tuesday, 30th July 2013, 11:29
Spider form movespeed removal.
No one went for that spell in the same way they went for oldswift because not only does it have a huge price in terms of defenses by the time people who were not Tms could have it available, it also synergizes with UC which isn't a particularly popular choice of weapon skill. Furthermore, spider has always had antiwiz and that paired with the 2.5 turns going in and out of a transmutation takes just makes it not practical in any real danger situation to kite enemies in spider form; or perhaps just not practical enough that it's the better option anyway, by the time you can reliably kill through the -Wiz you could've done it without spider.
Vampires have a more boring spider form as a racial ability, felids are a race built on kiting. I believe if those two options are considered acceptable then spider should also be, because it wasn't a escape option strong enough that people who were not Tm would actually get it "just in case" (this is mostly because escape options are very cheap and plentiful in crawl) and for Tm it was a legitimately useful spell that could be used to wear down plenty of threats.
What's worse, the new spider form heavily encourages kiting for Tm because you still have huge evasion and poisonous UC; while with old spider you could just roll your ev and hit things to see if you got lucky and then if you got hit just crabwalk away using your movespeed, new one makes you want to make the best out of your poison by applying it then walking away immediately, since if you do get hit you can't just waltz out of danger.
The removal commit mentioned swiftness briefly and the change swiftness saw was an overwhelming improvement indeed, but the change to spider form missed the point of the spell, which is sad because it was a pretty cool spell with interesting drawbacks that still managed to feel strong.
Mind you, that's another thing about magic. It's supposed to do something and open up possibilities, this sounds not very relevant but I think spells the player casts should be important enough that it doesn't amount to just "getting your buffs up" for a percentual increase in efficiency. This change makes the spell blander and removes a lot of the impact from using it or having it available at all.
- For this message the author dck has received thanks: 6
- Arrhythmia, asdu, Cheibrodos, earLOBe, rockygargoyle, tedric