Proposal: Qalzal should protect your allies from your clouds

[Jeremiah]

Your fire elemental is engulfed in freezing vapour (x3)!

Qalzal has an active ability that gives you allies and a passive ability that kills your allies. Seems kind of counterproductive and a bit silly. I would say it was a bug, but I can't believe it hasn't been noticed before now.

[Siegurt]

It has been noticed, and commented on in this forum, nevertheless it's good to bring up as it's own thread.

[nagdon]

Another similar problem is that the fire cloud trail of the allied fire elementals created by Elemental Force harms the player, so probably Qazlal should also protect you from the clouds of your allies.

On the other hand, clouds making most types of allies unviable is an interesting drawback of the god: my last win was an OpNe of Qazlal, who couldn't use undead allies and had to rely on Agony/Bolt of Draining/Dispel Undead to deal damage; and later when I wanted to get summonings against demons and constructs, I had to choose Haunt (low duration, summons can appear far away from the player) and Malign Gateway (the tentacle is almost unkillable). I think removing ally creation from Qazlal (or creating only allies immune to fire, cold and elec) and not protecting allies would also be a good solution. (Of course in this case probably a new ability would be neccessary.)

[Jeremiah]

Here's a suggestion: When you use the Elemental Force ability, instead of elementals being generated immediately, clouds stop being generated and friendly elementals are created instead. The ability has a duration based on Invocations; at the end of the duration, all elementals disappear or turn back into clouds

The rate of spawning of elementals would have to be toned down relative to the number of clouds created otherwise it would probably be overwhelming.

[nagdon]

Here's a suggestion: When you use the Elemental Force ability, instead of elementals being generated immediately, clouds stop being generated and friendly elementals are created instead. The ability has a duration based on Invocations; at the end of the duration, all elementals disappear or turn back into clouds

The rate of spawning of elementals would have to be toned down relative to the number of clouds created otherwise it would probably be overwhelming.

This would be a great solution! Althought it doesn't solve the problem with the flame trails of the created fire elementals; but it is relatively easy to special-case that problem away (clouds in the fire cloud trail of fire elementals summoned by Qazlal are considered to be created by the player).

I would even support making Elemental Force overwhelming in the midgame (like a weak Dragon's Call) and still useful in the lategame and making it the ***** ability of Qazlal instead of Disaster Area.

[offtopic] Disaster Area is almost uselessly random, against sane number of enemies (less than ten) Upheval is probably better as it will always hit one problematic foe and usually 1-2 others near it, against lots of popcorn (for example in Orc) it is great, but killing popcorn is also easy with other tools, and I think it is suicidal to use it against lots of strong enemies (for example Vaults:5), because using it once or twice doesn't kill anything and lots of strong enemies will kill the player if they get more time. [/offtopic]

In this case, an ability (Expand Cloud) allowing the player to select a cloud and make it spread onto adjacent squares (this would also mark both the selected cloud and the others created from it as player-created) could be added as a new medium level active ability (with cost similar to the current cost of Elemental Force).

[Sar]

freeze cloud + poison cloud trivialized the game ... lair branches and vaults got clouded to death

What does this have to do with Qazlal?

[dck]

- auto clouds killing my battlepants was just so very irritating