Proposal: Add a spell enhancer to Statue Form

[tasonir]

Recommended proposal: Add the archmagi effect, general purpose spell enhancer to statue form.
Weaker proposal: Add an earth enhancer to statue form, the same as wielding a staff of earth.

Reasoning: Statue form's slow is offset for melee characters (and I believe it also applies to ranged weapons) by a 50% increase in damage, or a different and much better damage formula for UC. However, no compensation is given to spells, and so despite the form not penalizing spell success at all, it's absolutely stupid to imagine some conjurer picking up statue form so they could hit monsters with IMB's, bolts of fire, etc. Spell casting would take 1.5 turns, deal the same damage, and you've sunk a great deal of experience into transmutations/earth magic. Gaining AC isn't enough to offset these severe drawbacks.

With the spell enhancer, you now have increased damage so that your damage per aut remains somewhat closer to what it was before (I don't believe one enhancer will fully negate 150% casting time, but it's something). You may be able to save mana by killing things in fewer casts. This will probably NOT make statue form appealing to most casters, but it could become a niche build primarily among casters who already have earth magic. For this reason, the two options, archmagi vs earth enhancer, isn't that much of a difference. I would prefer it to enhance all magic since it slows all magic, but I don't imagine many pure conjurations/fire type casters who have 0 earth magic are going to want to devote the experience into learning statue form.

In short, statue form is the "slow but powerful attacks with raised AC" form for melee, but for casters it's simply "slow, regular strength attacks with raised AC" and the latter is not compelling or useful. By adding a spell enhancer, casters can also be included in "Slow but powerful attacks with raised AC" and you may see more build diversity for casters, although possibly only in earth elementalists.

If someone knows the technical details about how much damage one enhancer adds, if adding two is likely still less than 50% damage, etc, please add some details about that. I know it varies a lot by spell, and of course if you hit the cap it doesn't do anything after that. My intention is that statue form should increase damage by roughly 50% similar to weapons, when you have not yet hit the spellpower cap (which would not change).

[duvessa]

Each enhancer is +50% pre-stepdown spell power. So it only corresponds to +50% actual spell power if your final spell power is 50 or less. Furthermore, +50% spell power does not correspond to +50% conjuration damage, although at high power it's usually close. So you're not going to get anything like the melee damage multiplier without adding more weird special cases (and the melee damage multiplier is a pretty weird thing already). On the other hand, conjurations are theoretically meaningfully limited by MP so it's reasonable to say one regular enhancer is enough. It does sound better than current statue form to me.

Also the damage multiplier should really apply to missiles.

[eliotn]

Statue form is already compelling enough to casters. Adding archmagi would make it too strong. Although I could see the rationale for adding an earth enchancer, and I don't think thats problematic.

[XuaXua]

Isn't casting in Statue Form the same as casting unarmoured, meaning any penalty for armour worn would no longer apply? Isn't that enough, or do transmutes tend to avoid hindering armour?

[duvessa]

You can also remove the penalty for armour worn by wearing a robe, which has the advantage of not requiring casting a level 6 spell that fucking slows you.

[tasonir]

Alright, if each enhancer is 50%, then just one enhancer is best. You'll get much less on higher powered spells after stepdowns, but I'd rather the player just have to deal with that than make anything special cased or complicated.

Statue form melds your body armor, so nothing about it applies, penalties or benefits. But casters tend to just not wear anything that would have penalties in the first place, so I don't think this is a major consideration. You get more ac, but that's the point of investing all the experience into a level 6 dual school spell. You also lose access to armor egos, which include some very powerful ones like robes of archmagi/resistance. Obviously if statue form had archmagi then you're making that one up

It's my intention and my best estimation that this would make statue form casters viable as an alternative, but probably still weaker than simply not learning statue form. You'd be gaining AC and possibly saving mana in exchange for 50% slow which would cause monsters to double act fairly often. If you count the experience investment, it's probably a loss. But it might be attractive to people who already have earth magic, or who picked up irradiate because why not it's a new spell let's cast irradiate.

[XuaXua]

You also lose access to armor egos, which include some very powerful ones like robes of archmagi/resistance. Obviously if statue form had archmagi then you're making that one up

I'm not quite sure why armour needs to meld into the form anyway. Why not let them stack? Or at least leave the robes on.

[Lasty]

Characters that use statue form and then go melee things generally have to (or should) move around, and thus experience the move speed penalty. Conjurer/blaster types and ranged-weapon users significantly smaller need for positioning, and thus already get to dodge some of the statue form penalties. As such, I don't think they need extra bonuses from the form. I also don't think it's necessary for any forms to be equally useful to all characters.

[KoboldLord]

Characters that use statue form and then go melee things generally have to (or should) move around, and thus experience the move speed penalty. Conjurer/blaster types and ranged-weapon users significantly smaller need for positioning, and thus already get to dodge some of the statue form penalties. As such, I don't think they need extra bonuses from the form. I also don't think it's necessary for any forms to be equally useful to all characters.

Statue Form does not give a move speed penalty. It gives an everything speed penalty. It isn't a matter of Statue Form not being as good for ranged characters, it's a matter of it not being abjectly and horribly worse than useless for those characters in absolutely all circumstances.

It is pretty counter-intuitive that Statue Form is a strict downgrade to a non-hybridized earth elementalist. This is a frequent point of confusion that I've observed among new players who are playing earth elementalists and thinking that earth elementalists should be wanting to pick up other earth magic spells. Statue Form is, in fact, currently suitable only for melee hybrids.

[tasonir]

Characters that use statue form and then go melee things generally have to (or should) move around, and thus experience the move speed penalty. Conjurer/blaster types and ranged-weapon users significantly smaller need for positioning, and thus already get to dodge some of the statue form penalties. As such, I don't think they need extra bonuses from the form. I also don't think it's necessary for any forms to be equally useful to all characters.

It's true that it doesn't need to be equally useful for everyone, but if there is a way to make it useful for more types of characters with minimal side effects, I'd say it's worth making it more broadly useful. This does have a slight side effect that it'd raise spellpower on buffs cast by melee statue formers, but they're still paying 1.5 turns to do so, and I don't think the power creep is that high. Using the "earth enhancer only" version would limit the buff to basically recasting statue form, as well.

My analysis is that if we set statue form's usefulness to a transmuter as a 10 of 10, then statue form's usefulness to a earth elementalist is somewhere around a 2 of 10. It's not even close. Adding a spell enhancer would make it something like a 5 out of 10. Still not as good, but maybe it wouldn't be terrible.

It seems like you're suggesting that statue form is better for casters/ranged because they don't have to move? I would think the 2/3 damage on their attacks (per aut) would overshadow that, but I suppose it may vary on circumstances.

[crate]

fwiw the last time I actually used statue form on a winning character I'm pretty sure it was an EE, and in fact I think the spell is actually better (especially in the past, when it cared about earth skill instead of spellpower) for EE than for Tm types.

[tasonir]

Alright, so it appears there's some divide here I wasn't expecting. Correct me if I'm misinterpreting things, but it appears KL, duvessa and I think statue form is bad for pure EE's, where as lasty thinks it may be good (I'm not clear on how good you think it is) and crate thinks it's better than for TM's (which is saying a lot, imho). What's the reason for the divide? Duvessa/crate are both very good at this game and usually agree, so am I missing something?

Can you link me a morgue of an EE where you used statue form? I checked all the EE's on the crate account, and none of them did use it. I realize you tend to quit characters early and have other accounts though, so it's probably just not on the list. I also only checked characters who started as literal EE's, so it could have been a different background that picked up earth magic. Did that character use it frequently, or was it a niche case (ie, you used it for rElec vs nikola, rTorment, etc)?

[duvessa]

I do agree with crate here.

[crate]

oh it wasn't actually an opee, it was an opwz that basically was an opee, oops
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/crate ... 223218.txt

For tm statue form has the problem of not being better offensively than dragon form (or, really, usually blade hands) and requiring at least as much investment as dragon form, plus it requires finding an additional spell (stoneskin) to be useful. Admittedly I haven't used it since the enormous buffs it got not too long ago but it still seems to fit better as "well let's melee dudes with this EE" than as a tm spell, since tm still generally has other, better options. (EE doesn't.)

[tasonir]

I'm not sure I'd call that an OpEE, to be honest. I don't want to sound hostile, but for the sake of argument, you started casting statue form in the level 13-15 'bucket' on the action table. Looking at the level 16+ range, as the first bucket we know you had statue form online for the whole bucket, you attacked with a demon blade 7413 times, and cast magic dart 13 times, alistair's intoxication once, poisonous cloud 157 times, and iron shot 95 times. So there's certainly some magic in there, but I'd argue you were a good 85% or more melee. Cloud spells are always useful support, and having a ranged secondary option is also great...But you were melee.

Also Op's are a fairly special case where statue form/Ozo's armor makes sense in a lot of cases due to not having armor as an alternative.

[duvessa]

I'm not sure I'd call that an OpEE, to be honest. I don't want to sound hostile, but for the sake of argument, you started casting statue form in the level 13-15 'bucket' on the action table. Looking at the level 16+ range, as the first bucket we know you had statue form online for the whole bucket, you attacked with a demon blade 7413 times, and cast magic dart 13 times, alistair's intoxication once, poisonous cloud 157 times, and iron shot 95 times. So there's certainly some magic in there, but I'd argue you were a good 85% or more melee. Cloud spells are always useful support, and having a ranged secondary option is also great...But you were melee.

I'm really confused as to what your point is here. Statue form makes more sense for earth dudes than tm dudes because they get more ac, don't have to invest as much, don't start with multiple better melee spells, etc. What does the number of times he cast iron shot have to do with it?

[crate]

did you know that most monsters in crawl are not dangerous?

[tasonir]

You can also remove the penalty for armour worn by wearing a robe, which has the advantage of not requiring casting a level 6 spell that fucking slows you.

I do agree with crate here.

The way I interpreted the first quote made it seem like you didn't, my mistake. So for either of you, what kind of caster would you take statue form on? EE's only, general casters? Any race that can use armor (not Op, EE's, to a lesser extent the small/large races)? If you were using statue form, would you be casting spells like stone arrow/iron shot/any cloud or would you be hitting in melee/other thing? It seems to me like once crate got statue form online on that OpWz, he ceased being a caster and went melee + support magic.

did you know that most monsters in crawl are not dangerous?

Yes

Edit: So I take it you mean to imply that you think statue form is more useful for EE's than it is for TM's because EE's can use it to kill popcorn with a weapon even though it's not suitable for dangerous fights? Statue form's primary use is popcorn? And if that's what it's best used for, wouldn't adding a spell enhancer open up the possibility of using it for actual fights?

[duvessa]

You can also remove the penalty for armour worn by wearing a robe, which has the advantage of not requiring casting a level 6 spell that fucking slows you.

I do agree with crate here.

The way I interpreted the first quote made it seem like you didn't, my mistake. So for either of you, what kind of caster would you take statue form on? EE's only, general casters?

One that melees things and has better enough defenses in statue form that it's worth the investment (so...octopodes mostly, and stuff like trolls).

Any race that can use armor (not Op, EE's, to a lesser extent the small/large races)? If you were using statue form, would you be casting spells like stone arrow/iron shot/any cloud

No of course not, why would I voluntarily cut out 33% of my damage? I would be pressing arrow keys and tab. Isn't this the premise of your original post and reason for this change?

[crate]

I don't really care either way about the enhancer (probably I would suggest not adding it but my main reason there is just to keep the spell simpler).

[tasonir]

Any race that can use armor (not Op, EE's, to a lesser extent the small/large races)? If you were using statue form, would you be casting spells like stone arrow/iron shot/any cloud

No of course not, why would I voluntarily cut out 33% of my damage? I would be pressing arrow keys and tab. Isn't this the premise of your original post and reason for this change?

Yeah, I think I'm getting off topic on my own post. It shouldn't matter that caster can pick up statue form to go melee and save mana, the point is trying to encourage casters to pick up statue form and cast spells during it.

[triorph]

What if statue form was changed so that its only a movement penalty, rather than an everything penalty?

[KoboldLord]

Alright, so it appears there's some divide here I wasn't expecting. Correct me if I'm misinterpreting things, but it appears KL, duvessa and I think statue form is bad for pure EE's, where as lasty thinks it may be good (I'm not clear on how good you think it is) and crate thinks it's better than for TM's (which is saying a lot, imho). What's the reason for the divide? Duvessa/crate are both very good at this game and usually agree, so am I missing something?

You missed the very significant qualifier in my post where I specified a distinction between hybridized and non-hybridized earth elementalists. Most well-played earth elementalists will hybridize, and Statue Form performs more acceptably in circumstances that involve melee. Just don't use it with earth/conjuration spells.

I would hazard a guess that crate prefers it for earth elementalists over transmuters because earth elementalists have a high incentive to pick up melee, while transmuters already have Blade Hands for their melee needs and have more important things to spend a bunch more xp on.