Don't Nerf Powered by Death (too hard)

[byrel]

In the Abyss thread, Lasty mentioned his intent to nerf powered by death. In another recent thread, there was a consensus that it fit better as a top-tier facet than current.

While I personally agree it's a bit too strong, I want to urge caution; it's a facet that feels very fun and powerful, but in the end leaves you very weak to tough encounters where you can't just kill chaff for health. Directly nerfing it might remove the fun, rather than making you pay a cost for that fun. Perhaps simply raising it a tier (and maybe dropping the black mark ability to replace it as suggested in the other thread) would be enough to justify it's power? I don't think it's dramatically stronger than hellfire. (Anecdotally, my sole PbD Ds died in the abyss... it's not hard to get overwhelmed and PbD is removed by no regen mutation.)

Also from the other thread:

pbd isn't even good

Could you elaborate? It feels quite good to me, both decreasing the amount of HP you lose in long engagements and reducing time between combats, which increases effective piety gain.

[Wahaha]

PBD is decent to good; I don't think it's better than other good DS muts. PBD is very useful in V:5 and Abyss but not that much in other places. In other places, if you're playing well, you walk away from situations where PBD might be useful. Pull and fight monsters 1 at a time, split packs with stairs, etc. PBD is not useful when doing this.

[neil]

PBD is decent to good; I don't think it's better than other good DS muts. PBD is very useful in V:5 and Abyss but not that much in other places. In other places, if you're playing well, you walk away from situations where PBD might be useful. Pull and fight monsters 1 at a time, split packs with stairs, etc. PBD is not useful when doing this.

Even if you're fighting things one-on-one, I would expect it to reduce the amount of time you need to spend resting up between monsters.

Do you feel the same way about Makhleb's healing-on-kills (for non-DD)?

[Wahaha]

Yes, it's great for reducing the amount of time spent resting, this makes the game more enjoyable and faster (in real time). It also lets me play "suboptimally" by tabbing large groups of monsters without needing to split them, rest, etc which again speeds up the game a lot. My last game with PBD it reduced the real time I needed to win by maybe 1 or 2 hours.

But if we're talking about PBD's in-game power level, reducing resting time in game turns doesn't really help aside from V:5 and Abyss where you can't rest safely.

However, if the player is not managing threats properly and fighting too many monsters at a time, then PBD makes many of those fights easy instead of dangerous. Therefore PBD is pretty good for a player playing badly. It doesn't help someone playing well nearly as much.

I feel exactly the same way about Makhleb's hp from kills.

[duvessa]

PBD compares poorly to Makhleb healing because it's slow. A few HP per turn is not a big deal in combat, it's why we make fun of people who quaff curing for hp in hells or whatever. It is good for resting faster, which is good for piety decay etc. Compare it to the regeneration spell, it's barely a useful spell in combat. You can get more meaningful regeneration by killing many monsters in a row, of course, but that requires fighting many monsters in a row, which is just bad; I can only see that being helpful if you're carrying rats around with you so you can kill them all in 1 turn for regeneration, basically. So in practical terms, if you're not actively about to die anyway by fighting a bunch of dangerous stuff at once, or actively doing something that is clearly abusive (the rat thing), you have a version of the regeneration spell that is slightly better or slightly worse. Like, it's better than spiny, but I can't see why you would nerf it before nightstalker, rot, or magic shield, and I submit that it is also inferior to powered by pain, foul stench, and even demonic guardian on most characters. If you are going to change a tier 2 ds mutation, surely it should be nightstalker which downright resembles an easy mode toggle, or demonic guardian which just makes you want to quit if you have any sort of ranged attack.

Makhleb isn't good because of heal on kills. That is just one of those weird ideas perpetuated by bad players, like trolls "falling off in the mid-game" or gargoyles being the best species. He gives you pretty early summons that will kill everything up to and including Lair, and at higher piety, summons that will kill everything after Lair too. Healing on kills isn't bad, but it certainly isn't the important thing about the god, either.

The idea of scumming abyss is completely ridiculous when you can still scum lair, d, and any other place that doesn't constantly destroy your positioning.

[milski]

Healing on kills is the important thing about Makhleb because he's the god of megazigs.

[byrel]

PBD compares poorly to Makhleb healing because it's slow. A few HP per turn is not a big deal in combat, it's why we make fun of people who quaff curing for hp in hells or whatever. It is good for resting faster, which is good for piety decay etc. Compare it to the regeneration spell, it's barely a useful spell in combat. You can get more meaningful regeneration by killing many monsters in a row, of course, but that requires fighting many monsters in a row, which is just bad; I can only see that being helpful if you're carrying rats around with you so you can kill them all in 1 turn for regeneration, basically. So in practical terms, if you're not actively about to die anyway by fighting a bunch of dangerous stuff at once, or actively doing something that is clearly abusive (the rat thing), you have a version of the regeneration spell that is slightly better or slightly worse. Like, it's better than spiny, but I can't see why you would nerf it before nightstalker, rot, or magic shield, and I submit that it is also inferior to powered by pain, foul stench, and even demonic guardian on most characters. If you are going to change a tier 2 ds mutation, surely it should be nightstalker which downright resembles an easy mode toggle, or demonic guardian which just makes you want to quit if you have any sort of ranged attack.

Makhleb isn't good because of heal on kills. That is just one of those weird ideas perpetuated by bad players, like trolls "falling off in the mid-game" or gargoyles being the best species. He gives you pretty early summons that will kill everything up to and including Lair, and at higher piety, summons that will kill everything after Lair too. Healing on kills isn't bad, but it certainly isn't the important thing about the god, either.

The idea of scumming abyss is completely ridiculous when you can still scum lair, d, and any other place that doesn't constantly destroy your positioning.

I don't really disagree with this synopsis, but... it sound like you're viewing things from a very single-target perspective. Wouldn't PbD be more useful with bolt spells? My single reasonably good experience with it I had OTR + ignite poison, which made orc quite trivial (it's hard for the warlord to damage you significantly when you're regenning 5-10 HP per turn from his fallen allies.) It seems that this facet would have the greatest synergy with things like disc of storms really...

[milski]

PBD compares poorly to Makhleb healing because it's slow. A few HP per turn is not a big deal in combat, it's why we make fun of people who quaff curing for hp in hells or whatever. It is good for resting faster, which is good for piety decay etc. Compare it to the regeneration spell, it's barely a useful spell in combat. You can get more meaningful regeneration by killing many monsters in a row, of course, but that requires fighting many monsters in a row, which is just bad; I can only see that being helpful if you're carrying rats around with you so you can kill them all in 1 turn for regeneration, basically. So in practical terms, if you're not actively about to die anyway by fighting a bunch of dangerous stuff at once, or actively doing something that is clearly abusive (the rat thing), you have a version of the regeneration spell that is slightly better or slightly worse. Like, it's better than spiny, but I can't see why you would nerf it before nightstalker, rot, or magic shield, and I submit that it is also inferior to powered by pain, foul stench, and even demonic guardian on most characters. If you are going to change a tier 2 ds mutation, surely it should be nightstalker which downright resembles an easy mode toggle, or demonic guardian which just makes you want to quit if you have any sort of ranged attack.

Makhleb isn't good because of heal on kills. That is just one of those weird ideas perpetuated by bad players, like trolls "falling off in the mid-game" or gargoyles being the best species. He gives you pretty early summons that will kill everything up to and including Lair, and at higher piety, summons that will kill everything after Lair too. Healing on kills isn't bad, but it certainly isn't the important thing about the god, either.

The idea of scumming abyss is completely ridiculous when you can still scum lair, d, and any other place that doesn't constantly destroy your positioning.

I don't really disagree with this synopsis, but... it sound like you're viewing things from a very single-target perspective. Wouldn't PbD be more useful with bolt spells? My single reasonably good experience with it I had OTR + ignite poison, which made orc quite trivial (it's hard for the warlord to damage you significantly when you're regenning 5-10 HP per turn from his fallen allies.) It seems that this facet would have the greatest synergy with things like disc of storms really...

Duvessa (and much of the playerbase) doesn't believe there is any situation you should be attacking multiple enemies at once. Any perspective that isn't a single target perspective is suboptimal play that should never happen.

[Siegurt]

Technically it isn't suboptimal to be attacking more than one thing at a time, it is suboptimal to be *attacked by* more than one thing at a time.

Also it is suboptimal to have more than one thing to kill, with no way to heal up in between (which could be by way of stairs, or by way of just not having more things nearby to kill)

Killing a whole bunch of things at the end of a corridor while sitting on stairs with bolt/cloud spells is great (provided none of those things smite or reach, or dig) that is just a fairly uncommon situation.

Also it isn't that suboptimal play never happens, or indeed that you must always strive to play optimally, it is that you should try to pay optimally in any *plausibly dangerous* scenario.

[njvack]

Right. There are a bunch of Crawl things that *feel* stronger than they are -- the minotaur headbutt is a good example. I think that's generally a good design spot to be. And it sounds like PbD is there to some extent.

[Lasty]

PBD compares poorly to Makhleb healing because it's slow. A few HP per turn is not a big deal in combat, it's why we make fun of people who quaff curing for hp in hells or whatever. It is good for resting faster, which is good for piety decay etc. Compare it to the regeneration spell, it's barely a useful spell in combat. You can get more meaningful regeneration by killing many monsters in a row, of course, but that requires fighting many monsters in a row, which is just bad; I can only see that being helpful if you're carrying rats around with you so you can kill them all in 1 turn for regeneration, basically. So in practical terms, if you're not actively about to die anyway by fighting a bunch of dangerous stuff at once, or actively doing something that is clearly abusive (the rat thing), you have a version of the regeneration spell that is slightly better or slightly worse. Like, it's better than spiny, but I can't see why you would nerf it before nightstalker, rot, or magic shield, and I submit that it is also inferior to powered by pain, foul stench, and even demonic guardian on most characters. If you are going to change a tier 2 ds mutation, surely it should be nightstalker which downright resembles an easy mode toggle, or demonic guardian which just makes you want to quit if you have any sort of ranged attack.

Have you tried PBD in trunk? It got changed significantly, as did demonic guardian. The latter no longer punished ranged attacks, and the former increases your per-turn healing after every kill and refreshes the per-turn healing duration. There's a hard limit of +10 hp/sec, but even a single kill can give you +3 hp/sec, and it's not hard to have +7 or more hp/sec. With that kind of regen, very few monsters in the game are even remotely threatening. This version of PbD recovers your health so fast in large combats that it's generally optimal to fight in large combats -- ideally still minimizing the attacks you receive, of course. You could have a character that's scared of a storm dragon, but which could easily take one out safely if there's enough lesser monsters around.

Right after the change went in, I played a character with PbD, and it was one of the easiest characters I've ever played; by the time I had PbD3, I wouldn't bother to split up groups and I wouldn't care if I got marked because it was virtually impossible for me to go below 75% hp as long as I was fighting things.

[le_nerd]

Indeed. Trunk PbD is an excellent reason to switch to axes, since it strongly benefits from the cleaving (you heal more damage by standing in the crowd than you get). V:5 shennanigans? Nope, just stand on staircase, mildly buffed and shop the entire level to pieces.

[duvessa]

I don't know why you think I would post about it without knowing what it does. Yes, I have tried pbd in trunk and I think your claims are nonsense. Sure it makes tactics that are normally awful less awful, but I don't think it makes them anywhere near good. I have also looked at trunk demonic guardian and I think it's pretty much still just as bad.

Right after the change went in, I played a character with PbD, and it was one of the easiest characters I've ever played; by the time I had PbD3, I wouldn't bother to split up groups and I wouldn't care if I got marked because it was virtually impossible for me to go below 75% hp as long as I was fighting things.

So... like every character with good AC at that point of the game? Sorry, but this anecdote doesn't at all convince me that pbd is good let alone overpowered. I would like to know what tier 2s you think are worse than pbd.

[Lasty]

I assumed you hadn't played it because your comments about demonic guardian appeared not to take into account the changes that allow you to shoot through them. This is the first time I've heard someone suggest that the change didn't make demonic guardian significantly less irritating, so it didn't occur to me that you knew about it. What makes it irritating now?

What I related is one anecdote; perhaps it was exceptional in some other way that I don't realize. In any case, having PbD seemed to me to make my character invincible in situations that otherwise would have been threatening, and to the best of my recollection nothing in the game was remotely challenging after I got rank 3. YMMV.

As for which tier II facets are weaker, I'd suggest Powered By Pain, Nightstalker, Spiny, Rot, and Fire. Before tier III, also ice and probably magic shield. The only other Tier II that seemed to make the game significantly easier for me to the same degree is demonic guardian, if you get facets fast enough. That's not from a theorycrafting perspective, just an experiential one.

[njvack]

As for which tier II facets are weaker, I'd suggest Powered By Pain, Nightstalker

Nightstalker? I can see the argument that it makes the game annoying to a lot of players, but smaller LOS seems really, really, really strong.

Full disclosure, I haven't played a DS in a long time.

[duvessa]

Demonic guardian change is certainly a quality of life improvement if you are a missile character but it still interferes badly with aoe spells, and it's still an allied monster in crawl which means all your actions revolve around it.

As for which tier II facets are weaker, I'd suggest Powered By Pain, Nightstalker, Spiny, Rot, and Fire. Before tier III, also ice and probably magic shield.

Pbp, spiny, fire, ice before level 3, foul stench: sure, I can see these, although I don't at all agree for pbp or foul stench. Foul stench is definitely worse if you never melee though, since that's the only time it does anything at all.

Magic shield: I find it hard to believe pbd is better than this unless you already have a guardian spirit item. At level 1 it's basically like having at least robust 1 unless you're wielding antimagic, and if you have any mp skills then it's more.

Nightstalker: What. There is only one mutation in the game that comes anywhere close to being as game-breaking as this one, fast movement. Nightstalker makes every tactical situation in the entire game safer by a huge factor, with the only downside being that a crappy spell becomes crappier (iood). It is easily better than robust by the time you reach lair, and probably much earlier too. I can think of no possible reasonable argument for nightstalker not being the best tier 2 or 3 ds mutation in the game. You can argue that scales and body slots are better because you get them earlier, but otherwise, no way.

To be clear, when I say "pbd isn't even good", I'm comparing it to other tier 2 facets. I think pbd is at or below median for tier 2 mutations on most characters (my list is pretty much nightstalker > magic shield > demonic guardian > rot > ice > pbp > pbd > fire > spiny; you can move rot down if you don't use melee, and rot and ice down if you aren't looking at all 3 levels), because that's the alternative to having pbd on a demonspawn - having some other tier 2 facet. I'm not saying pbd does nothing, or comparing it to some imaginary "ideal" power level, like when people say "-1 is a good aptitude" when it's below both average and median.
I'm also not saying tier 2 facets as a whole are balanced; if you nerfed every tier 2 facet that would be an improvement to the game, just because it would include making nightstalker less insane.

[byrel]

Have you tried PBD in trunk? It got changed significantly, as did demonic guardian. The latter no longer punished ranged attacks, and the former increases your per-turn healing after every kill and refreshes the per-turn healing duration. There's a hard limit of +10 hp/sec, but even a single kill can give you +3 hp/sec, and it's not hard to have +7 or more hp/sec. With that kind of regen, very few monsters in the game are even remotely threatening. This version of PbD recovers your health so fast in large combats that it's generally optimal to fight in large combats -- ideally still minimizing the attacks you receive, of course. You could have a character that's scared of a storm dragon, but which could easily take one out safely if there's enough lesser monsters around.

Right after the change went in, I played a character with PbD, and it was one of the easiest characters I've ever played; by the time I had PbD3, I wouldn't bother to split up groups and I wouldn't care if I got marked because it was virtually impossible for me to go below 75% hp as long as I was fighting things.

My experience was similar; so long as I'm fighting huge mobs of popcorn with reds scattered throughout, I'm fine. But PbD still doesn't keep you from getting >50% HP taken away in one shot by an ancient lich, or a couple bad melees of an emperor scorpion.

I had one long game with PbD where I ended up dying in the Abyss after clearing depths due to transient No Regen mutation, which also disables PbD. 98% of the game it felt OP, but those were mostly times that weren't threatening anyhow. On the flip side, I remember having to burn consumables in spider:4 repeatedly when I'd engage an EScorpion or a ghost moth (lethally poisoned is still a threat...) I am really not the best player; I make tactical mistakes, and things like PbD make me willfully make them. But I really felt like I was still challenged in each branch end, when the chaff started getting too dangerous for PbD to deal with, and I had to do standard tactics (draw, stairdance, etc.) where PbD is essentially useless.

To me, that's the key downside to PbD. In the safest play it gives no benefit. I think it might be a touch OP, but I don't think it is by a lot.

For shits and giggles, my tier II power list is: Nightstalker > magic shield > ice > guardian > PbD > PbP > spiny > rot > fire.
My preference list is: Nightstalker > PbD > Guardian > Magic Shield > spiny > ice > rot > fire. Because I find these are the ones that are the most fun to play with.

Edited to remove triple negative.