Lom Lobon's abilities and their consequences

[Bart]

Hello, I'd like to talk about Lom Lobon and his abilities. To start with, let's list Lom's skills:
a) Glaciate
b) Major Healing
c) Blink Range
d) Conjure Ball Lightning
e) Tornado
I find this combination very problematic. Not because of glaciate or tornado - OK, these can hurt, but Pan Lords shall be strong. The problem is in combination of Major Healing and Blink Range. Lom during combat keeps spamming these two interchangeably, making him not even dangerous, but outrageously annoying and as long as he behaves so, he's invincible. Even with very potent weapon and evokers for support it might be that Lom will just keep blinking away and healing himself. What a player can do? Skip him (steal rune) or retreat and prepare for second/third/fourth round of combat.

On the other hand, if Lom spawns on another level after stealing his rune, luring him into a dug corridor or finding a natural trap all of the sudden makes him pretty standard, though sturdy enemy. Such way of dealing with Lom seems to be more and more common practice.

Is this working as intended? I would like to see blink range removed and/or the rate at which Lom heals decreased. Maybe there should be a long timeout on these skills? In either case, I hope that fight against Lom wasn't really meant to last till heforgets for a dozen of turns about two of his skills.

[Pollen_Golem]

add dig and shatter to his spell-list

[jason0320]

What if he get shatter and fire storm? He is demon lord of magic, not demon lord of ice and air.

[Pollen_Golem]

crazy-good regeneration prob better than Major Healing, at least antimagic would be slightly less great against him and you wouldn't depend on him just forgetting to heal himself for 10 turns

[bcadren]

How to deal with Lom Lobon: (1) Needlestab. (2) Lee's Rapid Deconstruction [avoid by breaking into vault] (3) Controlled Blink (Spell or Scroll) [Avoid] (4) Antimagic (5) Corrupt (Lugonu) (6) rC+++, rElec (May not be able to kill, but can survive more easily).

Easily the hardest Pan Lord to kill; but...also the easiest to avoid; the blink range makes it easier to walk away from generally.

[WingedEspeon]

bring back singularity, that dealt with him nicely!

Honestly I think the bug where he drowns you is a much more pressing issue. C-Blink can help let you catch back up to him when he uses blink-range. You can also use throwing to kill him so you don't have to worry about getting into melee range, and with enough skill steel javlins will probably out damage your melee weapon.

[Hurricos]

Lom Lobon's abilities are so that you need to be cunning in order to kill him.

Nets? Bingo. Needles? Bingo. LRD crystal walls? Firestorm out of sight? Killhole? Purple drac breath? PoGStab (!lm comborobin fesk uniq=lom_lobon -tv)? Ding ding ding!

He's powerful and omnipotent but it's very flavorful to destroy someone that's so strong by tricking them out of their might. Not coming at them with brute force, but forcing them to twist into a situation where they cannot survive as easily. Tricking them to their doom. You don't have to do that with any other panlord; the rest are just spearspam or punch to death; Lom actually requires finesse (or a stack of blink scrolls. Or Troggy AM, which is the only thing that falsifies this description, but Trog's all about simple bruteforce kills anyways ...)

[asdu]

Honestly I think the bug where he drowns you is a much more pressing issue.

Regardless of the bug, I don't think it's appropriate for tornado to cause death by drowning. Either tornado should treat deep water tiles as if they were walls or Lom Lobon's vault shouldn't have deep water.

[Sar]

Lom during combat keeps spamming these two interchangeably, making him not even dangerous

I'd like to see a character for whom an enemy that blinks around and heals and also has Glaciate and Tornado is "not even dangerous, just annoying".

I like new Lom's spellset/casting chances. He can be hard as hell to kill, so if you don't have amazing offense, antimagic or cheesy stuff like needles, you might just want to steal the rune. It's fine, he's a daemonic lord of magic, he can be allowed to be good at magic IMO. Feels better than him just casting once or twice, bumping into you and then dying.

[Bart]

Lom during combat keeps spamming these two interchangeably, making him not even dangerous

I'd like to see a character for whom an enemy that blinks around and heals and also has Glaciate and Tornado is "not even dangerous, just annoying".

You should have seen then my naga with 300 HP, 54AC, rC+++, rElec, double healing from devices, +9 triple flaming sword and bracers of War.
Also, my reference was to spamming blink+heal abilities, not tornado+glaciate.

Nets? Bingo. Needles? Bingo. LRD crystal walls? Firestorm out of sight? Killhole? Purple drac breath? PoGStab (!lm comborobin fesk uniq=lom_lobon -tv)? Ding ding ding!

Thanks a lot, I wasn't aware that Lom can be caught in net, which is a helpful trick. Too bad remaining solutions are inaccessible to most of characters facing him.

What is PoGStab?

[Sar]

double healing from devices

Really want to get that scale mail before it's nerfed.

Also, my reference was to spamming blink+heal abilities, not tornado+glaciate.

Well, the former allows more of the latter.

[sweetrabies]

What is PoGStab?

Casting passage of golubria to get close and then stabbing. It's like passwall stab, but less dependent on level geometry.

[dynast]

Wind cant harm lobom because he is wind itself, but he can get caught in a net? the ****?

[duvessa]

Lom Lobon doesn't have innate wind resistance. Tornado just protects the caster from wind while in effect. It does so for players too.

[dynast]

Have you ever airstrike lobom?

[duvessa]

Yes. If he's not currently tornado-ing, it damages him. If he is currently tornado-ing, the targeter won't let you do it.

[Yermak]

What is PoGStab?

Casting passage of golubria to get close and then stabbing. It's like passwall stab, but less dependent on level geometry.

It is not like passwall stab. Monsters don't have chance to wake up after you passwall next to them. They do have chances with the passage usage. And since Lom is a boss, it's better to use one of your scrolls of blinking for a stab - much more reliable than passage.

[Pollen_Golem]

but blinking makes noise at the destination unlike passage of golubria. Have you ever stabbed something by getting next to it with a scroll of blinking?

[Yermak]

but blinking makes noise at the destination unlike passage of golubria. Have you ever stabbed something by getting next to it with a scroll of blinking?

Don't mix scroll of blinking and spell Controlled Blink.

[Sar]

What? Why do these work differently, anyway?

[Siegurt]

They work differently implicitly, rather than explicitly.

Spells in general have the effect happen before the spellcasting noise happens, and the nose happens at your location when you finish casting the spell (unless the spell takes more than one turn like passwall)

I suspect the current balance of this is considered healthy for the stab game, but it does feel slightly odd.

For what its worth I've found the portal location fuzz to be too unreliable to make really excellent stabs, and it is risky, since portal closing is loud and will probably wake up the critter if you aren't there yet, or if there are other critters nearby

[Pollen_Golem]

Spells in general have the effect happen before the spellcasting noise happens

uh? - and non-spells have their noise happen before the main effect?

(unless the spell takes more than one turn like passwall)

Speaking of which, that's not just spells. If you have blurry vision, the delay when reading ?blink takes place before you blink, not after. This means that you will never ever wake anything up by scroll-blinking into its LOS with blurry vision. And people call it a "bad" mutation.

[Siegurt]

Spells in general have the effect happen before the spellcasting noise happens

uh? - and non-spells have their noise happen before the main effect?

No, those also make noise afterwards for the most part. I was just addressing a particular point about spells in this case.