Remove Rod of the Swarm

[bcadren]

It feels redundant with the Sack of Spiders; which is a significantly better item. Additionally it feels redundant with the Rod of Shadows, which is -also- a significantly better item. Rod of Shadows and Sack of Spiders are different enough that both can easily exist; but the Rod of the Swarm just feels like a redundant and weak (for a rod) item.

[ololoev]

Rod of the Swarm can summon hornets and yellow bees that slows and paralyzes enemies. I like paralyze-stabbing!

[RBrandon]

I am confused that you are comparing rod of the swarm to sack of spiders. Sure sack of spiders is stronger than rod of the swarm. It also is stronger than most other items in the game.

I am also surprised that you feel it is redundant with anything. In my view swarm is one of the most unique spells in the game. No other summon makes a large amount of fast middling strength monsters.

[Bart]

The rod of the swarm does not scale at all, which isn't a good feature. If you get it early, it's absolutely overpowered. If you get it late, it hardly does anything. If you make it scale with power, you get sack of spiders.

[dynast]

Yeah but sack of spiders is limited and can fail while rod of swarm is rechargable.

[Floodkiller]

The real issue is that none of the cool, high powered insects get added to the swarm at higher levels of Evocation. If I could get queen bees and death scarabs (as well as the new spark wasps), I would totally use it more often. Otherwise, it can't compete with shadows/acid clouds/a literal shotgun.

[njvack]

If you make it scale with power, you get sack of spiders.

Except for being rechargeable, not webbing monsters, and generating things that aren't spiders.

But other than that, yeah it would be the same.

[prozacelf]

If you make it scale with power, you get sack of spiders.

Except for being rechargeable, not webbing monsters, and generating things that aren't spiders.

But other than that, yeah it would be the same.

Ants are spiders now? Because you totally get worker ants from the sack at low evo.

[Piginabag]

I've never understood this argument. Rod of shadows is based on your floor and often restricted in usefulness as a result. Additionally, the summons hardly last any time at all. Sack of spiders is obviously stronger at max evo but is charge based and thus somewhat restricted on how many times it can be used.

Neither of them summon a large amount of fast insects, which do provide an array of usefulness; popcorn for LoS and movement blocking, venom monsters to poison, and wasps that apply slows and paraylsis. One of the big benefits of rod of the swarms is that the units it summons last a long ass time, sometimes longer than it takes the rod to recharge.

Rod of the swarm is more than different enough from Shadows and sack of spiders to merit its existence.

[Sar]

Rod of shadows has never been based on the level you're on:

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=359569f0a7cc005214ae84427511059f71db10ad
http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=9dedd774a5ac4f319355d9f1c866c4da3efc5aa2

[Sprucery]

It's easy to be confused though, because the spell Shadow Creatures is based on the current level. In fact, I think the Rod of Shadows should be renamed; how about naming it the Rod of Summoning?