Yet another Qazlal buff thread

[phloomp]

Here is a proposal to make Qazlal's conduct less onerous, while keeping the general formula of trading off noise for power. I don't think it has been suggested yet. It is an enormous buff but under the circumstances I think that is fine.

• Create a new status called "noisy". It acts like drain (reduced by xp gain, signalled by a colored status light) but instead of reducing skills temporarily, it makes you noisy.
• Qazlal's passives (including cloud generation) are unchanged.
• Qazlal no longer makes you noisy (except for insofar as clouds make noise). Instead, using his active abilities causes/intensifies noisy status (much like using Ru's abilities causes/intensifies drain).
• Remove mp cost from all of Qazlal's active abilities, because piety cost + mp cost + noise cost is too complicated.

Flavor: Using Qazlal's powers awakens the ire of nature, which is very noisy. Mother nature won't calm down until you help her work out her issues by destroying stuff (a.k.a. xp gain).

[archaeo]

There's not a lot of point to noise as a drawback when you can control when and where you make the noise. At that point, Qaz is just a Makhleb that damages your stealth instead of your HP.

I think it's totally valid to question whether or not Qaz's noise conduct leads to fun gameplay, but if you think it doesn't, I have a hard time figuring out a version of that conduct that solves all the problems without completely trivializing it.

[Dungeoneer]

qaz is good like he is now. he is a great god

[duvessa]

An easy way to make Qazlal less crippling is to reduce the intensity of the noise. Right now it's 16 at max piety which is really high. If you reduced it to, say, 8 or 10, it would still be bad, but not nearly as bad as it is now.

[removeelyvilon]

Make friendly ementals created by the elemenatel force ability immune to your clouds.

Why would you give a god an ability that gets self-countered by one of its other abilties? It makes no sense.

[duvessa]

wow someone actually used elemental force

[Sar]

One of my first Qaz-related ideas was making a TeAE, learning Tornado and casting Elemental Force to turn every single Tornado cloud into a friendly air elemental. I don't think I ever did that, I think I just realized at some point that you don't get that many elementals - not every cloud gets used.

[duvessa]

That wouldn't actually work at all, you can't use elemental force with tornado clouds.

[dynast]

You could just get rid of Qazlal's storm clouds, that alone solves most of the noise problem, or you could just make lightning bolts not be so stupidly loud for no reason other than flavor.

[phloomp]

There's not a lot of point to noise as a drawback when you can control when and where you make the noise. At that point, Qaz is just a Makhleb that damages your stealth instead of your HP.

The idea is that you wouldn't have that much control. To take your analogy, with Makhleb you just wait to recover from the effect of using his actives, whereas with Ru or this proposal you are dealing with the effects for a while.

An easy way to make Qazlal less crippling is to reduce the intensity of the noise. Right now it's 16 at max piety which is really high. If you reduced it to, say, 8 or 10, it would still be bad, but not nearly as bad as it is now.

This should definitely be tried. I suspect "sometimes 16, sometimes 4" will be more fun than "always 8," but I am talking out if my ass until I try it.

Regarding elemental force, I've found it quite useful for running away. The interaction between the elementals you create and your clouds is frustrating and pretty unpredictable but I think it is balanced at least. I am a shitty player though.

Spoiler: show

I don't want to throw too much half-baked-ness into one thread, but I can't resist: replacing the "noisy" status in this proposal with "mark" would be less work, more transparent and maybe more interesting.

[duvessa]

This should definitely be tried. I suspect "sometimes 16, sometimes 4" will be more fun than "always 8," but I am talking out if my ass until I try it.

The way Qazlal noise works is that the noise is made on the player's square every turn. So if it's randomly between 4 and 16 every turn, it won't be much different from always being 15 when you press o or 5.

[and into]

I'd be interested in trying a toned-down version of Qazlal. archaeo's point is well taken; a god conduct should meaningfully affect your game. But the intensity of the noise affects the game in ways that ultimately invite degenerate play. My issue with Q is not so much balance per se, but that worshipping cloudgod changes DCSS into "Stairs: The Game" which loses its novelty fast.

I imagine there is a better (and more fun) balance point for this god somewhere between "noise makes it difficult to pick your fights" and the current "literally only rest on stairs or else" level. I would be happy to give Q another shot if max noise were reduced.

As for the OP, those changes could also create an interesting conduct, but I think that simply reducing the noise created at max piety along the lines duvessa suggested should be tried first.

[yesno]

This should definitely be tried. I suspect "sometimes 16, sometimes 4" will be more fun than "always 8," but I am talking out if my ass until I try it.

The way Qazlal noise works is that the noise is made on the player's square every turn. So if it's randomly between 4 and 16 every turn, it won't be much different from always being 15 when you press o or 5.

by 'sometimes 16, sometimes 4' phloomp probably didn't mean "a random number between 4 and 16 every turn" though. a combination of gradual change and small chance of sudden loud noise or sudden end of noise was what i assumed.

[goodcoolguy]

wow someone actually used elemental force

Elemental force is actually good.

[Arrhythmia]

wow someone actually used elemental force

I used it once because it sounded cool, and then all my summons died to my clouds, and I learned never to use elemental force.

[eliotn]

Why not make Qazlal give immunity to your clouds for friendly allies? Especially since one of the abilities is summoning. This would allow for summoner play, and ensures that qazlal doesn't kill your allies unfairly.

[Siegurt]

Why not make Qazlal give immunity to your clouds for friendly allies? Especially since one of the abilities is summoning. This would allow for summoner play, and ensures that qazlal doesn't kill your allies unfairly.

Its been suggested before, including earlier in this thread

I think the reason "why not" is "none of the devs either care or think its important enough to spend time doing" if indeed any of them think about it at all.

[Haelyn]

One of my favorite plays is a troll monk of Qazlal. And I have to admit, I've never really had a problem with it. Sure I haven't won yet but still.

Troll metabolism kinda incentivized finding every monster anyway, and since I'm not wearing much it made the resistances and offenses awesome. I DO think it would make sense for your elementals to be safe from you, and I also think Tornado+Qazlal ought to be awesome.