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duvessa wrote:bel wrote:This god is no longer a "combo god", which was the original aim of the god.
Being the original aim doesn't make it a
good aim. I have yet to see a compelling explanation of how "combos" are supposed to be anything other than fluff.
People play the game in different ways. You are free to consider the abilities "fluff", but not everyone feels that way. In particular, there is nothing wrong with being a "combo god", so I don't feel necessary to defend the aim. I will assert without argument that I consider the idea of martial attacks inflicting status effects, which one can then exploit, to be a totally legitimate concept. The change has completely destroyed the basic idea, for unclear advantages.
duvessa wrote:bel wrote:Looking at the ##crawl-dev chat the god's supposed design now is: "hit multiple monsters at once, and hit monsters while also re-positioning for other stuff".
...Is that supposed to sound bad? Hitting multiple monsters at once has some overlap with cleaving, sure, but what's wrong with hitting monsters while repositioning? I like it far better than any of the prior designs for the god.
I did not say that it sounded bad. I just listed what it is, before I started to criticize it. If it was self-evidently bad, I wouldn't have written such a long post making arguing against it.
duvessa wrote:bel wrote:Hitting two or three monsters at once, while also getting hit two or three times, is bad in almost all cases. Recall that most people don't like wearing the amulet of harm (in the old version, and even in the new version); this is really a worse version of the amulet of harm since it only works in melee range, and you get exactly the same increase in offence as defence.
Cleave has a damage penalty for hitting multiple targets
and inferior base weapon stats, yet axes are still pretty good. This was also even more of an issue with old whirlwind, so...
There are crucial differences between cleaving and whirlwind. If you are using axes, you have already committed to the weapon type, and you cannot re-position easily without giving away free hits; so you have to decide whether to re-position or not. In this case, you can choose to whirlwind or not, with any weapon, and this god allows lots of re-positioning. Therefore, in most of the cases, the optimal way would be to move towards a corridor to Tab, which reduces decisions, not to mention being very boring.
In the old version, whirlwind was strictly better than Tab (chance of slow); so you had more of an incentive to fight in an open space. Now basically all the incentive is gone; you only fight in an open space if you're forced to. And you try to get out of this situation as quickly as possible, as described above.
duvessa wrote:bel wrote:Lunge is basically useless except in degenerate cases (like repeatedly swapping with a summon, or energy randomization, or repeatedly wall jumping to distract). It also has virtually no synergy with the other abilities (neither do the others with each other, for that matter).
Why is "synergy" between the abilities assumed to be desirable? Most god abilities have no synergy with each other, because it's more interesting if they can stand on their own, and this is especially true for free ones.
I have already said above why I would like synergy; that was the aim of the god. It's ok if you don't consider it an important goal. Also, lunge is very boring now; it's almost like wielding a polearm.
duvessa wrote:bel wrote:By the way, I also gave a solution which doesn't touch the "always on" aspect.
Even you admitted that this "solution" was bad
Yes, it was inferior to the other solution; I would have preferred it to the changes made though. People seem to have an attachment to the "always on" aspect, so I tried to accommodate it.
duvessa wrote:bel wrote:A minor point is that the changes also make using long blades even more of a no-brainer because: (a) you get ripostes while re-positioning (b) cross-training with short-blades for stabbing for distractions/lunges. This was true even before, but to a lesser extent.
These points have basically no relation to the god and you could make the same argument that long blades are a no-brainer on pretty much anything else, since everyone repositions and there are tons of better ways to get distraction/confusion/etc.
Again, analogous to the axes argument I gave above, the same argument does not apply to long blades on any other character. With any other god, you either reposition (while taking free hits), or you fight from where you are. With this god, re-positioning is mostly free, so you'll almost always do so. This reduces the diversity of decisions. And since long blades are best while repositioning, it reduces diversity of weapon choice as well. As I said, this is a minor point and was a problem with the old version of the god as well.
Quazifuji wrote:bel wrote:This god is no longer a "combo god", which was the original aim of the god
The original aim of the god was the god of floating weapons and weapon swapping, with the "attacking while moving" mechanic being there to promote weapon swapping. Then it became just the god of attacking while moving because that part turned out to be the most interesting part, and that turned into "combo god" as a way to incentivise using the moves, and now the latest change turns it back into just the god of attacking while moving without the combo part.
Yes, I'm aware that the god has changed a lot. However, whirlwind, pressure points, lunge, wall jump have been part of the god for many months, even when weapon swapping was a thing. See
this, for instance. Now, I don't know exactly why many people seem to like this god (I'm pretty sure the brokenness of certain mechanics is a major part of it), but I don't like abandoning a core idea for unclear reasons. Maybe people will still like the current iteration, who knows.