Balancing the Council God

[sooheon]

bel, no need to censor yourself, I think your input is valuable. I totally agree that strong, free mechanics would break the game.

> Making them cost something (piety, exhaustion, whatever) is the most logical and simplest way to proceed, reduces cognitive load and fixes the (perceived) brokenness.

The "heroism" way is one way to put a cost on it. What if we thought of WJC as somewhat more like Hep though? Hep doesn't have a Summon Ancestor ability which costs 10% max health, you just lose the health up front and have the ancestor follow you around. Because having a perma ally changes tactics, how you move, where you stand, how you fight, it's better to have it just be there and for you to get used to it, rather than have to make the decision to summon it and change your playstyle. This also differentiates it from Makh. Finally, making the cost health rather than piety changes the tradeoff from availability to survivability. It's a different price to pay.

Similarly, having some always on martial attacks should change the way you think of and approach important fights, and the cost should not be piety or exhaust (which limits availability), but inherent increased vulnerability of some kind (see glass cannon idea above).

Along these lines, a longer AUT for jump is almost surely necessary, first to stop trivializing disengage, and second to add more of a cost to jumping into the middle of a pack (enemies get more hits in). This makes the player look for opportunities to finish off low health enemies with jumps, and have a plan to quickly move back out to the periphery, break LOS, etc. One idea is to make quickly chained jumps take slightly more and more time, maybe make it a gradual Exh like contam which dissipates faster. Serpent's Lash's cost can be pegging this Exh at max for longer. Someone who spams wall jump around and around a fight would find themselves taking more and more hits.

[duvessa]

Martial attacks are already manually activated. You're just pretending they aren't because you use movement keys instead of 'a' to activate them. It's like saying that reaching is a passive effect and therefore there can be no interface problem with it, sure it doesn't use the 'a' menu but it does greatly slow down the game. (Granted, adding piety costs wouldn't solve the interface problem completely, but let's not pretend the problem doesn't exist.)
If whirlwind and wall jump were like lunge then I would be fine with them. Lunge is a good free effect because in situations where you can do a normal melee attack against a monster, it's not beneficial to lunge at it instead. (Unless you have reaching, but that's because reaching is, itself, broken). But whirlwind and wall jump aren't like lunge, you're explicitly incentivized to whirlwind and wall jump against adjacent monsters. This is why they are fundamentally broken as free abilities, and you can't fix them by throwing AUTs and multipliers at them.

[Steel Neuron]

But whirlwind and wall jump aren't like lunge, you're explicitly incentivized to whirlwind and wall jump against adjacent monsters. This is why they are fundamentally broken as free abilities, and you can't fix them by throwing AUTs and multipliers at them.

That's a gigantic leap you have taken there. You have provided no justification why reducing the base damage of whirlwind and increasing the time spent on wall jump would not fix them.

[duvessa]

Whirlwind only works against adjacent monsters. It's not a gigantic leap to say that changing its damage isn't going to change that. I suppose you could fix the worst of it by reducing the damage and removing the slow effect, leaving it as a worse version of cleave, but I assume the intent of whirlwind is not to be a worse version of cleave.
It's hard to assess a theoretical "fixed" version of wall jump because I have no idea what the intent of wall jump is. Currently its practical uses are as a superior tab, a superior s, and an increase to movement speed. You can use it to one-time jump into the middle of a pack, yes, but that's almost never beneficial, so I consider that "use" irrelevant no matter how flashy and cool it is, not to mention that requiring a wall provides further disincentive to jump into a pack. Reducing its damage/aut by enough would fix it being a superior tab, and making it take more than twice as long as a movement action would fix it being an increase to movement speed, and removing distraction would fix it being a superior s...but then you're left with an ability that has no practical utility at all. An improvement over the current situation, but not an improvement over removing it altogether.

[Steel Neuron]

Whirlwind only works against adjacent monsters. It's not a gigantic leap to say that changing its damage isn't going to change that.

I suppose then that the gigantic leap is saying that a spammable passive form of attack that works on adjacent monsters is fundamentally broken. I'm making the argument that it isn't, provided it is comparable to tab and not strictly better. The only cost it needs is opportunity cost, in the form of less damage.

It's hard to assess a theoretical "fixed" version of wall jump because I have no idea what the intent of wall jump is. Currently its practical uses are as a superior tab, a superior s, and an increase to movement speed. You can use it to one-time jump into the middle of a pack, yes, but that's almost never beneficial, so I consider that "use" irrelevant no matter how flashy and cool it is, not to mention that requiring a wall provides further disincentive to jump into a pack. Reducing its damage/aut by enough would fix it being a superior tab, and making it take more than twice as long as a movement action would fix it being an increase to movement speed, and removing distraction would fix it being a superior s...but then you're left with an ability that has no practical utility at all. An improvement over the current situation, but not an improvement over removing it altogether.

You don't have to take guesses because I've brought up a specific number, and I don't agree that "fixing" equates making it lose all utility.

I think you are being inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory, it's clear the tone of the conversation is that we are tweaking a concept that works for a majority of people and that is not "fundamentally broken", so if that's the angle you want to take on it, we aren't going to find much common ground.

[Steel Neuron]

Let me just clarify one point about what I mean by "active martial attacks", because I don't think people are talking about the same thing as me. I am talking about a status effect like Heroism, where you press "aa" and you get to do whatever martial attacks you want for a while, and then the status fades.

You'll still have all kinds of positioning thinking you want, and it will be perfectly smooth and require no extra keypresses (except for the initial "aa"). The only difference is that you'll only be using the abilities in the fights that matter, not in all fights.

By the way, whirlwind can also be used as an escape option (because of the associated slow), but it's not completely reliable like wall jump.

I happen to think that many of the problems with the mechanics arise largely because they're free. Making them cost something (piety, exhaustion, whatever) is the most logical and simplest way to proceed, reduces cognitive load and fixes the (perceived) brokenness. And it will certainly not "kill" the god (or at least I don't see how it kills the god).

Ok, I'll now really shut up for a while.

First of all, let me reiterate what sooheon said, in that I don't think you should be censoring yourself. While I disagree with your input, you're making your points well and I find the conversation very constructive!

I understood what you mean by making them active, but there are a few big elements your solution are missing.

The ability to be reactive is a major one. You don't always enter a fight with the intention to do a specific martial attack, sometimes the opportunity presents itself in the way monsters are laid out. If you are forced to use an active ability, the window of opportunity will close unless you make the ability instant, at which point one of the arguments to make it active in the first place disappears.

Another factor is more related to the power fantasy. A major point in favor of the god is that you can feel like you're effortlessly gliding through combat. If you're forced to budget the use of these abilities, that feeling is just not there. Not to mention the fact that you can't sprinkle them on occasion when they make sense, but are instead forced to make the most out of the cost spent by spamming them in a short window of time, which is unnecessarily constraining.

Aside from all of that, as Lasty said, it adds keypressed and thought to something that is working well passively.

[Siegurt]

There's a huge advantage to martial attacks that should be obvious but everyone here is somehow either pretty much ignoring it or even trying to sell it as a disadvantage: The ability to combine multiple attacks into one action. This is because monsters do not act. The player acts, and monsters react. If a player takes 100 aut to kill an ogre, but those 100 aut happen within a single player action, the ogre dies without getting a single action of its own. As a result, if your attack delay is lower than your movement delay, and you're fighting a single monster (which you usually are, especially since the god makes it even easier to separate monsters than usual...), the monster gets fewer actions if you use whirlwinds/walljumps instead of regular attacks, even *without* the extra bonuses for using whirlwinds and wall jumps. The monster getting fewer actions before it dies is the same effect that a damage bonus would give. This becomes relevant the earliest with Na and Ba, but applies to every character.

But the monster only gets fewer actions on the turn you kill it, if you combine 3 30 aut attacks into one 100 aut movement, but dont kill the critter, it still gets a full 100 auts worth of reaction.

And even then it only *might* get fewer actions. If the turn before you kill it, it did a 110 aut action, it will get exactly the same number of responses (0) Its only particularly likely to make a difference in the case where the monster's action rate is faster than your movement rate, and then only on the turn you kill it.

I mean that is definitely an advantage, but it hardly strikes me as a super big deal if fast monsters get an average of one (or maybe two for super fast monsters) less attack on the turn you kill them.

[bel]

Rest assured: I'm not censoring myself. It's just that I counted and found that 20% of the posts in this thread are mine (and they're pretty verbose). I thought I'll give others a chance to get a word in edgewise. I have said most of what I wanted to say at this point anyway.

[duvessa]

I have no intent to be inflammatory, I genuinely believe that whirlwind and wall jump are fundamentally bad ideas and fundamentally broken mechanics, in largely the same way that reaching is: they make the game take more real-world time to play without adding more meaningful, difficult decisions.

we are tweaking a concept that works for a majority of people

I get that there are a lot of people talking about how cool and fun whirlwind and wall jump are, but what tactical depth do they actually add to the game? I've been presented with formulaic "combos" but as bel says, the optimal path technically being more complicated doesn't make it more interesting. More options are nothing if they don't add more decisions. Just as casting Agony at a monster thrice and finishing it off with melee isn't inherently deeper than tabbing, whirlwinding then wall jumping back then lunging isn't inherently deeper than tabbing. So far, both in theory and in my personal experience, consecutive wall jumps make Crawl's positioning game substantially less deep even if you ignore the movement speed increase, since terrain that was already good becomes even better. Whirlwind's not as bad in that regard, but it's worse in another regard because it's a free ability that applies a binary debuff. If the monster isn't slowed yet, there's not much reason for me to do anything other than whirlwind.

Again, lunge is good. It doesn't have the same interface problems as whirlwind and wall jump and it doesn't have the same gameplay problems because it doesn't make your tactical decisions shallower. It changes moving towards a monster from a bad idea to a sometimes decent one, so it actually makes tactical decisions more interesting sometimes. Serpent's lash is good in itself too, and mega-Darkness is ok imo, aside from the weird name and insufficient description. But whirlwind and wall jump completely ruin the god for me and I don't think I'm alone in this.

Free abilities set an extremely high bar, because by adding one you're claiming that you can increase the depth of tactics by enough to justify increasing mechanical complexity. Finesse and banishment and evocables and power leap know they can't meet that bar so they have permanent or semi-permanent costs instead, so that they introduce a different sort of decision. Spells know they can't meet that bar as a whole so they have MP costs. Many special abilities without meaningful costs, like reaching, swiftness, and launchers, are widely reviled by high-level players because of this. Melee attacks are universally accepted, but even something as "simple" as movement gets heavy scrutiny (luring monsters for long distances is not well liked, and almost nobody likes player movement being faster than monster movement). Now that martial attacks are in mainline DCSS I'm going to apply that scrutiny to them, too.

Yes, gods have the cost of a god slot and conducts, and polearms have the cost of reduced base damage. Those can fix balance, but they won't fix a damaging effect on tactics. Once you have reaching, or whirlwind or wall jump or lunge, there is no gameplay incentive to limit your use of it, so you'd better make damn sure that using it whenever it's useful is actually good for the game.

[phloomp]

Whirlwind and wall jump are fun because they decrease the cost of running around while you fight, instead of holing up in a corridor. They could possibly be made into actual decisions while increasing this effect if they require you to move around in ways that potentially expose you. Spitballing (with some duplication):
* Whirlwind only works if you are moving to a tile that you haven't been on for the last n auts
* Whirlwind only works on a particular enemy once per n auts
* Whirlwind and pole vault only cause status effects when you end the move adjacent to at least 2 enemies.
* Introduce a "momentum" number, which increases when you move in approximately the same direction for two actions in a row and is otherwise decreased to 0 (that is, N followed by NW counts, N follows by W does not). Make martial attacks depend on momentum. (This is a terrible idea until you can no longer easily run away using wall jump. It will also make fast species horrible to play optimally with this god, but they are already bad to play optimally with or without this god.)

[sooheon]

> they make the game take more real-world time to play without adding more meaningful, difficult decisions.

If it added time for no benefit, that would be a problem. But adding time in order to have fun combat is a good thing, in my opinion. That is why some of us play the game, to enjoy combat! Not everyone plays for speed and wins, if we did MiBe would be the be all and end all of game design. The journey is what makes the game fun.

> More options are nothing if they don't add more decisions. Just as casting Agony at a monster thrice and finishing it off with melee isn't inherently deeper than tabbing, whirlwinding then wall jumping back then lunging isn't inherently deeper than tabbing.

Perhaps when you're fighting one monster. But add two, three, a whole pack more, and suddenly the branching decision tree explodes. Don't you see how having multiple options on the table at any given turn in an open and changing environment gives you a lot of tactical options, that you can either misplay or outplay?

Traditionally, when facing any N>1 monsters, all that the game required of you was to walk back into known territory, satisfy the booleans "are you in a choke?", "do you beat the stat check?", and mash tab. If you failed one of the two, you used ability/spell/consumable. It's my contention that martial attacks, and the tradeoffs they can pose, force multiplication vs. increased vulnerability, should be able to make very fun, flow-like melee gameplay.

[papilio]

IMO

wall jump - very useful
whirlwind - looks fun but barely useful
lunge - good

serpent lash - okay
heaven on earth - really powerful, okay

[Steel Neuron]

I have no intent to be inflammatory, I genuinely believe that whirlwind and wall jump are fundamentally bad ideas and fundamentally broken mechanics, in largely the same way that reaching is: they make the game take more real-world time to play without adding more meaningful, difficult decisions.

Thanks for approaching this in a more constructive way now. I really appreciate it!

I get that there are a lot of people talking about how cool and fun whirlwind and wall jump are, but what tactical depth do they actually add to the game? I've been presented with formulaic "combos" but as bel says, the optimal path technically being more complicated doesn't make it more interesting. More options are nothing if they don't add more decisions.

I will go back to this later but I think you may be fixating on the single enemy case. Against one enemy, it is possible that you will come up with a flowchart, but I'd argue this flowchart doesn't have to be the same for each player, or for each build. At the moment there isn't a set of actions that is significantly better than any other, where a player would prefer to spam whirlwind, another will constantly wall jump away + lunge, while another will chain wall jumps. Hopefully tab will fit in here after the changes, but I agree that this single target scenario isn't necessarily that ripe with decisions.

However, when there are multiple enemies, that's when it gets interesting. Only using whirlwind is very much not optimal in this case, with combos between Whirlwind and Lunge being the most damaging option. These take significant thought to set up, and the opportunities to do so arise constantly thanks to the brief "freeze" moments that wall jump distraction affords you. When people are talking about the god being fun, they generally talk about handling multi enemy fights, and the decision trees there are quite deep.

Just as casting Agony at a monster thrice and finishing it off with melee isn't inherently deeper than tabbing, whirlwinding then wall jumping back then lunging isn't inherently deeper than tabbing. So far, both in theory and in my personal experience, consecutive wall jumps make Crawl's positioning game substantially less deep even if you ignore the movement speed increase, since terrain that was already good becomes even better.

I agree that spamming WJ is boring and shouldn't be optimal, much like "jkjk" shouldn't. This will immediately stop being optimal when it takes 150% auts however, and in-fight jumps will only ever be desirable to gain better positioning. Wall jump will still be great (although worse) for running away, but that's intended; we must not forget that this is a god that forces you to be in bad (i.e. exposed) situations, so it needs a powerful escape tool.

Whirlwind's not as bad in that regard, but it's worse in another regard because it's a free ability that applies a binary debuff. If the monster isn't slowed yet, there's not much reason for me to do anything other than whirlwind.

Why not? There are many things you could do before you apply that slow. An even safer approach would be to wall jump around the monster without falling adjacent to it, until it's distracted, lunge, and then repeat. If you're truly afraid of the monster's damage, this is probably optimal. With the new changes, you may want to tab instead of whirlwind if you think you will take the monster out fast enough than the slow won't matter.

But whirlwind and wall jump completely ruin the god for me and I don't think I'm alone in this.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that whirlwind and wall jump have issues, and some people (like Brannock) share some of my concern, but we think they're relatively minor, solvable issues. I would say from what I've heard so far in terms of feedback, you're the only one that thinks they're broken or impossible to salvage.

Free abilities set an extremely high bar, because by adding one you're claiming that you can increase the depth of tactics by enough to justify increasing mechanical complexity. Finesse and banishment and evocables and power leap know they can't meet that bar so they have permanent or semi-permanent costs instead, so that they introduce a different sort of decision. Spells know they can't meet that bar as a whole so they have MP costs. Many special abilities without meaningful costs, like reaching, swiftness, and launchers, are widely reviled by high-level players because of this. Melee attacks are universally accepted, but even something as "simple" as movement gets heavy scrutiny (luring monsters for long distances is not well liked, and almost nobody likes player movement being faster than monster movement). Now that martial attacks are in mainline DCSS I'm going to apply that scrutiny to them, too.

I think we are classifying these abilities in a completely different way. While you think of them as free actives, I think of them (and my design was in this line) as an extended set of weapon intrinsics, much like cleave, dagger stab, or riposte. Riposte does not have a MP cost, it has the opportunity cost of the sword stats. Ditto for cleaving and stabbing. These new three weapon intrinsics have the opportunity cost of a god slot, which I think is fair.

[Steel Neuron]

Whirlwind and wall jump are fun because they decrease the cost of running around while you fight, instead of holing up in a corridor. They could possibly be made into actual decisions while increasing this effect if they require you to move around in ways that potentially expose you. Spitballing (with some duplication):
* Whirlwind only works if you are moving to a tile that you haven't been on for the last n auts
* Whirlwind only works on a particular enemy once per n auts
* Whirlwind and pole vault only cause status effects when you end the move adjacent to at least 2 enemies.
* Introduce a "momentum" number, which increases when you move in approximately the same direction for two actions in a row and is otherwise decreased to 0 (that is, N followed by NW counts, N follows by W does not). Make martial attacks depend on momentum. (This is a terrible idea until you can no longer easily run away using wall jump. It will also make fast species horrible to play optimally with this god, but they are already bad to play optimally with or without this god.)

The problem with all of these conditions is that they are extremely hard to convey and represent in the GUI, and add an artificial layer to your decision making that has nothing to do with how the fight is laid out, but rather pure bookkeeping.

I am firmly convinced that the only changes that whirlwind and wall jump need are power changes that make them unwise to just blindly spam, not artificial restrictions on their use (which include an active cost or any other limitation).

[TeshiAlair]

I think the god is actually absurdly well balanced, and I'm praying there aren't too many changes. The only one I would make is the aforementioned damage debuff to whirlwind. I think it's usage as a status provider is more interesting, and being able to clear orc and spider by just walking around enemies is kind of silly.

[minstrel]

Doesn't nerfing whirlwind's damage actually encourage the opposite of what you you want from the god, in terms of fighting in open areas with multiple enemies?

If the player is now encouraged to attack-while-moving until slow is applied, then tab, won't he just fight until slow, then run to a safe space?

Now, if claustrophobia is implemented, too, that will discourage that behavior, but you're left standing in the middle of a pack of enemies swinging like any other melee character.

I guess you still have the option of lunge or wall jump instead of man-fighting it out, but those had be one hell of a strong carrot to overcome the multiple turns spent setting up the combo.

Mind you, I think whirlwind is probably way OP as-is, but I wonder if some other strategy would be better.

Then again, maybe it'll work. I don't want to totally trash something before I've tried it.

Here's a radical idea in either event, probably bad but what the heck:

Make IJC's piety increase really fast (like, say, 12 level-appropriate kills fill you up to 6*). Leave the abilities as they are now, or maybe strengthen them somewhat, and leave them always active (ok maybe they could be activatable, but I'd be curious how this would work before doing that), and have them each cost a high amount of piety, such that you could possibly, but barely, maintain full piety if you went toe-to-toe with a huge pack of stuff, constantly whirlwinding.

Also have piety decay quickly, not Usk-quickly, but quick enough that you can't leave a level full of popcorn to go top off on and come back to fight Dispater will a full bar.

Now you've got incentive to fight in the open with big packs (both to maximize your piety bang for the buck and hope to maintain it), but if you try to constantly jkjkjk against every lone thing you meet, you'll use up your piety quickly. The god is still fun where he was fun before (martial artsing around big groups of stuff) and the optimal tedium issues vs smaller enemies disappears.

I think you'd actually need buffs rather than nerfs here, but those are easy knobs to turn and I feel like this would be an interesting style of piety usage.

[duvessa]

I have no intent to be inflammatory, I genuinely believe that whirlwind and wall jump are fundamentally bad ideas and fundamentally broken mechanics, in largely the same way that reaching is: they make the game take more real-world time to play without adding more meaningful, difficult decisions.

Thanks for approaching this in a more constructive way now. I really appreciate it!

I haven't changed my approach in the slightest, and I find it worrying that you think I have.

However, when there are multiple enemies, that's when it gets interesting. Only using whirlwind is very much not optimal in this case, with combos between Whirlwind and Lunge being the most damaging option. These take significant thought to set up, and the opportunities to do so arise constantly thanks to the brief "freeze" moments that wall jump distraction affords you. When people are talking about the god being fun, they generally talk about handling multi enemy fights, and the decision trees there are quite deep.

I think I've been quite explicit in saying that I believe whirlwind and wall jump make those decision trees shallower, not deeper.

I would say from what I've heard so far in terms of feedback, you're the only one that thinks they're broken or impossible to salvage.

You keep bringing up player feedback but Crawl isn't developed based on player popularity, and you can't possibly know what the majority of players think anyway (Tavern, SA, Reddit, and ##crawl are hardly representative samples). If Crawl were made by polling Tavern then it'd still have 3 or 4 elves and like 10 more gods and uniques. As a general rule, communities tend to be echo chambers in favor of anything that increases user or player options and against anything that reduces them - surely you've noticed the whining that happens whenever anything in any game gets nerfed?
I've had plenty of ideas that were popular with some visible players and even developers, but in retrospect were absolutely horrible ideas: crystal golems getting innate reflection, tornado spinning monsters and items around, etc. Popularity doesn't prove anything even if you could determine it, which you can't. A good design should be able to stand on its own without appealing to argument from popularity. Demigods and distortion and Elyvilon stay in the game despite being "unpopular" because the devteam doesn't measure the quality of a feature by counting how many people praise it.

I think we are classifying these abilities in a completely different way. While you think of them as free actives, I think of them (and my design was in this line) as an extended set of weapon intrinsics, much like cleave, dagger stab, or riposte. Riposte does not have a MP cost, it has the opportunity cost of the sword stats. Ditto for cleaving and stabbing. These new three weapon intrinsics have the opportunity cost of a god slot, which I think is fair.

If you don't believe reaching is broken, then I can't possibly convince you that there's anything wrong with whirlwind and wall jump other than power, and I see no point in arguing about the power when the devs as a whole clearly do not care about god balance (otherwise fedhas, trog, kiku, xom, qazlal, etc. would have changed long ago).
Cleave and riposte and stabbing are irrelevant to the issue. You don't need to do any different or extra inputs to use cleave or riposte. They just get added to your regular melee attacks.

[Steel Neuron]

I think I've been quite explicit in saying that I believe whirlwind and wall jump make those decision trees shallower, not deeper.

And I've been quite explicit I disagree, we are just going in circles now.

You keep bringing up player feedback but Crawl isn't developed based on player popularity, and you can't possibly know what the majority of players think anyway (Tavern, SA, Reddit, and ##crawl are hardly representative samples). If Crawl were made by polling Tavern then it'd still have 3 or 4 elves and like 10 more gods and uniques.

When I say I listen to player feedback I don't mean I 'count their votes'. I read their arguments and see how they align with my own experience. Several players have provided feedback that has been completely transformative for the god (a single post by luckless lead to a big steer in the god's design direction). I try to judge the arguments for their own merits and ignore the source. I've listened to a lot of dev feedback too, and implemented many, many proposed changes (MarvinPA would be one to tell you) yet there are others that I refuse to because I firmly believe are opposed to the design, like Lasty's suggestion of removing status effects altogether, even though Lasty is possibly the dev with the biggest influence on the current iteration of the god.

When you say that design shouldn't be driven by player feedback and, on the same breath, reiterate with much hyperbole but little justification that the design is broken, I'm not sure if this is a veiled attempt to appeal to authority, or where your authority would come from exactly. Is this not 'player feedback'? Why should I accept it at face value? Do you belong to an elite that allows you to say 'do not listen to other player feedback, but listen to this'?

If you don't believe reaching is broken, then I can't possibly convince you that there's anything wrong with whirlwind and wall jump other than power [...]

Surely you realize I didn't mention reaching at any point right? I dislike reaching as well, and it's no small part that it's an active ability, which the martial attacks avoid.

Cleave and riposte and stabbing are irrelevant to the issue. You don't need to do any different or extra inputs to use cleave or riposte. They just get added to your regular melee attacks.

Well, the martial attacks get added to your regular moves! How would this be any different?

Cleave-> An extra effect that gets added when you spend auts to hit a dude.
Whirlwind-> An extra effect that gets added when you spend auts to change position.

There is nothing fundamentally different about them aside from the opportunity cost and method of obtaining.

[Heia]

I'd vote for maintaining status quo, WJC is great the way it is, maybe tweaks for high AC&SH builds are needed (havent played much with those builds)

[pedritolo]

I've been playing it in trunk. Seems pretty fun so far, wouldn't change a thing.

[luckless]

I'd also vote for maintaining the status quo.

In any case, I think it's important to the experience of the god for me that the martial attacks don't reduce single-target damage over time, and hence that I never have a reason to tab-attack instead of them. I worry that if this were changed, smart WJC play would come again to involve lots of luring and corridor fighting, relegating the martial attacks to situations where one-on-one melee wasn't an option. imo this would be a major step back. If the WJC needs to be nerfed, it should be nerfed without changing its core dynamic--e.g. with defense penalties.*

(In any case, the fact that Whirlwind can make it suboptimal to tab through popcorn is a terrible reason to change it; in general, game features that otherwise work fine should not be changed simply so that the small minority of players who aim to maximize their scores can do so with fewer headaches. By that logic, there should be no autoexplore.)

[*] SN, maybe I should clarify (since you so nicely credited me above) that I do not take my feedback necessarily to be justified from a purely design perspective. From that perspective, duvessa may well be right: in allowing the player to engage and escape from multiple opponents so easily, the WJC in fact makes positioning less important and reduces tactical depth. However, I don't care. As far as I can see, any change that could correct this problem would make the god less fun, and sometimes it is reasonable to prefer fun over tactical depth. (Otherwise, there would be no reason to play games like crawl at all, rather than chess or go or whatever.)

[luckless]

Also--incidentally to my previous post--there are still some changes to Whirlwind Attack and Wall Jump that may be worth considering.

• In Sil, the Whirlwind equivalent only functions if the player is not adjacent to walls or similar obstructions at the beginning of their movement. It may be worth adding this limitation here, or perhaps an extended version of it (on which Whirlwind Attack functions only if the player does not either begin or end their move adjacent to a wall).
• I do not think Wall Jump should take longer or do less damage, though I do think there is a case for giving it a short cooldown--like 5 turns or so, maybe 10. This would preclude spending a whole fight attacking by bouncing between walls--which I think both looks silly and is degenerate play--and weaken its power as an escape mechanism while still preserving it. (Specifically, this would let you use Wall Jump to break engagements, but it would make it harder to use it to escape from the berserk deep trolls Trog summons when you switch to WJC after getting the branded triple sword you wanted.)

[theclanless]

I just want to chime in again, and say this god is a ton of fun, and thanks to SteelNeuron for making it. Sorry if things have gotten all heated in the balancing. You are awesome, remember that!

I wonder if part of the issue some folks have with the god is the lack of cost. The closest similar god would be say, Okawaru, who has almost no penalties, but he require invocations to run.

Rather then nerf overall, maybe bring invocations back in? Just a thought.

Also, everyone who LIKES the god, take a second to shower Kudos on Steel. When harsh feedback comes in it can really harsh the mellow of creating and sharing new content.

GO STEELNERUON! YOU ROCK!

[minstrel]

I'd also vote for maintaining the status quo.
(In any case, the fact that Whirlwind can make it suboptimal to tab through popcorn is a terrible reason to change it; in general, game features that otherwise work fine should not be changed simply so that the small minority of players who aim to maximize their scores can do so with fewer headaches. By that logic, there should be no autoexplore.)

I feel that this understates the issue. What is popcorn is not binary. Sure, a quokka at XL10 is popcorn. An ogre or an orc warrior is mostly so, but most characters would be wise to use a free slow on it if possible, to help mitigate lucky big hits. And until you hit really big XLs, those are common types of encounters: not really an existential issue 90% of the time, but worth using a free ability -every time- to make it easier. And thus, I suspect, common behavior.

Where I think we agree is that decreasing whirlwind's damage isn't the way to solve anything. I posted a suggestion that would decrease the frequency the player is able to use the attack, and I'm curious what defensive nerfs you mentioned would be.

I worry that, even with those issues resolved, whirlwind (and wall jump to some extent) will have a bigger issue with cognitive burnout. The behavior on which it's modeled (or appears to have been), Dodging + Flanking in Sil, is a ton of fun, but Sil is a much shorter and tighter game and even so, while I can only speak from personal experience, the playstyle is tiring by the time you hit Morgoth's throne room. I agree there's a state of flow you get into, but I think long term it's too many constant micro decisions for a potentially much longer game.

[luckless]

I feel that this understates the issue.

I don't. I'm basically comfortable using Whirlwind against anything minimally troublesome, and don't find this playstyle to be more tedious or tiring than, say, casting offensive spells. For basically the same reason I don't think there's a problem with cognitive burnout; playing any roguelike for hours is tiring. Of course, I realize this is all pretty subjective, but there it is.

This discussion may be getting too abstract and speculative to be helpful, but overall I think current discussion of the god should focus--as the title of the thread implies!--on balance. In my experience, WJC is still very strong. I don't know if it's too strong, but I do think it would be worth testing a weaker version in trunk and seeing how it plays.

(The defensive nerf I had in mind was basically going off something Lasty suggested in another thread: preventing worshippers from using the martial attacks if they were wearing armor with encumbrance rating greater than 4--that is, heavier than leather--or using a transmutation form other than beastly appendage, blade hands, or necromutation.)

[minstrel]

I'm basically comfortable using Whirlwind against anything minimally troublesome, and don't find this playstyle to be more tedious or tiring than, say, casting offensive spells.

I made the mistake of putting two points in the same post and didn't mean to cause them to become conflated.

My criticism of whirlwind for being optimal against anything not totally popcorn was meant as separate from that of burnout.

That clarified, if your playstyle matches that of most players (I suspect it would), it would be explicitly against the goals of DCSS as I understand them. That being an obvious and optimal tactical choice that takes time or adds complication over the default attack: whirlwind until slow, wall jump/lunge to taste instead of just whack with stick.

Going against my own rule again, I don't know if I'm crazy about Lasty's ideas as you presented them. It seems like they might just penalize high Armor, low Dodge races and narrow the appeal of a god that already explicitly only appeals to melee. I agree it's very strong and suspect strongly it's over-the-top strong. Need to play a few more games after my current one is done.

[duvessa]

When you say that design shouldn't be driven by player feedback and, on the same breath, reiterate with much hyperbole but little justification that the design is broken, I'm not sure if this is a veiled attempt to appeal to authority, or where your authority would come from exactly. Is this not 'player feedback'? Why should I accept it at face value? Do you belong to an elite that allows you to say 'do not listen to other player feedback, but listen to this'?

Of course not, I'm just tired of hearing "but it's FUN!" every time a game mechanic is criticized. It's distracting noise. (You are far from the only person to do that, of course.) I find the martial attacks fun too, but I try to avoid letting that bias me.
Nothing I have said about WJC is hyperbole. This is all my honest, unexaggerated opinions on the god.

Surely you realize I didn't mention reaching at any point right? I dislike reaching as well, and it's no small part that it's an active ability, which the martial attacks avoid.

I do realize that, but dismissed it since I thought you just wanted to avoid acknowledging reaching altogether. Being activated by hjklyubn instead of by 'v' doesn't make whirlwind, wall jump, and lunge into passive abilities. You are still doing extra inputs that you would not do without those abilities. This isn't a huge deal for lunge*, since it mostly replaces moving backwards (or pressing 's' against slow monsters), but there is definitely an interface tax for whirlwind and wall jump. Wall jump only works with inputs that previously did literally nothing! How is that not an active ability?

there are others that I refuse to because I firmly believe are opposed to the design, like Lasty's suggestion of removing status effects altogether

That's disappointing to hear. I thought I would like this god if it was adjusted, but if it keeps the status effects it's unsalvageable imo.

*or what I assume is the intended design of lunge; the bonus against slowed/distracted monsters kind of ruins it at the moment but that part can be removed easily enough.

[duvessa]

This discussion may be getting too abstract and speculative to be helpful, but overall I think current discussion of the god should focus--as the title of the thread implies!--on balance.

There was a thread for discussing the god's design but it was locked so discussion has spilled over into this thread.

[Siegurt]

Surely you realize I didn't mention reaching at any point right? I dislike reaching as well, and it's no small part that it's an active ability, which the martial attacks avoid.

I do realize that, but dismissed it since I thought you just wanted to avoid acknowledging reaching altogether. Being activated by hjklyubn instead of by 'v' doesn't make whirlwind, wall jump, and lunge into passive abilities. You are still doing extra inputs that you would not do without those abilities.

How is it "extra"? if you're doing "melee" attacks, you are either doing "hjklyubn" or <tab> to attack, the martial attacks *take the place of* the keypress that you would hit to do a "regular" melee attack, in fact if you aren't using tab, it's exactly the same keys, it's just a matter of pressing slightly different ones, plus since the martial attacks increase your damage done per keypress, you are actually hitting *less* keys in total (Although you might have to spend slightly more time thinking about which ones to use if you want to be perfectly optimal about it.)

It's not even the "fake not activated" accomplished by the <tab> autofight key using v<enter> with polearms.

The god actually *saves you* keystrokes, if that's somehow your major complaint.

[CanOfWorms]

You only need to hold tab (1 press) to clear an entire room of monsters*

*may result in character death

[ONIchinchin]

The god actually *saves you* keystrokes, if that's somehow your major complaint.

Yeah that's absolutely right. Instead of pressing aa and has a trait to consume piety and/or MP and/or has cooldown and/or has other tedious constraints, these martial attacks have none, how convenient! I've always wanted a better version of Chei's Bend Time since I don't want to waste turn/s trying to proc it like some stupid Hex spell. These Bend Time with damage and less tedium is definitely right up my alley!

[papilio]

I felt whirlwind sucks because-

- your attack takes 0.7 turn but
- your move takes (normally) 1.0 turn and whirlwind damage is 75% of dam of normal attack, resulting 52.5% efficiency. so worth to use only if you can hit 2+ enemies at once
- yes, whirlwind inflicts slow, but that's not always the case

[bel]

I felt whirlwind sucks because-

- your attack takes 0.7 turn but
- your move takes (normally) 1.0 turn and whirlwind damage is 75% of dam of normal attack, resulting 52.5% efficiency. so worth to use only if you can hit 2+ enemies at once
- yes, whirlwind inflicts slow, but that's not always the case

That's not the way it works.

Whirlwind does normal damage (the 75% is just a proposal which hasn't been implemented yet). The number of whirlwind attacks on the monster in your example would be (1 / 0.7), randomly rounded; so, on average, whirlwind does the same damage as a normal attack. The slow effect triggers independently on each hit with some probability.

[Steel Neuron]

Sorry I haven't been too attentive these past two days. Zelda happened, and it has absorbed me quite a bit.

To respond some concerns about my proposed change to whirlwind (which after some tests I think would be fine at 80% damage). It's very important to reiterate that I don't intend for tab to be better than whirlwind in any particular circumstance. If you, as a player, decide to engage with whirlwind on every single fight, you should be rewarded, and that's why I'm proposing the drop in whirlwind damage to be compensated with an increase in slow chance. The nuance of what I'm proposing is for whirlwind not to be strictly and unconditionally better than tab. It may be a minor difference, but it has some psychological impact, as the player who chooses to tab through a fight doesn't think they are playing 100% wrong, even if whirlwind would technically be better thanks to slow being powerful.

[duvessa]

If you, as a player, decide to engage with whirlwind on every single fight, you should be rewarded

Okay, I'll bite.

How the fuck is this better for the game than engaging with tab on every single fight?

[Steel Neuron]

If you, as a player, decide to engage with whirlwind on every single fight, you should be rewarded

Okay, I'll bite.

How the fuck is this better for the game than engaging with tab on every single fight?

the same way that engaging a quokka with mephitic cloud is better than tabbing until it's dead.

Let's push this example a bit further: Assuming no other spells and once it's hungerless, it's better to use mephitic cloud against any enemy, no matter how trivial, it is however not strictly and unconditionally better because of mana cost. This way, a player can be justified to tab against an enemy they consider trivial, even if they aren't playing optimally, because there is at least one minor aspect (mana) in which tab is better.

As it stands, whirlwind is strictly and unconditionally better than tab. I want to introduce an aspect at which whirlwind is worse than tab (raw damage) while maintaining the status quo of whirlwind being altogether better than tabbing. We have ruled out traditional costs for martial attacks again and again, and also artificial restrictions, so the only thing that remains is opportunity cost, realized in the form of damage and to a lesser extent the requisites on your surroundings (can't whirlwind in a corridor). This way you can choose to tab if you don't want to bother without being strictly penalized, but you are still rewarded for taking the fight to the open, as you should due to your god choice.

If you simply don't enjoy the act of using whirlwind to attack in any circumstance, then you're just not the kind of player to enjoy this god, and there's nothing wrong with that. We're in the realm of player preference then, and my argument that a lot of people are enjoying WJC is valid.

[luckless]

To respond some concerns about my proposed change to whirlwind (which after some tests I think would be fine at 80% damage). It's very important to reiterate that I don't intend for tab to be better than whirlwind in any particular circumstance. If you, as a player, decide to engage with whirlwind on every single fight, you should be rewarded, and that's why I'm proposing the drop in whirlwind damage to be compensated with an increase in slow chance. The nuance of what I'm proposing is for whirlwind not to be strictly and unconditionally better than tab. It may be a minor difference, but it has some psychological impact, as the player who chooses to tab through a fight doesn't think they are playing 100% wrong, even if whirlwind would technically be better thanks to slow being powerful.

I'm skeptical of the psychology you seem to be asserting here. I'm far from an optimizer in Crawl, but to the extent that tradeoffs between efficient play and complex play annoy me, it's not in the case where I just tab through a fight. If I tab through a fight, I know I'm playing suboptimally, but I just don't care because I'm not trying to maximize my score.

What does annoy me, however, is the case where I am trying to play (somewhat) efficiently, but I know that determining whether some tactic would actually be efficient would require me to stop playing for a bit, look up some numbers, and do some math. I suspect that the new Whirlwind would require this, insofar as it would require me to take slow probabilities into account when calculating expected damage. If Whirlwind's supposed to be better, just let it be better.

[luckless]

If you, as a player, decide to engage with whirlwind on every single fight, you should be rewarded

Okay, I'll bite.

How the fuck is this better for the game than engaging with tab on every single fight?

What I'd really like to know is: on your view, leaving aside user interface concerns, would a version of whirlwind that neither reduced damage nor had a chance to slow be bad for the game, e.g. because it made positioning less important? If so, why?

I'm asking because (after a lot of WJC games) I think the ability to simultaneously engage multiple enemies in melee--without getting surrounded and while preserving some ability to continue to approach ranged attackers and manage LoS--is really the essence of the god; everything else is gravy. Obviously it fundamentally changes gameplay and I can imagine arguments that it does so negatively. I'm undecided about these arguments but I think it would help if they were made explicit, since I think they should set the direction with respect to how the god should be adjusted.

[duvessa]

If you, as a player, decide to engage with whirlwind on every single fight, you should be rewarded

Okay, I'll bite.

How the fuck is this better for the game than engaging with tab on every single fight?

the same way that engaging a quokka with mephitic cloud is better than tabbing until it's dead.

Let's push this example a bit further: Assuming no other spells and once it's hungerless, it's better to use mephitic cloud against any enemy, no matter how trivial, it is however not strictly and unconditionally better because of mana cost. This way, a player can be justified to tab against an enemy they consider trivial, even if they aren't playing optimally, because there is at least one minor aspect (mana) in which tab is better.

You misunderstand. I know perfectly well that your design makes starting with whirlwind a no-brainer. What I'm asking is, why do you want engaging with whirlwind to be a no-brainer? How could that possibly make the game better?
Also, the reason you shouldn't do that with meph is noise. Not mana. This example doesn't help my faith in your understanding of Crawl tactics.

We have ruled out traditional costs for martial attacks again and again

You've ruled out traditional costs. Other people, as far as I'm aware, have not. Like it or not, a developer adding real costs to your martial attacks in the future is a possibility.
Also...in your own example, the only thing that stops you from mephing every monster is that it has a traditional cost. Surely you do not think a version of meph with no mana cost and no noise would be a good for the game.

What I'd really like to know is: on your view, leaving aside user interface concerns, would a version of whirlwind that neither reduced damage nor had a chance to slow be bad for the game, e.g. because it made positioning less important? If so, why?

A non-slowing version of whirlwind, even if better than regular melee attacks, makes no significant changes to the positioning game. (It's also redundant with cleaving.) The main reason this god makes Crawl's tactics much shallower is wall jump.
For what it's worth, the slowing is more practical the smaller the number of monsters you're engaging is, so I don't believe whirlwind making it somewhat less bad to fight multiple monsters is enough to change things. Cleaving makes it somewhat less bad to fight multiple monsters, too, provides no advantage whatsoever against single monsters, and still doesn't really change your tactics at all when you're not berserking.

Even a slower version of wall jump (assuming it's still useful at all) makes the best terrain even better and gives you another tool to reach it. Specifically incentivizing the player to hang around walls, when there are already tons of reasons that hanging around walls is better than not hanging around walls, is not a good idea.

I don't like to leave aside user interface concerns though. Most of the gods make melee tactics shallower, having one more that does so isn't that bad. What I do think is that bad is that it gives you free abilities that are optimal to use in most fights, and that these abilities are unnecessarily complex.

[luckless]

The main reason this god makes Crawl's tactics much shallower is wall jump.

Okay, now that I see it, I agree wall jump is bad. In addition to the problems you raise, it seems thematically unnecessary (why should a martial arts god give worshippers a free and extremely reliable escape mechanism?) and may make whirlwind tactically shallower than it needs to be (since it makes it all but impossible for the player to lose the ability to whirlwind by getting cornered). All things considered it strikes me as quite likely that the god would play as well or better with wall jump simply removed, and would recommend the next trunk version try this out.

I don't like to leave aside user interface concerns though. Most of the gods make melee tactics shallower, having one more that does so isn't that bad. What I do think is that bad is that it gives you free abilities that are optimal to use in most fights, and that these abilities are unnecessarily complex.

It's beating a dead horse at this point, but the question whether repeatedly alternating arrow keys instead of repeatedly hitting tab is unnecessarily complex is evidently not resolvable through argument. It may be because of all the Sil I've played, but I find I like repeatedly alternating arrow keys in roguelikes. One thing to note, however, is that unlike Charms (which every character can effectively be penalized for not using), relegating this playstyle to a god lets players who do not find it subjectively satisfying ignore it.

[TeshiAlair]

Wall jump is the single most fun thing to happen to crawl in at least 4 years. If it's OP, maybe make it exhaust or something, but it is seriously delightful and the main reason I've been playing nothing but this god (this god being the main reason I've been playing crawl last two weeks)

[shping]

Another possible way to slow down any "jump":

Jump (which may use walls as it does now now, but does not need to) only moves you one space, but you are flying during that movement (mostly for flavour and feel) and attack as Whirlwind where applicable. Then you choose one of the three squares that make logical sense as being "in the same direction" as your jump, and land there, doing your AoE attack. (alternatively, whirlwind and lunge are triggered on the landing, and "jump" no longer has to have its own special attack.) This costs you two movements worth of time, but you get to see monster movements mid jump and don't have to commit to potentially being bashed on for two turns. If it costs a little piety or some other resource, distract could be added to your mid-jump whirlwind.

[phloomp]

I would be surprised if the god worked without wall jump - running around enemies is quite dangerous if they are able to cut off your escape or pin you against walls. At the same time this means jump only functions to the extent that it makes the positioning game shallower. Suggestion: instead of distracting enemies, do the opposite: if you land adjacent to an enemy it gets a free melee attack. Now you are penalized for letting yourself get trapped, but can still untrap yourself.

[Steel Neuron]

What I'm asking is, why do you want engaging with whirlwind to be a no-brainer? How could that possibly make the game better?

Now you're just resorting to cheap strawmen. I've only been comparing whirlwind to tab, particularly with the intention of making both viable. Not only I don't think engaging with whirlwind is a no brainer, but I described other perfectly valid tactics, like repeated wall jump away + lunge or wall jump over the monster. Keep in mind these options only replace meleeing, but they don't replace any of your character's kit like spells and other active abilities.

Also, the reason you shouldn't do that with meph is noise. Not mana. This example doesn't help my faith in your understanding of Crawl tactics.

Yup, you got me. I picked that example at random and forgot to factor in noise. You could do better than be smug about it though.

You've ruled out traditional costs. Other people, as far as I'm aware, have not. Like it or not, a developer adding real costs to your martial attacks in the future is a possibility.

If you think I have been autistically developing this god on my own closed to external input, you're very wrong. Every step of this god (which has been reworked many, many times) has been almost entirely led by feedback from players and devs. In fact, very little of my original idea remains, if anything at all.

Yes, there are people (and this includes devs) that are directly advocating not to complicate the martial attacks with costs, restrictions, etc. You don't even have to go too far, Lasty made a comment in this thread along these lines. If anything, I'm currently being directed at ##crawl-dev to be conservative since the god had a good reception as is.

Of course there is a chance a dev will add a cost in the future. However, there is no indication they currently want that to happen.

Even a slower version of wall jump (assuming it's still useful at all) makes the best terrain even better and gives you another tool to reach it.

You keep bringing up that "wall jump makes the best terrain better" and I would like you to explain what you mean. The best terrain for a melee character is a killhole followed by a corridor, and wall jump is straight up disabled in both scenarios. If anything, wall jump makes terrain that is traditionally bad (3 tile wide corridors) good.

In any case, I think you've made your point already, and I'm going to stop engaging in this conversation. This is a thread for balancing aspects of the current design and you've crashed in asking for the whole concept to be thrown away. If your position had more support, believe me that I would take it into account like I have in the past with posts that were very critical of the god, but we shouldn't be focusing this thread only on the points you raise.

[duvessa]

What I'm asking is, why do you want engaging with whirlwind to be a no-brainer? How could that possibly make the game better?

Now you're just resorting to cheap strawmen. I've only been comparing whirlwind to tab, particularly with the intention of making both viable. Not only I don't think engaging with whirlwind is a no brainer, but I described other perfectly valid tactics, like repeated wall jump away + lunge or wall jump over the monster. Keep in mind these options only replace meleeing, but they don't replace any of your character's kit like spells and other active abilities.

I did rephrase it, but I don't see any other way to interpret "If you, as a player, decide to engage with whirlwind on every single fight, you should be rewarded". It sounds like you're saying you want engaging with whirlwind to always be the optimal choice.

Even a slower version of wall jump (assuming it's still useful at all) makes the best terrain even better and gives you another tool to reach it.

You keep bringing up that "wall jump makes the best terrain better" and I would like you to explain what you mean. The best terrain for a melee character is a killhole followed by a corridor, and wall jump is straight up disabled in both scenarios. If anything, wall jump makes terrain that is traditionally bad (3 tile wide corridors) good.

That is not the best terrain for a melee character, with or without WJC. If there's a simplified best terrain, it's a killhole with escape routes that have many LOS blockers (and even more ideally, stairs, but you generally won't have that unless you want to lure monsters across half the level which isn't a good idea). Straight corridors are not the best for that; you can't block LOS with them and they can get clogged with a single monster. If the optimal terrain for a melee character is a killhole, then the optimal terrain for a WJC character is functionally the same, if technically more complicated. It looks roughly like this. Let 1 denote the "entrance" and 2 denote an example of where you could put an escape route:

  Code:

  ###
 ##.#
1#..#
#.#.#2
####.#
   ###

It's the same functionality as a killhole, but with some modifications made to allow as many lunges/whirlwinds/wall jumps as you want. twelwe already covered what the ideal escape route should roughly look like with current wall jump,
But centering the discussion on killholes doesn't mean much unless the player can freely dig, and that's just not a very interesting case. On most characters, in most fights, you'll be using the terrain that's given to you. There's a lot of corridor worship around here but those really aren't the best terrain even without WJC: being in a corridor puts you at risk of getting your retreat blocked by a single monster, is horrible at blocking LOS, and while it lets you fight some monsters one at a time, it doesn't let you rest between them. When you want to kill a centaur or an orc priest as a Melee Character™, you don't want a corridor, you want a corner. Wall jump makes it easier to get there and gives you another movement option when you do.
It is true that a straight 3-tile-wide corridor goes from a bad terrain feature to a useful one, because you can use wall jump to move through it at double speed. You still don't (or at least shouldn't) want to fight multiple monsters in it though, and wall jump makes it easier to avoid doing that by increasing your movement speed through it...

How about balancing whirlwind and wall jump by making them generate a large amount of noise? Higher than the cap of 12 for melee attack noise. That way it wouldn't be optimal to use them in trivial fights.

[TeshiAlair]

@duvessa- The idea of having walljump generate a lot of noise is a really good idea actually, and works thematically as well. Whirlwind being super noisy I think is frustrating interface wise because it is really easy to unintentionally trigger whirlwind.

[Steel Neuron]

How about balancing whirlwind and wall jump by making them generate a large amount of noise? Higher than the cap of 12 for melee attack noise. That way it wouldn't be optimal to use them in trivial fights.

I actually like that a lot. I'll respond at length tomorrow, but it's very promising.

[twelwe]

Gained mutation: you scream loudly when executing alarming acrobatic combat moves

[Steel Neuron]

Re: Noise on wall jump and whirlwind.

I think this one could work very well. I'm not convinced about whirlwind yet (I still think a lower base damage could be the ideal tweak) but walljump could definitely benefit from being noisy since it goes against its main degenerate use, which is escaping for long distances. In any case, testing it for both wouldn't hurt. I like the notion of moving WJC away from dithmenos by making it a "noisy god", since it's so far away from Qazlal it wouldn't really clash.

There is a slight problem; some players are finding it difficult to prevent accidental wall jumps when navigating the level. Shift-walk already prevents them, but for people who prefer navigating step by step it can take some adjusting. If wall jump makes noise, this would make those mistakes more punishing. I think this could be mitigated with a RC file option that prompts you the first time you want to wall jump since the last time you stopped having enemies in LOS (essentially, it would prompt you the first time after each encounter).

[duvessa]

In addition to the noise, you could forbid wall jumps that wouldn't attack any visible targets. Just like shadowstep only works if there's a monster there. That would get rid of most of the accidental ones, and have some other good effects (nerfing its use for escaping, not letting it replace 's' when waiting for approaching monsters).