Conjure Ball Lightning explosion radius

[bel]

I recently played a fair bit with CBL with very high power (150+). With high power, I was creating lots of balls and was getting radius 3 explosions consistently. Size 3 explosion may have made more sense with CircleLoS, but multiple size 3 SquareLoS explosion (with field of vision of the player only 7 squares instead of 8) cover a huge area. I received extremely high self-damage and I had to more or less stop using CBL (Chain Lightning was safer). It's rather counterintuitive that I was getting more use out of the spell at low power than at high power.

I propose that the explosion radius be 1 or 2, instead of 2 or 3. This change would both be a nerf and a buff: much less damage, much more control. It would make CBL much less annoying to use.

[duvessa]

Spells should either have no self-damage, or have self-damage that is (nearly) impossible to avoid. Static Discharge, Chain Lightning, and Ozocubu's Refrigeration self-damage work fine because you can't get around them.
CBL does huge self-damage, but it's also self-damage that is easy to avoid by only using it at long range. This is not interesting and not fun.
If you removed the self-damage but made it impossible for CBL to damage monsters that are out of LOS, you would be left with a spell that is much more convenient to use, and it would actually be weaker than the current version IMO (getting to attack out-of-LOS monsters is pretty nuts).

[bel]

I would consider removing self-damage (and removing out of LoS damage, and keeping the other conditions same) to be a rather big buff. One could spam CBL rather mindlessly to take out anything before it gets close, and even after it gets close (Chain Lightning already works something like this, but it sucks if there are lots of monsters on the screen). In these situations, CBL would be much better than Irradiate, say, to take out things in melee range.

[nago]

The fact is that is much much much better to kill things who aren't able to retaliate at all (actually that are dead even before getting in LOS) than having things nearby or in melee range.

[Lavandula]

CBL is essentially a cheap nuke, so self-damage and requirement for rare resitance are totally justified.

[bel]

The fact is that is much much much better to kill things who aren't able to retaliate at all (actually that are dead even before getting in LOS) than having things nearby or in melee range.

Let me rephrase. I don't see what "out of LoS damage" has, logically speaking, to do with "self-damage". One can make an argument pro- or con- either of them independently of the other aspect. FWIW, I favor removing out of LoS damage, but not self-damage. But that was not my proposal.

I should probably not have talked at all about whether the net effect of these two logically separate things (which are also logically separate from my own proposal) is a nerf or buff. In the OP, I mentioned the two different effects (for my own proposal) because it was relevant. I don't know what the net effect of my proposal would be (and it's not really important).

[VeryAngryFelid]

IMHO attacks out of LoS are bad in most branches no matter if it is CBL or Fire Storm as it encourages standing on upstairs, making noise (both spells are extremely loud so you don't even need to do anything else) and spamming the spells indefinitely.
Killing monsters out of LoS in areas without normal upstairs (Pan/Tomb 2-3/Hell 2-7/Abyss/Zigs) is fine IMHO

[Majang]

IMHO attacks out of LoS are bad in most branches no matter if it is CBL or Fire Storm as it encourages standing on upstairs, making noise (both spells are extremely loud so you don't even need to do anything else) and spamming the spells indefinitely.
Killing monsters out of LoS in areas without normal upstairs (Pan/Tomb 2-3/Hell 2-7/Abyss/Zigs) is fine IMHO

Clearing out an entire Depths or Zot level with Firestorm while standing on an upstairs doesn't work as well as you think. Even if you repeat the procedure on all upstairs (which on Depths levels are usually close together anyway). For some reason most of the monsters value their sleep and can't be bothered unless you open a door on them.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

To return to topic: Self-damaging spells that can do large damage are usually annoying and sometimes extremely fiddly to use. In a lot of cases it becomes more convenient to just use something else.

I would be in favour of removing the self-damage, or toning it down dramatically. If that leaves the spell too strong, then other changes can be considered.

[duvessa]

Let me rephrase. I don't see what "out of LoS damage" has, logically speaking, to do with "self-damage".

Nothing. It was just my suggestion for a compensating nerf to the spell, since removing the self-damage is a noticeable buff. There are plenty of other conceivable nerfs, like reducing the damage or explosion radius.

[bel]

I also favour removing out-of-LoS damage. I think CBL could do without any compensatory buffs; it would still be a pretty good spell for its level.

My proposal was not really about buff or nerfs: I just think radius 1 and 2 explosions would be much less annoying. SquareLoS radius 3 explosions are too big, imo. Implementing this proposal would also remove the counter-intuitive result which I mentioned in my OP: at higher power the self-damage is so high that the spell actually becomes less useful in many situations.

I should also mention a few key differences between radius 3 explosions created by CBL and a radius 3 Fire Storm explosion (for instance). The explosion is centered at the ball (when it explodes), which means that it's one square away from the monster at the time of the explosion. Second, there are multiple balls created by CBL. Third, the explosion is not instantaneous, but the ball needs to travel a bit. The total result of these three factors is that you are typically closer to the explosion even if you back away after casting CBL. This means that size 3 explosions do much more self-damage to the caster.

An alternative proposal would be to have the size 3 explosions occur with a fixed probability, independent of spellpower. 20% seems like a good number. Spellpower would only determine the number of balls created and their damage.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

It might also be possible to have the explosion occur on the tile of the thing that gets hit, which would make more sense anyway I think.

[Siegurt]

I also favour removing out-of-LoS damage. I think CBL could do without any compensatory buffs; it would still be a pretty good spell for its level.

My proposal was not really about buff or nerfs: I just think radius 1 and 2 explosions would be much less annoying. SquareLoS radius 3 explosions are too big, imo. Implementing this proposal would also remove the counter-intuitive result which I mentioned in my OP: at higher power the self-damage is so high that the spell actually becomes less useful in many situations.

I should also mention a few key differences between radius 3 explosions created by CBL and a radius 3 Fire Storm explosion (for instance). The explosion is centered at the ball (when it explodes), which means that it's one square away from the monster at the time of the explosion. Second, there are multiple balls created by CBL. Third, the explosion is not instantaneous, but the ball needs to travel a bit. The total result of these three factors is that you are typically closer to the explosion even if you back away after casting CBL. This means that size 3 explosions do much more self-damage to the caster.

An alternative proposal would be to have the size 3 explosions occur with a fixed probability, independent of spellpower. 20% seems like a good number. Spellpower would only determine the number of balls created and their damage.

What if the size of the explosions was dependent on the distance from the player (So you could only get size 3 explosions when the ball was 4 spaces from the player, size 2 explosions when the ball was 3 away and size 1 when the balls were two away) spellpower could determine ball travel speed (since this would effect how far away it was, and therefore the size of the explosion) as well as number of balls and damage.

As an additional possibility, you could even keep the potential for self damage, and have it be the *distance travelled* that determines explosion size, so if you don't move at all, you'd be safe, but movement would require you pay attention to what balls were launched and from where, and which ones would explode in squares you might move into, that might make it drift back into too fiddly to use properly, but at least it'd always be *possible* to use without self harm.

[VeryAngryFelid]

What if the size of the explosions was dependent on the distance from the player (So you could only get size 3 explosions when the ball was 4 spaces from the player, size 2 explosions when the ball was 3 away and size 1 when the balls were two away) spellpower could determine ball travel speed (since this would effect how far away it was, and therefore the size of the explosion) as well as number of balls and damage.

That would change the spell a lot, it will no longer be "save me now" spell like in my last game where I used CBL just when surrounded by monsters, otherwise I was using bolt spells, freezing cloud (and sometimes fireball) as they are more silent, more predictable and don't depend on terrain that much.

[duvessa]

Uh, let's not go scale everything possible with spellpower, please. The spell already has superlinear returns on power due to power increasing both the damage per ball and the number of balls. This is very uncommon for damage spells (Static Discharge and Chain Lightning are the only other spells I can think of where this is true).

I also favour removing out-of-LoS damage. I think CBL could do without any compensatory buffs; it would still be a pretty good spell for its level.

My proposal was not really about buff or nerfs: I just think radius 1 and 2 explosions would be much less annoying.

My proposal also was not about buffs or nerfs. I just think having no self-damage would be much less annoying.

[bel]

CBL with no self-damage would be basically a completely different spell. It could simply be spammed mindlessly in all situations. A single monster at the edge of LoS? Cast CBL. Monsters in melee range? Cast CBL. Monsters coming from all directions? Cast CBL. Encountered a monster pack? Cast CBL. Also, relatively few monsters have rElec, which increases its utility even more.

All I want is a tweak to make the spell much less annoying, not radically change the spell.