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In f559e6e, Chris Campbell changed Ozocubu's Armour so it ends if you move. Personally, I think this is a major change that greatly affects casters and deserves a discussion thread.

So, any comments?

I personally don't use the spell, too much of an hassle. Now it's more circumstantial, which is a nerf, but it gives it a defined tactical niche, since it isn't a "you always cast this spell" any more -- now it's "you cast this spell when in a corridor" or "when with Cheib" or "when fighting a centaur with ranged, although you'd be better off getting at melee range". Maybe I'll start using it. The problem with the old version was that it took over your game with many useless keypresses to keep it active, in spite of giving a fairly low advantage compared to buffs like transmutations.

That seems like a pretty heavy nerf. With enemies in sight, is it often better to cast OA than to spend those auts killing things or escaping?

I always felt that my MP was better spent offensively. If I am soaking up melee hits with a character who is even allowed to cast that spell, I am already doing it wrong.

crawlnoob wrote:I always felt that my MP was better spent offensively.

That's weird. What can you do offensively with 3 MP that is better than getting 7 - 9 AC?

Going up or down stairs doesn't break ozos. Seems bad to allow this but disallow other forms of movement tbh. There don't need to be more reasons to lure dudes back to a staircase.

Blinking doesn't break ozo's either but I'm less convinced that's important.

Do stairs generally count as movement? IIRC they also don't activate barbs.

my thoughts:

1) The change is definitely a nerf. It makes Ice Elementalists worse vs Fire Elementalists, and casters worse vs bow/melee characters.

2) Ozo's Armour used to penalize running away, which is interesting, and now it encourages not moving at all while you fight, which is boring. That's bad.

I never use this spell, but have interface concerns about it. The "breaks if player moves" gimmick surely means that at least some players will cast Ozo's, forget about it, and move to waste the spell. Is there a warning against this?

If there isn't, this is bad because the player will sometimes do something detrimental to them through no real fault of their own, akin to the old versions that let you incur god wrath by e.g. poisoning things with TSO without warning.

If there is, this is also bad because a "barb self" spell that warns you every time you try to move wouldn't be worth it even if it gave you 300 slaying.

This thread needs a post from CYC thread:

KoboldLord wrote:Obviously we need to have buffs in the game that only provide a benefit when the player is standing in a one-tile-wide corridor or has already lured a monster far away from any potential complicating monsters. That's exactly the situation where the player needs a defense boost, and definitely the tactical situation the player needs more encouragement to stay in at all times.

The problem with Ozocubu's Armour was that it was annoying to put up and encouraged tedious behavior. The attempted solution is to make this problem dramatically worse. I would have preferred that it work passively like the demonspawn mutation, but if that's a no-go just remove it.

This change makes the spell more annoying to use: after you cast Ozo's Armour you have to fight manually/slower now. Because if Tab moves you towards an enemy, your ice armour will break without a warning.

Ge0ff wrote:This change makes the spell more annoying to use: after you cast Ozo's Armour you have to fight manually/slower now. Because if Tab moves you towards an enemy, your ice armour will break without a warning.

Shift-tab attacks without moving.

mrob wrote:
Ge0ff wrote:This change makes the spell more annoying to use: after you cast Ozo's Armour you have to fight manually/slower now. Because if Tab moves you towards an enemy, your ice armour will break without a warning.

Shift-tab attacks without moving.

You can also macro regular tab (or any key) to ===hit_closest_nomove if you want that to be the default behavior (Personally I prefer this to be the default behavior of tab, regular tab is pretty much always worse than hit_closest_nomove, IMHO.)

Apologies for necro'ing this thread. This is the first time I've posted in the tavern and the first time in many, many years I've posted in a game forum.

I am currently playing my first game with the post-change Ozo Armour, and was surprised by this change. Let me ask four rhetorical questions:

1) How many casters never move in combat? Further, how many casters move less than once per every, say, 10 turns in combat?
2) Did the opportunity cost for keeping this buff (losing 3 spell slots, 3 MP, a full turn, and most mobility options) get ignored in this change?
3) No spell-caster could rightfully think it's appropriate to ask what a spell-caster can do with that stuff mentioned above that's better than gaining 10 AC until you move. (?) ((because... questions))
4) How is this balanced against a new amulet ego with ..only.. a "one-ego" opportunity cost that gives 15 EV while moving?

My recommendations to better balance Ozocubu's Armour and allow spell-casters to use it again (pick one!):

1) Shorten the casted duration and have all non-magical movement reduce the duration by an additional (auts x squares) spent moving.
2) Return the duration buff that remains through movement, but applies the AC after one non-movement action, and removes it after one movement action. (weapons of protection'ish)
3) Like #2, but reduces the AC bonus for each movement action (min zero), and increases it for each non-movement action (up to max).

The current version is still useful for most of the characters that the old version was useful for. Transmuters are happy to stand in one spot around a corner while they melee a monster (and the turn cost isn't a problem, since they otherwise would have just spent that turn waiting for the monster to come around the corner). Similar situations happen on conjurers that don't have LOS range spells, or are just waiting for monsters to come into LOS, and hey look, IE is one of those conjurers without LOS range spells until you find Freezing Cloud.

The point of the change was to stop players from maintaining the spell while exploring, and it accomplishes that. All of your suggestions re-introduce that problem.

The comparison to amulet of the acrobat doesn't make any sense. Ozocubu's Armour isn't an amulet, they're not competing against each other. They even stack, although this is seldom relevant when not waiting for a teleport.

I suppose we can have different definitions of "stack", but I'd call mutually exclusive activation criteria "not stacking". It's a nitpick anyhow.

Option #2 makes maintenance during exploration most ineffectual, while all of them make maintenance (at a lower level of effectiveness) during combat movement possible. That is the point.

It seems like, from the stated position, the change was really to make the spell useless for any person that does anything but "stand and deliver" a range payload. Maybe I'm in the minority, preferring mobile casters. From the games I've observed, i doubt it.

If transmuters are the target audience, then make it a transmutation spell. If Conjurers are a concern, give them a defensive spell that performs how Conjurers need defense to work, and give Ice Magic users their mobile defense niche back, which has been slowly eroded since Condensation Shield... did whatever it did and left TSO's magical SH buff.

arcanemastermind wrote:I suppose we can have different definitions of "stack", but I'd call mutually exclusive activation criteria "not stacking".

You can activate both at the same time with the '.' (or 's') key

I don't know how to break this to you, but Condensation Shield was not a very good spell.

arcanemastermind wrote:Maybe I'm in the minority, preferring mobile casters.

The reason Ozo's Armour was changed is purely because some players casted the spell constantly while exploring because it is optimal to do so. And some people consider that to be a bad thing because it leads to common interruptions and key presses while exploring. So it was changed to remove a user interface issue. The change is not related to 1. balance 2. character types. I think. So if you want to give ideas to bring back mobile defenses, try to think of ideas that don't have this problem of recasting while exploring.

Wahaha wrote:
arcanemastermind wrote:Maybe I'm in the minority, preferring mobile casters.

The reason Ozo's Armour was changed is purely because some players casted the spell constantly while exploring because it is optimal to do so. And some people consider that to be a bad thing because it leads to common interruptions and key presses while exploring. So it was changed to remove a user interface issue. The change is not related to 1. balance 2. character types. I think. So if you want to give ideas to bring back mobile defenses, try to think of ideas that don't have this problem of recasting while exploring.

Once cast it only stays up while there are enemies in sight? A very short duration otherwise. Say a grace period when cast of 5 turns to allow you to cast + buff up around a corner?

It could stay on until it absorbs X amount of damage, which doesn't have to be 100% of all incoming damage at once. Mobility problem solved, recast while moving problem solved. If someone wants to recast it over and over during a fight because 1 or 2 hits is removing it, they can but they are draining all of their mana to do so.

I like the new OA. It's especially nice on naga's and barachi, but my casters frequently stand still whilst killing enemies. My main frustration with the spell was that it is too easy to accidentally dispel the buff by moving. Has that been fixed now?

svendre wrote:It could stay on until it absorbs X amount of damage, which doesn't have to be 100% of all incoming damage at once. Mobility problem solved, recast while moving problem solved. If someone wants to recast it over and over during a fight because 1 or 2 hits is removing it, they can but they are draining all of their mana to do so.

Sounds functionally identical to Shroud of Golubria.

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Ozo's Armour change discussion

Ozo's Armour change discussion

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