Re: Remove confusing touch
Posted: Friday, 16th August 2019, 10:08
Confusing touch duration is roughly 100 / (HD + 5) auts on average. The value is very concentrated around the mean. Keep in mind that the monster is immediately confused when you succeed, so if you swing your weapon with 7 aut delay, those 7 auts can't be used to damage the monster. So the "real" duration is 100 / (HD + 5) - 7.
More generally, one should keep in mind that confused monsters have their damage essentially reduced to 1/3 their normal (melee) damage, and it reduces the spell damage to zero. So, depending on the value of your damage, monster's damage, your HP and monster's HP, there is a fairly large domain where using confusing touch is pretty good. I had planned to run some fsim tests but I didn't get the time. Soon, maybe.
The reason why confusing touch isn't used as much as it should is because it doesn't directly kill the monster and is somewhat annoying to use (less now than it used to be). How many people use Slow often? Slow is really good: it has LoS range, reduces monster speed by 33% for a really long time and has a spellpower bonus so it often easily overcomes monster MR. Apparently, many people think that Slow is the worst lvl 2 spell, which is completely bonkers, imo. To be fair, there are a lot of good lvl 2 spells (confusing touch used to be lvl 2 as well).
More generally, one should keep in mind that confused monsters have their damage essentially reduced to 1/3 their normal (melee) damage, and it reduces the spell damage to zero. So, depending on the value of your damage, monster's damage, your HP and monster's HP, there is a fairly large domain where using confusing touch is pretty good. I had planned to run some fsim tests but I didn't get the time. Soon, maybe.
The reason why confusing touch isn't used as much as it should is because it doesn't directly kill the monster and is somewhat annoying to use (less now than it used to be). How many people use Slow often? Slow is really good: it has LoS range, reduces monster speed by 33% for a really long time and has a spellpower bonus so it often easily overcomes monster MR. Apparently, many people think that Slow is the worst lvl 2 spell, which is completely bonkers, imo. To be fair, there are a lot of good lvl 2 spells (confusing touch used to be lvl 2 as well).