Formicids (Was: Dwants)

[TeshiAlair]

Having a shield is good generally for mages.

Having a two handed weapon is generally good for everyone.

Being able to melee some enemies is generally a good thing.

Let's say you are fighting a pack of four slime creatures. Midgame, say 30 MP. Level 4 conj does 1/2 their health. You will be OOM at the end of this fight, so if there is anything else present, life will be annoying, especially as an Fo. Being able to more efficiently/safely melee murder some things is nice. #ImAMediocrePlayer #ShakyMath

[chessplaya]

if your argument is "why would characters that cast a lot want to hit ... things with a weapon" then that's a different topic

Of course casters can and should hit fairly weak things with weapons to save their MPs, so having a good weapon and training the corresponding skill makes sense for that, and I'm sure being able to wield a better weapon with a shield helps. However, in a dangerous situation a caster probably has high int and lower str/dex, so using spells (or channel/run if out of MP) seems like it would be better against anything that can hit reasonably hard. Slime creatures are a good example--it seems unlikely that most casters could fight them in melee midgame even with a good 2-handed weapon and some skill investment; the slimes would merge and crush them. Normally I will have spells as a midgame caster that can deal with crowds: freezing/poisonous cloud, fireball, bolt of fire/cold/draining, lightning bolt, and/or summons, so I would hopefully not run out of MPs while fighting 4 slime creatures.

My point is I don't think casters benefit nearly as much as fighters from being able to wield a 2-handed weapon, plus stasis seems hurt casters more than fighters since they are squishier, so maybe formicid casters should get a different boost to compensate for this. Has anyone won a game with a formicid caster (besides transmuter/skald) yet? I couldn't find anything when I did a search for this. As far as enhancer staves, I did a search and I was wrong about their use--many good players are recommending using them on midgame casters well before having a level 9 spell online. However, I'm pretty sure they are one-handed weapons, so if anything this would be another reason to give formicid mages a buff.

[WalkerBoh]

The premise of your suggestion is flawed and your proposed improvement is needlessly complicated. Formicids are not inherently better at melee because they can use a 2-handed weapon with a shield. Even if they were better at melee than casting, this is not something that needs to be fixed - see Mi, Tr, DE as extreme examples of other races that are much better at either melee or casting.

And overall we do not need more special-casing than already exists, especially for this race.

[Sar]

My casters do fight slimies in midgame in melee most often than not because slimies are not very dangerous if you don't let them merge.

I won a FoEE recently, but it wasn't a very casty FoEE (I also used a one-hander).

[Klown]

raise their weapon/shield apts!

[Lasty]

Currently, 13 people online have won formicids that started as explicitly blasty backgounds (Wz, Cj, FE, AE, EE, IE) out of 2073 such games played (00.627%). For contrast, the same backgrounds have an all-species win rate of 00.587%.

[khalil]

Currently, 13 people online have won formicids that started as explicitly blasty backgounds (Wz, Cj, FE, AE, EE, IE) out of 2073 such games played (00.627%). For contrast, the same backgrounds have an all-species win rate of 00.587%.

Sure, but the all species win rate includes species like trolls who start with a spellcasting background approximately never. It'd be best to look at the average when you remove the races that either almost always(Deep Elf) or never(Minotaur) start with a casting background.

[and into]

I don't think any of this stuff about win rates is a good way to make design decisions.

Having 2-handers + shield be an option is a benefit for every character, full stop. Some play styles may benefit from that more than others, but that's ok. Fo have pretty good magic aptitudes overall, except that -2 in air. Of course, their innate stasis is nevertheless a big challenge, but not a challenge that uniquely disqualifies them from any particular set of backgrounds, though certain things (AK, EE) do become somewhat more appealing. Again, that's ok, and it is less extreme for Fo than for Me (strongly directed into choosing Polearms) or for DD (strongly directed toward Necromancer and/or certain specific god choices), to take only two of the most obvious examples of species being shoehorned into specific strategic decisions.

In general:

Backgrounds that start with a religion are the strongest (except CK), followed by those that start with a book, followed by the rest. I don't think anything about Fo radically diverges from that spectrum. And plenty of species are better suited for one of the above categories in contrast to the others, so that is not a problem per se.

[XuaXua]

Backgrounds that start with a religion are the strongest (except CK)

Blasphemer!

[khalil]

In general:

Backgrounds that start with a religion are the strongest (except CK), followed by those that start with a book, followed by the rest. I don't think anything about Fo radically diverges from that spectrum. And plenty of species are better suited for one of the above categories in contrast to the others, so that is not a problem per se.

That really depends on how you define strongest. Book backgrounds have a much higher chance of dying early, especially Warpers who don't really have anything going for them until level 2. (Not like anyone's going to play a Formicid warper though.)

[DracheReborn]

(Not like anyone's going to play a Formicid warper though.)

Why not? A lot of Tloc escape options are good for Fo (Passage, Dispersal, Disjunction) and the buffs of course are also good (Shroud, Phase Shift, Warp Weapon).

[and into]

In general:

Backgrounds that start with a religion are the strongest (except CK), followed by those that start with a book, followed by the rest. I don't think anything about Fo radically diverges from that spectrum. And plenty of species are better suited for one of the above categories in contrast to the others, so that is not a problem per se.

That really depends on how you define strongest. Book backgrounds have a much higher chance of dying early, especially Warpers who don't really have anything going for them until level 2. (Not like anyone's going to play a Formicid warper though.)

This is a very general trend, I didn't mean to imply that every book background, with any species, is stronger than every possible combination of species with a non-book background. I probably should have clarified that I wasn't specifically thinking about streaking, and that I was taking reasonable/strong species choices as a given in all cases.

[khalil]

(Not like anyone's going to play a Formicid warper though.)

Why not? A lot of Tloc escape options are good for Fo (Passage, Dispersal, Disjunction) and the buffs of course are also good (Shroud, Phase Shift, Warp Weapon).

For starters, because I thought Passage was blocked by stasis.
You're still down the mainstays of the school (blink and cblink) though, and that really sucks.

[zardo]

Book backgrounds have a much higher chance of dying early

I don't know the overall stats but in the hands of decent players I suspect this is extremely incorrect

edit: I don't know about warpers specifically (though they're probably still better off than fighters) but I concur with and into that book backgrounds overall are much better, yes, easier, starts. Necromancers, elementalists, enchanters, wizards...

edit edit:

many good players are recommending using them on midgame casters well before having a level 9 spell

Many players win "casters" without ever having a level 8 or 9 spell.

[Lasty]

Has anyone won a game with a formicid caster (besides transmuter/skald) yet?

some statistics

Sure, but the all species win rate includes species like trolls who start with a spellcasting background approximately never. It'd be best to look at the average when you remove the races that either almost always(Deep Elf) or never(Minotaur) start with a casting background.

I don't think any of this stuff about win rates is a good way to make design decisions.

and_into is right. The reason I brought up the statistics at all is because it directly addresses the rhetorical argument chessplaya is attempting to make.

As for khalil's response, it's the wrong argument to make about the statistics. Many more games are played with magic-affine races paired with blasty backgrounds than magic-crippled races paired with blasty backgrounds, so removing all races with good/bad magic aptitudes will probably push the statistics further in formicids' favor. Aside from that, the point is that there is an average level of blasty background wins, and formicids are above that average, meaning that they're not one of the particularly magic-crippled races, as chessplaya was claiming. There are a lot of arguments you can make about this crude statistical argument (no significance calculations, no control for player skill levels, etc), but the brute point is clearly true: people have indeed won blasty formicids, and the ratio of them that have been won is not extremely low.