Proposal: Sif Muna Cancellation

[bcadren]

Just like to suggest a third Invo for Sif Muna. Essentially:

  Code:

**** - Cancellation (3 MP, 5-8 Piety) - Cancels all active magic on you (like a !cancellation); removes contamination, amount removed depends on Invo skill.

This suggestion comes from; (1) Sif's flavour is meant to be supporting all kinds of magic and removing contam would increase the variety of magic builds that would have use for Sif. (2) There currently isn't really a god that allows you to NOT WORRY about contam. Jiyva and Zin both help with mutations caused by Yellow level contam, but a god actually helping you manage contam both doesn't exist and feels like it would fit Sif out of Sif's "support all magic" theme.

That's all. Simple 3rd invocation; aimed primarily at Haste/Invis/Irradiate users.

[nago]

It actually seems it would be much more aimed to marked\sapped\polymorphed\whatever user.
I don't like Sif but it doesn't seem to me very coherent with her flavour.

[archaeo]

I do like Sif, but I agree that this idea is a little loosely connected with Sif's theme. It's also a pretty unnecessary buff; cancellation doesn't matter until the late game, when Sif is already extremely strong by virtue of the fact that you're swimming in books.

There's an argument to be made that Sif and Veh are boring (I think the latter moreso than the former), but they're boringly strong, not boringly weak. If you wanted to make them not-boring, you'd have to do more than tack on another invocation in either case, I'm afraid.

[tabstorm]

but they're boringly strong, not boringly weak

I think this is untrue. Vehumet is slow to help you that much in the early game and Sif is worse than Vehumet for basically all character archetypes but one (summoner), not to mention the piety gain system and slowness of book gifts. At least Vehumet lets you get positive MP for casting a spell sometimes.

They appear to be good because Mage backgrounds on magic-affine races are good, not because the gods themselves are that good (and you generally do not pick Vehumet or Sif outside of those cases). Almost all the other gods are useful to more character types than those two.

[sanka]

For me it's a little bit strange to hear that Vehumet is a strong god. Which gods do you compare her to? I guess she is stronger than Xom, Quazlal, TSO, and a certain god whose name I do not want to write down to avoid derailing the thread, but I cannot think of any other god who is weaker than her. I also think that Sif is on the weaker side of gods, too, but she is somewhat ok.

Anyway, I do not think that this invocation is thematic or good for Sif.

[le_nerd]

A god activated ability to remove contam would drastically widen the appeal of Sif for any stabber. You wouldnt want to use it too often (since you can just rest contam off, and losing out on book gifts isnt worth it), but every so often in the game you want to !cancellation. I'd probably go Sif a lot more with this.

[kuniqs]

Sif's miscast protection already protects against contamination (I think)

[byrel]

I find it quite odd to hear Sif touted as a strong god. A bit boring sure. But you get no power spike. Like, if I pick yred, I'm guaranteed a bunch of undead minions to help in tough situations. If I pick Kiku, again I'll have some useful utility. If I pick the closest god to sif, oka, I'm guaranteed a skill-boost.

With sif I can recover mana faster out of combat. Or maybe get one more spell off in combat by tanking a couple hits. Of course, I could make the same tradeoff by backing up for a while against most enemies, so it isn't much of a power peak. I also get to train my utility spells a bit less to eliminate miscast problems. Again, that's small. I get... amnesia? Rarely useful before end of Lair+Orc. Oh, and around the end of lair I'll start getting random spell gifts.

That's really too late. Even chei or ash will be giving me full power by then. That's when the curve of sif's actual power starts. I can't pick sif unless I'm confident in my ability to clear lair atheist. And yes, if I can she's a strong god, but the fact that she's strong on strong combos doesn't really recommend her to me that much.

I'd honestly prefer Qaz on a weak combo. He actually gives you tools to deal with stuff you can't handle.

What Sif needs to make her strong is either an acceleration on her gifting, or an ability to give you something useful at 2-3 stars.

Maybe I'm missing something. If I'm underrating channeling, let me know. I don't use it much, so maybe it really is quite potent if you put 5 levels in invo or something.

[ydeve]

With sif I can recover mana faster out of combat. Or maybe get one more spell off in combat by tanking a couple hits.
Maybe I'm missing something. If I'm underrating channeling, let me know. I don't use it much, so maybe it really is quite potent if you put 5 levels in invo or something.

While I'm not a particularly good player, when I first started playing I played Sif a lot. My first win was a DECj^Sif. And this is exactly my experience with Sif channeling. Early-mid game casters tend to be in trouble when they run out of mp, and channeling takes too long and gives too little mp to usually be worth it in a fight. It's almost always much better to run away and come back. The only real benefit from Sif channeling was recovering mp after a fight, so that 10 turns later when all the enemies come to check out the noise you can handle them. Which could also be dealt with by running to the up-stairs to regen mp, so it didn't do all that much.

Sif was only really for the miscast protection and the books, which honestly in a 3 rune game isn't nearly as good as Veh would be.

[archaeo]

but they're boringly strong, not boringly weak

I think this is untrue. Vehumet is slow to help you that much in the early game and Sif is worse than Vehumet for basically all character archetypes but one (summoner), not to mention the piety gain system and slowness of book gifts. At least Vehumet lets you get positive MP for casting a spell sometimes.

They appear to be good because Mage backgrounds on magic-affine races are good, not because the gods themselves are that good (and you generally do not pick Vehumet or Sif outside of those cases). Almost all the other gods are useful to more character types than those two.

Well, here we are, in the weeds of what makes a god "strong." I don't think a god has to be "useful to more character types" to be good, and I don't necessarily think they have to help you in the early game, especially with magic gods. Sure, maybe it's just "magic affine races," but on those species and with the right background, you start the game with the book. Used properly (which, in some cases, means really boringly, admittedly), all of the book starts don't need gifts until after Lair, imo.

I find it quite odd to hear Sif touted as a strong god. A bit boring sure. But you get no power spike. Like, if I pick yred, I'm guaranteed a bunch of undead minions to help in tough situations. If I pick Kiku, again I'll have some useful utility. If I pick the closest god to sif, oka, I'm guaranteed a skill-boost.

I guess I'm not really sure how Sif doesn't provide "power spikes" when the first few gifts can really be a dramatic shift for a character, but ok.

I'd honestly prefer Qaz on a weak combo. He actually gives you tools to deal with stuff you can't handle.

As I said, Sif (and Veh, to some extent) mostly expect that players who are casting spells can lean on their books for most of the early game. Qaz is fun, but hardly easier to handle than Sif and Veh; noise management is pretty key, and if you're a "weak combo," managing the transition from weakness to invo master seems trickier than I'd like.

Maybe I'm missing something. If I'm underrating channeling, let me know. I don't use it much, so maybe it really is quite potent if you put 5 levels in invo or something.

If you have worshipped Sif without training any invo, and you're complaining about channeling being useless, I don't know what to tell you. It's never like, CBoE/Wucad Mu channeling, but it's better than |energy with a modest invo investment, that's for sure.

[byrel]

I find it quite odd to hear Sif touted as a strong god. A bit boring sure. But you get no power spike. Like, if I pick yred, I'm guaranteed a bunch of undead minions to help in tough situations. If I pick Kiku, again I'll have some useful utility. If I pick the closest god to sif, oka, I'm guaranteed a skill-boost.

I guess I'm not really sure how Sif doesn't provide "power spikes" when the first few gifts can really be a dramatic shift for a character, but ok.

I thought I was clear in the parts you didn't quote; my problem with Sif is that you get no power boost before the end of lair. And your first few books can also be shiity, so that you get no real boost before (say) the end of Orc.

I'd honestly prefer Qaz on a weak combo. He actually gives you tools to deal with stuff you can't handle.

As I said, Sif (and Veh, to some extent) mostly expect that players who are casting spells can lean on their books for most of the early game. Qaz is fun, but hardly easier to handle than Sif and Veh; noise management is pretty key, and if you're a "weak combo," managing the transition from weakness to invo master seems trickier than I'd like.

I can pillar dance things to death with qaz. I get defensive stats, and I get an invocation which is pretty good at low invo. And that's by 3 stars. At 3 stars sif gives me... amnesia and channeling. I've never felt a power spike from those at that point. Maybe I'm doing invo training on sif wrong... in which case I look forward to being educated. But when I stated no power spike, I was talking about a mid-lair 2-4 star power spike.

Maybe I'm missing something. If I'm underrating channeling, let me know. I don't use it much, so maybe it really is quite potent if you put 5 levels in invo or something.

If you have worshipped Sif without training any invo, and you're complaining about channeling being useless, I don't know what to tell you. It's never like, CBoE/Wucad Mu channeling, but it's better than |energy with a modest invo investment, that's for sure.

I mean... what level do you raise invo to that it gives you a meaningful power spike in mid lair? I admit I'm usually either getting my book online or getting a bit of defenses up.. but I have no objection to a moderate Invo investment if it will do more good.

[archaeo]

I thought I was clear in the parts you didn't quote; my problem with Sif is that you get no power boost before the end of lair. And your first few books can also be shiity, so that you get no real boost before (say) the end of Orc.

I can pillar dance things to death with qaz. I get defensive stats, and I get an invocation which is pretty good at low invo. And that's by 3 stars. At 3 stars sif gives me... amnesia and channeling. I've never felt a power spike from those at that point. Maybe I'm doing invo training on sif wrong... in which case I look forward to being educated. But when I stated no power spike, I was talking about a mid-lair 2-4 star power spike.

I mean... what level do you raise invo to that it gives you a meaningful power spike in mid lair? I admit I'm usually either getting my book online or getting a bit of defenses up.. but I have no objection to a moderate Invo investment if it will do more good.

This is what I mean by "in the weeds of what makes a god strong," byrel. Your position is like tabstorm's or radinms', which is that god "strength" is directly correlated with how quickly that god's powers come online. A "strong god," by this formulation, is one that can help you before Lair.

To me, god strength is more of a holistic thing, and I judge it in part by what kinds of characters you'll be using with those gods. Qaz with a DEFE is terrible, just like Sif is a terrible choice for MiFi. If you're using Sif right, you have a character that doesn't really need a huge power boost until after Lair:8, if not Orc:4; channeling (or Veh's MP-on-kills) is usually enough of a difference, ime. By then, amnesia really is a fairly helpful thing, even if Sif's gifts aren't great, and by the Lair branches I usually get several gifts anyway.

Wiki and learndb give d(2+[Invocations/4]) as the Sif channeling formula (|energy is just 1d3). At 4 invocations, you have a free |energy, and it just gets better from there. That 1d3 is substantial in the early game, and raising it to like, 1d6 is reasonable by late game. I usually find channeling to be helpful no matter what kind of magic dude I'm playing, but TS is right about it being particularly good with summons.

[byrel]

Ah. Well I don't demand help pre-lair, because most of the time I can get to lair. But I consider coming online after Lair to be rather too late for most characters...

[milski]

I feel like by lategame even Sif worshippers should probably replace their channeling with a CBoE.

[partial]

There's an argument to be made that Sif and Veh are boring (I think the latter moreso than the former)

Veh is one of my favorite gods

never know what spells you're gonna get

[greedo]

Sif muna really doesn't need a buff imo, since she basically guarantees haste/cblink/deflect missiles (+ necro for extended), and thus basically gaurantees a win for many species. Only issue is sif kinda sucks before lair, but I think gods that are strong in end game should be weak in early game. If anything, sif should probably give one book upon reaching *** just because you can sometimes go entirely through lair without getting a single book as sif muna, which feels weird.

[byrel]

I thought I was clear in the parts you didn't quote; my problem with Sif is that you get no power boost before the end of lair. And your first few books can also be shiity, so that you get no real boost before (say) the end of Orc.

I can pillar dance things to death with qaz. I get defensive stats, and I get an invocation which is pretty good at low invo. And that's by 3 stars. At 3 stars sif gives me... amnesia and channeling. I've never felt a power spike from those at that point. Maybe I'm doing invo training on sif wrong... in which case I look forward to being educated. But when I stated no power spike, I was talking about a mid-lair 2-4 star power spike.

I mean... what level do you raise invo to that it gives you a meaningful power spike in mid lair? I admit I'm usually either getting my book online or getting a bit of defenses up.. but I have no objection to a moderate Invo investment if it will do more good.

This is what I mean by "in the weeds of what makes a god strong," byrel. Your position is like tabstorm's or radinms', which is that god "strength" is directly correlated with how quickly that god's powers come online. A "strong god," by this formulation, is one that can help you before Lair.

To me, god strength is more of a holistic thing, and I judge it in part by what kinds of characters you'll be using with those gods. Qaz with a DEFE is terrible, just like Sif is a terrible choice for MiFi. If you're using Sif right, you have a character that doesn't really need a huge power boost until after Lair:8, if not Orc:4; channeling (or Veh's MP-on-kills) is usually enough of a difference, ime. By then, amnesia really is a fairly helpful thing, even if Sif's gifts aren't great, and by the Lair branches I usually get several gifts anyway.

Wiki and learndb give d(2+[Invocations/4]) as the Sif channeling formula (|energy is just 1d3). At 4 invocations, you have a free |energy, and it just gets better from there. That 1d3 is substantial in the early game, and raising it to like, 1d6 is reasonable by late game. I usually find channeling to be helpful no matter what kind of magic dude I'm playing, but TS is right about it being particularly good with summons.

Okay, I went and played a full Sif Muna game, training a bit of invo early then never touching it again. (I ended up transitioning to hybrid melee after a DTrident of elec dropped in L:8, so channeling really stopped being useful at that point. I think I used it in Abyss a bit still.)

I take back what I said; with 5 points in invo, channeling is a reasonable power peak once you have some mana-efficient spell online. A couple turns and you can cast sticky flame again. That's pretty darn good. Sif gifts still seem less than entirely impressive, but... she's really not useless in Lair.