Lair Larrikin
Posts: 22
Joined: Saturday, 3rd September 2011, 07:10
Fire Magic is very weak
I won my first game as a KeFE of Vehumet. While I did use most of the fire spells at the beginning I quickly unmemorized them for superior conjuration spells from Vehumet. When I entered zot my only fire magic spells were fire storm, and ring of flames. Out of those ring of flames was only marginally usefully. I sort of had delayed fireball, because I used to have it, but then forgot it. The problem with fire magic is that it only does damage. For flavor damage only is not a problem, but it is a balance problem. If it does too little damage it is useless.
Currently it seems like the role of fire magic is to get firestorm. The other skills help you get to the mid game where you can find conjuration based spells. You then replace fire spells with superior conjuration based spells. This maintains training towards firestorm while improving your character's power. In other words fire magic is an all or nothing deal. You either gain a lot of fire magic so you can cast fire storm, or you have a negligible amount so you can use spells like evaporate or fire brand. The spells weaker than fire storm have no utility and are strictly weaker than conjuration nukes. Furthermore conjuration nukes avoid the damage resistance problems that fire magic has.
Disclaimer: It was a three rune win (Shoals, Snake, Vault). I had Spriggan speed for most of the game (fly + swift). I caught beserkitis early on so I completely avoided melee. I caught carnivore 1 early on which helped with hunger problems. Here's the morgue file in case there's anything in it that biases me that I didn't notice: http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/0.9/ryz ... 012827.txt
Here is a list of every fire magic spell and my thoughts on their power:
- Flame Tongue - Good early on, but worse than magic dart. Forget when you find magic dart.
Throw Flame - Good early on. Makes flame tongue obsolete. Magic dart might be better.
Inner Flame - An interesting idea that is poorly implemented. Using this spell almost always hurt more than it helped. A monster charging you down, whom if you kill will explode in your face is very bad. If I had not been able to out run the monsters this spell would have killed me. This is only useful if you have a way to confuse the monster, OR the monster will retreat when wounded. This spell is suited a long range attacker who knows mephitic cloud. I propose changing it so it is smite targeted. This way a FE can choose a mob in the middle of the pack which makes the spell effective and safer.
Conjure Flame - As far as I know this spell was deleted. This is unfortunate because it is the only low level defensive spell a fire elementalist has.
Sticky Flame - An interesting spell. Worth keeping for a while, does good damage. Best for melee hybrids or fast casters. Very mana efficient for killing normal speed tough single monsters. Eventually you will want to forget this spell.
Bolt of Fire - I never learned this spell. Would be more useful if Inner Flame was smite targetted. Training evocations a little provides the same thing, with varied damage types and other utility. Bolts are more useful for other schools because they lack an aoe spell like fireball.
Fireball - Seems good, but isn't. It's most useful trait is that it always hits. However, the monsters that have high EV are typically things like bees and bees are best killed with Ignite Poison. Even against multiple opponents fireball is inferior to poison arrow. Against a pack of slime creatures it was faster to use poison arrow than fireball even if fireball hit 3-4 slime creatures per cast. Furthermore, FB is much louder than poison arrow, which makes it a more dangerous spell to use. My suggestion is for Fireball to leave flame clouds behind that dissapate fast like mephitic cloud. This gives the spell some extra power, and gives fire magic some utility.
Delayed Fireball - I guess it's worth it for 1 SL if you have Fireball. I only used this ability once or twice the entire game. Both times I used it I could have ran off and rested for mana. I only used delayed fireball to kill things slightly faster.
Ring of Flames - One of the few fire magic spells that provides any utility. It's main use is that it lets you stand in flame clouds and provides rF++. It is not a good escape spell. By the time you could cast RoF you could cast Summon Butterflies which is a superior escape spell. RoF is basically useless without Fire Storm. This is okay given that Fire Storm is the entire point of being a FE. If there become reasons to be a FE besides Fire Storm then RoF should change. As is, I think RoF should have some sort of SL synergy with Fire Storm the same way Fireball and Delayed fireball cost 7 SL total.
Fire Storm - This spell is the reason to be a FE. Does huge damage, is smite targetable. Just a great nuke.
- Evaporate - A strong skill with a low SL. Can be cast well with very little Fire Magic.
Fire Brand - Only used by hybrids. Irrelevant for FE.
Ignite Poison - An amazing spell. For certain parts of the game this is by far the single best skill to have. It trivializes hives, lair, snake, spider dens, and probably swamp. However, further in the game poisonous monsters stop existing so this spell should be forgotten. If you are not a FE this spell could be worth keeping for its synergy with poisonous clouds.
Bolt of Magma - No reason for a FE to learn this.
Dragon Form - Never used this so can't comment too much. It seems like a FE will either learn Fire Storm + Ring of Flames, or Fire Storm + Dragon Form. Given RoF's synergy with Haste I doubt many FE will ever use Dragon Form.
The big problem with Fire Magic is that only 1-3 spells are worth keeping for the end game. Compare this to Air, Ice and Earth which all have a large amount of useful utility spells. Fire Magic is the "damage" school, but doesn't have the strongest damage spells until Fire Storm. Magic dart does more consistent damage than Flame Tongue. Shock does more damage than Throw Flame AND shock is a bolt. Sandblast does huge damage with components even near end game. For a school that has the least utility Fire Magic also has the least damage with the exception of Fire Storm.
Fire Magic can be improved 2 ways: BIG damage, or more utility. Damage can be increased directly, or indirectly by changing monster resistances. However, the problem with making a school focused on damage is that most spells will become obsolete. Casters need a handful of nukes, and a large amount of utility spells. Because of this any approach that ONLY improves the damage of Fire Magic will still result in casters forgetting most lower level spells. This is why Fire Magic needs to gain 1-3 utility spells.
Utility Spell Suggestions:
- Make Inner Flame smite targetted.
Have a spell weaker than RoF leave flame clouds. This could mean bringing back Conjure Flame, or adding a flame cloud effect to Fireball.
Let FE set walls on fire so adjacent monsters take damage. This would be similar to the slime pits.
Let FE swim through lava with an increased movement rate and an increase to the power of their FE spells.
Let FE create lava, but not on top of a monster.
Give FE an enchantment where monsters take damage for hitting the caster. Make this self targetted only or it would be absurd with summoners.
Let FE light corpses on fire similar to Corpse Rot. Ignite Poison already does this with poisonous corpses.
Let FE explode corpses.
Make Bolts of Fire and Fireballs ignite corpses.
Give FE an enchantment that defects projectiles similar to repel missiles. This enchantment works differently by attempting to burn the missile in mid air before it reaches the caster. It would only work thrown items and items from launchers, but not spells. All missiles that this spell does not outright destroy gain the flame ego.
Note that these are only suggestions and FE should only gain a subset of these. If FE gain many ways to create flame clouds then monster AI may need changing so an entire horde is not stopped by a single flame cloud. Note that the more ways FE can create flame clouds the more useful RoF becomes.