acrobat/wu

[mollymolluskus]

What about easing the attack restrictions on the Amulet of the Acrobat such that followers of Wu Jian still get the evasion bonus while using the 'Whirlwind' ability? In my experience, the Amulet of the Acrobat is a lot less useful as a Wu Jian-ite, because you often find yourself inadvertently attacking while you make a hasty retreat... Also, it just seems like kung-fu plus acrobatics should be a cool combination
MM

[b0rsuk]

On the other hand, no other character benefits so much from a weapon of... protection. It lets you stay in contact with several enemies (whirlwind/wall jump). Vampiric weapons are even better as long as you're facing natural enemies. For lunge, I'd rather use a big weapon.

Normally these weapons are shunned because they deal lower damage, but Heavenly Storm shoots your damage into stratosphere. I won a formicid of Wu Jian. You just don't need to run away, except on Vault:5 where staying in the middle is deadly (whirlwind around the edge of the vault guardians).

[vt]

Just an observation: if this happened, I think lots of folks playing melee Wu characters (surely that's the bulk of Wu characters?) who find acrobat amulets will think they ought to whirlwind basically all the time instead of tabbing.

Off the cuff that seems to me like it would be a reasonable decision, especially if you can easily stop whirlwinding and get back the damage output in cases where the improved defenses aren't helping. But I'm not going to pretend to understand how much 15 EV helps well enough to be confident about that. (Either way I think some people are going to think it's worthwhile, based in part on how I see players evaluate wearing and training shields.)

I don't really know how annoying people would find whirlwinding all the time; maybe that's a barrier that would stop them from putting the plan into practice.

Design-wise, I'm not sure I think heavily disincentivizing tab is a problem. I suspect that someone who had a hand in developing Wu tried to avoid the result that Wu attacks are systematically better than tabbing, but that's getting a bit speculative.

[mollymolluskus]

VT, I'm sorry... in this context, what does 'Tabbing' mean?
MM

[vt]

Oh, sorry. By 'tabbing' I meant attacking by using the autofight command bound to the tab key. If you're using a melee weapon it approaches an enemy and then bump-attacks them (or reaches if you're using a polearm) when they're in range. Really I guess I should have just said bump-attacking (and reaching), though.

[petercordia]

It is a bit sad that there's currently such anti-synergy between Acrobat and Wu.
As band-aid you could also make Wu give Acrobat at ****, though that doesn't really address the underlying issue.

When I'm playing Wu I'm fine with using movement-attacks all the time instead of tabbing, and I actually find it annoying that movement-attacks are sometimes worse than tabbing. Tabbing breaks the flow of Wu for me.
It would be annoying if Walljump was much stronger than Whirlwind though.

[b0rsuk]

For most characters wall jump is probably just a way to avoid getting cornered, but it shines in small rooms. It lets you front load a heap of damage, and it doesn't matter much that it takes a lot of time because half of them will be dead. But at times it feels a bit like a "win more" button. Weak characters can't stand the heat, strong ones don't really care they fight in the open.

The worst thing about using Wu Jian is the message spam with whirlwind and wall jump. It would be very nice if it was condensed, for example:

You hit 5 times. Orc wizard, orc and orc priest die. Orc warrior is moderately wounded wounded.

Wu Jian with Yiuf's staff of chaos is something on my ToDo list. A slightly more sensible one is starting a Chaos Knight to get a weapon of chaos early, then switch to Wu Jian when I can survive this and wear a shield. It's probably going to cost me a few ugly mutations.

Martial attacks work better in Brogue they are obviously inspired by. Whirlwind (flails) is more interesting because normally you can't attack across corners (except in the open), so when a monster opens a door you can sidestep in and automatically stab him. If there's a patrol coming, each monster closes the door behind him. Or you can disengage from a position across door to one adjacent diagonally, get an attack and the monster can't retaliate. Lunge with rapier consistently works on wandering monsters (always hits and always stabs for triple damage), and in deep vegetation. Long story short I think synergies in Brogue are better. Crawl has lunge-stealth-stab and whirlwind/protection/slaying/vampiric/electricity/Heavenly Storm.

[damerell]

What about easing the attack restrictions on the Amulet of the Acrobat such that followers of Wu Jian still get the evasion bonus while using the 'Whirlwind' ability?

I think the difficulty there is the design of WJC is meant to avoid you having an incentive to repeatedly use martial attacks against a single opponent.

On the other hand if you have a halfway decent ranged attack this already isn't true; whirlwind, step back, ranged attack, delivering 80% of your melee attack and one ranged attack in return for one monster melee counterattack.