Sunday, 20th February 2011, 11:31 by DemonOfWrath
I completely agree with your sentiments, playing Demonspawn's really often I tend to do the same thing if I get a lousy mutation first up in the first few levels (I've gotten overly strict on it because it's so easy to scum amittedly, so I've ended up at the point where I scum way too much), although if I get one of them later on after some better ones I'll play on (except for thin skeletal structure, I seriously hate it, at least nightstalker gives an actual benefit besides stealth (I play DSFi, so stealth is usually useless, and that's where my opinions come from, people who play spellcasters and such will obviously disagree)).
While they don't have to be perfectly balanced, there's a fair few no-brainers in which is better, so I'm gonna throw my opinion on them down.
Breath weapons are fine, although poison ends up sucking a bit much late game compared to fire, but it is more useful early on (it's so disappointing to have the breath finally kick in at XL 20, and find out it's poison).
Horns/Antennae are by far the best body slot (since you can still use a wizard hat/cap and not lose out on potential resists), and claws are the worst by a long margin as the extra attack gets locked out too often. Monstrous makes me quit, it feels more like a 10% chance of 'haha, say bye to a large chunk of your potential defense'.
Black scales suck, full stop, compared to iridescant, thin skeletal structure sucks too and needs an actual benefit besides stealth and some stat shuffling (non-stealth melee player), the rest of the scales ect are all awesome to get (colourless scales are probably the mutation I get most excited at, to find out what it ends up being later)
Most of the tier 2 facets are great fun, ice, spines, MR and PbD are all awesome, PbP sounds fun but I play heavy melee so yeah, same general feeling for nightstalker, demonic guardian is fun but I find the first 2 ranks go obsolete too quickly (by D:8 or so the first rank is rather useless, by late Lair the second rank is too except for the occasional sticky flame), that and it feels too unreliable (they pop away too easily) and an on/off switch would be nice. Mapping is plain boring and doesn't add any real benefit due to how common mapping scrolls are.
The only tier 3 facet I don't find awesome is fire, simply by comparison with the ice facet. Hellfire costs way too much health to consider using (admittedly, I haven't had much of a chance to use it later on, but I didn't find it that great), and honestly, I just don't see why it's tier 3 when ice is tier 2 and so much better (passive freeze is the greatest thing since sliced bread).