Nerf melee brainstorming

[Sandman25]

I know we can reduce chunks to make life of dedicated casters harder, we can reduce ammo generation to make ranged characters train melee. Do you have any ideas how we can make life of pure melee characters harder? Or is it normal for crawl to make hard play styles harder and keep the easiest play style unchanged?

How about making characters have 30% chance to lose 1 AC for 10+d20 turns every time you kill a monster with melee attack? It is too boring to kill 30+ monsters in a kill hole, almost a no-brainer. We should punish characters for using a single play style like we do for casters, rangers, artificers, stabbers etc.

[Berder]

Well said.

[bel]

Don't think this makes much sense. Melee already has more "disadvantages", since many monster special attacks like (corrosion, rot, constriction) only land when monster is meleeing you (which it can do if you are meleeing it). Also many monsters are "melee only", so unless you melee them, they can't hurt you. Plenty of other things, like positioning, and dangerous to melee monsters like hydras (I often use wands on many builds to handle them).

I think melee is fine.

[njvack]

I'm not a good enough player to have a real answer, so this is a serious question: is melee actually easier than ranged or conjurations?

Anyhow, see octopode crushers, early hydras, spriggans, crabs, and other monsters that discourage melee combat and encourage you to train some ranged or conjurations or evocations.

[Sandman25]

I'm not a good enough player to have a real answer, so this is a serious question: is melee actually easier than ranged or conjurations?

Anyhow, see octopode crushers, early hydras, spriggans, crabs, and other monsters that discourage melee combat and encourage you to train some ranged or conjurations or evocations.

Yes, melee is easier than anything for most races (except Op, Fe, am I missing Sp/Ce? Polearms work fine with high speed if we ignore aptitude for Sp).
We also have Silent Spectre, Ghost Moth, Spider Nest, Shoals etc. Melee has easier time vs Orbs of Fire, Ancient Lich etc. There are no spells/missiles which cause monsters waste turns trying to cast a spell or make demons get 150% more damage (ranged requires TSO here).

[Sar]

Melee isn't stronger than magic. Turn 1 Trog possibly is, though.

[Sar]

melee is easier than anything for most races

do you really think that HuFi or HuGl is better than HuIE or HuCj

[Berder]

Strong melee is easier than anything. There's a reason time speedruns are melee; you don't have to spend a lot of thought on each turn.

Weak melee is hard - felid, spriggan, octopode, etc.

Humans are weaker than normal for melee. HuFi is not that easy at first. However, it does become easier and faster than human blaster mages once you have some good gear.

[Sar]

I'm talking about strength. Obviously melee is simpler when you have good gear because you just press one button and things happen.

[Sandman25]

melee is easier than anything for most races

do you really think that HuFi or HuGl is better than HuIE or HuCj

I was talking about play style, not about starting background or gods. Assuming you stay without god, will you really continue to rely on spells as main (or even only) source of your damage with IE or Cj?

[Sar]

Assuming you stay without god

And why would we assume such a silly thing?

will you really continue to rely on spells as main (or even only) source of your damage with IE or Cj

This really depends on drops. What I can say is that, unless I had some really ridiculous gear drops, my main source of damage through Lair would be Ice Beasts.

[Sandman25]

Assuming you stay without god

And why would we assume such a silly thing?

Because I wanted to analyze playstyles, not gods. As long as Trog exists, melee is not easier than everything else, it is extremely easier than everything else.

This really depends on drops. What I can say is that, unless I had some really ridiculous gear drops, my main source of damage through Lair would be Ice Beasts.

Ok, Summon Ice Beasts is arguably better than melee in Lair. Arguably because such character will have more problems with packs of Blink Frogs/Death Yaks/Elephants than a pure melee character would have IMHO while having less problems with Hydras and other alone monsters. Also melee is easier than Summoning+Ice Magic if we are talking about the whole game, we can play less carefully and are not that vulnerable to bad luck when some dangerous monster comes into view when we are low on MP.

[Sar]

Only Berserkers start with Trog on D:1, others must find an altar.

Blinkies die to Freeze, Ozo helps. Death Yaks - split pack, 4v1 them with Ozo and beasts. Same for elephants I guess.

[Sandman25]

Only Berserkers start with Trog on D:1, others must find an altar.

Blinkies die to Freeze, Ozo helps. Death Yaks - split pack, 4v1 them with Ozo and beasts. Same for elephants I guess.

I am not sure why are saying this, I know it is possible to win with every play style. It is easier to kill everything without playing lure-retreat-kill game.
Let me put it another way. Do you know an easier play style than DD in CPA with vampiric axe and Makhleb?

[mps]

I don't think nerfing melee makes any sense. Other things get nerfed because it's easy to look at them in isolation and say "That's OP!" E.g., haste spell, ranged weapons at high skill, etc. With melee, it's a complete package and it's hard to point to a single thing about it that's too good and that could be easily changed.

What is and isn't overpowered has to be understood in terms of how things compare to other things and what the trade-offs involved are. Right now, I'd say the reference builds should be heavy armor melee and Trog anything. Is it so powerful it's better than a Trog character? (The answer to this is always "no.") Is going with this option worth the opportunity cost of not going heavy armor melee? Here the answer is again usually no.

The gold standard for "overpowered," to my mind, is "can you combine it with heavy armor melee at low cost?" If the answer is "yes," it might be overpowered. If the answer is no and it's in crawl, then it's probably not "overpowered."

[Sar]

Do you know an easier play style than DD in CPA with vampiric axe and Makhleb?

A DD with OCPA and Tornado and Death's Door and Dragon Call and also maybe Controlled Blink, because hey, if we're imagining some superpowered endgame chars might as well go the full way, no?

Anyway, I have no idea what does this have to do with anything. You said that Crawl "makes hard playstyles harder". I don't think that most magical backgrounds are harder to win than most melee backgrounds. You, apparently, do. I disagree. Whatever.

[Sandman25]

I don't think nerfing melee makes any sense. Other things get nerfed because it's easy to look at them in isolation and say "That's OP!" E.g., haste spell, ranged weapons at high skill, etc. With melee, it's a complete package and it's hard to point to a single thing about it that's too good and that could be easily changed.

Antimagic brand is OP, holy brand is OP, berserk potion is OP.

[mps]

But only antimagic brand is specific to melee chars. Arguably not even so. And melee remains great even without anitmagic brand.

@Sar: There are reasonable ways to measure the "ease" of a given build. Like, how many top scorers did X? How many realtime records did X? It's not purely a matter of opinion what "hard" means.

[Sandman25]

Do you know an easier play style than DD in CPA with vampiric axe and Makhleb?

A DD with OCPA and Tornado and Death's Door and Dragon Call and also maybe Controlled Blink, because hey, if we're imagining some superpowered endgame chars might as well go the full way, no?

No, I had many characters with AC 30+ and vampiric axes in Lair. It is almost untouchable. Main problem with melee it is its extreme cheapness, you have to train only one skill (weapon) to have unlimited OP way of killing everything without caring about monster resistances and special properties. Not only that, it means you will have better defense also.

[Sar]

I had many characters with AC 30+ and vampiric axes in Lair

I didn't.

[duvessa]

I'm not sure if this is a joke thread but I will go ahead and assume it is not.

Let me put it another way. Do you know an easier play style than DD in CPA with vampiric axe and Makhleb?

DDEE in whatever with Makhleb
DDNe in whatever with Makhleb
Centaur whatever with a launcher
Notice how these require finding 0 insanely rare items, instead of requiring 2

I definitely think launchers, conjurations, and summons are all stronger than melee, both in general and when used "pure", and I don't think any of those are punished for using a single play style. I submit that pure melee is punished a lot more than pure any of those, in fact, especially launchers.

It is too boring to kill 30+ monsters in a kill hole, almost a no-brainer.

"kill holes" have nothing to do with melee...i guess they are different for summons but that's about it

is it normal for crawl to make hard play styles harder and keep the easiest play style unchanged?

Yes

fakeedit: typed this before he posted "holy brand is OP", so now I'm certain it's a joke, but I'll post anyway because I already typed it

[Sandman25]

Anyway, I have no idea what does this have to do with anything. You said that Crawl "makes hard playstyles harder". I don't think that most magical backgrounds are harder to win than most melee backgrounds. You, apparently, do. I disagree. Whatever.

Sorry, forgot to answer this. Starting backgrounds don't care about poisonous chunks on D1-7 so the change was making their life harder in Spider and Snake where melee characters are already stronger than anything else. Feel free to disagree again

[Sar]

how many top scorers did X? How many realtime records did X?

Scores? Real time speed? Not winrate?

[mps]

I don't really believe that committing to doing anything other than luring every monster you meet back 15 spaces and similar silliness has much impact on winrate. Whether a character wins or not is more of a measure of the competence and patience of the player than the quality of his strategies, as long as he isn't doing anything too original.

edit: In other words, you don't need a strong character to win, but you do need a strong character to win fast. The bar of merely winning is too low to see what's going on here, imo.

[Sandman25]

I'm not sure if this is a joke thread but I will go ahead and assume it is not.

Let me put it another way. Do you know an easier play style than DD in CPA with vampiric axe and Makhleb?

DDEE in whatever with Makhleb
DDNe in whatever with Makhleb
Centaur whatever with a launcher
Notice how these require finding 0 insanely rare items, instead of requiring 2

I definitely think launchers, conjurations, and summons are all stronger than melee, both in general and when used "pure", and I don't think any of those are punished for using a single play style. I submit that pure melee is punished a lot more than pure any of those, in fact, especially launchers.

It is too boring to kill 30+ monsters in a kill hole, almost a no-brainer.

"kill holes" have nothing to do with melee...i guess they are different for summons but that's about it

is it normal for crawl to make hard play styles harder and keep the easiest play style unchanged?

Yes

fakeedit: typed this before he posted "holy brand is OP", so now I'm certain it's a joke, but I'll post anyway because I already typed it

Do you mean your DDEE has easier time while being marked in Vaults 5 than DD with vampiric axe? I hope you remember we are talking about playstyles, DDEE who casts Stoneskin before killing everything with vampiric axe is not DDEE, it is a DD with vampiric axe.
I don't think Ce with launcher is stronger, it will have problems in Vaults for example where it cannot kite everything.
Kill holes do not work for casters because they will still run out of MP. It works for ranged, yes.
Holy brand is OP in extended, I am talking about crawl, not about D1-D3.
This thread started as joke, yes, but now we are just discussing play styles more or less seriously.

[Sar]

I don't really believe that committing to doing anything other than luring every monster you meet back 15 spaces and similar silliness has much impact on winrate. Whether a character wins or not is more of a measure of the competence and patience of the player than the quality of his strategies, as long as he isn't doing anything too original.

I don't understand your post. Was it a reply to mine? Highscore play is very different from your regular average playing-to-win - speedrunners will skip most floors, get into risky fights (because what matters isn't just winning, but winning fast enough).

Late edit: sorry, I re-read it and I understand. Well, winning a game of Crawl might be not the hard but longer streaks are rare. Then again, it's often impatience that kills you. I am biased here as I don't play for highscores and as my opinion is obviously negligible for somebody who does.

[mps]

I don't really believe that committing to doing anything other than luring every monster you meet back 15 spaces and similar silliness has much impact on winrate. Whether a character wins or not is more of a measure of the competence and patience of the player than the quality of his strategies, as long as he isn't doing anything too original.

I don't understand your post. Was it a reply to mine? Highscore play is very different from your regular average playing-to-win - speedrunners will skip most floors, get into risky fights (because what matters isn't just winning, but winning fast enough).

I understand the difference. I'm saying that playing leisurely "I just want to win" games does not significantly differentiate the various "build types" people bring up in these discussions that one can talk about what's better or worse as a matter of anything but taste. This kind of play is just a matter of tactics where winning comes down to whether you're luring things properly and not doing overly stupid things in the extended endgame, not whether you chose to play a "stabber" or a "blaster" or went Trog. You see real constraints coming in when you get into high scoring and so on. Therefore, if you don't see something high scoring, I would say either it's not OP or we don't know enough about it to tell whether it's OP.

[Sar]

See my edit above, please.

[basil]

Fedhas is stronger than Chei. I hope that isn't too controversial.

However, Chei has more high scores than Fedhas.

[mps]

Fedhas is stronger than Chei. I hope that isn't too controversial.

However, Chei has more high scores than Fedhas.

If he's stronger, then someone will presumably use his power for some high scoring play.

[basil]

Sometimes stronger things take more turns to function. Sometimes mushroom shepherding doesn't happen in 0 turns. Magic tends to take more time to replenish than HP. Even ranged, which is effectively melee with infinite reach, takes more turns simply due to ammo pickup.

[Rast]

Sometimes stronger things take more turns to function. Sometimes mushroom shepherding doesn't happen in 0 turns. Magic tends to take more time to replenish than HP. Even ranged, which is effectively melee with infinite reach, takes more turns simply due to ammo pickup.

And because ranged does less damage per aut than melee

[basil]

And they let you take fewer hits.

Then again they don't have cleave, but I'm conveniently ignoring that because that would shift the topic from Nerf Melee to Nerf Axes.

[Berder]

Bows let you take fewer hits unless you are using them in melee range anyway, or unless you are using them against ranged opponents.

[mps]

I agree that Fedhas has design issues that make him "good" in a sense that may not translate into characters that can punch above their weight in terms of turncount, in the way Trog and Chei do. "It's easier to win with Fedhas if you don't care how long it takes" strikes me as equally true as "it's easier to win if you don't care how long it takes." Fedhas gives you some nice tricks that are useful early and help you out early. Maybe playing Fedhas through lair or so and abandoning him is a good strategy. Someone would should try to speedrun it.

A similar thing may be true of ranged weapons, which is why I think the missiles should have some kind of automatic returning mechanic.

[basil]

Bows let you take fewer hits unless you are using them in melee range anyway, or unless you are using them against ranged opponents.

Ten shots with a longbow/glaive seems like enough to kill a lot of things before you get into melee range.

or unless you are using them against ranged opponents.

And melee characters either walk up to those guys while getting shot, or spend turns to break LOS.
Anyway, this seems like a tangent that has been overdone.

I agree that Fedhas has design issues that make him "good" in a sense that may not translate into characters that can punch above their weight in terms of turncount, in the way Trog and Chei do. "It's easier to win with Fedhas if you don't care how long it takes" strikes me as equally true as "it's easier to win if you don't care how long it takes."

I don't see how that's a design issue. And to rephrase that statement in a way that more accurately matches my intent: "It's easier to win with Fedhas than to win with Cheibriados." I suppose with the caveat that you use god abilities and you know how to walk away from monsters.

[Sandman25]

Speaking about HW and melee being OP.

  Code:

Attack: Formicid Hunter vs. Ice Fiend (4000 rounds) (2015/04/16/ 8:37:51)
Formicid Hunter: XL 1   Str 24   Int 10   Dex 19
Wielding: +9 triple crossbow of holy wrath with 30 bolts, Skill: Crossbows
Ice Fiend: HD 18   AC 15   EV 6

 Crossbows | AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
         0 |     30.5 |    136 |      84% |  25.7 |   230  |  0.43 |     11.2
         1 |     30.8 |    162 |      84% |  26.1 |   225  |  0.44 |     11.6
         2 |     31.0 |    148 |      84% |  26.3 |   220  |  0.45 |     12.0
         3 |     31.9 |    144 |      85% |  27.2 |   215  |  0.47 |     12.7
         4 |     32.2 |    165 |      85% |  27.6 |   210  |  0.48 |     13.1
         5 |     32.3 |    151 |      85% |  27.6 |   205  |  0.49 |     13.5
         6 |     33.6 |    149 |      85% |  28.7 |   200  |  0.50 |     14.3
         7 |     33.7 |    161 |      86% |  29.1 |   195  |  0.51 |     14.9
         8 |     35.1 |    152 |      86% |  30.2 |   190  |  0.53 |     15.9
         9 |     35.9 |    158 |      86% |  31.1 |   185  |  0.54 |     16.8
        10 |     36.3 |    164 |      86% |  31.4 |   180  |  0.56 |     17.4
        11 |     37.7 |    194 |      86% |  32.5 |   175  |  0.57 |     18.6
        12 |     37.7 |    179 |      86% |  32.5 |   170  |  0.59 |     19.1
        13 |     38.8 |    188 |      86% |  33.7 |   165  |  0.61 |     20.4
        14 |     38.4 |    183 |      86% |  33.3 |   160  |  0.62 |     20.8
        15 |     39.7 |    220 |      87% |  34.6 |   155  |  0.65 |     22.3
        16 |     41.2 |    220 |      86% |  35.7 |   150  |  0.67 |     23.8
        17 |     41.1 |    207 |      86% |  35.6 |   145  |  0.69 |     24.5
        18 |     41.6 |    214 |      86% |  36.2 |   140  |  0.71 |     25.9
        19 |     42.1 |    209 |      86% |  36.2 |   135  |  0.74 |     26.8
        20 |     43.7 |    227 |      88% |  38.5 |   130  |  0.77 |     29.6
        21 |     44.0 |    269 |      87% |  38.4 |   125  |  0.80 |     30.7
        22 |     45.3 |    232 |      87% |  39.5 |   120  |  0.83 |     32.9
        23 |     44.8 |    260 |      87% |  39.2 |   115  |  0.87 |     34.1
        24 |     45.5 |    219 |      87% |  39.7 |   110  |  0.91 |     36.1
        25 |     47.5 |    240 |      86% |  41.3 |   105  |  0.95 |     39.3
        26 |     48.0 |    251 |      87% |  42.2 |   100  |  1.00 |     42.2
        27 |     50.2 |    259 |      87% |  43.9 |   100  |  1.00 |     43.9

  Code:

Attack: Formicid Hunter vs. Ice Fiend (4000 rounds) (2015/04/16/ 8:35:39)
Formicid Hunter: XL 1   Str 24   Int 10   Dex 19
Wielding: +9 bardiche of holy wrath, Skill: Polearms
Ice Fiend: HD 18   AC 15   EV 6

  Polearms | AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
         0 |     23.9 |    125 |      83% |  19.8 |   200  |  0.50 |      9.9
         1 |     24.0 |    112 |      83% |  19.9 |   195  |  0.51 |     10.2
         2 |     24.1 |    122 |      82% |  19.9 |   190  |  0.53 |     10.5
         3 |     24.6 |    116 |      83% |  20.5 |   185  |  0.54 |     11.1
         4 |     25.7 |    122 |      83% |  21.6 |   180  |  0.56 |     12.0
         5 |     26.5 |    137 |      84% |  22.4 |   175  |  0.57 |     12.8
         6 |     26.2 |    125 |      83% |  21.8 |   170  |  0.59 |     12.8
         7 |     27.0 |    136 |      84% |  22.7 |   165  |  0.61 |     13.8
         8 |     27.9 |    126 |      83% |  23.3 |   160  |  0.62 |     14.5
         9 |     27.3 |    147 |      84% |  23.0 |   155  |  0.65 |     14.8
        10 |     28.4 |    133 |      84% |  24.0 |   150  |  0.67 |     16.0
        11 |     29.5 |    138 |      84% |  24.9 |   145  |  0.69 |     17.2
        12 |     29.7 |    177 |      85% |  25.2 |   140  |  0.71 |     18.0
        13 |     31.2 |    179 |      84% |  26.3 |   135  |  0.74 |     19.5
        14 |     31.3 |    168 |      85% |  26.7 |   130  |  0.77 |     20.5
        15 |     32.0 |    170 |      84% |  27.0 |   125  |  0.80 |     21.6
        16 |     32.9 |    162 |      85% |  28.1 |   120  |  0.83 |     23.5
        17 |     32.0 |    192 |      84% |  27.1 |   115  |  0.87 |     23.6
        18 |     34.2 |    181 |      85% |  29.1 |   110  |  0.91 |     26.5
        19 |     34.1 |    179 |      85% |  29.2 |   105  |  0.95 |     27.8
        20 |     33.4 |    184 |      85% |  28.7 |   100  |  1.00 |     28.7
        21 |     34.0 |    180 |      85% |  29.0 |    95  |  1.05 |     30.5
        22 |     35.5 |    200 |      86% |  30.7 |    90  |  1.11 |     34.1
        23 |     36.8 |    218 |      86% |  31.7 |    85  |  1.18 |     37.3
        24 |     37.5 |    177 |      86% |  32.2 |    80  |  1.25 |     40.3
        25 |     37.1 |    196 |      85% |  31.8 |    75  |  1.33 |     42.4
        26 |     38.2 |    209 |      85% |  32.7 |    70  |  1.43 |     46.6
        27 |     37.9 |    178 |      86% |  32.9 |    70  |  1.43 |     47.0

269 max damage for crossbow, 209 for bardiche. And you can double bardiche damage with level 3 spell. Also slaying, Chei stats, Song of Slaying, potion of might.
Do you know such spells? FS has max 208, OoD has max 207, LCS has max 230.

[mps]

Sure, but skilling spell schools gives you useful benefits beyond firestorm, LCS, etc. some of which are costly for characters that don't specialize in spells. The salience of the fact that xbows are comparable or better in damage than conjurations at high skill levels is somewhat diminished by the fact that all xbow skill does for you is improve your ability to shoot xbows. By comparison, fire or earth skill gives you access to various other effects, many of which are tactically valuable at various parts of the game and some of those effects, collectively available at all stages of the game, are vaguely similar to shooting an xbow. A similar argument can be made for melee weapon skills, with the additional point that you actually have to be close to monsters to damage them with effects improved by those skills.

re: Fedhas vs. Chei, I agree that for a typical player playing only to win, Fedhas is probably more convenient and requires less experience to play well than Chei. I am unsure about whether Fedhas figures in any viable high scoring strategy. I would like to see it if so.

[basil]

How is Chei inconvenient?

[Sandman25]

Sure, but skilling spell schools gives you useful benefits beyond firestorm, LCS, etc. some of which are costly for characters that don't specialize in spells. The salience of the fact that xbows are comparable or better in damage than conjurations at high skill levels is somewhat diminished by the fact that all xbow skill does for you is improve your ability to shoot xbows. By comparison, fire or earth skill gives you access to various other effects, many of which are tactically valuable at various parts of the game and some of those effects, collectively available at all stages of the game, are vaguely similar to shooting an xbow. A similar argument can be made for melee weapon skills, with the additional point that you actually have to be close to monsters to damage them with effects improved by those skills.

Middle game you are limited by MP much more than a crossbow user is limited by ammo and when you have level 9 spell you basically have already stopped casting low levels spells long time ago. Nothing prevents crossbow user from learning Haste/Phase Shift/CBlink etc. As many players here claim they usually fight 1 vs 1 so it is unlikely that they often use fancy effects like bolts of foo or fireballs

[tabstorm]

There's a few reasons why melee dominates scoreboards that I don't think are completely related to the relative strength of character archetypes:

1. Conjurers and summoners have a ton of items they need to find to win quickly. In addition to armor, resistances, and the typical speedrun jewlery (tele + ctele) they also typically want a staff of energy, a bunch of books, amulet of the gourmand, etc. Realistically, it's unlikely to hit the book drops you need without doing Orc + Elf or doing a huge number of runs.
2. Early game for spellcasters takes a long time compared to a berserker or chei user. Both gods allow you to quickly kill enemies that you wouldn't be able to in a timely fashion without the help of those two gods, and their powers continue to be useful all game. Meanwhile as a conjurer you spend forever stopping to regenerate MP, especially currently with the MP growth changes reducing MP early on. Even after you get Sif or Vehumet, you still have to stop and regenerate MP often or at least channel. Both also have some drawbacks - Sif piety is slow and your MP will often run out in fights, and Vehumet won't give you the non-conjuration spells you need for a good turncount and is slow without a staff of energy. But a player on a run just trying to maximize their chance to win dosen't care - they can just lure enemies and rest up after every fight.
3. Ranged will never be good for a speedrun until automulch is a feature because you waste a ton of time picking up arrows. I don't think ranged with launchers is any good without oka or trog in general, since you have to limit your ammo use and probably train melee to kill a lot of enemies until you start getting ammo drops fairly often - why not just not train dodging and weapon skill instead? I feel like the game is basically over by the time you can realistically expect to use only your bow.
4. Stealth stabbing is bad (imo) unless you're a spriggan, and the effectiveness of spriggan stabbers has a lot more to do with spriggan-ness than with stealth. It does not help that it basically requires training the worst (by far) weapon class and you end up getting noticed a lot when everything sees invisible and has high-ish MR (even if you have 27 stealth and umbra). Stealth from items (like shadow DA) is good though. Again, players not aiming for a high score can work around this in various ways. I imagine it comes down to choosing a god that helps you kill enemies you can't stab (say, kiku) vs. choosing dithmenos to race through extended as fast as possible (but be bad at killing things you can't stab).

With melee, you just play the same game you always do, but faster. It comes down to other archetypes' power being somewhat more reliant on resting, picking up stuff, or running away (If you think stealth stabbing is any good). This makes sense because conj/range rely on a limited resource either fight by fight (conj) or strategically (ranged early game) but are quite powerful.

[Sandman25]

re: Fedhas vs. Chei, I agree that for a typical player playing only to win, Fedhas is probably more convenient and requires less experience to play well than Chei. I am unsure about whether Fedhas figures in any viable high scoring strategy. I would like to see it if so.

Convenient??? Chei requires manual exploration and some luck, with Fedhas you can win reliably. I mean there are much more situations that result in unavoidable deaths with Chei than with Fedhas. Basically every time you approach a pack of monsters far from stairs, you risk being noticed by several monsters because you cannot retreat fast enough. With Fedhas you are guaranteed you will not be noticed by any monsters who were not in your LoS when one of the monsters shouted.

[tabstorm]

I forgot to say this about win percentage:

The book backgrounds are good because spells are better early on. As we all know this is the part of the game where you're most likely to die since there are often single enemies that you are unable to kill (and some are faster than you), and you must retreat and avoid them. Farther down the line, you can basically kill any one thing, but groups of enemies with a lot of abilities might kill you or you could get a really bad roll against an enemy with LCS or whatever.

When people talk about how good backgrounds are, I think it's often implied that the game essentially ends somewhere in Lair, and the rest is basically trivial, as after that you are not going to die unless you make a major error. Earlier than that, it's easy enough to die by making only a minor error (or just not having the right consumable when a D:3 killer bee pack spawns). The Mage backgrounds are "better" in this sense, as spells are better at this stage of the game. Later on, though, I would not want to be playing a pure conjurer, because MP will tend to run out and you'll have to use melee, channeling, or items. But I also think most spells over level 4 are mediocre to bad unless your character is built toward using them, so usually I just try to find a way to become a character using mostly melee as fast as I can unless I decide to go with sif or vehumet on a reasonably magically-adept race, in which case I play pure conj for amusement.

In general I would agree that the "warrior" archetype is preferable to the "pure conjurer" one, though. Ranged is probably better still, but I won't train it because it's so bad early on that to me there is no point. Stealth is just crap.

[n1000]

Earlier today I was considering making a thread to call for buffing melee! Melee has the unique disadvantage (yes there are exceptions) of forcing the player to stand next to the monster he wants to damage. This is a very big disadvantage. Furthermore, aside from three rare weapon brands, melee does not have any special disabling effects.

On melee characters I pull monsters towards safe, explored areas before fighting them. I do the same on conjurers and summoners. This strategy works well until there is a substantial ranged threat or fast monster you cannot safely walk away from indefinitely. Being able to kill or disable a monster from distance is supremely useful.

I have played a few 'pure' conjurers or summoners, characters who only used melee attacks against the weakest enemies and never thought I was playing poorly. On the other hand, my 'melee' characters usually rely on non-melee offense for difficult fights. Some typical examples are curare needles, wands, deity summons, elemental evokers.

It is also the case that during dangerous fights my melee characters more frequently have to use consumables to become strong enough to win whereas light armour wearing casters often (though less often now that the spell is very rare) can just cast haste and fling poison arrows or fill the screen with zombies or whatever.

I think that the orb of fire/lich examples are especially misguided. These monsters can do hundreds of damage per turn from long range. My strongest conjurers could kill one of these before a melee character could even walk up to them.

I think I've made my point but let me explain one sort of subtle advantage to not getting into melee range with an enemy: if your foe shrugs off your initial attacks and you want to reset the fight it's very easy to block them off with a summon, conjured flame, or just keeping your distance if you haven't been adjacent to them at all. I think the most important skill in crawl is identifying threats, and, while melee characters might have to actually take some hits to figure out their opponent is too durable to kill safely, a ranged character can determine this without ever putting themselves in melee range of the monster while having excellent, non-melee escape options (between spells, dispersal ammo).

[Sandman25]

The melee "problem" is caused by secretive nature of crawl, there would not be need to become adjacent to a monster to determine whether it is too durable if you could see estimated damage and HP in xv. One of the differences between new and experienced players is that the latter estimate current threat from previous experience (or fsim) and may retreat without trying to attack.
I am not sure why you treat haste as thing which belongs to mages only, it is casted by many "pure" melee characters (no conjurations, no summoning, no ranged, no hexes). Many spells seem like specifically created for melee characters because they don't care about spell power and I am talking about the best spells of crawl here - haste, spectral weapon, (controlled) blink, animate foo, shadow creatures, control teleport etc.
Many melee characters have so high defenses that they can stupidly move to a pack of Yaktaurs and ignore received damage. Casters use evocables too, it is too easy to get low on MP in middle/late game. At least melee characters don't need to train Evocations to be able to use weapons non-stop.

About OoF - I prefer to fight them with melee, Zot 5 is crowded with monsters and OoF have too high HP and defenses, my casters usually run out of MP while trying to kill a single OoF while melee character can just quaff might/resistance/agility/haste and kill 3-4 OoF non-stop.
True, Ancient Lich becomes trivial with Silence but if you are unlucky and cannot kill it before your MP reaches zero, you'd better be a melee character.

[duvessa]

so, devs, why haven't you nerfed melee brainstorming yet

[Hirsch I]

they should, brainstorm is indeed too OP.

[Bloax]

I'm talking about strength. Obviously melee is simpler when you have good gear because you just press one button and things happen.

A very good melee build will be stronger than the best magic build unless you count level 9 dual-school spells (haha), and the best melee builds outclass any magic build at any time.

But what would I know about this topic?

[Sar]

The melee "problem" is caused by secretive nature of crawl, there would not be need to become adjacent to a monster to determine whether it is too durable if you could see estimated damage and HP in xv.

Monster HP are wildly random, combat rolls are random so it's perfectly possible to kill one monster of a kind easily and have troubles with another. Note that I don't think is a bad thing, I would have no interest in playing deterministic Crawl where a fight with monster X always goes roughly the same and you never had to change your approach mid-battle.

[Sandman25]

The melee "problem" is caused by secretive nature of crawl, there would not be need to become adjacent to a monster to determine whether it is too durable if you could see estimated damage and HP in xv.

Monster HP are wildly random, combat rolls are random so it's perfectly possible to kill one monster of a kind easily and have troubles with another. Note that I don't think is a bad thing, I would have no interest in playing deterministic Crawl where a fight with monster X always goes roughly the same and you never had to change your approach mid-battle.

If you try to attack Ancient Lich with a dagger, you can see you are more likely to die before the lich dies. Actually you don't know how many HP the monster can have and how much damage it can deal to you. If Ancient Lich had 5-15 HP and its spells were dealing 20-30 damage, attacking it with a dagger would be a viable tactics and current monster description would be the same. We even have similar monsters like Boggart who are in Depths with HP 13-28.