Every Build Sucks Except Conjurer

[Camcolit]

Dear DCSS dev team and fellow players,

I'll make this short and to the point.

Don't get me wrong, I love the game and have put in countless hours. I've won many times with different character classes. However, it seems that the long range killing power of conjurers, specifically deep elf fire conjurers, totally outclasses anything else in the game. It's trivial for me to win with DEFCs. Same deal every game. Start as wizard, or elementalist if you want things even easier but I like the maxed INT, stay out of trouble until you find a book with some kind of decently powered conjuration in it, worship vehumet, PWN everything, get firestorm, PWN everything harder and before they can even move a tile, build up your necromancy for sublimation and regen etc. and you're basically unkillable if you refrain from feeling sorry for your enemies and let them get close. Add in controlled blinks, hastes and deflect missiles, extra HP from fighting, shields which you can easily branch into during a normal playthrough, etc. etc., and no other character build comes close.

Also, afaik only conjurers can do Zigs without weird and dangerous grand plans, and quite easily at that. I ran through several without breaking a sweat. Haste, Deflect, Regen before every level, fry everything, sublimation on yourself if running out of mana (you could carry around chunks but why bother?). Easy game. The addition of those annoying deep dwarf damage reflection guys is only a minor obstacle and that's really the only thing in zigs to touch you. Also, that is a very cheap way to kill an otherwise overpowered class and seems to have been put in for that express purpose. They are easily avoidable, the only effect is focusing attention on how unbalanced nuking conjurers are.

It's irritating for a number of reasons, not only because they outclass all melee characters easily (melee without carefully planned magic backup seems to be a joke anyway), but also all other mage builds. This should cut off those who are ready to say something like 'but mages are physically weak and easy to kill so should be powerful late game' blah blah. Firstly, conjurers are the hardest characters to kill, if played properly, which is easy to learn. Secondly, I've tried to make necromancers several times and they suck comparatively. Why create crappy abominations when a similar level conjuration can blast everything in one shot? Why dispel undead when you can just turn them into cinders? Lol at bolt of draining - lowers your xp haul and cannot affect anything except living creatures. Haunt? Let's summon a bunch of mid-tier undead around some powerful monsters and wait until they finally kill them, meanwhile being precariously close to all kinds of nasty critters who could one or two shot us. Oh, wait, firestorm, everything is dead. There is just no reason whatsoever gameplay-wise to choose a necromancer over a conjurer. There is no competition. Try it yourself.

My two cents. Wouldn't bother posting if I didn't like the game so much

[battaile]

I'll make this short and to the point.

Or will you...

[crate]

ok thanks but you're wrong

[mumra]

Right, summons are massively underpowered. Let's buff them and nerf all conjuration builds.

[BlackSheep]

Ranged weapons suck too. I hate needing ammo. We should make all launchers not need any ammo.

[khalil]

Twisted resurection sucks. We should make it give 1 large abomination for every 3 amu.

[tasonir]

Casters tend to be slightly easier than melee, and DE's are certainly an overpowered race, but being a single player game not all races/styles are intended to be balanced. Some will be easier. The difference isn't that huge, and many people, myself included, prefer playing melee. My easiest game was probably going centaur + bow, too. Keeping track and conserving ammo can be a bit annoying but it is incredibly powerful.

[Camcolit]

ok thanks but you're wrong

Ok thanks but why?

[Psieye]

ok thanks but you're wrong

Ok thanks but why?

"My build is superior to every other build out there". Oh and your Zig paragraph probably was the coup de grace.

[Camcolit]

A) It's not my build.

B) If you know of any way even nearly as effective to do Zigs please enlighten me. Really, I would appreciate it. I am not looking for any dangerous, gamey, or tediously slow way though. As I mentioned in the original post, I know they exist but it's irrelevant.

I may be a new poster but not a new player and am only trying to provide constructive criticism. Please limit your contributions to something tangible and not vague implications that there is something I should know that would make my entire argument nonsense. If there is, spell it out. I may be a new poster but not a new player and am only trying to provide constructive criticism.

[Kate]

Maybe you're just bad at every other build. You seem to have not considered any other possibilities, and to not have come up with any justification for your arguments other than "x is great and y sucks" so it is not surprising that nobody else can be bothered to post productively here either.

[mumra]

Your best bet is to ask in the Dungeon Crawling Advice forum for tips on how to play non-Conjurer builds.

Also, summons (and necromancy) are very strong, perhaps too strong.

[Camcolit]

Thanks for your reply.

Firestorm can kill any number of stone giants or whatever else in a couple of turns. It uses 8MP with vehumet but so what? MP is never an issue due to gaining mana from kills, sublimation/regen in a pinch, magic pots in a real emergency that you should never get into unless you're just bored with the game being too easy. As mentioned, you don't even have to bother using chunks.

[Camcolit]

And of course, yes, skilled players can and do win with any character/skill combination, but that is totally beside the point.

[Camcolit]

Maybe I shouldn't have been so provocative with the title.

[njvack]

I've moved this to Advice, since it's really not about game design.

[Wahaha]

When I got my 2nd win with a DEFE I almost made a post very similar to this. Now that I have more experience with the game I'm glad I didn't. I understand your point of view very well because I had it too, but it's wrong. Hope this helps.

[mumra]

Of course the point should be made irrespective of this discussion that not all race/class combinations are even supposed to be the same level of difficulty, in fact this is stated in the game's philosophy. Different people enjoy different levels of challenge.

[Psieye]

A) It's not my build.

B) If you know of any way even nearly as effective to do Zigs please enlighten me. Really, I would appreciate it. I am not looking for any dangerous, gamey, or tediously slow way though. As I mentioned in the original post, I know they exist but it's irrelevant.

A) "My build" in the sense of "the only build I like", not "this build I invented".

B) That wasn't what I was alluding to. That you put so much emphasis on Zigs is the problem in the first place - it's known to be broken but just isn't a high priority to fix so it's left as a fun mini-game.

You put down a lot of words but little actual detail. It brings to question whether you can cope with things like Zig mummy levels (since you don't mention any high level necromancy) or Silent Spectre + Shadow Fiend spawning next to you together in Tartarus. In other words, your intention is constructive criticism but there's not enough detail to make it constructive.

[Swiss]

Another point is that the sort of character that one finds easy/strong is going to have something to do with how they like to play. Conjurers and other backgrounds based on attack spells certainly can be powerful, but they probably seem even more so to somebody who'd rather just throw spells at everything to kill it quickly without worrying that much about positioning and tactics - spells tend to be good at dealing lots of damage fast, frequently to several things at once, so often (not always) you can just end a fight so quickly that any bad tactical decisions you made don't really matter. If you're bad at that sort of maneuvering or don't like bothering with it, conjurers probably are very strong for you, compared to a lot of other options.

Other characters have strengths too, though. A melee character with good HP and defenses (this could be a lot of combos) has a sustainable attack that can kill everything, and since they can take more attacks without dying, they're good at escaping fights they can't win. A fast stabber (SpEn being the best one) can avoid just about every fight it doesn't want by not being seen or by outrunning whatever's chasing them, and can kill most enemies in one hit by stabbing them, very reliably when you add Invisibility. If you have a somewhat more careful style, one of those might be better for you.

At any rate, a lot of different types of characters are viable, it just depends on whether you know how to use what you have to not die and then eventually win. It's harder for some characters, but it's possible for all of them, and for most of them it's not even all that hard.

Also, I've definitely seen some zigs done pretty much entirely with melee. There are ways to make that viable, certainly; axe cleaving definitely helps.

[diviton]

I don't remember if 12 nerfed summons or not, but I would say that hungerless summoning is even easier than Fire Storming stuff. Getting a mummy summoner off the ground is very tough, but once you can summon dragons and channel MP, you're essentially invincible, whereas conjurers can get caught with their pants down.

[tasonir]

The page I linked to was streaks. Successive wins with no deaths in between. It stands to reason that a player going for a long streak of unqiue characters will get the difficult races/backgrounds out of the way first, and do the easy ones toward the end. Notice that in his 22 streak, mikee played DECj before such combos as OgAM and DgSt. elliptic did the same combo as his fourth.

Even if OP is a troll, I appreciated this explanation. I haven't really given much thought to streaking, so I wasn't sure what to get from the list of streaked characters. I imagine that if you're planning a 10+ streak you probably need to match up the races and backgrounds ahead of time? You wouldn't want to be stuck with a good magic race and be out of magical backgrounds or vice versa? Or do you just think about what the next most hardest combo would be without planning out 27 first?

[some12fat2move]

The page I linked to was streaks. Successive wins with no deaths in between. It stands to reason that a player going for a long streak of unqiue characters will get the difficult races/backgrounds out of the way first, and do the easy ones toward the end. Notice that in his 22 streak, mikee played DECj before such combos as OgAM and DgSt. elliptic did the same combo as his fourth.

Even if OP is a troll, I appreciated this explanation. I haven't really given much thought to streaking, so I wasn't sure what to get from the list of streaked characters. I imagine that if you're planning a 10+ streak you probably need to match up the races and backgrounds ahead of time? You wouldn't want to be stuck with a good magic race and be out of magical backgrounds or vice versa? Or do you just think about what the next most hardest combo would be without planning out 27 first?

There's actually only 24 species iirc

[nicolae]

The page I linked to was streaks. Successive wins with no deaths in between. It stands to reason that a player going for a long streak of unqiue characters will get the difficult races/backgrounds out of the way first, and do the easy ones toward the end. Notice that in his 22 streak, mikee played DECj before such combos as OgAM and DgSt. elliptic did the same combo as his fourth.

Even if OP is a troll, I appreciated this explanation. I haven't really given much thought to streaking, so I wasn't sure what to get from the list of streaked characters. I imagine that if you're planning a 10+ streak you probably need to match up the races and backgrounds ahead of time? You wouldn't want to be stuck with a good magic race and be out of magical backgrounds or vice versa? Or do you just think about what the next most hardest combo would be without planning out 27 first?

There's actually only 24 species iirc

If you get a long enough streak you unlock the five secret species

[Camcolit]

You put down a lot of words but little actual detail. It brings to question whether you can cope with things like Zig mummy levels (since you don't mention any high level necromancy) or Silent Spectre + Shadow Fiend spawning next to you together in Tartarus. In other words, your intention is constructive criticism but there's not enough detail to make it constructive.

Silent spectres are irritating but that's about it. By the time they start showing up you can just blast them with a wand or melee them. If having an extremely unlucky summon in Tartarus is the only thing that's going to provide danger for your character, that just shows it's overpowered. In any case it's quite easy to escape. I did mention to build up your necromancy, but neglected to mention high levels, I thought it would be obvious that it's desirable later to have necromutation to deal with mummy levels / tomb. If I had more posts, people would be more willing to fill in the blanks probably.

[crate]

by the way using zigs to judge how good a character is is not a good idea

zigs are very different from any other part of crawl

[Camcolit]

Well, I tried responding semi-nicely. I wouldn't be surprised if this thread were just another successful troll, but I'll have another go at it anyway.

Firestorm

That's a level 9 spell. Even most pure conjurers don't get those, and even those that do get them after all the meaningfully difficult parts of the game.

any number of stone giants

You are displaying one of the symptoms of being terrible at Crawl: thinking that fighting multiple stone giants at once is a common and desirable circumstance.

And of course, yes, skilled players can and do win with any character/skill combination, but that is totally beside the point.

The page I linked to was streaks. Successive wins with no deaths in between. It stands to reason that a player going for a long streak of unqiue characters will get the difficult races/backgrounds out of the way first, and do the easy ones toward the end. Notice that in his 22 streak, mikee played DECj before such combos as OgAM and DgSt. elliptic did the same combo as his fourth.

Hmm, playing as a DE you can get firestorm quite early. You're not gimped until you do either, since the conjurations you do have will one or two shot anything you're fighting - this is as I mentioned in my OP.

As for fighting several stone giants at once no, that never happens. I was just using the example in response to your comparing ranged weapons, summons, and conjurations. I was trying to be polite.

DECjs are naturally fragile, which might account for deaths at the very start of the game before you get heavy hitting spells. This may be one explanation for people's reluctance to use them in streak runs. This is a special case. It doesn't affect the case that once you get them off the ground they are godly.

[Camcolit]

by the way using zigs to judge how good a character is is not a good idea

zigs are very different from any other part of crawl

Granted.

[Kate]

Most people here include the early game when considering how strong a character is, instead of ignoring it.

[tcjsavannah]

The point may be here that Vehumet conjurers are powerful EARLIER than many other builds. Or at least they are the way I play. I've played many DEFes that have gotten firestorm online before Vaults - and because of being used to that, I find it hard to play other caster builds because I'm used to having such a game-winning spell online early. What, you mean I have to wait until D:20-25 to cast that spell?

[moocowmoocow]

As others said, different builds are stronger at different parts of the game. Like I'd much rather be a TrFi trying to get to lair than a DEFE. Necromancy is pretty good early and midgame, and the spells in the Necronomicon aren't anything to scoff at.

[KoboldLord]

ok thanks but you're wrong

Ok thanks but why?

Why don't you seriously try ascending a berserker or healer and then get back to us about how conjurors are the easiest build? Seriously, not joking at all. I'm generally better with conjurors than melee types myself, but Trog and Elyvilon builds are in a class all their own.

[Psieye]

If I had more posts, people would be more willing to fill in the blanks probably.

Subject to what was in those 'more posts', but even then the OP could have been titled and written in a more concise yet more watertight way.

[BountyHunterSAx]

@OpeningPoster:

Take a look at my signature, you'll notice that I too tend to play the game with necromutation, firestorm, ironshot/p-arrow, blink+cblink, swift,haste, channeling/sif+cball etc. etc...

And yet I have, what?, 6 MiBe wins? If you want the most overpowered build currently possible in the game, then try that .



Everyone here has made the (valid) point that Conjurers aren't the strongest. I can't speak with any certainty as to if that's true or not for sure; though I assume it must be if they say it is since they're better players than I am. I'd like to highlight a different point:

Who cares?!


Assuming it's true, then hooray! You know the 'best' build, and can beat the game with it! Congratulations! Mission Accomplished! No need to branch out any further, do your victory dance and move on .
Oh, you *want* to try other race/class (build) comboes? Well go for it! Nothing at ALL is stopping you, the game's wide open. Lots of options to try. "But they're not as good as my beloved DeCj/DeWz/DeFe" Awww, that's too bad. If they're fun, keep playing them. If they're not fun, then try something else. If you're having an impossible time getting them to work at all, well then ask on the forums and you'll be surprised just how much more you can milk them for.

I was incredibly pleasantly surprised when I gave in to my desire to run a pure-stabber, and ran my own custom SpWz version. DAMN, it was exhilerating (Recorded as 'JabGut' in my youtube channel series). Was it as unilaterally 'overpowered' as a pure conj build? No, ofcourse not. But then, realize, for any game with a variety of builds at a variety of power levels there will always be some that are better than others and one that is the best. That's inevitable. As long as there are 5+ winnable ways, I see no problem.

-AHMAD

[posistomp]

This is a crazy thread to read as a new player. I have been playing a DEFE for 3 or 4 days since I started playing this game and I have died 36 times despite everyone's advice and I think it is hard as hell. Haha.

[siggboy]

The page I linked to was streaks. Successive wins with no deaths in between. It stands to reason that a player going for a long streak of unqiue characters will get the difficult races/backgrounds out of the way first, and do the easy ones toward the end. Notice that in his 22 streak, mikee played DECj before such combos as OgAM and DgSt. elliptic did the same combo as his fourth.

OP did not suggest DECj, but DEWz (which then goes FE via Veh gifts and book finds). Also, one should not look at old streaks IMHO, because with 0.12 DECj has indeed become a super-easy starting combo due to the new Cj book.

Also, when I look at the list of streak-breakers, it rather seems to be that the hardest core of players is already bored from streaking and puts the impossible races towards the end (hello Mummies, Humans and Demigods). Or these players are so much better than us meak peons that it doesn't matter much which race they play, which would render the easy-comes-last reasoning moot as well.

Personally, while still sucking very much at Crawl, I think the easiest combo is Minotaur Berserker. You have to actively try to lose these characters in order to die (at least until Vault:5/Elf:3/Spider:3 which is as far as I've been so far).

[Pacra]

<Pacra> !lg * s=job / won
<Sequell> 11119/2149025 games for *:
230/16980x Healer [1.35%],
444/50515x Earth Elementalist [0.88%],
468/56850x Gladiator [0.82%],
311/38208x Venom Mage [0.81%],
432/54653x Ice Elementalist [0.79%],
1216/157490x Berserker [0.77%],
602/80788x Fire Elementalist [0.75%],
382/55967x Hunter [0.68%],
231/36345x Death Knight [0.64%],
195/31617x Warper [0.62%],
299/49361x Air Elementalist [0.61%],
131/21647x Arcane Marksman [0.61%],
398/65874x Conjurer [0.60%],

<Pacra> !lg * @greaterplayers s=job / won
<Sequell> 2921/50956 games for * (@greaterplayers):
98/941x Healer [10.41%],
90/1075x Venom Mage [8.37%],
62/754x Stalker [8.22%],
79/977x Artificer [8.09%],
109/1445x Gladiator [7.54%],
89/1203x Hunter [7.40%],
81/1096x Summoner [7.39%],
84/1147x Death Knight [7.32%],
18/246x Thief [7.32%],
88/1213x Assassin [7.25%],
103/1466x Wizard [7.03%],
127/1860x Ice Elementalist [6.83%],
142/2090x Fire Elementalist[6.79%],
96/1433x Conjurer [6.70%]

You're pretty much dead wrong here but nice trolling attempt I guess?

[siggboy]

398/65874x Conjurer [0.60%],
96/1433x Conjurer [6.70%]
You're pretty much dead wrong here but nice trolling attempt I guess?

He did say "build", not class. Supposedly the "job" query will return starting class (which would be Wz in the case OP tries to make).

BTW your query proves nothing in any case, simply because Cj might be popular among noobs, which would depress the win percentage (or Cj might be so good that experts get bored, and thus not pick it as often, again depressing the win percentage).

I'm sure many more ridiculous claims can be made starting with your two queries, but let's leave it at this one for the moment.

[crate]

Anyway if you want a more serious response from me:

It is quite possible that conjurer-types are the easiest type of character to be successful with for you. They are actually relatively easy tactically for the most part--you have very many spaces that are "good" to stand on for most encounters, since you have ranged attacks and most enemies do not. (Contrast this to meleeing things, in which you have very few good spaces to stand--they are much harder tactically.) They are not the type of character I personally have the most success with, particularly early on.

Also:

it rather seems to be that the hardest core of players is already bored from streaking and puts the impossible races towards the end (hello Mummies, Humans and Demigods)

What game are you playing where humans and demigods are hard to streak? It sure isn't crawl.... (Dg is actually one of the easiest streak races as long as you have a decent background to go with it, since you are substantially more powerful pre-Temple than most other races and that is probably the hardest part of the game for streaking.)

[Pacra]

He did say "build", not class. Supposedly the "job" query will return starting class (which would be Wz in the case OP tries to make).

BTW your query proves nothing in any case, simply because Cj might be popular among noobs, which would depress the win percentage (or Cj might be so good that experts get bored, and thus not pick it as often, again depressing the win percentage).

I'm sure many more ridiculous claims can be made starting with your two queries, but let's leave it at this one for the moment.

Actually, he specifically said "specifically deep elf fire conjurers," and that second query proves that wrong.

Also your own argument is (much more) spurious!

[siggboy]

Actually, he specifically said "specifically deep elf fire conjurers," and that second query proves that wrong.

There is no "fire conjurer" in the game, and he specifically talks about Wz:

Start as wizard, or elementalist if you want things even easier but I like the maxed INT, stay out of trouble until you find a book with some kind of decently powered conjuration in it, worship vehumet, PWN everything,

(I disagree about "elementalist" making it easier BTW).

Your second query proves you know how to query Sequell, but not much more :-).

[Grimm]

Locked on request of a member as the discussion has grown jejune. If anyone wants it open again we'll put it in CYC.