Melee weak due to overpowerd wizard builds

Why melee when you can breeze through the game as a wizard.

Wizard Pros
-Can easily make a pure wizard build (all skills are wizard class)
-Seemingly endless amounts of mana (blood mage)
-High damaged ranged attacks
-Good trap avoidance
-Teleport
-Good AoE spells
-Pets (good enough until teleport keeping a pet behind you when opening a door and stepping back)

probably missing some more points but the fact is wizards are way too strong especially if you can get to dungeon level 2 which isn't that difficult. So if they can nerf spells where magic power doesn't decrease mana cost, nerf damage and decreasing warrior skill cooldown times (suit up 40 turns to 30) maybe melee would be a more viable build because I personally like the difficulty as a warrior on GR but think that mages have it way too easy.

 

I'd be in favor of doing away with natural regeneration altogether (both mana and health), since I agree, running in circles to recover is not interesting. If the player gets themselves into a hole because they don't have the resources to recover, then they die, oh well. Then the game becomes a matter of rationing your resources and trying to recoup more than you lose from getting into fights. Of course this would also completely change the game balance for everyone, so it's probably too extreme a change to introduce at this stage.

Naturally you could keep regen available on the easier difficulties, which should be more forgiving.

 

Kill regen? I am cool with that.

 

Rewrite the regen formula, make 0 regen equal 0 regen, and progressively above 0 it starts and gets faster continually. Negative could maybe even drain it, that would make it pretty much impossible to cast spells on a warrior, and -1 health regen on things makes a difference.

 

As much as I hate to say it, mana regen - particularly from "dual-wielding" orbs, is probably the biggest issue. Ease off on Orb Regen across the board, or nix being able to equip 2 Orbs at once - thereby forcing mages to use a Staff and Orb. That would be two ways to keep Mages from obtaining the coveted 1 Mana every 1/2/3 turns plateau by Floor 4-ish, at which point they become pretty much unstoppable.

Another option: raise the minimum mana cost of most attack spells, or make it take more Magic Power to get your Mana discounts, or (as was suggested by others) make it so that one the "hybrid" Primary Stats gives the mana-lowering effect (Savvy perhaps?) so that Sagacity is not the end-all, be-all stat for Mages.

Of course, I'm sure you guys have discussed these and better options already, but hey, it's fun to consolidate most of the best ideas I've read on the forums into a single post.

 

I really want to see Magic remain broadly useful - some suggestions like removing mana regeneration entirely would seem to hurt Warrior builds with 1 magic skill much more than a dedicated Wizard. And incidental use of magic isn't the problem - it's the really focused Wizards who are the problem.

That's why I suggested that spell cost should basically be in inverse proportion to your Sagacity, rather than in direct proportion. It would be great if a build with just 1 skill tree and very little Magic Power could cast their spells for less mana than a Wizard with 50 Magic Power. Because they _have_ less mana! And because the spells are, generally, _less_ effective for them!

In fact, perhaps spell costs should not decrease at all over time. Perhaps they should start very low - at their current minimums, say, and then increase as Magic Power increases. That might reach the same result, but be a bit more thematically believable.

 

Nullifying Regen is not a good idea it will make alchemy a must have and starting dungeons a pain. I think nerfing damage is the only real solution. for spells that are 2-3 hit kills like fireball, tactical pyre, recursive curse ect... to 3-4 hit kill making it more challenging and cost more mana as well as playing more tactically for instance laying down tactical pyres to soften up enemies then finishing off with another spell. wizards have the most flexibility because spells are many so make them pay for it in damage.

 

The problem with this approach is that, right now, spell damage increases linearly with Magic Power. So players will just find ways to increase Magic Power, and any damage reductions will be rendered moot.

Underlying mechanics could be changed, certainly. For example, the maximum increase to base damage could be capped. That's a bit inelegant, but it could be effective.

 

damage would be reduced by using a smaller percentage than the stat is now E.G. 60% to 45%. thats how it can be implemented. They just need to calculate.

 

Starting dungeon levels are already a pain for mages...at least, until they reach level 2. The goal is to extend that pain for longer. Nullifying regen wouldn't make alchemy a necessity; just helpful -- otherwise you'll likely need some way of dealing damage when you're out of mana and the booze has run out. Odds are any pure mage would want alchemy anyway, just as many pure warriors want smithing.

 

Another option might to be widen the gap a bit: make your starter spells a bit cheaper so a low-level mage with 40 mana can cast more than 3 spells before running out of mana, and at the same time, increase the mana cost of spells that you get in the latter "half" of the spell school trees. Those would be the spells you typically get when you have 80+ mana and a couple Orbs to give you +4-ish regen, so if they cost more than 12 Mana, it would be fair because by the time you can access them, your mana pool is double what it was, with quadruple the regen.

Currently, you have stuff like Dragon's Breath with it's pitiful damage and negligible scaling costing 10 Mana, while something like Arctic Vortex - which does solid damage and scales well - only costs 14 Mana (Mana numbers assuming no Magic Power "discount" here). Why not something like 6 Mana for Dragon's since you only use it when you absolutely must, and 16 for Vortex, which can be used for most of the game? Just a thought.

 

Nuking Mana Regen is a bit shortsighted. There are 4 main issues in my opinion:

1. Mana Regen is too easy to max
2. Alcohol is too easily acquired
3. Blood Magic is too good
4. Magic Power reduces spell cost too much, is too easily acquired and is too good

My thoughts on each:

1. Mana Regen is too easy to max

+4 Mana Regen from orbs is the main culprit here. Remove Mana Regen bonuses from orbs and increase the Mana bonus to compensate.​

I'd also like the removal of negative Mana Regen on heavy armour. It really hurts 'hybrid' Warriors that try to use support magic (like Psionics and Viking Magic). Pure wizards will never wear it anyway due to the massive Magic Power cost and because they never get hit.​

2. Alcohol is too easily acquired

Distilling with Alchemy is still way too good. Compare Food with Booze:​

• Food fills half your inventory with cheese vs. Booze needs 3 slots for the 3 types of Brandy.
• Food heals 10-15 life, vs. Booze recovers 20 mana.
• Grilled Cheese Sandwich recipe vs. Brandy "recipe".

I'd suggest reducing the drop rate of Booze (particularly high quality) and perhaps even further nerfing for distilling (e.g. 2 wines -> 1 brandy).​

3. Blood Magic is too good

Give it the same downside as Vampirism: No Booze. Do a joke about blood alcohol level.​

4. Magic Power reduces spell cost too much, is too easily acquired and is too good

See: this thread that talks about how Sagacity is the only stat Wizards care about.​

I'd love for spell cost and spell power to be separated into different secondary stats. The idea of basing spell cost on Caddishness is great. It would differentiate pure Wizards (heavy hitters without sustainability) from the 'hybrid' style (support magic that's sustainable).​

 

RE Blood Magic: Would it also gain the "no regen' downside, or just "no booze"?

Further thought on booze: Don't nerf the droprate. Apply a debuff for booze use: "hic!" When on Booze, any spell casting makes a Haywire check. If the spell Haywires, it fizzles OR has a catastrophic backfire, depending on how sadist the devs feel . You REALLY shouldn't cast drunk.....other idea: if Booze duration is greater than (Max Mana - Current mana), then there's an "OOPS" check every turn till it's not. OOps, of course, can be as nasty as the devs want to make it.

Booze then becomes like food - something used to restore BETWEEN fights, not something to double your mana regen for the whole game.

RE food: yeah, we need better foods. MUCH better foods, and much more consolidated foods. Or at least a reason to have a bajillion different types of cheese - maybe each could also give a buff? or make the different food items stack EFFECT, instead of duration - IE, eat 10 Deep Omlettes, you've got 590 turns of 1 HP/turn regen left. Toss a grilled cheese on top of that, and you've got 40 turns of 2, and then 549 of 1. Makes the small-stuff food like Danishes actually useful - eat a danish and an apple and a pear, have 5 turns of 3 HP/turn left.

 

I like that stacking of regen from different food types.

I'd be leery of messing with the drop rate on booze, since I don't think mages should be required to take Alchemy (even if it would almost always be a good idea). The "wine -> 2x brandy" recipe needs to be nerfed, though. Either 2x wine -> 2x brandy or just 1x wine -> 1x brandy would be a big improvement.

One thing that would help with food would be to make more cheeses eligible for the grilled cheese sandwich recipe. The bare "cheese" item is quite rare, but why shouldn't you be allowed to make a Gouda cheese sandwich? Heck, add some artisan breads while we're at it. Poppyseed baguette, sourdough round, 11-grain whole wheat loaf...

And some crackers. So you can combine cheese + crackers + apple to make a set of mini-sandwiches.

 

Some awesome ideas here: I'll echo the ones I especially like.

1 - Don't allow Blood Mage-users to drink alcohol. Gives a clear choice between Blood Mage and Alchemy.

2 - Allow different type of foods to stack - add some other food types. I love that it's "all cheese" right now - how about introducing vegetables on dungeon levels 4-8, and then something else on 9&10? That would make the low-regen cheese items relevant later on, since they would stack with the better vegetables.

 

^^This. Also, no natural regen. Either that or remove those same restrictions from Vampirism and let Warriors play that game, too.


Really, though, all of this seems to come down to a very core philosophical issue with the game in my mind, and it's an issue that's existed since D&D Redbox:

Warriors are stat-accumulation machines with 2-3 very minor 'tricks' they can pull to supplement their stat-gathering.
Rogues are trick-accumulation machines that rely on numerous cooldown-based or RNG-based tricks to accomplish their goals.
Wizards are everything to everyone. And a pile of silver platters.

That's always been the way, and it's always produced the same few problems:
1) Warriors are boring. If you're not a wire-fu Crunching Tiger, Forbidden Dragon by about Warrior Level 12-15, you're doing it wrong -- and in DoD, once you've gotten your one activatable trick from your weapon skill and the uncontrollable procs from weaponskill/Deadshot/Berserker Rage, you're done. Then it's 7 more dungeon levels of using slight variations on the same theme until you have to cheese Dredmor with some consumables and commence flexing. There needs to be some form of high-end warrior badassery that comes from mixing and matching different high-end Warrior skills, much like Wall+Thaumite, Mortal Machine+Invisbility, and the other combos that make high-end magery so interesting. I'd love to see 50% of the current "you gain a pile of stats" Warrior levels replaced with activated abilities that added special effects to X number of attacks or defends, for example. (Visualize Goku "Powering Up" for a few minutes while his enemies beat him down, and then unleashing hell and winning in two hits.)

2) Rogues are coinflips. If you Rogue, you can overpower yourself very easily in a good percentage of your games by running straight up Burglary, reaching 5FD, and then finding the most out-of-level item Brax has in store and stealing it. Sure, your game ends half the time -- but the other half you're running around with a freaking Clockwork Chainaxe or Staff of Moravia without ever touching DL2. In a more fundamental sense, Rogues don't have as much defense as Warriors, and they rely on procs (Blackjack and Sneaky Shiv mostly) to incapacitate enemies so that they can't strike back. If the RNG turns against you for any length of time, it's game over. D0D has Fungal Arts, which helps a lot, but even then, you're at the mercy of the RNG to have enough Fairywodger/Hoglantern/whathaveyou to make it through the early game until you have hundreds of every shroom stored up.

3) Time Really Is Money.

First, I don't see how this is any different from HP or Cooldown skills. If a Mushroom Man needs more Spores, he hits space 40 times. If a Warrior is low on HP and has no food, he hits Space 3450 times. All non-item resources in this game are restorable by time. In that regard, it should be design intent that every character essentially enters every fight with full resources. The minor enemies you encounter along the way are speedbumps designed to get you enough XP to level, and to force a bit of caution in your sprinting around the dungeon -- and that's OK. (Every dungeon level should also have a few to several spots in it that are designed to come very close to killing you -- mini-bosses, zoos, Chests of Evil, etc -- or it would be rather dull.)
The balance problem with Mages doesn't come from the tedium of pressing spacebar until your Mana is full, because that exists for every character as an integral part of the game. The balance problem with Mages comes from their ability to walk through those "killer" parts of the dungeon without fear because their spells cost so little and mana regens so quickly that they can spam spells indefinitely and/or the ranged/AoE nature of those spells keeps them from ever getting touched in the first place. Fix either issue -- so that in a "killer" section, Mages either have to carefully manage their resources or they can expect to get beat down while spamming their best spells -- and the Mage issue is good.
Personally, I'd rather see Mages running out of Mana mid-zoo or vs. a named boss than would see them spam spells and still get beat down. But the whole idea that "spacebar=tedium" has got to go. It only applies out of combat, and out of combat shouldn't really be a balancing point for any game where time=resources (unless you want to code some code where pressing Spacebar causes enemies to appear...but that's an entirely different game.)

 

Pressing spacebar does cause enemies to appear. More specifically, enemies spawn over time, and rather aggressively on GR, so the more time you spend just sitting there regenerating health, the more enemies there will be. I don't think a warrior can survive using the spacebar to regen; at a base regen rate of 13 (call it 12 from Suit Up), you'd need to spend 720 turns sitting still to recover a mere 60HP of damage, and I 'm pretty sure about 60HP "worth" of monsters would spawn during that time.

In any event, the fact that players are better off if they spam spacebar between fights is a design flaw, because it encourages tedium. That's why I would rather do away with regen entirely and require the player to start fights at less than perfect health/mana (unless they feel like burning consumables to recover of course). If you're low on HP and out of food, then you die and you should have planned better. Likewise, if you're low on mana and out of booze then you can't cast spells, whoops!

Of course, part of the reason for the disparity between warriors and mages is that mages can easily get down to powerful levels of mana regen, while warriors can't do the same with health regen because the base rate is a whopping 5 points higher (8 for mana vs. 13 for health). So I suppose it would probably be adequate to increase the base mana regen rate to the base health regen rate, at which point even stacking dual orbs + maxed ley walker + witch's hat + two rings of regen + amulet of regen only gets you down to 1 point every 3 turns. But then we're back to the point of "why bother with mana regen at all", which is pretty much where health regen is right now. There's basically no point to boosting health regen on GR because you're never going to get it to a point where it changes your strategy during fights. About the best you can hope for is to make mashing spacebar between fights slightly less tedious.

 

Um, you shouldn't be relying on those coinflips to play the game, sure they're nice, but when I used five-finger discount (and rather annoyingly there were no out of level items on any floor I've been to on that save, because coinflips while generating went badly), I was prepared long before that assuming that I would be caught (and I did escape alive after I was).

As you level up the chances are so high it doesn't matter that much. Blackjack and sneaky shiv, along with dodge and counter, and a bit of block, make it harder to get hit rather consistently. It's possible to get unlucky it's just not going to happen enough to matter. The chances stay about the same throughout.

 

I think you missed the point -- the point is that Rogues can overpower the first 2/3 of the game by getting lucky and 5FDing to obtain overpowered weapons. Sure, you'll end half your runs in 15 minutes, but the other half will be a cakewalk when you're swinging for 25+ damage at DL1.

And yes, cheaters can already accomplish the same goal in a few different ways, but we're talking about designed intent, not bugs.