A God am I - Egyptian Magic

I agree with the opinion that the downside to Egyptian Magic should be the mana cost to run it all at once.
It probably does need a nerf as it stands, so I'd suggest that that nerf take the form of increasing the minimum mana cost of sandstorm and increasing the upkeep of the runes.

Perhaps, if possible, have the runes cost more mana based on how many of them are active. That would avoid the lower levels being punished for high level play.

 

Sandstorm does Blasting damage though, and Dredmor has no Blasting damage resist. So actually you need exactly zero magic power to do damage to him with Sandstorm.

EDIT: Ah wait... Blasting is affected by Armor, eh?

 

Agreed. I don't believe it. Sandstorm simply isn't designed that way. It's an area-clearer, not a one shot, in depth, bypass all resistance spell. I'll bet it's just cheap talk.

 

No comments on the "sand in eyes" debuff in the latest hotfixes? Is it really supposed to stack 5 times? That seems like a big of enough nerf to me (maybe even too annoying).

 

I keep getting the "Test of Time" debuff.
That really annoys me. I thought that was applied to enemies?!

 

I could see replacing some of the static damage in sandstorm with scaling damage to even it out a bit. That said, I think fleshsmithing is a easier line to play. Miasma is much much stronger that people seem to give credit and the line has an easy mode heal and the first skill is one of the best. You also don't need massive mana generation to use it.

To suggest that egyptian magic + bloodmagic = win is completely unfair. After playing with the line I find it much harder to really get rolling than with other mage lines due to the mana costs.

 

I agree fully. Getting adjusted to the game, I play Elves Just Want To Fun, and even on that difficulty combined with Tourist and Leywalker that I am barely breaking even on Mana Regeneration with just the first two buffs and still able to use Sandstorm to much effect with a good start until as deep as even mid-floor 3. You just need too much max mana and mana regeneration for it to carry you through the first 2 floors. And with so many supportive skills invested in getting Egyptian Magic running, you certainly won't have a fantastic damage output for Blood Magic.

 

I got it repeatedly in the early stages of my character's development with that skill. Once I hit L5, it vanished.

 

I made no claims for the effectiveness of the spell against dredmor, only claims that they have completed runs easily using the skill tree. Like I said, I just glanced at some basic info people had posted.

Who were you replying to about rift? Sandstorm CERTAINLY doesn't touch rift and after a quick glance I didn't see anyone saying it was better.

All in all I think this is the answer. I'd like to see a more penalizing 1/4 upkeep per buff but I just like the challenge.

 

So that's the end of that, then. Time to switch back to Necro?

 

Not until we see how badly it's nerfed. But yeah, that doesn't sound good. I wanted a sort of "You like damage? You get all the damage you want, but you pay for it with almost everything you've got" kind of approach, and that doesn't sound like it will be the case.

Of course, nothing's to stop somebody from modding a new class that has the old Sandstorm with a really fine assortments of debuffs and mana sinks.

 

See Shreeper's post, four above yours on Page 2.

Borodin: Try the Radiant Wizard mod.

 

Will do, Lunix. Thanks for the suggestion. As long as the risk is high, and the cost is tough, I'll relish the challenge.

 

When I first saw the tree, I immediately thought "Gish skill." I was excited; I love gish builds, so a new skill to play with was exciting.

Unfortunately, I ran into the problem cited in this thread; sandstorm with full glyphs just instanukes everything. Open door, throw sandstorm, win forever became my default modus operandus, and my playstyle wasn't very gishy.

But other people raise good points. On one hand I'd like to ask that the stat benefits and melee damages go up along with a big nerf to sandstorm, to push it towards gish builds. However, it's such a good candidate for a pure damage tree for wizards as it is now.

I'd like it to be both, really. But I don't know how this could be managed. Given the overlap in desired stats (mana, regen, etc..), a gish could benefit from a primary mage damage tree anyway, so unless something radical is changed the tree will still be good for gishes. Increasing the mana upkeep is questionable when the glyphs themselves are so weak; as it is now they simply exist to enhance the sandstorm, which is the problem.

Why not increase the mana cost for sandstorm itself? Decreasing flat damage and increasing scaling slightly (not enough to compensate for the flat damage, so as to slightly nerf damage overall) sounds fine to me.

We have to ask ourselves, "What is EM supposed to be?" In my opinion, it's a gishy primary mage damage skill that excels early, with the drawback of massive mana upkeep. It relies on another tree for lategame power, yet due to its upkeep, anti-synergizes with another tree because it demands all your mana for itself.

We could reduce upkeep to work with other trees better, but would need to decrease power, especially early. We could increase the mana upkeep, pigeonholing it as your only primary damage tree, but we might also need to improve its lategame power. Or, we could nerf sandstorm and place power elsewhere (like the glyphs themselves.) This is my preferred solution, but again, this pushes it more towards a gish tree, and I don't think many people want that.

I guess GLG already has something in store, though. So we'll see how effective that nerf is.

 

The nerf already exists in the latest hotfix btw.

I'm not sure how the damage has changed (if it has even changed yet?), but it adds a significant 5x debuff that makes you essentially completely blind among a few other things (because of "sand in your eyes").

 

Let's talk about sandstorm. The spell lasts for 6 turns.

The initial effect is: (1+ 0.06 × ) 1+ (1+ 0.05 × )

Asp adds: (1+0.1 × )+ (1+0.1 × )

Imhotep adds a debuff that does -5 , -5 , -5

Anubis adds: 2(1 + 0.1x) + 2 (1 + 0.1x)

Ra adds a debuff that does -1 and 1 and also drops a mine that does 6


Let's compare it to miasma: 4 (1+ 0.18 × ) 2 (1+ 0.12 × ) 4 (1+ 0.18 × )

Miasma has a total coefficient of .48. So it's pretty dang close. Miasma also lasts 16 turns. The difference is that with 0 sandstorm does 27 damage against 0 resists while miasma does 10. Once you have 60 sandstorm is doing like 57 damage vs miasma with 39 the spell doesn't seem so overpowered. It's the static damage.

 

After some severe testing of the spell, my analysis is that it's about in the same ballpark as Miasma. It has a drawback, where as Miasma has none, but it does more damage and hits a larger area. It also doesn't last nearly as long as Miasma. Seems like a fair trade off to me. The tree seems to rest squarely between Miasma and Tenebrous Rift, which is about right. So how should the spell be balanced? Beware of incoming flood of opinions.

I hate the on hit effects of the glyphs. I hate them. I'm constantly spewing clouds and some such nonsense when I don't want to be. Instead, let's remove this effect and make the glyphs scale with the number of glyphs currently active:
Asp: 1 1 static and 1 1 per active glyph.
Imhotep: 1 1 per active glyph (if this seems too much possibly just the could scale).
Anubis: 1 1 static and 1 1 per active glyph.
Ra: 1 1 static and 1 1 per active glyph.
Note: The static values are still part of the glyph, they just don't scale with the number of glyphs active.

What does this do? Well, it gives 6 damage of different types to Gish builds. Not too bad. Not to mention 4 resist of the same six types. That'll go a long way towards keeping you alive in melee range. Again, a good set of static buffs for Gish builds. Lastly you get a good chunk of trap affinity and trap sight to help with the lower levels. The cost of these? I'd like to see an upkeep of 1/5 or 1/6 on every glyph. This allows you to roll with 1-2 more buffs without getting negative mana per turn which a Gish would have problems with. It also doesn't immediately peg a caster with a complete dependence on booze or Blood Magic.

Now, how to balance out Sandstorm? I'm glad you asked!
Base: (1+.05x) + (1+.05x) + (1+.05x) = Total: (3+.15x)
Asp: (1+.05x) + (1+.05x) = Total (2+.1x)
Imhotep: I like the current debuff mechanic. Keep it.
Anubis: (1+.05x) + (1+.05x) = Total (2+.1x)
Ra: (1+.05x) + (1+.05x) = Total (2+.1x) + procs a patch of fire on the ground per Sandstorm tile

So what you essentially get is (9+.45x), fire, and a debuff. You'd have a strong resistance to your spell but since the physical damage scales you'd still take a fairly solid chunk of damage standing in it.

Now let's talk cost. This storm should only last 6 or 8 turns. The base cost should be high and shouldn't really go down much with Savvy. I'm thinking either 20 reduced to 10 or 30 reduced to 20. Now either way the spell should get more expensive to cast per glyph. A static 5 mana per glyph would be good. That leaves you with a 30 or 40 casting cost reduced, or 40 or 50 cost not reduced. It could possibly be even higher. Alternatively, the spell could have a low cost like 10-20 or so and the glyph effects could raise the cost by 10 or more each.

The point is to make the mana cost restrictive to a few casts per mana bar for casters and 0-1 casts for a gish build. For a Gish the cost would be high, the upkeep would be high, and the damage would be low since most of the static damage has been traded out. A Wizard would see high damage output but low mana recovery and a high cost. At low levels the spell couldn't be stacked to 4 glyphs as your mana pool couldn't handle it. A lot of people seemed concerned that it was too easy to burn up to and sustain with blood magic but a high static cost would help deter this. Essentially you get an incredible room clearing spell but you have to take blood magic or use booze after a few casts to make it worthwhile. The buff costs keep your regen too low to make it spammy.

Gish would take it for 6 damage, 24 points of resist, and the utility of Call of the Nile. Could change Imhotep to give a xGlyphs buff instead to make it that much more Gish friendly, but that may make it too much for mages.

As always, just my two cents.

 

Is the Egypt useful as the main damage skill tree in the late game?
Should it?

 

Wow. Its been quite awhile since I've been to the forums, and it seems everyone's been so busy! I don't even know what a gish is. But I am loving Egyptian Magic. I am guessing a gish is a melee build that uses magic to support itself? I think Egyptian is great for that, and in my current play, that is how I'm rolling.

Btw how does Test of Time even work? Last play it occassionally popped up when I was running imhotep, asp, and then I guess I cast sandstorm and it just... appeared at some point when I wasn't paying attention. Great buff.

But in my current playthrough Ruin of Time keeps popping up on my character. I cast sandstorm and then, boom, ruin of time on myself. Is that, like, a random thing that occurs? So it encourages you to cast it a bunch of times until you get Test of Time instead of Ruin of Time, or am I experiencing some sort of glitch?