Armor, and how it work1s

Lets discuss how armor and might works for a moment works, for a moment. Because it's ENORMOUSLY counterintuitive.

1) Each point of grants 1 , 1 , and 1
2) Each point of grants 1 damage, split between , depending on what your weapon has.

Therefore, if you have 4 , equip a weapon with 4, and go up against an enemy with 6 you will deal 8 to 6 and therefore deal 2 damage.

If you have 4 , equip a weapon with 4 AND 4, and go up against an enemy with 6 you will deal 6 and 6 to 6 and 6 and therefore deal 0 damage.

I have just tested this with an amulet that grants 1, I will upload screen shots in a little. But the TLDR is:

1) DO NOT TAKE SMITHING WITH ANY CHARACTER THAT USES SWORDS/AXES/DAGGERS/ETC. Smithing grants crushing damage, those tend to be slashing damage. Slashing and crushing DO NOT MIX.

2) Do not take items that add to the basic damage types. If you have a weapon, accessories with or are right out. In fact since NOTHING does pure , accessories with are the devil.

3) This system is stupid. Don't post to tell me that it MUST work some other way when you can verify it works this way in about 10 minutes of gameplay.

 

Here is a picture of my character. See the two lines up at the top?

The second is without the amulet equipped, the first is with. I have 5, 2, 1, and 2 without amulet. Sanguiblobby has 2. So I do 5, 2, 1, and the 2 counters the 2

Now with the amulet? The 2 splits. So I do 6, 2, 1, 2 (As you can see, amulet adds 1). The armor acts as 2 AND 2, and the 1 effectively REDUCES my overall damage.

Still using the amulet because it's way too good to pass up, but it is a damage debuff, and as soon as I find/buy/steal something better it gets trashed.

 

Well, most of the time, yes. Sometimes your character only uses melee weapons as support (with its main means of attack being thrown weapons), in which case it might be desirable to take smithing (depending on whether you plan on using crushing throwables too, or only slashing/piercing ones).

Yeah it's ironic that other than Maces, every single weapon proficiency skill tree is better off without Smithing if you want to optimize your character (not that all players care, though, as some of us don't really mind the challenge coming from playing a sub-optimal build, for as long as we like the style of gameplay it requires).
Thus, I propose changing it so that every weapon proficiency skill tree would have a stance that would decrease the amount of "foreign" basic damage types dealt but give a slight increase in the "native" basic damage type, so that the total damage would be lower but centred on a fewer number of damage types (something like Maces getting a stance that gives you -10 to slashing/piercing/blasting but +6 to crushing and some other bonus).

Once again, that depends on circumstances - if you know you'll be throwing a lot of bombs, even if they don't only deal blasting damage, it is still a bonus. Because you will be dealing damage of that type, so that bonus might be what you need.
Either way, unless you find an item with really potent bonuses (in which case you don't care because the bonuses are good enough to stop it from being a problem) or like switching accessories a lot, I don't see a reason to choose something that gives you a few points of damage over something that gives you a few points of resistance to damage that is common on the floor you are on, or a few points to dodge/counter/magic resistance.

Ugh...

Yes, it works exactly the way you describe it. But you know, from what I remember, melee power was originally supposed to add damage to the type that already had the highest value, which is what would've made the whole thing less annoying (in fact, it would've stopped it from being a problem at all). I wonder if their intentions had changed in the meantime or if something just went wrong.

 

That's really silly, and needs to be changed. It simply isn't fun gameplay for a "bonus" to work as a debuff.

There's two potential solutions I see:
1) Make it so armour can only remove as much damage as its total value.
So, if an attack did 10 10 and the enemy had 2 2 14 then the resistances would reduce the attack to 8 8 and then the armour would only take 14 more of that total away, leaving the attack doing 2 damage at the end rather than the current 0.
One downside would be that this would be a minor nerf to , but nothing significant as very few things do more than one mundane damage type.
2) As said, make apply exclusively to the damage type you have the most of. Although that might cause problems if two types tie for the lead.

Edit: Ninja'd!

 

One issue I see with a fix on this:
Dredmor himself is one of the enemies that do two types of mundane damage, so any fix so players don't get debuffed by extra damage is going to cause Dredmor to be even harder to take on in melee combat.
For example, if gets added exclusively to the highest type, then you'll need 54 to fully resist his non-crit melee attacks, rather than the current 35. Which is quite a significant buff to the final boss.

 

Yay for bugfixes!

This is a little weird to me. Honestly, I believe should work differently than 1 1 1. It should only reduce one point of mundane damage, period.

That is, an enemy with 10 taking 5 and 10 should be taking 5 damage, not 0. There should be a hierarchy of calculations. Resistances first would work the best, I think.

First, mitigate via resistances. In this case, no resistances, so 5 and 10.
Then, the 10 kicks in and mitigates evenly, taking one of each damage type evenly. So, 1 crushing, 1 slashing, 1 blasting (not present in this case) and then repeat. Final damage would be 5.

Alternatively, the damage is 4 4 4. In this instance, after resistances, 10 would result in 1 and 1. Or something. We might be able to just divide evenly; it's up to the devs.

TL;DR I agree with Maze completely. In instances where two types tie for the lead... well, I don't know. Randomly select a damage type per attack? Default to one based on last stat acquired, or by alphabetical order?

By the way, thanks for catching this, GreyICE! This is pretty important, though not at all obvious.

Now I'm getting ninja'd.

This can be solved by nerfing his numbers, I think. Reducing melee power across the board might be required for this, but I feel it's worth it to instate proper game mechanics. Then again, maybe the dungeon simply wasn't as hard as it was supposed to be for melee players.

 

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly how I imagined armour should work.
Although I wasn't the one who made the original catch, GreyICE was.

 

This would be AWESOME. 35 is TRIVIAL to get by floor 15. There are individual items that can add up to 16or better! Best I ever got was a set of magnetronic artifact plate with 20. 54 would be much more difficult to mitigate, and thus make him hit as better than a wet blanketa in melee (Just take him on with the battle geology debuff while standing in a celestial circle, and watch him plonk you for 3-6 damage. Nice final boss).

 

Piercing and Exotic Damages FTW. Mages and Rogues ALWAYS had an easier time than melee, especially against dredmor(without Battle Geology or CK).
Edit: I've learned a lesson that I should watch my mundane damage types if I'm using Thrown or Melee. Anyway, Does thrown use "Melee Attack" damages or "Ranged Attack" damages?

 

At any rate, I really hope the fix for both these issues comes in the next patch, or the one after. My only concern is how this will affect balance. But the sooner the change happens, the sooner we can figure out how it will.

Fixing the AA issue will both nerf warriors, and buff them by allowing them to benefit from split mundane damage types. I think players do split types more often than monsters, so this should benefit players more. However, it will lead to harder Dredmor fights, as mentioned before, and make more difficult any monster that does split mundane damage types.

This will also make ingeniously scythed plastic bolts better, which do and , if I recall correctly.

After that, the melee power fix will be mostly irrelevant, but will at least behave predictably.

All in all, I feel as though AA ought to be higher priority, for the aforementioned reasons.

 

AA should be a higher priority, and I believe this will do more nerfing than buffing to the warriors unless Dredmor's Melee Power is nerfed as well. Even Dual Wield Warriors highly appreciate massive Tanking/Health Regen. Dredmor himself actually used to be impossible to do as a Warrior even on Elvishly Easy. Tip: Never play Evilishly Easy, if you're a newb, play Dwarvish Moderation instead. Always play Permadeath On, and Dying left and right and losing everything is one of the core features of roguelikes.

 

Arron, I don't think it's your business to tell people how to play the game, particularly in a thread about attack power. I played exclusively on EEPD until I beat Dredmor, which took a long while.

 

yeah, i suggest playing the game all the way through with permadeath off at least twice before you take on anything harder. The many, many deaths you suffer will help you learn about trial and error in a roguelike, and players need to have a good idea of the scope/scale of early, mid, and end game Dredmor. With permadeath/DM, you will more likely end up playing the first 3-5 floors over and over again and know them really well, but as soon as you get to new floors you'll get trashed. And you might get bored of seeing the same stuff, too.

Throwing weapons get bonuses from your . IIRC no other melee effects apply to it. Most bolts with spell effects tend to scale off of , so the thinking is generally Melee: Use Throwing, Magic: Use Bolts.

 

I actually enjoy making new characters, so I started out with DMPD, though it only took a single game for me to move on to GRPD. Needless to say I've never gone past level 7, but I'm fine with that. I don't really play to beat the game as much as I do to have fun.

 

So based on the Gaslamp Games twitter, it looks like they are looking into fixing this for the next patch. Huzzah for devs that listen!

 

I'm still playing every game on EEPD. So far I've made it to Dredmor once, got quickly blasted.
Wouldn't play without permadeath, wouldn't feel right without it.

 

I meant the 2 things right above the secondary stats and right below the equip screen on the character panel. By what you're telling me, thrown uses neither of those "ranged attack"/"melee attack", just melee power and the damage from the thrown item. This would mean that Smithable Projectiles/Softballs would do alot less damage per hit than let's say, a Single Damage Type Sword with Melee Power and Artifact Damage bonuses, or say, a Clockwork Bolt thrower with high-end bolts and Artifact Damage bonuses.

 

Grey, have you tried this test since the new patch? They said they were working on AA and I wonder if its different now.

 

I don't recall any patch notes including mention of a fix, though. I can do some tests myself if I come across the appropiate gear.

Edit: Easy testing by taking dual wielding and communism. 3 and 3 + 2.

A gnome took 4 4. An enraged diggle took 3 4.

Looks like it's fixed. Armor, anyway. Melee power still divides itself between damage types, but hey, that's not a big deal given AA is fixed. It also arguably makes more sense than enhancing the most dealt type.