After further review: Melee still sucks

I disagree with your assessment. DL9 is more or less optional, and worth skipping if you think you walk out with less food than you went in with. And DL10 is a game of resource management.

If anything, melee is exactly where it should be in terms of difficulty. I don't think making melee as easy as a mage is the solution. It's just that mages have no real risk of dying once they develop because they end up with near unlimited mana and rarely take damage.

 

Either way, there's a disparity. Personally I'd like to see Archers that can shoot mages (as was mentioned), or better Monster AI that will sometimes target the Character with ranged attacks (spells at the moment) instead of his Pet 100% of the time. Nerfing Mages instead of buffing Melee would be A-OK in my book.

 

As it happens, monster ranged attacks never target the pet, even if the monster is in melee with the pet at the time. They always target the player.

 

Melee vs Magic is a joke at the moment.

Take sustainability: Magic needs mana regen, Melee needs health regen. Magic throws regen at you with +4 from orbs and +3 from leylines which leaves you to find the last +1 to get 1mp/turn. Compare that to health regen - you need +13 to get 1hp/turn. Has anyone ever gotten that outside of the terrible 'walk it off' buff? Vampirism nets you +3hp/hit but stops you eating food. Blood Magic nets you +4mp/kill and gives you a buff. Booze can be distilled in massive quantities, Food forces you to use up 10 inventory slots and raid every vending machine you find.

Take danger: Named monsters are terrifying to melee users and unless you're suicidal you'll be filling your inventory with ranged weapons. For magic users named monsters are just meatier punching bags that give you more XP. Groups of casters are deadly unless you pick them off fast. Unfortunately only magic spells can pass through enemies - melee users just have to keep punching whatever's next to them and hope they don't get chain casted to death on the next turn.

Take progression: As you get deeper in the dungeon every monster gets more stats. For melee you care about health, dodge, block, counter, crit, armor, damage and resists. For magic you care about health, resists and magic resistance. While an Arch Diggle can counter 1/5 melee hits he's about as tough as a normal diggle for a magic user.

Now how would you fix this? Some ideas:

• 'Fast' but weak enemies that move more than once per turn.
• Ranged enemies that deal mundane damage (e.g. archers).
• 'Dumbfounded' debuff - puts an N turn cooldown on one of your spells. Forces you to think outside the box instead of relying on a single spell for the whole game.
• Mana sapping enemies.

 

The biggest problem with caster is the ease of positioning. You got math that lets you port anywhere at 3 mana, then you got wall or shove to pretty much shut down everything. Like I don't even open doors anymore I just port into them and cast 1 wall right in front, and nothing (not even spells) can hit me. Then I just take my sweet time pumping zen and blasting stuff with recursive.



Xeuclid's Translation need to have a much higher minimum cost so it stop being a walking/door opening replacement.

 

To be fair, your little "door trick" is akin to spamming double-click to move across a room while skipping the monsters's turn over and over: it's abusing bugs in the game/game mechanics. I can play a Promethian mage and never take a point of melee damage ever because I can move any number of squares without being attacked or followed: you can clear rooms with a "ignores line of sight" spell because you're in a position that A) should not be achievable and B) the game is not programmed to handle. The game does suddenly get easier when you remove the enemies' ability to attack or even see you.

re: J-Factor

Good points. I'd like to reinforce one of my points with it.

Thus, the best way to deal with them is to get some range and fire Bolts or Spells or them. They will die and you will take no damage.

meaning that the correct answer is to quickly fire your best and strongest AoE Bolts or Spells at them. They will die and you will suffer the least amount of return fire.

Therefore the best way to deal with melee-destroying Arch Diggles is to get some range and fire Bolts or Spells or them. They will die and you will take no damage.

Now quick, someone give me a situation where the correct answer (read: the solution that kills the enemies and you take little to no damage) is to charge up and wade into melee combat. Oh wait, you can't, because it's never the best way to deal with what you're facing, regardless of your build. At best, and I'm reaching here, it's an Acceptable Answer when you're a very low-level caster and you're out of Mana and Booze and that L'il Batty has a sliver of health left.

 

Is this on GR? Or what? I routinely took NO DAMAGE on Dwarven with my build. I would say it was more normal to not take damage, than to take damage. Wading into melee absolutely was the best option for my melee build.

 

Even if you do the more legit version of casting 3 walls on the door before opening it, or to actually open the door first before teleporting back/wall, or just port back and shove, the end result is almost exactly the same. You might get hit by 1 spell at most before your defense is set.

There are almost no reason for a golem/math or psi/math to ever get hit past Xeuclid's Translation, except maybe by invisible monsters.

 

I killed dredmor with a warrior build on going rouge, with perma death.

Vampirsm. Archeology, Dual Wielding. Mace. Smithing. MoA. Besker rage.
When i confronted dredmor i pelted him with around 20 hand grenades, getting lucky not getting hit by his spells. Once he got to me his health must have been around 2 because you couldn't even see the red on his life bar. Smacked him, he's down, i get a new acheivment

I had 2 flail of pleiades and the embossed seprtine mail rocket boots, the Canada hat, and the Ankh amulet. I maxed all my skills other than MoA which i never even leveled up. Almost everything was enchanted.

I have to agree. Melee is a little underpowered in the game unless your loaded with potions (as i needed with my vampirism).

 

Don't tell moof about this thread.

 

You might wanna read page 5. smarty.

 

Changed that a bit.--anything on the ground can be subdued with traps, and it's easy to accumulate a lot of boulder fall/IEDs early on.

Triggering traps remotely would be highly useful with flying enemies (is it possible now?)

 

Learn to take advantage of line of sight. If you are facing a large group of enemies, retreat behind a hall/corner to avoid ranged damage and force enemies to fight you 1v1. Yes, melee is more dangerous. But only because they stand in melee. If anything magic spells are more dangerous to casters who have less life and are more likely to be reckless with their hp.

 

Mmm, nope. Batties and various Djinn will float right over them and they won't go off. I even tried laying a Death Chain of various traps I had picked up and Lord Dredmor just hovered right over them and giggled at me. I'm assuming it's a combination of some enemies A) floating and bypassing most (if not all) trap types and B) monsters with Rogue levels not triggering them - sometimes - because of high Sneakiness.

 

Yeah, flyers don't trigger traps. They do trigger the rune of exploding, but that doesn't help melee.

 

Whoa, Dredmor doesn't trigger traps? I'm pretty sure I got him to activate a whole bunch of blingmines and brimstone cloud thingies.

 

Well, this was back in like... 1.0.2? I just remember that I had a character with like, 8 Affinity and a TON of traps in my Inventory and we walked over them all and took no noticeable damage. Then I tried to melee him. Congratulations, here's your Thrusty (!!) Achievement.

 

Yeah, Expensive Rune seems to have it's own rules.