u/Primary-Dentist7055

Just an absolute insane high roll that makes me shake my head and wonder why the game is so swingy.

I just don't understand how this makes sense. At my ac of 19 I should have around 34% general damage reduction. The ironbound beast master can do only 45 max damage with its trident per turn according to its character sheet. That should reduce its damage by 15.3 per hit to about 29 damage per max damage hit. However, it still hits for 3 exclaimation points each hit which is at least 36 damage and is more based off of my max HP at the start of turn -4. Can someone explain this?

EDIT: I guess he got mighted somehow by some incorporeal ironbound convoker that I never encountered or noticed. Still rolled max damage on 3 attacks in a row and my AC roll was near zero meaning I was coasting on GDR.

People say Brogue is less swingy so I'm going to go play that game instead of this one.

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The spurs are in our division and we are definitely going to see them in the post season over and over again. Are we ABSOLUTELY SURE that Kessler isn't going to get played off the floor by Wembanyama just like Hartenstein did yesterday and like Rudy did last series?

All 3 are pretty similar players when you get down to it, great rebounders and rim protectors who can't really space the floor, meaning they can't reliably force wemby out of the paint, which may be the only way to neutralize his defensive impact.

We don't have to put a small guy on him like caruso, we can put JJJ on him who is stronger and can keep him out of the paint, but then what is kessler doing out there? Defending castle who is quickly develping a 3 ball making the spurs a 5 out team? And if JJJ is defending the 5, is Lauri at the 4? I'm not trusting those 2 to neutralize Wemby on the boards (24 rebounds last night). Maybe a rebounding guy like boozer at the 4 and JJJ at the five is truly the best fit for beating the spurs? (Maybe?)

I'm really scared to pay this man north of 20 million to get played off the floor in the playoffs. Its really hard to trade that kind of contract, especially when our team defense has been so bad despite his defensive dominance, nothing like rudy bringing us to a top ten defense every year despite our terrible surrounding defenders.

Is the league going to transition again towards stretch centers in order to neutralize Wemby's defensive dominance?

Furthermore, running pick and roll with Kessler against Wemby might be useless, because he just covers so much space out there.

I know this stuff is in the heads of the front office with what happened with rudy getting played off the court by Wembanyama, and sorry but Kessler still has a way to go before he is good of a 1 on 1 defender as Rudy is right now.

Otherwise, we have a great team scheme that plays into the spurs weakness. Our offense is based on running guys of screens and get open 3s which can really help against a team that protects the paint as well as the spurs do.

EDIT: Actually Kessler holds wembanyama to 42% in their matchups with is pretty good, better than JJJ.

If Kessler can actually shoot the 3 he becomes a great wembanyama counter. If he doesn't, he is a decent wembanyama counter who may get played off the floor on offense.

The lack of potions not letting you heal confusion and just get perma confused in a corner with absolutely no way to fix it at all is once of the worst gaming experiences I have ever had in my entire life. Do better with this race. It has been broken for 5 years. Get. Rid. Of. It. Requiring me to do this to get greaterplayer is straight up masochism. I don't know why you think putting your players through this agony is a good idea.

Its literally just a "You lose, no counterplay, try again next time fucker!" scenario. "You know all that time, decisions, close calls, everything that led up to this? Well it didn't matter because you walked around a corner and norris was there. And next time, your decisions probably won't matter at all either because this shit will just happen again." It's absolutely dumb. Walked around a corner Norris was in the doorway I was instaconfused no chance for counterplay or avoidance whatsoever.

To make it even worse, they decided, to add Norris back to the game, after already making mummies useless, adding a unique that instakills mummies essentially if they stand next to him. Wow. They couldn't even leave confuse to be a spell reduced by will, nope, it has literally no resistance. "Fuck you player,"

There literally would not be a single angry player if you removed mummy from trunk TOMORROW.

And you owe me an hour and a half of my life I WASTED on this fucking run. I was prepared to never play this stupid race ever again, now I have to go through this agony over and over. It might just push me away from this game for good.

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Chei is my favorite god for dex characters because the dex scaling is just bonkers for ev and sword damage. Being slow isn't that bad when you can just teleport all the enemies away from you or do damage to everything on screen at once. It makes getting trapped not a big deal, which is why I have 8 blink scrolls left at the end of this game. Never felt the need to use them.

Having high AC and EV at the same time makes you feel solid, and a tower shield and gold dragon scales makes you impenetrable. You also get the strength boost for throwing and just destroy stuff with your boomerangs.

Didn't even feel like learning spells this time. Double sword was destroying everything once I got valor on it. I basically never got below 80 percent hp, and I could tell because the valor beam never turned off.

Killed a Seraph and 4 pan lords on the way up. Didn't even get close to hurt.

2 races left. Mummy and felid.

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Won Kobold on about my third try. Once I got an orcbow it was easy pickings. Just abuse your dodging and range weapons apts with dodge. Find an arablest and enchant it heavy.

I find chei to be the best ranged god because it takes your dex to the stratosphere (I was at 65 at one point) and nothing hits you. You can also wear a bit of light to medium armor and get some medium level spells on line at the same time.

You also just need to find a way to deal with vaults 5, which for me was ignite poison and olgrebs. Summon forest is OP and dimensoional bullseye, while annoying to use, is very very effective. I experimented with raising my weapon skill above min delay to get some more damage. It was okay, nothing crazy. Got like ten more damage rating by the end. I guess its nice. Don't really feel the difference though. Just had tons of XP to go around.

Got mule late and mostly used it to deal with orbs of winter. Its so loud that it was scary in zot.

3 more races to go until greater player.

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Finally beat vine stalker. Still did not have any fun with the race. It simply feels the same to play as a melee brute who ends up having good regen, but feels very, very dependant on awesome armor or shield drops in order to not feel intensely squishy and frail. I really don't think forcing people to play a melee race with low HP is that fun, and even if innate spirit guardian is nice, it just doesn't feel that impactful. Finagling a way to make this race work did not feel fulfilling, rather like I was being forced to play in a specific way with no way to break free from the constraints of the race. I thought crawl was about taking what comes to you, not waiting for a very specific build like is required for this race.

Usk is fun I guess, if not just an "I win" button that feels a bit vestigial and unrewarding. I literally just clicked on Tiamat and killed her. Just tab tab tab and get rewarded by all the enemies falling dead. Yaaaaay...I guess? Not a lot of interesting decisions to be made with this race. Probably the least memorable and interesting encounter with Tiamat that I have had yet. (The best being using Yred to make her my ally.)

Any race that is just more squishy and has bad defenses as a way to make gameplay more challenging is just repetitive and duplicative design in my opinion. It would be fine if there were one or two squishy characters with no defenses but there are far too many in the game right now and "no defenses" is just an easy, slapdash way to devs to make a race more challenging. I really don't see much difference between this race and the old "human with different aptitudes races. The bite is mechanically interesting, but gameplay wise it ends up feeling like a powerful antimagic weapon with a speed brand. Not exactly the most exciting thing in the world or providing interesting gameplay decisions or unique gameplay

Vinestalker, Oni, Troll, Octopode, Spriggan, deep elf, all feel too similar in gameplay due to the most important gameplay mechanic between the 5 of them being how squishy and easy to kill they are. Tengu is the only one I like because the innate acrobat is great for any build and teaches players to run away from combats. A very well designed race that actually feels worth the lack of HP rather than just being an outright hinderance and handicap.

I suspect I will feel the same way about Felid and Mummy as it literally just seems like "Play the game without all the fun parts, as if a masochist had created it."

Anyway, Mummy, Kobold, Human, Felid to go to greaterplayer.

1. Mummy
2. Vine Stalker
3. Felid
4. Gale Centaur
5. Oni
6. Deep elf
7. Octopode
8. Human
9. Spriggan
10. Naga
11. Troll
12. Kobold
13. Demonspawn
14. Coglin
15. Revenant
16. Gargoyle
17. Formicid
18. Minotaur
19. Draconian
20. Poltergeist
21. Djinni
22. Mountain Dwarf
23. Demigod
24. Gnoll
25. Merfolk
26. Barachi
27. Tengu

Its clear that I dislike the races that just slap on -HP% or bad all around aptitudes as a way to make the race more challenging.

Any race that is just more squishy and has bad defenses as a way to make gameplay more interesting is just repetitive and duplicative design. It would be fine if there were one or two squishy characters with no defenses but there are far too many in the game right now and "no defenses" is just an easy, slapdash way to devs to make a race more challenging. Make their weaknesses more interesting and gameplay relevant than just "Hey this guy has very little health to balance the powers the race has."

Vinestalker, Oni, Troll, Octopode, Spriggan, deep elf, all feel too similar in gameplay due to the most important gameplay mechanic between the 5 of them being how squishy and easy to kill they are. Tengu is the only one I like because the innate acrobat is great for any build and teaches players to run away from combats. A very well designed race that actually feels worth the lack of HP rather than just being an outright hinderance and handicap.

It said I died to a nagaraja's poison bolt, which was fired BEFORE i blinked.

You aren't seriously telling me I just took 19 damage in one turn from 2 stacks of poison?

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I'm just so sick of being so squishy. I've died in zot with great resistances and defences twice because the damage spikes just keep coming and coming, and I just get so low that I need to use haste or tele or blink to escape and I just run out of consumables. I did a berzerker, destroy the tesseract and lo and behold of course there are 4 orbs of winter right behind it who just demolish me instantly with no ability to counter whatsoever and I'm completely out of consumables.

Every time I die its because get hit twice on some lucky hits and damage in one turn and i'm automatically in the red AND my mp is gone so I can't use god powers.

Got storm form up in another run, died to some BS.

I really, really think this race is unfun to play. I am literally having more fun playing felid. It just a race where it was like "What if you feel weak literally all the time"

Tying to even figure out how a stabbing build could work its just anti fun and so much meaningless finagling of positioning and tedious crap like that (Reminds me of stair dancing shit). Don't even suggest uskayaw to me. I just die before I can even kill the first dude in the group. I don't know how you expect me to build up the piety to kill these groups with stabbing once they fall asleep. I'm literally in the red before they even fall asleep. Then, after I stab one, all the rest of them wake up. Dead.

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My money is on tower shield. When I find one before lair I become an unhittable killing machine and that continues all the way through zot if you keep enchanting it.

Could also be buckler because of the lack of need to invest skill points and the insane upside of using it.

Honorable mention to giant rock and boomerangs.

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Finally won deep elf. Got down to 1hp at one point. But we did it. Once ignition and fire storm come online its easy. Didn't even get hurt after that.

I only used sif muna when I ran out of magic or needed to forget a spell. Not one of my favorite gods tbh. It was my first win with him.

5 more species to go. Kobold, human, Vine Stalker, mummy, felid.

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If you draw a straight line from the prism to me you would assume the wall would stop it since it is directly in the path of the explosion. Not so.

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Was having a tough time with gale centaur until I started stacking dex for blades and dodging. Stacking dex is in my opinion the most simple and easy way to get great defenses on a race with a good modifier to dodging. Tower shield is the next, and in my opinion is the strongest item in the game (For 3 rune winrate.) After I get tower shield up I just never, ever worry about anything and face tank the rest of the game.

I like getting fugue of the fallen on melee guys for a little extra omph and aoe and works well with oka finesse doubling your attacks and thus doubling your bonus from fugue.

I almost never used the rampage mechanic on purpose unless I was 1v1ing a guy. It can get you into bad situations when it pushes you toward unexplored territory and get you hit by a thousand opportunity attacks if you use it on a group. It's nice to 1v1 dudes with though, but the 30% damage reduction is barely noticable.

6 species left until greaterplayer.

Out of the 16 playoff teams, 13 have dealt with injuries to star players or starters.

Stars injured: OKC, Lakers, Rockets, Timberwolves, Spurs, Magic, Raptors, Celtics, 76ers

Just Starters injured: Nuggets (Gordon), Pistons(Huerter), Cavs(strus, wade), Hawks (Hart).

The 3 who have no injuries are all relatively young teams with little playoff milage under their belt. Suns, Hawks, Blazers

Its clear that the modern game is much more strenuous on the human body and changes need to be made. This is a bad product. The rockets lakers series is an absolute farce and is embarrassing playoff basketball.

Its only a matter of time until something is done. I can't wait for the "whoever is left uninjured wins" finals AGAIN this year.

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Yeah, fighter, like with many other races, is the easiest way to shore up the bad defenses of the oni species early with both a kite shield and an early boost to dodging. I got a manual of evasion and shields in orc which was a huge boon.

The best way to deal with that mid game is to find a granite talisman and drop every other skill to train it as quick as possible.

Threw items over 1500 times. I think that is the key, just always throw shit. Always.

I think my biggest mistake in my deaths was not training throwing enough because I didn't realize how consistent it gets at higher levels.

Anyways, 7 more species until greater player. Deep elf, kobold, human, centaur, vine stalker, mummy, felid.

There is a bug with Fungal Fisticloak where it will not allow you to equip the extra set of gloves on your hat when you are in granite form.

My body has turned into granite, but not my hat. My hat should still be able to equip the extra gloves.

I'm sick of dying in d10 and lair with this stupid, no defenses race.

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I'm on a roll. I've won 4 new races in the past 5 days. Poltergeist (First Try), Naga, Spriggan, and Djinni.

Since the 16th of april my winrate is 4-7. (Three of those ended before D5)

Found a distortion axe early and trained to 1.2 to help when enemies got close. Ignite poison helped through midgame, then fusillade handled everything post s branches.

Swamp Witch Dragon Scales + Sticky flame =fully poisoned and on fire and ready to ignite flame.

Got abyssed to abyss 4 by a floating distortion weapon. It was harrowing. I had to teleport 3 times, burn 3 blink scrolls, 10 ambrosia potions, and use slouch tons of times to save my ass. Finally I defeated enough enemies that I was able to spawn a gateway. I met Donald there after banishing him with my distortion axe, (Fancy seeing you here, Donald) and killed him for good this time.

Tower shield because of course, it blocks so many attacks it hurts. Chei is so awesome.

The orb run was difficult due to chei though. Was forced to burn my last 2 blink scrolls early and had to face off against some harrowing enemies. Think I killed 3 pan lords and a seraf with his angel army. Slouch was basically the only thing that saved me. I was down to 2* peity by the time I got out.

Slouch is the best ability in the game in my opinion. Not much can survive 3 slouches, not even orbs.