Crowning Gift Comparisons

[F50]

Thunderstroke is useful. Its an excellent missile that never goes away. It can kill a lot of enemies that have ill effects quickly (floating eyes, vortices) and if you are fast (monk fast) this greatly improves hit-and-run tactics. Its at least a good artifact (though admittedly not as useful as most excellent artifacs)

[vogonpoet]

Two peeps defending the missile artifacts? Come on, they are insanely sucky crowning gifts. Damn, my archers would rather find Cat's bloody claw than Thunderstroke.

As for vortexes, yeah, I always love to make sure to have my favourite non-stacking missle in my slot so that I can be halfway through reloading something else when it explodes in my face. Super.

[Silfir]

That's the thing. Missiles are godly because of slaying powers. Raw damage will never come close to that destructiveness. And Thunderstroke and True Aim are one-time deals which will not help you win the battles in question.

Killing vortices in the early game? Sure, if you walk around with the missile equipped at all times you can try. Not sure if you're going to get crowned this early and not have wands to do it much safer. In a very early game crowning stuff like Nature's Friend and Perion's also gets interesting once more, however. It doesn't change the tier they're in, which is the "by the time you get your crowning this stuff is junk" tier.

A compromise: Give half a point to each junk artifact.

(I must not have played Pok?mon for a while because I am not quite sure what you mean with 1 defense and 1 avoid... I guess you're referring to the in-battle buffs, like Harden or Double Team? I'm not sure there are any that give only one level of avoid...)

[Pumpernickel]

That's the thing. Missiles are godly because of slaying powers.

The specific use mentioned was against nasty low-hitpoint stuff, where you need only one good hit to drop them. But i think that's only an option for characters that only ever use missiles for that express purpose, which definitely aren't the classes that can get the missiles as crowning gifts - archers, rangers, thief; each of those should preferably use missiles as regular means of afflicting damage before stuff comes into melee range, and for that you need a _stack_ of missiles, the bigger the better.

So yes, for those who can get them as gift, the artefact missiles remain useless.

> In a very early game crowning stuff like Nature's Friend and Perion's also gets interesting once more,
> however. It doesn't change the tier they're in, which is the "by the time you get your crowning this stuff
> is junk" tier.

Just to be contrary (haven't seen Perion in 1.1.1 so far), i think that Perion's plate should only be one level lower than the Robes of Resistance - it weighs more and lacks the resists, but has similar PV, and some intrinsics, too. And for the Robes' To bonus - that's mostly extra HP, and by crowning time, extra hitpoints are just luxury [1].

[1] youngsters these days with their fancy hitpoints! When i started playing, we had no hitpoints - if you stubbed your toe, you died horribly! If a giant frog _looked_ at you, you exploded into a fine red mist! And we had nothing to eat by iron rations! Sod it, we had nothing _but_ iron rations, and they were really iron, so you had to smith your teeth before you could eat! (which was a bit tricky, what with there being nothing but iron rations to find) And we liked it!

Briefly returning to the matter of artefact ratings, what's the rationale behind putting Shit-it-triakis at non-useless for healers? I don't see how specifically healers shouldn't be deeply offended by autocursing handgear as crowning gift - they become worse than useless for everyone who needs to change rings more than thrice after crowning, or acquires poison hands at any point. And that's not even counting the to-hit penalties.

[Silfir]

Perion's was rated as junk for weaponsmiths, presumably because it is scarcely better than the stuff they can easily smith for themselves. But then, everyone can smith.

I'm not saying I agree on that rating either. I always though Perion's was pretty okay. At this point I was trying to list examples for artifacts that are quite decent and helpful in the early game, and that certainly applies for Perion's, even for weaponsmiths.

Perion's has resists to both fire and acid, so compared to the robe of resistances it doesn't do too bad in that regard. Certainly more useful than the cold immunity on the AMW (but the AMW is good because of other things)

[Molach]

Whirlwind is fair at most. Because rocks are very unspectacular and demon slaying slingshots are rare.

> extra hitpoints are just luxury
WHAT? Who said that? Not getting killed isn't a luxury.

Humanoid slayers all should be high up, good or better, no doubt.

The power of crowning gifts for me plays a part in whether I go for an early crowning (and forego all benefits I might get by switching alignment). A wizard char, at least when I was playing them, never was in a hurry to crown. Many others would go for it early, so I could incorporate whatever I got into the character build.

[Pumpernickel]

> extra hitpoints are just luxury
WHAT? Who said that? Not getting killed isn't a luxury.

Bah, youngsters! In my days, we got killed thrice before we even started! And we liked it!

It may be that i'm over-cautious, but there is such a thing as completely sufficient hitpoints in my games, to the extent that i see no point at all in getting more: when i have 400 hp max and won't drop under 200 anyway, i don't see what point there'd be to having 450, or 1200. It'd just mean that i'd never drop under 1000 in the latter case. What use is that? It only encourages careless play. Point in fact - i nearly got my healer winner killed on CoC_50 after closing the gate. I wanted to clear out the level and, because i had so absurdly many hitpoints, i just jumped right into the middled of the horde and nuked them with ball spells. Until at some point my hitpoints went two-digit (i.e. under 100), thanks to ?ber Chaos Servants. Whoops. I would never have been that careless if i hadn't had 1000+ hitpoints max.

[grobblewobble]

Whirlwind: excellent for archers, fair for anyone else.

I think so, because with an archer I care more about having an indestructible ranged weapon and easy ammo than about slaying ammo. For example my (only) archer win cleared the Tower easily (with no blankets) thanks to Whirlwind. Also, I was not afraid of falling down the rift, acid traps etc. And last but not least, with +12,+12 you gain sling marks like crazy.

Holy Scarf: Excellent yes, not gamebreaking. It is not in the same tier as vanquisher, justifier(paladin), sun's messenger, bracers of war.

One more idea: how about a separate analysis for elves and dwarves? Add the score of their special class artifact, next multiply by 6/7 = 0.86.

As a matter of fact, I tried an analysis like this to help me decide between high elf or dark elf archer. High elf archer for the improved chance of Suns Messenger, Dark elf for Find Weakness. Here is my analysis:

I decided to look only at game-breaking crowning gifts (farslayer and sun's messenger). This ignores the fact that Whirlwind and the Boots are also good, but it also ignores the fact that sun's messenger is even slightly more gamebreaking than farslayer. These two ignored facts have opposite influence on the score, so I think ignoring both is fair.

So, a dark elf has a 33% chance of receiving a game-breaking artifact and a high elf has 3/7 = 43% chance. Only 10% better. So what do you value more, 10% additional chance of a game-breaking crown gift, or 100% chance of Find Weakness. For me it was clear now.. dark elf.

[JellySlayer]

Thunderstroke is useful. Its an excellent missile that never goes away. It can kill a lot of enemies that have ill effects quickly (floating eyes, vortices) and if you are fast (monk fast) this greatly improves hit-and-run tactics. Its at least a good artifact (though admittedly not as useful as most excellent artifacs)

Um... Thunderstroke is terrible for hit and run because you have to reload after you shoot. That means if you miss or don't kill your target, you're stuck with a flat 1000 energy penalty before your next one. In the same period that you shoot Thunderstroke and reload, an archer can shoot 4 regular (or slaying, penetrating...) arrows. How often is one hit with Thunderstroke (or True Aim) going to be better than 4 regular shots? For non-archers it is slightly less dreadful--with a Thief (True Aim), for example, you take 1000 energy penalty still, but that only puts you 100-200 energy behind (Quick Shot + skill), which might make it marginally worthwhile to use True Aim in some situations.

Perion's plate should only be one level lower than the Robes of Resistance - it weighs more and lacks the resists, but has similar PV, and some intrinsics, too. And for the Robes' To bonus - that's mostly extra HP, and by crowning time, extra hitpoints are just luxury

Perion's plate is worse than a standard dragon scale armor, or a half-decent eternium piece, adamantium, or crystal piece. It's one of the heaviest pieces of armor in the game (450s). Robes of resist give more PV (+5 To is worth 2-3 additional PV) more DV, plus extra HP, slightly better intrinsics, and weigh almost 400s less. And yes, when you are level 50 and have 45 To and 1000, and extra 5 is not going to make a huge difference. When you have 25 To that gets buffed to 30 and are trying the ToEF with a level 14 wizard, those extra 5 points of To will make a huge difference. As I think I mentioned earlier though, I may redraw the list and move RoR down one level for non-monks.

Perion's was rated as junk for weaponsmiths, presumably because it is scarcely better than the stuff they can easily smith for themselves. But then, everyone can smith.

For weaponsmiths, yes, I consider it to be completely worthless. Smiths start with an anvil and smithing skill >60, and once you hit level 6, you can produce large quantities of ingots (iron at least) with relative ease. All you need is a forge, and then you can smith a piece of [-3,+5] chainmail to better than Perion's. At worst, you have to wait till Dwarftown, but if you're lucky, you can find a forge in the UD and have a better piece of armor than Perion's before you have the opportunity to get crowned. Most other PCs cannot seriously consider smithing until they reach DT, and may take many, many levels before they can even hit 60 smithing, so the problem is a bit different.

PV is much more important than DV. I interpret it that people say in the late game, DV is better than PV. Not true. PV is constant. Let us take pokemon. Would you rather get 1 defense or 1 avoid? How about any RPG? It is not hard. Anyway, I'd say bracers of war is probably the best artifact- 8dv, 4pv, some resistance, regen, bracer slot, good critical hits. Also, I don't really like invis cloaks, so no cloak of defense. Also, the cloak is bad because even though it is one of the best cloaks in the game, cloaks don't matter too much.

Uh... never played Pokemon, but given that it's a completely different game with completely different game mechanics, I'm not sure how much the comparison matters...

But let me put it this way.... suppose you ran into a tension room of stone oozes. Would you rather [0,100] or [100,0]? Would you consider trying the Bug Temple wearing moloch armor? Or, for that matter, would you consider wearing moloch armor at all?


[edit]Interesting to note... nobody seems to have a problem with how the classes ended up ranked, just how the artifacts were ranked.

[Molach]

First, let me say that this was a good thread. Interesting, fresh and free from gut vs Grey-ism. So well done.

Jelly: I'd take [0,100] and wear amulet of free action.

It IS possible to get crowned very early on. N= or C- would be easier, getting to L+ takes a while. Just livesac while eating cooked lizards. And very early most artifacts are decent enough. Even perion, and the staves of suckiness. But a crowning gift you will sell quickly for the heap of cash they tend to give should be considered junk.