Wiki Discussion - Dungeon Page Layout

[Tinker]

[Berzee]

Tinker, I sent you a PM about the wiki a couple days ago but it's still in my outbox (instead of sent items) so I think perhaps you have not seen it (not sure how the outbox thing works though) -- that is all. =P

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

I've been checking the wiki lately, and I've been correcting stuff. Not much for now. I'm incapable of expressing myself briefly, as you all know, so I'm apprehensive about doing it. The crusader entry was very wrong though, so I couldn't help myself, it completely missed the point of that class. The bloodmage entry didn't even have Orcs, the strongest race listed as a decent option and is still completely misleading about the best way to play them (or if not the best way to play them, then it makes it look like Sanguine's the most important feature, or otherwise mana potions - and while you can fiddle with those, that's not the best way to go about it. He's about being able to cast spells while bypassing your mana as much as possible. It's not that other approaches can't work, it's just that they don't kill VT bossess at lvl 3 and this does.)

Also, the pissorff page doesn't mention Bloodmages anywhere. They're stronger with it than Wizards, and since they munch on popcorn for bloodpools all the time they much preffer it to fireball unless going Mystera. You can, and I have, kill the VT goo by pissorfing him without bypassing his MR, at lvl... 3-4 - that's what BM's are about.

Too tired to do anything about any of it right now. Will try to do something tomorrow.

[Astral]

Our play styles differ, so it's ok you consider Orc BM to be better than Gnome, or BM being a better Pisorf user than Wizard. Just to mention, I have crossed 80% sanguine before with a Gnome and also fireballed down SMM just by quaffing manapotions without spellcasting gods.
As for Wizards? They can cast unlimited Pisorfs with the combination of Rock Heart, B2P and Binlor even at lvl10 as long as they have blackspace and walls.

But you're completely wrong about the ideal use of Momentum. If you won't ding by comsuming your popcorn you should always try to slay ALL of them before hitting the boss for maximal damage. If you do the math you'll see.

A quick example: you start at 0 momentum and have 12 popcorn. This is the cumulative extra damage you deal by killing them all vs in groups of 2 after the first 4.
1. 180%/60%
2. 270%/120%
3. 315%/180%
4. 337%/240%
5. 348%/300%
As you can see you wasted 48% damage this way. The bigger problem is, if you can't even take 5 hits in the first place, then it's even more wasteful.

This is the reason why Crusaders should avoid all kinds of slowing/extra xp on popcorn too. Such things limit how many of those can they consume in one go without a ding.

[Lujo]

Crusader:

^ Yes, except that approach only works if there's just one boss. And there's very few places where there's just one boss. The two by two approach is the standard good one as it keeps you going longer and stable (which if you're stacking resistances is what you want more often), the big shot approach only works occasionally. Finding a god which lets you get a bunch of hits in (many ways) or otherwise a god which supports pissorf spam on top of the ocasional hit is the way to go.

Telling a newbie Crusader is all about big momentum will set the newbie up for dissapointment when it doesn't work, or make them think they're only good when you can one-shot the boss. If you keep 60% damage up constantly you have the biggest damage boost in the game (tied only by the Warlord), except relatively stable, and that's gonna work way more often.

BLOODMAGE:

- Yes, the bloodmage can work in several ways, it's just that Orc Bloodmage needs so little in the way of anything and has the easiest time munching popcorn that makes him the best. You can get your sanguine high with the Gnome and it's surely better for endurance runs, but that just takes way more effort. The wizard can get infinite - if he uses walls, which is the wrong and fiddly way to play Pissorf as it has "if's" attached. The orc just sticks a health boost on him, slams the boss into another boss/big guy, dings of the collateral guy, slams the boss into another guy.

I wouldn't be pointing newbies towards a Bloodmage approach that needs buildup rather than the one which doesn't.
Hoarding Bloodpools too much will get you in trouble whenever you're cut off from them, and going for the transition requires melle/resist buildup - not that you can't do it, but you can't do it reliably. Trying to get the most out of him as an Elf or a Gnome requires buildup as you'd do on a standard spellcaster - and he starts at a disadvantage there. Any sort of buildup requires exploration, and that just diminishes B2P. If you know you don't need any actual buildup in most cases, you just move from target to target spamming B2P off a health boost and pick stuff up as B2P reveals them.

BM isn't a complicated class, he's a very simple class, and the point is that you have guaranteed B2P which means you can use health potions to spike stuff with spells and that he requires almost no buildup compared to other spellcasters. Magnet:Fireball, Orc, Binlor and a Health Pendant is practically all you need for most stuff, even VT runs. And the crazy thing about it is that you can still transition into later game fine.

I think both approaches (low effort, and high effort) should be up on the wiki, but only because you CAN actually do the high effort one occasionally when the scenario demands. Vast majority of the time it's wasteful (kind of opposite to the crusader, tbh).

And the way you play him with Drac isn't for the blood shield, it's for the lifesteal, so you can get B2P health and drac piety from munching on popcorn while you spike. You don't take sanguine untill your B2P is over -.-

[Tinker]

I think that it really helps the quality of stuff on the Wiki if it represents a consensus of sort. I don't mean that everyone needs to fully agree to everything, but at least we should agree as much as possible on what's a playstyle thing, and what's common understanding. Both can be mentioned on the wiki, just with different context I guess.

Now, on Crusaders, the way I play it may be a bit retarded, but I just see what I want to kill, how many hits I can afford, and use momentum to round up my damage to make sure it is just enough to do the job in the number of hits I can afford. Works the same way for high-level kills and for boss(es). Also, since I know monsters are a limited resource, I only build up the mometum if a kill is really worth it, otherwise I let it dwindle and just play the Crusader as I would play a non-Crusader.

Btw I had lots of fun with Elf Bloodmages, works better during the game, of course weaker during the sanguine slurping phase. But boosting up Mana to 25-30 and then drinking a 60% effective Mana Potion is a feeling everybody should experience at least once in their DD careers

[Lujo]

^ That's not a retarded way to play the Crusader, that's the best way to play them. Ignore momentum for the most part (I even play them as more of a caster while I level), and then use it to tactically spike stuff. But getting it above 30% makes it drop at a faster rate than you can recharge it, and the more you acquire for a single hit, the less favourable the dropoff. At 60% you need 2 popcorn to keep it stable, and this kinda gets stuff done way more often than anything else. Crusader's not an "only one way to play it" class, he's probably the most open ended class of all - he'd actually work fine without momentum entirely (he destroys VGT and you don't give two hoots about momentum in there). We actually put up a suggestion at one time during the beta to have momentum reworked into anything just so noobs would stop trying to cheeze that thing and missing the massive open-endedness of his.

Currently he's the guy who can both prep his starting god and 4 altars, who's immune to most res-stacking counters, and who can, if you learn to manage your popcorn and leveling have a semi consistent highest damage boost in the game on top of that. If you've stacked your resists, you can keep it at 30% and munch one guy after every hit, and still be a monster. Oh, and he can occasionally one shot somethig if you're up against that kind of boss. Try that in the Slime Pits, though and you'll quickly get nowhere... And you can do Slime Pits purist with a goblin crusader eaily, otherwise.

(For a bit of meta information - only the warlord has +60% damage, and the game is mostly balanced around that, afaik. Every time one-shot momentum started getting out of hand whatever was enabling it got nerfed. So while you can ocassionally use it, there's not reason to expect anything in the game to require you to get more than +60% or even that much out of your class. It looks flashy when it works, but that's more of a gimmick than anything. You have 4 altars, save plenty of popcorn, always something to desecrate - why throw a lot of it away on one set of potions / DP / bloodswell and one boss or one ding if you don't absolutely have to? Think. Flashy moves and big numbers are for screenshots and the brag thread, not wiki's).

---

Oh, and ofc various approaches to stuff work and have to be represented - the big problem is that a lot of it is written as if various things are way more optimal or "only thing that works" than they are. Sanguine isn't the defining trait of the bloodmage - or rather it's not something you need to work on much - you can choose to go for it, and there's runs where that's the better option, but if there's a single class where you really don't need to play for the late game or big numbers it the Bloodmage. Trying to boost your mana or your sanguine is more of a self imposed challenge or something you get in rather specific runs, not what that class is about. He is, however, the only guy who can combine other preps with B2P and who gets a (mana regenerating!) sanguine without Drac worship. It's not that you can't play him another way, it's that you can't play anyone else THAT way without scumming. I think I've done them all possible ways and then some and there's a reason I go Orc bloodmage when I want to trounce most VT runs quickly.

Also why I don't have any problems with Bloodmage Gold - take orc, find pissorf, spike one big thing, spike another big thing, find boss, pissorf spam. Never have a single bloodpool he can suck. You don't have to be that single-minded about it, but most of the time fiddling with your mana and sanguine just holds you back from real power. And I still prefer the halfling in BM silver simply because you can just completely ignore both your mana and your sanguine level. (I went mad over the way Burn Salve can swing it, not the way I was playing it.).

Not saying that JJ or Mystera Gnome Bloodmages aren't the best way to go about it, provided you're going fireball. Anyway I rewrote the BM article, someone ought to go even it up a bit maybe.

It may seem strange that I'm advocating two different approaches with the Crusader and the Bloodmage, but there's a significan difference - one's crazy ass damage spike is fueled by popcorn, and the other one's is fueled by blackspace. If you can spike and explore at the same time that's way better than just exploring, and if you can kill a boss/lvl 7-8-9 while spiking while you explore - that's even better than that. You always want to explore the map anyway, not getting the most out of a prepped B2P is a crime (or at least not the most beneficial or straightforward way to play him).

And if you ever needed the kind of damage you can get the (orc) crusader to do for one hit - noone else would be able to do it but him. So you don't, 99% of the time. Here and there it can be the way to go, but if it was ever the only option only one class could beat a dungeon not 18 of them. And if you've got +60%, you've got the most anyone can have anyway. No reason to put yourself in a positing where it could bite you in the ass. Definitely not the only way to play him, and about as furthest from the best way to play him as you can get.

[Astral]

Seems like I misphrased what I tried to say about Crusaders. My point was that if you decide to kill X popcorn for a boss/enemy, those monsters should be consumed in 1 go before the 1st hit as opposed to any other scheme.
Regardless of your build and whatnot, because this is the way you get the most damage out of those popcorn in Y number of hits.

What Tinker said about popcorn consumption is the perfect and reasonable way. I didn't mention it because I thought it was self explanatory and everyone already uses it.

Worrying about the momentum drop off afterwards is pointless. If you kill popcorn in a bunch you need less of them for the kill and also finish your target in fewer hits. On top of that it's very convenient, you can watch the battle predictor to determine how many popcorn you need without any calculation.

Don't get me wrong, I never try to suggest there's only one way to play anything, but when something is clearly, in a mathematically provable way better than the rest of options I want to make sure others know about it and are not misinformed.

One more thing about momentum drop off, if you play in a certain way, you will only experience it on level ups. Go Orc Crusader of Binlor and Pisorf allows you to weaken high level guys without losing momentum. Boons and popcorn will make sure you kill even high level foes in 1 hit, so practically each kill just makes you stronger. Stone skin let's you tank big hits, so health is not an issue. Thanks to all the bonus xp you will be swimming in popcorn, and high momentum will ensure there's barely anything that qualifies as fat popcorn.
It's also quite a stretch assuming that pursuing high damage on an Orc Crusader puts you in any kind of danger. I've never regretted it, not even on purist VT runs. For reliability - I have 'oneshotted' (with reflex potion) hard SMM before - no particular boss setup is problematic.

I don't dispute that Orc Bloodmages are easy to use or strong, but the same is true about the Gnome version. Bloodmages are the best manapotion users. Of all the classes only the Sorcerer can get more mana for a potion, but if you raise your max mana by 7 points you take the lead there too. Doing that with preps is very straightforward.
So going Gnome as your race is very reasonable, and if you're a Gnome how does drinking your manapotions to raise sanguine takes a lot of effort?
Are Dwarf Bloodmages great sanguine users? Guess what, no matter how much CP you convert for Gnomes are still better.
To sum it up, there's a class with the strongest mana potions and the best sanguine for drinking those manapotions and you say using that is a self imposed challenge. The simple idea that transitioning with a Bloodmage from spellcasting to melee requires any support beyond the manapotions is a giveaway that choosing an Orc as your race is the bigger self imposed challenge, as weird as it sounds.
And how much buildup it takes to play a Gnome BM? Depends on how powerful you want to get. As the standard BM I'd recommend JJ Gnomes with say Elven Boots so you don't care about the starting penalty either. The first health boost takes barely any time/blackspace to reach and it's effects are devastating. From there if you want convenience you spend the rest of your heath potions as supreme mana potions but you could save 1 more for extra health. When you get to middle game you start tapping into your manapotions and by now you increased your max mana as well. You won't need too many potions for great kills, your health is still big to provide you benefits. If you want to conserve blackspace (which is rarely an issue if you use potions), you can drink some bloodpools here and there. By the end your sanguine will be so high you will have plenty as leftover either way.
When you face your bosses you can destroy them with your still numerous 1st grade manapotions, and once you drank them all, you can continue by either sanguine fueled B2P, or straight up face tanking. It's funny that BMs can completely sidestep all the issues of dedicated spellcasting (retaliate FB/MR/attack penalty from mage Plate/no benefit from last Glyph's manapotion).
I almost forgot, scenarios which cut you from bloodpools aren't difficult either. You just switch things up, you spike with bloodpools and save your insanely strong manapotions.

[Lujo]

Erm, here's an idea - we're both prone to textwalling (my fault really), and there's no real need. I realized that the whole "what's better" thing is the whole reason that I'm having problems with the wiki as it is. It's not that JJ Gnomes aren't the most strightforward, most well rounded and most easy to transition BM's - that's actually difficult to dispute.

The problem is that, and this is very clear on the issue of Bloodmage - is that Gnomes aren't nearly the only way to play them, and they kinda play them more like a gnome specific thing than a bloodmage specific thing. BM's get larger mana potions - but only the gnome and possibly the elf even care about that. For anyone else that just means you still get a fireball worth of mana (or thereabout) for a potion even with your lower mana pool. That can't be given top billing in "how to play a Bloodmage", even though not mentionig it is silly, because that's more like a "how to play a very cheezy gnome". The PQI will ask people to play all sorts of bloodmages - and the wiki would basically tell them to skip it as unfavourable if it wasn't Gnomes (especially before I changed it because Orcs weren't even listed).

Same thing with Orc crusaders, you can probably get your damage high as f**k with the Orc Crusader, but that's a VERY specific way to play a rather deep and open-ended class. Nobody would really play it like an Orc! So you can't have the wiki saying "Momentum is the most important ability" or only have Orcs listed as a good Crusader race - they're pretty much a complete anomaly.

The wiki as a whole is very misleading about most classes in this way and puts someone taking it seriously in the wrong frame of mind. That was what made me want to pull my hair out. I think it would be far more beneficial for the wiki to give tips on how to play various race-class combos (nice preps, favourable gods, stuff you like to find, etc.) for each race, rather than just list sinergistic ones - or make bold claims about them. I think I saw something like "The only race for Crusader is Orc" and that's complete BS - the only race which can attempt to cheeze momentum in a particular way is the Orc, but that's hardly the only way to play a Crusader and is VERY specific and narrow.

*And as for why gnome needs buildup, which is a silly debate - take this as a bit of a joke, even though it's partially true - the Orc BM asks 3 things 1) Do I have Pissorff, 2) Do I have B2P and 3) Where da bosses at? You can play him without being aware that you can boost sanguine, that you have a mana potion boost or any care about the size of your mana pool, really. Using a sigle neuron to consider anything else at all is more hassle than that in the literal sense. (I'm obviously exaggerating, but unfortunately not by all that much). It's not that playing a JJ Gnome BM is particularly difficult or complicated or anything - it's that playing an Orc (or to a degree Halfling) is even simpler than that. I bet most of the time you don't even have to convert out of Binlor and just keep getting punished over and over and don't even bother with that. And that's the underlying power of any bloodmage - some preps or races can get more out of him, but you just don't need to, which makes those races a bad baseline or "default" BM. A Gnome BM is BM++ and, well, Gnome ++ when you get down to it. Interactions between mana potions and sanguine and stuff aren't universal at all, they're Gnome or possibly Elf shennanigans, but any Bloodmage at all can stick on a Health Pendant and/or the JJ health boost and go to town (Even Goblins, funnily enough). Orcs just kill 2 bosses at lvl 3 on average, while anyone else needs the whooping lvl 5.

* As a DD joke you can immagine a Gnome BM and an Elf BM talking about getting more about getting more out of your mana potions by boosting your mana pool, and the Halfling sitting at the table next to them spits his drink in shock and the Orc jumps up and yells "Wait, we have a mana pool now!?"