After further review: Melee still sucks

Yeah, I've tried over and over with characters that can't use their mana and don't have Alchemy/Fungal/whatever as a backup plan for healing, and it never goes well. Even the most dedicated Warrior-type needs something to supplement Food/Vampirism because you simply can't rely on finding enough Potions/Food/Vending Machines to keep pace with the damage you're taking, especially on the lower half of the Dungeon.

 

What mode are you playing on? My build pretty much smashed Dwarven, only getting in a bit of trouble with caster types. I believe this was it:

Swords
Dual
MoA
'Zerker
Assassin
Burglary
Smithing

Burglary is only for picks. I never leveled it until I ran out of other skills to hit. First level should go in swords or assassin, then smithing, or MoA (for piercing resist) if you haven't found any materials on floor one. 'Zerker can be tossed out if you like. I think wand lore would be a good replacement, but I really don't think extra healing is necessary, though it is very nice to have. Escapes shouldn't be an issue, because you shouldn't need to escape. The point of smithing is to turn out thorn rings, and serpentine plate, making you a tank, with like 60% counter chance. You will want to be in melee range. I only ever had to run from Fizzes, and the only escape I used was invis to setup a distance away to pelt Dredmor with a few clockwork/squid bolts (he was right by the door when I found him).

I haven't played much 1.06 though, so this build could get you dead.

 

I have been playing Dwarven (with Permadeath) mainly. I have tried GR a few times without much luck. I might give the smithing tree another shot next time in place of psionics, as right now I am counting on shops and found items to build my characters up. The game I just finished I never found a single piece of plate armor which made the last level a challenge.

 

I tried this very build today, and I got completely destroyed on level 10. I barely made it out of level 9 alive (had to move around the zoo as I had no chance of surviving it). I had about the best gear you could ask for: embossed plate, double rings of thorns, Sir Albrecht's Helm, artifact boots, and a great amulet. I found the same thing I generally see when playing a pure melee (no spells) build. When you get to the last two levels and you have no great healing mechanism it takes a ton of luck to win the game. The only time I have won with a no-spells build is when I found Dredmor right away on level 10. If I have to hunt for him there is no way I can survive it. In this particular game I opened a door to a room with six Djinn Fizzes. I had 134 health when I opened the door and one turn later I was dead. Ah well, it was a fun build while it lasted!

 

I finally got my first GR Melee win with the build: Swords, MoA, Assassination, Burglary, Smithing, Alchemy and Vampirism.

I could never get my block to 100 (it capped, with all the MoA procs, at about 85) and I was running about 35 crit & 35 counter. Which was good enough to melee most anything except named mobs and Dredmor himself. Once on 10 I got so low on potions that I had to go back two levels and beat up on some mustache golems just to heal myself, then went back to 10. Found a monster zoo, closed the door on it immediately and never went back. Found Dredmor half way through the level and didn't melee him once - holy hand grenade (which detonated midway between him and I), two mass bolts, tons of acid arrows and a couple of invis potions to get range back.

I will say that it felt like the most satisfying crawl, even with the wimping out at the end. I struggled with damage on the later levels because the best sword I found the whole time was the White Lies one - every quest or chest gave me an axe or a staff - had I found a better sword I would have contemplated meleeing Dredmor at the end. I used Smithing to craft one extra ring of thorns and serpentine plate mail and used the anvils as a mini-lottery, swapping out to get the best one.

Might have to try the throwing challenge now.

 

Notice that the last two people who "beat the game as melee" had to do so by shooting Bolts at Dredmor to kill him. I think my point (and the name of this thread) still stands: things on the lower dungeon floors are skewed - significantly - against melee combat.

 

There are many games where your strategy in beating "the boss at the end" has to differ from your general strategy in clearing whatever levels, floors or areas you went through to get you there. Could I have melee'd Dredmor with this character? Maybe. I elected not to try because I just wanted the win and I went with the strategy that I knew worked.

I'm not going to sit here and say that melee is perfect, but it is not as broken as some claim. It's just.. different. You need offense and defense for it to be successful. Casters need just the offense + mana replenishment and can forego the defense.

 

So it's okay for Dredmor to have a decent chance to literally one-shot one of the three major play styles in the game, but not the other two?

 

Well I am not gonna ever get into melee range with Dredmor if my intent is to win without dying, regardless of what my build is.

But here's the catch, if a melee can tank him without significant risk of dying, then everyone else can tank him without dying. Because everyone can put on 2 shields/armors and bolt him to death....

 

I think the biggest problem is, overall, this: Melee skilltrees just do NOT scale, at all. A perfect example is the procs and AoE skills in the weapon trees - even at level 20, they deal a fixed damage(usually below 10), with the only "big" hit being on the single target Eyebrows is facing and directly beside - and that's purely based off your equipped weapon. When it comes to crafting, Rogues can use Tinkering to make the ultimate crossbow, while getting massive boosts to trap skill - which means easy XP, faster levelling, etc. and in addition they can make a bajillion bolts for that crossbow, including a zookiller bolt depending on wand of fire availability. They also get the ability to make an amulet that blows away the Emerald one - Cybertronic may not be MUCH, but it's still better than 1-2 completely random stats. And lastly, they get all KINDS of AoE Throwing weapons - Concussion Bombs are almost as good as Telekinetic Shove, and quite easy to make in hundred-size stacks. Mages can use Alchemy to make the ultimate staffs and penultimate orbs, plus a buttload of healing, mana, elemental, etc. potions, plus infinite booze to fuel their mana plus the "alchemical" throwing weapons, which are quite often just as good or better than the Tinkering ones. Smithing...you can make Embossed Serpentine and 2x Ring Of Iron Thorns(the throwing weapons smithable are, to be honest, laughable. A warrior can deal single-target damage quite efficiently without resorting to Throwing an axe). Which while nice, just does NOT balance out to a Mage crafting the equivalent of 2 Doul's or a Rogue cranking out a ranged CLockwork Chainaxe.

A "Pure" Warrior has no way to heal itself - I don't count Walk It Off and Duck And Cover; they only mod regen rate, and it requires BOTH procs going off at once to have a noticable effect. No skill provides a flat boost to HP regen, but there is an entire skill tree dedicated to making mages regain mana faster. No Warrior-class skill tree provides self-healing; Mages get Blood Magic for a "mana heal", Fleshsmithing, Alchemy, Psionics, Vampirism, and Necro(yes, I do count "drain" attacks as healing, as long as one can negate the necropain and gain back more than one loses in the melee'ing). Rogues get Wand Lore(inefficient but cheap) and Fungal(dreary but almost brokenly powerful). Finally, all the skills and abilities that add "special" stuff to melee are, aside Berzerker, Rogue or Mage. Vampirism, Assassination, potions, fungi, self-buffs(I'm looking at Viking Wizardry and Fleshsmithing), all are out-of-class for Warriors. Oh - and only Rogues and Mages get "alter luck" and "infinite resource" skills(Spores, picks, gem transmuting, TTIAW, fungus shuffle, wand shuffle).

In Dredmore, the main focus is controlling luck. The only Warrior skill that helps control luck by controlling drops is Smithing - which is still severely lacking. The only skill that helps control luck by controlling monster population and pathing is ...well, an argument could be made for Unarmed with Buffalo and Crane or Mace with the knockbacks. But they're VERY situational, and unlike mage/rogue equivs cannot be spammed endlessly/rapidly, nor do the skilltrees they're in provide MORE fun toys to play with on top of them - just secondary statbuffs, which while nice...don't have the oomph to make the difference. And if they did...well, you'd see more 4/2/1 builds...focusing on Mage or Rogue, with enough Warrior to pick the low-hanging fruit and a splash of the other class for utility.

And as STW notes, if Warrior armor is made tough enough to withstand Dredmore, then you'll just see Rogues and mages tossing a suit of said armor into their bag and strapping it on when the moment comes. The answer HAS to be in the skill trees - or in the programming. Making things scale off of something OTHER than magic power might be a good start; so would eliminating the infinite-resource skills in Fungal and Burglary. And a better one would be to give SOME melee tree SOME form of self-healing that is controllable or reliably triggerable by a method OTHER than getting punched in the face, and with a little more oomph than dropping your health regen to 1 per 3 turns...for a whopping 5 turns. Hell, give us a Warrior skill that's exactly like Ley Walker - except it's health regen, health, and melee power, not mana/magic. That MIGHT start tipping things back to level.

 

I think part of the answer lies in further fixing Lord Dredmor's AI. Why does he not have a 100% chance to cast a spell if you are visible to him? Tone his melee power down to Arch Diggle levels, makes his spells do a bit less damage, but he should be firing that shit off every round, like, you know, the player is doing to him.

Having a Lich - and not just "any" Lich, we're talking about the Big Bad of the entire Dungeon - that isn't using powerful spells/innate abilities on a turn-by-turn basis makes little sense and only serves to reinforce the idea that Spells and Bolts are "I win" buttons for every situation. Because, with the AI the way it is, they are.

 

I think you pointed it out: The problem in DoD is not mainly the balance but how easy it is to abuse the AI. It is far too easy to run around stuff to lose an ennemy and infinetely shoot stuff at him when he's far enough until he drops.
Making Dredmor able to teleport to close combat could also be a way to make him way more scary. I do think though that's its not an issue that he could be insanely strong at melee ( maybe reduce his counter stats though so that he is more predictable in his damages ? ).

 

The problem with him being very strong at melee is a melee-focused character - a Conan, for lack of a better term, HAS to get into melee with him. If he is brutal at melee, and brutal at range, then the game goes to the character who can fight at range - and disappear at will. IE, Rogue with Ninja Vanish or Mage with Alchemy. Plus, if he is a monster spellcaster, then a warrior faces the challenge of GETTING to him to administer a beatdown. Giving Dredmore more magic resist is potentially risky as well - there's a tipping point where quite suddenly mages will find themselves in the same boat as melee'ers - getting there is possible, winning is not. It's a thorny problem.

 

A blink that he uses reliably when you're more than a few squares away would be a huge step in the right direction. Right now any character can win by using a strong DoT 3 times (Tentacular Wand, Clockwork Drill Bolt, DoT spells, etc.), then Vanishing, moving until Dredmor is out of sight, wait for Flexing to commence. It's silly and unfair to melee and anticlimatic.

 

Well, one other problem is that monsters, unlike the hero, dont regenerate ever at all, making any lame and slow methods of damaging them actually worth it ( ex: infinite shove ).
Weak AI + DoT + no regen = billions of tempting abuse.

 

I believe that they are at least supposed to have health regen, and it seems to me like they did, but it's no more than the player so pitifully slow methods can still kill them.

 

Just to set the record straight, I used bolts because I didn't want to take a chance. I'm sure I could have beaten Dredmor toe-to-toe, but why risk it when I've got the tools to weaken him first? This is no different from any other RPG, or game in general. Sure, I can kill the first boss in Deus Ex: HR with just a pistol, but why not use grenades, mines, and explosive barrels? I fail to see how this in itself makes melee less effective.

I'm not saying melee does need to be looked at for balancing, but I am saying that it isn't nearly as bad as some are making out to be.

 

At the moment, it's not "you can beat him with melee, but safer to soften him up first" - it's "if you are in melee range of Dredmor, either you screwed up or you had bad luck - either way, you're about to die". Even on Elvish, it's a crapshoot to survive in melee with him - I just did a "casual" run, axes/shield/Viking/smithing/burglary/archaeology/Berzerk on Elvish, more looking to get skilltree achievements than actually gunning for a challenge. Still ended up with the "full melee kit" - floor 9 had like 7 Uberchests and an Evil chest that between them coughed up artifact Albrecht's, Caketown, Bearded Axe, Clockwork Bolt-Thrower, and Black Velvet Boots, which matched nicely with the overclockworked powerlimb and Ankh amulet I'd been tossing on anvils steadily. When I opened the door and saw him there, I closed it, popped every buff potion and skill I had, then gave it a shot. And quickly was disabused of the idea - he didn't outright kill me, but if I'd tried for a second swing instead of defaulting back to "vanish, heal, drill with stockpiled bolts and run like Sir Robin", he would have. Remember, this is on Elvish - he hits like a TRUCK on any difficulty, has massive counter/dodge/block and a solid amount of resists, and a boatload of HP. This means it takes a while to whittle him down sans the DoT and offscreen bug - which you usually don't have unless you're using the aforementioned "duck out of sight repeatedly while pelting him with bolts/flasks/wands" stratagem; his Thor's can drop a character with over 120 HP to about 50 in one hit, and he isn't shy about using it, or his acid bolt - it's almost a RELIEF when he just clocks you with a shard of ice, and a gift when he just tries to close the distance.

And I do understand your point - at the moment, the classes are all in a strange situation. A nudge too far one way or another will tip them from "power" to "lost cause" or vice-versa - Mages are definitively the power in the game, rogues middling, and warriors are Nightmare mode, but an indelicate change could easily reverse that standing. Honestly, I think mages are too high and warriors too weak - the "mainly rogue" builds seem to have a solid shot but no absolute "I win" buttons, making it a fair balance of skill and luck to pull a win. Mages are as noted often "die on level 1 or hit the breakpoint and become unstoppable", and warriors are "level 1 is a gift. The rest are trials." - unless they play like a rogue, and then it's once again back to "fairly even".

Honestly, playing a "pure" class SHOULD be more challenging than a hybrid - because you shut yourself out of utility skills in the other classes. The problem is all the utility skills are in rogue and mage - they need exactly 1 Warrior skilltree to help with floor 1, and thereafter can focus on their class strengths to get them through the rest of the game. Warriors have damage output and damage reduction abilities - no positioning, no healing, minimal/no AoE, minimal/no crowd control, minimal/no single-target debilitation, and almost NOTHING "on demand" - everything is procs, thus in the hands of the RNG. And yes, if EVERY class had to leave their wheelhouse to take on Dredmor, that would be fine - thing is, mages do what they always do. Rogues do what they always do. And warriors....do what mages and rogues do, or die.