Sil: What are the weakest abilities?

[half]

Part of balancing the game is reigning in the extremely powerful options. People tend not to like this so much, but it is often necessary for good and variable gameplay. The other side of the equation is improving the weak options. This one is good for gameplay and should be fun too. If an ability can't be made better, then at least we might replace it with something better...

So, what are the weakest abilities in Sil?

[debo]

This is going to be good

[HallucinationMushroom]

Channeling. Even with significant buff, maybe full identify on all staves & trumpets and extra charges & half voice cost... I probably still wouldn't take it.

Song of Freedom. Seems like the perception variant, eye for detail, is probably better in that it's always active. I'm actually unfamiliar with this song, other than the quarterstaff that gives it... so maybe I'm missing out.

Song of Este. Again, not much experience with this, but if you are going to sing a song, it seems like others would be better. Barahir's ring has it, and I don't notice much when I use it, so I tend not to even sing it when I have the ring.

Those would be my top three. Most of the abilities look good to me, even though I tend to take the same ones over and over again.

[taptap]

I believe most songs are good but nobody takes them because everyone wants sharpness and unwavering voice (I do at least). Song of Freedom helps against rubble, opens doors without delay etc. this is probably useful when you have to run.

Song of Staying - combat song but < Song of Sharpness / Song of Slaying and only so much songs to sing at the same time.

Careful shot - I used to take it when I started the game, but never since. As soon as you regularly burn your arrows, careful shot really shows itself as pointless exercise. I take weaponsmith nowadays.

Point blank archery

Eye for detail - probably good for low perception characters, but I usually invest some points.

Curse breaking - sometimes necessary, but I feel like a failure when I take it. Getting at least lore keeper makes it completely redundant.

Mind over body - only take when playing around with hunger items - then it is very important.

Channeling - never took it - but maybe it could have saved me one or two times. Still never took it. Too many important abilities on the will tree.

Enchantment - completely avoidable when you build your smithing kit with artifice and took jeweller. Took it on my first smith and then wondered that the cool artefacts are only available via artifice (only enchanted arrow stacks are not available via artifice).

[Patashu]

Curse breaking - sometimes necessary, but I feel like a failure when I take it. Getting at least lore keeper makes it completely redundant.

When I equip something cursed in the early game, I remove all of my equipment except for the cursed equipment and stand next to green worms until it is destroyed by acid. So, there is only a very narrow window where you'd take this (green worms are no longer spawning, you haven't gotten lore master yet or found a staff of sanctity yet and if you don't remove it you are at risk of dying).

However, in spite of all this, it NEEDS to stay in the game for newbies to be reassured that cursed items can be removed in a very obvious way. I think the same should be applicable to other skills - not every skill needs to be useful for optimal play if it is useful for helping with newbies' problems or keeping them confident in their options.

Also, reposting here that I think if buying songs exp did not ramp up, or did not ramp up as fast, more songs would be inviting to use.

[debo]

Here's my take:

Throwing mastery
This would be better if (a) throwing weapons were easier to stack / hoard, or (b) it gave some other bonus than a raw +5, or (c) it didn't make all my other melee abilities more expensive just to take it Right now the future cost / current benefit ratio doesn't seem to ever justify buying it. (I like the gloves of brethil for this reason)

Whirlwind attack
If herbs of rage didn't exist, this would be much better. As it is, herbs of rage are IMO way better than this, because I don't have to stand right out in the open to make them work, and they don't cost any experience to use. Also, by the time the prereqs are fulfilled, there are probably other melee abilities I'd rather take (and just use rage to situationally get this effect). Still very fun on theme builds, though.

Controlled retreat
There aren't reallly any Evasion abilities that are bad, but I have a hard time understanding why this one is so high up in the tree. Riposte is under it, and IMO riposte is about eleventy billion times better because it has the potential to fire for every monster you engage. (I realize these abilities appeal to completely different builds, but still.)

It is also very tiresome in practice to type z -> dir -> z -> dir -> z -> dir over and over again. Even if I have blocking and the bestest shield in the world, it's hard to convince myself to do this reliably. I think this ability could potentially be outright replaced by something cooler, even if it is sort of neat the way it is now.

Vanish
This went from being a clutch ability to barely a nice-to-have for me. I either go whole-hog with stealth or ignore it altogether, and in both cases I'd almost always rather spend the XP somewhere else. I'd also prefer it if the game "vanished" me as a reward for moving around tactically, instead of just taking an ability to make it easier. I imagine the pacifists in the audience would strongly disagree with me, and I totally see how this would be a basically a necessity for those builds given the lack of XP to put into skills.

Channeling
This one has been done to death in other threads, I don't really feel like I have anything else constructive to add. If it had the ability to randomly make staves do something more powerful than they normally do, that might be a lot more interesting for me

Clarity
I dunno, I've never seen the need to take this. I guess if you're going to try being a dragon-slayer it might be useful, but if dragons are my worry i could equally take Bane and get better hits on them to boot.

Majesty
This ability drives me crazy. It barely does anything at the will cost you buy it at, unless you've stacked up a lot of bonuses from equipment. And then when it does work, it just makes things run away from you, which for most will-based characters is pretty much the OPPOSITE of what I want them to do.

I sort of wish that song of mastery was replaced with something else, and that this ability got the 'transfix' effect instead. Song tree already has Lorien, which sort of does the same thing as mastery… sort of. Speaking of which...

Song of Lorien
The first time I took this, I did so with a low-stealth character thinking that the enemies would fall asleep and stay asleep. Boy was I wrong. The constant "the orc wakes up! The orc falls asleep. The orc wakes up! The orc falls asleep." seems a bit silly. I would think that magical sleep would be a bit deeper than 'normal' sleep. If it worked by putting the monster in a 'magical slumber' that was much harder to wake from (but still auto-wake on being attacked), I would consider this more often.

Other thoughts

I've bitched about the song tree enough, so I'll defer that discussion to other threads. (TLDR, the presence of sharpness on that list and the way abilities get more expensive with each purchase means I don't see any reason to take any of the other songs, ever, unless I'm doing something gimmicky for fun. I would also like the game less if we got rid of sharpness altogether, so yeah lol)

The skills in the archery tree to me seem to be too cheap across the board. 10 skill to get every ability in the tree? I also think versatility is a cop-out and should be replaced with something different / more fun.

Finally, I think that smithing abilities across the board are a lot less fun now that Psi singlehandedly got the smithing costs nerfed so badly, but I feel like that's a whole other discussion as well

[debo]

Um, crazy idea. If the idea with archery was to make it viable for melee builds with minimal investment in archery, why isn't the complement of versatility on the melee tree instead?

If I have to pay +500xp to all my future abilities for taking throwing mastery just to get a measly +5 to throwing, wouldn't it be awesomer to get half my melee score to my archery score? Maybe we could even reduce the 50% evasion penalty to, say, a 25% penalty or less if we did this, since you're given the option to make your archery score better for a cost.

This would also mean that I wouldn't be able to buy all the abilities that make archery so OP, unless I invested there explicitly, But if all I want to do is shoot that bloody violet dragonfly reliably out of the sky, I have the option to spend the XP to do so.

You could even still call it 'versatility' Also, did I mention that i'm not a game designer? Just in case it wasn't obvious lol

[HallucinationMushroom]

I was mulling this exact idea earlier Debo, but decided it would be too good since archery halves evasion, and you'd end up with a warrior who hits equally well with bows with no archery investment, while the opposite isn't true with versatility.

[debo]

I was mulling this exact idea earlier Debo, but decided it would be too good since archery halves evasion, and you'd end up with a warrior who hits equally well with bows with no archery investment, while the opposite isn't true with versatility.

Yup that's why I said we could probably ditch the penalty altogether.

HM Y U NO READ

Of course that might totally hose the archer monsters and require rebalancing them, but there's only like 3 of them anyways + easterling spies and a unique (umuiyananananana)

[clouded]

Firstly, I don't think any song is too weak or useless, they all have their uses. The problem is fairly well told by now, but I'm not sure if changing the core rules of the game for one skill tree is a good thing to do, one thing that wouldn't break the rules but would help is removing all song requirements on other songs. This would free up things a lot, not necessary to take slaying for sharpness, don't have to get trees for este/staying. Of course there is still a big question about having an ability that every character wants, but removing song of sharpness causes problems too, a lot of rebalancing, certain already extremely good artefacts becoming even better. Song of sharpness is sort of a crutch at the moment, any crawl players will appreciate a comparison to haste in that game.

Some comments on things already mentioned:

* Controlled retreat, I disagree about. Maybe I am the only one who likes it, as I never see other people use it and after I told elliptic to try it, he didn't like it either, but it can reduce the amount of attacks you take by half given a good place to use it and it has good synergy with a lot of other skills (blocking, flanking, focused attack, concentration, probably works with some other stuff like polearm mastery, knockback).

* Vanish, I agree with debo, it doesn't really help pacifists because they don't have a lot of xp. The main thing I will say about it is that it should have a much higher requirement, as then you will actually have enough stealth for it to work, but then again, with that much stealth it's almost impossible for things to notice you normally.

* Song of Lorien, disagree in the strongest terms! Tell my song/stealth only character it's weak. You're right that it has a disadvantage against a pack of shouting things, that's why you put them all to sleep before they notice you. I felt that it wasn't that great when I was first trying it too, but the key moment was when I began to recognise that it is not its strongest as an emergency song, it is something you use premeditatedly.

I agree with several other ones mention, but I don't have anything particular to say on them. Anyway, now for other things.

* Polearm mastery. This is mainly because polearms aren't too good themselves. I thought yesterday that a nice way to give polearms a niche would be for them to give protection, since the only reasonable ones are two handed (I say 'ones', maybe I should say 'one') it would be interesting if they gave you a pseudo shield. Could be: spear [+0,1d2], great spear [+1,1d2], glaive [+1,1d3]. Polearm mastery could then double this amount. Polearms would be a very defensive option, quite unique.

* Follow-through. This skill is sort of overused as a requirement and I would never take it otherwise. One free attack every time you *kill* an enemy? Compared to a lot of other skills that is barely anything at all, really not any sort of incentive to fight multiple enemies like it should be. How about instead: the attack continues if you kill an enemy or if you miss an enemy.

While I was thinking about that I also thought of another possible miss based skill. For each missed attack, you have a chance of attacking the same target again, based on weapon weight (as such that wielding a 10lb weapon will guarantee a second attack) and diminishing after successive attacks (as such that you can't reasonably get more than 3 without something like a custom mattock).

* Knockback. This maybe isn't that bad but frankly I never use it. It doesn't give enough incentive for me to. For the final power based ability it is quite underwelming, maybe it could have stun rolled into it?

* Strength in adversity. Fun sounding but Str/Gra is not too exciting, now if it gave Str/Gra/Dex it would be much more appealing. (I guess it can't give Con, it would probably have some weird effects if it did)

* Weaponsmith. Personally I hate smithing and this ability works fine for simply letting you make whatever weapon you like at the beginning which is good, but it seems like when you bring artistry/enchantment into the picture, it is very underused. Perhaps people more into smithing could comment.

Edit: Oh, the following posts reminded me. I think Eye for Detail should give some hints about stair location, would give it a bit more utility and make extreme divers a bit more fun.

[ussgordoncaptain]

I'm surprised you rate Controlled retreat so low Debo, I put it as one of the best evasion skills in the game. As you get 2 hits for every 1 your opponent gets assuming equal speed. My standard strategy is spam (flaming) arrows at the opponent until they get to melee range then take 1 step back and hit 1 step back and hit
#########
@M
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Attack M then go one space left getting a free hit, then hit him again. With so many free hits in that setup you should almost never be hit.

[debo]

Just a couple of things to clear up, as I was quite ranty in my post and my points didn't really come through

* Controlled retreat, I disagree about. Maybe I am the only one who likes it, as I never see other people use it and after I told elliptic to try it, he didn't like it either, but it can reduce the amount of attacks you take by half given a good place to use it and it has good synergy with a lot of other skills (blocking, flanking, focused attack, concentration, probably works with some other stuff like polearm mastery, knockback).

I agree that controlled retreat is strong, I just find it tedious to use because of the way you have to invoke it.

* Song of Lorien, disagree in the strongest terms! Tell my song/stealth only character it's weak. You're right that it has a disadvantage against a pack of shouting things, that's why you put them all to sleep before they notice you. I felt that it wasn't that great when I was first trying it too, but the key moment was when I began to recognise that it is not its strongest as an emergency song, it is something you use premeditatedly.

I agree with a high-stealth character it's very strong. My main complaint is that it only works for high stealth characters. I think my 0 stealth guy should be able to sing Lorien and not have enemies wake up on the very next turn. The way the song is described, it sounds like they'll stay asleep for at least a few turns no matter what I do (short of attacking them).

* Knockback. This maybe isn't that bad but frankly I never use it. It doesn't give enough incentive for me to. For the final power based ability it is quite underwelming, maybe it could have stun rolled into it?

Rolling stun into it is a great idea IMO -- maybe make the stun a separate check after you succeed the knockback check, I think it would be too strong if it happened every time you knocked back. Then again, big-weapon builds have fewer gimmicks than light-weapon builds right now, so this might not be a bad thing.

* Strength in adversity. Fun sounding but Str/Gra is not too exciting, now if it gave Str/Gra/Dex it would be much more appealing. (I guess it can't give Con, it would probably have some weird effects if it did)

I totally forgot about this one. Don't have much to say here, but I do agree that I'd never buy it.

It might be fun if you had a chance to burst into rage anytime you were damaged below half HP, but that's not very thematic nor does it fit well into the Will tree. But if we did have that, I could take it and song of este and a couple regen sources and create a Wolverine build lol

Edit: The one reason strength in adversity bothers me is that I'd expect it to help my survivability when i'm at low HP. Adding to str only helps that a little bit and only if I have a weapon too heavy for me to use optimally, and adding to gra basically helps not at all. It would be nice to get a boost to evasion (or just raw dex), as you said, or to protection, but neither of those really make sense thematically in the context of the ability, I don't think.

What if it reduced the number you require for criticals as well, like how subtlety does? Basically any kind of hack to make you kill things faster would be thematic, I think, it's just a matter of integrating it elegantly with the current rules. It would be cool to be at 5HP and suddenly start seeing a bunch of !!!!s as your guy freaks out and goes Rambo on everything around him

[WildKhaine]

Weakest in my opinion are:

Throwing Mastery - Just too much of a pain to carry around throwing weapons plus the bonus isn't that great. Would be nice if throwing weapons had some kind of quiver. Not worth the xp atm.

Polearm Mastery - Would be a nice ability if there were better options on polearms. I like the idea of a polearm build but not really any polearms worth building around. Think there's only one artefact polearm I'd even bother using.

Whirlwind Attack - Now, I really do love this ability but Herbs of Rage are just so much better it's hard to justify spending the xp on this ability.

Careful Shot - If you use Flaming Arrows, this one is pretty useless. Even if you don't it's not really worth it. I just grab Weaponsmith and make all the arrows I need anyway.

Point Blank Archery - Not really bad but not very good either. Better things to spend xp on if you are using the Archery tree.

Channeling - Think enough people have bashed on this skill already. Just gonna say it's not something I'd ever use.

Mind Over Body/Curse Breaking - Not really weak but very situational. No one is going to spend xp on them unless they have to but nothing wrong with that.

Strength in Adversity - Never have found much use for this ability.

Majesty - Causes monsters to flee and you have to chase them down. Sounds annoying. I'd never use it but maybe some others find it more useful.

As for the Song tree, I really only use Slaying, Sharpness, Unwavering Voice, and Woven Themes. Can't say the other songs are bad but most of them don't fit my play-style very well. Might be better if some of the requirements were different. Like why does Freedom require Elbereth? Or having to get Trees for Este? They don't seem to go together in my opinion. Been a few games when I might have grabbed Este or Freedom because they are useful but their requirements weren't so just went without.

Controlled Retreat - I used this skill for the first time not too long ago. Never thought it was that great before but after messing around with it a bit I loved it. Very useful.

[locus]

*Whirlwind attack: you have to let the enemy surround you and can't even put your back to the wall. Sil abilities are usually very generous about their conditions but this one is rough.

*Eye for detail: Finding traps is nice, but not worth an ability just to get +5 for it.

*Lore-keeper: exists only to make Lore-master more expensive. I understand the thinking but it's lame. Should give a bonus to use-ID too, not that that would help.

*Channeling: most staves don't even care how high your will is really so that's lame. If you told me it turned Trumpet of Terror into a force to be reckoned with I'd have to believe you but I doubt it.

*Mind over Body: There's really plenty of food! Even the gear that causes hunger you can just swap out while exploring and then the food cost is marginal.

*Strength in Adversity: Situational strength bonuses are troublesome in that to get the most out of them you need to carry around swap weapons. Grace bonuses are nice but probably not the biggest thing on your mind when you're below 25% hp.

*Song of Staying/Este: With Song of Slaying/Sharpness mandatory it's hard to justify buying these to sing in combat instead.

[locus]

Song of Este nearly killed me one time when I got it on an artifact with a song of like 3 and sang it while poisoned and it turned off all my healing and ability to recover from poison. I guess the bug has been fixed now but I still don't remotely trust it.