Which weapon is better to use in this circumstance?

[Inquisitivephysicsguy]

Hi, I have a Mage that's survived to stat gain, again. I've given up speed diving, and as a result I have a living breathing Mage. This fellow found a strange Trident of Wrath (3d8) (+16,+18) (+2) (weight 30 lbs). Apparently this is an Artifact and *not* an Ego-Item. I also have Dethanc (2d4) (+4,+6) (weight "much less"). Which of these are the best to use, short term, and long term (Provided that I don't find anything better by this time)?

[warlin]

Well as a mage you wont deal much damage melee wise, you are better off with a bow.

anyhow.

The trident, which im guessing you get 1/blow with, since it weights 30, will give you aprox 58,5 average damage per blow.

If you get 3 blows with dethance you get 63 average damage, and with 2 blows 42 average damage

[Narvius]

Even with only 1 blow you should take Dethanc... the 30lbs of weight aren't worth some melee damage. Unless the Trident gives a strength bonus, of course.

Okay, it gives 2 strength. And 2 Dex. Poison brand... hm, I don't know how useful that is, damage-wise.

[Atarlost]

If poison brand is time delayed in V that's worth a lot if you ever plan to actually use melee. It means you don't have to chase down stuff that runs or teleports away unless it resists poison. It may even be worth taking a swipe to poison some foes before blinking back to pelt them with spells or arrows.

If poison is just another brand it's not so good. I think lightning may be less resisted than poison.

[Inquisitivephysicsguy]

I don't think that the Poison stat is a damage-over-time kind of a benefit. I also don't imagine that the base damage multiplier for the 'elemental' stat of the weapon makes much of a difference. Damage for a sufficiently strong and dextrous mage with the Trident of Wrath would be around: Dam=58*(# of attacks) for non poison resistant creatures [that's not even factoring in the strength bonus for the char], Dam=25*(# of attacks) for poison resistant creatures.

In the case of Dethanc: Dam = 21*(# of attacks) = 84 (max) [In general, most creatures aren't resistant to electricity, unless they're Nikolas Tesla]

So, (2 blows w/ Trident of Wrath) > (max dmg for Dethanc), but Trident is very heavy.... so at max maybe 3 blows per round with some stat boosting stuff... I would need to find a better weapon.

Do I have the melee formula correct?

[(xdy)*(ego item boost)+(total dmg multiplier {found in character screen})]*(# of attacks)

And also, the formula to hit something is fairly ambiguous, and without it, it would be very difficult to do a back of the envelope statistical analysis of a weapon's quality. (This would be a little spoily, but it would be a nice feature to add in future versions of angband, I would think). It would be fairly simple to do, take a division of maybe 4 depths with average armor classes of monsters native to that depth, and given your specific character's characteristics calculate the char's percent chance of hitting something, then put this somewhere in the character screen. Then the expected damage of a weapon would simply be (Damage calculated above)*(Percentage chance of hitting armor class "A"). Because of this, I suspect that there are some artifacts, and some ego items whose potentials are being ignored just because of the ambiguity of some of these formulae.

What are your thoughts?