Bay 12 Games Forum

The primary worry, especially in winner-takes-all states, is that by giving your vote to a small party, the party that you strongly disagree with (instead of merely disagree, or at least disagree with less) is not only going to take the area election, but also control over your vote.

In a number of states (most of them, really) it doesn't matter how small the margin your agreed with party is, if it loses, you are ultimately counted as supporting the victor -- who may be the worse of the two dominate parties, to you. That's why there's the sentiment that you have to be over a certain size party before you genuinely matter... because frankly, insofar as the elections themselves go, that's absolutely true -- if you don' have the numbers, not only will your voice not be officially tallied once the votes are counted and the dust clears, it will be hijacked as nominal support for someone you blatantly disagree with.

It's why you see a lot of dialogue in US political discussions about voting for the lesser evil, because often you're trying to vote specifically to prevent what's considered a greater evil from getting control of your representation. I'll probably be voting Obama in the upcoming despite strong objections to a number of things he's done, because my state is winner-takes-all. I don't like Obama, really, but like hell I'm going to do something that makes it more likely for my vote to be counted for Romney -- and voting third party would do that, unfortunately.

We could seriously use some proportional shit or somethin' down here

Still haven't gotten around to using it, though I hear good things about dreamshield (especially mixed with AM shield and dismissal. There's apparently not much overlap with the latter, but it's a hefty tanking option anyway).

Now dreamhammer, I like, and it's actually pretty vicious. The big thing with it is that it's very much a combo tree -- a standard pattern for my hammer using solipsist was to mindsear while they're one-two tiles away, lay out a toss (remembering to manually aim just past the target), probably use mindsear again, use the tier three when they got right beside me to stun, then drop the first tier talent and immediately follow through with whichever of the second and third tier talents came off cooldown due to the first tier's effect. Then you can nail with a knockback wave, sleep 'em, or swap positions with your thoughtforged and wait to do it again. A lot of upfront damage for when mindsear alone wasn't cutting it. S'pretty nice if you can manage to be safe in melee (not going 5/5 on solipsism can help there, as can using a natively high life rating race (dwarf, ghoul, skeleton, primarily).

Maximum Zero has discovered a loophole full of maple syrup and moose!

Pretty sure that's illegal in both the US and canada.

Unlike dropping moose from airplanes, I'm not sure if they have a specific law criminalizing it, though.

E: Wait, wait. Sleepybrain missed the loop. Right, carryon.

Not just could be. Just putting that out there. No more details.

2. I was born in a town with maybe 3,000 people and spent the vast majority of my life in Kentucky, and have picked up something of an accent. Self-depreciating humor is one of the best kinds.

Man, crazy. Your town has like six times the population my town has.

Redneck quota +6? How do you measure these things?

Quote from: Gamerlord on September 06, 2012, 05:36:45 am

Download?

Just to save some lazy people a google search. Was on first page searching for just "Sil" though down a bit.

Anyway, Sil's pretty darn decent even if I'm not particularly fond of it myself

Haven't played too much, though. Too busy playing T4, and Sil's a little too minimalist (I guess) for me. Or maybe just too *band, even though it's about as *band as T4 is nowadays.

Maybe I'd just like it better if it weren't Tolkien? Tired of Tolkien based/heavily influenced roguelikes at this point, I think. At least at the moment.

Anyway salmon brought up Sil some pages back. It's a Tolkien themed roguelike that isn't an Angband clone to the point of nausea.

All of the breathes

Particularly sand, but ice and lightning also help with the crowd control. You want swallow, especially if you go antimagic, and doubly so in the mid-game and beyond; the higher level the enemy, the more equilibrium swallow restores on consume. You can expect to keep antimagic shield running indefinitely on a higher end wyrmic, if you go antimagic. You probably want burrow, eventually (it's been recommended previously on this thread, by someone else: Mix burrow with lightning speed or a movement infusion for an incredible escape method), and quake can do some interesting stuff (it moves anything.).

You definitely want lightning speed, though how many points in it is up to you, so long as you have at least one. In all seriousness, one of your two starting class points should be going into it. The other two storm talents are somewhat iffy, but not terrible (just not wonderful) now that static field can land on more stuff. The flame talents are solid enough, especially the first tier one once you've got some stats to back it up; confusion is incredibly powerful. The rest of the fire ones are just fairly solid damage talents.

E to the E: Generally you're going to max your primary stat, followed by your secondary, only dipping into other stats as necessary. A wyrmic, ferex, might put a bit in con if they're having trouble with their HP and a bit in dex if they're having trouble hitting things, but is mostly going to be putting everything into strength and then willpower, or the other way around depending on which talents you're focusing on first. They might go 2/1 into both and alternate or something, too. You hit level cap pretty quickly (early/mid teens, iirc) if you're going all-in on a single stat, and can spread the leftovers around as needed after that while still keeping your primary stat topped off.

Things get more complicated with classes that have more that two major stats (arcane blades, ferex); generally for them I find that beelining for your talent's stat reqs is most important, after which you can invest as needed to cover holes or boost effectiveness, whatever you need.

One really interesting thing about stealth and shadowstrike is that shadowstrike will go off so long as you have stealth active. Which, yes, means that you can get the shadowstrike boost even on things that have otherwise seen you; so long as you have't broken stealth, you get the shadowstrike boost. Shadowstrike flurries will, unsurprisingly, wreck many different variations of day

And re: focused TW: I definitely agree it's possible; my TW winner (albeit many versions back and utterly ridiculous -- four stats over 200, ultimately broke the game in the post-game by getting movement speed below zero, etc.) was primarily melee spec'd. Doing so closes off parts of your toolset unnecessarily, though, which is why a focused TW is going to be weaker almost necessarily.

That said, if you are going to focus, definitely focus on either a ranged or caster (or hybrid archer/caster) build; TW mobility means you completely trivialize most melee enemies in the game innately (celerity kiting means you can kill pretty much anything without rush or a ranged talent with tier one ammo all the way up into the late game) and bows later in the game both do utterly ridiculous amount of damage (especially randart ones that manage to stack some speed reduction) and are much, much safer for the relatively squishy warden.

As for armor training, I'd be cautious. You can do it, but remember and remember well that fatigue (coming from, say, the heavy or massive armor you have to wear to really take advantage of heavy investment in armor training) makes you more likely to bugger up your paradox talents. Either that or makes the more likely to explode badly... something like that. Fatigue on a chronomancer is a bad thing nowadays Of course, a nice lil'feathersteel amulet can make most fatigue problems go away, and chronomancers really like the improved feathersteel amulet, so...