PlumBrake

joined 2 months ago
[–] PlumBrake 1 points 1 hour ago

Prismatic is one of my favorites! Though I think the damage is too low compared to Warding which has similar vision uses. Prismatic's battlemage and element burst effect is also terrible, but it does have an edge in preventing ranged attacks with blind and having a torch + examine effect, I think this wand in particular is between B and A tier.

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submitted 3 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) by PlumBrake to c/pixeldungeon
 

S-Tier

Fireblast. Deals decent damage, and upgraded it becomes even better for crowd control! It helps survivability in 9 challenge and it's one of the only wands worth upgrading even for non-mages. It has a dangerous downside of burning scrolls and grass however, making it unusable in some scenarios, and the Battlemage's blazing hit can be detrimental.

Blast Wave. Movement options are always important to survive in the dungeon, and blast allows chasm kills and fishing! Not necessary to upgrade, and the Battlemage's elastic melee is redundant.

Corrosion. Deals good AOE damage, and unlike Fireblast it doesn't burn everything. Overall worth using, but the Elemental Blast effect deals terrible damage-over-time, without any extra effects or immediate damage. The Battlemage's caustic hit is unreliable as it doesn't last forever, and water cures it.

A-tier

Warding. Gives ranged damage and vision, good for darkness challenge. Upgraded it allows burst damage with wards but requires high costs in SoU, charges, and turns. Scrolls can be used on better things. The Elemental Blast is very very bad, it only heals nearby sentries and deals no damage or effect.

Lightning. Decent DPS that hits multiple targets especially in water, just don't get close. Battlemage hit effect is awful due to the staff's low melee damage, but it has great Elemental Blast effect as it stuns and deals full damage.

Displacing Dart. Helps a bit with crowd control on 9 challenge, but the fact that it can miss makes it too inconsistent.

Paralytic Dart. Same as above, but this has an awful duration. In a pinch it can help prevent ranged attacks, create some distance, but it's inconsistent.

B-tier (IMO it's usually not worth upgrading wands past this point due to the high opportunity costs)

Prismatic Light. Good for sight with darkness challenge, and can rarely reveal hidden rooms. Prevents ranged attacks with blind. Damage is mediocre, and it's only passable against undead and demons. Battlemage's cripple-hit duration is way too short, it's extremely difficult to make distance using cripple at close range. Elemental Blast's search effect needs more range.

Disintegration. Good hallway damage against multiple enemies, it can destroy barricades but also grass. Battlemage melee effect is mediocre as it's just a little extra reach, using this staff to do kiting kills on 9 challenge can be difficult due to the low melee power.

Frost. Cooks meat and saves potions on fire rooms. Crowd control with chill is passable but not great. DPS is mediocre as it deals less damage to chill enemies, but it has a great Elemental Blast effect, dealing full damage + freezing.

Incendiary Dart. Decent source of damage that can burn rooms.

Blinding Dart. Prevents ranged attacks and allows surprise attacks to the target.

C-tier

Corruption. Requires too much SoUs + damage for reliable corruption, the opportunity costs are dangerous especially with forbidden runes challenge. And spending one charge + turn to give one random debuff is generally not worth it, as you need luck to find the right debuffs for the current situation. Weakened for example is not useful against mages, and Amok is not useful against single targets. At base level, if it fails corruption it should give one debuff plus 25% chance for another one. Upgrading increase this chance by +15% each.

Regrowth. You can get extra seeds, but it's better to farm with RoW as Regrowth requires too much SoU to be viable. Regrowth is especially useless in barren lands... it's a terrible challenge that removes all the fun stuff like dews and plants. The Elemental Blast and Rooted duration is too short for crowd control, and it doesn't deal damage. The Battlemage melee is good as it gives herbal healing on hit, but you unfortunately need to move and make distance on 9 challenge.

Living Earth. Only useful in the sewers. In general, minion builds in this game are very weak especially with challenges. The opportunity costs to upgrade and take care of your summons put players in a worse position. No-armor challenge destroys this wand completely. Elemental Blast is weak as it only deals half damage, and the effect only heals an already-summoned golem. It could instead either heal the golem or summon the golem if we don't have one.

Transfusion. Only useful for the charm to prevent ranged attacks. Sacrificing 5% health to heal allies is a horrible idea, more so with challenges! Almost every ally in the game have low HP and armor (spirit hawk, wraiths, elementals, earth guardian, wards, decoy, sad ghost without highly-upgraded armor). The only exception is prismatic image and shadow rogue as they use your armor, but the opportunity cost of spending one turn + 5% HP to give them measly heals is awful. We can use that turn for so much more, such as killing the offending enemy. No-armor challenge ruins minion builds even more, as it strips their already-frail defense...

Magic Missile. Low DPS but high ammo. Only useful to charge your other wands, and the effect is small.

Chilling Dart. 6 turns of chill (10 only on water) is not enough for crowd control. Frost wand deals more damage, doesn't miss, and is "free". Darts have a seed and gold cost, and the low-tier darts are too weak to be viable options. They need more bang for the buck!

Poison Dart. Poison damage is worse compared to incendiary, with many immunities.

D-tier

Healing Dart. Same reason as Transfusion; the opportunity cost to spend turns and resources to help allies is terrible as they die quickly. Sungrass seed in particular is valuable for "food" and safely dropping into chasm wells.

Cleansing Dart. Spending turns and seeds to clear ally debuffs is even worse! Mageroyal is also valuable for "food" with cleansing potion, and chasm wells. I've tried the dart forget effect on enemies but it's unreliable, and enemies never utilize buffs to remove. The only two mobs that use buffs is monk focused (which blocks an attack so cleansing dart is useless), and gnoll brute. I wonder if this works on brute? Though it'll still be useless as it's a dying buff from a single enemy in the game. Crystal Spire and Gnoll Geomancer's weapon immunity could be a buff instead, and if you remove it, you can attack them with regular weapons!

Adrenaline Dart. 5 turns of crippled is far worse than 6 turns of chilled, as the former only affects movement. It needs much more turns. Giving 10 turns of adrenaline is also too short for allies; most of them have poor DPS to make use of it. It's better to spend your turn whacking enemies manually. Not worth using the haste seed!

Holy Dart. The damage to undead is very low, and the blessed status duration is too short and unviable for frail allies. Starflower is another valuable seed for blandfruit and exp potion, and it's never worth crafting this dart.

Shocking Dart. It ignores armor, but the damage is extremely low. The electricity also doesn't do AOE like lightning wand. Most enemies in the game have low armor anyway, the thrown weapons you find early on will deal more damage, and doesn't use up a seed.

Rotberry Dart. Low amount of uses, and extremely high opportunity cost, it doesn't justify giving up an upgraded wand from wandmaker, even if the wand is low-tier.

[–] PlumBrake 1 points 4 days ago

Evan please read this, I enjoy representation with the duelist and all, but saying that a game with only white men and girl is "clearly bad" is very off-putting, even if you didn't mean it that way. This game has a lot of russian and asian players, which tends to avoid LGBT pronouns, and I've seen people start to correct them online to use they/them on cleric. This starts to cause drama on group chats. I am personally fine with cleric, but I think it's best not to go too far like Sony's Concord, as this issue tends to kill games.

[–] PlumBrake 2 points 1 month ago

I've noticed it too. Most trinkets are definitely a beginner trap as you've said, they need to spend energy on alchemy recipes instead of using all their energy on "just for fun" trinkets. For advanced players, energy economy becomes very important with challenges, I squeeze every energy I get from profitless items like stone of intuition's second use, detect magic, certain seeds. There's no room for +3 trinket energy, I often keep them at +0 and energize it later, or immediately throw it away if it's harmful.

[–] PlumBrake 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So the tome is an artifact, and you use talent points to learn new spells for it? That's very RPG-like and I love it, seems like it's going to be a fun and creative class like duelist collecting weapons and switching abilities.

[–] PlumBrake 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I never said that "changes are not deliberate". I'm only saying that, in my opinion, the original clover's high rolls to the hero probably shouldn't happen again.

[–] PlumBrake 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If we think about it, during early floors where parchment is most helpful, it's very difficult to immediately pay the 51 energy cost unless you throw all your useful scrolls and potions immediately, which is too dangerous especially when playing with challenges. But if you keep it at +0 you'll end up encountering more curses, which also makes things difficult. By the time you reach the prison's alchemy room, you could pay the 51 cost, but by then you already have plenty of remove curse scrolls from drops and shops (which guarantee RC scrolls), and you might've encountered anti-curse wells too. By the caves, I have my final gear already, so parchment became useless starting from here. So for me personally, the 51 energy is terrible and could be used for many other important things, curses are never an issue in my games but that's just my personal thinking.

[–] PlumBrake 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I agree, I suppose this trinket's very low regen at +3 is supposed to help with that, and you're supposed to take damage inbetween, but it's too much of a downside in both energy and gameplay for a mere extra 50% heal. Blood vial is not necessary on normal gameplay as well as challenges that remove waterskin and potion usage.

[–] PlumBrake 1 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I know and I'm on the latest version, it's why I said that it's probably best for it to never happen again.

[–] PlumBrake 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I look forward to it~~ The censer's potential for death and item loss is terrifying, and I don't know when it will explode. At least with resin trinket, I have full control of the decision to possibly set things on fire. Also, I'm unsure if rat skull itself is the reason for winning... If I can farm floors sustainably, rat skull is nice as I'll eventually find those powerful rare mobs for the badge, but this only makes already-winning runs better. If I play normally, the 5% rare chance never triggers much to break-even on the 36 energy. I feel most of these trinkets have harmful tradeoffs, and the massive energy commitment could've been placed on actual win-conditions, especially when getting the 1M score badge. That would be my personal perspective I suppose...? I only take the C and D trinkets if I play casually, and I take them knowing full well that it will be a neutral-challenge rather than a benefit.

(But having said that, it's still nice that trinkets are dungeon tools instead of obscure game settings. I feel shattered is lacking in the variety of items that can be dropped from mobs and chests, they're always the same scrolls and potions. Dungeon runs are nice with more loot variety, maybe poison spells from cave spiders, or hidden shops with weird items, with the journal overhaul finding items becomes fun~)

[–] PlumBrake 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

The patches made them better, but maybe it can still be improved~ For this tierlist, it's less about personal preferences, but whether the tradeoffs help or hinder the hero and comparing the costs against other things. Like... I prefer to use torches than newt eye, but I admit that it's somewhat useful in certain playstyles, so I put it higher. Conversely, even though parchment is hyped up as a powerful anti-curse trinket, in practice it often hinders runs. Some trinkets like sundial will only make already-winning runs better, instead of giving win conditions. I suppose when we consider that obtaining these trinkets use up puzzle room items, food, and a lot of energy... it's inevitable to think about these. They're costly dungeon tools, instead of optional game settings, so I usually only take the beneficial trinkets and avoid the C and D trinkets which often hinders the hero, unless I want to have fun.

EDIT: Thinking about this, I think I'll put mimic tooth at B-tier, it's both a win condition and a lose condition and it feels situational.

[–] PlumBrake 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

I agree. Personally I can't find a use for parchment even at low challenges, as arcane stylus enchanting feels better. Curse negation doesn't seem like it's worth 51 energy, RC scroll and wells are common enough to make curses trivial.

[–] PlumBrake 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Hmm I think for Vial of Blood, it just needs a little bit more heals than +50%, and cheaper than 36 energy. It's fine if the downside is severe, it creates an interesting new way to heal, but it just needs more bang for the buck. It sits in an awkward spot where it's not worth taking with challenges like pharmacophobia, and also not worth it for normal gameplay.

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by PlumBrake to c/pixeldungeon
 

A-tier

Exotic Crystals. I like this. Exotic items are generally better and yield more energy, but there's some huge downsides like losing important items (transmutation, invis, etc) and cluttering the bag. It's probably not worth spending the energy cost to +3.

Mossy Clump. Water and especially grass floors are useful. Not worth upgrading to +3, as by the time you can pay the astronomical 81 energy, you have explored more than half of the dungeon. You can refund the cost if you energize the seeds you get from trampling grass, but you'll need to burn over 40 seeds. It's only worth upgrading if the game is longer.

Petrified Seed. Another favorite, as seeds are unusable with challenges. Somewhat worth upgrading to +3, but only if you can pay the energy cost early. In general, trinkets like these should only be upgraded if there's many more floors ahead.

Mimic Tooth. Dangerous, but gives more rewards in return. Very interesting and I love it, but the mimics are deadly later in the game, and at that point you can throw it away.

B-tier

Wanderous Resin. Can be fun with mage, but some effects will destroy items and damage the user. This trinket icon should be changed, as all the catalysts, resins, dust and moss in the game is hard to differentiate for colorblind users, they all look like the same hairball.

Salt Cube. This one's weird. I think it's below C-tier on normal gameplay, but shoots up to high-tier when playing with many challenges. Fast health regen is much more important and satiety is never an issue, so I always avoid taking this when I play normally, but it's useful when doing the diet challenge. The buff to 40% finally made it okay-ish in normal gameplay.

Eye of Newt. Kinda useful with darkness challenge, you can constantly throw and pick it up to adjust the vision, but can be annoying.

Shard of Oblivion. The drop boost is not that great, but it can make getting loot a little easier. The unidentified gimmick is an interesting downside, I like how the shard can identify items that are ready for it.

C-tier

Parchment Scrap. Purely advantageous at +3, but it's too costly and equipment drops are too rare for this to be useful. I think getting enchants normally (with arcane stylus) is cheaper and better. It could've been good if you can combine this with mimic tooth.

Trap Mechanism. You can kill enemies with traps and pitfalls, it's fun but I'll only take it if I have blast wave early, and that is very rare. This trinket got more dangerous without disarming.

Dimensional Sundial. Only useful to speed up ring of wealth farming runs, and the energy you use to decrease enemy spawn rate should just be used to create helpful items, to combat said enemies. Could use an additional effect.

Vial of Blood. Very harmful downside and the extra healing is not necessary on normal gameplay. Might need to be less severe, the immediate potion heal is too important to prevent deaths.

Rat Skull. Only useful if you want to collect rare bestiary monsters. You need to find crazy bandit, chaos elemental, and crystal mimic for it to be useful, because their drops are the best, but it needs too much luck.

D-tier

Chaotic Censer. You use up items for puzzle rooms to get a magical catalyst in a treasure box, spend energy on it, only to get a harmful challenge that can kill you and destroy items? The gimmick looks fun, but not knowing when it will activate is too dangerous.

13-leaf Clover. Needs a more interesting gimmick. It doesn't matter if you roll high or low, it will average to the same damage as the game progresses, so ultimately it doesn't have any usage. The trinket has a very specific use if you equip +0 fast weapons against highly armored enemies, it can overall deal a little more damage, but the usability of this trinket sharply decreases when you upgrade your weapons. It's also too dangerous if enemies can do high rolls to you, it's probably best for it to never happen again.

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