Rings of Flame, etc.

[Egavactip]

What exactly does a Ring of Flame [+11] (or something like that), do?

[debo]

In 3.0.x versions (I think) they gave your melee atk an elemental brand, which is freaking awesome.

In later versions, the brand was removed and they just provide resistance. They only seem to drop at deep levels, though, which makes them completely useless.

[Derakon]

The original version gave you an AC bonus (the +11) and resistance to the appropriate element. Then in an effort to make them more useful they got an activation which gives you additional temporary resistance and a ball (area-effect damage spell) of the appropriate element. Still nobody used them, so they added an elemental brand to your melee weapon. Then everyone used them (especially the acid rings), so the brand got removed.

Their real problem is that they're too deep for their abilities; by the time you find them you have more important things to do with your ring slots. If they showed up in the 800-1400' range then you'd be more interested.

[Egavactip]

Thanks. I kept thinking there had to be more to them, because I was only finding them fairly deep.

[Starhawk]

Yeah, as they exist now they are pretty much squelch material. Just enough to get you to chase through a vault for an unidentified ring, hoping it is an artifact.

I'm hoping that with the advent of the percentage brands in v4 that we'll someday see a return of a weak weapon-branding effect on these.

[Magnate]

Personally I think they could easily have a x2 brand in V as it is now. By the time you find the Glaive of Pain, most of your tough opponents are immune to most base elements, so the potential for abuse is not quite as high as some of the more hysterical critics of off-weapon brands would have you believe.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Magnate

Personally I think they could easily have a x2 brand in V as it is now. By the time you find the Glaive of Pain, most of your tough opponents are immune to most base elements, so the potential for abuse is not quite as high as some of the more hysterical critics of off-weapon brands would have you believe.

Glaive of Pain is not the ultimate weapon with brand, MoD of Extra Attacks +2 is. Acid-brand makes it effective against these high-level monsters (starting from deepest):

Sauron
Gothmog
Vecna
Carcharoth
Lungorthin
Tarrasque
Cantoras
Draugluin
Maeglin
Witch-King
Greater Balrog
Qlzqqlzuup
Great Wyrm of Balance
Pit Fiend
Feagwath
Master quylthulg
Great Wyrm of Law
Great Wyrm of Chaos
Black reaver
Nightwalker
Greater rotting quylthulg
Greater draconic quylthulg
Greater demonic quylthulg
Glaurung
Gelugon
Nightcrawler

....and several others. That counts about everything I care about - Morgoth itself, Huan, angel and giant uniques.

Unless that MoD with 7 (8 with warrior) blows have been fixed in 3.4 it makes it huge against almost anything. With slay undead as feature of MoD itself, anything with UNDEAD-flag gets x3 dice damage. That alone makes it 472.5 with 7 blows. Add +20 from STR and +20 or so from other boosts and you have 752,5 against undeads + criticals, which there will be many and big ones. Others would get 315 from x2 acid-slay.

I think immunity to element would be less bad than any brand. If you could make it permanent double-resist without activation and reasonably high-damage ball spell with activation with not-too-long recharge then that would make them worth the depth. This would require code change, but with all that is going on with the code I don't think that would be too big change.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

Glaive of Pain is not the ultimate weapon with brand, MoD of Extra Attacks +2 is.

....and several others. That counts about everything I care about - Morgoth itself, Huan, angel and giant uniques.

Unless that MoD with 7 (8 with warrior) blows have been fixed in 3.4 it makes it huge against almost anything.

MoD is too heavy for a warrior to get six blows with it (if fractional blows has changed this then it needs fixing). It is just light enough for five blows, but if we put it up to 26lb it would never give more than four blows (again, unless fractional blows has changed these breakpoints).

With slay undead as feature of MoD itself, anything with UNDEAD-flag gets x3 dice damage. That alone makes it 472.5 with 7 blows. Add +20 from STR and +20 or so from other boosts and you have 752,5 against undeads + criticals, which there will be many and big ones. Others would get 315 from x2 acid-slay.

You seem to be making a slightly different argument here: the presence of SLAY_UNDEAD on the MoD actually makes any ring brand LESS effective. If the problem is that MoD+2att is too powerful we can make it heavier (fewer blows) or remove the slay, or just prevent it from getting the Extra Attacks ego. A x2 ring brand doesn't seem to be the big problem here.

I think immunity to element would be less bad than any brand. If you could make it permanent double-resist without activation and reasonably high-damage ball spell with activation with not-too-long recharge then that would make them worth the depth. This would require code change, but with all that is going on with the code I don't think that would be too big change.

Not for 3.5-dev, no, but we're trying not to do these kinds of changes for 3.4 because they tend to introduce little bugs with interactions with other parts of the game. I'm surprised that you think immunity would be less bad, since it's not yet available on anything except artifacts.

One option is that we could put a x2 brand only on Ice and Flames rings, and make them deeper and rarer than the Acid and Lightning rings, which could come a bit earlier. This is consistent with there being earlier rings for rFire and rCold but not rElec and rAcid.

We could also crank up the damage of the ball spell and the duration of the double resist (and reduce the recharge time) to make them slightly more attractive. There are lots of possibilities.

[fizzix]

Welcome back Timo, haven't seen you in a while.

MoD +2 attacks is very rare. It will also be significantly rarer in 3.4 and it was in 3.1-3.3, as there was a general drop in the availability of egos and artifacts. I think leaving uber-weapons in, provided that they are rare enough is ok.

That being said, Magnate is right that there are a lot of options for branding rings. For example, if we could separate out inventory damage to player damage, then rings could provide for inventory protection. That could immediately make them useful as swap items. Even now, there is significant usefulness to having access to a cold or fire ball spell that can do around 100 damage. That's usually enough to kill a vampire (weak to fire) or scare away a 4 or 5 headed hydra (weak to ice, and one of the most annoying monsters in the mid-game). That in itself has some utility that we shouldn't discard, although it doesn't really make the rings worth it.

=lightning and =acid have very little use. =acid would be useful if it could protect inventory, and =lightning maybe should have damage boost. In general lightning lags way behind other elements in damage, probably because few monsters resist it. I don't know what the best solution is, but there are a lot of options for v4 or 3.5 or beyond. There probably won't be any changes in 3.4, they're going to have to remain as "'is it =speed?' disappointments" for now.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Magnate

MoD is too heavy for a warrior to get six blows with it (if fractional blows has changed this then it needs fixing).

IIRC you now get max blows with MoD with any char with 18/220 STR & 18/220 DEX. Fractional blows definitely changed heavy weapons (mainly high DEX affects a lot more than it used to). Not quite sure that you can get 6 with warrior, but definitely can get 5 with everyone.

Originally Posted by Magnate

You seem to be making a slightly different argument here: the presence of SLAY_UNDEAD on the MoD actually makes any ring brand LESS effective.

Not really. Now the MoD became double-branded which covers huge amount of monsters. A bit like cold-brand & slay undead or fire brand & slay demon which makes it a lot more attractive. Acid is just a lot more effective against deep monsters than most other brands. I think reason for that is that acid brand didn't exist at all in old days, and hole for acid was for mage acid-based attack spells (elec brand was also x5 and poison brand didn't exist as well). As a result almost all the deep monsters that actually do resist acid and are not acid-element users (like Aether Hound) are new ones: giant uniques, Huan, Horned Reaper, Bronze golem. Omarax does resist acid, but so do all the other mobile eyes too, and I guess Khamul, Ungoliant and Pazuzu are just exceptions to the rule (Khamul has been also moved deeper quite a lot from the old days).

Anyway thing is almost as bad with BoC and SoS of extra attacks +2 too. 5d8 vs 6d5 vs 8d3 = 22.5 vs 18 vs 16.

Originally Posted by Magnate

I'm surprised that you think immunity would be less bad, since it's not yet available on anything except artifacts.

I tested that for my own variant long time ago. For ring slot it isn't bad, you have better uses for them (damage and speed). Things might have changed now because speed is so easy to get. Only problem with those was that dragon pits become really easy, which felt wrong.

Also immunities are still quite easy to get even without rings: Ulmo, Tuor or Thorin for acid, Turmil or Eonwe for cold, Azaghal, Firestar or Eol (Gothmog, Deathwreaker) for fire, Stormwalker or Taratol (Razorback) for elec. With swaps when you need immunity you can use any of those just as well as you could use ring slot, difference is just that with ring you could keep using your main weapon which is usually something quite a lot stronger than for example Turmil.

Brands OTOH are not available at all outside of weapons, except with those elemental rings, which makes that a lot bigger change.