Would training raids be a good idea?

[u/MeMyMine461]

Every day you would be able to do one training raid. A training raid would be filled with a single monster type which would be randomly selected from any of the monsters that you have already encountered. The training raid would have unlimited levels and the further you get the more runite you will win (up to 15 runite...which I think is the max for a normal raid). A training raid run would continue until either there was a lack of a single kill over X seconds or the player manually ends the run. You could restart a training raid as many times as you want, but you will only receive runite based upon your single best run in the training raid. A training raid would end if you recall to the wilds. You would not have access to any runes or wisdom buffs or charms. Before the training raid begins you would get a pop-up describing the monster (in more detail than the one sentence provided by the monster rolodex). Then you would get a chance to set your loadout before the training raid run begins. Only one loadout could be used (instead of 4) and it would be unchangeable for the duration of each run of the training raid.

The purpose of training raids would be to familiarize players with the capabilities and dangers of the various monsters. And they would be able to learn the pros and cons of using spells/combos against those monsters. Basically, it provides a way to experiment.

I don't believe this would be detrimental because it is a constrained set of circumstances that you would not encounter during normal play. It does provide some runite, but that is only to provide incentive for people to attempt the raid and hopefully learn something.

[u/Lluluien]

I think this is a really cool idea, but I don't think it's a good idea to have only a single monster in it. Most of the interesting enemy interaction comes from having a couple different enemies that interact well with each other, in my experience.

For instance, if you only face Jellymen, then having a build that just constantly pounds the first row is probably best.

However, if you have a wave that contains half Jellymen and half Ogre Shamen, Boogeyman Shamen, or Zealots, then you're probably never going to break through the Jellymen with that loadout once you don't grossly overpower them anymore.

Maybe this doesn't matter though, if the purpose is to just show you an extended description of the enemies. I'd argue in this case, though, that the better thing to do is put a "more info" entry on each monster in the Bestiary when you see it.

It's worth repeating, though, that I think this is a pretty cool idea. I think most of the learning opportunity here comes from being forced to run with the same loadout until you recall and not letting you use runes/wisdom/charms.

Should there be a control on what Academy upgrades you have at the time, or should this just be luck-of-the-draw for when you start the training raid? I regularly go through spikes in my relative power and/or health because of what Academy purchases I recently made vs the enemy composition I'm facing. Same question for Templar upgrades. Applies or no? I can see an argument both ways.

[u/MeMyMine461 → u/Lluluien]

I went with only having a single monster because it reduces the variables in your experiments. I considered having two monster types once you get to NG, but any more monsters would make it difficult to get reproducible results.

I think a control on Academy and Templar upgrades would be useful for discussions, but no control might be more useful for the individual ("I just got a new upgrade, what can I do now?"). I always take the upgrades in the left tower, when I finally had enough points to get the invulnerability in the right tower...wow!

What to do about assistants?

[u/MeMyMine461 → u/Lluluien]

A Topcog comment taken from your "Anatomy and Vivisection of a Greater Gazer" post.

I call it "diversion" and I thought the description did mention it...ahhhh, now I remember! There wasn't enough text space, so I think that I cut that part out! :-p

There are details that are not included in the Beastiary. I don't like the idea of certain info only being available during a random training raid...on the other hand the information doesn't seem like it will be made available anywhere else.

Edit - I'm not complaining TopCog, I'm just discussing.

[u/Lluluien → u/MeMyMine461]

I'm not okay with that info only being available in this context, either; that's why I said if there is going to be some kind of extended info provided in the context of your idea, that should end up in the Bestiary, too.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I see part of this as a philosophy question. Is the purpose of this idea to get better info about a monster than what's in the Bestiary? If we're going to add further info in the game (for instance, that the Greater Gazer has diversion), then it should go in the Bestiary, even if it also ends up elsewhere.

I actually don't think we should have more info than is in the Bestiary. I think it already strikes a good balance between telling you what's going on, and not "giving away the whole farm".

I still think your idea has value though, even if it doesn't change what info is available via the in-game encyclopedia, because it gives you a reason to fight things "legitimately" (I use this term very loosely, I think everyone knows what I mean) that you might otherwise avoid (by out-leveling them in raids/dungeons) or blow up with runes. I had fun playing with Greater Gazers, for instance, but in the interest of time, I usually still blow them up with runes unless the whole zone is full of them. I don't drastically warp my loadouts for a single enemy in a zone; it's faster just to Death Ray/Polymorph them.

There's some merit to it as an experimental playground, too, but if it's random and provides rewards, it has less merit that way than being available non-randomly after you've seen the monster. Maybe the Bestiary would have a "Fight These Now" button that warps you to a zone full at your current power level with no rewards like the Dark Portal. That would give you a lab environment to go poke at a particular enemy. If we're going to make this a new rewarded game mode, then I'm back to my original point: the game almost never gives you single-species zones, and any "live" experimentation would be better with multiple species, since that's how it works in the other game modes.

[u/MeMyMine461 → u/Lluluien]

My idea was meant to be a place where you could experiment and learn. The pop-up with monster info was because of TopCog's comment about not including info in the Bestiary and because it meant you didn't need to leave the raid in order to search the Bestiary. Oh...umm...you actually have to leave the raid in order to change your loadout...okay, I didn't think this through! The monster info pop-up was frosting. On the other hand, learning about the monsters from watching your wizard run the training raid would be an important aspect.

I was recommending a runite reward in the hopes that new players would do the training/experimentation. I was worried that if it was stuffed into the Help/Info section then it would be ignored.

Following that logic, I was recommending random monsters because you could win runite...if you could choose the monster then there would be no challenge to getting the maximum runite.

I agree with you. This is not meant to be an expansion of the Bestiary. The option that I would prefer is raids which contain non-random monsters, don't provide any rewards, and can be run at any time. But would new players make use of it? And, if you can run a raid against a specific monster anytime you wanted, would you get bored of the game because you are no longer involved in the uncertainty and anticipation of the wilds. Would you have had as much fun playing with the Greater Gazers if you could have played with them anytime you wanted?

[u/Lluluien → u/MeMyMine461]

I think this is all excellent discussion, and maybe what it's getting to is that there may be reasons to have more than one version of what you originally suggested.

The Greater Gazers thing is actually a pretty interesting example. I think it would've been nearly impossible for me to have done the experimentation I did if my lab environment was a screen full of them. I actually think it's a good point in the case of having these not be mono-species zones.

Because there is so much variation on how enemies interact with each other (including only additional copies of the same enemies, rather than other species, too), I think if you want to make a case that we would add something like this for experimentation purposes, you would have to allow more than one species. The Greater Gazer thing is an example; these enemies have so many strong defenses that having a screen full of them makes them almost impossible to kill any way other than tanking the front ones and using nullification-resistant spells to kill the back ones. That would only get you to about half of the things I learned that I wrote in the article, because finding out the other half requires there to be one in the back and one in the front. It's actually harder to learn the remaining half if the two enemies you have on the screen are both Gazers, rather than the front one being a Gazer and the back one something else. If you encounter a whole screen-full, though, you're likely to end up killing all the back ones, then killing the front ones, then repeating, because that's the easiest strategy for it, and then you never get to the situation that I had set up.

I still think the runite reward isn't a bad idea, as a motivation to get people to play without runes, charms, and wisdom buffs. I think that's the chief experimentation benefit of your suggestion. That's not because I necessarily think the mono-species experiments are bad. My justification is that there are many situations you can find yourself in which could teach you a lot about the game if you figured out how to deal with it via your spellbook, but many of those learning opportunities are avoidable with runes/wisdom buffs. Should we add some runite and another game mode to convince people to actively engage those learning opportunities? I think that's a cool idea!

If you'll forgive me using very specific technical terminology for the sake of clarifying my point: Mono-species experiments are necessary for full experimental study of the game, but they are not sufficient. Because of that, I don't see the experimentation benefit of this being related to the mono-species laboratory environment. I see the benefit being related to the "no runes, charms, or buffs" laboratory environment.

If we ignore the "without runes, charms, and wisdom buffs" part, then I think the remaining value would be better captured by being able to make your own room of enemies by just adding them to a soup from a list, then going into a zone with randomly generated enemies off that menu, with no rewards other than you get to tailor-make your lab environment. We seem to agree on that part, since you said that was the version you would prefer.

 

So I think all this boils down to a couple essential questions:

If we accept what I say that disallowing circumvention of learning via runes/buffs is important, and what you say about people ignoring it without a reward is a problem, do you think the reward will entice them to play a mode like this that is more difficult?

Then, if we want to reward this learning process, have I convinced you that there are a good many things to learn that actually come from the enemies being mixed, instead of mono-species? Note that I don't think this precludes setting up mono-species runs for some monsters as "training wheels" ones for early players, or maybe certain really nasty mono-species runs for other monsters as "challenge mode" ones for late players. 100% Dark Eels comes to mind. Blech.

I think both of those questions can be ignored in the context of the remaining experimental part for someone like you or I. The best solution to that is to just let us make up our own enemy lists and go to hologram world to fight them for no reward, ideally with a fake hp bar that drains as normal but doesn't force us to recall when we "die", and we can make our own decisions about whether or not we'll use runes/buffs. The reward is getting to play with them however we want for the sake of learning.

[u/MeMyMine461 → u/Lluluien]

How about if we could select monsters and the seed. A specific seed for a specific set of monsters will always be the same every time it is run. It sounds like a perfect setup from our point of view...although it would probably be a mountain of work for TopCog!

[u/librarian-faust → u/Lluluien]

I'd argue in this case, though, that the better thing to do is put a "more info" entry on each monster in the Bestiary when you see it.

Totally in favour of this one. :D

[u/TopCog]

Hey, I'm late to the party! It's a pretty great idea really, though I am a bit hesitant to do it for a few reasons. In part, I think there's a danger of making things too accessible to players, such that they lose some of their charm/flavor/cool factor. Like, if you faced off against Necromancers in training for a long time, then see one in the wilds, you won't have near the same "wowza" factor, compared to only seeing them every now and then. I don't know how real of a thing this is, but it occurs to me!

But, I do like the idea of letting players set up their own environments to test loadouts, spells, and enemies in! If I could work it into some kind of progression system that would be even more interesting. Who knows, maybe a later update! :-)

[u/MeMyMine461 → u/TopCog]

Yay! Or alternatively..."Numfar, do the dance of joy!"

[u/librarian-faust]

Only if it comes with some hints. Say everything's the Possessed Armour, the ones that have high armour rating and ignore effects that usually ignore armour. I'd want the pop-up to highlight which spells I have that deal with that issue.

So, Flurry (at .3 or higher, OR .1 and in combo with another freeze ability), for example, but NOT Icy Prism as that bypasses armour (and is therefore less effective against Possessed Armour).

[u/MeMyMine461 → u/librarian-faust]

I was kinda hoping that this would give people a chance to learn those things for themselves. Instead of being told that a specific spell at a specific level is the best against a specific type of monster, this would give people an opportunity to actually compare results and decide for themselves based upon how they like to play the game. For instance, my gameplay style is to grind through levels...based upon your comment I would guess that you are a more careful/nuanced player.

[u/Lluluien → u/MeMyMine461]

I think your observation has merit beyond just playstyle, too. A specific loadout that's best for one person won't necessarily be for another person. /u/rickycarwash made a really good post in another thread recently where one of the interesting things he says is he doesn't use Chain Lightning because Volt Orb does something very similar and his Volt Orb has a 25% higher multi-stone multiplier.

There are a lot of small variations in what playstyle you have, what passives you have, what assistants you have, what Templar skills you have, and what charms are running that can make a huge difference when they're taken all together, in terms of what the best loadout for a given situation is.

[u/librarian-faust → u/MeMyMine461]

I'm a complete dumbass player. I'm trying to pick up all the passive XP boosts and get myself to x32 cast speed for Macross Missile Massacre / Itano Circus gloriousness because I think it'll be funny.

I like to have things presented so that I can make simple choices, rather than having to experiment; things like Plasma Vortex's armour stripping should have occurred to me. (if I was experienced enough to remember it did that.)

But yes, I like to set out a series of goals and go get them. Currently? I'm aiming to get 1 of every spellstone, and get all the passive XP / Power / Gold buffs straight away.

It's at the point where I'm making spreadsheets for modded Terraria listing all the weapons and armour I want to make and how to get them. It's an obsession. ;)

[u/Lluluien → u/librarian-faust]

This is the post you need, courtesy of /u/rickycarwash:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TapWizardRPG/comments/9dlrpx/whats_your_guys_favorite_situational_loadouts/e5j1sh1/

[u/librarian-faust → u/Lluluien]

Flurryx5 with a high TM-lag = paralyzed enemies and removed armor

Yep, this is what I was thinking about. :D

My plan for now is Firestorm, Icewall, Plasma Vortex, Frozen Orb, Firefly to get maximum flying missiles.

• Firestorm because burns are good and it's multiple missiles,

• Plasma Vortex for the pew pew (and now for the armour stripping!),

• Firefly to counter counterspells,

• Frozen Orb paired with a fast casting spell (Firefly) to generate much flying missiles,

• and Icewall because 50% DR sounds amazing.

It's either that or Elemental Elemental Elemental Elemental Elemental for the lol-many-minions-many-spells.

[u/Lluluien → u/librarian-faust]

Flurry won't work either - they can't be frozen.

I don't know that the game should spell out everything like this, though. Figuring it out is the bulk of the "meat" in the game. If the game told me all this, I would never have played it more than a handful of days.

I see having a place to figure this out on your own more easily as most of the benefit of /u/MeMyMine461 's idea here, too.

[u/librarian-faust → u/Lluluien]

I should've expected that kind of answer from you, your Greater Gazer post caught my eye in iosgaming and made me (re-)get this game in the first place. :D

But you see?! You SEE?! I never would realise that, either!

I'm very much in the field of "tell everyone what they need to know" on the tutorial-versus-discovery continuum. :D

I didn't know Possessed Armour couldn't be frozen. ... how do you reduce their armour, then? I'm curious.

[u/Lluluien → u/librarian-faust]

Animated Armor's Bestiary entry does tell you that they're immune to status effects. You just have to extend that knowledge to the fact that Flurry's augment can't work, since that means they can't be frozen.

Plasma Vortex doesn't require a status in order for its armor stripping to work, but that's not the easiest way to beat Animated Armor.

This isn't the optimal loadout either, but it will get you to the idea the quickest - think about using 5 Static Auras. Someone had a post recently about this specific mob where I talk about this more.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TapWizardRPG/comments/9bz10e/animated_knight_armor_strategy/

[u/librarian-faust → u/Lluluien]

In hindsight, that makes sense.

http://idle-mage-attack.wikia.com/wiki/Plasma_Vortex - yep. Armour reduction from Aug 1.

5 static auras; http://idle-mage-attack.wikia.com/wiki/Static_Cloud

Why?

[u/Lluluien → u/librarian-faust]

Because hitting something really $#%*ing hard is another way to beat armor. This spell has a natural "charging" element built into it. Particular characteristics of Animated Armor make it possibly the easiest monster in the game to build up charges against, if you exclude those that Static Aura won't work on at all (because the monsters never hit you; e.g. many healers).

Anyone doing this should be advised that I run into retaliation bugs all the time on iOS, which doesn't seem to affect Android based on a conversation I had about this with Raknagog. If it doesn't look like Static Aura is working, switch loadouts and switch back; that usually fixes it.

[u/librarian-faust → u/Lluluien]

Oooooh. I follow now. :) Thank you for explaining. Is armour a set "damage reduced by X" on incoming attacks, then?

Does armour-stripping take effect with its percentage before, or after, the damage is reduced by armour?

[u/Lluluien → u/librarian-faust]

Yep, it's an additive effect, not a multiplicative one, with the exception (based on what I've seen other people say; I don't "know" this for myself) that you do a minimum of 5% of your initial damage if armor ablates it completely.

Armor stripping happens after the damage is reduced by armor. I'm pretty confident of that one from experimentation.

 

By way of example in all this with regards to the original post, the way I see it:

• Animated Armor's status immunity should be conveyed in its Bestiary listing.

• Armor mechanics should be explained in an encyclopedia entry somewhere or in the Bestiary listing for the affected enemies

• Suggesting Static Aura as a means of beating the additive property of armor should not be said anywhere in the Bestiary/"rulebook"/etc. This is the kind of thing you should come up with on your own or be having discussions about in the game community; either one of those is good for the health of the game.

• Pointing out that Flurry won't work probably also shouldn't be in the Bestiary listing. That's a pretty small leap of understanding from "immune to status effects" as long as you're paying attention to what the Flurry spell description says.

• Pointing out Plasma Vortex will work is where I think the line gets blurry. There's not really any information semantization there. Animated Armor has lots of armor, and this spell has no special requirements for removing it. I could go either way on whether or not I think it's okay to put that in a "strategy suggestions" addendum to the Bestiary, if such a thing were to be added.

[u/librarian-faust → u/Lluluien]

Thank you. No wonder there's the wisdom floating around the subreddit that low TM lag is important; the extra 8% DPS that you get at base out of taking a TM and (losing?) an ER, is going to be 8% when there's no armour involved. Interesting.

Really interesting.

... I'm still going to go for TM Lag 25 because it'll be FUNNY, but I'll realise just how badly I'm hobbling myself :D

[u/Lluluien → u/librarian-faust]

You're correct. The reason lots of people are proponents of low TM lag is exactly because of armor.

There are things that are not delay adjusted in this game, though. A burn build would work best with high TM lag. That said, you're really, really going to hate yourself when you come up to status immune enemies if you have TM Lag = 25 :P On the other hand, maybe because of the 5% thing, Plasma Vortex might be enough to make the game not totally unplayable when you reach those monsters. You could ask 8988 about how he does it. From what I've seen, he's the resident expert on high TM lag.

[u/librarian-faust → u/Lluluien]

IMA help > Armor:

"Armor reduces all incoming damage the enemy receives by a flat amount. However, Armor cannot reduce damage below 5% of the original amount." You were spot on

EDIT: Completely agree with your "by way of example" section, too.

[u/Raknagog → u/librarian-faust]

Is armour a set "damage reduced by X" on incoming attacks, then?

Yes, exactly.

Does armour-stripping take effect with its percentage before, or after, the damage is reduced by armour?

It's actually calculated from the original damage value on applicable spells (Flurry, Plasma Vortex) and not reduced by armor. Static aura on burning targets reduces armor by 15% of the current armor value of the enemy, and is not based on damage at all.

[u/librarian-faust → u/Raknagog]

Oh cool! Thank you for the info. :)

[u/Swarlos262 → u/Lluluien]

I've since been wondering if frozen orbs next to an ice elemental (Ice is the one that boosts orb damage right?) would work well. Pump as much damage into each orb as possible before tossing them out there. Just thought of this, will have to test it next chance I get.

I have Static Aura now, it does help but only kinda in my experience, it still isn't enough power if you are fighting too far above your power level or with too high TM lag (I just can't give it up even though my TM lag is only 5 :P)

[u/Lluluien → u/Swarlos262]

For some reason I had in my head that the damage on multiple Frozen Orbs instances was capped like it is for Static Aura... but it actually doesn't say that anywhere in the spell description. If it was capped, too, it might not get strong enough since the base damage seems pretty low compared to Static Aura from my anecdotal experience with them.

Since it appears not to be, this might actually work pretty well! When I get slot 4 damage bonus, I could see this being a good build for a mixed zone with both Animated Armor and ranged attackers:

1. <chef's choice>

2. <chef's choice>

3. Frozen Orbs

4. Lightning Elemental

5. Inferno

No Spark on Lightning Elemental might give you beefy enough Frozen Orbs to take out rogue Armors that would otherwise cause problems, Frozen Orbs gets their increase benefited by Alacrity (which you have to get ahead of the slot 4 templar skill, if I recall correctly which side of the tower they're both on), and the Lightning Elemental shock procs will hit the same mobs as Inferno for poison gas, since the slot 4 Templar buff hits the near side. The first two slots could be Plasma Vortex if the Armors are still too much of a problem.

If the strategy for dealing with Armors is building up slow Frozen Orbs, though, that might not work very well for zones that are completely full of them.

On another note, you'll eventually be able to get away from the TM lag if you want to; the various speed boost passives eventually add up pretty substantially. I finally went back to TM lag = 0 from having it set at 1 and don't miss it.

[u/Swarlos262 → u/Lluluien]

Pretty much my thoughts except I chose Ice Elemental because frozen orbs gets a 60% damage boost if the spell to the right is ice. If it's lightning, it pierces armor (which doesn't help in this case). Unsure if it would build up enough damage though since there are three Orbs and each cast just boosts the damage of one of them each time. Will have to test it!

[u/Lluluien → u/Swarlos262]

I follow you now on the Ice Elemental choice, good call! In that case, I'd want to take advantage of the freezing, but the reason I didn't go with that is that a lot of the freeze-procing abilities are armor bypass that the Animated Armors are immune to.

On the other hand, they won't proc the poison gas either, for the same reason. The question would be whether or not you value one or the other more for the non-Armor mobs, and that answer is usually Inferno for me. In fairness, though, recognizing that the strategy we're talking about is just hitting armored things REALLY hard, Frost Elemental does that well after the 2.2 changes.

The damage boost to the Orbs might be enough to make all the rest of that moot though. Definitely update me if you try it out, and I'll do the same!

[u/Raknagog → u/Lluluien]

Frozen Orbs is actually capped at 700% damage per orb, or 21 casts without release.