Heavy

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

It deals dramatically more damage, but attacks with it are much slower.

Heavy weapons have +80% base damage, but take 50% longer to swing. This results in an average of +20% physical damage. Compared to brands like flaming and freezing, heavy weapons are reduced less by AC, but receive less benefit from slaying and will activate less auxiliary attacks.

The penalty to attack speed is applied after skill, but before the effects of encumbrance (both shield and armour).

Strategy

Heavy offers a slightly weaker damage boost than flaming or freezing, but has the benefit of being irresistible. In an average situation, heavy is competitive with those brands. It has a clear superiority against high AC. Conversely, it is clearly worse for slaying-reliant weapons, like quick blades. Heavy is also poor for species with strong aux attacks, such as Tengu or Vine Stalker.

In addition, heavy weapons are less impacted by shield/armour encumbrance. For example, lets say armour increases attack delay by +0.1 decaAut:

• A regular weapon would go from 1.0 -> 1.1 delay, or 10% slower.
• A heavy weapon would go from 1.5 -> 1.6 delay, or 6.25% slower.

However, using heavy on most weapons introduces a serious risk - see below for details.

Risks of >1.0 attack delay

Heavy can seem like a good brand on the surface, but it can be very risky, as it can prevent you from reaching ≤ 1.0 attack delay. Most weapons have a minimum delay of 0.7. A weapon with delay of 0.7 would now have a delay of 1.05 decaAut. This represents a 5% chance of a regular speed enemy getting a double-turn of attacks.

A komodo dragon can normally hit for up to 45 damage, so with a double-turn, it turns into 90 damage. Many characters heading into the Lair won't have 90 max HP, others are barely above it. The chance of this actually happening is tiny - the probability of {max roll, getting double turn, max roll again} is extremely low, and AC / EV / SH further reduces that chance. Also, guaranteed damage reduction will lower max damage against non-spells. Still, using a heavy weapon forces you between two options:

• Treat every time you go below ~80 HP vs. a komodo dragon with extreme caution. (Remember that Throwing, evocables, etc. let you attack at 1.0 if so desired.)
• Introduce a tiny, but non-zero chance of dying every time you make a swing below ~80 HP vs. a komodo dragon.

It's important to remember that most dangerous situations in Crawl involve multiple enemies. Adding a single yak turns it into max 126 damage. When you consider a whole pack of enemies, things can go sour very quickly. Even if they don't do max damage, a few high damage attacks can end your run, or at least force you to use scrolls or potions. Also note that this applies for almost every 10-speed enemy in the game, not just komodo dragons (deep elf annihilators can deal up to 102*2 damage, for instance).

Weapons that have a minimum delay below 0.7, like demon blades, demon tridents, and all Short Blades, can reach a post-heavy mindelay below 1.0. Though watch out for shields, which can bring the delay back up. Also, for weapons that never reach 1.0 delay (e.g. hand crossbow + any shield), this point is obviously moot.

Tips & Tricks

• Slow actions can be useful in a turn count speedrun. Each attack takes 1 turn, regardless of how long the swing was. If a regular weapon would take 3 turns to kill an enemy, a heavy weapon would take 2.

In addition, swinging an untrained heavy weapon is a better way to skip time than bread swinging. For example, swinging a scroll takes 1.5 decaauts, but it takes 2.1 decaauts to swing a heavy flail when you have 0 Maces & Flails skill.

History

• In 0.30, this weapon brand was introduced. It replaced the vorpal brand.