Heavy

Trunk-only: This article pertains to a feature of Crawl which is being tested. It will likely change before the next release, and may even be removed entirely.

Heavy weapons have +80% base damage and +50% attack delay. 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.

Both melee and ranged weapons can be heavy.

Strategy

In theory, heavy can be an incredibly risky brand, due to the importance of 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.

With 2 turns, a deep elf annihilator can hit you with 2 crystal spears for a maximum of 204 damage, enough to instantly kill most characters for most parts of the game. The chance to maxroll an attack is minuscule (0.002% to maxroll 1 crystal spear, before AC / EV / SH). But enemies do not need to do maximum damage to be scary. And it's important to remember that most dangerous situations in Crawl involve more than 1 monster. When multiple monsters get a double-turn on you, things can go sour very quickly. So 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.

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. Therefore, the dangers of heavy are mostly negated. Watch out for shields, which can bring delay back up beyond 1.0. You will also need to train skill until you get below the 1.0 delay threshold.

Pros

With all that being said, heavy offers a slightly weaker damage boost than flaming or freezing, but has the benefit of being irresistible. In addition, heavy is less impacted by AC, slaying, and enchantment. Heavy has a clear superiority when fighting against high AC enemies.

In an average situation, heavy is a competitive brand with flaming or freezing - assuming you are past the early game (early on, the player's generally low accuracy makes heavy an even riskier brand). Heavy can also be a good/great brand if it's on a weapon below 0.7 mindelay, for the reasons stated above.

Tips & Tricks

• Slow actions can be useful in a turn count speedrun. Each attack takes 1 turn, regardless of how long the swing was. 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 will replace the vorpal brand.