Autumn katana

[petercordia]

I found the Autumn Katana on D:5, with a poltergeist that’s my current attempt at the CCC tournament.

I have questions that I could maybe find out in wizmode, but I hope someone already knows:

• do you have to attack an enemy that stands next to you with the autumn katana, or can you also trigger the inherent MA by attacking the air?
• how big is the MA trigger chance actually? 80%? 20%?
• how does it interact with Confusing Touch?
• If you cast MA assault whilst wielding the Autumn Katana, do you do 7*4=28 attacks?

In general, would you?:

• build around the Autumn Katana,
• use the Autumn Katana,
• leave the Autumn Katana?

[hattopo]

1. If I remember you have to attack an enemy for it to work
2. Could be wrong, but if I’m correct, it’s a 20% chance
3. The MA does not do anything with confusing touch
4. I don’t think casting manifold assault also procs the katana’s MA if that’s what you mean

From my (limited) experience it’s pretty alright, having a way to use MA without a bunch of TL skill is nice to have, but someone better at the game than me would probably be able to give a better evaluation of the weapon

[bobross419]

@petercordia

• do you have to attack an enemy that stands next to you with the autumn katana, or can you also trigger the inherent MA by attacking the air?
• how big is the MA trigger chance actually? 80%? 20%?

20% and only works on any valid “defender” (tested in wiz mode for you, plants count as defenders) - crawl/crawl-ref/source/art-func.h at 0.32.1 · crawl/crawl · GitHub

• how does it interact with Confusing Touch?

Confusing touch overrides any melee damage from weapons, so there’s no interaction. While you have the Touch status you are no longer swinging the katana if that makes sense.

• If you cast MA assault whilst wielding the Autumn Katana, do you do 7*4=28 attacks?

It looks like it… The MA proc actually casts manifold assault (same link as above at the bottom of the function). And in diving the the manass code it just triggers a melee attack… no where in that diving did it seem to indicate it would not proc again… so I went and tested it with 26 trolls in wiz mode…

And I counted two additional messages indicated more manass love and a total of 26 slice/slash/hit messages. So it looks like maybe it can even proc itself??? Tbh this smells like a bug.

In general, would you?:

• build around the Autumn Katana,
• use the Autumn Katana,
• leave the Autumn Katana?

If I was a melee with good apts or dex/hybrid I’d probably pick up the katana and skill long blades anytime before I’m done with Orc. After that it’s unlikely to be worth the investment on most of the builds I run.

I wouldn’t explicitly build around it though since ManAss is pretty steep (L7s need around 18 skill points) and the long sword base type is going to run out by the time you’re hitting your third rune.

The low proc rate means it’s not really worth swapping unless you’re already in long blades and want something to help out with packs if you’re lucky enough to have two end game capable swords. It would be a pretty solid swapper for a stabber though.

And in the case of the original context, katana pairs well with Usk to really crank up the piety. I don’t think it procs on damage sharing (I did not dive that code but I believe it has its own damage formula) but otherwise any procs it does have will help rev up the piety faster. Again though, by the time you’re ready for your third rune you’ll probably want to swap to a demon blade or double sword just for the base damage increase.