Idea on making mindslayer striking tree interesting

[Suslik]

Meanwhile charge/discharge mechanics may certainly get very interseting. Excellent example is path of exile, here is how charger builds work:

3 kinds of charges:
1) endurance charge. every charge gives you ~5% resist all
2) power charge. every charge gives you 5% increased critical strike, damage and spell damage
3) frenzy charge. grants you attack, movement and cast speed.

By default you can have max 3 charges of every kind and they last for 12 seconds. Every acquired charge refreshes duration of its type.

Frenzy charges are primarily given with a certain melee attack(one charge per attack) or some items/talents give you them when you kill an enemy.

Power charges are gained with one of the two opposing items:
- first one gives you a power charge for every crit you deal
- second gives you one power charge for every non-crit you deal but you lose all charges on every crit

Endurance charges are primarily gained from taunt-like abilities(the more foes you taunt the more charges you get) or there's an item that converts every used power charge to endurance.

And the ultimate talent and usually the only offensive ability chargers have: you can without a cooldown and with minor manacost discharge all your charges for potentially huge damage spike of cold damage per frenzy charge, fire per endurance and lightning per power charge. It's a spell and power charges increase spell damage so you're encouraged to stack as many of these as you can before discharging.

By choosing charge gain mechanics for your character(in poe it's done by equipping certain unique gear, we can do it by activating certain sustains) your goal is either to keep as many charges up as possible for passive bonuses or to gain charges as quickly as possible for repeated discharges.

For example you can go like this: take a super-fast weapon with low crit chance, stack frenzy charges for every hit with it, and gain power charge for every non-crit. put discharge on a special proc "on crit" and when you do crit instead of simply losing power charges you discharge them all and another items immediately gives you endurance charges for every power charge spent. Process usually repeats rather quickly(once every 1-3 seconds) and such builds tend to be very fun and unique.

Hope you gain any ideas of these.

[HousePet]

oh wow. good luck making interesting a fight that you can win with casting 1 damaging ability anyway.

Yeah, and those are all boring.

Nah, I know about Path of Exiles charge system. (I don't feel it quite works as a mechanic as the charge and discharges are too thin on the ground)
This one is based on the D2 Assassin.

Strike talent then normal attack:
Strike talent does the normal weapon damage with type conversion.
Normal attack then does normal damage, plus the extra damage from the Strike talent.

Two Strike talents then a normal attack:
First two Strike talents do normal weapon damage with type conversions.
Normal attack then does normal damage, plus the extra damage from the first Strike talent, plus the debuff from the second Strike talent.

Three Strike talents then a normal attack:
All the Strike talents do their normal weapon damage with type conversions.
Normal attack then does normal damage, plus uses the special shape from the Third talent to produce an effect which does the damage from the first talent and the debuff from the second.

Example: Kinetic + Thermal + Charged + Bump.
Final effect is a chain lightning shaped, physical damage with freeze debuff.

Any non Strike talent that does a weapon hit can be used in place of the normal bump attack.

[Suslik]

As much as I loved d2 I really think it's assasin's charge system is dated now because it always turned out to be like hit-hit-hit-pew-hit-hit-hit-pew-... Via interesting gear choices PoE offers way more variety in the way you gain and use the charges.

[Doctornull]

What would be the behavior goal for a charge system?

Give you something to do while waiting for an enemy to approach?
Spend turns in combat NOT attacking for a benefit later (like Block)?

[Suslik]

goal of charge system is to make regulat strike talents do something more interesting than just inflicting damage/statuses. one example is storing charges that can be discharged later(like brawler's combo points).