Remove Mind damage's save check?

[SageAcrin]

I've been randomly mucking around with a character that has had two Merchant weapons ruined by Mind Conversion effects, thanks to the Rogue's 40 Mindpower, meaning that they'll be more often than not half-nulled on damage.

That's okay enough-There's some things like teleport dropping(though...I question the existance of that as well. It's cute, but it really ought to give an item some extra bonuses if it exists, and it doesn't seem to.) that will do that anyhow. And of course, I always could have gotten a dagger that happened to give me a lovely set of magical boosting bonuses, or have been Antimagic for my Skeleton... Luck happens, no big deal.

But it occured to me-what is the logic behind having this happen to start with? That is, Mind damage getting nulled by a save check?

The three mostly-unresisted elements are Temporal, Arcane and Mind...and the more I think on it, the less I see the justification for what is a rather unintuitive exception(a save preventing damage from an element) happening in the case of Mind, compared to the other two. Mind attacks aren't notably better than Temporal or Arcane-the main source of it right now in general is Doomed, and Doomed only has two real, controllable elements, similar to Paradox Mage, in fact.

If it, say, went through the rather common All resist that enemies start pulling out lategame...but it doesn't seem to. (And it probably shouldn't.)

If it was an issue of containing enemies that would be overly powerful...but the only notable sources of Mind damage are a starter dungeon and Bloated Horrors, and the latter tend to blow through all but the most extreme save checks until lategame, by which time they're manageable.

Am I missing something here? It seems like an exception for the sake of an exception. It doesn't even really hurt Doomed, lategame, since few enemies can really resist the Mindpower of someone that has funneled all their stats into it(And this is good, as, again, All resist gets gradually more common, rendering the rare resistance less of an edge.). It mostly just nerfs some weapons randomly, seemingly. It's obviously not a huge deal, overall, but I'm not sure why it happens at all.

[ghostbuster]

I agree with that.
Physical attacks are avoided with accuracy/defense and phys save applies to effects.
Spell attacks are always unavoided and spell save applies to effects.
Mind attacks are avoided with mind save.

What would make sense is to have the same behavior as spell attacks and to have the attacks always unavoided. It woud make damage conversion coherent with other damage conversion (fire, etc) and avoid the double check accuracy/defence and mindpower/mindsave.
Only the brain-lock effect should check mindpower/mindsave (like ice attack that always applies the damage and freeze that checks phys save).

[edge2054]

Mind Conversion damage was made much less common for next beta.

[SageAcrin]

Yeah, I knew about that.

Doesn't change the basic question, though. IIRC it was put on the same tier of rarity as Arcane and Temporal, despite them having low resistance and, well, no check. They seem strictly better.

It's just odd that it has the save check, and I can't really see a reason why.

[edge2054]

Mind damage is somewhat balanced around the hit mechanic though. Look at Mind Sear for instance compared to say Dust to Dust.

Code: Select all

getDamage = function(self, t) return self:combatTalentMindDamage(t, 10, 340) end,

Code: Select all

getDamage = function(self, t) return self:combatTalentSpellDamage(t, 20, 230)*getParadoxModifier(self, pm) end,

100 more damage on the high end.

In other words, Mind Damage is meant to *hurt* but not be as reliable as other forms of damage. I understand the complaints on conversion weapons but I'd prefer to see Mind Damage not appear on them rather then reworking a core mechanic like mind damage needing to hit. Also the difference between Arcane, Temporal, and Mind conversion weapons is in the numbers. Even though I made all three equally rare on randartifacts Mind Conversion is much cheaper (in other words when it does show up you'll get more of it).

Also...

There's a generic tree being built for Solipsists which plays off Mind Hit and I believe some Doomed abilities play off this mechanic as well. Another option would be for the mentalism (the new generic tree) to be open to everyone somehow (like harmony for instance). Maybe we can put it in the Solipsist unlock so people that want to use Mind conversion weapons without having a ton of mindpower can do so.

[onyhow]

But won't the damage type be rendered entirely useless on enemy with high saves? I mean, the problem with your argument is that every single mind damage talent will have to hurt more than other damage talents...then won't this render the mind convert damage useless? And no, the less frequent doesn't count since it'll appear anyway...and I don't think that having a talent tree worked out of that alone is a good idea...also as of currently does all the mind damage talents deal that high damage compared to arcane or temporal talents? Plus, as of currently mind sear cannot be gotten from normal level up anyway...

[edge2054]

Let me just ask this...

Is this solely an issue with mind conversion weapons? Because it seems like Doomed have been doing fine with this mechanic as it is and I have another class almost done that was built with this mechanic in mind. If mind conversion is the issue I'd prefer to see that go rather than seeing Mind damage become just another 'magic' damage type.

*edit* And I'm moving mind sear to a class tree fyi.

[onyhow]

I'm not sure of others, but to me it's mind damage viability to classes that doesn't necessarily have high mindpower...

[Grillkick]

Just one point- I don't understand why mind damage *should* be viable to a wide range of classes. Just don't use weapons that feature the conversion. It's like complaining about using a barbarian and seeing daggers or staves as fairly useless.

[SageAcrin]

The thing to me is less the balance and more the out of place impact.

I don't recall mind damage's resistance via saves being advertised in tooltips, for example. But even if it was, it's still...completely aberrant behavior. No other element just gets up and resisted by saves. It's just...weird. That's why I'm wondering if there's actually a good reason for it.

Mind Sear is a point, but if you're moving it to a talent tree to a dedicated Mind class, there's an okay argument for it being nerfed, anyways. It was originally balanced by the fact that PCs got it at 0.7 and couldn't level it, unless they got multiple Loremasters-and it could still deal well into the 200-300 range even then. Save checking isn't going to balance that at, say, 6.5, not when your Mindpower usually overcomes it-a dedicated Mind class will, as I said, overcome consistently. And it's the only example-Agony, for example, does damage over time, Reproach is 0, 280 but is drastically weakened among multiple people and short ranged, meaning it's balanced by its flaws. Hateful Whisper is 0, 300 and could conceivably do damage to a crowd of very high measure indeed, but at the same time it often will hit one enemy and fail to spread/kill them, especially since you have to try to guess if it will critical.

Also, while Mindpower usually overcomes Mind Save, it does not, for the most part, hit ranges equal to Spellpower. Spellpower can easily strike 80+ on a good setup. Mindpower is lucky to hit 65. I assumed the damage values were balanced around that in part, because they certainly feel like it. Willful Strike is 0, 280, for instance, and physical, and Blast 0, 300. An example of the damage being balanced around the relatively lower power.

(As to if it is balanced, I can only give my own opinion, but yes, it feels very balanced to me. Doomed is a moderately strong class right now, without being overly or underpowered, and is quite a fun play. More people should try it out, though the late unlock is obviously a pain there... However, this does not, necessarily, reflect on the balance of Mind Sear, which also has 2 Cooldown. Most of the low cooldown skills Doomed has are short range.)

So basically, this is about the Mind Save check being weird for no reason that I can see. I don't think Mind Sear being out of place really justifies that, but Mind Sear isn't even all that out of place(...At least, on raw damage.), as I've shown. Mindpower isn't Spellpower.

Also, no Doomed talent I know of really plays off the Mindsave thing. Agony kind of lets you get around it, Hateful Whisper I believe can actually enact the status if it fails to damage(I'm not sure if this is a bug or not-it makes sense either way.), but there's nothing really notably special about it for all of Doomed's skills, that I can see.

If you're making new skills that play off of it, why not just code the check into them, and advertise it in the tooltip? Unless that's extremely hard, that seems a simple enough answer. That would make those skills more distinctive, not less.

[edge2054]

You bring up some good points.

But I personally *like* that mind damage isn't the same as everything else. Yes it's aberrant but from my perspective that makes it interesting and has opened up possibilities in talent design rather than closing them.

I'm personally not a fan of changing it but if you guys convince Darkgod that it's the best way to go I'll adjust what I need too for the Solipsist and the mind conversion egos and artifact abilities.

[SageAcrin]

I'm not strictly against Mind damage being different, but it seems like if it's going to function differently than every other damage, the effect should be subtle or meaningful-optimally, both-and optimally fairly intuitive, is how I feel about it.

Maybe it could use a kind of reduced scale, and a corresponding upside?

What I'm thinking of is either a damage adjustment or miss rate of 1% for each point of Mind Power below Mind Save, then a 1% chance of Brainlock for every point above. (This could possibly use a 20 cap either way, which would also be in line with status effects.)

This would make Mind weapons/damage extremely interesting for their target audience, would keep the element unique...and would let people that don't really care largely ignore it. Even a 40 point gap wouldn't quite halve damage then, and with a 20 cap, that would be -20% damage on one end and 20% chance of Brainlock with Mind effects on the other, which seems like a nice range(Obviously the values could be juggled, too. Say, it's easy to make the damage impact 2%, or the Brainlock chance 1 per 2, or even have it Brainlock like a normal status, similar to how Spellcraft makes various spells Spellshock.). It would make the Mind element feel more like a quasi-status, while at the same time taking some of the impact away from its low end(no more fully nulled damage).

It is, admittedly, still largely a difference from most elements for the sake of a difference, but this way it at least is interesting, yet ignorable if you're not interested.

Edit: An interesting, and simple, idea that was suggested in chat, was to simply have a save halve the damage, and then non-saved attacks give a 25% chance to Brainlock, on all Mind damage. Seems easy to code and intuitive enough.

[edge2054]

Yeah, half damage on save and chance to apply brainlock if the save fails feels like a good compromise.