ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm feeling mindslayer probably is the weakest class:
-no strong controls (such as stun)
-defensive and survival talents require a lot of investment
-offensive talents also require a lot of investment
-and they all use class points
-no good supporting talents for weapon users
-mindslash actually is the only usable output, but now there is a debuff to nerf it...
-mindslayer rare monsters make me feel safe...

I think it need a overhaul, any thoughts?

I absolutely agree that they need some reworking. I had a few ideas in mind for possible changes for them, especially for melee Mindslayers.

1. Make Augmented Mobility not require level 10, so Telekinetic Leap and Shattering Charge are available much earlier, greatly helping melee Mindslayers actually get into melee range of their targets. Change Shattering Charge's damage to scale with a percentage of weapon damage, with the percent increasing with Mindpower (like Cursed's Slaughter talents scaling with Strength).

2. Add the Shield Offense, Two-Handed Maiming, and Dual Techniques categories available unlocked at 1.0 mastery to fix the problem of melee Mindslayers only having Telekinetic Smash for offense. Also add Combat Techniques at 1.0 mastery, possibly locked because Blinding Speed is really good. Alternatively, add new Psionic trees specific to Mindslayers instead of these existing ones. I have some ideas for two-handed, dual wield, and shield categories but they aren't complete yet, I'll post them when I finish them.

3. Make Reshape Weapon increase weapon power by a percent rather than a flat amount, since at the moment it definitely favors mindstars while barely helping with two-handed weapons.

4. Make spiked shields stronger with lower point investment while keeping them good at 5/5 to allow points to be spent elsewhere instead of requiring players to go 5/5/5/5 in the category.

5. Make spiking auras either free or instant because they're really bad right now. Instant auras would allow you to use them in combat without spending two turns while free aura spiking would allow you to use them without crippling your psi pool. Also make them drain less psi while sustained, because you get very poor damage per psi point spent at the moment. Also add another effect for when they're sustained like bonus armor for Kinetic Aura, bonus global speed for Thermal Aura, and bonus stun resistance for Charge Aura to give an incentive to sustain them rather than only use them with Conduit.

I've got plans.

Too many plans.

Gotta say I disagree. Mindslayers are fantastic and not at all weak.
Mindlash nerf was justified and is now decently balanced.

Faeryan wrote:Gotta say I disagree. Mindslayers are fantastic and not at all weak.
Mindlash nerf was justified and is now decently balanced.

Assuming Mindslayers aren't underpowered, they're still pretty dull. If ranged, you really have Mindlash, Pyrokinesis, and Implode for damage and if melee, you just have Telekinetic Smash and Shattering Charge. They should definitely have more options than spamming Mindlash or bump attacking in melee.

bpat wrote:Assuming Mindslayers aren't underpowered, they're still pretty dull. If ranged, you really have Mindlash, Pyrokinesis, and Implode for damage and if melee, you just have Telekinetic Smash and Shattering Charge. They should definitely have more options than spamming Mindlash or bump attacking in melee.

This, a thousand times this.

Agree with bpat. While Mindslayers can be plenty powerful, they are not very fun compared to other classes. I'd suggest these changes, which include some of bpat's:

Tree access:
1. Augmented Mobility is unlocked and doesn't require level 10. Also, reduce the psi cost of Mindhook and Quick as Thought slightly as they'd be a bit excessive for low level mindslayers.

2. Shield Offense, Two-Handed Maiming, and Dual Techniques are available locked at 1.0, similar to Arcane Blade.

Projection:
1. Make aura activation (and deactivation) instant. This would better parallel shields and make them much less annoying to use. (However, see 5. below.)

2. Don't deactivate auras on hitting 0 psi. Right now, this is mostly a trap for inexperienced players.

3. Remove aura psi cost on damage. It's rarely relevant and doesn't serve a balance purpose.

4. I don't think that replacing the psi cost is strictly necessary, but a better alternative would be that each sustained aura reduces psi regeneration by .15 or so (without extra psi regen, that's .20 => .05 with one, and .20 => -.10 with two). Alternately, sustained auras could provide a negative healmod for psi (affecting all methods of regaining it).

5. An alternative psi cost mechanic for auras could instead make them work like Deflection. Psi lost to keeping auras active builds up their charge until it hits a cap based on talent level. Dealing damage expends charge, and either the minimum psi check is replaced with a minimum charge check, or the effects scale with charge. This is a desirable change if making aura deactivation instant! Otherwise, it will be possible to activate two auras, spike them, activate a third, activate Projection Mastery, and repeat for a total of six instantly spiked auras of damage.

Psi-fighting:
1. To account for more dual/shield mindslayer capability, make Telekinetic Smash extend to your offhand if present. If you have Conduit active, the damage is divided evenly between your attacks.

2. Make Conduit simpler: it just suppresses the damage of active auras and applies it to your TK weapon instead. No interaction with your ability to activate/deactivate aura talents.

3. Possibly, make Frenzied Psi-fighting a psi-draining sustain instead (a la Momentum).

Focus:
1. Remove the repeated Mindlash cost. It's irritating, hard to remember, blocks zoning, etc.

2. Improve Pyrokinesis slightly. Perhaps 15/15 psi and cooldown instead of 20/19?

3. Move Reach into Finer Energy Manipulations, and add a new lightning-based Focus talent, keeping up tree symmetry. Example:

Brainstorm
Use mode: Activated
Psi cost: 40
Range: melee/personal
Cooldown: 30
Travel speed: instantaneous
Usage speed: 1 turn
Is: a mind power
Description: Bridge the gap between minds with a spark of inspiration. Each turn, a bolt of lightning leaps from you to a random enemy within [low talent based range] for [low mindpower based damage] lightning damage. Anyone damaged by the bolt may be dazed ([~10-20 Cunning-based %] chance) for [1-3 talent based] turns. The brainstorm will only target each enemy once, but they may be hit by bolts aimed at others.

The damage increases with your Mindpower, and the chance to daze increases with your Cunning.
(Gem/mindstar bonus disclaimer)

4. Buff Focused Channeling somewhat, and make it more explicit what parts of aura and shield effectiveness will be increased (display the increase in the description).

Finer Energy Manipulations:
1. Remove Perfect Control - it's completely underwhelming/uninteresting. Replace it with Reach, as above.

2. Make Reach depend only on talent level. Basing it on gem/mindstar tier is unnecessary.

3. Get rid of the "reduced benefit from Reach" complexity by making Reach only affect energy manipulation talents (Projection, Focus, Grip, and possibly Voracity). Preferably, increase their range by squares rather than by percent to make the benefits clearer.

4. Scale Reshape Weapon and Reshape Armour off of talent level only, and change the bonus to a percent.

5. Not a huge difference, but I love the idea of making those two talents increase the ego modifier (say, by .05 per talent level) of psionic infused items. This would make them a better choice across the board for Mindslayers, which would be nice and flavorful.

6. Remove Matter is Energy - Mindslayers should get their psi from getting hit or from hitting. Replace it with a new capstone talent, Reshape Being:

Reshape Being
Use mode: Activated
Psi cost: 0
Range: melee/personal
Cooldown: 1
Travel speed: instantaneous
Usage speed: 1 turn
Is: a mind power
Description: Manipulate forces on the molecular level to realign, rebalance, and recalibrate a target being (or yourself). [...]

Permanent buffs are cool, and ones you can use on escorts are even cooler. I've left the effect open here because there's a lot of room as to what 'recalibration' actually means. But when I think 'more perfect body', that might include: poison/disease/bleed resist, increased physical stats, increased HP, increased saves, crit shrug off, increased resists / cap, movement speed. When I think 'more perfect mind', that could be expanded into: mindpower, luck, confusion/stun resist, psi regen. Implementation-wise, this should probably gift a matching talent level of a passive talent that provides these effects.

idea:
Also tweak telekenesis a bit upon provide the three weapon trees.
Make telekenesis able to grip a shield, and make telekenesis weapons recognized by the weapon talents.
Therefor Mindslayers are capable to use two different weapon trees at the same time (such as dual wield + shield).

And for Telekinetic Smash, since it only use the telekenesis weapon, make it a range talent would be a interesting idea (just like the one Paladin has).

With regard to the Original Poster, jinsediaoying, several intrepid community-members have been working on addressing this.

To my knowledge, the results were favourable, although I've never found cause to use either Mindslayer myself.

I would provide a direct link, but for some reason I'm formatting it wrong.

Also, I'd love to see an (unlockable?) telekinetic archery talent tree for Mindslayers that gives you something like:

When Beyond the Flesh is sustained with a launcher, it will fire independently at your closest enemies (at speed 1.00) based on Willpower instead of Strength and Cunning instead of Dexterity and applying Conduit damage. This uses reloads, but your launcher can fire while you're reloading or moving, and it will reload itself on any turn it doesn't fire at a target.

Kinetic Projectile (Sustained): Enhance your telekinetic projectiles with kinetic energy. Increases the travel speed, accuracy, and damage of telekinetic projectiles. When deactivated, the effects persist for [X] rounds, during which arrows will penetrate targets while shots will knock them back.

Thermal Projectile (Sustained): Enhance your telekinetic projectiles with thermal energy. Arrows are set alight (radius 1 fire damage on hit), while sling bullets are supercooled (ice damage on hit). When deactivated, the effects persist for [X] rounds, during which arrows will leave trails of fiery clouds while shots will leave trails of icy vapor.

Charged Projectile (Sustained): Enhance your telekinetic projectiles with electrical energy. Adds lightning damage and a chance to daze to telekinetic projectiles. When deactivated, the effects persist for [X] rounds, during which arrows will ionize the target (reduced lightning resistance) while shots will warp magnetic fields (radius 1 chance to disarm on hit).

Sapient Projectile (Activated, 1 turn): Imbue a piece of ammunition with just enough free will to hate your target. Your next telekinetic projectile will be aimed directly at the chosen target, gaining [X] accuracy and [X] damage against it. On each subsequent turn, the projectile will shoot itself at the target again from wherever it landed. The projectile's sapience fades after [X] turns, or when the target is dead.

You're giving up a lot of your normal ranged damage by not wielding a mindstar, but also giving up on any synergy from a TK melee weapon. You also get less out of your shields/auras because you're in melee less. Your ranged damage output won't compare to a real archer, and you have limited control over its targeting. However, you're getting an alternative source of damage that doesn't require psi and can hit out to range 10 eventually. You're not restricted to a particular type of launcher: you can use arrows to weight towards dealing damage, or slings to weight towards crowd control and debuffing.

For me, one of the biggest problems with Mindslayer is the fact that their shields are boring. The winning strategy is generally to spike all your shields. This not only means six keypresses at the start of every battle, but also means that 20 class points are locked up in a boring, no-brainer defense

I suggest that unspiked shields be made stronger, and that shields be given a much longer cooldown, so that spiking shields is an emergency choice rather than something to do all the time. Also, get rid of the cooldown reduction talents.

That's a nice idea. Spiking them not always being the obvious choice would be very welcome. A higher cool down, as well as better basic defense, would probably go a long way towards it.

Perhaps auras as well. Although I'm not an expert in either.

How about giving Mindslayer a Dream Forge tree? It seems to fit the class. Forge Shield should also play well with shield talents.

Parcae2 wrote:For me, one of the biggest problems with Mindslayer is the fact that their shields are boring. The winning strategy is generally to spike all your shields. This not only means six keypresses at the start of every battle, but also means that 20 class points are locked up in a boring, no-brainer defense

I suggest that unspiked shields be made stronger, and that shields be given a much longer cooldown, so that spiking shields is an emergency choice rather than something to do all the time. Also, get rid of the cooldown reduction talents.

Don't they already have pretty long cooldown? Also this won't stop anyone from spiking them at once anyway. A lot of enemies, dangerous enough to spike shields for, tend to have very diverse damage types, so spiking single shield is rarely an option. Except for auras of Corruptors/Oozemancers there aren't any distinct visual signs of dangerous single-type attacks in ToME.

Maybe the shields could automatically spike?