Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

[bpat]

Mindslayers are currently really awkward with both melee and ranged builds. This proposed rework will hopefully make melee Mindslayers more interesting and fun with melee, ranged, or hybrid builds. Rather than list everything in this post, I have the entire proposed rework on a handy Google doc.

Shibari and edge helped me a lot with designing this and I also got a some good ideas from this thread.

Let me know what you think!

Edit: HousePet alreay coded a bunch of these changes and so far they look great.

[Doctornull]

Some very good ideas, but I don't think you have gone far enough.

For example, what if you just got rid of Auras and had Conduit grant 3 different sustain talents (one for each old Aura type). Then, fold the previous Aura attacks into Voracity or use them to replace Mindlash + Pyrokinesis, both of which are kind of dull.

Or something. Anyway. You have a good start, so take it farther!

[bpat]

Some very good ideas, but I don't think you have gone far enough.

For example, what if you just got rid of Auras and had Conduit grant 3 different sustain talents (one for each old Aura type). Then, fold the previous Aura attacks into Voracity or use them to replace Mindlash + Pyrokinesis, both of which are kind of dull.

Or something. Anyway. You have a good start, so take it farther!

I really dislike the Focus and Grip categories so I was trying to make it so skipping both entirely would be viable, but I didn't want to mess up Mindlash for the people who like ranged Mindslayers. Your Aura/Conduit idea is interesting but I'm not really sure if I'm prepared to delete another category, especially since Auras have potential despite being poorly executed. If you want to write up a plan for how to do that I'd be really interested to see how you plan on making it work.

[HousePet]

More ideas in this thread: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=40198
I'll look through the google doc in more detail later.

[anonymous000]

Overall these are pretty good changes, but I still have some questions though:

The Absorption tree: The tree is now less tedious to level up but I still don't find the purpose of having 3 different shields for different elements. How about we use the Forcefield to replace the shields? It can work in this way: A sustain which lowers all incoming damage by x% and you gain psi when being attacked. Spiking the Forcefield lower all incoming damage by y% and drains psi.

The Focus tree: With the buffed aura and the new talents I don't really see the point of keeping this talent tree. If we are going to have a talent tree for enabling different builds, Parcae2 had mentioned some good idea about a short-ranged summoner tree here http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... 4&start=15

[HousePet]

For Shields: Only allow one to be spikeable at once. Maybe remove the ability to reset the cooldowns on all shields.

Focussed Combat clashes with Augmentation. Maybe put Shattering Charge in that slot instead?

Brainstorm is too similar to Charged Aura. Not sure how to change it.

Voracity talents need sensible radius.
Also, since they are effectively resourceless, it could be interesting to require the user to be below 50% of their max psi to use. Power could be buffed if your current psi is even lower. Insatiable could relax the restriction.

Don't base anything on the tier of the TK wielded item and convert the scaling it uses to normal mindpower scaling. For consistency.

Matter is Energy: I've got code for that.

Auras: I'd like to have these automatically do the Conduit effect if you are TK wielding a real weapon. So if you are TK wielding big sword, the auras will add double their damage to the TK weapon hits. If you have a gem/mindstar TK wielded instead, it gives you the radius 1 ball each turn instead. (up that to radius 2 with Reach 5)
Also, Spiked Auras are quite powerful once you have a T5 mindstar. I'm not sure you needed to buff them.

And finally, it might be worth rearranging talents to fit with different equipment loadouts. The Psi-Fighting category for example: Telekinetic Smash, Conduit and Frenzied Psi Fighting are about a TK wielded conventional weapon. Augmentation is for conventional wielding of conventional weapons.

[bpat]

For Shields: Only allow one to be spikeable at once. Maybe remove the ability to reset the cooldowns on all shields.

Focussed Combat clashes with Augmentation. Maybe put Shattering Charge in that slot instead?

Brainstorm is too similar to Charged Aura. Not sure how to change it.

Voracity talents need sensible radius.
Also, since they are effectively resourceless, it could be interesting to require the user to be below 50% of their max psi to use. Power could be buffed if your current psi is even lower. Insatiable could relax the restriction.

Don't base anything on the tier of the TK wielded item and convert the scaling it uses to normal mindpower scaling. For consistency.

Matter is Energy: I've got code for that.

Auras: I'd like to have these automatically do the Conduit effect if you are TK wielding a real weapon. So if you are TK wielding big sword, the auras will add double their damage to the TK weapon hits. If you have a gem/mindstar TK wielded instead, it gives you the radius 1 ball each turn instead. (up that to radius 2 with Reach 5)
Also, Spiked Auras are quite powerful once you have a T5 mindstar. I'm not sure you needed to buff them.

And finally, it might be worth rearranging talents to fit with different equipment loadouts. The Psi-Fighting category for example: Telekinetic Smash, Conduit and Frenzied Psi Fighting are about a TK wielded conventional weapon. Augmentation is for conventional wielding of conventional weapons.

I agree with most of what you're saying here. I disagree on only being able to spike one shield at a time since it will be a massive nerf. I agree Focused Psifighting overlaps with Augmentation but I didn't really want to touch Augmentation since it helps meet stat requirements and such. Brainstorm could brainlock or confuse instead of daze. Voracity talants' ranges increase with Reach but I still see your points, part of me wants to remove Reach completely and buff the range of all Projection, Focus, Grip, and Voracity talents to make up for it. Agreed that stuff shouldn't scale off focus tier, not sure how the numbers would come out but you're right about that. Spiked Auras are still not great compared to Mindlash at 5/5, and they should always be much stronger than Mindlash since they take two turns to use and have an actual cooldown. I'm not sure about the free Conduit idea but it might be better than sustaining auras is at the moment, since sustaining auras is terrible. You're probably right about the Psi-Fighting category being a little awkward, I don't really know how to rearrange that though.

[bpat]

Overall these are pretty good changes, but I still have some questions though:

The Absorption tree: The tree is now less tedious to level up but I still don't find the purpose of having 3 different shields for different elements. How about we use the Forcefield to replace the shields? It can work in this way: A sustain which lowers all incoming damage by x% and you gain psi when being attacked. Spiking the Forcefield lower all incoming damage by y% and drains psi.

The Focus tree: With the buffed aura and the new talents I don't really see the point of keeping this talent tree. If we are going to have a talent tree for enabling different builds, Parcae2 had mentioned some good idea about a short-ranged summoner tree here http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... 4&start=15

I really like Parcae's idea but I feel like it'd be completely changing the class into a whole new class which wasn't exactly my goal. I think it'd be great for a whole new class really. You might be right about Forcefield but I'm hesitant to remove Absorption since it's the class's signature tree, same issue with Focus, I don't really like the tree but a lot of other people do so I didn't want to delete it, I just wanted to make it skippable.

[grayswandir]

What if you gave unspiked shields some other benefits, ideally ones that would further distinguish the shields from each other. Like, I could see maxed out kinetic shield giving 50% knockback and pin resist. Or maybe just physical/spell/mental save buffs.

Or, a fun idea, you could allow unspiked shields to inflict counter attack like Block.

[ZyZ]

I dont have time to analyze eveything (still at work!) but even brief look at proposed changes made me uneasy. When you remove gem/mindstar restriction there is nothing stopping you from going staff/staff/dagger or staff/staff. Huge +phys dmg / +crit multiplier bonuses will make any other build inferior.

Atm obvious choices are

mind/nature dmg from weapon + boosted phys/fire/lightning with better range

or

phys dmg + short range, limited dmg from phys/fire/lightning skills

When you remove gem/mindstar requirements i dont see why would anybody go for mindstar build. Phys builds will let you focus on one dmg type without any side effects.

[bpat]

I dont have time to analyze eveything (still at work!) but even brief look at proposed changes made me uneasy. When you remove gem/mindstar restriction there is nothing stopping you from going staff/staff/dagger or staff/staff. Huge +phys dmg / +crit multiplier bonuses will make any other build inferior.

Atm obvious choices are

mind/nature dmg from weapon + boosted phys/fire/lightning with better range

or

phys dmg + short range, limited dmg from phys/fire/lightning skills

When you remove gem/mindstar requirements i dont see why would anybody go for mindstar build. Phys builds will let you focus on one dmg type without any side effects.

That's interesting, that double staff builds hadn't really occurred to me until now. Maybe to compensate, a telekinetically-wielded mindstar could give a Mindpower boost or something. That's definitely something that'll have to be looked into.

[HousePet]

You have other defensive options and relying on spiking all your shields is kinda cheesy and lame.

Which reminds me, Dream-Forge would be a useful defensive generic category for them.

Voracity talents do scale with Reach, However, Thermal Leech has radius 1, so a 80% increase doesn't actually do anything.

Damage from Mindlash with a t5 mindstar: combatStatTalentIntervalDamage(t, "combatMindpower", 15, 425)
Damage from spiked Aura: self:combatTalentMindDamage(t, 100, 500) + 200ish from focussed channelling.
(these formulae really need to be standardised)
So a spiked aura does around double the damage of a Mindlash and hits multiple targets. Though this is with investment in more talents.
We should standardise the formulae before messing with actual numbers...

And its not really a free Conduit, as you would then be paying the sustain cost (though maybe not the per damage cost) of sustaining the auras, you just save on the talent point cost. Which I think is a good thing, cos there are a lot of talents that are interdependent.

[bpat]

You have other defensive options and relying on spiking all your shields is kinda cheesy and lame.

Which reminds me, Dream-Forge would be a useful defensive generic category for them.

Voracity talents do scale with Reach, However, Thermal Leech has radius 1, so a 80% increase doesn't actually do anything.

Damage from Mindlash with a t5 mindstar: combatStatTalentIntervalDamage(t, "combatMindpower", 15, 425)
Damage from spiked Aura: self:combatTalentMindDamage(t, 100, 500) + 200ish from focussed channelling.
(these formulae really need to be standardised)
So a spiked aura does around double the damage of a Mindlash and hits multiple targets. Though this is with investment in more talents.
We should standardise the formulae before messing with actual numbers...

And its not really a free Conduit, as you would then be paying the sustain cost (though maybe not the per damage cost) of sustaining the auras, you just save on the talent point cost. Which I think is a good thing, cos there are a lot of talents that are interdependent.

Yeah, spiking all 3 shields is pretty lame. If we limit it to one spiked shield, then sustained shields should probably be buffed and Forcefield should also be buffed so you can still defend all damage types somewhat decently. I originally was thinking Forcefield would be a panic defensive option but maybe it could be used in conjunction with the shields if the psi per turn was reduced or removed.

I think Voracity talents round up the Reach range so Thermal Leech would be radius 2 and the other two would be radius 4 with 5/5 Reach.

Since Focused Channeling is now gone, I think it's fair to buff the damage of the Auras to compensate. i absolutely agree on standardizing the formula, though someone with more development experience than me would have to figure out how to do that.

Your idea for reworking Conduit is pretty cool. To make sure I'm understanding it correctly, you're suggesting the sustained aura be changed into a Conduit-type damage on hit instead? If so that would be much better than Conduit eating 5 talent points.

[HousePet]

Yep, if you are TK wielding a real weapon, not some poncy crystal, then the Aura would function as if it was Conduited.

Edit: Would also allow you to spike it still as well.

[anonymous000]

For Shields: Only allow one to be spikeable at once. Maybe remove the ability to reset the cooldowns on all shields.

Focussed Combat clashes with Augmentation. Maybe put Shattering Charge in that slot instead?

Brainstorm is too similar to Charged Aura. Not sure how to change it.

Voracity talents need sensible radius.
Also, since they are effectively resourceless, it could be interesting to require the user to be below 50% of their max psi to use. Power could be buffed if your current psi is even lower. Insatiable could relax the restriction.

Don't base anything on the tier of the TK wielded item and convert the scaling it uses to normal mindpower scaling. For consistency.

Matter is Energy: I've got code for that.

Auras: I'd like to have these automatically do the Conduit effect if you are TK wielding a real weapon. So if you are TK wielding big sword, the auras will add double their damage to the TK weapon hits. If you have a gem/mindstar TK wielded instead, it gives you the radius 1 ball each turn instead. (up that to radius 2 with Reach 5)
Also, Spiked Auras are quite powerful once you have a T5 mindstar. I'm not sure you needed to buff them.

And finally, it might be worth rearranging talents to fit with different equipment loadouts. The Psi-Fighting category for example: Telekinetic Smash, Conduit and Frenzied Psi Fighting are about a TK wielded conventional weapon. Augmentation is for conventional wielding of conventional weapons.

Agreed on the automatic Conduit effect for auras but I am not sure about the ball-shaped effect when TK wielding a mindstar. Mindslayers who TK wields a mindstar are either melee builds which work in the same way as those who wields a conventional weapon, or they use Mindlash as the main damage output. Naturally they would like to have Conduit on. It seems to me that the auras are only worth it when Conduit is on or when you are spiking the auras for AOE.

What if you gave unspiked shields some other benefits, ideally ones that would further distinguish the shields from each other. Like, I could see maxed out kinetic shield giving 50% knockback and pin resist. Or maybe just physical/spell/mental save buffs.

Or, a fun idea, you could allow unspiked shields to inflict counter attack like Block.

Improving a bad idea without touching the core problem only makes it less bad. Don't want to offend the people who loves the shields but I think the shields are inherently boring. In most cases the enemies attack you with quite a lot of different elements (especially when you are facing the rares or a group of enemies, like in the Dark Crypt), spiking all 3 shields is often the only sensible choice. Giving status resist/save buffs can distinguish the shields from each other, but won't change the situation.