ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Since 1.2.0 is finally out we can switch from reworking mindslayer to balancing him at last.

I've gone on my cornac mindslayer in 1.2.0 release to lvl25 and just cleared dark crypt on nightmare/roguelike. Cannot say I facerolled it but it was far easier than on most other classes if not any other. The class is very interesting to play and has a lot of tactical abilities but because of some of them are way too powerful I just did not need a major part of potentially interesting abilities. So here go the proposals. Number 1) is the most urgent, 2) is less urgent and so on.

1) Absorbtion tree:

Experience: I rarely used transcended shields because non-transcended shields absorb ~80% of damage and that's usually sufficient with regen rune to not lose any hp. I was also virtually immune to any damage lower than 100 because it was simply absorbed by 80% and the remaining part by my andtimagic shield/armor.

Suggestion: nerf passive absorbtion from 80%/100dmg to 60-70%/120dmg on max level so that you cannot be passively immune to anything.

Experiense: spiking currently seems underpowered. Everyone just uses passive/transcended modes, because 6 turns of accumulation time is the time when battle is usually over already and you are either dead or don't need protection anymore. With previous damage reduction % nerf spiking is going to be even less useful.

Suggestion: I suggest spiking shields create a temporary shield with damage value of last 3 turns multiplied x2. Also duration of such shield should be probably increased to duration of regular damage shields(7-10 turns).

2) Focus:

Experience: Pyrokinesis and Brain Storm look far too powerful on 1/1. I also wager rares casting it with talent level 15 will rip apart anything. Frenzied focus looks useless.

Suggestion: nerf damage to about 70% of current, but buff damage to current value when transcended. This will also justify using charged mastery which's currently underwhelming. HP wanted to change frenzied focus so that it attacked twice with TK melee weapon instead of two targets which looks like a great idea.

3) Augmented mobility:

Experience: Quick As Thought increases attack speed, but mindslayers don't have any attack talents so the only thing it's good for is bump attacking.

Suggestion: Change to reduced global speed or mind speed.

4) General idea of TK weapon:

Experience: different kinds of TK weapons are viable. I went with mindstar and 2h weapon, gems look fine as well but tier 5 greatmaul that accidentally dropped in sandworm lair ripped everything apart for about 250dmg/turn without even taking an action. I'm not sure if it's ok maybe I'm just lucky.
Upd: other players report TK weapons being too powerful indeed considering they don't take an action to strike.

Suggestion: Probably make will modifier on TK weapon lower(to about 80%)

5) Projection:

Experience: I have never felt need to spike auras after like lvl5. Probably if focus is nerfed this spike damage would be useful but currently they are far more useful passively.

Suggestion: it's fine if focus tree is nerfed.

6) Psi-fighting:

Experience: There's indeed some imbalance that makes mindslayer tend to use mindstar as a main weapon(not TK) because it's just way more convinient to build will/cun and mindstar mastery instead of will/cun/str + weapon mastry + augmented striking. First one is just more efficient and augmentation just encourages talent point juggling. Warding weapon and impale are fine.

Suggestion: either make mindstar way default for mindslayers(like it is for solipsists) and allow different weapons to be weilded TK(which's already viable) or come up with an idea on how to make conventional melee weapons viable.

7) Augmented striking:
Experience: other players report this tree to be somewhat boring and useless. Knockback is more annoying than useful, overall abilites are underwhelming.

Suggestion: tree should be made more synergetic and interesting to become comparable with focus and other offensive options. Here are the proposals:

Kinetic Strike: Instead of the knockback then pin, make it shatter the armour of the hit creature.
If that creature is frozen, this will shatter the ice block dealing cold damage equal to the ice block strength, before applying weapon damage.
If that creature is shocked, the extra force catches them off guard and disarms them.

Ice strike: Freezes on hit
If the creature is pinned, ice shatters one or more beneficial effect/sustain instead of freezing
If the creature is shocked, iceblock will have 50% increased hp and duration

Charged strike: Applies shock(effect that reduces stun resistance) on hit
If the creature is pinned, electricity transfers weapon damage via grounding effects to everyone in radius of 2
If the lightning flash hits a frozen creature, the ice refracts the blinding effect into a radius 1 burst.

Different skill combinations allow strategic use: charged strike reduces resistance, then kinetic strike to pin then ice strike to shatter effects. Or if the foe has no resistance then charged strike is best set as finisher for AOE. If you want to deal high damage then charged->ice->physical shatter.

Also using any other non-instant ability reduces strike talent cooldowns by 1(possibly moved to strike weapon mastery).

8 ) Voracity:

Experience: Someone said that 200+ stamina leech on kinetic leech will basically kill any PC while being harmless for most NPC's. I agree.

Suggestion:
Drain stamina only while transcended/change to something else.

9) Kinetic mastery:

Experince: I have never seen deflect projectiles actually deflect anything. Not sure if it's me or if it actually does not work. Need more feedback. Had no need for TK throw.
Suggestion: test deflect more. Make TK throw not only push targets away from you, but pull them from afar as well with reduced damage and daze instead of stun(instead of mindhook that got removed).

I'm running a somewhat melee-oriented (not mindstar focused) character in an ID. campaign. Getting viable melee damage takes some time after training up melee skills, augmentation, etc. Damage from Pyrokinesis, BrainStorm (though the short range at first is a bit frustrating) seems a bit high, and makes it hard choose melee talents.

The new absorption shield spiking method is a significant nerf and a bit unintuitive. It's useless preemptively, of course, but can stack up significantly if you can survive a few turns in a tough fight -- in which case you probably don't need them. I think spiked shields would work better if they had a certain amount of base damage even if no absorption has occurred, so that they're useful for getting out of a tight spot. As is, I never use them.

The most noticeable thing about the way the class plays now is that psi recovery can be very spikey. Playing a melee character (with fairly heavy armor), psi talents deplete the pool quickly, The first 3 Voracity talents can quickly recover a full pool with a few enemies in close range however, making this play style kind of a feast or famine affair.

I dont think that spiky recovery is a bad thing. I actually like the feeling of using all my psi pool and then using voracity talent at 150% efficiency.

And forcefield is an excellent choise for getting out of tight spots already, don't think shields should have any passive spiking value, though I've used spiking rather rare as well and modified initial post with updated suggestion about it.

Thanks for your feedback.

Well at least the shields are useful passively now.

Pyrokinesis was buffed twice as I was told it was too weak. First it was buffed when the focus tier scaling was removed, then I was told it was still crap, so I reduce the duration to 6. Now its too powerful? Sheesh!

Psi Fighting/Augmented Striking: I wasn't expecting DarkGod to throw in the adjustment to Beyond the Flesh that made all attacks count as psi combat. Augmentation and that change will need to be adjusted a bit, as they are antisynergising and confusing things.
Ignoring that issue, Psiblades versus Weapon Mastery/Combat Accuracy is 5 generic + buying the category versus 10 generic points. Which isn't too bad, but Psiblades being OP skews it.

I was going to greatly reduce the stamina drain on Kinetic Leech, it wasn't supposed to be that high.

I don't see how turning TK Throw into Mindhook helps TK Throw. If you aren't going to use it to throw, then you may as well just have Mindhook.

HP, hope you restore those changes to frenzied psifighting you did before as well to global speed buff instead of attack speed.

About TK throw. I actually used it once! To throw boss in alt old forest away from escort! But srsly the rest of the game it was on hotbar without ever being needed. Maybe at least make it pull targets from TL3? And 1 utility skill that can act as 2(push/pull) is better than 2 separate situational skills. I don't see how that's gonna be OP if it could pull targets, it'll just add more options and variety.

About pyrokinesis scaling. It currently does 350 damage at TL1 on a char 25lvl with huge aoe. 350 dot damage is still 350 damage which's you know, a lot.

Okay, nerf away.

I feel Mindlash is pretty useless, compared to the other two talents in the tree. The first level in the third skill does as much as ~3 in Mindlash, with a better AOE. Pyrokinesis is also higher damage at the same range and a better AOE coverage. (though dot instead of burst and lack of status does balance this a bit).

It also feels that anything in the tk slot early EXCEPT regular weapons is bad. t1 gems don't give much of a bonus (though their Frenzy bonus is really neat), and mindstars are pretty useless until you get the Generic tree upgrade for them (and high tier items), since both the chance and range are laughably low at low material levels.
Perhaps instead give some sort of Psihook-like talent as an active? Pulling at random seems a little less than useful.


And is there a reason the shield buff icons no longer show how much of a shield it will give when spiked? I remember seeing that when I was playing in the beta, and it was a really nice addition.

For comparison, here are the damage formulae for Mindlash, Pyrokinesis and Brainstorm.

Mindlash:
self:combatTalentMindDamage(t, 10, 240)
Which at level 1 and 20 mindpower is about 50.
At level 5 and 100 mindpower its about 250.

Pyrokinesis:
self:combatTalentMindDamage(t, 50, 480) (but over 6 turns)
At level 1 and 20 mindpower its about 106. (18 per turn)
At level 5 and 100 mindpower its about 530. (88 per turn)

Brainstorm:
self:combatTalentMindDamage(t, 30, 300)
At level 1 and 20 mindpower its about 66.
At level 5 and 100 mindpower its about 330.

I apologize if some of what I'm about to say has been discussed before, I didn't follow any of the threads about the changes made.

I just beat the game with a Ghoul Mindslayer dual wielding two handers: http://te4.org/characters/11995/tome/30 ... 86fb82f66b. This character played through the whole game with relative ease. The final boss/Amathon/the room of death were all trivial. He finally died to Linaniil. I think I got to her 5th form before dying in a single turn through 1700 HP with a 600 damage shield as well as the psionic shields.

His build is far from optimum, but the Ghoul race is very good with this class so it didn't really matter. I didn't even know that my main hand weapon didn't use Strength to calculate damage till I beat the game(hence why it's at 138). That change feels a little weird and tacked on honestly, but it's no big deal, just might be my resistance to change. That being said, it seems clear to me that dual two handers are inferior compared to mindstars.

The talents I found to be overpowered:

1)The entire shield line:
I have to agree with the assessment that shields are way to strong. I was walking around the prides tanking everything with ease with ~30% resists at level ~40. I also didn't have to spike any of my shields till I got to Amathon.

2)Static Net:
This talent does A LOT of damage. By end game it was hitting for about 170 per turn for 11 turns with a cat point in it. This is on top of the fact that it has a hefty slow, very large aoe, and the mediocre damage buff. Needs to be toned down across the board in my opinion.

3)The telekinetic weapon:
This does too much damage for what is basically a free action each turn. Mix that with the fact that it's an extra equipment slot so it'll give every action you make a boost. Late game my Blighted Maul that was in the TK slot was critting for about 1.5k without me having to do anything. I would recommend toning the damage down to 60-100, or 80-100. The 80-128 the weapon has currently is too much.

Augment Striking:
The Augmented Striking tree I assume was meant for people who want to dual wield two handers, or at the very least don't want to use mindstars. This tree as a whole feels fairly weak and kind of dull.

Kinetic Strike: This skill seems odd. Knockback, generally, is only useful for ranged characters. Most of my time was spent trying to get up next to my enemies, I had absolutely no desire to knock them away afterwards.

Thermal Strike: This skills secondary effect, the freeze, is pretty much useless. The secondary damage is what causes the freeze which means the ice blocks formed are very weak. My telekinetic weapon would immediately destroy the ice as soon as I hit them with the attack.

Charged Strike: This is the only skill I found useful.

Psi Tap: Might be useful on some builds, it was useless on mine.

Suggestion to improve non Mindstar builds as a whole:
Considering the large majority of weapons are physical damage, barring a few Arts/Randarts, I believe the Kinetic Mastery tree should be tuned towards a melee build, at least a little. As opposed to now, where it looks far more like a caster tree.

Telekinetic Throw: This is another knockback, which is pretty much useless for melee and is the third knockback that the class has. I understand that comes from a flavor perspective, but don't forget that pulling also makes sense. Replacing this with something akin to Telekinetic Pull would go a long way.

Deflect Projectiles: I don't think I have ever used any talents that are like this. They just seem useless.

Implode: No comment, seems decent enough, I've never used it though.


Overall I'd say the class is a large improvement on the original Mindslayer and was much more fun to play. Seems to be leaning towards the overpowered side though so I think there are definitely room for nerfs.

Kinetic Mastery was intended to be a caster category. The melee category wasn't finished.

HousePet wrote:Psi Fighting/Augmented Striking: I wasn't expecting DarkGod to throw in the adjustment to Beyond the Flesh that made all attacks count as psi combat.

What do you mean?

Allows you to wield a physical melee weapon, a mindstar or a gem telekinetically, gaining a special effect for each.
A gem will provide +4 bonus to all primary stats per tier of the gem.
A mindstar will randomly try to telekinetically grab a far away foe (5% chance and range 2 for a tier 1 mindstar, +1 range and +5% chance for each tier above 1) and pull it into melee range.
A physical melee weapon will act as a semi independant entity, attacking foes nearby each turn while also replacing Strength and Dexterity with Willpower and Cunning for accuracy and damage calculations (for all melee weapons).

As far as I can tell only the telekinetic wielded weapons benefits from the strength/dexterity -> willpower/cunning.

gfder
Deflect projectiles is not useless at all. It basically lowers damage from projectiles by 50% which's a huge defensive boost. Though the active does does lack some use due to the fact that projectiles are a little too fast so it's best combined with slow projectiles mod.

Also saying "striking tree is bad" is actually not saying much. We have to change the tree somehow and ideas which way to change it exactly are welcome.

Other than than I agree with your whole post.

(for all melee weapons) really means all melee weapons.

HousePet wrote:(for all melee weapons) really means all melee weapons.

Because the subject of the paragraph is the psionic focus i read it to mean axes, maces, etc.

gfder wrote:3)The telekinetic weapon:
This does too much damage for what is basically a free action each turn. Mix that with the fact that it's an extra equipment slot so it'll give every action you make a boost. Late game my Blighted Maul that was in the TK slot was critting for about 1.5k without me having to do anything. I would recommend toning the damage down to 60-100, or 80-100. The 80-128 the weapon has currently is too much.

I don't know.. 80-128 is pretty typical for an endgame artifact twohander. Legacy of the Naloren, voratun with crystal focus and hammer of the deep of the deep bellow are all similar.