ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So these are some of the problems and suggestions that have been communicated in chat and summarised by yours truly.

Currently mindslayer mostly works by wielding 2 two-handed weapons with Gems and Mindstars being sadly negligible options for TK wielding.
The two talents responsible for this difference are Beyond the Flesh and Frenzied Focus.
Both talents perform differently depending on what is TK wielded.

Normal Weapons:
An attack on all nearby enemies each turn using different attributes than normal.
With frenzied focus this can be temporarily increased to up to 4 attacks per turn in radius 4.
This is a strong effect, especially since these can be 2h weapons.
Mindstars:
Have a chance of pulling a random enemy into melee range.
With frenzied focus this fires a single bolt each turn, dealing moderate damage to a random target in range 6.
The first effect here is considered to be an actual downside, since it randomly pulls enemies to you, disrupting your gameplay. The second effect shoots a random bolt an enemy, hardly comparable to the effect of the weapon, which usually turns out to be much, much more damage.
Gems:
Boosts stats by 3-15.
With frenzied focus this fires a single bolt each turn, dealing moderate damage to a random target in range 6.
This effect is not of much benefit during combat. Frenzied focus effect has the same problem as above.

So in comparison not only is the passive effect of wielding a weapon in hand pretty much inversally better, the same even holds true for the frenzy effect. In addition to this, 2h weapons offer better stats than comparable weapons.


To resolve this problem there have been a couple suggestions made in chat to resolve the problem:
Gems:
Give gems a the random range 6 shot as a passive.
As for Frenzied Focus it could be changed into an AoE with a large Radius, proccing each turn with damage according to the damage type of the gem. This may sound weak initially and uncreative, but the damage type options provided by gems might make this interesting indeed.
Mindstars:
Maybe make them function as a weapon. It's not very creative, but it's something.
Someone suggested frenzied focus making it into an animated weapon of sorts, or maybe multiples.


Thanks to the chat and especially Oops and MagisterRex for their contribution.


PS: i'm here to summarise the chat and the concerns and ideas of players. I'm not great at mindslayer myself, so feel free to augment the thoughts present here.
PPS: someone mentioned TK wielded staves using channel staff. Not sure if that's a good idea, but let's put it in here.

I like the idea to make telekineticly held mind stones more useful. Maybe instead of just attacking a random enemy they instead do an attack against all adjacent enemies? They tend to have relatively low damage so I would think this would be too overpowered. When frenzied they could hit all enemies in radius 2 or 3.

To give an even greater buff as mind stones damage is relatively low they could maybe also grant a change to parry ranged attacks?

overgoat wrote:I like the idea to make telekineticly held mind stones more useful. Maybe instead of just attacking a random enemy they instead do an attack against all adjacent enemies? They tend to have relatively low damage so I would think this would be too overpowered. When frenzied they could hit all enemies in radius 2 or 3.

This is exactly what a TK weapon does right now.

I mean, there's a thought. Doing something to offset the lower base damage, that is. Bundle mindstar mastery (or whatever that first tier talent is called) into BtF, scaling talent level equivalent with either material level or the 4th finer energy talent (probably the latter). Just do the normal take-higher thing conflicting masteries do for folks with the current mindstar tree. Would finally give us a non-equilibrium mindstar melee boost thing. That would be the passive -- frenzy could let you do the pull mindstars normally do now, maybe with a damage or rebuff component on pull.

I could see gems doing something similar with with psi-shield/projection things -- paired down/limited effects based on gem type. Flat damage will/cun scaling flat damage reduction plus AoE damage ticks, probably scale AoE radius with material level to a degree, since you likely wouldn't have the spike method normal projection has. Want something real nasty have the latter count as mind talent usage for proc chances.

Alternatively, have gems be a incoming/outgoing damage converter. BtF on, part of your damage (either any, or just mind powers -- adventurer fun times would prefer anything) is converted to whatever the type, and part of the damage you take, too. I'd probably say dump the passive stat boost, have it scale 5%/material level and another 5% per finer energy manip 4th tier, so a t5 gem with 5/5 what-that-talent-is would be a 50% conversion both ways. If that'd be too sexy, you could probably half those numbers and still have something pretty tempting.

PseudoLoneWolf wrote:

overgoat wrote:I like the idea to make telekineticly held mind stones more useful. Maybe instead of just attacking a random enemy they instead do an attack against all adjacent enemies? They tend to have relatively low damage so I would think this would be too overpowered. When frenzied they could hit all enemies in radius 2 or 3.

This is exactly what a TK weapon does right now.

The difference would be hitting all enemies in the radius instead of one. Basically turning into 360 degree area attack.

Phantomfrettchen wrote:Mindstars:
Maybe make them function as a weapon. It's not very creative, but it's something.

As it happens, I have an addon that does that.