[b42] Halfling Solpsist winner, no deaths

[donkatsu]

http://te4.org/characters/8893/tome/f6f ... 3b039c3cb8

Tankiest character I've ever played, even more so than my Archmage winner. I could literally just sit there and tank OMHWs, and Atamathon. I have a couple of criticisms on some of the talents that may or may not be valid.

-First of all, the whole thing felt too much like a Paradox Mage. Mind Sear is Dust to Dust, Dismissal is Energy Decomposition, Ravage is Destabilize, Sunder Mind is Quantum Spike, Distortion Wave is Repulsion Blast, Maelstrom is Gravity Spike/Well, Projection and Overmind are Precognition, to name a few. I realize that with so many classes now, it's getting harder for each class to find its niche, but all in all it felt like the similarities were too much. I think the main culprit is the Distortions tree. The whole "use the tier 4 talent to make the tier 1-3 talents go from kind of bad to pretty good" mechanic felt too similar to Gravity's schtick. Add on the fact that they're both physical nuking trees, on a class that primarily deals a different kind of damage (temporal for PM and mind for Soli), and I'd like a change in the way that the Distortion tree plays out.
-Try as I might, I could not find a way to make Dreamscape worth using. All it did was drag out a fight that I could've ended much more easily by not using Dreamscape. And as a way to get yourself a moment of reprieve, for cooldowns and resources, Dream Prison is much, much better.
-Nightmare is a bad tree for the same reason that Cursed/Fears is a bad tree and Corruptions/Plague used to be a bad tree; it's completely negated by the presence of a certain immunity, with no way around it. I'd like to see both trees get the Epidemic treatment.

Edit: Forgot to mention Thoughtforms. They need to be immune to at least one nuking tree. Right now, they get killed by my Distortions, or get in the way of my Mind Sears. Either way, they're just not compatible with other forms of damage dealing.

[SageAcrin]

As far as I'm aware of, sleeping resistance only exists in the form of Insomnia, which happens right after getting woken from sleep.

So getting walled by it isn't possible, but chain-utilizing it is impossible. (Also Inner Demons is very much usable without sleep unless I miss something.)

I don't know about some of those comparisons, either-Mind Sear's similarities to Dust to Dust are pretty minimal in practice, same with Sunder Mind and Quantum Spike, they have differing roles despite some similarities. It's like saying Manathrust is the same as Flame-sure, they're similar, but one gets boosted cooldowns from the right set and synergizes with Aether, while the other gets bigger boosts from heavy duty Wildfire cannon setups.

Similarly, Projection/Mind Link actually can do damage from a distance-and doesn't prevent you from getting killed, either-while Over Mind is more of a summon control type skill, which more than one class can already do, but which serves a useful role on each.

I did notice that about Distortion, though. Status effect cone, standard blasting spell with an AoE, damage over time effect and area damage over time, all in physical and all with a special status...well, it is rather similar. Not the exact same thing, but reminiscent. Didn't bother me much, but I agree it was noticeable there.

I will agree the class is pretty tanky, looking it over, though. Kinda would like to see the pet Thought-Forms have linked cooldowns, or at least have all cooldowns go down when one dies(so that you intelligently have to juggle them rather than throwing them all at the same enemy over and over.).

[Frumple]

Ehn, re: sleeping immunity, some things are just flat out immune to everything, so they resist it. Time elementals, ferex. Not sure what else manages it, though.

Only problem I have with mind sear is that the CD's too low -- you can kill the majority of the west spamming that and almost nothing else. Necromancers had a thing like that, too -- a low CD beam that utterly trivialized the early game, making investment in other talents mostly superfluous for a long while. Bumping the cd by one or two would be better, IMO. It's also kinda' weird that the lore master mind sear can level it. Makes it the only class talent that a class can invest in normally in the game an escort can bump up.

As for the rest, th'so-lips I've been running has been investing in sleep, thought forged critters, and dream forge/hammer talents so far (somewhere in the twenties, now), so can't really comment. Hammer toss is fun, though. I've only got three direct damage talents, despite clearing out everything up to daikara. Then sleep and slumber, and the thought-forged guys. That's wrecked everything up to dread fell, and the sleep/slumber stuff was completely unnecessary. What I'm saying is that I could probably get to character level twenty using mind sear and literally nothing else, without kiting shenanigans.

[donkatsu]

Well duh, if you pick out single talents from the many that I listed, then there's nothing wrong with having them be similar. But that's absolutely NOT like saying Manathrust is like Flame. It's like saying Arcane Power, Manathrust, Arcane Vortex, Disruption Shield, Aether Beam, Aether Breach, Aether Avatar, and Pure Aether are like Flame, Flameshock, Fireflash, Inferno, Blastwave, Burning Wake, and Cleansing Flames. There's enough of an overlap to warrant needing a slight tweak, preferably to the Distortions tree, as I stated.

I never said anything about sleep resistance. Nightmare talents check fear immunity.

[SageAcrin]

Inner Demons and Waking Nightmare do, but Nightmare does not. Still not quite the same.

Odd, though, I don't think the tooltips advertise that they class as Fear. Didn't realize that until I code dived. (And didn't notice it when I was doing that earlier.)

I picked those specific skills because they aren't that similar to the base. However, some of those are pretty large stretches(Energy Decomp, a 30%-or-x damage resistance barrier based off spellpower, compared to saving against damage up to a % of your Mindsave, for example), and the overall categories are not very similar in those other ways.

Mind Sear and Sunder Mind might be somewhat like Dust to Dust(in that it's a spammable beam attack, one of the most common mage spells) and Quantum Spike(in that it's an ST damage spell boostable by another status), but I'm pretty sure Synaptic Static(AoE radial damage, low impact, Brainlock) isn't like Destabilize(DoT with explosion on death) in any way but providing a status that helps the last skill, while Psychic Lobotomy is nothing like Carbon Spikes...

And the rest of Energy compared to anything in Solipism-anything in Solipism compared to anything not in Solipism in general-is not a valid comparison.

I didn't disagree with your assessment on Distortion overall, though. It's different, but you're right, it feels thematically similar.

[donkatsu]

You're just nitpicking things that don't matter, or refuting statements that I didn't make to begin with. And given that you don't even disagree with my conclusion, I think you're just wasting my time and yours.

[edge2054]

I'll concede that distortion feels a lot like gravity. Maelstrom is probably the biggest offender (it's a blackhole!!). Honestly I didn't have much idea of what to do with a secondary nuking tree (this was before dream-hammer was written) and borrowed that whole tree from another game almost verbatim (though apparently I covered my tracks well since no one has said distortion feels a lot like 'blah').

I'm open to suggestions on how to rework it.

As to fear immunity Inner Demons and Waking Nightmare could always apply on slept targets. Would be an easy enough change.

Insomnia is getting reworked a bit to prevent cycling sleep durations to perma-sleep an enemy. It's in my local copy already and I think it will prevent some cheese and make getting slept a bit better for the player.

The following changes are in trunk.

Code: Select all

Deactivating sustains no longer breaks psionic channels
Fix feedback tooltip
Mind damage from the summoner no longer damages thought-forms
Distortion bolt no longer rolls crit twice, damage calculations for explosion changed
Dreamforge no longer brainlocks every turn but has a chance to brainlock instead
Thought-forms can now spawn with technnique based egos (hopefully reducing the chance they'll spawn without an item)
Thought-forms in ascii are now easier to distinguish
Secondary bonuses from thought form unity moved to over mind, over mind range increase removed
Fixed restless night and nightmare interaction

None of these are straight nerfs really (aside from Dreamforge).

You said the class felt very tanky. What are the worst offenders in this area? Just Dismissal and Forge Shield?

Any thoughts on how to change Dreamscape?

I value your opinion Donkatsu and I'm open to any suggestions you have on how things could be better balanced. Generally I've written classes more conservatively then I did this one with the intention of balancing up (which resulted in over compensating on the TW and having to eventually nerf them back down). This go I figured I'd try the opposite approach and wait until I got feedback from people who have taken them to the end-game before pulling out the nerf hammer. They felt really strong to me early game but I wasn't sure they'd have enough through-put. Apparently they do so lets look at how we can dial in the difficulty on them

[donkatsu]

What if the Distortion status effect duration stacked with each application? Right now it's binary, like Gravity, but you could differentiate it a bit by having the bonus effect scale with how many turns of distortion are on the target.

I like the Inner Demons and Waking Nightmare always working on sleeping targets idea.

Dismissal and Forge Shield are both fine on their own because they will basically never stack with each other (Dismissal only works for small hits and Forge Shield only works for large hits). The problem is that they both stack with Antimagic Shield. I don't think there's any other class that can get Antimagic Shield, as well as another source of flat damage reduction that applies to every hit (the only ones I can think of are Paradox Mages, Corruptors, and Reavers, all ineligible for AM). Plus your AM shield is souped up compared to other classes because you're already stacking mindpower, so in the end you just can't get damaged by any hit doing <100 because of Dismissal, and any hit >150 or so gets cut down by a flat 150. The trick is nerfing the synergy without nerfing the individual talents too much. Maybe apply Dismissal before AM Shield, and have Forge Shield only block physical damage, but with a higher block value than currently?

Honestly the "tanky" comment was not so much balance commentary, as a playstyle feeling. It's like the inverse of a Corruptor, which has extreme offense and mediocre defense; my Solipsist build had extreme defense but mediocre offense. The difference is that with the extreme offense setup, you can still die. With only minor defense nerfs, player Solipsists will probably become killable too.

Some Dreamscape suggestions:
-End Dreamscape as soon as you kill enough projections to kill the target
-Reduce the projection interval to every 3 turns
-Projections get -50% resist all

I realized that with 5/5 Dreamscape, I'd basically be guaranteed to take more turns killing something inside the Dreamscape than out. If you Dreamscape a boss at full health, you only end up killing like two or three projections, damaging it for 20% of its health when the alternative was to not Dreamscape and damage for 100% of its health in the same amount of time. If you Dreamscape a boss that's at, say, 20% health, then you end up killing all of the projections but have to spend 40 turns inside the Dreamscape anyway, when you could have just finished off the boss in like 5 turns outside of the Dreamscape. I'm sure there's a sweet spot in between where Dreamscape actually saves time, but that spot is really hard to hit right now.

[SageAcrin]

If you want to be ambitious, you could have the different skills apply different distortion effects, which buff the other skills in different ways.

Have Distortion Bolt cause a form that converts some of Distortion damage to added AoE around the targets. Have the cone version cause Stun for a turn whenever the targets are hit with other distortion. That sort of thing.

That would be less linear and more synergistic. Might be a little hard to keep from getting out of control, but it sounds neat on paper.

[edge2054]

Interesting thoughts.

Dreamscape ending when you've done enough to kill it I considered, but I'm not sure what would happen if you dreamscaped a shielded target. Maybe it can just do call :die once it hits the threshold.

I don't know how I feel about -resist on dream projections. The caster already gets a big +damage bonus. I'd say one or the other but not both. Maybe negative resists would be better (let you cut through high resist targets). But that sounds like another paradox mage spell Keep in mind the player can get dreamscaped too and there's a bit of code magic in the dreamscape timed effect that makes the AI pretty efficient at using it as anyone that's woken a dreaming horror can attest too.

Distortions being less binary could be more interesting. I'll take a look at it.

I was considering cutting dismissal down to a 50% reduction but that might be to big of a nerf. I don't know yet. I didn't go Antimagic on my solipsist and I still died but I was super tanky even without antimagic shield. So I think Forge Shield and Dismissal both may need to be looked at.

[donkatsu]

Well, for Dreamscape, 100% of the target's current health becomes worth 10% of the total health. Since in its current state, your damage is basically doubled inside the dreamscape, let's say 50% of the target's current health is worth 10% of its total health. In terms of sheer offense, and ignoring the fact that AoE damage gets multiplied, that means you break even when you Dreamscape something when it's at 20% health. But then you only need to kill two projections, in which case 5/5 Dreamscape is a huge waste of time (unless it's changed to end early once you kill enough projections). If you Dreamscape at higher than 20%, then the increase in total life you need to damage outpaces your damage bonus, and you have to make it up with AoE, which is actually sort of hard to do in practice. You don't get to start until 4 turns in, and it's hard to hit more than once with Mind Sear because the projections naturally tend to spread out perpendicularly in their attempts to attack you. Hitting yourself with Distortion Bolt is devastating, so once a single projection gets close enough in your face, that option mostly goes out the window too. There are your dedicated AoE attacks, but you only get to use those every so often. -50% resist all sounds like a lot, and it is, but that's like 50-100% extra damage, when you're faced with up to 1000% more health.

So in the end, the offensive capabilities of Dreamscape are narrow. On the defensive, you're potentially taking up to 500% extra damage by the last few turns (50% * 10 projections). But I like that. I like the idea of having a character that's normally very tanky, but then being able to suddenly change the situation so that she's doing much more damage, at the expense of taking a lot of damage herself. Hence the suggestion to spawn projections faster.

When the player gets dreamscaped, do the player's projections avoid friendly fire? It was sort of hard to tell because, well, I was a Solipsist too. If they do, then I don't think it would be that bad for players even if Dreamscape gets buffed. I only ever lost one projection when getting Dreamscaped, and that was from a High Peak unique. In order to get instagibbed by Dreamscape, you'd have to lose ten. If you get Dreamscaped at 50% health, then yes, Dreamscape could potentially become actually deadly, but there are a lot of other things that are potentially deadly when you're already half dead.

[edge2054]

Fair points.

I've implemented closing dreamscape early and faster projection spawning. The projections do avoid friendly fire (ally compasion 10).

I've also made 5 points in distortion bolt turn off friendly fire for the distortion tree so doing AoE with distortion effects in the dreamscape should be much easier. The reason for this change was unrelated to dreamscapes (I've just gotten a lot of complaints about distortion bolt detonations and even though I thought they're fun, I guess not everyone does).

One thing I want to mention though is even though you had Dreamscape capped and really did give it a fair shake, you also didn't invest in the talents it gets the most synergy with. Namely... Nightmare, Restless Night, and Night Terror. Using Nightmare to start off your Dreamscape means every projection that spawns will spawn asleep with a powerful dot on it followed by a nuke at the end from Restless Night. Killing off the projection after that should be very easy and in turn will spawn a Night Terror which, while not hugely powerful, do add some damage as well as an extra target for any projections that are awake. Lucid Dreamer and Night Terror both will add more damage as well. Mind Linking the target before dreamscaping is also good.

The stuff above, while not strictly extra damage, is all damage that avoids being split up. Anyway I'm still considering the resist reduction or possibly cutting the projection hit points in half. But I think I'd like to hear some other people's experiences on it first.

[donkatsu]

True, there may be other builds that can take advantage of Dreamscape better. One of the nice things about Solipsists is how much potential build variation it has. Thanks again for making such a fun class.