1.4.9 Ranged Mindslayer (Nightmare)

[Funkymoses]

Here's the character in the vault:
http://te4.org/characters/215406/tome/a ... 5c021f69ae

I wanted to run a tristar Mindslayer just to see what it was like, and because I found the kinetic/thermal/electric foci... with a Temporal Warden. So I vaulted 'em. This is the best case tristar mindslayer, then, and I was still kind of meh about it. OTOH this was my first Nightmare win and the only death was a stupid early one to the Gloom boss. After that it was a cruise, with zero Heartstart triggers.

PROS:
You're a tank inside of another tank
Highly focused mindpower build
Everything is massive AOE
Psi regen is also a solid attack

CONS:
Most of your skills have mediocre or worse range
Movement skills suck
Mindslayer design encourages a lot of annoying point floating
Mindstar focus "bonus" is an active detriment
Damage is mediocre late

*BASICS*

This character uses all the ranged attacks and uses a mindstar as a focus to pump up mindpower, mental crit, etc.

Antimagic is great on mindslayers because its flat damage reduction comes after psi-shield mitigation and it's a different energy bar than most of your skills. So get that.
Fungus is mandatory for an antimagic character without a way to mitigate equilibrium gain otherwise.
Mindstar Mastery is great and Leaves Tide is better, so get that.
All of the mastery categories have terrific skills in them, so get those too.

Since this is a generic-starved build with a ton of categories to unlock a Cornac was my pick, for a fourth infusion and greater focus on the various generic categories.

Other good races: Halfling (mindslayers don't have much status removal, like wading into hordes, and like bigger hp pools), Thaloren(as per usual w nature focused class), maybe Higher (there's an AOE spell w/radius 4 and 8 range so you can LOS snipe w/ them if that's still a thing).

Any of these will have to skimp on some key generics to unlock their race skills and will either have to forgo one of the Mastery trees (all of which are excellent) or run just three infusions all game.

----------------------CLASS SKILLS------------------------

Psionics / Psi-fighting
Psionics / Augmented Striking

This build doesn't use these trees, and the last time I used them was so long ago. Nevermind then. One note: you can float some points into Augmentation early to level up armor and maybe wear a shield or body armor you couldn't otherwise. (Fun fact: I didn't know the antimagic quest will strip you of all your arcane gear *immediately,* so i had to reskill during that fight to put some armor on.)


Psionics / Absorption

Most Mindslayer trees have three near-identical skills with a slightly different flavor; unusually, you do not have to have prior skills to get the second and third skills in these trees. You do need all three priors for the capstone. This leads to a lot of floating points. Just not in this category. These shields are the only damage mitigation mindslayers have and there is no reasonable build that does not go at least 3/3/3/0. You can run two of these at the same time. In practice this means Kinetic and Thermal are up almost all the time and you switch to Charged when you see blight/lightning/mind enemies. This switch is instant but there's a 12 turn cooldown on any shield you've spiked.

Kinetic Shield absorbs a percentage of incoming damage up to a certain maximum if that damage is physical/acid/nature/temporal. With three points in it, you can deactivate it and it will turn into a full damage shield worth twice the amount of damage it's absorbed over the past three turns. If you're thinking about doing this it's time to pop that movement infusion and GTFO.

RECOMMENDATION: two points immediately, a third by level ten, and a fourth late.

Thermal Shield identical to Kinetic shield except it applies to fire/cold/light/arcane. You'll have this up most of the time as the second shield since three of those damage types are relatively common.

RECOMMENDATION: two points by level 8 and a third soon after, luxury point late.

Charged Shield same deal, damage types are lightning/blight/darkness/mind. Float this up to five before taking on Storming The City and the Melinda crypt.

RECOMMENDATION: three points by level 15, pump it to five for the aforementioned areas, and then back down to three, with a luxury point late.

Forcefield. A powerful emergency button that will halve all incoming damage with just two points in it. Takes 5% of your psi round one, 10% round two, 15% round 3, etc. That will buy you five rounds if your psi is at 75% before deploying, and there are a number of mindslayer talents that can boost your psi mid-fight.

I did not use it because I didn't feel threatened, but at higher difficulties I'd definitely give it a look. A lot of mindslayer damage talents don't get anything out of their fifth point except a modest damage bump, and TBH there were many times I was frustrated that I had *too much* psi. Combined with psi shields and antimagic this has the potential to make you a tank inside of a tank inside of another tank.

RECOMMENDATION: two points if you feel squishy. Effectiveness drops off rapidly after that.

Psionics / Projection

First three talents are all sustains that add damage to your attacks (or passively damage opponents next to you if you have a mindstar or gem) and have an attack effect when you disengage them. They are instant to engage, so set them to autocast. They take a turn to fire. They do the exact same damage, with different patterns.

Kinetic Aura. Physical damage. When disengaged fires a beam of length six. Damage is the only thing that scales. Important early but increasingly bad late as both other auras have better patterns. (If this had range 8 it would be competitive.)

RECOMMENDATION: 2-3 points early, removing them once you have better options.

Thermal Aura. Fire damage. Fires a cone of radius six when disengaged. Somewhat underwhelming when you've got another fire skill that's 360 degrees and radius six, but since you're going to be hitting the reset button for fire a lot because of that skill it's worth a few points in. I maxed it late but that was just because I had points to put somewhere.

RECOMMENDATION: 2-3 points midgame but floatable, return to it later.

Kinetic Aura. Lightning damage. Same six range but unlike the other skills it scales well, chaining to an increasing number of enemies. At 5/5 you can hit six times. Those chains 1) can hit guys 7-10 squares away, which is unusual for mindslayer skills, 2) can hit guys around corners, and 3) can hit the same guy twice. An excellent attack skill and your bread and butter combat intro for much of the game.

RECOMMENDATION: max ASAP.

Frenzied Focus. Absurdly good on a weapon build. Worthless with mindstars.

RECOMMENDATION: ignore


Psionics / Focus

(Mostly) big AOE attacks that can inflict crosstier debuffs on the opponent. Each gets a special bonus when you are Transcendent in their category.

Mindlash. Low-range beam doing physical damage. Range starts at 3 and gets up to 6 at 4/5. Cooldown of just 3, but damage and pattern are weak. Important early--it'll get you through Trollmire--but quickly surpassed. Stuns when you're Kinetically Transcendent. W/ short cooldown could stunlock for a bit, which might be better on higher difficulty levels.

RECOMMENDATION: 3 points early, zero midgame, one when you need it to get Iron Will.

Pyrokinesis. Bread and butter AOE does excellent damage in a radius of 6. It's DOT, taking six turns to finish. That's lame, but the Transcendent version inflicts six rounds of Burning Shock, which is awesome. You can stack the burn and the shock burn, too. With high mindpower the flameshock lands consistently, and there's the potential enemies will blow their physical clears on the initial burn. Pyro lets you wade into the middle of vaults, laughing. 5 stars, would burn everything in sight again.

RECOMMENDATION: four points ASAP with a fifth when the minor damage bump seems the most attractive option.

Brain Storm. Overshadowed by Pyro but a decent skill. Short range (3, getting up to 5 at 4/5), radius 2 ball that gets up to 3 at 4/5. Inflicts a turn of brainlock, which puts one talent on cooldown and stops talents from cooling down. That's better that doing nothing (the other two skills) but the Transcendent version only adds blind, which is worse than the stuns the other two do.

RECOMMENDATION: filler skill that you can put some points in whenever you feel like you need another attack.

Iron Will. If you can find a bunch of effect resistances this is unnecessary, but good luck with that. Mindslayers are starved for debuff clears; at 5/5 this will give you close to 50% stun resist and a ~35% shot at clearing random mental effects. As a rule I take anything and everything that reduces the number of f---ing stuns I take.

RECOMMENDATION: start filling this in your 20s and 30s and 5/5 it relatively early.

Psionics / Voracity

Three different shortish-range radius effects that will do something nasty to nearby enemies while refilling your psi. Get up to range 4 at 4/5. Notably, these are more effective the less psi you have. Debuff durations go up slightly; damage and psi gained just about doubles at 0 psi. You'll want at least one of these as a panic button when you're low on psi. More effective at replenishing your psi with more dudes around.

Additional levels in these reduce cooldowns, hitting 10 at 5/5. You only need one of these, really.

Kinetic Leech. The worst! This leech has a slight slowing effect (max 24% at 5/5) and... drains stamina? You'd be hard-pressed to find a more useless effect in TOME.

RECOMMENDATION: no

Thermal Leech. The best! Does a reasonable amount of cold damage and has a high chance to freeze for up to 5 turns, with big iceblocks. That's a reliable shutdown for the majority of threats near you, and they're all a few hundred HP closer to death. One caveat: frozen characters can't take additional debuffs so pyro-->leech-->transcendent-->pyro won't apply your flameshock. Burning enemies inside an iceblock will continue to burn, though, because Reasons.

RECOMMENDATION: a couple points immediately and get it up to 4 by level 20.

Charged Leech. The mediocrest! Does lightning damage and at max levels has about a 2/3rds chance to daze for three turns. Iceblocks last longer and if a dazed opponent is burning he'll wake up next turn.

RECOMMENDATION: skip, but not as hard as kinetic

Insatiable. I never had psi problems so I ignored this. If you don't take Thermal Mastery YMMV, but take Thermal Mastery.

RECOMMENDATION: skip

Psionics / Kinetic Mastery

Oh yeah, here we go. Each of the mastery categories has a cooldown reset for its relevant skills and at least one awesome skill in addition. Kinetic is probably the weakest and it's still pretty good.

Transcendent Telekinesis. The transcendent talents are all pretty much the same, but they are extensive:

1. Resets cooldowns for Kinetic Shield, Aura, Strike, and Mindlash. You're probably only using the shield so this isn't great, but if you're in a tight spot you can pop your kinetic shield, go Transcendent, and immediately get your shield back up.
2. Increases the range of your aura effects. I did not ever notice this was happening. It does not increase range on the spikes.
3. Doubles your kinetic shield absorption and lets it absorb 100% of incoming damage. Obviously pretty terrific if you're in a tight spot.
4. Adds stun to Mindlash, sleep to Leech, and a sweep to the strike
5. Adds a reasonable amount of phys damage and phys penetration.

Additional levels increase the number of turns this lasts and the damage/pen. Possibly worth it if you're focusing on one Mastery. This build has all three and was fine leaving each of the Transcendents at 1/5.

RECOMMENDATION: 1 point as soon as you unlock it.

Kinetic Surge. Terrific, versatile talent. You can cast it on yourself to teleport, doing damage to anything you run through. You can cast it on yourself to bust down walls, which you can use to immediately slash LOS down to just one or a few enemies. You can cast it on an adjacent enemy to throw them, which penetrates a big chunk of knockback resistance, stuns for four turns, and does moderate damage to that enemy and anyone around him. Open a chest and get two melee rares? One of them is now eight squares away. This makes the final battle way more manageable. Toss one of the bosses into a corner and go to town on the remaining one.

One point gets a range of 6, two a range of 8, four a range of 9.

RECOMMENDATION: two points as soon as you can.

Deflect Projectiles. A one point speedbump on the way to Implode because I didn't have the points. Sometimes people shooting at you aim at another square, and if you deactivate it you can take all the projectiles you can see and hurl them at somebody else. I never used this, but I sustained it because I had no psi problems and it was a little damage mitigation.

RECOMMENDATION: one point.

Implode. Your best and pretty much only single-target skill, implode debuffs a target with a whopping 50% slow effect, pins them, and damages them. At high levels of mindpower this can get up to 7-8 turns. This isn't necessary early as your DOT and burning shock will take down most early bosses, but by the time you get to the East this is a priority.

RECOMMENDATION: you can skill this late but by the time you're going after the Prides it should be 5/5.

Psionics / Thermal Mastery

Transcendent Pyrokinesis. Same effects as T.Telekinesis. Since it resets pyro and adds flameshock to it you'll use it a ton. More worthy of pumping because the effect it adds to Thermal Leech--the best leech--is damage reduction that can get up to ~60%. A Pyro focused build should probably max this. This is not that.

RECOMMENDATION: one point ASAP.

Brainfreeze. Single target cold damage with short range (4 ranging up to 6) that will brainlock opponents for 4 rounds. Damage is decent and brainlocking helps you keep guys stunlocked after they've been hit with pyro, but it's a filler skill since it doesn't have great single target damage.

RECOMMENDATION: one point.

Heat Shift. Big AOE, moderate range, low damage, many effects. Will pin, disarm, and slash armor and saves for anyone in the area of effect. I pumped it late in case I couldn't land my effects on High Peak bosses and the final battle, but never used it.

RECOMMENDATION: one point, plus luxury points.

Thermal Balance. Panic button that immediately restores you to 50% psi... oh and it also does a bucket of damage to a huge area. Obviates any need for voracity or other leeches. Yes sir. Unconventional "cost": resets your psi to 50% no matter what it is now. It's another big AOE effect that should be doing mostly cold damage. I say "should" because at max psi it does all fire damage and at 0 it does all cold damage. 4 radius and damage on par with your other skills despite also being a manasurge rune.

RECOMMENDATION: one point immediately and then bump it when it feels like the best option for damage.

Psionics / Charged Mastery

Transcendent Electrokinesis. The usual cooldown resets and damage bump. Since you'll be casting Charged Aura a bunch this will see some use. Adds blindness to Brain Storm and a weak (30% max) confusion effect to the mediocre Charged Leech.

Thought Sense. Precognition/Track for Mindslayers. Adds a fair pile of defense and a charge focused build might put points in it; for this build it's a speedbump. Apparently this kind of skill is critical at higher difficulty levels, so it's got that going for it.

Static Net. Hell yes. This is a massive DOT that has the best range you've got (8 plus the 4 radius), lasts seven turns, and inflicts ~40% slow at max levels. Also it adds ~100 lightning damage to the melee attacks you're making. The DOT plus the slow is awesome. Every turn an enemy is in it, the slow re-applies. You cannot clear it, and it lasts five turns, so it's basically an un-avoidable 40% slow for 7-12 turns. Also it can get in over a thousand damage as it does this.

RECOMMENDATION: max immediately.

Heartstart. Heroism/Blurred Mortality-ish effect for mindslayers. If you go under 1 hit point it clears stun/freeze/daze and allows you to survive at a few hundred negative HP for a few turns. Mindslayers are vulnerable to huge crits that burn through their shields and this is an extra few hundred HP for a class that needs it and has the ability to shield-spike and crit-heal back to hale and hearty. There's a big breakpoint at 2 points that gets you around 300 HP and three turns by the endgame. I didn't put more in because this never triggered but I'd think about it on higher difficulty levels.

RECOMMENDATION: two points as soon as you can spare them.

----------------------GENERICS------------------------

Technique / Combat Training

Until you get a few levels in Mindstar Mastery and 3 decent mindstars you're going to be running a two-hander as your focus, so you'll want to float a few points in weapon mastery until it's time to psiblades it. Other than that the usual 5/5 in thick skin and somewhere between 1 and 3 in armor training, depending on what you run across. I went with 2 because I was running a shield until it was tristar time.

Cunning / Survival

Nope. Hope to get a Piercing Sight point from a Thief Escort.

Psionic / Augmented Mobility

Skate. Minor movement speed bump and major knockback malus. Mindslayers suck at moving around but even so this isn't worth a bump. You should sustain it, especially early. You're going to need to kite some enemies.

Quick as Thought. At 5/5 this is a 20%+ crit increase and 50%+ global speed for 5-6 turns for 40 psi. That's a steep cost early and you'll have to carefully manage when that's affordable. By midgame you can set it on autocast on enemy sighted.

RECOMMENDATION: max it. I maxed it early because I didn't have much else to spend it on.

Mindhook. You have no interest in dragging one enemy to you.

RECOMMENDATION: one speedbump point.

Telekinetic Leap. It's a teleport, and you should always, always get whatever teleports you can. It's a sucky one that does nothing but move you and that generally a short distance, but all teleports are good. I could only put 2 points in it, which gets you a range of 5.

Psionic / Finer Energy Manipulations

Realign. Heal that can crit and clears physical debuffs. You get two clears at 2/5 and that's where I left it.

RECOMMENDATION: 2 points immediately.

Reshape Weapons/Armor. Doesn't effect mindstars. Does give you an armor bump and some fatigue relief. (Fatigue is 2x on psi.) I accidentally put a point in that couldn't be removed and by the end of the game it was worth 11 armor and -5% fatigue and might have actually been worth it.

RECOMMENDATION: sure, one point.

Matter is Energy. Sacrifice a gem for psi and get the imbued effect of the gem for a few turns. Thermal Mastery and a leech makes this redundant. Also it takes a turn and does (almost nothing) but restore psi. Also we're out of generics.

RECOMMENDATION: skip

Resonant Focus. The mindhook effect of mindstars is an outright detriment and you'd be crazy to want to make it more common.

RECOMMENDATION: skip

Wild Gift / Mindstar Mastery

Psiblades. At 1.2 mastery 5/5 will nearly double the mindpower, WIL, and CUN you get off your three(!) mindstars. Also your massive stacks of WIL and CUN will make your bump attacks reasonably effective when that's required.

RECOMMENDATION: get to 3/5 ASAP and fill it out late.

Thorn Grab. Unusable until you get Fungus up and running, but once you do it's an instant-speed melee attack that imposes a 20% slow for 10 turns and does some damage in a resource you don't use much. Not bad for a point.

RECOMMENDATION: One point after you get fungus filled out.

Leaves Tide. Your massive mindpower stack makes this silly overpowered. At 3/5 you get 7 turns of ~40% damage negation and 50 points a turn of bleeding damage.

RECOMMENDATION: Three points once you're in the late 30s.

Nature's Equilibrium. I didn't put a point in this but I probably should have instead of getting the last one in antimagic shield. It's a melee attack that heals a reasonable amount, and cheap heals are always good. Mindslayers in particular tend to eat the occasional blast of damage and not much else so it's something that can get you back to full HP in conjunction with a couple other things as you hide under your spike shield.

RECOMMENDATION: one point late.

Wild Gift / Fungus

Unlock this with your level 20 cat point.

Get Wild Growth to 5/5 and find the biggest regen you can find, which should be pretty damn big since your WIL will be off the charts. Fungal growth is a speed bump; Ancestral Life means that 1) popping a regen is essentially instant and 2) regen drains 1-2 equilibrium a turn. Get it to 3/5 so you can keep Antimagic Shield up. Sudden Growth is a 6-700 point heal if your regen is up and is definitely worthy of one point.

Wild Gift / Antimagic

Necessary defense for a class with no damage spike mitigation; antimagic plus fungus helps you stay at max HP so that the massive crits you will inevitably take don't kill you.

Resolve. Once you take damage of a type (other than physical or mind) you get a seven-turn damage resistance. Also gives you EQ if your antimagic shield is down, and it will go down despite Fungus. You get a free point for going AM. At 5/5 this is about ~40%. Negatives: triggers after you take damage the first time, and will be useless if you get hit with a different element next. Great against drakes; not so great against advanced Wyrmics. This was still my best option with late generics.

RECOMMENDATION: You get a free point; fill it out after AM shield is up to 4 and fungus is up and running.

Silence. Powerful AOE silence that hits a radius of 7 and duration of 4 with two points. 4/5 is the next breakpoint, which gives you an extra turn. I stuck with two points and dumped the rest into resolve.

RECOMMENDATION: two points quickly.

Antimagic Shield. The reason you're here. AM shield applies after psi shields and *resistances*. With resolve probably capping your resists for any mono-damage there won't be a ton left over to mitigate and AM shield can usually eat the rest of anything minor. This is key for keeping that HP maxed as you wait to get thunked by a crit.

RECOMMENDATION: get to four points ASAP. Last one is a luxury point since it doesn't give you very much.

Mana Clash. I didn't have the spare points to invest in this, but I might regret that since the final battle was a beast for reasons I'll go into later. Clash turns a portion of opposition spellcaster's mana/vim/pos/neg energy into arcane damage. Unfortunately, any boss-level caster in this game has absurd resource pools and will never be impacted by that resource loss. So you've got a decent caster-only 10 range poke that's on par with your other offense but sucks EQ you want to avoid using so the shield stays up.

RECOMMENDATION: skip.

--------------------------STATS, PRODIGIES, INFUSIONS, AND MISC CAT STUFF-----------------------------

Cat unlock order: Thermal (early pyro reset, psi reset at level 22) and Charged(aura reset) at 10 if you're a Cornac, with Fungus following at 20 and Kinetic/infusion with your last two. If you're a different race, Thermal, Fungus, two of Charged/Kinetic/infusion.

Mindstarslayer is a focused class that has 0 use for magic and dex so stats are pretty easy: max WIL and CUN, put enough into CON to get to 5/5 thick skin, and put the rest in strength so you can get Pain Enhancement Systems. CON sucks less on Mindslayers because their HP pool is their only defense against spikes.

You're not going to have great options with your level 30 Prodigy. Draconic Will won't be available for a while and the unlocked WIL/CUN options aren't great. I went with Spell Feedback because a 35% fail rate for opposition bosses who hit you with spells can buy you critical turns and I wasn't actually getting a ton of status effects for whatever reason. Spine of the World is a candidate if you've already got 50 CON.

At 42, Pain Enhancement System all day every day. You crit a ton and everything scales off mindpower, which PES will take to silly levels.

Infusions: Movement is obvious for many reasons. Mindslayers aren't great at moving around and don't have a bunch of clears. Healing is better than Regen early, and then once fungus gets up run the biggest regen you can find. It should be pretty damn big. I kept a wild around to clear stuns, and only unlocked the fourth infusion after Wyrm Bile. That was Heroism, for the same reasons that Heartstart is good.

Gear is pretty obvious: anything that boosts mindpower. Try to get that extra 50% or so stun immunity, because a stun free life is a good life. I ditched Crimson Robe, an artifact that's perfect for high level psi classes, for Chromatic Harness because it just about maxed my blindness immunity and took stun to 100. Resists are lower priority because Resolve will take a lot of them to cap a lot of the time. "Reduces incoming crit damage" is also something to look out for.

--------------------------ERRATA, Qs, COMMENTS-----------------------------

1. Final boss battle was *brutal* because Argoniel appeared to have a zero-cooldown Spine of the World that prevented me from applying burns to her. Is this as intended? I was super frustrated as I waited for SotW to expire so I could get a pyro in and then it would be back the next turn. I ended up bump attacking her a lot, which seems odd. Killing her took forever. Good thing Mindslayers are tanks inside tanks.
2. OTOH using Kinetic Surge to hurl her across the room was awesome. I got teleported away by Elandar but I managed to keep Aeryn alive w/ some help from Nature's Touch despite doing pathetic damage.
3. Q: can you get two different sets when wielding a wyrm mindstar in a tristar configuration?
4. While I like the design of the class a lot, the mindstar pull effect sucks out loud. I'd rather have a focused mindstar do absolutely nothing. Not only does the pull sometimes bring dangerous enemies you were trying to engage at range to you, it doesn't even keep them on the same side. You can get boxed in by a "feature" of the class. Unless that's an intentional nerf to a powerful strategy it needs a redesign.
5. Suggestion: mindhook works better if you have a mindstar equipped. Gives a fungus like speed bonus to the skill and increases its range while applying some sort of mental effect.

[ster]

The only mind you slayed with this guide was mine. Congrats for salvaging a run with tristar i guess since it's one of the few setups that actively hinders your character with the pulling.

e:

--------------------------ERRATA, Qs, COMMENTS-----------------------------

1. Final boss battle was *brutal* because Argoniel appeared to have a zero-cooldown Spine of the World that prevented me from applying burns to her. Is this as intended? I was super frustrated as I waited for SotW to expire so I could get a pyro in and then it would be back the next turn. I ended up bump attacking her a lot, which seems odd. Killing her took forever. Good thing Mindslayers are tanks inside tanks.
2. OTOH using Kinetic Surge to hurl her across the room was awesome. I got teleported away by Elandar but I managed to keep Aeryn alive w/ some help from Nature's Touch despite doing pathetic damage.
3. Q: can you get two different sets when wielding a wyrm mindstar in a tristar configuration?
4. While I like the design of the class a lot, the mindstar pull effect sucks out loud. I'd rather have a focused mindstar do absolutely nothing. Not only does the pull sometimes bring dangerous enemies you were trying to engage at range to you, it doesn't even keep them on the same side. You can get boxed in by a "feature" of the class. Unless that's an intentional nerf to a powerful strategy it needs a redesign.
5. Suggestion: mindhook works better if you have a mindstar equipped. Gives a fungus like speed bonus to the skill and increases its range while applying some sort of mental effect.

1. spine of the world has no cooldown at all, yes. you can inflict 1 effect before it goes off but if it's like grapple or daze that breaks easily it would look like it was infinite
2. kinetic surge is amazing and i wish i'd learned to target it properly earlier, throwing dudes 5 walls away gives you ages to recover since the AI is so bad at pathfinding back to you
3. iirc tk mindstar doesn't give set bonuses except for the 3 foci, might be wrong here though. you can form any amount of sets with randart mindstars that have matching properties though
4. mindslayer was reworked from a class where mindstars were the only real option to one where 2h weapons are the only real option since tk mindstars were nerfed to the ground. personally i would just make them attack like normal weapons in the slot since yeah it's bad. also turn off beyond the flesh so the pull doesn't happen.

[Funkymoses]

Not everything has to be minmaxed to be interesting.

[Number43]

Um, why would you take PES but not put points into augmentation?

[Tasidar]

Mana clash is pretty good vs Vim users.

[ster]

You can also just kill said vim users given that this class completely ignores bone shield/fearscape anyway and doesn't have issues tanking a soul rot or two. Incidentally this doesn't give you any of the horrible drawbacks of antimagic (also aura of silence is better anyway if you absolutely have to pick AM)

[Number43]

And mindslayers have enough great use for generic points, I wouldn't put points into something just for fighting vim users.