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dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 1:27 am
by dadito
WIP (I'll be updating it in the coming days)
  • I've been meaning to make a guide for Mindslayer since I became interested in them, but I was putting it off until I got a win (which came a few hours ago), so here it is
Winner
  • Took just under 14 hours to clear game (there was a lot of idle time too)
    Character has managed to kill Linaniil and Atamathon with minimal problems, and has also done the 500 Sludgenest walls achievement with no stairscumming needed
Deaths
  • First one was burrowing into an undiggable wall on necro pride and suffocating inside :lol:
    Second one was on first try on Atamathon with no dispel
Races recommended
  • Cornac (really good since 1.5 patch if you wanna get tinkers)
  • Shalore (Timeless amazing with Leaves Tide, Transcendent, Quick as Thought, Matter is Energy, Frenzied Focus)
  • Ogre (Not as good anymore since we don't get free infusion, empowered infusions are still really good on mindslayer though)
Talent guidepoints
  • Talent points
    Image

    Prodigies
    • lvl 30: Pain Enhancement System
      If you don't have Embers, choose between defensive prodigy (Draconic will, Cauterize, Spine of the World), or offensive (Superpower)

      lvl 42: Superpower
    Class talents
    • Absorption
    • Kinetic is best, it's worth it to max it around high 20's
    • Thermal is second priority since you're getting Transcendant for both
    • Charged it's worth it to get to shield spike breakpoint since you have Charged Strike, but I didn't end up using it all that much on my playthrough
    • Force Field do 2/5 at least as soon as possible, more points to taste

      Projection
    • The auras are good early for having a few ranged options, but they essentially become dispel padding late game
    • What you're really here is for frenzied focus, the most stupid skill mindslayer has, 4/5 it ASAP for breakpoint

      Psi-fighting
    • Telekinetic Smash is pretty good, 3/5 by midgame, more points to taste
    • Augmentation becomes retarded once you hit lvl 30, I max it as soon as possible, but early game you can probably do with a few points on it
    • Both Warding Weapon and Impale I leave for later, I max Warding since it blocks one physical attack every turn at >40% chance, and applies disarm on the mob that triggers it

      Focus
    • 1 point in pyrokinesis is all you want when you get transcendent pyrokinesis

      Augmented striking
    • You don't need more than 1 point in each of the skills, maybe 2 on the last one to have decent psi sustain

      Voracity
    • 4/5 Thermal Leech for the radius breakpoint, more points for lower cd (also if you get a mastery mindstar 5/5 gives 1 extra radius)

      Kinetic mastery (locked)
    • Investment on Transcendent to taste, it's probably worth it to max but I just didn't have enough points
    • 2/5 on Kinetic Surge for awesome 8 range movement skill that can go through 4 walls and can also get mobs away from you while stunning them
    • 4/5 on Deflect Projectiles for radius breakpoint, pretty good against steamgun classes
    • Investment to taste on Implode, the skill is really good, but I already had Implode from Naloren

      Thermal mastery (locked)
      This one is amazing, adds Flameshock effect to your Pyrokinesis (stun but with 70% damage reduction instead of 50%, and Weakened to Thermal Leech (another 57% damage reduction))
    • 5/5 transcendent for 11 turn duration so you can cast Thermal Leech 2 times if you maxed both
    • Tier 2 and 3 skills 1 point so you can get to the last skill on the tree
    • Thermal Balance is good for squeezing 1 extra turn or 2 from your forcefield
    Generics
    • Combat training
    • Max Thick Skin and Armor Training, float 3 points on weapon training so you can refund them when you switch to Exotic. Don't invest into accuracy if you can since you'll have more than enough at endgame

      Survival
    • Didn't have any spare points for this, if using something like Thalore it might be worth it to get a few points into Charm Mastery and 1 into Evasion

      Mindstar mastery
    • Invest here when you switch to mindstars

      Augmented mobility
    • The only good skills here are Quick as Thought and Telekinetic Leap, invest by taste[/b]

      Finer energy manipulations
    • 2/5 Realign for 2 phys cleanse
    • 1 point each in t2 and t3 (Matter is Energy is really good for getting a few more turns off Forcefield or to regen psi if you're really low)
    • Max Resonant Focus ASAP, boosts both your damage a lot and the stats you get from the TK gem that you use for Augmentation snapshotting

    Category points order
    • Inscription
    • Kinetic mastery/Inscription
    • Remaining option
    • Thermal mastery
    This is more taste, Charged mastery is also decent, but needs a lot of investement, so I went with Kinetic and Thermal since I find they're really good for survivability (especially Thermal)
Escorts
  • For this build you only really "need" to save 2 escorts (1 Warrior for Exotic and Alchemist betray for 1 Psiblade point), but the more escorts you save the more flexibility you'll have with generics, since they're very tight

    Don't buy Mindstar mastery on Zigur until you get the Psiblades point from the escort (otherwise the category ends up at 1.2 instead of 1.3). Also you need to buy all the steps, don't skip

    Other good escorts to save/betray
    • -Seer betray (Nature's Touch)
      -Temporal explorer betray (Dream Walk)
      -Thief (Piercing Sight/Charm mastery)
      -Tinker (Tinker category)
      -Warrior (Vitality/extra Exotic Weapon points)
    If you play Ogre/Shalore it's worth it to delay investing into your racials until you get all the rewards you want for betraying

Early game tips


When to switch to mindstars?
  • Float 3 points on Weapon Mastery until you either find good mindstars (t5-4) and a good exotic weapon, or you get Naloren
But why mindstars?
  • -Respectable damage
    -More survivability (Leaves Tide, Nature's Equilibrium)
    -Very high mindpower so your shit sticks
Playthrough highlights

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 6:58 am
by ster
Finally the theorycraft from discord comes into fruition. Pretty much all i'd change is a couple personal preference skills (does 5/5 frenzied focus get an extra radius point with mastery mindstars?) and to not abuse the snapshot bug so heavily.

e: fun trivia despite having a million and a half sustains you actually don't care about sustain removal since your shields and auras still spike (don't spike auras they waste a turn though) and aug/BTF/skate all have 0 time to restart.

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 11:09 am
by jenx
Please fix the augmentation bug darkgod

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 3:13 pm
by Mordy
Note that you don't need to unlock exotic with an escort to get 10/5 with the Naloreen prodigy. The extra points the prodigy give doesn't prevent you from investing 5 generics in the mastery and it unlocks it automatically.

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 3:15 pm
by St_ranger_er
Nice guide and videos! You probably may beat atamathon in 1st try, as i can saw you had healing infusion+heroism ready for use. BTW your playspeed is really fast, i'm often need to rewatch/hold pause to understand what's going on.

I'm often see, that you use movement infusion/heroism/Quick as Thought/etc. by mouseclicking on them. Did you try the shortcut hotkeys for it(with modifiers, like ctrl/shift/alt+1/2/3...)? For me, alt + 1/2/whatever is very useful for prebuff/combat utility talents.

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 3:18 pm
by dadito
I use mostly 1 to 6 and alt 1 to 4, everything else i just click
Mordy wrote:Note that you don't need to unlock exotic with an escort to get 10/5 with the Naloreen prodigy. The extra points the prodigy give doesn't prevent you from investing 5 generics in the mastery and it unlocks it automatically.
Is it true?, I always thought you had to max the skill before you get the prodigy

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 4:31 pm
by ster
jenx wrote:Please fix the augmentation bug darkgod

e: it got fixed and now suddenly this class has to worry about entropy

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 2:58 pm
by dadito

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 9:37 pm
by Effigy
Cool. I've been meaning to do a Mindslayer run. I may have to try this.

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 4:37 pm
by Tharsonius
So i guess prodigies are Pain Enhancement System and Legacy of the Naloren ? since i cant see it stated anywhere in the OP

anyway what would be interesting for me if this is considered a good mindslayer guide if you dont wanna/or cant use pain enhancement system? maybe youd like to add pointers for alternative builds which work without addon content or where the options are to build differently?

class is pretty weird and i didnt get into it much yet. so id like to try after the rework, but not if it is only good when bugusing



edit for comment below:

thanks, took some time for me reading your guide and wathing class talents ;) was helpful.

Thermal mastery (locked)
This one is amazing, adds Flameshock effect to your Pyrokinesis (stun but with 70% damage reduction instead of 50%, and Weakened to Charged Leech (another 57% damage reduction))
5/5 transcendent for 11 turn duration so you can cast Charged Leech 2 times if you maxed both


you mixed up charged leech with termal leech in this paragraph, i believe.

hf

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 4:54 pm
by dadito
If you don't have Embers dlc, i'd say another good prodigy to take would be a defensive one (cauterize, draconic will, spine), or superpower if you wanna go for more damage

Thanks for the typo, fixed

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 9:56 pm
by ster
PES is so strong on mindslayer it's hard to recommend even playing the class without it, but superpower works like a worse version of PES so it's not completely unusable

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 10:52 pm
by San0ix
Can I say that it's actually ridiculous that you didn't put 5 points into the second Ogre racial?
Being able to wield Naloren, another trident and a mindstar is just insane; and you greatly benefit from the improved infusions as well.
Replacing a mindstar for a trident should increase your damage per turn by more than 30% if you get one with half-decent egos.

Now, you might start wondering if going mind blades is even worth it. That is precisely why I excluded that from my build. The benefits are not worth those generics.

Dual wielding mind blades works, but it's by no means optimal once you get Naloren.


This is by far my biggest critique of this build. I would literally spell out every single difference between this build and mine if I mentioned all of them.
And once again, this works, but it is not optimal.
Let's see if you can still finish Insane with this when the Augmentation bug, which I assume you heavily abused, gets fixed.

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 11:08 pm
by ster
i beat insane without snapshotting with this and used double trident, it was notably weaker dps wise - i didn't get trident of the tides though because dragon dude wouldn't drop it (i also didn't use thermal mastery though which was probably the biggest difference)

again; your build uses antimagic so by definition it is complete garbage


e; http://te4.org/characters/208724/tome/2 ... 29c2602604 ignore the level and hexes unlock, i thought i500 was a good use of my time (it's not). also took tinkers which was a huge mistake but w/e

e: e: wow that build was awful. i'll get a shalore one done next week

Re: dado's mindstarslayer guide

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 11:12 pm
by San0ix
ster wrote:again; your build uses antimagic so by definition it is complete garbage
Ah yes, and because of that literally every other point is also garbage?

And you know what's good? Two tridents AND the benefits of a mind star! WOW! Think of the possibilities: a bunch of +phys damage and penetration, +healing mod or insane life leech with that life leech ring.