Balancing solipsists (again)

[SageAcrin]

Hum, so you can sleepwalk and sleep eat but not effectively sleep fight.

Seems reasonable.

Do note that it'd need to be a special modifier and not just -100% alldamage, though. Or at least a very high -% alldamage, like 1000. That way, no one could break it with positive modifiers.

[lukep]

Or, it could just set damage to 0 at the same place as Dazed effect does right now. (which is before pretty much anything else)

[SageAcrin]

That's what I meant by special modifier.

[Omega Blue]

While the OP makes an interesting case for nerfing solipsists, closer analysis reveals two problematic areas:
1. The author clearly has a high level of skill in playing tome; and
2. The author made 3 voluntary choices when building the character: a) choosing a solipsist b) choosing the anti-magic route and c) going around in heavy armor.

When you have a high level of skill in playing the game, it becomes easier for you, and some combination of choices make it uninteresting. But you need to remember that the vast majority of tome players don't have that level of skill, so it's unfair to weaken these combos based on your level, since others may need them to win the game for a change.

To restore the challenge, there are a number of things you can do. First of all is to play the game at a more difficult level, such as nightmare and insane. Secondly, since the overpowered combos are results of voluntary choices, you can avoid one or more of these choices easy enough. Say, instead of going the anti-magic route, side with the grand corruptor to destroy zigur.

If, after all these, the game is still too easy, you can impose further restrictions on your characters:
1. Do not use magical weapons, armor, etc.
2. Do not use all of the stat points, class points, generic points, and category points whenever your character raises a level.

In conclusion, you can make the game more challenging for you by making choices so your characters aren't maximized.

[Velorien]

While the OP makes an interesting case for nerfing solipsists, closer analysis reveals two problematic areas:
1. The author clearly has a high level of skill in playing tome; and
2. The author made 3 voluntary choices when building the character: a) choosing a solipsist b) choosing the anti-magic route and c) going around in heavy armor.

When you have a high level of skill in playing the game, it becomes easier for you, and some combination of choices make it uninteresting. But you need to remember that the vast majority of tome players don't have that level of skill, so it's unfair to weaken these combos based on your level, since others may need them to win the game for a change.

To restore the challenge, there are a number of things you can do. First of all is to play the game at a more difficult level, such as nightmare and insane. Secondly, since the overpowered combos are results of voluntary choices, you can avoid one or more of these choices easy enough. Say, instead of going the anti-magic route, side with the grand corruptor to destroy zigur.

If, after all these, the game is still too easy, you can impose further restrictions on your characters:
1. Do not use magical weapons, armor, etc.
2. Do not use all of the stat points, class points, generic points, and category points whenever your character raises a level.

In conclusion, you can make the game more challenging for you by making choices so your characters aren't maximized.

It's worth noting that balancing solipsists isn't really about making a better playing experience for the OP specifically. It's about making a better playing experience for other solipsist players. A less experienced player (or an experienced one who's never played solipsist) may make choices that they think will result in a satisfying game, but will in fact make things too easy and therefore rob them of enjoyment. Sure, they can then start a new character that avoids the skills and combos they found to be broken, but which is better: to make everyone avoid broken skills, or to fix them?

The point about balancing is that it's meant to generate meaningful choices. If two skills are equally valuable, but in different ways, then it's meaningful to choose to invest your limited points in one over the other. If one skill is much less valuable (because it's broken and stops the game being fun), then it reduces player choice and lowers the quality of the game as a whole.

Also, while challenge runs are a very fun way to play the game, I don't think they should be considered a solution for balance issues. If the game isn't fun enough unless the player deliberately finds ways to make it so, this is a problem, not a feature.

[jotwebe]

But you need to remember that the vast majority of tome players don't have that level of skill, so it's unfair to weaken these combos based on your level, since others may need them to win the game for a change.

Have to say I disagree with this. It's a roguelike when all is said and done, winning is optional. Sure some variety in power is fine, but if following a specific build lets lot's of people win that otherwise couldn't, that build is overpowered.

Effectively that places too much of the skill and difficulty in choosing the right skill combinations and not enough in actually playing the game.

[HousePet]

Fungus is just too powerful.

[SageAcrin]

Fungus is sorta secondary to this discussion, but...

You know, if fungus is overpowered, making the first skill add a turn once every two talent levels instead of once every talent level is a pretty easy nerf, and you could even add a small amount of bonus regen for it to compensate. (Say, 10+5% per talent level bonus to the actual regen value.)

I think it's the constant regen chaining that make it overly good, if anything.

[HousePet]

I think that most Solopsist talents are too cheap.
I like the way that they are a tanky caster, but they can nuke things without worrying about running out of psi.
I'd like to see many of their talents have their psi costs increased by around 50%.
Psi is very easy to regenerate for a Solopsist, so increased costs would just slow their damage output a bit.

Costs are meaningless. They run fungus and the regen keeps them topped up on both psi and hp. That's why they can run in heavy armor all they want. Who cares about fatigue when you have +100 to your resource every turn?

On the other hand, push the costs too hard and fungus becomes a requirement rather than a choice.

This suggests to me that Fungus is rather central to the issue.

[supermini]

While the OP makes an interesting case for nerfing solipsists, closer analysis reveals two problematic areas:
1. The author clearly has a high level of skill in playing tome; and
2. The author made 3 voluntary choices when building the character: a) choosing a solipsist b) choosing the anti-magic route and c) going around in heavy armor.

c) is wrong. I went in light armor and took the mobility tree (mobile defense skill). You could also wear robe of spydre for the same effect. Heavy armor works as well because resource costs are moot after you run fungus.

I didn't make any outlandish choices when building a solipsist, except that I didn't pick dreamforge skill (which is considered a very powerful one). This is a very typical build, I think, because antimagic is a natural combo for solipsists.

When you have a high level of skill in playing the game, it becomes easier for you, and some combination of choices make it uninteresting. But you need to remember that the vast majority of tome players don't have that level of skill, so it's unfair to weaken these combos based on your level, since others may need them to win the game for a change.

I also can recognize the difference between a good combo and something that breaks the game, I think. If you take no damage with a certain combo, then winning or not winning the game is moot.

To restore the challenge, there are a number of things you can do. First of all is to play the game at a more difficult level, such as nightmare and insane. Secondly, since the overpowered combos are results of voluntary choices, you can avoid one or more of these choices easy enough. Say, instead of going the anti-magic route, side with the grand corruptor to destroy zigur.

I could go the opposite way and say that if you need a class to be broken to win the game, then you need to increase your skill level - but that would be rude and elitist, wouldn't it? So why are you making the same sort of argument?

My point wasn't to try to make the game harder for everyone, it's to help balance solipsists who have gone through several rebalances and still have issues.

[SageAcrin]

I think that most Solopsist talents are too cheap.
I like the way that they are a tanky caster, but they can nuke things without worrying about running out of psi.
I'd like to see many of their talents have their psi costs increased by around 50%.
Psi is very easy to regenerate for a Solopsist, so increased costs would just slow their damage output a bit.

Costs are meaningless. They run fungus and the regen keeps them topped up on both psi and hp. That's why they can run in heavy armor all they want. Who cares about fatigue when you have +100 to your resource every turn?

On the other hand, push the costs too hard and fungus becomes a requirement rather than a choice.

This suggests to me that Fungus is rather central to the issue.

If it were primary to the discussion, we'd be talking about Balancing Rogues (again). Instead, about one of the last couple dozen was AM at all, if I recall the statistics right.

Doesn't seem to be an issue on some classes. And it's a (semi)-universal skill. Therefore, it's secondary.

[supermini]

Fungus is sorta secondary to this discussion, but...

You know, if fungus is overpowered, making the first skill add a turn once every two talent levels instead of once every talent level is a pretty easy nerf, and you could even add a small amount of bonus regen for it to compensate. (Say, 10+5% per talent level bonus to the actual regen value.)

I think it's the constant regen chaining that make it overly good, if anything.

I agree.

[HousePet]

Reduce the psi regen from healing then.

[SageAcrin]

That's a possibility.

One of the ideas I've tossed around mentally is divorcing the Psi damage conversion rate from the actual Solipsism conversion rate.

Right now, they're the same rate. That is, the amount you take from damage incoming, in Psi, is the same percent as the healing you convert to Psi.

What if you, say, made it half as much healing conversion to Psi as damage conversion to Psi? Or two thirds?

Suddenly, 5ing Solipsism(the first skill in the Solipsism tree) is a lot more of use-fully capping it actually gives you a good Psi regen rate, while your Psi regeneration is rather lousy if you go for an optimal health/Psi balance.

Either way, it makes for a more interesting decision than the current one.

I'm not sure if this is necessarily safe to do with all the defensive nerfs listed in the opening, as it would make Solipsist rather hard to recover from heavy hits, but it's a thought.

[AIAndy]

I have checked the log from the solipsist I completed the game with last night to find out why he takes so low damage.

There are multiple reasons that work together:

1. Forge shield checks for its activation threshold before any damage reduction has taken place so it activates very often. It is a block so its damage reduction is applied before resists as well which does not make it too strong per se. I'd suggest to make it more like resolve and apply to further damage of the same type but not to the attack that triggers it and then check the trigger threshold after all resists and damage reductions so it only triggers when you really take a hit of more than 15% of your life (maybe reduce the threshold a bit to compensate).

2. Anti-magic shield is applied after resists. That is ok when the shield is not too strong (which it can get with enough mindpower) and the equilibrium cost is meaningful. But with fungus double regen the equilibrium cost is not meaningful.

3. Dismissal seems to dismiss all damage instead of half. I assume that that that ability is reliable for a lot of the survivability of solipsists in mid game when final damage amount (after resists and everything) is somewhere around mental save. In late game on the other hand it does not scale so well as mental save has strong diminishing returns while incoming damage gets higher and higher. It still works with the strong shields that reduce damage before dismissal but if that damage reduction is nerfed then dismissal will be weakened as well. I'd suggest to change that ability to roll against the power of the attack and not the damage but only reduce damage by 30% or so on success.

4. As others have already mentioned Forge Armor is too strong with 58 armor and 28 defense added in endgame. With half the amount (best by reducing the base amount and the scaling from mindpower) and as a separate sustain (so it has a meaningful cost) it should work.


The offensive power of solipsists in endgame is very strong as well with a good amount of control and debuffs. Increasing mind sear cooldown by 1 is a start but I don't think it will be enough, especially if Mental Tyranny stays as it is (distortion tree ends up as very strong damage, something is weird about the damage calculation of distortion bolt).