So what would a psionic mindstar tree look like?

[Frumple]

Th'current mindstar discussion leads me to thinkin'... what do people think when they think of a psionic mindstar tree? What are they expecting from it, or what is the first set of talents or iconic abilities/themes that come to mind?

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My own initial ruminations spat out this:

Extend Focus - Active - one-two turn cooldown
Make a melee attack at any enemy in 2,2,3,3,4,4,5 range (further extended by reach, if mindslayer) at 33-75% attack power. If both attacks land, gain the psionic harmony buff for 2,3,4-etc. turns. Psionic harmony provides a stacking bonus to the damage you do with mindstars and allows your attacks to deal a stacking 1% mind damage to enemies in a 1,1,2,2,3,3,4 radius. Stacks tlvl*2 times.

Harmonic Synchronicity - Passive
Increases mindstar stat multiplier by 1.5*tlvl% for every power source your worn mindstars share.
At level two, you gain tlvl (tlvl/2?) accuracy for every stack of psionic harmony you have.
At level three, while harmony is active, your mindstar attacks gain X% increase in damage for every stack of psionic cacophony inflicted on an enemy.
At level four, while harmony is active, you gain X(probably a simple raw tlvl)% mind and nature resistance penetration for every stack of destabilization inflicted on an enemy.
At level five, while harmony is active, you gain an X% chance to instakill non-boss enemies for every stack of cacophony and destabilization inflicted upon them (probably cap out at a 15-20% chance with full stacks of both).

Cacophony - Active - Long-ish cooldown, about on par with the mindslayer frenzied psifighting.
Temporarily disarm yourself in exchange for your mindstars automatically attacking 1,1,2,2,3,3,4 enemies per turn in a radius of 1+tlvl for a duration of 1+tlvl. Enemies struck by these attacks gain the psionic cacophony debuff, which is a low duration status effect that provides a stacking debuff to saves. While cacophony is active, you may activate Extend Focus to direct the cacophony at a specific enemy for a turn, inflicting all attacks for that round on them. Doing so reduces the frenzy's duration by an extra turn and grants you harmony as per extend focus.

Destabilization - Sustained
Your mastery of mindstar harmonics has enabled you to disrupt your foes very essence. Every strike you make against enemies reduces their resistances by (.5 or 1)%/tlvl for (raw tlvl) turns, stacking up to 5 times. Drains (6-raw tlvl, min 1) psi per hit.

Numbers tentative, of course. The general idea is to have something that's a slight inversion of the current mindstar mastery (by being much more active in use, as well as primarily debuff/offense related, instead of defensive) and somewhat parallel in usage to the staff combat/heat tree synergy alchemists have -- something you do in between other actions to add damage/utility/etc. to your overall plan action. The emphasis on stacking effects is something fairly unique, and somewhat fits the half-hearted musical/sound theme of the tree (rising to a crescendo, etc.).

Extend focus fills the niche of channel staff, while being closer range as generally befits the psion modus operandi. It's also somewhat careful to avoid the issue with channel staff where it's almost always better to be using CS over a regular melee attack, by having a lower base damage and non-zero CD. The buff would roughly come out as somewhat weaker than the psiblade's boost (at an equivalent tlvl) in regards to damage bonus (i.e. physpower boost), due to the additional ball damage that comes from it as well as the further boost that could come from the second tier talent.

Harmonic synchronicity is intended to be a sort of tailor-it-to-your-investment passive, where you put points into it to match how far you go into the tree. It's also intended to reward synergistic usage of your other talents, obviously, by adding functionality based on how may other talent effects you have 'on the field', so to speak.

Cacophony is a frenzied psifighting/flurry fusion, particularly intended to benefit less melee-centric mindstar users (by letting them worry about other things and still get some melee attacks in, at the cost of being reduced to punching things for the duration). The interaction with EF would let you exchange duration for focused damage (without it, any excess attacks if there were limited enemies would probably be wasted) and a debuff spike, which is a mechanic I can't recall seeing much use (the rogue's poison thingy is about the only one I can think of... maybe the reaver's cyst burst, as well.).

Destabilization is a fairly obvious wildfire/etc. riff, though tailored to fit the tree's general theme of ramping effect. The general resistance reduction (definitely intended to be more lower than the 50% resist pen its inspirations hit) benefits the generally more varied attack and damage types mindstars bring to the board, as well as the variance in damage types the likely users would have access to. With a higher level synchro talent, it'd also allow for fairly reliable chaff-clearing during tough fights.

The general theme of the tree is intended to be one of dynamism and tempo, to try to riff on the wilder, more natural essence of dual-wielding mindstars, as opposed to the more measured technique based dual wielding or more direct vim based style.

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Thoughts? Other ideas? The initial questions at the top of the post still stand

[AlexanderR]

You missed the most important part - what should be removed from Mindstar Mastery? Having both this and old tree intact would result in either in taking both (for further damage/mindpower boost) or ignoring both by virtually everyone. Also what's wrong about existing tree? It already allows to fill space between primary attacks with somewhat meaningful bump-attacks.

[SageAcrin]

Oh, that's simple. Make Synchronicity a sustain, and have it disrupt Psiblades. That doesn't seem too hard to handwave some fluff for.

The concept here seems interesting, but very hard to actually put a value on for a player. It seems okay on balance, but it's really hard to read how actually good it is, which will make players kinda shy away from it, I suspect.

Basically, the ideas are nice, but things like the target status focus(which is quite heavy, and quite confusing, and going to be very hard to describe in a tooltip due to being impacted by multiple status) and the forced unequip(which makes players have to worry about constantly losing their support effects, and isn't really required for the concept; Just lower the random attacks to compensate) are complexity mostly for its own sake.

Oh, and the first skill doesn't compare well to Channel Staff, which functions very similarly, with weapons that are surprisingly not too different. I'd say something more like (0.9,1.5) for that range set, which makes it start out a bit better than a normal physical and end out notably higher, but it wouldn't ever get Channel Staff's high range.

[Frumple]

SA ninja'd me re: overlap, heh. Just make it so something disables or overrides psiblades, sorta' like how gestures overwrites the base melee attack. I wouldn't actually see much of a problem with still being able to use the other mindstar mastery talents, but psiblades stacking up would indeed be an issue.

As for the existing tree, nothing's wrong with it, per se. It's just that the fact that it's an equilibrium talent limits it a bit (no undead), and the fact that it's non-arcane locked (at least initially) limits it in other ways, which is generally the primary complaint (as the other current mindstar related discussion has noted). More importantly than that, the question isn't what's wrong with mindstar mastery, but what a psionic mindstar tree would look like, what would be interesting

There's been a degree of call for one since mindstars and the mindstar mastery tree came around, after all. Hopefully we can get some other ideas or visions for what a psionic powered mindstar tree would look like.

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In regards to the damage on EF... maybe just make it instant instead of increasing the damage, or something, perhaps a partial turn instead of full. Ideally, it's a low cost, low cooldown talent, and I'd really like to avoid the situation where it's categorically better to use extend instead of melee in more-or-less every circumstance, as it currently is with channel.

Regarding the disarm, presumably you wouldn't lose the mindstar's bonuses or whatev' while it's up, just be unable to melee with them (though you could still punch, heh). Thematically, the stars are flapping about whacking things for the duration, and mostly outside of your control. This is partially to compensate for gaining access to a couple of low CD ranged mini-flurries during the duration, heh.

As for complexity for complexity's sake... yeah, maybe a little I like interesting mechanics and moving pieces and prefer to avoid stuff that's just damtype swapped copies or whatnot (turning cacophony into a ranged frenzied psifighting, ferex, though the associated debuff would help counter that, somewhat), when it's possible. Not sure what you mean by the target status focus, though.

Good point about the evaluation difficulty. I'd hope solid tooltips would help mitigate that issue, but... maybe not. The descriptions I gave certainly weren't final passes, heh.

[SageAcrin]

In regards to the damage on EF... maybe just make it instant instead of increasing the damage, or something, perhaps a partial turn instead of full. Ideally, it's a low cost, low cooldown talent, and I'd really like to avoid the situation where it's categorically better to use extend instead of melee in more-or-less every circumstance, as it currently is with channel.

That's an idea, too. I respect not wanting to make it a Channel Staff clone, and that's a good enough way.

Maybe just have it be flat rate 60% delay or something.

Regarding the disarm, presumably you wouldn't lose the mindstar's bonuses or whatev' while it's up, just be unable to melee with them (though you could still punch, heh).

So not quite Disarm then. I'm pretty sure that the actual Disarm status removes the weapon for the duration, including bonuses-at least, I'm pretty sure I made Elandar very unhappy by disarming him a few times.

Still, probably not that hard to code as a difference, and it does make sense for it to be functionally different.

[Sedrahl]

I feel like it's unnecessarily elaborate for a mastery tree, and doesn't cover the necessities. It can't really be a mastery without the psiblades equivalent, bolstering Physical Power, %damage, and the modifier/stat/mindpower multiplier, as the t1 generic. That is your meat-and-potatoes melee sustain, and gives you everything you need for respectable melee damage in 5 points. Adding too much synergy or focus is a bad idea because it will cause a limitation in playstyles, classes are meant to be defined by their talent trees and not their mastery after all, the intention is for one Mindstar melee psionic to be able to potentially fight very differently from another. (Although it's a safe guess that both will involve some degree of lightsabers and bumping.)

Also, I really think it should stick to either being passive/sustained enhancements or melee actives, like the Gesture and Psiblades trees. The general idea is that it's a tree for psionic melee combat using mindstars, psionics already have plenty of ranged options through their class talents, and the "mindstars attacking on their own" thing is dangerously close to encroaching Mindslayer's primary quirk. Turning their weapon mastery into yet another set of ranged attacks also just seems like a bad idea, and the self-disarm stuff further aggravates that issue by essentially forcing you to play caster part-time when it's supposed to be a tree focused on melee prowess.

The limitations of being a Wild Gift aside, I feel like the Mindstar Mastery tree handled things pretty well. If you just want your damage boost you can get your 5 points in Psi Blades and get out, and if you have some extra points it has some melee utility talents as well. Sure it's generic, but it's supposed to be generic, you have class talents after all.

[Frumple]

I feel like it's unnecessarily elaborate for a mastery tree, and doesn't cover the necessities. It can't really be a mastery without the psiblades equivalent, bolstering Physical Power, %damage, and the modifier/stat/mindpower multiplier, as the t1 generic. That is your meat-and-potatoes melee sustain, and gives you everything you need for respectable melee damage in 5 points. Adding too much synergy or focus is a bad idea because it will cause a limitation in playstyles, classes are meant to be defined by their talent trees and not their mastery after all, the intention is for one Mindstar melee psionic to be able to potentially fight very differently from another. (Although it's a safe guess that both will involve some degree of lightsabers and bumping.)

First, thanks for the response! Criticism is a good thing

Second: *fist shake* Staff combat! You can certainly do a mastery tree without the first tier talent doing all that junk -- stat/mindpower multipliers especially are something I'd rather see kept unique to mindstar mastery (you only see it partially in the gestures tree -- and its t3 talent, to boot -- and no where else.). Including them makes turning your weapons into stat sticks too attractive, imo, and part of what I'd like to see in a mindstar tree is something to disincentivize that and make the mindstars more than just something you passively boost your other talents with (gestures is particularly bad about that, and it seems that many are investing in psiblades and nothing else, and not for the melee.). Psiblades doesn't actually encourage you to bump things at all... gestures, at least, manages that via its t2.

In this case, the basic physdam/percentile damage boost is split between the first and second talents and modifier boost regulated to t2 (which I'm still cool with, as it's weapon focused instead of a general stat boost), basically splitting the difference between staff combat and mindstar mastery. In exchange, it gets a shattering impact light in the first talent and a quick limited range melee attack. Toned back/support channel staff and a neat quirk, and it's still got "the necessities" of a mastery tree (namely a semi-passive damage boost for the tree's weapon).

I'd like to think that a tree along the lines of the one outlined above would be opening things up for a mindstar melee to play notably different from the other ones (which, as you noted, are basically passive and/or heavily melee-range focused), while still allowing (and indeed, incentivizing) for bump attacks.

As for playstyle, the general idea of the tree when you're not strongly investing in it is to either frontload, backload, or spike -- 3/2/0, 1/1/3+/1+, 1/4/-/3+. In the first case, you get your damage/accuracy and modifier and go off and beat on things. In the second, you use it as a strong group debuff, providing temporary save/resistance shred while you unload with other things. In the last, you crack open the full buff/debuff spread and get some heavy crowd control out of it (mostly by instakilling the chaff), while still getting a strong modifier boost and a heavy damage increase via resistance shred and penetration.

All of them are incentivized to continue bumping when possible, to get out more destabilization stacks or spread the AoE harmony love around. Any of those is fairly distinct, and they're certainly differentiated from mindstar mastery itself (with a notable offensive/debuff lean instead of defensive bias, as well as being considerably more active. It might fit to regulate the range to leaves tide level, though, if keeping it in a similar range bracket is desirable. EF's already there, so it'd just mean reigning back cacophony somewhat.) and gestures (which is very passive, something that T4 generally discourages in melee trees. Gestures kinda' isn't a melee tree -- more a defensive/utility tree -- but still.).

... I'll give the elaborate bit, though, as I did to Sage. I really like mechanically interesting talents and tree interactions, heh.

The general idea is that it's a tree for psionic melee combat using mindstars, psionics already have plenty of ranged options through their class talents, and the "mindstars attacking on their own" thing is dangerously close to encroaching Mindslayer's primary quirk. Turning their weapon mastery into yet another set of ranged attacks also just seems like a bad idea, and the self-disarm stuff further aggravates that issue by essentially forcing you to play caster part-time when it's supposed to be a tree focused on melee prowess.

I think you may be missing what the tree's actually doing, perhaps. It's primarily a melee buffing tree with a sideline of ranged debuff/CC, not another set of ranged attacks (this is why EF is doing <100% damage, and partially why cacophony regulates you to punching stuff or using other talents for the duration). It does use ranged attacks to prime those buffs, but the majority of the damage and utility coming out of the tree comes from status effects, most of which are primarily triggered or capitalized on by melee bumps or other melee talents, with lesser (though still present) effect coming from non-melee attacks.

The disarm's a thing, though, and I'm still iffy about that.* But, as you noted, it's already pretty close to infringing fully on frenzied psifighting's shtick, and that'd be a very effective way of staying off the lawn, so to speak. It also leaves cacophony as an approach/kite talent or something you pop up while you're throwing out other things... kinda' like leaves tide in that respect.

The limitations of being a Wild Gift aside, I feel like the Mindstar Mastery tree handled things pretty well. If you just want your damage boost you can get your 5 points in Psi Blades and get out, and if you have some extra points it has some melee utility talents as well. Sure it's generic, but it's supposed to be generic, you have class talents after all.

See, that first bit is actually probably my largest mechanics complaint towards mindstar mastery (the build limitations related to it are more meta). Generally, I'd call going 5/0 into a tree indicative of bad design somewhere. Why aren't the rest of the talents being used? Why is that one getting all the attention? Usually that means either the talent in question is too attractive, or the other talents insufficiently attractive. In MM's case, it's certainly not because the bump-aspect strongly synergizes with the classes that use it (it mostly doesn't), it's largely because of the passive stat/mindpower boost, and the rest of the talents don't see much use due to the range bracket most mindstar classes fall in (they're largely ranged nukers, honestly)**. And beyond that, as a melee tree specifically MM doesn't really incentivize bumping -- it's got two melee range actives, but no real reason to actually run into things. Several of the "mastery" trees are guilty of this, really, and it'd kinda' be nice if we designed around that lack instead of towards it.

Still, the question and thought experiment stands, to all comers, not just you, Sed. What would you want to see out of a psionic mindstar tree? You've locked down a psiblade copy and passive/melee range effects, but what kind of theme do you see separating a psi tree from a wilder tree?

*An idle thought would be to turn cacophony passive, and have it give EF an AoE debuff effective, and possibly a % chance for melee bumps to proc a CD-less EF attack (arcane combat crib? You bet.). Only issue I'd have with that is that it'd leave the tree kinda' active poor (with either two sustains and a passive or vise versa), unless stuff was replaced.
**E: If I were going to design around this, I'd probably strip the mindpower/cunning/will boost out of psiblades and redistribute them among the other three talents, probably in a cunning (t2)/willpower (t3)/mindpower (t4) spread, while probably increasing the passive boost slightly and maybe having the higher tlvl actives get some minor range on them (possibly in a sort of 'baton pass' method, i.e. target an ally and they get to channel the talent for you, perhaps at reduced effectiveness.). That would incentivize investment, disincentivize going 5/0, and encourage more use of the higher tier talents for ranged classes.

[Sedrahl]

I think Staves do a good job of conveying what I mean, despite being different. The thing with staves is that they also support the straightforward, generalized approach. Staves are used by characters who are not going to want to be in melee range in the first place, (Let's forget about Staff AB for a moment.) this is why it prioritizes granting a cheap spammable ranged attack over it's physical damage bonus. Furthermore, even despite the fact they're intended for ranged use, they still don't force you to play part-time range by having to use Channel Staff to get and keep your weapon mastery working, if you want to have a fully effective staff fighter you can get your 1/5/0/0 and forget the tree exists entirely. (Or you can get points in the other skills because they're solid all-purpose talents.) These trees aren't meant to be elaborate, they merely provide you with the basics for effective weapon combat. (For mages, this involves being ranged because they don't want to be in melee combat.) After getting your bread and butter the tree gives you a basic defensive sustain and a basic stun, the entire tree is very basic, and that's a good thing. Save the combat-defining talents for the class trees.

Psionics are generally less afraid of being up in the enemy's face than mages are, and make competent melee fighters. This is why making their first Mastery skill a ranged attack like Channel is unnecessary, and making it required to cast it repeatedly to gain and maintain stacks in your weapon mastery is an even worse idea. The reason weapon masteries are so simplistic is so other classes can easily work them into their own unique playstyles, creating multiple flavors for the same melee weapon. Making a weapon mastery that requires a certain playstyle contradicts that purpose entirely. This is the reason (at least I imagine it is) why half the masteries in the game are all on a tree you can get almost for free and are not directly linked to any other abilities. You don't need incentives to hit things, you just need stats, and differentiation comes from other sources.

Don't get me wrong, I think your talent tree is very cool, however I feel like it simply doesn't fit the purpose of a Mastery. (That purpose being all-purpose weapon combat talents) It seems more like something you'd see as a Mindslayer Class tree (it would certainly be more fun that Mindlash) or on a new psionic class with a heavy emphasis on telekinetics/levitation-based powers.

[HousePet]

Personally, I'd just tweak the existing Mindstar Mastery and Gestures categories.

[Sedrahl]

Personally, I'd just tweak the existing Mindstar Mastery and Gestures categories.

I think the simplest and most effective approach would be to simply take Mindstar Mastery out of Zigur and turn it into a less expensive generic tree available in Last Hope. The only class that would suffer from doing this is Oozemancers, and Oozemancers can afford to suffer a little bit.

[aristalis]

Personally, I'd just tweak the existing Mindstar Mastery and Gestures categories.

I was happy with gestures on my doomed winner playthrough; Great defensive, control and damage synergies and good at finishing every power of monster

[Sedrahl]

I like gestures a lot too, they're a fun skillset both in theme and gameplay. They also actually synergize with Psiblades well because Gesture of Pain toggles instantly, Guarding and Power take effect even if it's not toggled on, and Psiblades can be used to proc Madness. (Provided they deal mind damage.) The only real downside Gestures has is being incompatible with any combat techniques, (which Doomed don't have anyway) and Psiblades can be used for that purpose.

[SageAcrin]

I would honestly like to see Gestures available through the Last Hope Graveyard.

Those coffins don't curse you at all right now. Would like to see Gestures get added there as a substitute. Not all curses have to be negative.

[HousePet]

A hideous teenage spectre arises from the disturbed coffin and gestures rudely at you. It seems that dead teenagers really hate being woken up too.

[Planetus]

While Gestures is a powerful counter-psi-blades tree, I think it's thematically much more accursed appropriate than psionic-powers appropriate. I'd love to see a psionic mindstar tree that has some feel a bit in-between that and the current mindstar mastery tree.

Furthermore, I'd suggest splitting mindstars into psionic powered mindstars and nature powered heartstones (name negotiable). Heartstones would basically take what mindstars are now, will dependent weapons with many defensive buffing egos, and mindstars would become cunning-based weapons (for accuracy and the bulk of damage) with more offensive egos (+mindpower, +mind crit, +damage on hit, +damage%, mental on-hit effects). Heartstones would take the current mindstar mastery tree and rename it heartstone mastery (and maybe rename psyblades to something like vine handles, turning the heartstones themselves into mace heads as a possibility), and a new mindstar mastery tree would be made. Heartstones would also take the current mindstar material tier names (mossy, vined, etc) and the new mindstars would probably use terms like shivering, glowing, whispering, or the like.

I'd like the new mindstar mastery tree to start with psiblades, which would increase the damage modifiers for will and cunning by something like +tlvl*5-10%, increase physical power and crit rate with mindstars, and maybe increase mind resistance penetration. Later talents would add chances for mental status effects on-hit (passive, sustained, and/or activated), with the last talent being a passive (or sustained) chance to take over the target's mind with each melee hit, similar to the Yeek racial ability or the Corruptor hex. This whole tree would be, of course, psionic in nature, and any activated or sustained talents would cost psi.

This would make the psionic mindstars more of an offensive melee weapon and these nature-powered heartstones more defensive, and thus probably caster-oriented.