Interactions between Gesture of Pain and Psi Blades?

[thorgi]

I've never played a *spoiler* and after looking them over, they come off as a short to mid range caster. I'm naturally a fan of concept builds, and after doing a once-over of their tree, I wanted to try making a "Melee Mage" using Gestures with supportive spells.

My main questions are wanting to know how Gesture of Pain interacts with Psi Blades. Copying and pasting both from the wiki:

Use a gesture of pain in place of an normal attack to strike into the minds of your enemies, inflicting between %0.1f and %0.1f mind damage. If you strike your target, there is a X% chance to stun your opponent for 3 turns. This strike replaces your melee physical and checks Mindpower versus Mental Save, and is thus not affected by your Accuracy or the enemy's Defense. It also does not trigger any physical on-hit effects. However, the base damage and the critical chance of Mindstars equipped is added in when this attack is performed. 25% chance of cross tier effects. Requires two free or mindstar-equipped hands. Can cause critical hits with cross tier effects. The damage will increase with your Mindpower. Mindstars bonuses from damage and physical criticals: (+X damage, +X critical chance)

Channel your mental power through your wielded mindstars, generating psionic blades sprouting from the mindstars. Mindstar psiblades have their damage modifiers (how much damage they gain from stats) multiplied by X, their armour penetration by X and mindpower, willpower and cunning by X. Also increases Physical Power by X and increases weapon damage by X% when using mindstars.

"The base damage and critical chance of mindstars is added when this attack is performed."

Psiblades buff mindstar damage modifiers, and if this is added to the considered "base damage" when calculating Gestures, that's a nice synergy. Otherwise it's a swing and a miss. Same goes for the Psiblade increase to Physical Power and Weapon Damage. Are these considered into the base damage calculation? I would assume physical power isn't, and possibly weapon damage as well.

If those don't interact positively with one another, then the only real synergies are the Psiblades' buff to Mindpower provided from Mindstars, which is pretty weak on its own, imo.

I also posted this in the Spoilers section but I think this might be the better place for it, assuming none of the above is considered a spoiler.

[HousePet]

Gesture of Pain overrides the damage from Psiblades.
You can still use the other attacks that require Psiblades active though.

[thorgi]

Gesture of Pain overrides the damage from Psiblades.
You can still use the other attacks that require Psiblades active though.

So Gesture of Pain doesn't inherit any of the bonuses given to the Mindstars? I thought it might, since it draws from some mindstar stats which are buffed by Psiblades.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

It does inherit the increased mindpower you recieve (which is used in gestures calculations), and teh increased will/cun on mindstars increases your own will/cun, which in turn, further affects gestures. But the damage increases to mindstars, do not affect gestures, IIRC. Only the indirect mindpower/will/cun stuff.

[thorgi]

It does inherit the increased mindpower you recieve (which is used in gestures calculations), and teh increased will/cun on mindstars increases your own will/cun, which in turn, further affects gestures. But the damage increases to mindstars, do not affect gestures, IIRC. Only the indirect mindpower/will/cun stuff.

Makes sense. The difference between a 5 point or a 1 point, imo. I delved into the code (for the first time) to try to see if I could decipher how those values were calculated in the skills, but it's little more than latin to me.

[HousePet]

It does say its in place of a normal attack, so the only reason anyone thinks it might get the Psiblade bonuses added on, is because they are hoping for some super powered combo.

The passive bonuses to non weapon combat stats still work.

[kevlar]

I'm running a *Spoiler* right now: it's sooo entertatining

I have psiblades at 1, further investment seemed pointless to me (say a +10Will would pass from +14Wil to +15Wil)

Kev