Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

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HousePet
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#136 Post by HousePet »

Drat, I did miss some instances of Reach. Completely forgot to do anything about Mindhook.
Hopefully DarkGod will fix things.
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Elcs
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#137 Post by Elcs »

When an aura is active and no item is telekinetically wielded it appears as though the aura damage effect, as expected when TK wielding a gem/mindstar, is in effect.

Not sure if this is expected behaviour or thematic but I thought I'd raise it.

Suslik
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#138 Post by Suslik »

- Lua error on removing TK weilded item from inventory. After this error talents can be activated even if you don't have enough energy, there's no obvious way to undo this problem, I had to start over.

- Auras became even more worthless than they have been. Before they had at least a conduit to be active under that barely used any energy and physical aura used to sustain less psi than others. Now they sustain equally large amount of psi without any noticable benefit. Activating an aura still takes a turn so to fire it you have to activate and then deactivate it for a quite shitty damage taking 2 turns.

- New shields suck if they are low-levelled and make you virtually unvulnerable against weak foes while hardly making any difference against strong foes even when maxed. What I loved about shields as they used to be was they were usable even at 1/5 in regular battles(unspiked) as well as in tough battles(spiked). Now if you dump 15 points into the tree they'll make your regular battles a breeze but won't help you against being 1-shot by a multi-hued wyvern. If you don't dump 15 points in this tree it'll be simply unreliable, letting some types of damage through. Also there's no point at all in not keeping all 3 shields active at the same time. Forcefield is a cool defensive ability but its knockback is really annoying for a melee char. Overall I really consider micromanagement-based tree as it was before way more versatile, balanced and reliable than it is now.

- Quick as though gives you about 300% attack speed for 4 turns. Wait, what? Maybe it's typo and it intended to be 30%? Also considering the class has no physical skills, you're forced to bump attack about 12 times in a row to get max benefit from this ability?

- Since mindlash cooldown does not scale anymore with mindstar tier, I really had trouble dealing sustained damage other than bump attacking foes till any spell goes off cooldown. Overall mindlash became way more boring than before and than other abilities.

- On lower levels voracity spells recover close to none psi. During boss battles every spell takes 20-30 psi, after 3 turns you are at 0, cast all 3 leeches and now you're on 12 psi unable even to spike an aura off forcing you either to retreat or bump attack for the next 22 turns till leeches come off cooldown.

- Mindslayers used to abuse stat juggling easily with augmentation and wielding a gem as TK. Now they have resonant focus+gems to further abuse these mechanics?

Overall my most severe complaints are related to a vast amount of points that should be sunk into absorption tree to make it somewhat reliable(still not reliable against 1-shots anyway) and auras being completely worthless due to insane amount of reserved psi and 2 turns for activation/spiking.

Suslik
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#139 Post by Suslik »

I have a few proposals to make the class more fun(it really was my favourite class even if did need some rework):

- Make shields always absorb all kinds of damage they currently absorb only on lvl6, but make 1 shield cost 10 psi, 2 shields 30 psi and 3 shields 60 psi or something like that to encourage at least some micromanagement. Also still think that spiking shields should give a damage shield or any other benefit. There's currently absolutely no benefit to turn any shield off, ever.

- Make auras activate instantly(spiking still costs a turn ofc), reduce psi cost. Maybe add some bonuses while active and debuffs when spiked.

- Knockback on forcefield should really be optional to ranged builds. Maybe make some ranged-only ability add knockback to it or something, that's very annoying for a melee.

- Skate has a huge movement bonus and is kinda boring. I think it should be reduced like 4 times when active and maybe add a global speed when spiked or something.

- Leeches are barely noticeable at least on lower levels. Definitely should be more effective in the beginning.

- Conventional weapon builds have no options other than bump attacking with insane quick as thought attack speed bonus. Maybe add some locked trees like 2-handers or dual wield or shields? anything to use instead of a bump attack?

- Give mindlash cooldown decrease back from a mindstar to allow caster-builds have anything that deals sustainable damage except for bump attacking.

Suslik
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#140 Post by Suslik »

If you guys want to rework shields that badly, how about this idea?
3 shields. every shield absorbs stacking 20% of any damage type, no more than ~30 damage on the first level. each gives a passive bonus: some global speed, some resists, maybe some saves. 1 shield costs 10 psi to sustain, 2 shields cost 30 psi, 3 shields cost 60 psi. if you have 3 shields up for example they'll absorb 60% of any damage, no more than 60 per turn and give you all 3 passive bonuses but for 60 psi you're very unlikely to have spare.

when spiked you get a stacking damage shield for every shield spiked. first spike is free(no energy needed), second spike is 20 psi, third spike is 40 psi. this will encourage you against panic spiking everything and will take at least some micromanagement making shields worthwhile on both low and high levels.

Doctornull
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#141 Post by Doctornull »

@ Suslik - check out my proposed shield revision: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=41168


It really bugs me that these new Mindslayers are even more Cunning focused. Absorption in particular, why make this Cunning based?

I'd really prefer a (Str or Dex) + Will build to be possible.
It might be neat if you could go (Str or Dex) + (Will or Cun) but that seems like a tricky design.

Projection remains a really crappy tree. Folding Conduit into Projection is the wrong direction -- Auras are worth about 5 points max for all of them, not 20 ever. Also IMHO the Activation / Deactivation pattern remains a bad way to trigger attacks.

Mindlash remains very powerful and kinda dull. I'm able to one-shot Normal foes and below; able to one-shot Elites with a Mindlash crit. If Mindslayer is intended to be a melee class, let's not make ranged combat the optimal tactic.

Shattering Charge is very painful to receive -- I got one-shotted by an NPC Adventurer in 1.2b11. I guess that makes it fun to use for the PC, but maybe tone down the damage and add a condition instead?
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Suslik
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#142 Post by Suslik »

@Doctornull
Sorry, don't like your absorption idea either. Having an ability that protects you 9/10 times does not look like a good design to me. You'll walk 9/10 fights like a breeze but 10th will 1-shot you. That's why I don't like shields that cannot protect you against some damage types until you dump 15 points in them(current state) or at all(your proposal).

HousePet
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#143 Post by HousePet »

Suslik, your comments on shields and aura spike damage are the opposites of what I've received earlier. :?

Auras have had their Psi costs reduced and I've been told the Aura spike damage is too high.
Auras can be activated out of combat, so spiking them is an effective 1 turn cost.
Perhaps the sustain cost needs to be reduce further?

I'm pretty sure the new shield have better values at low levels now. I specifically changed them to do that.
They weren't usable with 1/5 spent until you maxed Absorption Mastery and had decent stats.
The only time you could block all damage types was by maxing Absorption Mastery and spiking all three shields.
You seem to have forgotten that you can only have 2 shields active at once?
I can make the second damage type shielding work at level 2 instead of level 1?
Happy to remove the knockback from Forcefield.

Quick as Though sounds like a typo. The attack speed effect is an issue though, all of these talents being marked as mindpowers are going to make it unchecked. Maybe add mind speed boost.

Something is off with those Leech values. I'll check them.

Spiking Shields is technically still there, just merged into a separate talent.

Cooldown on Mindlash was unintentionally increased, will address.

Cunning concerns: DarkGod appears to be making it so that psi wielding a weapon will make all your weapons use willpower and cunning for accuracy and damage, which was a surprise to me. I was sort of aiming to make cunning more melee focussed and willpower more caster focussed. This may have been lost a bit with the cutting.

Shattering Charge hasn't had its damage changed at all. But sure, I'll lower the damage.

Mildly annoyed at getting feedback at this stage that things have been adjusted in the wrong direction. But anyway will do what I can with it. Did you two like anything? :P
My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.

Suslik
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#144 Post by Suslik »

First of all, you'll have to cope with different opinions. Looks like my tastes are opposite to bpat's for example so no wonder our feedback's different.

Auras:
The reason they feel like they cost way less before is that I always used them for conduit damage only and they were always under conduit which did cost 0 psi to sustain. Now to add damage equivalent to conduit you have to use 60 psi which's tremendous amount. And it takes further psi to spike them which further reduces their use(for me to none).

Shields:
New shields reduce far more damage than they used to in passive mode - they are by no means weak. Reason I don't like them is they don't actually protect your life anymore: while indeed they absorb all weak regular attacks they do nothing to protect you against arcane/temporal/you-name-it spike damage. Using transcendant skill makes it even worse - those weak attacks you used to absorb 90% now are fully absorbed for the duration and attacks you're not protected against(you don't start with 15 skill points in this tree, you know) or really high damage criticals will just pass through the shields. Unreliability is the problem. To make shields reliable you had to spend 5 points into mastery, now you have to spend whole 15 points. I don't think moving second damage type to lvl2 will solve the root problem of unreliability until vast skill point dump.

I think the best option would be either to rework 3 shield mechanics completely somehow(i've given an idea before though that's just a suggestion) or a more conservative solution like give all 3 resistance types on lvl1 or maybe 3 of every shield. Amount of damage reduced should be of course lowered if so.

Leeches:
Just checked, leech rates are ~3 times lower than they used to be. With this issue the only possible strategy for the class is to fire 1-2 nukes then bump attack.

And I certainly love some changes. Forcefield(reduces %of damage) sounds very interesting with flat damage absorption from shields. Deflection spiking sounds extremely fun, just increase range you can throw projectiles to on lower levels(3 is kinda low on lvl1). Maybe it's even worth it to add spiking to all sustains? Realign is very useful(mindslayers did lack effect cleaners). Kinetic and charged masteries look very interesting. Brain storm is the AoE nuke mindslayers really needed. Warding weapon being instantenous looks very interesting against slow hard-hitting foes and strategic too. Ability that somehow increases your speed via mental powers is very thematic and useful though 300% attack speed for a mindslayer looks like +50 str for an archmage.
Last edited by Suslik on Fri May 23, 2014 3:08 am, edited 2 times in total.

Suslik
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#145 Post by Suslik »

More global questions. Are you trying to make conventional physically-weilded weapons viable? If so, then how are they supposed to be used since mindslayers have only 1 melee talent, namely Telekinetic Smash? I really think that idea of using conventional weapons should be either dropped altogether or mindslayers should be given some means of using them instead of bump attacking.

Maybe make some abilities reduce Telekinetic Smash cooldown. Maybe make mindlash hit with your weapons instead. Maybe spending psi can lower their cooldown. Maybe give some 0cd ability with a tricky usage like Fearless Cleave(0cd deals high damage if you are 2 squares away from foe, low damage if you are adjacent). Maybe add shoot-like ability that'll telekinetically throw your weapons without cooldown in cost of psi. Maybe make bump attacks give you psi. Maybe make you hit with your melee weapons(maybe make the attack ranged, reduced damage) whenever you cast a mind power. You've given so much options to make weilding conventional weapons easy(augmentation and stuff) and so few options to actually use them.

Overall I think there should be some spammable single-target melee talents that give you psi intead of spending it because voracity works best on large groups of enemies making long boss fights exhaust your psi pool very quickly without any means of recovery other than retreating.

HousePet
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#146 Post by HousePet »

Yeah the Auras sustain cost is way too high. How does 10 sound?
Conduit reducing it to 0 was a bit cheap though. As a bonus you get the Conduit effect without blocking the option of spiking.

Old shields never protected your life until you spiked them though. But point taken about them loosing too much reliability. I wanted to make sure there was a reason for levelling them.
I'll make them reduce all relevant damage types with 1 point investment, but will reduce the amount they reduce at talent level 1.

Hmmm, Maybe Leech gain was accidently nerfed when I standardised the scaling formula.
Current formula is 1-5 based on talent level + 1-25 based on mindpower.
What levels have you tried it at? It might only need adjusting in the early game.

Warding Weapon and Impale benefit from having a psi wield weapon over other options. There was a locked category with more stuff in it, but it wasn't very good and didn't compete well with Kinetic Mastery. :(
Will try putting something together.
My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.

donkatsu
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#147 Post by donkatsu »

Shield descriptions should mention that you can only sustain two at a time.

Thermal Leech's weaken effect is less than stated on the tooltip (tooltip states 14% at level 4/5, actually does 11%)

Pyrokinesis Flameshock applies with spellpower; should use mindpower or just make it its own damage type because there's no reason to force a mind class to pump spellpower.

Why was shield spiking removed? I could see that they needed to be nerfed somehow to incentivize not spiking them all the time, but removing the ability to spike shields entirely seems like a step backward from what was an imbalanced but potentially interesting mechanic.

Pucker
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#148 Post by Pucker »

Cross-posting from the dev-test thread:
I am a big fan of the Mindslayer rework. I like the way the class and generic talents have been shuffled around.
  • One of Mindslayer's biggest problems was lack of mobility. Now you get Telekinetic Leap without investing a cat point and for a generic (and its 6 range from the get-go).
  • The different force specializations are a very awesome idea.
  • Shield spiking was removed, but I believe the base shield efficiency was increased to make up for it, the different elements are now baked into the shields, and you also have Realign as a survival tool. I think spiked shields were way too strong before anyway.
  • Aura sustain costs are high but I think it's OK because you now pick one Aura and specialization and go with it(kind of like an archmage picking arcane, fire, or cold).
  • I am not a fan of the Psionic/Focus tree(and I wasn't before either) but Iron Will is stronger now and I can understand why it was moved there.
  • I love that Telekinetic Smash now has a secondary effect aside from just "here do damage for some psi". The only thing I'd like to see is slightly better duration scaling on the stun.
All-in-all I think the changes are great, but I feel like they just need one more special interaction/talent tree to make them really interesting. I think this is a step in the right direction.

I did find a couple of bugs, I submitted them but the one I remember off the top of my head is:
  • Activate Transcendent Electrokinesis then try to cast Charge Leech with an enemy next to you -> LUA error

HousePet
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#149 Post by HousePet »

donkatsu wrote:Thermal Leech's weaken effect is less than stated on the tooltip (tooltip states 14% at level 4/5, actually does 11%)
I expect you've been caught by the weird scaling it does. The tooltip value only apply if your psi is exactly half your maximum.
donkatsu wrote:Why was shield spiking removed? I could see that they needed to be nerfed somehow to incentivize not spiking them all the time, but removing the ability to spike shields entirely seems like a step backward from what was an imbalanced but potentially interesting mechanic.
They didn't get removed, they were just moved.
My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.

Suslik
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Re: Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

#150 Post by Suslik »

Glad to hear about aura cost nerf and shields being able to block all damage types at 1/5, I definitely think it's a step forward. To reward investment you can raise absorption percentage with level. Say, from 20% to 80%. But I still think previous spike mechanics were less cheesy. Consider a battle like this. You face a foe that hits for 200 phys damage/turn. When you spiked a shield before, you got let's say 400pts damage shield and could survive only 2 turns with this. That's fine. Now that you passively block 60% max 100, you spike your shield and you get 100% absorb rate with x2 absorb value and you can get no damage at all(100% to absorb 200pts) for the whole duration - new shields are way too strong in this case. Now imagine something's gonna hit you for 1000 dmg once and you know it. Spiking a shield before reduced this damage by 400 and you'd survive. Spiking shield now reduces this damage only by 200 and you'd die.

What I want to say is the new spiking mechanics are way too powerful against regular hits and are barely useful against 1-shots. Spiking mechanics as they were tended to be equally useful in both cases.

Leech values are way too low only on low levels.

Also looks like guys considering shields as they were OP don't play nm/insane. No shield is OP when you play higher difficulties except for aegis and bone shield.

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