Comprehensive Mindslayer rework

[HousePet]

It appears that DarkGod neglected merging the changes to Combat.lua. So Aura damage on weapons won't work.
Can't see any reason for stat bonus from gems not to work.

[Suslik]

@HP
> Mindlash shouldn't scale with psionic weapon damage as it is supposed to be a bread and butter for caster mindslayer.
how can anything single-target with 5cd can be bread and butter? mindlash should really lower its cooldown with something(if not mindstar tier then melee attacks, other abilities, anything).

Well, I wouldn't call it "fundamentally flawed". Suppose sustained shields blocked 100 damage on every hit, and spiked shields blocked 200 damage total, on a 20 turn cooldown. Would you spike your shields at the start of every battle? Of course not, in fact you would probably never spike. And yet the fundamental mechanic remains the same, it's just the numbers that are tweaked. There's got to be a balance somewhere in there that makes for an interesting decision to be made, and hitting that balance would be better than just completely lopping off the part that made mindslayer shields interesting.

100% agree again. I really think that spiking mechanics should be the same as before but numbers may be tweaked. Maybe add psi cost to consecutive spikings to discourage panic-spiking everything.

Also HP, what do you think about forcefield consuming increasing %of max psi instead of psi per damage taken? Because currently it acts pretty much like solipsists' hp->psi passive conversion.

[HousePet]

It can be bread and butter with corrected cooldown value.

Making Forcefield cost more over time is a good idea. Its different from everything else and makes it work as intended. Short term.

[edge2054]

Shattering Charge doesn't seem to let you bash down walls.

[Parcae2]

Sorry about the erroneous bug report, totally my bad.

[HousePet]

Okay, how about Mindlash doing less damage, having lower cooldown, being a beam and also inflicting Off Balance (-15% damage)?

Also, I thought up a new category.

Augmented Strikes. Will based, base level, starts unlocked.
Kinetic Strike: active. Melee attack with 50% damage converted to physical, which knocks the target back and pins them to a wall if they hit one. Transcendent Telekinesis upgrades this to a three target sweep hit.
Thermal Strike: active. Melee attack with 50% damage converted to cold, which also freezes the target. Transcendent Pyrokinesis upgrades this to a radius 1 cold damage burst on strike that also freezes.
Charged Strike: active. Melee attack with 50% damage converted into lightning, which also dazes. Transcendent Electrokinesis upgrades this to have the lightning leap to three nearby enemies and stuns instead.
Psi Tap: passive. Gain psi for each weapon hit you land. Also increases critical hit power.

These strikes would do between 100% and 200% weapon damage.

And here is some ideas for the locked category:
New Telekinetic Combat
Piercing Strike: active. Perform a melee attack that cannot miss, bypasses armour and shields, and has increased critical hit chance. Uses psi combat.
Reflexive Warding: passive. Grants a chance to automatically do the Warding Weapon block whenever you are hit. Doesn't interact with the Warding Weapon cooldown.
Telekinetic Assault: active. Perform a melee attack on every enemy in a radius 2 around you. Hit enemies also become Off Guard for a few turns. (decreased crit resistance)

[Suslik]

Like the melee ideas so far, but lightning seems kinda op with stuns and such. Careful though not to fall into the same trap as wyrmics did with their shitton of similar abilities like ice claw - having a long cooldown disallowed abilities rotation and in the end no one used them. Please do consider a scenario player rotates the abilities in a long-term fight. Especially with mind over matter having insane mind speed.
Also love the idea of piercing strike.

[HousePet]

Yeah elemental debuffs tend to get typecast a lot. Something other than daze/stun for the lightning would be good. Blind maybe?

[Suslik]

From git:
At talent level 3, when you de-activate the shield all the absorbed damage in the last 6 turns is released as a full psionic shield (absorbing all damage).

Hail to the god! I think that's a perfect solution to make shields spikable yet non insta-spikable at the beginning of every battle and i think everyone should be happy. Asap.

[edge2054]

Shattering Charge should really be looked at. For one it's pretty redundant with leap. For two it's the highest damage per cast talent in the game, it's generic, and it's basically a controlled teleport. It used to be semi-balanced (and I use that loosely) by the fact that you had to have a spiked kinetic shield to activate. It also has a fairly low cooldown considering how hard it hits.

[edge2054]

TK wielded items can't be 'used'

[Suslik]

also HP, can you please syncronize your updates with DG's beta releases? because he's gonna release b12 now but without your mindslayer update.

[Parcae2]

Melee attacks with knockback tend to be more annoying than useful.

Really liking the locked tree though.

[bpat]

I'm trying to get a couple hours of balance testing in today. My first thought is that Leeches are really, really terrible at the moment. 3 psi gain is essentially a waste of a turn, it should be more like 15 or possibly higher. Brain Freeze also should have a much longer cooldown than 4 turns since this essentially allows you to permanently brainlock an enemy while doing high damage as well. Also, although I haven't tested it, Charged mastery looks very underwhelming compared to Kinetic and Thermal masteries since Thought Sense is no better than Track and Static Net is just okay. I'd replace Thought Sense with Sensitize/Neural Overload since that was a much better and more interesting talent in my opinion. Also Telekinetic Throw and Implode's cooldowns are at least two or three times what they should be, they should definitely be reduced to 15 and 20 respectively or possibly even more. Transcendent Telekinesis also needs to add something to Mindlash, a stun would be too good but it needs have something, perhaps a stacking resistance or armor reduction. Transcendent Electrokinesis should also be buffed a little since blind on Brainstorm is far weaker than flameshock on Pyrokinesis. Also Transcendent talents shouldn't take a turn to activate since you can only have one active at a time; at the moment they encourage precasting before entering LoS which is pretty annoying since it makes Track more important. At the moment, it looks like Thermal mastery > Kinetic Mastery > Charged Mastery, but I'll still try to test all of these to confirm this.

Edit: Also, now that spiked shields are gone, the damage reduction on sustained shields needs a massive buff.

Edit 2: Quick as Thought is insanely overpowered. 25 Mindpower and effective level 5.2 it gives 46 accuracy, 23.2% crit chance, and 206% attack speed. This make Momentum look bad in comparison. These values should be more like 20, 10%, and 30% respectively. With this I killed Shax and Bill at lvl7 and 8 respectively in two game turns on Nightmare with only 1/5 in Weapon Mastery.

[Suslik]

@bpat dude check git for a change or read the thread before posting. almost none of your suggestions are relevant anymore.

and yet again my vision is opposite to yours. I find thermal mastery the most underwhelming. brainfreeze is stupidly OP with 4cd, heat shift is underwhelming and thermal balance is just constant damage split between 2 elements for half of your psi, while the last talent in charged mastery is a lifesaver with status cleaner.

Also, now that spiked shields are gone, the damage reduction on sustained shields needs a massive buff.

even if dg has not added a new way of spiking shields, buffing shields passively would make them even more unbalanced. you'd never kill a level 9 rare mindslayer in trollmire 1(about 90% damage reduction + heal) and if you play mindslayer yourself you'd be even more invulnerable to weak damage(you are already anyway) and equally vulnerable to damage spikes. overall I find reducing damage by flat amount terribly wrong because of this reason.