Mindslayer balancing

[gfder]

I don't know.. 80-128 is pretty typical for an endgame artifact twohander. Legacy of the Naloren, voratun with crystal focus and hammer of the deep of the deep bellow are all similar.

My bad, I wrote that poorly and I can see why you misunderstood what I meant. The numbers I gave were directed at the % of Willpower/Cunning that gets applied to the telekinetic weapon. For example, right now it starts at 80% and scales up to 128% with 5 talent points invested. I was suggesting lowering that %.

Also saying "striking tree is bad" is actually not saying much. We have to change the tree somehow and ideas which way to change it exactly are welcome.

Alright, first off:
Change Kinetic Strike to a pin instead of a knockback. It's still thematic and should be at least a little bit useful against casters/archers.

Change Thermal Strike so that the ice block actually gets applied with a decent amount. I'm unfamiliar with the specifics of the freeze mechanics, but I assume having the "X% of weapon damage as cold" part apply the freeze will give more sizeable ice blocks.

Here is my suggestion to make the whole tree more interesting:
Add a mechanic similar to the Solipsist Distortion tree. That is, have one strike set up another strike so it is more powerful. Instead of the second strike adding more CC I was thinking the second strike could add a buff to the player.

Here's an example:
Player hits monster with Kinetic Strike first, then hits with Thermal Strike second, player gets a 'Thermal buff'. Player then hits monster with Charged Strike, player then gets a 'Charged buff'.

Examples of what the buff could be:
-Increase player Damage/Penetration by X% related to the type of buff attained.
-Convert X% of all damage dealt to the damage type related to the type of buff attained.
-Kinetic Buff: increase Weapon damage by X%
-Kinetic Buff: X% chance to parry/deflect/counter/block melee attacks against you
-Thermal Buff: Increase armor by X and add thorn damage (like icy skin)
-Thermal Buff: Increase all resist by X%
-Charged Buff: Increase all stats by X
-Charged Buff: Increase some type of speed by X%
(These could definitely be more interesting)

The 4th skill, the passive, could also be changed to augment these buffs. Having this passive just give more passive stat bonuses would be boring though. So instead I'm thinking it could be changed to augment all melee attacks made.
Examples of what I'm thinking the 4th skill could add:
-Kinetic Buff: All melee attacks send out a shockwave and damage enemies in X radius for X% of the original damage.(Shattering Impact)
-Thermal Buff: All melee attacks have a X% chance to freeze.
-Charged Buff: All melee attack have X% chance to chain lightning up to X distance and X times for X% of the original damage.(Arc Lightning)

The ideal scenario (which only exists in fairy tales) would be for all the buffs to have a use for the player at different times. I feel like this fits with the class because it gives the skills different effects depending on when the player decides to use them(like Shield/Aura/Leech/etc).

I'll admit none of these ideas are original or particularly interesting, but they are, hopefully, slightly more interesting than the current form.

[Suslik]

Again I concur with the idea o striking skills being somehow synergetical. Like one skill lowers cooldown of others, another skills increases damage of skill that follows and so on. Dream hammer tree or distortion tree are good examples of such synergies. The only thing I don't like is a ton of abilites that you just rotate without much thought about their most efficient order(hello, tribeam archmages).

I have also added everyone's general suggestions to zero post. I have omitted ideas about buffing mindlash because if other abilities get nerfed it will be more useful and particular ideas about buffing striking tree because they are too raw yet.

[Melkhior]

My idea to make conventional weapon and mindstar mindslayer equal.

Mindslayer weapon mastery generic tree:

1. talent - Weapon mastery - same as classical weapon mastery, but instead str/dex use will/cun and instead of str
requirment for weapons use same value in willpower (example weapon need str 24, so mindslayer need will 24 to
use it as main weapon), for mindstar it will function same as psyblades (maybe not so strong) multiply damage by
x - not sure about that mindstar part

2. talent - allow dualwielding - boost to off hand weapon and effects of meelee talents aplly to off hand weapon (boosting
mainly daggers maybe also mindstar?)

3. talent - sustain, cost x psi, set 1 chosen aura on cooldown adding damage of that aura to main weapon ( and off hand if
dualwielding?). Deactivating this talent spike that aura as aoe meelee attack - I am not sure about this talent,
posibility to change to something different

4. talent - psi tap, for 4. talent in Augment Striking use idea proposed by gfder

No change to access to combat training .

And augmentation we can change with some aoe strike.
With this there will be more posibilities to build meelee mindslayer - build around Augment Striking without investing class points in Psi-fighting and use other new abilities and so.

What do you think guys? Any objections, posible changes?

[Suslik]

My idea to make conventional weapon and mindstar mindslayer equal.

Mindslayer weapon mastery generic tree:

1. talent - Weapon mastery - same as classical weapon mastery, but instead str/dex use will/cun and instead of str
requirment for weapons use same value in willpower (example weapon need str 24, so mindslayer need will 24 to
use it as main weapon), for mindstar it will function same as psyblades (maybe not so strong) multiply damage by
x - not sure about that mindstar part

2. talent - allow dualwielding - boost to off hand weapon and effects of meelee talents aplly to off hand weapon (boosting
mainly daggers maybe also mindstar?)

<...>

What do you think guys? Any objections, posible changes?

I like these two ideas as well as eliminating augmentation altogether so that we can finally forget about str/dex builds and use will/cun for all weapons.

[HousePet]

Kinetic Strike: Instead of the knockback then pin, make it shatter the armour of the hit creature.
If that creature is frozen, this will shatter the ice block dealing cold damage equal to the ice block strength, before applying weapon damage.
If that creature is blinded, the extra force catches them off guard and disarms them.

Charged Strike: If the lightning flash hits a frozen creature, the ice refracts the blinding effect into a radius 1 burst.

Haven't thought of anything for the other 3 possible interactions yet.

[Suslik]

Ice strike:
If the creature is pinned, ice shatters one or more beneficial effect/sustain instead of freezing
If the creature is blinded, iceblock will have 50% increased hp and duration

Charged strike:
If the creature is pinned, electricity transfers weapon damage via grounding effects to everyone in radius of 2
If the creature is frozen, then your suggestion about AOE blind.

Instead of blinding with charged strike we can apply the new effect that reduces stun resistance(also used by archmage lightning tree) to allow strategic use: charged strike reduces resistance, then kinetic strike to pin then ice strike to shatter effects. Or if the foe has no resistance then charged strike is best set as finisher for AOE. If you want to deal high damage then charged->ice->physical shatter.

Also using any other non-instant ability reduces strike talent cooldowns by 1(possibly moved to strike weapon mastery).

What do you think?

[HousePet]

Could be interesting.

I should post this in the thread, I didn't get around to finishing it in time.

Telekinetic Combat
Mindhook: active. Pulls target creatures to you and dazes it.
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]

Frankly speaking I'm not a huge fan of that Telekinetic Combat tree you were talking about for so long. The class already has a lot of abilities and definitely is not in need of another tree. The only ability that the class needs from that tree is mindhook and looks like it can be easily merged with TK throw. Hell, TK throw can be even replaced with mindhook(but i really think that push/pull + daze is better than only pull+daze and apparently better than push+damage).

Also updated zero post.

[gfder]

7) Augmented striking:
Experience: other players report this tree to be somewhat boring and useless. Knockback is more annoying than useful, overall abilites are underwhelming.

Suggestion: tree should be made more synergetic and interesting to become comparable with focus and other offensive options. Here are the proposals:

Kinetic Strike: Instead of the knockback then pin, make it shatter the armour of the hit creature.
If that creature is frozen, this will shatter the ice block dealing cold damage equal to the ice block strength, before applying weapon damage.
If that creature is shocked, the extra force catches them off guard and disarms them.

Ice strike: Freezes on hit
If the creature is pinned, ice shatters one or more beneficial effect/sustain instead of freezing
If the creature is shocked, iceblock will have 50% increased hp and duration

Charged strike: Applies shock(effect that reduces stun resistance) on hit
If the creature is pinned, electricity transfers weapon damage via grounding effects to everyone in radius of 2
If the lightning flash hits a frozen creature, the ice refracts the blinding effect into a radius 1 burst.

Different skill combinations allow strategic use: charged strike reduces resistance, then kinetic strike to pin then ice strike to shatter effects. Or if the foe has no resistance then charged strike is best set as finisher for AOE. If you want to deal high damage then charged->ice->physical shatter.

Also using any other non-instant ability reduces strike talent cooldowns by 1(possibly moved to strike weapon mastery).

I'm probably misunderstanding, but where does the pin come from in all of this? I'm reading that as Kinetic Strike just shatters armor. Or is it supposed to do both?

My only suggestion is to change the current scaling of the talents. Currently only the damage that is dealt is what scales, I suggest making the CC portion also scale in some way. It might just be personal preference, but talents that only increase in damage are always last on my list to put more points in. For example I only leveled them to 5/5 on my character just because I had absolutely nothing else I wanted to put them in.

Also what is strike weapon mastery? I assume that's going to be the 4th talent? It's hard to suggest anything without knowing what you're thinking, but I'd recommend making it something that helps normal bump attacks. Bump attacks are pretty much a standard for any melee character, and this class doesn't really have much supporting that. For example you could make it so normal bump attacks lower the cooldown by 1.

Frankly speaking I'm not a huge fan of that Telekinetic Combat tree you were talking about for so long. The class already has a lot of abilities and definitely is not in need of another tree. The only ability that the class needs from that tree is mindhook and looks like it can be easily merged with TK throw. Hell, TK throw can be even replaced with mindhook(but i really think that push/pull + daze is better than only pull+daze and apparently better than push+damage).

Also updated zero post.

I have to agree with this. Just making Kinetic mastery slightly more melee friendly is a large indirect buff to melee users of non mindstars. This is obviously due to the physical damage type that most non mindstar weapons have.

Do keep in mind though that the daze part from the pull will immediately be undone by any telekinetic weapon, and the creature will then move back if it wants to.

Personally, I still insist Telekinetic Pull would be a great addition to this class if you can manage to fit it in somewhere. I used the artifact with that skill all the way up until I started fighting Amathon/Lillani and needed raw stats

My idea to make conventional weapon and mindstar mindslayer equal.

Mindslayer weapon mastery generic tree:

1. talent - Weapon mastery - same as classical weapon mastery, but instead str/dex use will/cun and instead of str
requirment for weapons use same value in willpower (example weapon need str 24, so mindslayer need will 24 to
use it as main weapon), for mindstar it will function same as psyblades (maybe not so strong) multiply damage by
x - not sure about that mindstar part

2. talent - allow dualwielding - boost to off hand weapon and effects of meelee talents aplly to off hand weapon (boosting
mainly daggers maybe also mindstar?)

<...>

What do you think guys? Any objections, posible changes?

I like these two ideas as well as eliminating augmentation altogether so that we can finally forget about str/dex builds and use will/cun for all weapons.

Why get rid of str/dex builds? It just seems like it'll homogenize all the builds. It's easy to build a character around str/will/cun, I did so as a Ghoul which also has a heavy use for con. When both builds are exactly the same, what reason does someone have to choose physical weapons over Mindstars? Mindstars give very large bonuses and will improve ALL of your abilities, and with MindStar Mastery they'll even do comparable damage to a two hander.

In my opinion the two builds should be something like the difference between Cursed and Oozemancer. Cursed use mindpower more passively and generally just as a means to help them survive in melee, Oozemancer's while also capable of being in melee, use mindpower more as a caster to attack from afar. And obviously it'd be up to the player to decide just how far down one side of the spectrum he wants to go.

I'm probably the only one, but I don't even like the fact that will/cun takes over for all weapons. I would just get rid of that and leave it up to str/dex again.

I might be bias though, I used to play dual two handed Mindslayers even before these changes(I liked them).

[Suslik]

I'm probably misunderstanding, but where does the pin come from in all of this? I'm reading that as Kinetic Strike just shatters armor. Or is it supposed to do both?

Suggestion was to add pin to kinetic strike instead of shattering armor or knockback.

My only suggestion is to change the current scaling of the talents.

Scaling will be changed when we finally decide what we want the skills to do. Currently striking tree is not satisfactory enough to think about scaling.

Why get rid of str/dex builds? It just seems like it'll homogenize all the builds.

Because will/cun builds are already viable and it's extremely hard to make str/dex/will/cun builds viable as well without breaking anything.

When both builds are exactly the same, what reason does someone have to choose physical weapons over Mindstars? Mindstars give very large bonuses and will improve ALL of your abilities, and with MindStar Mastery they'll even do comparable damage to a two hander.

Same stats != same builds. Idea is to make will/cun used for conventional weapons and make 2 possible ways of general mindslayer building: conventional weapons and mindstars. Mindstars are more utility- and caster-based while conventional weapons are melee offense-based. Ideally conventional weapons are superior in raw damage, mindstars are superior in utility.

[Melkhior]

Melkhior wrote:
My idea to make conventional weapon and mindstar mindslayer equal.

Mindslayer weapon mastery generic tree:

1. talent - Weapon mastery - same as classical weapon mastery, but instead str/dex use will/cun and instead of str
requirment for weapons use same value in willpower (example weapon need str 24, so mindslayer need will 24 to
use it as main weapon), for mindstar it will function same as psyblades (maybe not so strong) multiply damage by
x - not sure about that mindstar part

2. talent - allow dualwielding - boost to off hand weapon and effects of meelee talents aplly to off hand weapon (boosting
mainly daggers maybe also mindstar?)

<...>

What do you think guys? Any objections, posible changes?

I like these two ideas as well as eliminating augmentation altogether so that we can finally forget about str/dex builds and use will/cun for all weapons.

Thank you for your opinion. Have you any idea for 3rd and 4th talents for that tree?

Could be interesting.

I should post this in the thread, I didn't get around to finishing it in time.

Telekinetic Combat
Mindhook: active. Pulls target creatures to you and dazes it.
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)

Locked meelee category would be cool, but I have to agree with Suslik. Right now we have many choices and this tree don't add enought utility or interesting abilities to choose it instead of charged mastery (mainly because of heartstart) - I would rather see locked meelee category which add even more synergies and synergical attacks to existing meelee talents, but I don't have any idea what to create.

[gfder]

Because will/cun builds are already viable and it's extremely hard to make str/dex/will/cun builds viable as well without breaking anything.

I hope I don't sound like I'm nitpicking, but they're already viable the way the class currently is. Yes, I understand the class currently has op talents, but I doubt nerfing them will make the build unviable.

My Mindslayer was built around str/will/cun/con, and he pretty much facerolled the later half of the game. He actually would've been stronger if my mainhand weapon had scaled off of str instead of will(~138 str vs ~96 will). I think we can also safely ignore dex because I can't imagine anyone choosing a dagger over a mindstar, mindstars don't have the offhand penalty so they're pretty much guaranteed to do more damage, plus they'll give caster bonuses.

My point is why fix what isn't broken? Str builds were viable before the changes and they're viable now, making people juggle points isn't really a bad thing.

Same stats != same builds. Idea is to make will/cun used for conventional weapons and make 2 possible ways of general mindslayer building: conventional weapons and mindstars. Mindstars are more utility- and caster-based while conventional weapons are melee offense-based. Ideally conventional weapons are superior in raw damage, mindstars are superior in utility.

Do conventional weapons actually deal more damage? Let's say someone wants to make a melee offense-based build. Will using conventional weapons actually net them more damage in the long run, over the same build, but with mindstars? It's been too long since I've done a mindstar build so maybe I'm way off the mark, but I always though mindstars towards end game did almost the same amount of damage as conventional weapons.

Even if conventional weapons deal more damage than mindstars, they will then also have to compete with some of the more passive damage that comes from increased mindpower. Auras, leeches and the Transcendent talents for example will all add more damage to mindstar melee builds semi-passively (as opposed to conventional weapons). Even the current form of Strike talents scale off of mindpower a little bit. I'm saying, without running the numbers(lol), you can make a melee focused mindstar build that'll deal almost the same damage as conventional weapons over several turns.

When both conventional weapons and mindstars use the same stats, it's always going to come down to a matter of which is better. The only thing stopping people from freely changing between the two types is whatever points they happened to invest in the mastery talents. I suppose this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but this comes back to my point of the homogenizing, where the only thing separating your weapon choice is a few generic points. IDK, maybe I'm wrong, it's not like going str/will/cun will prevent you from changing between the two weapons types either.

But take a look at Sun Paladins and Reavers. Many of their abilities scale off of magic and both of them can get away with using staves effectively. Would it make sense to have their weapon/armor requirements to suddenly change to magic? Too me, it just seems like you're bypassing a stat requirement for no good reason.

I understand that switching the stat costs back to str won't magically fix the problems of mindstars almost always being superior. But it at least adds more uniqueness in the choices of equipment and prodigies that one would choose.

I'll admit this is a trivial matter, and honestly, I'm most likely biased when it comes to this sort of thing. Of the more caster oriented classes I've played and won with, I've gone str on all of them (Alchemist, Solipsist, Summoner, Oozemancer). I have yet to manage to get a melee Doomed to work...they always die before they hit level 20 for me -_-.

[HousePet]

Oh fine, merge Mindhook into TK Throw.
Piercing Strike has already been merged with Impale.
Add Reflexive Warding to Warding Weapon at level 5. Base the chance on cunning.

Maybe add some accuracy bonus to Sense Thoughts?

[Suslik]

Oh fine, merge Mindhook into TK Throw.
Piercing Strike has already been merged with Impale.
Add Reflexive Warding to Warding Weapon at level 5. Base the chance on cunning.

Maybe add some accuracy bonus to Sense Thoughts?

pure joy and love. but all of these are buffs and the class is extremely strong already(read: it's op) so please don't forget about nerfs too(tk weapon damage nerf, absorb % nerf, focus tree nerf, etc).

[Suslik]

Bump. HP, when are you going to push the tweaks to DG?