[1.5] YASTL (yet another stupid tier list)

[Cathbald]

Hello random person reading this, in case you arrived here by accident know that you shall find below the truth about the current state of classes in ToME, untainted by silly consideration such as madness as in that other tier list where even the guy updating it confessed to savescumming to win this impossible difficulty.

How easy is it to pick up the class and win in AoA? Based on a mix of power (duh), rapidity (longer fights/game = more mistakes = death), tediousness (more tedious = more annoyed/more easy to mess up = death). Only 99% subjective!
Gonna skip adventurer and possessor because lol, unbalanced classes, and tinkers because I don't play tinkers out of EoR (that said, psyshot > sawbutcher >>>>> gunslinger, unless you're a dirty cheater using awesomovementoss)

TL;DR (you lazy bastard) :
Archer
Temporal Warden
Demonologist
Oozemancer
Paradox Mage
-----------------
Sun Paladin
Anorithil
Mindslayer
Brawler
Marauder
Stone Warden
Doombringer
-----------------
Shadowblade
Berserker
Doomed
Rogue
Bulwark
Reaver
Corruptor
-----------------
Necromancer
Archmage
Arcane Blade
Cursed
Skirmisher
Wyrmic
Alchemist
Solipsist

Tier A (aka braindead/full autopilot tier) :
Archer : after unlocking sniper and finding a range 9 bow (surefire or shop can net you one VERY early) you can finish the game using something like 5 skills only and rarely fighting something that can fight back. Nerf when?

Temporal Warden : mobility, debuff removal, damage mitigation, best perma-summons in the game. If you do find yourself in a dangerous situation, which is unlikely, you WILL be able to get out of it. Pretty much impossible to - up your build, you don't have enough bad talents to invest all your points in them.

Demonologist : can only die from oneshot or due to dispel, thanks to osmosis shield. Has crazy armor thanks to hardened core so can't be oneshot. Only defiler with 0 vim issue. They're carried by 3 talents and the demon seeds, rest of the kit is average and they even have two of the worst trees in the game. Meet the class that can enter room of death the first time east and keep '5' pressed while everything around him dies.

Oozemancer : damage mitigation is just stupid on those guys but you might not even be attacked if your summons take the aggro. Once you get going it's basically impossible to die. Subpar damage can make fight longer but you are fully able to bash your head against the keyboard until everyone is dead but you.

Paradox Mage : hands down the best class in the game. Not the easiest but not that hard either. Many ways to reduce damage, can dig, wall, heal, remove sustains... Dispel can - you up and longer fight, which will happen due to lowish damage, can - up your paradox management. Has an answer to everything but blinkwyrm next to the stairs in vor:a 2 madness.

Tier B (strong and slightly tedious, braindead for a good chunk of the game)
Sun paladin : chants and light tree are very good at keeping you alive. 2h for best results. Very strong in general, even though an insane winner recently proved you can die 4 times in final fight even if you have sawrd.

Anorithil : light and chants again. Can mostly spam talents in safety like ooze but need to pay more attention to positionning and can't bump if someone get close. The early game is harder and the mitigation is not as good, but their damage is higher and they have in built pen. Management of jumpgate beforehand is annoying. Rare Orc-mage hunter alone might be more difficult than the whole final fight.

Mindslayer : insane damage ouptut but susceptible to oneshot. Those shouldn't happen before late game though, and a good use of forcefield should cover it. Lots of abilities can be confusing but you won't use that many actives in the end. Do not start final fight without forcefield unless you want a 3k freeze by Elandar. Who said I was salty?

Brawler : grapple, combination kick, axe kick. Congratulations, you know how to play brawler. You are immortal in 1v1 as long as the mob doesn't have spine, or is 2 size categories bigger. Even in crowds grapple damage reduction is fantastic and you have means of getting away.

Marauder : mobility, damage, defense all in one package. Unstoppable to be invincible for a few turns. Slightly heavy in number of skill/trees. Headbutting in real life can cause brain damage, use with parcimony.

Stone Warden : using no skill but halves until the east is a surprisingly valid strategy. You also have access to a windblade without a prodigy point but with better range and worse cd. Trouble is the lack of mobility and defensive tools. The first to say vines and Tarrasca get stone spikes in the ass.

Doombringer : really good damage output but squishy. I have problem not getting oneshot with one, and they use vim, but they probably deserve this spot since they oneshot 99% of ennemies themselve. Use and abuse abduction, Liam Neeson is not in the game and won't track you down.

Tier C (strong but tedious/average but simple, where the noob and pro classes collide)
Shadowblade : really - strong and fast, lots of disable, mobility, and defense, but this makes for a class with a lot of hotkeys and hard to get into. If we were talking strictly power they'd be in the top 5. FYI, ogre shadowblade is the reason sawrd is going to be removed from the game.

Berserker : straightforward and good tools, blinding speed, fearless cleave, unstoppable. Average power for a melee, best noob class.

Doomed : Cursed aura is an excellent tree and the shadows are too once you've invested enough. It takes a while though, and then you spend a lot of time resting, waiting for them to finish killing and then heal. Then you press '5' one too many times and.... saving game

Rogue : ok, I'm not really up to speed on new rogue, but it can't be better than shadowblade. They might be on par with marauder but that would only be because of "exploit" weakness. And they are way more annoying to manage (artifice/poison/traps) so they're lower.

Bulwark : easy to pick up but lacking in defense in end game, which makes the name confusing. Imo a bit underrated *block criticism and counterstrike with ghoulwark. It's surprisingly effective*

Reaver : again, not really up to speed, I never get far enough to get rot going so I find them too squishy. Bone shield is good but overrated *wait for the flaming to fade out* Early game is a pain, partly thanks to vim. Rework seems amazing.

Corruptor : lesser reaver although the early is better. Reworked alongside reaver.

Tier D (really bad/tedious/both)
Necromancer : Impending doom carry you early against strong ennemies and chill of the tomb against crowds. Just put at least one point in your dark beam for those white wolves... starts being a pain during dreadfell. Lich quest is a massive pain too, having to do graveyard and nur before level 24, having to boost with cat point. And is lich even better than non lich? Never find out because both will die later in the run anyway.

Archmage : range 10 beam carry you through the T1 (wow!) Then you realise you don't deal damage and are as durable as wet tissue and things get real tedious as you start questionning autoexplore. And purposefully draining your mana every other turn for disruption shield. And since you're using mana say hello to the inscription tax too!

Arcane blade : harder early than archmage because no mana regen but ends up oneshotting everything. So I have been told, I am incapable of reaching that point because that early is awful *pretend not to hear the cries of "you're awful!"*

Cursed : hard early, is a melee who is at his worst against other melees. Loving cursed aura and it's strong but it's a tedious tree too. Narrowly escape the "worst melee" spot.

Skirmisher : low damage, can selfshoot to death if tp'd/pulled/pushed. Bad in general (2 good talents? 3?). Also not fun, I want to have fun with a sling but that's just impossible by playing skirm. Please give tireless combattant to other class though. Pretty please?

Wyrmic : breaths are bad, melee damage is not that great compared to other melees (big % weapon damage on talents but not as phys damage and bad weapon mastery). No defense but icy skin. Icewall and burrow are good but having to use them every fight because the rest of your kit sucks... bleh. Strategic retreat is one thing, running around after every weapon strike is another.

Alchemist : low damage class, made more tedious by the fact that you have to think how to maximise bomb damage, and manage golem. Their early (and even the T2s!) is surprisingly good though. I lied about managing golem though, I tried several times an alch in insane RL and the only time I managed to win I started to put points in golem at level 47-48.

Summoner : tedious by definition, requires great positionning, and reliant on impermanent summons that might get one shot, might decide to attack the wrong target, might decide to move rather than attack... and you keep summoning them because there isn't more you can do. Great class for sadist (sending waves and waves of innocent creatures to their deaths) and masochist (have you not read how tedious this class was?) alike though.

Solipsist : Finally, the pinnaccle, the most annoying class of the game, the one who start with a skill that makes them worse, has no damage, no defense, no movement, and of course, the class that ignores all of that by repeating itsinotrealimagoodclass, itisnotrealimagoodclass over and over ignoring all common sense. I'll give them that inner demon is great when it happens but it's about 30% chance at 100mindpower... without counting saves/immunity and that you can reduce ennemies saves if you spend 20 turns doing that. Oh and mind damage can be saved against, 5% chance minimum. And when you lose ressource you get slower, making it even harder than usual to get out of a tight spot. ITISNOTREALIMAGOODCLASS


Congratulations to anyone who manage to make it this far, here is an ascii cookie.

















I lied, cookies are actually hard to draw.

[Kruzifixxion]

Nice tier list this is the best one I've seen so far, and it's so nice to see someone who isn't afraid to speak the truth about Archmage/Arcane Baby being some of the worst classes in the game Great thread, Cathbald! Will be entertaining how 1.6 will switch it up.

[FruitSalad]

Move wyrmic up or I'm gonna riot

Pretty well thought out otherwise.

[orange<]

It's really refreshing to see a tier list written by someone who actually plays the game and doesn't just theorycraft their tier lists (not mentioning names).

At first I disagreed with your decision to put cursed in the same tier as classes like archmage and solipsist which do 0 damage and get oneshot by white enemies, but the rest of your list is so solid it must be me who's wrong

[Micbran]

i still want a damn cookie


also how many tier lists is this? 3? tell bpat to move shadowblade up

[TinyReaver]

Good and mathematically correct tier list, we should use this as a canon for future judgement.

Even if i strongly disagree with the reaver placement, but of course i will wait 1.6 to prove you wrong mr catty.

What surprises me the most is that you won on alchemist but not reaver/corruptor, this puts you in a bad baaaad light!

Good the choice to trash wyrmic, give all wyrmic users a toothbrush to clean the fetid breath they cast.

[Cathbald]

Thanks for the first answers!

Will be entertaining how 1.6 will switch it up.

It will indeed, so far it seems there is going to be a LOT of changes but cursed in particular might go even lower.

It's really refreshing to see a tier list written by someone who actually plays the game and doesn't just theorycraft their tier lists (not mentioning names).
At first I disagreed with your decision to put cursed in the same tier as classes like archmage and solipsist which do 0 damage and get oneshot by white enemies, but the rest of your list is so solid it must be me who's wrong

I tried to play every class to dreadfell and get more than 10 insane RL win before attempting to write this tier list yeah, it's full of jokes sure, but even though the jokes quality vary I'm confident the tier list itself is top quality.
I wished I could have put cursed higher, it was my favorite class for a LONG while

also how many tier lists is this? 3? tell bpat to move shadowblade up

Yeah he really underestimate them, as I said it's a top 5 class even if not an easy one

Good and mathematically correct tier list, we should use this as a canon for future judgement.
Even if i strongly disagree with the reaver placement, but of course i will wait 1.6 to prove you wrong mr catty.

I'm not quite sure how the tier list is mathematically correct, huh. Reaver will definitely go higher in 1.6 along with corruptor, bone shield huge buff of ignoring small hit alone would have seen them higher but there's more so...

[PseudoLoneWolf]

I want to argue some changes to this list because I like the friendly argument and I disagree with some stuff here.

Paradox Mage : Totally has an answer to blinkwyrm next to the stairs in vor:a, via Time Skip. If it fails, chuck a Temporal Bolt into the crowd and try again. If THAT fails, Wormhole it via gravity manipulation to control where it goes. Tier choice unchanged.

Stone Warden : has TWO WHOLE SHIELDS to give him defensive stats, can block with both of them at once (pretty much guaranteeing a counterstrike even without Riposte), and has... reasonable mobility via Vine teleports and a psychoport torque which isn't remotely hard to find. Also your stone half makes you basically immortal at sub-madness difficulties. Tier choice unchanged.

Brawler : Is totally awesome even without Grapple. I played a whole game without using Grapple outside of setting up for Take Down. It was glorious. You want Take Down though, but I'm reasonably convinced that Brawlers can bump attack their way through just about the whole game. Tier choice unchanged, but I seriously considered moving it up to A.

Corruptor : You're squishy in the early game but by level 12 you have the Fearscape Win Button. You don't even need Vim for anything else. Drain and Blood Spray the local trash mobs and Fearscape anything that looks more threatening than your ex-wife. Bone Shield is gravy. Planar Beacon is extra gravy. Run away from big Demons. Recommended Tier: B

Wyrmic : Wyrmic trades an elemental specialization for elemental diversity, allowing you to hit the weak point of anything you come across. Remember when you got hit for about 700 damage by a dragon breath? Nerf that a bit down to about 300-400, and then fire off up to 7 of them in rapid succession, each one carrying a different aux status effect, and each one having a cooldown of six. Lightning Speed is the best movement infusion in the game, hands down, no argument. Lightning Speed gives you a passive +49% move speed when it's not even activated, that's how awesome it is. Static Field is the highest potential damage attack in the game, hands down, no argument, AND ignores resistance, AND can be cheaty with Arcane Amp Drone if you're interested in completely busting the game wide open for lulz until it's patched. Also you get Raze which is hilariously busted. Also you get Lightning Speed + Burrow which is hilariously busted. Also you get Dissolve which is basically an acid-flavored Flurry, which also blinds, and doesn't even require dual wielding to get max DPS out of. Also you start with Fungus unlocked which can let you stack like 20 free turns with appropriate tediousness. You get fat %wep damage on most of your damaging attacks, and yeah they don't do phys, but we already covered why that's not such a bad thing. Recommended Tier: C because it's strong enough to be in B but it's a bit more complex than all the Tier B classes.

Archmage : Only argument that I'm making here is that you can completely dump your manasurge rune after you unlock Disruption Shield. You're not likely to ever need it again after that. So the inscription tax isn't so bad as you make it out to be.

Cursed : Get 5/5 Curse of Nightmares and 5/5 Curse of Shrouds, put on heavy armor, press 5 in front of enemies, win game. Same applies to Doomed, but to a lesser extent, they want to take more advantage of shooting Shadows through the walls. Gloom-on-hit is a better talent than Gloom is, buff pls? Recommended Tier: C

Solipsist :


Skill that makes them worse - 5/5 Solipsism makes you never lose HP again once you hit about level 20. You can also restore your health, your other health, and your casting resource with a single healing infusion, as an instant action. Later investment in this tree gives you: roll all saves with Mind Save (dubious quality but you may as well get it), +40% global speed boost at max Psi (also dubious as you'll be spending Psi regularly, but it helps offset the speed loss at low Psi as well as helping you start every fight with a few more turns than your enemies. With a cat point you can suppress your solipsism threshold with this! Probably not worthwhile though.), and Dismissal which is freaking bonkers and lets you roll your mind save against ALL DAMAGE TAKEN and just elect to IGNORE that sh*t (reduces damage by at least 50%). This applies every time you take damage and uses up to 68% of your mental save, which will be stupid high anyway + even higher because you should be prioritizing mental save over all other saves in gear. That's an absurd amount of damage reduction.
No damage - ALMIGHTY MIND SEAR for the T1s and T2s, add Distortion to taste. Distortion scales better later and apparently the hammers are good late but I hate the hammers so f- 'em. Ravage deals damage AND absolutely obliterates sustains and bene effects. Inner Demons procs regularly despite what you say - 30% chance at 100 mindpower is fine, as you'll likely have over 100 MP at endgame and besides - that's 30%, per turn, for FOURTEEN TURNS. And their resist is halved if they're sleeping. This is an instant win button for any fight that has a rare+ in it. The more dangerous your enemy is, the easier the fight is, so long as you can land a Sleep on them, which you usually can because your mindpower is through the roof. Because you're a solipsist. I'm unclear whether or not you can use Dream Prison to extend ID infinitely until one pops out, I haven't tested this. Besides all of this - psiblades for bump attacks.
Mind damage can be saved against - Yeah I got nothing here. This is a dumb gimmick for one of the damage types, IMO, but it exists and I have no effective counters to it.
Get slower when you lose resource - Yep. And then Conversion fills you right back up again. Takes one turn and then you GTFO. You want to get a Defender Thoughtform and one level in Over Mind to kickstart the Feedback Engine, after which you have Resonance Field and Conversion usable at will. Biofeedback gives you free HP and Psi regen as long as you have Feedback, which is always.

Not enough damage output for you? Get Discharge! Park behind your Tform in a hallway and crack open the Mind Storm. Feedback Loop costs a little Feedback to give you a bunch more Feedback if you're running low somehow. Backlash kills archers and mages before they even come onscreen. Focused Wrath will make all your Mind Storm bolts home in on the boss of your choice and gain a whopping +66% critical power, melting ANYTHING in a matter of seconds. That's theoretically up to 10 bolts per round dealing 136 base damage per bolt with your mental crit chance and an extra 66% critmod. You can do the math.

As for other bits and pieces, I hear Dream forge is good, never used it. Forge Shield looks like a worse Resolve that can proc Counterstrikes. I have little opinion on the rest of that tree. Mental Shielding is an extra kickass mental status clear. Projection is projection, not quite as abusable as on Possessor though.

Recommended Tier: B, C at worst.

[Snarvid]

Tiers aren’t determined by how cool a class sounds in isolation, but how the classes compare to each other. re: Solipsists, Psyshots aren’t “strictly better” but have many advantages over Solipsists in durability, mobility, status clears, a bonus injector, save-less control tools, unlocked tinkers, and (perhaps a little sadly) better tools for boosting Mindpower / lowering enemy mind saves to get Nightmare->Inner Demons to stick. Also, pew pew pew!

Solipsism 5 is less “never take HP damage again” and more “get spiked, lose all Psi, take massive malus to global speed, die before getting another turn.” Not always, of course, but it’s a real possibility in challenging encounters and adds another failure mode that few other classes have to deal with (and the only other one that does is Possessor, who is a diesel killing machine for other reasons). Solipsism also weakens Heroism and PES (increase Psi cap = weaken Clarity bonus), two otherwise excellent tools.

[Cathbald]

I want to argue some changes to this list because I like the friendly argument and I disagree with some stuff here.

Paradox Mage : Totally has an answer to blinkwyrm next to the stairs in vor:a, via Time Skip. If it fails, chuck a Temporal Bolt into the crowd and try again. If THAT fails, Wormhole it via gravity manipulation to control where it goes. Tier choice unchanged.

This is a shot at Ster's PM who had this happen to him when he tried to win madness. Good luck with that strat against a mob with 200 spell save.

Stone Warden : has TWO WHOLE SHIELDS to give him defensive stats, can block with both of them at once (pretty much guaranteeing a counterstrike even without Riposte), and has... reasonable mobility via Vine teleports and a psychoport torque which isn't remotely hard to find. Also your stone half makes you basically immortal at sub-madness difficulties. Tier choice unchanged.

Psychoport is available for all char, SW don't "have mobility" because they found one. Stone half makes you immortal until the east agreed, things changed once there which is basically what I said. Shields can give defensive stats, sure, but it's not comparable to other classes in-built defenses (parry, TR, hardened core, intuitive shots, light, chants,... I could go on for a while.)

Brawler : Is totally awesome even without Grapple. I played a whole game without using Grapple outside of setting up for Take Down. It was glorious. You want Take Down though, but I'm reasonably convinced that Brawlers can bump attack their way through just about the whole game. Tier choice unchanged, but I seriously considered moving it up to A.

Brawler is extremely good, agreed, but to quote what I saw someone say just today : "that seems dumb not to use grappling, no offense". Grapple + crushing hold is pretty much the best defensive move in the game, while still helping you with damage.

Corruptor : You're squishy in the early game but by level 12 you have the Fearscape Win Button. You don't even need Vim for anything else. Drain and Blood Spray the local trash mobs and Fearscape anything that looks more threatening than your ex-wife. Bone Shield is gravy. Planar Beacon is extra gravy. Run away from big Demons. Recommended Tier: B

Best way to use fearscape is on trash mob to get a breather from your fight against the big mob. The damage it deals is low and you're draining your vim way too fast to make it last long enough against a mob you already had trouble killing.

Wyrmic : Wyrmic trades an elemental specialization for elemental diversity, allowing you to hit the weak point of anything you come across. Remember when you got hit for about 700 damage by a dragon breath? Nerf that a bit down to about 300-400, and then fire off up to 7 of them in rapid succession, each one carrying a different aux status effect, and each one having a cooldown of six. Lightning Speed is the best movement infusion in the game, hands down, no argument. Lightning Speed gives you a passive +49% move speed when it's not even activated, that's how awesome it is. Static Field is the highest potential damage attack in the game, hands down, no argument, AND ignores resistance, AND can be cheaty with Arcane Amp Drone if you're interested in completely busting the game wide open for lulz until it's patched. Also you get Raze which is hilariously busted. Also you get Lightning Speed + Burrow which is hilariously busted. Also you get Dissolve which is basically an acid-flavored Flurry, which also blinds, and doesn't even require dual wielding to get max DPS out of. Also you start with Fungus unlocked which can let you stack like 20 free turns with appropriate tediousness. You get fat %wep damage on most of your damaging attacks, and yeah they don't do phys, but we already covered why that's not such a bad thing. Recommended Tier: C because it's strong enough to be in B but it's a bit more complex than all the Tier B classes.

Why do I use breath for 300 when i can hit with ice claw for 2k? or bump for 1k? How is lightning speed better than movement since it doesn't make me immune to stun/pin/daze/freeze? Raze isn't busted, it scales on a stat you have no use for and damage cap quite fast. AAD cheese is indeed busted but is cheese. fungus tediousness? I think i mentionned tediousness in my tier ranking :p

Archmage : Only argument that I'm making here is that you can completely dump your manasurge rune after you unlock Disruption Shield. You're not likely to ever need it again after that. So the inscription tax isn't so bad as you make it out to be.

Dump manasurge, get manaclashed, die. getting to 0 mana ALSO make disrupion shield go down.

Cursed : Get 5/5 Curse of Nightmares and 5/5 Curse of Shrouds, put on heavy armor, press 5 in front of enemies, win game. Same applies to Doomed, but to a lesser extent, they want to take more advantage of shooting Shadows through the walls. Gloom-on-hit is a better talent than Gloom is, buff pls? Recommended Tier: C

Why do you use curse of shrouds and not move? Curse of shrouds is the best because cursed main strength is mobility, so it's always up.

Solipsist :
Skill that makes them worse - 5/5 Solipsism makes you never lose HP again once you hit about level 20. You can also restore your health, your other health, and your casting resource with a single healing infusion, as an instant action. Later investment in this tree gives you: roll all saves with Mind Save (dubious quality but you may as well get it), +40% global speed boost at max Psi (also dubious as you'll be spending Psi regularly, but it helps offset the speed loss at low Psi as well as helping you start every fight with a few more turns than your enemies. With a cat point you can suppress your solipsism threshold with this! Probably not worthwhile though.), and Dismissal which is freaking bonkers and lets you roll your mind save against ALL DAMAGE TAKEN and just elect to IGNORE that sh*t (reduces damage by at least 50%). This applies every time you take damage and uses up to 68% of your mental save, which will be stupid high anyway + even higher because you should be prioritizing mental save over all other saves in gear. That's an absurd amount of damage reduction.
No damage - ALMIGHTY MIND SEAR for the T1s and T2s, add Distortion to taste. Distortion scales better later and apparently the hammers are good late but I hate the hammers so f- 'em. Ravage deals damage AND absolutely obliterates sustains and bene effects. Inner Demons procs regularly despite what you say - 30% chance at 100 mindpower is fine, as you'll likely have over 100 MP at endgame and besides - that's 30%, per turn, for FOURTEEN TURNS. And their resist is halved if they're sleeping. This is an instant win button for any fight that has a rare+ in it. The more dangerous your enemy is, the easier the fight is, so long as you can land a Sleep on them, which you usually can because your mindpower is through the roof. Because you're a solipsist. I'm unclear whether or not you can use Dream Prison to extend ID infinitely until one pops out, I haven't tested this. Besides all of this - psiblades for bump attacks.
Mind damage can be saved against - Yeah I got nothing here. This is a dumb gimmick for one of the damage types, IMO, but it exists and I have no effective counters to it.
Get slower when you lose resource - Yep. And then Conversion fills you right back up again. Takes one turn and then you GTFO. You want to get a Defender Thoughtform and one level in Over Mind to kickstart the Feedback Engine, after which you have Resonance Field and Conversion usable at will. Biofeedback gives you free HP and Psi regen as long as you have Feedback, which is always.

Not enough damage output for you? Get Discharge! Park behind your Tform in a hallway and crack open the Mind Storm. Feedback Loop costs a little Feedback to give you a bunch more Feedback if you're running low somehow. Backlash kills archers and mages before they even come onscreen. Focused Wrath will make all your Mind Storm bolts home in on the boss of your choice and gain a whopping +66% critical power, melting ANYTHING in a matter of seconds. That's theoretically up to 10 bolts per round dealing 136 base damage per bolt with your mental crit chance and an extra 66% critmod. You can do the math.

As for other bits and pieces, I hear Dream forge is good, never used it. Forge Shield looks like a worse Resolve that can proc Counterstrikes. I have little opinion on the rest of that tree. Mental Shielding is an extra kickass mental status clear. Projection is projection, not quite as abusable as on Possessor though.

Recommended Tier: B, C at worst.

Man this is a lot of points to go through. You still take 1/2 damage to health when 5/5 solipsism, why do you ignore that? Dismissal rolls 68% mental save, yes, so it'll never work on hit >80-100 damage. When is the last time you died because you took 50 damage end-game? (because you won't shield even those low numbers before end-game). Compare distortion damage to hum.... any class but alch and AM? Ravage stripping sustains is good though. Discharge deals damage, if there are enough enemies on the screen and you're fine not moving while they destroy you. Dream forge is awful except for the talents creating walls which could have been good if the walls weren't random.

I know I give solip SOME undeserved shit, but it's still a really bad class, and not intuitive. How many time have seen player asking for quesiton on solip in chat? Or even writing "Solipsist" correctly? :p

[PseudoLoneWolf]

I admit my bias as Solipsist is one of my very favorite classes, although that's probably due largely to flavor. I desperately try to find ways to defend it when people talk shit about it, but yeah, it's really not one of the stronger classes. I just like it. Q.Q

[Zeyphor]

I will add to the words of Psuedolonewolf
first off, you are wrong about clarity suppressing the solipsism threshold if you CP solipsism; level 7.5 clarity's maximum global speed is 44.4%, and you would want a higher mastery to suppress the solipsism threshold
also, solipsists are very good at playing keep away; here are your options to keep enemies out of your melee range(or incapacitate them)
1: dream walk; even with just 1 point, this talent goes a very, very, very long way
2: distortion wave, which has a range of 9 at tlvl 6.5 and also stuns the enemy for 4 turns at tlvl 6.5 if the enemy was already distorted and they fail a physical save versus your mindpower
3: maelstrom, which has a radius of 4 and lasts for 10 turns at tlvl 6.5
4: sleep, nightmare, and slumber; don't worry about hitting yourself or your thought-form with sleep if you both have lucid dreamer up, since restless night won't proc against targets that are sustaining lucid dreamer
5: dream prison; with that, you can keep a every enemy in a radius of 7 asleep indefinitely if you have a decent regeneration infusion... and actually put them all to sleep, which is mostly a matter of targeting
6: forge bellows, which is one of the best talents in the entire game
7: dreamscape; you can use dreamscape on a different enemy to get a 15 turn breather at tlvl 6.5
8: running faster than the opponent because you have clarity
9: if your thought-form is behind you, you can swap places with your thought-form; depending upon the situation, that might be a bad idea, but it is often a good idea
10: a movement infusion, or a psychoport torque if you'd dare to use it, or rush/disengage shoes, or an offset nature's vengeance that you swap to

furthermore:
restless night stacks, and the making of thought-forms can crit too; I've had a thought-form warrior get me the 3k dmg achievement in a realistic sludgenest situation before... although thought-forms don't live that long anyway on insane
dream hammer is a weapon attack, and it can deal broken amounts of damage with high willpower
dreamscape can crit; at tlvl 6.5 with 100 mindpower, it grants you +136% all damage during dreamscape on a non-crit, and when it crits with 150% multiplier, thats +204% all damage right there! just imagine what it gets to with high critmult
solipsists are actually very beefy at high levels, especially if antimagic with massive armor; antimagic shield and dismissal are both far more effective if you have high resistances, and forge shield makes antimagic shield and dismissal even better... also fungus makes psi a non-issue unless your hp is also low
and as with all classes except demonologist, don't forget to stack up your physical resistance so that you have >60% by high peak

I was going to add more, but I didn't feel like it; regardless, I think that solipsists are a very easy class to play, and alot of the time I can just get reckless with them... they in my opinion are at least B tier, based upon the provided criteria for the tiering

[Snarvid]

Not sure who the “you’re wrong” on Solipsism is to, I can explain the PES/Heroism point in more detail if that’s to me.

Again, it’s all relative on tier lists. Not “tanky,” but “tanky compared to what?” I think Psyshot keeps Solipsist out of B Tier on a power comparison. Note below I’m assuming the Solipsist isn’t using steam-powered Tinkers - it’s certainly possible they could, but I don’t think most Solipsist builds have room for Tinkers and a steam generator implant without giving up needed resources. Also, as they are both non-magic classes they can both go massive armor/AM and therefore those options can be erased from both sides of the equation.

I’m willing to cede any of the below if there’s something I missed, clearly I’m not as experienced a Solipsist player as you (in that you have roguelike insane wins with them and I have 0 at any difficulty). Regardless, if your value proposition as a Solipsist is “use all your Distortion abilities, then put everyone to sleep until they cool down” I’m going to say that fails the rapidity and tediousness criteria explicitly included in this tier list.

Power Comparisons - Solipsist vs Psyshot

Tanky: Forge Shield and Dismissal vs Molten Iron Blood, ACT, No Hope, Mechanical Arm harassment, no Solipsism debuff?

Best skill in game: Forge Bellows 50% chance to make walls on 24 turn CD vs Solidify Air filling in 100% of unused space every 15?

Mobile: Dream Walk’s random movement vs Vaporous Steps instant speed/targeted movement with healing & resource gen from inhale vapors (and if you go AM/Fungus, triggers Ancestral Life for bonus turns, as does Cloaking Gesture with ERS)? Hook Shell and/or Rocket Boots if more needed?

Stun: Distortion Wave’s stun if pre-distorted vs. Blunt Shot’s stunning cone with Condensation or Vaporous Step to lower enemy stun resistance?

Keepaway: Distortion tree’s keepaway options vs. Metalstar, Vacuum Shot, a Thunderclap Coating on your Mindstar (aoe damage + 20% knockback chance on Shoot / passive Mechanical Arm punches)? Cloaking Gesture’s “I forgot you exist”?

Summons: Thought-forms vs. hand tinker summons (I’m quite partial to Toxic Canister, which synergizes amazingly well with Solidified Air, but others like Fatal Attractor for Taunt + Reflection)?

Damage: I can’t say. My guess is that, as a Tinker-wielding weapon damage class presumably running PES & Superpower the Psyshot does more in the endgame, but it’s just my general sense that mid-late game weapon % damage skills tend to outshine fixed damage skills.

[Cathbald]

here are your options to keep enemies out of your melee range(or incapacitate them)
1: dream walk; even with just 1 point, this talent goes a very, very, very long way

I like dreamwalk but saying it goes a long way at 1 point is just wrong, it has what, 6 accuracy then? You might move by only 1 tile...

2: distortion wave, which has a range of 9 at tlvl 6.5 and also stuns the enemy for 4 turns at tlvl 6.5 if the enemy was already distorted and they fail a physical save versus your mindpower

So you need 5/5 distortion bolt to ignore your thought form, to use a setup turn using distortion bolt, the ennemy to not be fast enough to avoid the bolt, to fail a first check and be distorted then to fail a save check to be stunned. I know easier stun to use.

3: maelstrom, which has a radius of 4 and lasts for 10 turns at tlvl 6.5

Works well until you meet an enemy with movement skill.
Or ranged damage.

4: sleep, nightmare, and slumber; don't worry about hitting yourself or your thought-form with sleep if you both have lucid dreamer up, since restless night won't proc against targets that are sustaining lucid dreamer

Agree that sleep is very good for running away, not so for damage though, as one hit will wake them and then they're really hard/impossible to sleep for a few turns after.

5: dream prison; with that, you can keep a every enemy in a radius of 7 asleep indefinitely if you have a decent regeneration infusion... and actually put them all to sleep, which is mostly a matter of targeting

Never tried so can't actually comment. Dislike not moving on purpose though.

6: forge bellows, which is one of the best talents in the entire game

Would agree if the wall creation wasn't random but 100%.
And would be better if the whole category didn't suck, you could basically multiply all numbers in those talents by 10 (except forge armor) and have something balanced.

7: dreamscape; you can use dreamscape on a different enemy to get a 15 turn breather at tlvl 6.5

Similarly to fearscape, yeah I agree.

8: running faster than the opponent because you have clarity

Agree to a point, once you've been hit it doesn't work as well and every class will use a movement infusion which will be enough to run away speed boost or not.

9: if your thought-form is behind you, you can swap places with your thought-form; depending upon the situation, that might be a bad idea, but it is often a good idea

Summons are always great, agreed.

10: a movement infusion, or a psychoport torque if you'd dare to use it, or rush/disengage shoes, or an offset nature's vengeance that you swap to

Avalaible to everyone so irrelevant.

dream hammer is a weapon attack, and it can deal broken amounts of damage with high willpower

Agreed, and I prefer to use dreamhammer rather than most solip talents but seems weird to mention after listing 10 points of how not to be in melee.

dreamscape can crit; at tlvl 6.5 with 100 mindpower, it grants you +136% all damage during dreamscape on a non-crit, and when it crits with 150% multiplier, thats +204% all damage right there! just imagine what it gets to with high critmult

So you use dreamscape against dangerous targets? Seeing as how they only get 50% damage reduction, starting turn 2 you take more damage than you would have otherwise that seems pretty damn dangerous to me.

solipsists are actually very beefy at high levels, especially if antimagic with massive armor; antimagic shield and dismissal are both far more effective if you have high resistances, and forge shield makes antimagic shield and dismissal even better... also fungus makes psi a non-issue unless your hp is also

Agreed that solip has more synergy than most with AM and fungus. Everyone use massive armor though. This is also the right time to point out that heroism, one of the best defensive tools, sucks hard on solip. On use it lowers your speed and you don't care about going below 1hp because that would mean your psi is almost/complety depleted and you are massively slowed.
I also find that heal infusion are superior to regen because of the lower, cd, instant use, wound+ poison cleanse but on solip I need a regen because I can't wait as long for my hp to drop because it would.mean being slower. That's already two insc slots where I have to play with inferior inscriptions.

I was going to add more, but I didn't feel like it; regardless, I think that solipsists are a very easy class to play, and alot of the time I can just get reckless with them... they in my opinion are at least B tier, based upon the provided criteria for the tiering

I feel like their damage is too low for them to be fast, their mobility/defense too poor to get reckless, and their kit to clunky to be easy. I know some of it is subjective and the class just doesn't do it for me andbut apparently click very well with you but trying to ignore that i still can't put them higher than C tier. For example shadowblade is just plain better and while not easy it's not as bad as solip, doomed can reduce ennemy damage to 0 and shadows deal more damage than solip, rogue has lots of tools for massive damage/utility, corr/reaver are more straight forward and deal massive amounts of damage making them better imo (though they do hugely lack in mobility...).

[ZyZ]

I feel like their damage is too low for them to be fast, their mobility/defense too poor to get reckless, and their kit to clunky to be easy. I know some of it is subjective and the class just doesn't do it for me andbut apparently click very well with you but trying to ignore that i still can't put them higher than C tier. For example shadowblade is just plain better and while not easy it's not as bad as solip, doomed can reduce ennemy damage to 0 and shadows deal more damage than solip, rogue has lots of tools for massive damage/utility, corr/reaver are more straight forward and deal massive amounts of damage making them better imo (though they do hugely lack in mobility...).

I mean, no offense, but saying that solipsist has low damage is absurd. You played it but you don't know what makes it tick.

1) Distortion explosion can crit. Afaik it's the only offensive talent in game that can double crit (base damage then explosion damage) thus with 150% crit power damage multiplier is x2.25 (not counting 1.5x modifier from explosion). Madness gear quality allows you consistently go to 300-450% crit power . 400% crit power = x16 damage multiplier. 500% crit power = x25 damage multiplier etc. Low tooltip damage is partially true only for <200% crit power / low crit chance characters.
2) Dreamscape can crit. All damage modifiers can be multiplied by crit power ie 100% phys damage is coverted to 400% phys damage. All different talent bonuses stack with dreamscape bonus thus 50k aoe distortion bolts are possible. Most boss / rare rank endgame have less than 70k life so dreamscape not only allows you to reset cooldowns but you can actually go for kill if mob has less hp than 1-2 full crit distortion bolts dmg
3) Many people mentioned it but i'll repeat it anyway. Windtouched Speed reduce talent cooldown by at least 1 turn and obviously you benefit from it the most when your core talents have low cooldown. With this prodigy mindsear becomes 1 turn cooldown, distortion bolts 2 turns cooldown. Add eye of the tigger and you will be able to cast BOTH mind sear and distortion bolt each turn every turn assuming you have enough global speed / mind speed to cast two talents each turn. Imho this is most offensive setup for solipsist. Run game in debug mode, set mindcrit to 100, crit power to 300 and see for yourself.
4) You can remove regeneration effect with distortion ravage

In general crit power synergize well with both defensive and offensive talents (resonance field, inner demons, dismissal, though forms etc) and imho is the most important thing to focus late game. Afaik when people create tier lists they focus on broken things like unstoppable, wall of stone, dot damage, hitting through walls etc. Im not sure why solipsist would be any different. It can face tank madness (like literally stand and wait for 1k tooltip freeze that is reduced to almost 0) and has enough damage single target and aoe damage to clear prides on madness. This is something that can't be said about fe oozemancer which struggle with every single rare with regeneration / healing.