Solipsist Changes

[anonymous000]

With 1.6 coming I think it might be a good time to review this. Solipsist might be the most forgotten class in terms of class updates. Not that we need class updates just because of the sake of doing so, but I strongly think there are a number of clunky mechanisms in Solipsist that deserve a change.

Below are my suggestions to make Solipsist less tedious to play, and I think they would not be making Solipsist much stronger (in terms of leading to a higher class tier). I do not play very often and the furthest I have got is only nightmare difficulty, also I haven't played with all the trees, so comments are welcomed!


1. Distortion: Remove the distorted prerequisite in triggering extra effect . The extra effects are not so powerful to warrant such prerequisites, and it is tedious to use Distortion wave as a filler to get enemies distorted first (you won't want to use Ravage as the first attack). I understand the original intention might be about creating some fun combo effects (seems this is also the design of the Dream Smith tree), but it is not working well here.

2. Add a mobility talent. For a class that has some melee leanings, mobility talent is necessary

3. Make Mind Storm does not break upon movement. Break upon movement is a show stopper for the whole talent tree, or at least:
- Just add an mobility talent that won't break Discharge, or
- Make movement when the Discharge sustain is on cost feedback

Some extra buff when there is only 1 enemy facing you would also be nice

4. Update Forge Shield to make to applies damage last after all DR are accounted for. The Counterstrike is so rarely triggered as you only trigger the Counterstrike when your enemy deals enough damage, and when they do, probably the Forge Shield does not matter. Or simply make it works like normal shield block with higher block value

[Arcvasti]

For distortion you just go maelstrom into another distortion ability. Both because maelstrom is very strong and because it has no extra effects when applied to distorted targets. Strong disagree on the extra effects not being powerful. Ranged stun, stripping physical effects and absurd damage explosions are all quite powerful. The last one is dying in 1.6 though so distortion bolt could maybe use some more love.

Solipsist already has more mobility then most melee classes.

This wouldn't fix discharge. That tree needs to be gutted and redone entirely.

Similarly the dream forge tree just has too low numbers to do anything.

The changes solipsist really needs are better descriptions and the removal of projection. It still has issues beyond that but those changes might be within the scope of 1.6.

[grobblewobble]

Off-topic, but I see people talk about the changes in 1.6. Curious if I can read about those somewhere? Or do you have to be part of the inner crowd?

[Zeyphor]

solipsists don't need any mobility talent that they don't already have; dream walk is plenty, and for further psuedo-mobility, they have malestrom and distortion wave

also, you should be using malestrom to distort enemies for further distortion effects if the enemy is actually threatening to you EDIT: and to keep the enemy where you want it to be
also, 5pt forge shield actually triggers counterstrike surprisingly often, at least in my experience; this is probably due to stuff like diseases, poisons, burning, bleeds, and glacial vapor
obviously, 5 points grants more counterstrikes than 4 does, and your thought-forms can take advantage of those counterstrikes for you

and fyi, they're making resonance field be instance on 1.6, which really isn't necessary, and they're also buffing transcendant thought-forms to make it be worth getting at least 4 points into

discharge does really suck though, even with thoughtforms; I tried insane rl with it and only died in high peak because I didn't notice that I got braided before it was too late
dreamforge(talent) sucks too, and could really use some sort of buff
in theory, they could make it and discharge good by just making them hit harder and/or debuff harder
dream prison is really strong as-is, even at 1 point, so I'd rather that they not change how psionic channels break when you move

[PseudoLoneWolf]

Let me shoot talents through my thoughtforms with T-F Unity, please. Right now if you want to effectively run Distortion you can't take TF, and vice versa, because they get in each other's way and instead of landing an attack on an enemy you just nuke your defender. Unity seems like the best place to put it since all the other TF talents are already pretty strong, and while adding "Your attacks don't damage allies" to one of them probably won't be THAT ridiculous, having it load into the capstone seems fitting and balanced, to me.

[Chronosplit]

I wouldn't say forgotten, I mean it's one of the most out-of-the-box ideas in the whole game and is often written about. But major improvements? Yes please.

I feel like the Feedback abilities could be improved a lot in general, especially since it's an escort betrayal tree now. In the generic tree the first talent more-or-less is just "I'll give you a bar" for most class builds, and the only other good ability in it for them is Conversion which is deep in there (unless you betray an ano). Discharge isn't the best to write home about either and it's sad, because Mind Storm would be killer with Focused Wrath if it didn't require you to stand still. Backlash would be really nice if you didn't need to max it and have 100 mindpower to make it just a flat feedback retaliation (but this could be just me). Maybe make that a lash out with a percentage of the feedback gained instead?

Also shooting through thoughtforms would be really nice. I hate it when the summon blocks my projectile path, and Soli is almost all projectiles.

[Arcvasti]

On one hand not murdering your thoughtforms makes them not useless. On the other hand if thoughtforms become not useless then it exposes how awful their design is.

And yeah it'd be nice if amplification and biofeedback weren't absolutely useless. Honestly I think that the best thing to do would be to remove the feedback category, projection and psychometry and then stick resonance shield and conversion into mentalism. Assuming that discharge even needs to exist, it could switch to using psi or just keep using feedback.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

On one hand not murdering your thoughtforms makes them not useless. On the other hand if thoughtforms become not useless then it exposes how awful their design is.

Not trying to argue, necessarily, but could you explain why they're considered useless? Personally I consider them to be one of the strongest trees the Solipsist has got, and I will never ever run a Solip without taking Thoughtforms. You get a constant auto-summoning tank a la Temporal Hounds that will keep you constantly filled up to max Feedback via Overmind. With maxed Unity you get an additional 12% resist all on a class that desperately needs defense. (Assuming you're using the Defender, which you should - I will admit that the other thoughtforms are pretty useless). Maxed feedback means you have a constant trickle heal at all times (which in turn means constant Psi regen), a Resonance Field at any time you need it without needing to get hit first, and Conversion at any time which can nearly reset a fight just by itself.

So, why are thoughtforms bad?

[Arcvasti]

I'll address these point by point.

1: Constant auto-summoning isn't important since they only resummon every 24 turns. If a fight is lasting 24 turns then something has gone badly wrong.

2: Getting feedback from your thoughtforms is one of the few things they do do, yes. The thing is you have two talents that require feedback in the first place. One of them is a heal, so you must have had feedback in order for it to be useful. And you really don't need a full feedback bar to use a single talent.

3: 12% resall for 8 class points really isn't worth it. I'd much rather have 18% mind speed for 5 class points, especially since the archer is the best thought-form anyways since it doesn't run straight into your hammer tosses. Honestly the 38 mindpower for 7 class points would probably be better then the resall if it let me apply inner demons reliably to the final bosses. The worst part about the resall is that it turns off once your thought-form dies, which will happen very quickly because it's melee-only. The archer will probably also die too quickly for investing in unity to be helpful but at least it tries to stay at a safe distance.

4: Biofeedback does basically nothing and, as mentioned before, conversion doesn't really need overmind to be usable.

The fact that you describes the auto-summoning as an advantage indicates that you don't know how to give thought-forms good stats/equipment. Without that abuse, a thought-form is an awful awful summon. They have low health, little damage and nothing else special going for them. They are good for tanking early on, for letting you use resonance shield early later on and possibly for a mind speed boost. If you're playing solipsist without dream hammer then they're better since you won't one-shot them by accident, that was primarily what I was referring to with the "useless" comment. Playing solipsist without dream hammer is pretty ??? though.

[ZyZ]

Solipsist is one of my favored class but unfortunately, after recent nerf to only viable way to kill stuff, (that doesn't cause memory leaks / cause serialization errors) it is no longer a class that can be played at madness difficulty. It simply doesn't do enough damage and basically it is in exactly same spot as oozemancer.

Main problem is that "mind damage" trees are not compatible with "physical damage" part of solipsist. When your goal is to do at least 8+ K single target damage per turn you need to focus on one source of damage and it has to be physical (a bit better damage, survivability due to cc talents and ability to apply melee debuffs).

At that point almost half of all available trees become simply useless and I would consider this a biggest problem. It not that mind sear is terrible. It is in fact quite good but in order to make it work you have to 100% focus on mind damage and skip even better skills. There is no synergy at all.

Simple solutions (not that much code, almost everything left intact yet class would be much different)
1. replace dream forge (old dream forge moved to some item perhaps) with skill that converts physical damage to DREAMFORGE damage (sustainable, do not force this). Basically the more you invest into dream hammer / dream forge the easier it should be not harder to use talent based on mind damage type. It would also make mental tyranny somewhat viable but don't quote me on that . You could convert 33% of fireburn damage + other flat damage bonuses to mind damage and with proper items do comparable damage to full physical build (let just assume it is worth one prodigy ...) Some people will argue that it would be better for class to convert other types of damage to physical (like gravity tree) and they are probably right but for me solipsist is all about mind, everything else is just a distraction that might not even exists at all so converting damage to mind / DREAMFORGE damage is imho a lot better idea.

2. pick sleep talents that doesn't do enough and replace it / upgrade it to allow them to convert DREAMFORGE and physical damage to mind damage vs sleeping targets. Again the more you invest in sleep, mind talents the easier it should be to use pure physical part of the class. Physical damage still won't be a thing (because you focused on mind damage) but at least there you will have an opportunity to use it from time to time vs sleeping targets and don’t feel bad about it.

3. Do not cancel mind storm after teleportation. Making dream walk the only talent that does not break it would also be ok but imho not that interesting and powerful. Dream walk fits thematically but it's rather bad talent. Whole turn to make short, conditional jump just doesn't sound great.

Goal of these changes is to make most talent work with each other. You still have to choose if you go dream smith path or sleep path but near endgame you will invest enough points in your core talents to make talents from other path viable. Today you make choice at level one and 2+ trees basically disappear because you won't invest a single point in them because there is no point.

[ZyZ]

So, why are thoughtforms bad?

Base stats numbers are too low. Even with high crit builds thoughtforms base stats aren't "broken" so there is not much to work with.

With 120 effective mind power, 300 crit power you get a creature with base stats below 500. It's not even good considering the effort. Summoner creatures are often better and you can have like whole screen of them. Thoughform would have to be truly exceptional to be considered a good talent.

[Arcvasti]

Solipsist is one of my favored class but unfortunately, after recent nerf to only viable way to kill stuff, (that doesn't cause memory leaks / cause serialization errors) it is no longer a class that can be played at madness difficulty.

I mean if a class can be played at madness difficulty then something is really wrong with that class.

[HousePet]

Stat bonuses don't do as much on Summoned Creatures as they do on normal creatures or players. Unless its been changed.
Con for example doesn't give them more Life.

[Zeyphor]

Stat bonuses don't do as much on Summoned Creatures as they do on normal creatures or players. Unless its been changed.
Con for example doesn't give them more Life.

it had been changed; my crit thoughtform defenders reliably have significantly more hp than my non-crit thoughtform defenders, in patch 1.5.x

[HousePet]

That's good. I was really surprised when I found out that those bonus stats weren't doing much.