Cathbald wrote:A lot happened here, huh. Might try solip with distortion bolt before the fix is pushed, just to see big numbers. Not sure how I'm gonna survive until I get the gear for it though, which pretty much sums up all my solip runs. At the very least this discussion fixed one bug so yay for making a difference.
Bpat, AM is tedious. I need to try arcane build for better damage, maybe this way it'd be higher, but i'm serious when i say i find it easier/faster to advance until dreadfell as necro. Beyond dreadfell i can't say because my AM never reached the east unlike my necros. Cursed lower mid-tier could be debatable, what are your reasons?
oh its not that hard to survive as solipsist
you don't even need to drown stuff at all or buy anything from shops before the third starter dungeon
heres how to get started with a cornac sleep/distortion AM build
at level 2, have 3 solipsism, 1 slumber, the rest distortion bolt, and for generics, get 1 biofeedback, and 3 sleep, and use the CP on an iscription
at level 3, 1 distortion bolt, 1 psychometry if you haven't yet
at level 4, 1 distortion wave, 1 lucid dreamer, and at this point you work on maxing out resonance field
at level 5, I think you get to max distortion bolt; at that point, you want to max the talent, solipsism, and then after that for class points you just max out distortion
at level 6 and onwards, stop spending generics after you get max resonance field, get 1 point in dream walk, get 1 point in dream prison, and maybe get conversion, which you might get from an escort
after you beat trollmire+ben+arena+kor'pul in that order, your infusions should ideally be phys/mag wild(starter works too)+big low cd regen+big low cd healing+movement; 2 big healings or 2 big regens can work too, and sometimes just taking whatever you can get is good enough
after you finish all 6 starter zones too, then you can go and buy whatever else you might want except maybe mindstar training, then go straight to the AM arena, do it, then dump your generics into antimagic until its 5/1/5/0; 1/1/1/0 actually isn't that bad in early T2, and you'll likely be able to get it to 5/1/1/0 right after the AM arena, if not better... you should also have distortion completely maxed out by level 17 or 18 as well; believe it or not, that by itself is enough offense until lategame
surviving t2 by that point is a matter of chance(maybe over 50%, actually), but there are alot of very, very scary things that won't scare you even with light armor by that point because of your ability by then to play keepaway with even hummerhorn cursed doombringers(beware of beyond the flesh when using dream prison)
this should succeed at clearing T1 most of the time, and you should be able to clear every vault that you come across when you come across them, except for maybe some rhaloren camp or kor'pul vaults(ladder zones aren't vaults)
PseudoLoneWolf wrote:This is really the crux of everything that I was getting at. Feedback is THE defensive talent tree for Solipsist. Not even Solipsism approaches the kind of situational saves that Feedback gives you - your thoughtforms give you feedback so you can safely have it at 100 every fight without ever having been hit, Biofeedback gives you a constant HP and Psi trickle refill, if you ARE going to be hit Resonance Field absorbs 50% of damage so that you still have a chance to Dismissal anything that gets past it and the shield lasts way longer, Amplification is slightly better than tax at 1 point, and Conversion is an at-will full reset of an entire fight. Use conversion and you'll be at full health and psi afterward, with the appropriate speed boosts, guaranteed. At least as a Yeek Solipsist that I'm currently playing to prove a point, by TL2 Conversion was giving me enough raw HP heals to fill my HP and Psi to full, without even taking into account the resource heals. It was enough to fill my whole health bar 2-3 times over by TL4.
biofeedback and amplification are awful unless you're doing a discharge build
with 1 point in biofeedback and none into amplification, you're gonna have enough feedback to use conversion when you need it for the hp, and to use resonance field after you get hit some
nothing should oneshot you unless you do something terribly wrong, such as standing in melee range of a hummerhorn brawler thats awake or fighting something thats bonkers like a gunslinger saw horror
resonance field is an easy 5 though, and out of all the generics that I end up getting, I think that conversion is the one that I'd forge if I didn't have enough points to get everything that I wanted, although I'd max out conversion if I could; its a good talent
also resonance field doesn't need to be instant, and if you really need hp without spending a turn to get it, then you might have your healing infusion up, or maybe you could spare some extra generics to make the extra turn gain from fungus break 100%, which although its nice, is really not necessary
Derael wrote:I think there are some misconceptions about Solipsists and Solipsism in particular.
1. First of all, solipsism threshold. It sounds like it ideally should be low, but actually the higher it is, the better. Since it's substracted from 100%.
So with 70% threshold you only lose speed when below 30% max psi, which almost never happens. Sure, you are still losing bonus from clarity when your psi drops, but you won't reach negative speed unless your psi is really low. Usually your PSI is higher than HP and it also regenerates much faster, so most of the time you will be above 60% and have more than 100% global speed.
2. Solipsism itself. Again, the higher it is, the better. It's not hard to keep high PSI levels, you get a lots of ways to do it (at least if you have 0 fatigue). Upping solipsism directly reduces damage to your HP, which is the main thing you are concerned about. The only downside is, it also reduces your healing done to HP, but usually you overheal with regen infusion anyway, so that's not a problem at all. Besides, it's completely in proportion with damage reduction so balance is still in your favor (basically you are much less vulnerable to burst, but also recover slower). This also means that with 60% solipsism conversion any HP from item grants 2.5x effective HP, so it's very good to get HP items on Solip. The same goes to CON, it may seem that CON is bad stat on Solip, but it's actually 2.5x times more effective than it seems, so you get 7.5 effective HP from CON compared to usual 4.
So even without items Solip gets 2.5x effective HP with 60% Solipsism, which already completely covers its halved HP modifier AND it also scales better with HP/CON. That's why Solipsist is one of the tankiest ranged classes. I didn't try melee Solipsist myself, but fully ranged Solipsist is just great.
3. Clarity is just global speed. And nope, it's not true that Heroism/PES are bad on Solip. I can partially agree with PES (Though there are better prodigies for Solip IMO). But Heroism is very good on Solip, if used right. Sure, it tepmporarily reduces your bonus global speed (from 1.6 to 1.55 or so, or from 1.75 to 1.7 with Crimson Robe). But it won't make any difference at all, because you are already almost twice as fast as your enemies. And your PSI will quickly fill up with Regen infusion, so the difference will quickly disappear. As for negative HP, you usually die when your HP runs out before your PSI is even in critical range. So again, if you are able to keep up with PSI regeneration, any HP increase (including negative HP increase) will be 2.5x times effective. That's why it might be a good idea to focus on getting as much PSI regen as possible (especially from PSI on crit etc.). When I played Solip I rarely dropped below 80%, only some huge hits got me to 50-60% and it quickly went back to normal with regen infusion. So nope, Heroism is NOT bad on Solipsism at all.
But on Solipsist it is used differently than on other classes, more like a panic button, when your HP drops below certain point, not at the beginning of combat, since duration is low and Solipsist battles can last for 10+ turns before you even get into any danger. So blowing your heroism early is not very wise, since its HP part will be wasted, and stats are not THAT important on Solip (your damaged is based mostly on mind damage modifier rather than will/cun).
4. Finally, Dismissal. It's actually worse than people think it is. First of all, it can never block damage higher than (0.68% of mental save + 20). Basically, with 100 mental save you are nearly immune to hits that deal 50 damage or less, and can occasionally block hits that deal up to 90 damage (with very low chance). But I have a feeling that the damage is determined based on damage to HP, not total damage. So that will again increase the damage range by 2.5. So any hits below 125 damage and occasionally hits that normally deal up to 200 damage will be blocked. Still, it's not confirmed and depends on the actual code, but I believe it works that way.
But the confusing part is about 50% damage. It actually can't crit. Simply put, the damage reduction % scales with crit. The formula is (1-1/(crit+2)). So at 0 crit you get 50% damage reduction (IF DAMAGE IS LOWER THAN YOUR SAVE ROLL). At 100% crit you get (1-1/102)~99% reduction, so it's almost damage ignore. Basically it works like flat DR, but not sure how it stacks with defense/flat DR. If chance to apply is tested after final damage was calculated, it's actually very good, since it will scale with resistances, flat DR, Solipsism threshold etc. But if it's applied before all the defensive modifiers, it's quite useless lately and is only good to block some low damage dots. From my experience it should be the former, because I rarely recieved any damage and if I recieved some, it was only from really big hits (above 200). So the theory about it blocking up to 200 raw damage is plausible, but maybe I just didn't notice. It requires some careful study or explanation from the devs.
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Overall Solipsism tree is much better than people tend to think.
1: you have solipsism's threshold backwards
the lower the threshold, the better, although really, its worth increasing the threshold to get the relevant solipsism talents
at 70% threshold, you lose speed if you go below 70% psi
at 30% threshold, you lose speed if you go below 30% psi
3: I'll also tell you that heroism is not as good on a solipsist as a second movement infusion is; I think that you can get double turned if you lose too much hp in 1 turn, but I'm not entirely sure... if you run out of psi, you're pretty much gonna be dead, but at least it works to some effect as a panic button, though it is, imo, outclassed by movement infusions; the ideal setup, imo, is phys/mag wild+12 cd big regen+healing+movement+movement, and you don't even need the 5th slot for the second movement infusion
4: dismissal is actually good when it reduces damage that is below 68% of your mental save, and is even better when you CP it, increasing it to damage below 74% of your mental save
if you have 100 mental save, which is actually quite doable, then you'll be able to reduce the damage dealt by alot of stuff... combine with with resists+AM shield+forge shield to reduce the damage dealt by big attacks
say that, for instance, an enemy attacks you with a critical lightning for 700 raw damage; it first goes through 70% lightning resistance and is lowered to 210, then it goes through AM shield and is lowered to 100, then forge shield reduces it by 30, and then that 70 is less than 74% of 100, so dismissal goes off, letting you reduce that 700 crit lightning spell to 35 damage, even less if dismissal crits
and that dismissal crit can presumably proc eye of the tiger(I know that resolve can)
also, I think that cursed is quite underrated
if you build em right, they're extremely tanky, and can even facetank farportals after winning the game on insane RL
armor+hardiness+AM shield is already really good defense, and then for melee range, you add repel, and for range 1-3, you add gloom RNG, and for range 4+, you add sanctuary, and for everything else, you get to add rampage's tenacity talent, reducing the damage that you take by even more... but its hard to get them past(let alone to) T2 on insane, though once they reach level 30, its very likely that you'll win
and of course, as with just about every build of just about every class, resistances, especially physical resistance, is very important