Psionics horribly broken lategame

Since monsters do not take a turn after being shoved, you can shove them forever(even dredmor) and never take damage.

While this makes the game take forever, you will never have to worry again about taking damage. Late game this is game breaking because the cost gets as low as 1 mana, and I am regen-ing 1 mana per turn with 7 regen. So I can spam shove to my hearts content and no monsters can ever hit me. I think the spell is really great for early game crowd control but this makes it abuseable for the entire game.

Thoughts?

 

Late game monsters resist shove, so much so that I barely used it past level 4. Why spam a resistable spell?

 

Because even if they resist they cannot attack that turn.

Psionics has a lot of cheap gameplay options. Another is to abuse nerve staple + melee.

 

Yeah, Shove is basically melee immunity if you're willing to spam it. You can clear an entire zoo by positioning the mouse over the entrance and clicking until everything is dead.

Psionics has the best monster lockdown, the best group monster lockdown, and the second-best healing in the game. About all it's missing is escapes, and with Shove locking everything down you only need that if you're at risk of a monster -- that you can't hit with Shove -- casting a spell.

 

They resist the push aspect of it but still are taking about 10 damage(with magic power around 55) and dont get to attack that turn. So with a spell that effectively costs no mana(1 cost, 1 regen per turn) I could spam just that spell the rest of the game after hitting 7 mana regen(1/turn). If you are lucky, you can have this kind of regen by like the 5th floor and just never worry about getting hit again, unless a monster casts a spell outside of your 9 square aoe lockdown.

 

That seems weird - resist should resist all, not just some or part. But I guess that's what I get for not understanding the game mechanics. The damage portion of shove was so negligible early on in my plays with it that I never followed through on it to see if it scaled late-game.

 

My one and only GR victory (two nights ago) was totally from Psionics. This was the first time I actually played with that skill, and I have to agree that it is op.

 

Yeah dual staves + nerve staple + bloodmagic = easy mode. You cast staple + attack twice and repeat as needed. Psionics is probably the strongest skill line in the game.

Since that's only 4 skills, you have 3 others to mess with. Tack on alchemy, and something with a pet like fungal/pyro/golem for early game, and something to deal with zoos like necro or possibly the new fleshcrafting and have fun.

You can more or less faceroll through the game without issue. That is at least after you clear DL 3 or so and get your character rolling. But that's the rub isn't it. I find most viable builds have a risk free go of the game. I'd say once I get past level 1 I have a 90% chance of beating the game no mater what I am playing and a 100% chance to win if I don't do anything stupid. The only build I felt was at risk was a dual wielding sword user melee who still took rather hefty damage and had no spells.

 

So play random. Much harder when you only have 2 skills that work together at all.

 

Heh. To be fair though, if you roll any of the following skills you will beat the game if you survive the first dungeon level with the small off chance of dieing on a monster zoo before DL 5. Past that you win.

Mathemagics
Viking Magics
Psionics

 

Recently I am finding floor 3 more and more brutal for 1 reason, Octo's Aethereal Missiles. I don't know what spellPercentage="13" even means but when I play they either don't cast or the whole flock just start casting over and over. Running into a group of 6 and a bit of back luck, and you can find yourself dead in no time (especially with a melee).

So I can't say that rolling into math or viking = instant win. Psionic maybe if you can maintain the shove spam without the mana supplement skills.

 

2 x Starry Orb reduce Aetheral Missile's damage down to 1. Mages have it easy.

 

I skip the third floor with all my characters.

 

I understand Mathemagics and Psionics, but I'm not as familiar with Viking -- what makes Viking so OP? Because I seem to recall people complaining that Viking was underpowered?

 

arctic wind.

I don't think that alone without either mana skill or positioning skill is enough though.

 

I agree -- arctic wind is good, but I don't see it a dependable way to win games all on its own. It certainly doesn't place it in the same class as either Mathemagics or Psionics.

 

Hell, all this isn't even taking into account Pyrokinesis, which is really solid single target damage (plus burning on the floor) for as little as 4 Mana. Shove, Staple, spam Pyro, kill that "scary" named Mob easy-peasy.

Anyway, Shove just reinforces one of the main disparities between Melee and Caster: Casters generally only take damage when they screw up royally, get lazy, or are out of Mana. Melee take damage as a by-product of dealing damage.

 

So for what it's worth, I'm playing a caster right now with Psionics and it's hard as hell. The difference? I did a random build and got this:

Throwing / Shields / Psionics / Viking / Mage school / Burglary / Alchemy

So I only have 3 mage skills instead of the usual 5 or so (and one of those doesn't have any spells), and I have no pets, nor Blood Magic / Ley Walker. My starting magic power and mana pool was terrible (making Narcosomatic Induction a nonstarter for killing things), and even now at clvl 6 I only have 14 magic power. Arctic Vortex will kill anything on level 2 but leaves many level 3 targets alive, and it costs 10 mana out my pool of 56 -- which means that I run out of mana a lot too.

Of course this is going to get easier as the game goes on and I start getting the better orbs (and hence decent mana regen), but it's nowhere near the "get to level 2, okay I've effectively won now" that most mages seem to get.

EDIT: okay, got level 4 alchemy and two starry orbs, and life is much easier now with Shove costing 1 mana and dealing 5 damage per hit. Still not enough booze, but I'm not scrambling anywhere near as much as I had been.

EDIT 2: and now I'm steamrolling everything in sight. So to sum up: casters are hard so long as mana is a limitation, because this keeps them from spamming their spells. Mana is a limitation so long as spells aren't too cheap and mana regen / booze isn't too plentiful. It seems like the breaking point for this character was getting Shove down to 2MP and getting +5 mana regen (two starry orbs and a ring with regen); at this point, I only really need the occasional booze outside of zoos. And considering that I have 38 mana potions in my inventory waiting to be used, I don't anticipate mana being a problem for the rest of the game.

So here's my suggestion: make Shove more expensive. Min cost of, oh, 5 mana at best. And nerf the mana potion recipe to only ever deliver 1 potion; as it stands, your limiting reagent is aluminum, and each aluminum ingot gives you 4 mana potions, which is just silly.

 

Well, the only reason you get to "I'm Level 2, I win" is because Blood Mage is just... so damn good. Sooooo good. Not having it is like having your mana pool effectively halved.

 

Perhaps there should be an effect associated with Blood Magic to even it out then.

Such as everytime you gain mana from killing you have a chance to acquire a bleeding debuff?