Report 420

Report #420
Skillset: Telepathy Skill: Mindblast
 Org: Geomancers Status: Rejected Jul 2010
Furies' Decision:
We do not find this to be necessary.
Problem: Mindblast, once a mighty flagship of telepathy, has fallen into the
obscure ranks of rarely used skills. The reason for the neglect is simple: the
mana and ego loss is small enough to cover with sparkle and healing scroll, and
the damage is weak enough to be easily healed up in the 6 seconds it takes to
recover from mindblast. Thus, everyone sticks with psyvamp. The cause for this
downfall is more complicated, and though I don't know for sure, my guess is that
the stat revamps that made intelligence matter less along with the
hexangle/pentangle buffs that boosted staff ended up making mindblast a poor
choice for damage. Indeed, if you exclude outliers like pyromancer staff vs a
dracnari, staff does more damage than mindblast even on targets with no psi dmp
(admittedly, most of Lusternia, but you see my point), while also being nearly
twice as fast. (3.5 seconds with pentangle vs 6 seconds for mindblast).
Solution #1: Increase mindblast's damage to be a slightly higher burst than
 staff (though of course, lower dps in exchange for the
 afflictions and mana/ego). From my testing, you could accomplish
 this by increasing mindblast's damage by 15%, which would make it
 a slightly higher burst on low and mid health targets, and about
 equal on high health (mindblast doesn't scale as much as staff,
 apparently).
Solution #2: Add the option to PSI SUPER MINDBLAST X (MANA|EGO). Mindblasting
 mana would remove the ego damage and double the mana damage, and
 the other way around. This would make it harder to simply
 sparkle/scroll off the secondary damage of mindblast.
Solution #3: If the target has 2 mental afflictions, mindblast's damage is
 boosted by 10%. It is further boosted by 10% for every additional
 mental affliction beyond that, capping at a 50% boost at 6
 afflictions. Keep in mind, this attack would still be a on a 6
 second balance and weaker than staff initially.