What's with the Solipsist's Dream Forge category?

[Adonan]

I use the point planner addon, and though it obviously can't take into account the bonuses to power and other stats you'll get later, I think it still gives you a pretty good idea of what your numbers might look like.

With that being said, the Dream Forge category on the Solipsist looks under-tuned. Compared to every other skill, the numbers just look really low. Now I'm no master of this game by any means-I only got my first win on Nightmare a few days ago-but blocking about 20 damage on an effective talent level of 8.5 seems lackluster, even if it can block damage of any type. Maybe I'm just underestimating how impactful these skills can be.

[76561199007339512]

I may be wrong, but I think percentage damage reduction is applied first, then static damage reduction like block, then solipsism/dismissal. Combined with solipsism, resonance shield, and dismissal it can negate chip damage significantly exceeding its reported block value.

It can't be balanced at all difficulties because saving throws scale less than incoming damage and dismissal compares them. Buffing it would make it seriously overtuned on normal and normal is the difficulty setting that is supposed to be balanced.

[Adonan]

I see. That's something, I guess. I'll give it a go, thanks mate.

[mk11]

1. I think the 15% trigger level is lower than it seems because it will be based on total damage before conversion from Solipsism. So this will trigger more often than you think.

2. Flat damage reduction is really helpful at blocking DOTs.

According to the wiki with talent level 8.5 and mindpower of 100 you should be able to get this to blocking about 45 which would be pretty good.

Contrast that with Energy Decomposition which can block about double that but only 30% of each attack.

[Adonan]

I don't know. Maybe I haven't played the game long enough, but I feel like if something only mildly prevents you from getting one-shot, it isn't good. Reality Smearing is a great shield because it's pretty much just a 30% reduction in damage taken on its own. The Forge Shield is dependent on other talents to be good, and I'm sure I've seen quite a few DoTs that can hit harder than 45.

Then again, the Solipsism damage reduction is passive, so you don't have to worry about something stripping you of them. It would probably also mitigate the loss of Psi, allowing you to last a little longer in a fight. Then there's the fact that Willpower and Ming Power are your main stats, and I've gotten my main stat well past 100 in other runs. To top it all off, I primarily play on Nightmare/Adventure, so I don't get one shot often enough that I need to worry about it.

[Avloren]

Forge Shield is not for protecting you against being oneshot. In fact that's the one thing it's not great at - a massive spike of damage all at once. It's for eliminating all the other damage you're taking.

As a solipsist, you have a ton of stacking sources of damage reduction, both percentage and flat. This can include: ordinary resists (boosted by antimagic tree's resolve), solipsism, resonance field, antimagic shield, armor (massive is better), forge shield, and dismissal. Note that while armor and antimagic talents don't apply to everything, they generally cover each others' weaknesses; there's very few sources of damage that bypass both. One of the few things that does is mind non-weapon damage (e.g. mind sear), which you'll probably wind up with good unbuffed resist against; many solipsist-themed items have mind resist.

When you stack enough damage reduction, particularly flat reduction which is harder to get, you can get attacks that would normally do hundreds of damage to 0. You'll completely eliminate most incoming damage, leaving your health and psi pool intact for the occasional spike.

Of course solipsist is pretty tough without forge shield, it's just one more piece to stack onto the rest. I wouldn't say it's must-have or a high priority unlock, but it's worth considering if you have the category+generic points to spare (in particular, Cornac should be able to fit it in). The rest of the tree isn't great, but not entirely useless; the third talent is a little extra armor to stack on top of everything else, that's worth 1 point, and forge bellows is maybe situationally useful for wall creation (I wish it was guaranteed instead of 50%, it'd be a lot better).