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Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 What is a psi?
1.2 Using the guide
2 Building your psi
2.1 Picking your playstyle
2.2 Picking your race
2.3 Stats Balancing
2.4 Skills Breakdown
2.4.1 Link Skills
2.4.2 Offensive Skills
2.4.3 Party Auras
2.4.4 Crowd Controls
2.4.5 Self Defence
2.4.1 Link Skills
2.5 Mental Overload and You
2.6 Example Builds
3 Strategy
3.1 Strategy Overview
3.2 Attack Chaining
3.3 Self-defence
3.4 Kiting
3.5 Hypnosis
3.6 Twin
4 Advanced Theory
4.1 Optimising damage rubies
4.2 Crowd Control: A closer look
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1 INTRODUCTION
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1.1 What is a Psi?
Psi's are the controller class of allods. They use mind tricks and illusions to mis-direct and lock down their foes, and telekinesis to reshape the battlespace into one that is more advantageous to their own goals. They're also no pushovers on the offence with a wide range of both single target and area effect skill combos that stack effects to unleash major damage often while simultaneously denying their opponent a chance to fight back.
With relatively strong barriers, good mobility and a couple of important melee range spells psis move around within the battlespace more than many casters and often spend a lot of time close to the front line rather than hanging back throwing spells from afar.
Many psi skills also have intresting qualitiative traits that are difficult to quantify in terms of numbers, and rewards creative application; for example timeloop allows a psi to step themself back in time 10 seconds restoring their buffs/health/mana/location to where it was a little earlier, something that can completely change a battle that has just turned against the psi but cannot be described with numbers alone.
What psi's are not.
Psi's defence is strictly pro-active, actively misdirecting and disabling foes, they don't take hits well and are poor self healers. A psi overwhelmed or taken by suprise is a psi that's not going to last long. Since they are heavily reliant on stuns, they fare poorly in boss fights (and raidding) as their stuns do not effect such foes and so are more useful in PvP/Astral/Heroics/Solo play than they are in PvE Raidding.
Psis also have a lack of direct support skills, their assistance to a party comes through situational awareness and proactively preventing enemies attacking their allies, rather than applying buffs or propping up health bars.
Why you might roll a psi.
Psi's are an exotic class with many skill nuances and intresting combos that tend to reward creative thinking and situational awareness over rigid adherance to attack chains so should appeal to players who like to play the underused wildcard class that doesn't fit the usual tank/dps/healer trinity and like being rewarded thinking outside the box.
Their party role - be it PvE or PvP - is primarily that of crowd control, keeping enemies bunched up and locked down and keeping pressure off their friends while taking advantage of the changing conditions to apply DPS too when it'll hurt hardest. They are also adept in solo play and quite capable of farming large groups of mobs for loot and can stand toe-to-toe with most other classes in PvP.
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1.2 Using the guide
This guide contains a huge amount of information, and you might get a bit lost or overwhelmed if you just try read it start to finish. Instead it's broken into several distinct sections
Part 2: Building your psi
This section has a few areas that'll help you with general planning of your character; stats assignment, that sort've thing. The larger "Skills breakdown" section however is extremely in depth, instead of trying to study every skill in succession you are probably better off using it as a reference when playing or planning your psi; you might wonder if psi-shock is a good skill choice, so you can cross check it, and it'll tell you what rubies and skills are related to it and what situations it might be useful in.
Part 3: Strategy
Covers actual practical application of skills in the field and hopefully the videos will give some insight into how a psi moves, attacks and defends in addition to the written guides.
Part 4: Advanced Theory
Is all about high end theorycraft, it's more aimed towards more experienced psis looking to squeeze more from the class than new arrivals and might be confusing or daunting to first time players.
Last edited by empiregibberling on Mon May 16, 2011 6:16 pm, edited 3 times in total.
empiregibberlingHistorian Posts: 2127Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:19 am
Re: The Complete Guide to Psis, Vol. 2
 by empiregibberling » Mon May 16, 2011 8:16 am
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2 BUILDING YOUR PSI
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2.1 Picking your playstyle
Psis are a very flexible class, there is not a set in stone distinction as you might find in say tanks or DPS warriors and even between veteran psis exact builds will differ quite considerably, but there are a few discreet playstyles (and their roles) that should help you to decide what sort've skills you'll be intrested in.
Single target DPS - aka "Raiders", "DPS"
These psis focus on skills in their mental link and psychic shock grids. They establish a mental link with a single target, often deploy a twin as a decoy - and then blast away with single target attacks like a turret. They have the highest DPS against bosses for the class and can compete with most other DPS classes which makes them ideal for raid boss fights. Their long setup time and narrow skill selection though makes them a little repetetive to play and very inflexible
Skills of intrest:
- Either mental link or will suppression, and their related rubies
- Pyrokinesis and all rubies for it including telepathy
- Pain transfer (And mental crisis) for extra intelligence
- Insidious influence, Extra strength, Related thoughts and other damage modifiers.
DPS hybrid - aka "DPS/CC"
By sacrificing some of the weaker damage modifiers it's possible to squeeze reasonable crowd control in without significant loss of single target DPS. In terms of playstyle these psis play much the same as regular DPS psis (turret-like) but are better set up to aid their party in heroics and astral by stunning large groups of foes and moving enemies back onto the tank where aggro can be held and AoE DPS deployed by other teammates. Given their reliable output, ease of play and inclusion of CC's, this tends to be a good starting point for new psis.
Skills of intrest:
- Either mental link or will suppression, and their related rubies
- Pyrokinesis and most the rubies for it.
- Pain transfer (And mental crisis) for extra intelligence
- Mental Pulse and Telekinetic Pull, plus mental suppresion rubies
Pure AoE - aka "AoE/CC", "CC spec"
It is possible to configure psis in a way that is a total inversion of the DPS spec however, focusing mainly on the pain transfer grid; whereas DPS psis play as rigid turrets with a long setup time and narrow focus, these psis are very mobile and can play very loosely and whimsically, snaring, kiting and disrupting large numbers enemies with stuns and AoE damage while wearring them down. The downside is that since most of their DPS is derived from their control skills, enemies who are immune to control are also immune to such psis; this makes them very poor raiders/boss hunters.
Skills of intrest:
- Mental Pulse and Telekinetic Pull, plus shattering pulse and astral blight rubies
- Mindbender and mental suppression for extended stuns
- Wall of blades and stinging blades
AoE Hybrid - aka "AoE/PvP", "AoE/PT"
The final approach to playing a psi would be to hybridise the AoE/CC playstyle. This build takes the stuns granted by the AoE skills, to confer a damage bonus to single target skills like pain transfer, which in turn grant a damage bonus back to the AoE skills through mental crisis, creating long and elaborate chains of damage boosts, area stuns and single target spikes. Like AoE/CC this playstyle fairs badly against bosses, but is exceptional in solo, team and PvP scenarios.
Skills of intrest:
- Mental Pulse and Telekinetic Pull, plus shattering pulse and astral blight rubies
- Mindbender and mental suppression for extended stuns
- Pain transfer, advantageous attacks and mental crisis
With these in mind, we can start looking at how to spread your stats, talents and rubies.
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2.2 Picking your raceLike all archetypes race simply determines which bonus racial skill you get and what your character looks like visually. Empire has two psi archetypes, league only one at present, though they recieve a second psi class in a future patch. Instead of going into a deep blurb about the races I'll just summarise the skills instead 
Elevated Insight - League Seer
For 5 seconds the caster is immune to all physical damage
Sonic Wave - Imperial Mentalist
Hostiles in forward arc are stunned
Mental Fortitude - Imperial Occultist
For 5 seconds caster is immune to all magical damage
If you're picking a class purely for their racial ability, there is no contest, the Xadaganian mentalist's racial is immensely overpowered. With the CC rubies I've seen it's stun duration last over 13 seconds, and that's just crazy. The price: Playing a boring human in a magicpunk setting
The gibberling and arisen racials block DAMAGE, but not the effects; for example if a mage cast conflagration on an arisen with mental fortitude active, they would not be harmed, but the fear effect would still apply and make them run in circles.
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2.3 Stats balancingPsi's have quite a lot of relevant stats to juggle that differ somewhat between builds and is inevitably one of the first questions people ask, even though talents and rubies are really far more important. But regardless a good starting point looks something like this:
Luck: 50% to 66% critical hit chance
Perception: 30% or less miss chance
Wisdom: As little as you feel comfortable with
Intelligence: As much as you can without violating the above 3 rules.
This is a good rule of thumb for all builds and playstyles. Given the dominating mind rubies are at present broken, shunning luck isn't an option if you wish to land solid critical hits. Remember that most your stats in Allods are derived from your GEAR, you won't want (and physically can't) get balance your stats this way simply by investing your level up points.
Luck Vs Intelligence
With the introduction of Mental Crisis - the ability for Pain Transfer to generate additional intelligence, it is viable to make an "int based" psi, who shuns luck (around 20% crit rate) in favour of extra intelligence. This approach results in lower overall DPS, but more consistent damage/healling and stronger defences - and when it does critical, boy does it critical.
While I personally advise against reducing luck and boosting intelligence in this way, it remains a viable alternative playstyle for less damage-focused psis or those having trouble finding luck gear.
Conviction
Crowd control potency is determined by conviction, this makes it an important stat for crowd control using psis, however at present there is no such thing as "conviction gear"; this means if you wish to raise your conviction above the norm, you will have to place your level up stats into the attribute. For CC heavy psis I HIGHLY recommend you do this, combined with the CC rubys your stuns will last over double their stated duration.
Faith
Faith determines the reliability of your self heals; psi self heals were badly nerfed in the most recent patch, so if you plan on using self-healling, you'll need to make sure you don't overlook faith. Faith tends to be found on perception gear; so if you look after your perception your faith will generally look after itself, for the same reason it's a good idea to avoid using perception potions or blessing and try stack it up using specialist perception/faith gear. But if you never use heals you won't need any faith either.
Where to put your level up stats
Given stats are gear derived and there is no specialist "conviction gear", the vast majority of psis will want to pump conviction; the only exception being more heavily DPS specced psis who are either willing to use a water of life in future potentially or are certain they don't want to control. The value of the additional stun duration added by doing this cannot be overstated______________________________________________________________________________________
2.4 Skills breakdown
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2.4.1 Link SkillsA psi's mental link is required to cast many more advanced control spells such as hypnosis and set up defensive measures such as twin. They also provide a damage bonus against the linked target and are required to enable the use of certain rubies such as dominating mind.
Needless to say single target specced psis (DPS/X) will want to invest heavily in at least one link skill, AoE specced psis will find links less important since they'll be hitting multiple targets simultaneously, though they will still want one for improving their boss DPS. All psis intrested in using hypnosis should put at least 1 point into the other link skill so they can perform double hypnosis but do not need to invest fully into both links.
Mental Link
Establishes a mental link with the target for a small mana cost, attacks against this target deal 15% more damage. Must be active to use erase memories, twin, spectral assasin, or hypnosis.
Accelerated Connection- Reduces cast time 0.5...1.5 seconds
Enlightened Path - Increases range and reduces upkeep cost
Shattered Memories - Increases damage dealt by Erase Memories
Dominating Mind - Increases critical hit chance 25...50% (Currently broken!)
Insidious Influence - 33...100% chance for hits to increase damage 2% up to maximum of 10%
Mental link has two distinct things going for it that could draw comparrisons to certain female parental figures - it's classy and it's cheap. Classy, in that it is the only link type that enables the use of all your link skills; twin, spectral assasin, hypnosis, erase memories; and cheap in that you get rank 1 for free, and you don't really need to sink any rubies into it if you don't want to.
Taking the accelerated rubies are certinly a sanity saver and useful (and recommended), but not essential, especially if you arn't specialising in it.
Will Suppression
The target is briefly stunned and establishes a crude mental link with the target for a small mana cost. Must be active to use spectral assasin or hypnosis.
Cruel Master - Increases damage to target by 8...24%
Enlightened Path - Increases range, reduces upkeep cost and cooldown
Dominating Mind - Increases critical hit chance 25...50% (Currently broken!)
Insidious Influence - 33...100% chance for hits to increase damage 2% up to maximum of 10%
Unlike Mental link, will suppression does not increase damage dealt to the target by default, you need to invest rubies into cruel master. Nor does it allow the use of twin or erase memories - what it does benefit from is that it links instantly and with the rubies provides a significantly larger damage boost. It also has good proximity to insidious influence and telepathy which are skills of great intrest to DPS spec psis.
Summary
Overall Mental Link is the more useful of the two skills for most playstyles, having a wider range of tools at it's disposal. Will suppression is of specialist intrest to raid DPS psis for the higher base damage, and it's proximity to the Insidious Influence and Telepathy rubies; while technically speaking ML + Twin and the Extra Strength rubies yields 2% more damage, the twin is easily killed and multiple psis cannot establish multiple twins at the same time.
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2.4.2 Offensive SkillsAll psis should have at least 1 basic attack irrespective of whether they consider themselves DPS or AoE spec. Most are spammable, but mental explosion and pain transfer have cooldowns and special caveats to their usage.
Psi-Shock
Deals weak damage to a single target. Cannot be pre-cast
Mental Reign - Increases critical hit damage 10...30%
Shocking Strike - Increases damage 3...9% and range by 5...15%
"PS" is, frankly useless. It's DPS is lower than everything except choke. The only "advantage" to this skill is that it uses much less mana to actually cast and is faster to cast, but that doesn't compensate for the fact it's damage is abyssmal. Astral venom, the tier 7 version has slightly lower DPS than pyrokinesis r3 though much better mana efficiency, but it's hard to justify 6 additional talent points for unless you're pure DPS spec.
The spell itself is useful for pulling groups of mobs quickly, by chaining through multiple targets, or for detonating astral blight or stacking insidious influence, but you don't need the spell to be levelled up to actually achieve that and you get rank 1 for free at level 1.
Pyrokinesis
Deals good damage to a single target. There is a 15% chance the attack will strike twice, but inflict mental overload. This spell can be pre-cast
Psychotic Urges - Increases critical hit damage 10...30%
Sadistic Touch - Increases damage 3...9%
"Pyro" costs around 3 times as much mana to cast as psi-shock and is pretty mana intensive, but it deals a great deal more damage than it's cheaper cousin, it's rubies don't have any useful synergies either, so investing heavily into this skill is a major decision as it'll become your build's focus, but a worthwhile focus if single target DPS is your goal.
At higher levels, Pyrolysis R2 boasts higher DPS than Pyrokinesis R3 for the same number of talents making Pyrolysis R2 generally preferable for any pyro-using spec of high enough level to invest in it (46+)
Pain Transfer
Deals massive damage to a single target. This spell inflicts significant mental overload and cannot be precast.
Mental Reign - Increases critical hit damage 10...30%
Master of Pain - Increases damage 3...9% and range 5...15%
Mental Crisis - Casting the spell increases you intelligence 5...15% for 10 seconds.
"PT" is not spammable since it has a 10 second cooldown, and it also generates a lot of overload, it does however have 2 specialised uses that makes it of intrest to all classes of psi in one way or another.
For one, the Mental Crisis rubies (Found in the psi-shock tree) grant the psi a 10 second intelligence buff after casting it, this means it can be used as a warm up spell to a sustained barrage of attacks to increase the damage of subsequent attacks. Also, for AoE builds, it can be chained together with mental explosion to drop a sizable single target damage spike, combined with pyrokinesis and astral blight the deluge of damage packets can overwhelm players in PvP; if not killing them then causing them to panic at the massive and sudden damage spike.
Nonetheless PT should not be invested in on the basis of it being a "primary attack", it is strictly an attack chain spell used to leverage other skills be they AoE or DPS. Functionally, Destabilisation is just an even more powerful PT, but you will need to take it to rank 3 if you wish to surpass PT R3's total damage.
Mental Explosion
Deals good damage to a single target. Can only be used against stunned or knocked down foes.
Like PT, "ME" has a 15 second cooldown so it's not spammable, and it can only be cast on stunned foes. It deals much the same damage as pyrokinesis, but only costs 1 ruby to max out, as opposed to 6 talent points and 6 rubies like pyro, however it's buried deep in the AoE side of the tree making it more of a skill for AoE or CC spec psis. Intrestingly as it has no cast time it can be cast while kiting.
Wall of Blades
Deals moderate damage every second for 6 seconds to target and adjacent enemies. Cannot be precast.
Stinging Blades - Increases damage 5...15%
Master of Blades - Your next wall of blades casts 0.3...0.9 seconds faster. Stacks up to 3 times.
"WoB" is the psi's main AoE attack and takes the form of a swarm of telekineticlly controlled blades, it is technically a damage over time (DoT) effect that you place on one target, and that foe and adjacent foes recieve damage every second for 6 seconds.
However, if the target dies, the effect stops prematurly so it's important you place this on a reasonably robust specimen. Needless to say this spell has an immense synergy with the AoE crowd controls, allowing you to pull more foes into the blades area of effect and stun them there so they can't get out of the way and will immediatly detonate any astral blight effect those CC's might apply. The Master of Blades rubies while nice in theory are impractical as the stacks only last around 8-10 seconds, shorter than most attack rotations.
Despite it's AoE nature, it damage over time isn't far below that of pyrokinesis making it suitable as a primary attack for AoE spec psis who don't want to invest in pyrokinesis.
Summary
Pyrokinesis is the spam attack of choice for single target DPS focused builds, while psis with an intrest in AoE damage, either as a primary or secondary attack will want to consider taking wall of blades. Pain transfer is useful to all breeds of psi for it's intelligence buff, while Mental Explosion is a useful secondary attack for AoE or CC specced psis as a cheap single target spike.
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2.4.3 Party AurasAll classes have access to auras as of the most recent patch, but older psis may recognise the concept's similarity to Disciplined Mind/Body of patches long past. Any character can only use a single aura at a time
Aura of Potency
Decreases your healling by 50%. Whenever you cast a spell you and your allies deal 5...15% more magical damage for 10 seconds.
Given psis self heal is pretty abyssmal as of the Odyssey patch this isn't exactly a big sacrifice. The main turnoff of this skill is that is costs rubies, which are quite tight to begin with in most psi builds.
Aura of Health
Increases the party's maximum health, energy and mana by 10...30% for 30 minutes
If you choose to maintain this aura yourself then you can fine tune your wisdom and replace some of it with intelligence, which provides a similar boost in DPS to aura of potency but without a healling penalty and also provides a latent buff to ectoplasmic form's strength (Which is int based).
Summary
There's no ideal choice here based on playstyle (With the exception of psis with self heals, who will not want to take aura of potency). In general aura of health is more useful overall, but you also need ask yourself:
- Which aura most benefits the friends I regularly play with?
- Can I most easily afford to burn talent points or rubies... or both?
Solo play is a big part of allods, but not all of it, and +15% more magical damage or +30% more health and energy is an immense boon to a team if you're able to bring something someone else cannot.
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2.4.4 Crowd ControlsPsi's are Allods controller class. As such they have - without ANY question, the most powerful and numerous crowd control spells in the game. For psis wanting to make full use of their crowd controls it's pretty much a requirement that they also take the Mental Suppression and Mindbender rubies; levelling up their stats into conviction is also a very very good idea.
Of the roles a psi can play, crowd control is the one that requires the most situational awareness and rewards creative thinking over following a fixed rotation of skills.
Telekinetic Pull
Draws all enemies in 20 yards to the centre of the target and knocks them down. 15...50% chance the targets will be stunned for 1...2 seconds.
Experienced Manipulator - Decreases cooldown 5...15%
Astral Blight - Next hit to affected foe deals additional astral damage
"TK Pull", or "Black Hole (BH)" to non-psis is the psi's most recognisable and spammable crowd control. If you don't have at least rank 1 in TK Pull you don't have a party invite. It's stun however is fairly unreliable with only a 50% chance even at R3, which means generally you'll be using this skill to move or group mobs, not to stun them - stunning them is just a bonus if it works. Ranking it up increases the stun chances and decreases cooldown significantly.
Following it up immediately with Mental Pulse is a good way or stunlocking a group, or deploying it over a wall of blades will ensure mobs are trapped in the WoB's AoE and detonate any astral blight debuff that might be laid; on it's own it's primarily used to pull mobs onto a tank while they get aggro.
Mental Pulse
All adjacent foes recieve weak astral damage, are thrown backwards 10 yards and stunned for 1..3 seconds.
Experienced Manipulator - Decreases cooldown 5...15%
Astral Blight - Next hit to affected foe deals additional astral damage
Shattering Pulse - Increases damage 50...150%, reduces enemy movement speed 25...75% for 7 seconds
Mental pulse is the psi's strongest stun, and also the most customisable skill in their arsenal and; possibly, the entire game. Depending on your ruby and talent selection mental pulse can be converted into an AoE stun, a self defence, a huge AoE damage attack, or an AoE snare - or all of the above. Care should be taken when deploying this skill, mobs who are stunned will not be thrown; though they will be stunned, but conversely mobile enemies will be tossed back a considerable distance and scattered, which can be more of a bane than boon executed badly in a party situation.
For AoE or CC spec psis, maxing the skill itself is essential. Ranking it up reduces it's cooldown, extends it's stun duration and increases it's damage. The Shattering Pulse rubies can potentially triple it's damage (turning it into a respectable attack in it's own right), and also add a 7 second snare.
It's worth noting that the snare is fixed at 7 seconds, psis with a heavy CC focus may echew shattering pulse as their stuns may be 5 or 6 seconds themselves wasting the snare component, while CC-light AoE psis might take the snare and shun actual stuns.
Like TK Pull, pulse procs astral blight, as well as detonating existing astral blight stacks if they are present, giving it a natural attack chain with TK pull and Wall of Blades if the psi has the astral blight rubies. (TK pull -> Mental Pulse -> Wall of blades)
Mindfire
For the next 45 seconds, the next 3 abilities used by victim have their cooldowns set to 20 seconds. Abilities over 20 seconds do not count towards this and are unaffected.
Debilitation - Victim recieves weak damage each time they use an ability under mindfire's effects
Considering most players attack rotations only use a few skills with very short cooldowns, this can easily gum up an enemy's entire attack chain for 20 seconds preventing them attacking, healling or; in the case of paladins - clearring or sustaining their barriers
Mindfire is a very specialist skill, it's of no intrest to players who don't PvP, and in the hands of an inexperienced psi it will likely be wasted even then, but deployed at the right moment it can completely change a PvP encounter
Hypnosis
All link targets are paralysed for 30...60 seconds. Recieving damage breaks the effect, enemies under the effect of martyrs blessing recieve 90% duration reduction to the effect and cannot be re-hypnotised within 45 seconds.
Accelerated Connection - Reduces cast time of hypnosis
Lingering Drowsiness - Victim is stunned for a futher 2 seconds if hypnosis is broken by an attack.
Is a long forgotten art that fell into disuse in the Gorluxor patch, but with the arrival of tier 2 astral it's become nessecary for most psis to carry this. Ranking it up is fairly pointless, reducing the cast time slightly. Hypnosis essentially lets you "take out" enemies from a fight until a more appropriate time to deal with them, by utilising both ML and WS it becomes possible to hypnotise two targets simultaneously.
If the lingering drowsiness rubies are taken, it will also inflict a 2 second base stun (extendable to 4 or 5 seconds in practice) if the hypnosis breaks due to damage buying a useful grace period, or allowing the hypnosis to be utilised as an impromptu 2-target combat stun.
In PvP it also retains value; against un-incensed players it stuns them like an NPC, basiclly for as long as the psi wishes it. Against blessed players the stun is only around 7 seconds, with a 45 second immunity buff. However, it can still be useful as a means to buy time for your cooldowns, particularly that of twin - or to wait for, and build up a large attack combo to unleash all at once - or to buy time while you make a swift exit.
A minor note of intrest is that hypnosis does not require line of sight nor that you are facing your targets; only that you have a link with them.
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2.4.5 Self DefencePsi's direct defensive capabilities tend to go up and down more than a 5 dollar hooker's underwear between patches. In initial OBT it was awful, in Gorluxor patch it was OP, and now it's sort've halfway between the two.
Ectoplasmic Form
For the next 7...13 seconds, all incoming damage is absorbed up to [a large amount], if more damage is absorbed it breaks prematurely. Astral damage is not blocked in this way.
Astral proximity - Increases damage absorbed by 5...15%
Ectoplasmic excellence - Every 2...1 seconds movement impairring effects are removed. Cannot be knocked down
Ectoplasmic form might as well be nailed to your skill bar. All psis should have it taken to rank 3, NO EXCEPTIONS. When something wants to wail on your skull, this is your best line of defence and will buy you time to come up with a new plan, stun it, kill it or simply wait for your cooldowns.
Ectoplasmic excellence rank 1 is well worth getting, but rank 2 isn't realllly nessecary. Astral proximity is pretty meh, amounting to barely 1-2 additional hits before breaking usually. The upgraded form of this skill, Astral Body, is about 15-20% stronger but is hard to justify the additional 6 talent points for that.
Mental Cleansing
Heals caster and removes 1 poison, bleed or disease effect, every 2 seconds for the next 10 seconds the caster is healed for a much smaller amount.
Cleansing Thoughts - Decreases overload cost by 1..3 stacks, decreases cast time 0.5...1.5 seconds
Mental cleansing was horribly nerfed; to the extent I would almost think it was an error in the calculation. Using this skill continually can easily take 30-90 seconds to fully heal back to health, and cost an insane amount of MO and mana for what it does.
Taking rank 1 for condition removal initially sounds like a good idea, til you realise that this has a 2 second cast time at rank 1 - much longer when being wailed on by a summoner's pet.
In it's present state I would advise against taking it, though my advice isn't gospel, try it if you think you can make it work
Mental Twin
Requires mental link to be active. Places a decoy clone of yourself that takes 200...100% more damage, while the clone is up you are invisible to the victim. Twin cannot be reapplied to same target within 60 seconds.
Clone Mastery - Reduces damage recieved by the twin 5...15%
Extra Strength - Deal 5...15% more damage Vs twinned foes.
Doppleganger Shock - Victim is stunned for 3 seconds if they kill the twin
Twin Explosion - Detonates the twin to deal astral damage. Lower twin health produces higher damage.
Mental twin is an amazing and versatile skill. If you are running a build that uses mental link, then not taking at least 1 rank in mental twin is a waste. Taking rank 2 greatly increases it's usefulness though isn't a priority, maxing it out is probably a waste of talent points. For full information on twin's full usefulness check out the strategy section.
Spectral Assasin
Creates a clone of the target which begins to attack them. Damage increases over time, against mobs the assasin generates massive threat and will pull aggro onto itself.
Clone Mastery - Reduces damage recieved by the assasin 5...15% and reduces cooldown
Extra Strength - Deal 5...15% more damage Vs assasined foes.
Spectral assasin is quite simply awful. It has a long cooldown and cast time, it's damage is based off the target's physical stats so it doesn't do anything to spellcasters or psuedo-caster like melee healers and melee wardens, it recieves triple damage from teal rings and cannot be cast on CC immune mobs.
So overall what we have a pet that can only be summoned against 1 trash mob every 2 minutes, and in PvP is only really any use against scouts (Which are already a pretty easy class to roll in the first place). I've heard some players argue that is can be used as an impromptu decoy/stun to buy a few seconds in heroics; but with it's huge cast time and cooldown it's a bad excuse, choke/lingering drowsiness performs that role better.
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2.5 Mental overload and youBefore we move onto attack skills, we need to sit down and talk about something that... all psis must sit down and talk about one day. No not that! - Go talk to your parents about that, I'm talking about mental overload.
Certain psi-attacks generate a lot of it, some generate none at all. The combination of skills you plan to use will effect the amount of points you'll have to invest into Mental Calming and Stress Resistance. A support psi with wall of blades as their main attack, and empathic gift to give mana to allies will probably generate a LOT and need full 3 ranks in everything, while a psi who uses pyrokinesis only will probably only need the bare minimum.
The amount of bang-per-buck you get out of mental calming basiclly looks like this:
As you should be able to immediatly see, you get the better value for money from ranking up mental calming, than you do from dumping rubies into stress resistance. However, odds are you'll pick up 1 or 2 stress resistance rubies simply because they're in your ruby path anyway.
In general most builds 1-2 mental calming is sufficient, only wall of blades spamming builds or those with self heals will likely need take it to rank 3.
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2.6 Example builds
Now we've examined the tools of the trade and had a think about the stats involved, only now I bring up the example builds. Why? - Because if I handed you the build immediatly and said "on your way" you probably wouldn't know why it's configured the way it is
Bare in mind these builds are very spartan, indeed most of them could not be created in game as they lack enough talents in some areas to advance to high tiers. But all are viable, they simply provide a skeletal view of the key skills and concepts behind a build without adding personalised fuzz, hopefully they'll provide a source of inspiration more than a copy-pasted build to use right out the box.
Single target DPS - http://allodsbase.com/ru/talents#-3oxg8 ... essy21g6w3
This build is focused on establishing will suppression and burning down a single target rapidly by stacking up extreme amounts of damage through insidious influence and mental crisis. It is very plain and mostly plays like a turret.
Hybrid DPS - http://allodsbase.com/ru/talents#-3oxg8 ... ssyu1i7gw2
This build trades off some of the smaller damage bonus rubies for crowd controls, and rubies that capitalise on stunned foes, this enables the psi to lock down large groups of mobs for a very long time, while dishing out additional damage against them without losing too much of their single target damage output against bosses and other unCCable mobs.
Pure AoE - http://allodsbase.com/ru/talents#-3oxpn ... 9q0u12fuw2
This build is a good AoE farmer for level 30+ characters looking to level quickly by grinding large numbers of foes. Whereas DPS builds struggle against multiple foes, builds like this can comfortably kite around and burn down huge groups of enemies, they're far from useless against single foes too, but the damage doesn't scale down, so it takes just as long to kill 1 foe as is does 8. Unfortunatly it does minimal damage against CC immune mobs
AoE Hybrid - http://allodsbase.com/ru/talents#-3oxg4 ... 820u12fuw2
This end-game build drops a little of it's AoE damage, in order to add damage bonuses Vs stunned foes, and single target attacks that can capitalise on the stun damage bonuses. This build can create some very long and elaborate attack combos that leverage both AoE and single target, direct damage and control effects seamlessly. It does more damage against CC immune mobs than pure AoE, but it's still not an ideal choice for boss hunting; it is however exceptional in PvP
For the curious, I roll AoE Hybrid
Last edited by empiregibberling on Mon May 16, 2011 1:56 pm, edited 5 times in total.
empiregibberlingHistorian Posts: 2127Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:19 am
Re: The Complete Guide to Psis, Vol. 2
by empiregibberling » Mon May 16, 2011 8:16 am
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3 STRATEGY
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3.1 Strategy overviewPsionicist combat is all about improvisation and will vary from build to build, as a result there's really no "psi-by-numbers" strategy I can give you. However there are small combos and general ways of thinking that can help put you on the right track and help you improve your game.
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3.2 Attack chainningFiguring out what synergies and patterns exist in the skills you possess will help you maximise the damage they deal and optimise when to use them - for example, Pain transfer has a long cast time and produces a buff that increases following damage, so this skill should be cast first in a chain. In contrast, pyro can be precast and held in hand til it's needed, while mental explosion can be cast instantly provided the target is stunned - so these skills can be cast after pain transfer to land at roughly the same time but benefit from it's buffs and overwhelm a target.
The simplest chain (As would be used by a pure DPS psi) for example is simply:
PAIN TRANSFER > MENTAL CALMING > x3 PYROKINESIS > ...
If you have advantageous attacks, then trying to find a space where the enemy is stunned to drop the attack combo will result in even greater damage. Such a chain might look like:
MENTAL PULSE [+ASTRAL BLIGHT]> PAIN TRANSFER > MENTAL CALMING > MENTAL EXPLOSION > PYROKINESIS > ...
Taking all this into account and equipped with the right build it's possible to stack up a barrage of 4 or more attacks in the space of under a second, and, since most of the attacks are instant cast, it's quite possible to do it WHILE MOVING provided you prepared in advance.
3.2b Attack splittingAnother caveat of chainning together multiple attacks is that it may be advantageous to split your attacks between multiple foes; if you're using astral blight this can detonate it causing yet more damage packets than focusing fire on a single target would, simply tabbing between foes is enough usually.
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3.3 Self-defenceThe basic defensive skill all psis should have is ectoplasmic form. This creates a barrier that lasts UP TO 13 seconds with a 30 second cooldown that will block the next [decent amount] of damage, but it is finite, it will break under a sustained barrage so it's important to have a rotation of defensive skills.
Under this way of thinking, ecto-form is your first line of defence. This gives you time to establish a link (and a mental twin), or to use AoE CCs.
A twin will buy you a fair amount of time, but it only effects your link target this means it's not suitable for fighting multiple foes, while many psis get into a habit of linking, twinning, DPSing and moving on, this can lead to bad habits and blind panic when the combo won't work (ie you've pulled multiple mobs).
A more reliable strategy is to learn to utilise your AoE CC's and kiting properly, stunning your foes, setting up attacks in the downtime, kiting if nessecary and repeatting until your defences are back off cooldown.
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3.4 KitingI've often heard it said psis are not good at kiting. This is complete nonsense, they're easily on a par with scouts for kiting if you have brought a decent amount of CC's, especially if you're AoE spec; which is a good thing given we havn't got permanent barriers like mages and summoners, or decent self heals like a paladin.
Remember: There is no penalty for running AWAY from enemy for a few seconds to buy time for your AoE's to cooldown, it might look like you're fleeing to bystanders but when you turn around and blast the enemy to ribbons with a second volley of telekinetic awesome and flying knives onlookers should quickly realise fleeing was the last thing you had on your mind. With shattering pulse on a lower level psi it's quite possible to maintain this pattern of snaring, casting and kiting indefinatly allowing you to pull in additional mobs as you kite around and farm very large groups even with relatively poor quality equipment.
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3.5 HypnosisThe long lost art of hypnosis has made something of a comeback in the most recent patch with the introduction of harder instances. There's three main ways of deploying hypnosis, pre-emptively and reactively.
Pre-emptive
Is the most common application. You simply establish both your mental links on the targets you wish to remove from the fight and cast hypnosis. This'll stun the enemies for a VERY long time, but also aggro the rest of their party - so make sure you're ready to ecto off any ranged attacks and group up the remainder with TK pull so your allies can take aggro off you.
While you're helping the party bring down the enemies, don't forget to check your links, it may be nessecary to refresh will suppression or re-cast hypnosis. Also remember that any damage will break your hypnosis; make sure your allies realise this and pull any other enemies well clear to avoid accidental damage.
Reactive
If you have lingering drowsiness when the hypnosis breaks it will cause a stun. This can in a pinch be used as an impromptu stun to 2 targets, in most situations your DPS is more valuable but in some group PvP and heavy going PvE scenarios (Such as thieves map) being able to keep a pair of targets under lockdown may be more important for the team's survival than mere DPS.
Defensive
The final method is your final option. You've messed up, you're dying, low on mana and/or your twin has died. Pop ecto form if you have it available and simply hypnotise the attacker, buying time to run away, rest or, let your cooldowns come back and resume your assault renewed.
[Hypnosis video will go here once it's uploaded]
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3.5 TwinTwin is a simple tool with a lot of potential uses. The main thing to remember is your linked enemy CANNOT SEE YOU, you should be in minimal danger of getting hit by AoE's and cannot be hit by direct fire.
Keeping the twin alive
The twin has a 60 second recast prevention buff, so it behooves you to not let your twin die til that timer has had a chance to tick down in extended fights. Therefore don't be tempted to use your twin as a discardable decoy, instead use your CC's to try keep the twin safe like you would if you were being attacked directly - even hypnotise him if you need to buy more time - if the twin goes down you'll end up taking direct hits, and these hits will interuppt, debuff and bleed you which hits to the twin won't, it's better the twin stay alive to take those hits than you do.
Staying in range
If your mental link is broken then the twin dies. One way the mental link breaks is if your target gets out of range, in PvP especially make sure you stay close to your enemy; afterall he can't SEE you anyway. Some players will attempt to run away from the twin; this is a very bad idea because provided you keep in link range of the target the twin will never die, and he'll never be able to attack you, he'll have no choice but to run back to your twin and finish the job by which point it might be too late.
Invisibility
As I've already said you cannot be seen by the link victim. But this also applies to mobs; it's quite possible to link mobs, even red ring bosses - place your twin well outside aggro range and you will be able to walk right up to them. This can be very useful in certain quests where you would rather avoid fighting a mob to access a certain area or object in the environment.
On Astrum Nival's favoured sons
Healer's "bubble" ability will break twin. Not disable it, but will physically bug the skill, they will be able to see and attack you even though your twin is still standing right there, all your mental link skills will cease working until you recast your link and then re-cast twin
Last edited by empiregibberling on Mon May 16, 2011 9:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
empiregibberlingHistorian Posts: 2127Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:19 am
Re: The Complete Guide to Psis, Vol. 2
by empiregibberling » Mon May 16, 2011 8:17 am
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4 ADVANCED THEORY
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4.1 Optimising damage rubiesIf we take an imaginary build where a player is mostly reliant on pyrokinesis - say 75% of his total damage output is dealt purely through pyrokinesis. If he were to take Sadistic touch, then he would enjoy a 9% boost to his pyrokinesis damage; however in reality because pyrokinesis was only accounting for 75% of his total damage, he would NOT experience a straight 9% increase in damage overall, it'd actually be closer to a 6.75% damage increase due to the fact the other 25% of his damage is not effected by sadistic touch; 6.75% increase for 3 rubies is 2.25% damage per ruby; this doesn't sound like a very good investment does it?
Now let's think about the universal damage buffs; demonic knowledge for example would increase your damage by 9% globally since it boosts astral and all of a psis attacks are astral damage; this is a 3% damage boost. But the bonuses can be bigger: Mental crisis is 15% - 5% per ruby; but only triggers in the 10 seconds after pain transfer; however given pyrokinesis has a 10 second cooldown it's more or less maintainable; Not only does pyrokinesis gain a larger damage bonus in these 10 seconds, but so do all other skills used in that time! - Instead of 9% for a single skill, we now have 15% boost to EVERY skill.
This lends us to the theory of skill chaining/combos and complex builds with many talents. Instead of attempting to elevate a single skill to godlike status, we instead looking at chainning together mental crisis, stuns (for advantageous attacks), astral blight and other modifiers in order to create a net total greater than the sum of it's individual parts. The best way to do this is to "weigh" your skills.
Consider how much of your total DPS is dealt by each skill, and consider the REAL bonus added by the rubies in terms of TOTAL DPS, then ask yourself "Are there other rubies that would give a larger advantage to my total output?" - the answer is surpsingly often; yes.
For basic skill rubies like Sadistic Touch, take the fraction of your total output (in percent) dealt by that skill, then multiply the ruby bonus to get the actual DPS increase, ie:
For crit rubies, like psychotic urges, first multiply the amount by your crit rate:
Intelligence rubies can be thought of as damage boosters since damage and intelligence are more-or-less linearly connected. While other stats boosting rubies can be used to allow you to shunt points away from luck/perc and add them to intelligence if you wish, and so act as damage boosters too but are harder to quantify and will differ from player to player.
The below table shows the full list of damage modifier rubies:
The first thing you should notice is that the conditional damage bonuses are in general larger than the unconditional ones, even though they cost similar numbers of rubies. The next thing to reflect upon is the conditional damage bonuses effect ALL skills, not just a specific skill as explained earlier so for your total DPS the numbers are even higher than they appear.
It's IMPORTANT TO BEAR IN MIND, I am not suggesting the single talent damage boosters are irrelvant, nor that there arn't advantages to having single talent focused builds. But hopefully this will help you understand that builds need not be focused on a single area to be effective, and there is wealth of possibilities that arise from spreadding out to cover multiple conditions instead of single skills; and the skill-specific damage boosts should more be thought of as "squeezing out the last few drops of damage" rather than "the focus of your build"
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4.2 Crowd Control: A closer lookCC's are a part of the psi arsenal that are, ironiclly, often underused. Many players throw one point into each of the CC skills and little if anything into CC extension rubies or conviction buffs, while this is enough to group mobs around the tank or throw enemies off an ally for a moment psionicists are capable of so much more than that.
Taken to the extreme psi CC's can lock down entire groups of foes for much if not all of a fight, reducing the workload of the healer, giving the tank freedom from being beaten on and keeping the enemies nice and still for the rest of the party to nuke.
CC-extension combinations:
First of all we'll look at the raw numbers that govern CCs, and the interplay of the various rubies and investment of conviction as primary level up stat.
As you can see, taken to the extreme the stun duration can be DOUBLED. In addition to this since most mobs are lower level than the players in reality the stun duration is often a good 20% higher than these numbers would suggest, I've personal observed 8-9 second stuns on heroic mobs from level 3 mental pulse in testing.
If we do some maths on the above tables we can reduce it down to the following combinations:
Lockdown: Bridging the gap
Crowd controls can be chainned together to keep enemies locked down for an extended period. Therefore the complementry flipside to this is time where the enemy is NOT under your control; this is a pretty obvious statement but by now looking at ways to cut down the time the enemy is NOT CC'd, we can bring about that ultimate goal of total lockdown.
Part of the secret here is that skill I used to often malign: Experienced manipulator. Taken to rank 3, experienced manipulator shaves 15% cooldown duration off mental pulse and telekinetic pull. This only amounts to 3 seconds off TK pull, and 3.5 seconds off mental pulse which is why previously I so despised this skill, but when you start looking at it in terms of total lockdown period this is 3 seconds less time the enemy is able to move, essentially +3 seconds stun but approached from the opposite direction - this is presented by the second column in the below table.
As you can see, with crowd control investment taken to the extreme, an entire group of foes can be locked down 60% of the time (12 seconds out of every 20), this not only represents the enemies being sitting ducks and unable to escape, but this also represents an approximate 60% reduction in damage being dealt to your party!!!
Temporal Acceleration
It shouldn't be forgotten that temporal acceleration taken to rank 3 halves cooldowns, this effectively doubles coverage, while it's not actually possible to achieve 100% stun coverage, even at rank 3 with maxed out CCs, it comes very close to it and enemies will be left almost entirely powerless for the duration.
Single targets
The above table only considers the multi-target spells, psis however have a variety of other CC's with single or double target capabilities, such as Lingering Drowsiness, Doppleganger Shock, Stone Idol artifacts, Will Suppresion etc - between these it is quite possible to achieve a non-sustainable 100% lockdown against one or two foes with the CC buffs in place.
Final thoughts
If a psi plans to use CC's, they should as a minimum take mental pulse and Tk pull to rank 3 and also take the 2 mental suppression rubies. If you're not willing to go at least this far then you should leave Tk pull and pulse at rank 1 and not bother with the rubies because the knockdown of the CC taking effect is going to be the biggest contributor to your stuns.
If you want longer stuns still, but want to save rubies it might be worth using a water of life and/or pumping your stats into conviction instead of luck when you level up - even then, experienced manipulator is an equally viable option if coverage rather than stun duration if your goal.
However at the end of the day, rubies in CC's are rubies that are NOT killing things, and so the whole concept of CC's is something not be over-invested in for psis who foremost role is DPS
[ 此帖被zorro在2011-06-06 11:27重新编辑 ]
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