Rapid Fire Brain Damage - Though Control specialist on Dominating

[sheepherder]

I fucking love the new psi system. Previously psi was fun but had like two builds total: SI+Psychosis and some Tranquility build. Both played the same too, lol. Now, each school can be made into a build on its own. Psi is still No.1!

I’ve already made a post about the TM specialist and this here is a Neural Overload focused Tranquility build. It’s not a solo school build, instead it also has TM for Contraction, LTI and Stasis.

Only used grenades against the few fights against robots and the mushroom root. Otherwise, no damage dealing grenades, traps or smoke-bombs used past depA. Not even during the Beast fight. Did all the robot-free optional content.

NO doesn’t mean no
Neural Overload (NO) is an interesting ability. Relatively interesting, that is. If you just grab it on a multi-psi school build - it’s a mediocre, single target, damage dealing spell from a psi school mostly known for its disables and CC. And to use Neural Overload as an AoE you’ll need Locust of Control (LoC), but with a cooldown of a whopping 15 turns, LoC is essentially a once per combat ability.

Brain Power
But if you decide to make build focusing on Neural Overload specialist build, you’ll notice several of its unique features. Namely:

• Lowest base AP cost of all spammable psi abilities - it costs 18 AP to cast NO once. For example, Cryokinesis and Temporal Distortion both cost 20 AP while Electrokinesis costs 35 AP. With Tranquility NO AP cost is down to 13 AP.
• Large amount of damage bonuses. Excluding Critical damage bonus, NO can gain bonus damage from 5 sources:
  
  • Magnifying Neuroscopic Filter: Neural Overload - ~50% damage bonus at 160 quality.
  • Cerebral Trauma - 20% bonus and another 20% from spec points.
  • Høddurform, a unique staff - 25% bonus and a portion of damage dealt is reapplied as a DoT effect.
  • Mental Breakdown - applies a penalty to the targets Resolve and doubles the damage of the next NO cast on the target.
  • Target’s Intelligence - varies greatly. Granted, there’s no way to alter a target’s Intelligence score but it generally provides a bonus to damage against humans.
• Its damage completely ignores Electrical DR and DT, allowing to easily damage heavily armored foes. So unlike for example Cryokinesis, which must go through mechanical and cold DR/DT, NO will not have a portion of its damage removed due to targets resistances.

Low AP cost and lots of non-crit damage bonuses means that it can work really well as a Tranquility buid. Also - no crits, no need to fish for blood for Focus Stims.
Hard to calculate the damage per cast, but you can check out how the build plays in action in the video at the end of the post.

Violent Thoughts
50 Base AP. Another 20 from Contraction. Plus 20 from Adrenaline. And to top it all off, 20 more from Blitz.
110 AP total. Divide it by 13 and you get 8 casts of NO. Plus one more from Premeditation. 9 Casts. Not baaad.

Remember that Metal Breakdown damage bonus? The one that doubles the damage dealt by NO? Use it with LoC on a group of enemies. Now pop them one by one with your double damage NO. And if there are any survivors left, there’s still the DoT from the Høddurform. Irresistible Acid damage which is based off the damage of the NO. Juicy.

Oh, and with the LoC spec, its CD is down to 10 turns. Less with liberal application of LTI.

There’s also an argument for putting 5 points into Tranquility spec. I know, I know, it’s a trash spec, but in this rare case it actually has a use. 5 points would reduce the cost of NO down to 12. With 110 AP this would allow us to cast NO 9 times. Eh, up to you if you want to use LoC more often or cast one more NO on Blitz turns.

Cross Continental Aneurysm Delivery Service
For a psi build, it’s also very mobile. 150 MP by endgame. Sprint with Infused Hopper Tabis and LTI means only ~1 turn will be spent not sprinting.
Contraction and Sprint means that you’ll still have MP to run around after using Blitz. So, not a sitting duck even after Blitz eats up all the MP.

Brain Drain
Robots scare me. Thankfully, there aren’t that many robots that I can't sneak past. The main weakness of this build really.

Video:

Faceless Commander: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhbY-95FwmQ


The build:
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMDCgMDEAgAwosAAAAAwqAAAAAAL2EMLVLCoAAARgAARSQ5Kz8FKsKHwr3CiCFkV8K-I0fCt8Kmwp3inYIK4qGaBd-_
Empowered: Psi-School is trash here and it’s trash everywhere.

[destroyor]

Lol you and your meme build. You probably would have to break your own self imposed restriction of not using grenade had you encounter the Siphoner-swallowed Calf random event as NO cannot damage this greedy Siphoner.

[sheepherder]

I wouldn't call it a meme build. It's an optimized build focusing on NO, lack of grenade feats aside.
I wanted to make NO specialist and had two options: Psychosis+SI or Tranquility. Psychosis would have less consistent damage output due to 65% crit chance, with spikes in damage whenever Mania and/or LoC came off CD. Psychosis would also not use Høddurform, as the +40% critical damage bonus from the other staff is better than the +25% from Høddurform. It would, eventually, have a bigger damage output than the Tranquility version, but would also lack the mobility and abilities from TM, such as LTI or Stasis.
Tranquility on the other hand, has a more even damage output, more mobility and can use Høddurform, which I really wanted to make use of. It also has a cool darkness effect.

Also, the damage bonuses from Filter, Cerebral Trauma and its spec and Høddurform are additive with each other 

[cypherusuh]

I actually played this, but put on hold because I can't figured out how to deal with robots. throwing EMP all day is too tiresome

[sheepherder]

I didn't have the patience for EMP spam  Instead I hid and sneaked past the mechanical menace like a cowardly Though Controller that I am.

[destroyor]

I wanted to make NO specialist and had two options: Psychosis+SI or Tranquility. Psychosis would have less consistent damage output due to 65% crit chance, with spikes in damage whenever Mania and/or LoC came off CD. Psychosis would also not use Høddurform, as the +40% critical damage bonus from the other staff is better than the +25% from Høddurform. It would, eventually, have a bigger damage output than the Tranquility version, but would also lack the mobility and abilities from TM, such as LTI or Stasis.
Tranquility on the other hand, has a more even damage output, more mobility and can use Høddurform, which I really wanted to make use of. It also has a cool darkness effect.

Also, the damage bonuses from Filter, Cerebral Trauma and its spec and Høddurform are additive with each other 

Disagree re: Psychosis + SI
- If you want even damage you just need to forgo the critical damage bonus from your psi headband, so use Thought Control Modulator, Magnifying Neuroscopic Filter: Neural Overload + Proximal Neuroscopic Filter. End result = TC skill + 34, NO damage + 46%, TC crit chance +19%
- Get 99% TC critical chance by:
5% = base
Psychosis + 15%, +10% w/ 10 specialization
30% from SI, + 5% w/ 5 specialization
Focus Stim = 15%
Psi headband, top quality at late game = 19%
Total = (5 + 15 + 10 + 30 + 5 + 15 + 19)% = 99% critical chance, meaning a consistently higher damage per NO compare to Tran build, you should be able to one shot everything mid ~ late game if you stack critical damage bonus gear + Trance. Don't need to spam NO as you can just silently one shot assassinate everything.
- "lack the mobility and abilities from TM, such as LTI or Stasis" - sure you won't have the AGI MP bonus but I don't see any reason why you couldn't do Psychosis dual psi school and still get LTI, PTC and Stasis.
- The insistence on not using various grenades, using Høddurform and other self imposed restriction is why I think there's a bit of meme flavor to your build.

Anyway once again good job on making another dominating viable build with distinct characteristic.

[sheepherder]

The crit chance spec is a cool idea. There's not much else a TC Psychosis+SI build would need from spec points here.
Keep in mind though, that there can't be two Filter type attachments on a headband. In this case, instead of Filter: Neural Overload, a Stable Neural Amplifier would also work for a +90%-ish crit damage.

As for adding TM here, imo it'd be hard to make it work. Contraction is 50 psi points, LTI is 35. More with Psychosis. So to keep the psi costs manageable, the build would need to use a multipsi headband with a muffler, which would lose one of the offensive attachments and provide lesser bonuses to crit chance or crit damage. It's not really necessary though, TC alone would work with the damage crits can output. The loss of MP does make my hearth ache a little 

And you have a point - it's not a build min-maxed for optimal damage output, but min-maxed for a theme I chose. I love mobile builds which get to do lots of actions per turn 

[destroyor]

I've played a dual/Tri psi school Psychosis build and the additional psi cost is only tough early game (stock up on Psi Beetle Brain Soup) but manageable. It worked fine once you have the proper gear (rush craft a psi beetle tact vest asap) and feats (Psycho-neural Flexibility - One psi school is ignored when determining the multi-school innervation psi cost penalty, available at level 10 and Advanced Psi Empathy).

You're right, my mistake re: psi headband: I would use Thought Control Modulator, Proximal Neuroscopic Filter + Stable Neural Amp. End result = TC skill +34, TC crit chance +19%, TC critical damage bonus +96%.

[sheepherder]

Sure, dual/tri school Psychosis work quite good, but it's not so much the increase of psi cost of having two schools innervated, but rather that both Contraction and LTI cost a lot and will be cast basically every time they go off CD, thus draining a lot of psi.
imo TM in general doesn't generally mesh all that well with other psi schools in pure-psi Psychosis builds. A considerable drain on psi/reserves for an extra cast or two when the damage output of Psychosis is already good enough as it is.

[destroyor]

I think your different perspective is due to you not using grenade.

For me the extra AP from PTC is use for grenade -> for example my alpha strike at late game usually looks like this:
Take focus stim
manually start combat
PTC
Premed + manic + cryo orb = 0 AP
High Tier grenade = 15 AP
2 Cryokinesis = 50 AP
At this point I have 5 AP left and psi is completely drain, wearing doctor's pouch = 2AP psi booster for psi refill
If something is seriously wrong adrenaline shot + Stasis

If hiding behind cover the next turn will open with LTI for immediate use of high tier damage grenade again
Flashbang if still fight against large group (unlikely)
Cryokinesis mop up

So as you can see I have no problem whatsoever playing w/ any school combined w/ TM psi school when playing SI psychosis psi.

[sheepherder]

Yeah, that sounds about right. Because I don't use grenades, some fights tend to last longer than they would with grenades, so the psi cost of TM abilities add up to quite a lot. I guess with grenades TM does fit in well into multi-psi school builds.

[Cyberized]

So what's the order that the points are put into the skills? I wanna try this out on Dominating, but having the right points in the right skills at the right time in midgame is also pretty important....

[sheepherder]

Maximise Thought Control every level.

TM eventually reaches 150 effective with just 70 base. The base value is required for Stasis. So get 45 for Psycho-Temporal Acceleration, later 55 for Contraction, then 60 for Future Oriented and eventually 70.

Throwing isn't very important to get to 125 effective. Get it to as high as you need. But the 125 value is for 90% accuracy at max range without moving. Even if you do target a tile with a grenade which is out of grenade throw range and it shows under 90% accuracy, the character will still need to move up to throw a grenade there, so the accuracy will be 90% again.

Stealth is also not necessary to max out. Stop once you get to ~150 effective (with gear) for the Greater Coil Spiders. There are few enemies who will insta spot you with 150 stealth, like the Grey Army Spec Ops guys or the blind fire boss of the natives, but such perceptive enemies aren't common.

Get Mercantile 92 (+3 from Underpie for 95 total) for Constantine merchantile check. It's not super urgent, but it's better to get access to his extended stock as soon as possible to be able to visit him as many times as possible for more chances to get better quality components. I'd also get it to 105 effective eventually, for Katia, Institute merchant, Ray and Tony if I don't get on the Expedition as Invictus. But that's after other skills are leveled.

For crafting:
At the start you'll need some Mechanics and Tailoring for a tactical vest with a psi beetle carapace. The quality of the components does not matter at all. You only need it for the 10% psi cost reduction. So put 15 in both and forget about them for a bit.
You'll also need Biology and Electronics for psi headbands. And just Electronics for a taser. Level them up and keep leveling according to the components you find.
Ignore Chemistry. It was for gas grenades for the Beast fight, but I ended up not needing to use those, so you can skip it entirely.

The final effective values are with house+Underpie+Hypercerebrix. Since I rarely get 164q components , they're more for reference.

Mechanics crafting is for 104 quality (max available) psi beetle carapace.
Electronics is for 164 quality double energy shield.
60 Biology is for processing Psionic Accelerator components on the go, to save me some weight. You lower it if you don't mind lugging unprocessed components around.
Tailoring is for 164 quality tactical vest.

[Cyberized]

This is a very good explanation, thank you! I'm gonna be running this as my next build.

[l0cus77]

Hi! Just checking what build to play next, was very interested by this one. Couple quick questions:

- To face robots, may be raising TM and using that kill them (even without C. Ripple) would be a good choice?
- In order to have access to traps during combat, raising dex to 7 and lowering Agi would hinder damage output too much? (No blitz)?
- And finally, haven't played in a couple patches. Does did got too much affected by changes?

Thanks.