Your opinion on the new psi abilities?

[redgoesfastfastfastfast]

So far I have personally used Plasma Beam and Cryogenic Barrier

Plasma Beam: Very good long range attack, has high damage and equally high psi cost, beam is currently well balanced for psychosis in my opinion due to the incredible psi cost limiting you to perhaps 3 beams a turn at most as well as how thin the beam is forcing you to position yourself carefully before firing it, I have not tried it on a tranquility build yet but I reckon it would be way more powerful on those.

Cryogenic Barrier: Very effective for jet ski combat, the amount of barriers mean that this is effectively a force field that lasts for 3 turns.

[Barry]

I believe Plasma Beam is overpowered on purpose, so I don't want to complain about how overpowered it is, instead I'd rather point out that other schools don't have spells that are similarly powerful, and they should.
I have not tried 4 of the spells added by the update because their usage never comes in my usage of psi, so I can assume that Cryogenic Barrier is only an aggressive, waterborne version of Force Field that can encase enemies, Psychosomatic Predation is only good if you use weapons instead of relying on psi for damage (maybe even being very useful for TC Knife builds), Motor-Cognitive Transferrence is mainly for crippling the combat abilities of a target (I assume the bonuses are not significant enough to decently improve a wielder's weapon stats, unless the wielder has 0 combat skills and enough TC to steal a huge amount of combat skills), Telekinetic Grounding could be decent for crossbow users and for those with absolutely zero skills in throwing, and Psychokinetic Chain is weak due to the damage limit, but may be more useful than I believe due to it working with Electrokinesis and sources of multiple damage (I believe you can throw a grenade into a group of linked enemies and the damage from shrapnels will be shared)
If damaging psi abilities will happen to be far stronger without needing critical damage bonuses to be viable then the Waterways update will eventually be justified (please rework the innervation system the slots are a shit mechanic), but why they weren't shipped with the Waterways update is unknown to me.

[harperfan7]

Plasma beam is neat, but too strong.  I think it either shouldn't crit or should have a cooldown (but not if you're wearing the cyclops).

Cryogenic barrier is awesome; this is the kind of shit that makes me want to use a school.  In case you didn't know, it works on those slitted-bridges over water, on walk-able water tiles (including the rocky ones that are usually seen as bridges), and will extend onto shore if cast on water next to land.  Unlike forcefield, each tile can be destroyed separately.  It traps jets and serpents.  You can't target anybody in it or past it.  Very underrated ability.

Transference is more of a self-buff than an enemy debuff as far as I can tell.  It's something you want to use premed for given its cost.  Good if you're a hybrid.

Predation is weird.  I can see it being good with LoC and brutality...but if I've got 10 will why not just NO the group?  As it stands it's kind of a boss killer (assuming they don't resist). 

Psychokinetic chain seems like another boost to fist builds (and smgs), but it's got too many conditions and limitations to really be worthwhile, as far as I can tell.  Still if I were playing a psimonk I'd probably use it.

Grounding is really great.  OP even. 

[redgoesfastfastfastfast]

Am curious, what do you all think makes plasma beam so strong? Its very high damage, its lack of cooldown, its low AP?

Also I think making it unable to crit is dumb, but I wouldn't mind adding a cooldown or increasing its ap to maybe 30-40ish

[Barry]

Very high energy damage, which most enemies do not have any resistance to, although I was surprised in a bad way to see how durable the Strongmen are against it.
The lack of cooldown is interesting and I wouldn't mind if it got a cooldown, but casting it twice per turn is already very draining. I also agree that Cyclop's Eye should remove the cooldown.
If anything psi's overall problem is that it is extremely weak early in the game and overwhelmingly strong later in the game, so that early in the game you are an anemic fart that can barely output any damage but later in the game you can wipe out entire groups of enemies with a few abilities. If Plasma Beam is to be nerfed for playing into the "overwhelmingly strong" part then early game psi should be buffed so that you don't have to rely on grenades all the time. People can already beat the entire game on the hardest difficulty with one of the shittiest weapons in the game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK7_YMa1uJg), but can't get past most of the early game encounters on Normal without traps and grenades.

[Tytyger]

chain is weak for its cooldown, grounding is very strong, its unresistable net, works even on jets or nagas,cryogenic barrier forces enemies attack it so i guess its fine for trapping something in it for a while,beam is strong but awkward to use- it can not touch highlighted enemies so you need aim behind them

[Egg]

Crit Psions already have Cryokinetic Orb. Adding Plasma Beam to their arsenal makes the build too op imo. And adding cool-down would not really work as a nerf since most fights as a Crit Psion do not last long enough for that to matter.

If Plasma Beam absolutely needs to crit, it would be better to add "warm-up" rather than cool-down to limit the damage output of alpha strike.

beam is strong but awkward to use- it can not touch highlighted enemies so you need aim behind them

Unlike most other AOE attacks, it seems you must make sure the beam actually touches your opponent to deal damage.
That also means the effective range of the ability is around 10.5-10.75, not 11 the ability description claims.

[Barry]

Plasma Beam can't even damage Locust Hives because the Hives count as a physical obstacle, so every time you aim at it your character tries to move behind it.