Imagine a smelly, damp latrine of an army base, deep underground. Chunks of sickly green paint are peeling off walls and its floors are covered with moldy, time stained tiles. One side is lined with toilet booths and there are pissoirs placed next to a couple of sinks on the opposite side.
It’s pitch black
(penalty to chance to hit with ranged weapons) and there’s a lanky dude
(Nimble: +15% bonus to Dodge/Evasion) in the corner booth. He is high as a kite
(Jumping Bean and Adrenaline Shot: +25% and +30% bonus to Dodge/Evasion), clad in slimy, green gimp suit
(Infused Greater Siphoner Leather Armor + Tabi Boots: +120 total to Dodge/Evasion) and armed with a pair of garish red boxing gloves
(Boxing Gloves: +15% bonus to Dodge). Like a deranged ballerina, he is dancing on the rims of a toilet seat - evading every shot
(Evasive Maneuvers) and dodging every blow
(Uncanny Dodge) with uncanny finesse
(Precognition: chance to dodge/evade increased by ~35%). His outline is fuzzy
(Personal Cloaking Field: bonus to Evasion), blending in with the surrounding walls.
Facing him is a contingent of soldiers. Covered in sticky glitter
(Chemhaze Grenade: reduces chance to hit with ranged attacks by up to 35% and melee attacks by up to 15%), they are scared shitless by his autistic screeching
(Yell: reduces offensive skills by up to 122).
The floor here is covered with bodies of dead soldiers, twisted and torn apart by fucky time magic
(Temporal Distortion). And with each kill, it spread further out on its next victims
(Continuum Ripple), seemingly without end.
https://i.imgur.com/6o6Zd22.jpgThis is the end result of a Temporal Manipulation-only psi build, using dodge and evasion, on Dominating.
A Question of Time
That said, Dodge/Evasion are a bit shit tbh. Especially on Dominating. Enemies get a sizable bonus to their offensive skills, which means they’re much more likely to hit. To avoid the “getting hit” part, your Evasion must be twice and Dodge - trice the attackers. Ouch.
Evasion is also soft-capped at minimum of 40% thc. This can be reduced down to the 10% hard-cap by other means. Dodge can reach the 10% hard-cap from skill alone.
Unfortunately, this 10% is THE hard-cap for both Dodge and Evasion. No amount of self-buffs and enemy debuffs will make the thc go lower. This is non-negotiable.
So, no matter how much you invest into fancy gear or raise your effective dodge/evasion scores or throw debufs at enemies, eventually... you’ll get hit.
Saving Time
And this build really, really does not want to get hit. To deal damage it heavily relies on Tranquility AP cost reduction of psi abilities. This only works when at full HP and any damage removes its effect.
So, to avoid that:
- For ranged attacks - a pair of energy shields: High/High for guns and Low/Low for Crossbows.
- For melee attacks - Uncanny Dodge. Activating this ability causes the next 2 + 1 for 30 effective Dodge melee attacks to miss. And this build has a high effective Dodge. It has a cooldown of 5 turns, but with liberal use of limited Temporal Increment can be reduced to 3-ish.
- Flashbangs and a taser for CC.
In the creative writing exercise, to which I subjected you to at the start of this post, you can find gear and consumables which are used to debuff enemies and to enhance your own dodge/evasion.
Mind you, a psi headband with Magnifying Neuroscopic Filter: Temporal Distortion reduces Dodge by 25%. Too bad, but we need the damage.
Untimely Demise
A rundown on using Temporal Manipulation as a source of damage:
The primary damage dealer is Temporal Distortion.
- It deals Mechanical and Energy damage, while ignoring shields and bypassing 50% damage resistances and threshold.
- It cannot crit.
- Damage is increase by 20% for each Temporal Distortion applied on the target.
- The two damage types it deals is not a single roll divided into two. Instead it is two separate rolls. Each damage type can deal significantly different amounts of damage than the other, depending on the roll.
- When multiple stacks of Temporal Manipulation expire, each rolls damage separately.
- Damage comes after two enemy turns. In other words, after Temporal Distortion is cast, the enemy will have two turns to act and at the end of the second turn, Temporal Distortion will expire and deal damage.
Continuum Ripple is a feat which allows to use Temporal Distortion as an AoE of sorts:
- After Temporal Distortion expires, each stack attempts to spread itself to each enemy within range. The chance of this to happen is 25%. Whether it spreads is determined separately for each enemy. So, if there are 10 enemies within range, each has a 25% chance to get a stack of Temporal Distortion.
- This chance can be raised to 45% with spec points into Continuum Ripple.
- After spreading to another target, the damage of Temporal Distortion stack is reset to base (damage shown in Temporal Distortion tooltip), regardless of what it was on the primary target at the time of expiry.
- If more than one stack of Temporal Distortion spreads to an enemy, the 20% damage bonus is applied for each stack.
- These new stacks can then spread further after expiring 2 turns later.
tl;dr: Temporal Distortion has an unpredictable damage spread, needs to be spammed to deal good damage, has a 2-turn damage delay and is unreliable as an AoE. 6 casts at 90 AP.
Time to go
The 2 turn delay of Temporal Distortion means that unlike other glass cannons, this build cannot simply outkill enemies as they appear within LoS. It needs to survive long enough for Temporal Distortion to do its work. Plus, as this is a single psi school specialist, it also lacks the CC abilities usually available to multi-school psi builds.
Thus Dodge/evasion and TM complement each other well. Dodge/Evasion allows the build to stay unharmed while it spams Temporal Distortion. TM has Precognition which enhances dodge/evasion and Limited Temporal Increment which reduces the CD of Uncanny Dodge. There’s also Stasis. I like Stasis very much; she is my psi-waifu.
Temporal Distortion is also very fun to use. Very different from other damage dealing psi abilities too. Requires planning ahead of time and keeping track of turn order.
Did all the content, didn’t use traps or damage dealing grenades etc. etc.
Screenshots:
Fort Apogee that one time when Temporal Distortion was all the rage:
https://i.imgur.com/U2TvLrl.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/JlW0xZX.jpgFaceless Commander ran out of time:
https://i.imgur.com/YinEdH1.jpgTchort, after his time:
https://i.imgur.com/3uBB0Pd.jpgPraetorian Warehouse mission gave me a hard time:
https://i.imgur.com/Fowcqq5.jpgThe timely death of Oyensorm:
https://i.imgur.com/7U1WIjv.jpgVideo:
Magnar. The single hardest fight for this build. It felt good after I beat him after all that time trying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmGwCjNO_oEThe Build:
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMDCgMDEAgAwokAAMKgwqBkAAAAABRhDC1VAAAAwqAAwqBFJDkrP8KGKkEPZClXwrzCiMKHRHLCt8Kd4rGMCuK5qAXfvwFeat order up to lvl 8 is set in stone. After that, pick what you think you need most at that time.
No Blitz, because while on paper Blitz seems to be perfect for this kind of build, on average all it provides is at best, a 1,33 cast of Temporal Distortion every now and then. Blitz drains ALL the MP to generate the 20 AP, regardless of how many MP you have at the moment. So the feat is too situational and high maintenance, because you need to ration your MP to be ~60 in order not to waste MP, then you need to have means to regenerate the lost MP (in this case it'd be contraction, sprint and jumping beans), but those means may be on CD or just not enough. MP is probably the strongest means of defense in this game. So, in the end, even if you spec into Blitz, the 20 AP are not worth the 60 MP.
