An Average Explanation of Outstanding Psi Builds

[sapfearon]

I'm thinking about starting dominating and wanna do it as pure psi. I already completed the game 2 times, on normal/hard with both psi builds (tranquility/psychosis). My builds were high con/will/int, but now i want to try and mix stealth in it. How good interloper is? Should i go 7 agi/4con or it's too squishy for dominating? Do i even need stealth/dodge/evasion or i can just ignore them and use same build as in normal/hard mode? I'm not a fan of psychosis after a hard playthrough, but i remember that when i played with tranquility i wished for better initiative or just better stealth.

[Apostrophe]

In my experience going agility is a waste. You are not a melee fighter or SMG user, you don't want to sneak up to melee range. You don't need to skip fights. Even with 3 agility and just 100 hardpoints in stealth with Hopper leather, Ninja Tabi, and Balaclava you have over 200 effective stealth with mediocre quality components, more than enough to start every fight on your terms, finish sneaky quests and evade a lot of stuff with careful navigation, cloaking device, and left-clicking skills.
Dodge and evade are terrible on dominating. You don't need Sprint feat. Interloper is nice and only thing worth considering but its 4 ability points for a QoL skill.
Going full tin-can with high strength and the constitution is really not that big a penalty to stealth playstyle, just switch some gear around. On the other hand, going agility blocks you from doing OP stuff like total immortality with drugs and specced Stoicism feat, metal armor with ES for practically the same, etc. There are fights that you cant start from stealth and have a really low chance to go first even with 7+ agility.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Now that you've played through the game twice, you should be fine to play a 3 Con build through DOMINATING. I wouldn't recommend it for a first playthrough, or even necessarily a first-with-this-kind-of-build play, but your third psi character? You'll be fine.

Interloper never seemed worth it to me except for melee builds. For melee, you may want to get right up on top of someone, and that last little bit of closing in makes every fractions of a second count.  But for psi, you're going to be using stealth mostly for optimal far-field placement, and for that, Interloper really doesn't shine.  With infused hopper leather (+movespeed) and tabis (+movespeed) you'll be zipping along just fine without Interloper. As far as effective skill goes, 30-50 real points and 3 Agi will be fine in every situation, if you can also craft and use a stealth set.  A good cloaking device alone will get you 75+ effective stealth.  I stealthed Emporion once on DOMINATING with 0 raw skill and 3 Agi, though it did take a few reloads.

I'd rather go with Dexterity for a Con-dumped psi character. Not only will you be able to invest less in Lockpicking and still hit the late-game thresholds, but you'll qualify for Grenadier, Quick Tinkering, even Gunslinger (which, especially combined with the other +7 initiative feat, can get you easily up into the 30s if you want). 

You should absolutely not invest in Dodge or Evasion as a full psi character. If you for some reason feel the powerful need to have Uncanny Dodge, and you're going Agi for Interloper anyway, then you can find the 40 points to unlock it.  It's not necessary, but that's really the only situation where you should invest in Dodge or Evasion. The AoE reduction just isn't worth it - if you're getting blown up all the time, craft some armor with Blast Cloth.

I think Apostrophe gives a lot of good advice in the previous post.

[AAO]

tfw you REALLY wanna play a full psi character because it looks versatile and powerful af (quite frankly, I just like magic stuff), but the early game is absolutely demolishing you.

Seriously, though, Depot A is absolutely demolishing me. Between having no Stealth to hide from enemies and my pitiful Initiative always making me go last, I tend to get bodied left and right. And since it's the early game, I don't have the most flexible arsenal.

I did play this game with the Spec Ops SMG build, and man it was easier. Efficient, powerful and cathartic af, but spamming Burst ad nauseum tends to get tiring eventually.

I was thinking of maybe investing in another backup skill (Stealth, Throwing, maybe even Melee) so that I couldn't be so squishy? Or maybe I should just suck it up and deal with the early game crap-between a high quality Tac vest, high quality Infused Great Siphoner Tabi Boots and a godly shield emitter, I'd be able to soak up at least some damage.

Any tips or advice would be really appreciated.

[Apostrophe]

All builds have trouble in Depot A on dominating, it is just a matter of preparation. In my opinion the hardest part of dominating run. Have 20 molotovs, Doctors belt and enough PSI boosters to eat them like candy. Do everything else before entering Depot A, you need to be level 8+ for this.

If you have STR for it you can just tin-can tank dogs with mutated dog leather boots and metal armor&helm.

Have some points in traps, stealth and trowing.
Stealth does not need to be high, just enough to be over their detection threshold so you can initiate fights from distance and have the first turn, you could do in with 3 AGI and no hardpoints in stealth with gear but that's expensive and time-consuming. Just put 50 points in stealth and use cave hopper leather armor.
Put some points into traps and use bear traps. Since you probably have PER 3 some points in traps are good to help with detection, I don't know exactly how much you need on dominating but I don't consider it "wasted" points in the long run.
Have some skill in trowing, you don't need it but it will cut on your reloads significantly so skip it if you really want super-optimized build for the rest of the game since after Depot A you don't really need to use grenades/molotovs with PSI.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Seriously, though, Depot A is absolutely demolishing me. [...]  Any tips or advice would be really appreciated.

What part of Depot A?  There's the "Pre-Depot" part which is the first maps you have access to, with Junkyard Muties, a few dogs, some Mutated Dogs, and a few turrets; then, the "Depot proper" which is what you get access to once you go through the locked gate, with full-on Mutants and Mutated Dogs.  If you're having trouble with the first part, then it's entirely how you're playing the psi character.  For example, you say you're always going last - you need to be manually starting combat, so you go first; start doing that, and you'll see a marked improvement right there.  On the other hand, if you're having trouble with the second part, it's possible you need to go pick up one or two more levels. There's no reason at all that you should ever be under level 8 when starting the Depot proper; if you're playing Classic XP, you can easily manage level 12 on DOMINATING, or even 13-14 if you really do absolutely everything first.

Pick the Pyromaniac feat at level 8 and you'll be able to crowd control the Mutated Dogs when fighting the Mutants; Mutants are immune to fear of fire but the dogs aren't and you can fearbounce them pretty reliably.  Between your four-turn Force Field (because you took Force User at level 4, right?) and your Premeditated Pyrokinesis (because you took Premeditation at level 6, right?) you should be able to throw down a couple caltrops (if you made/bought a stealth set, maybe even a few traps too) and get everyone in the entire map to bunch up at the edge of your force field, then pop Adrenaline and throw a grenade, toss out a fireball, and lob out an Electrokinesis and a TK Punch to get some stuns, then hop out of LOS to end your turn. Next round, do whatever you gotta do to survive - hopefully, it'll involve killing a few more enemies, then maybe finishing with a Morphine Shot if you see that you're going to have to facetank a Mutant. With a LTI, you'll then be able to hit a second psi booster for the fight and mop up.  Absolute worst case, you do stuff wrong and lose control of the fight - zone out, heal up, let all your cooldowns refresh, and go back in. It won't be as controllable the second time walking in, but at full health and with consumables and all your resources topped off, you should be able to survive one turn (again, you can pop Morphine if needed to survive that first messy turn walking into combat) and lay down the law.  By which I mean murder everything.

[Davaeorn]

So I dabbled a bit into Tranquility and Psychosis and am still not sure what's the definitive way to go because I am still a bloody noob.

Over on reddit someone claimed that now with Expedition Tranq would be the way to go because of psy contration spell?

What would you experts recommend in combination with stealth?

Also, does one just need to learn every psi ability possible or are there bad ones one shouldn't use?
 

 

[TheAverageGortsby]

[questions]

Either one is fine. Tranquility is more powerful if you're a skilled player; Psychosis is more powerful if you're still making mistakes. The reason for that is once you make a mistake and take damage in combat, you lose your Tranquility bonus (though if you can heal back to full, you can get it back) but the Psychosis bonus doesn't care.  Either one will work excellently with stealth.  The SI Psychosis build concept (like I described in the initial series of posts in this thread) lends itself well to being sneaky, then killing an entire room before anyone notices you were there.

There's no reason not to learn psi abilities; you don't have spell slots or anything like that.  May as well catch 'em all.  Every ability has use in certain situations - part of the fun of psi is figuring out what's the best or the most fun or the least risky ability for any given encounter.

[Davaeorn]

Thanks a dozen for your help and expertise.

SI psychosis stealth run initiated 

[Apostrophe]

Either one is fine. Tranquility is more powerful if you're a skilled player; Psychosis is more powerful if you're still making mistakes. The reason for that is once you make a mistake and take damage in combat, you lose your Tranquility bonus (though if you can heal back to full, you can get it back) but the Psychosis bonus doesn't care.

It cares more, after all you are running around with 1HP most of the time

[TheAverageGortsby]

after all you are running around with 1HP most of the time

With the 9 CON requirement for SI, if you spec into it, you'll be running around with SI benefit with nearly as much health as a 3 CON Tranquility build has at full. Indeed, safe play would have you running around at about 50-54% health, just outside SI range, so when you hit Psionic Mania and take the damage, you drop right into the top range of SI. No point having elevated crit chance when you're not using it.  That would have you running around well over the max health of a Con-dumped Tranq build.  If you're playing at 1HP, you've got nobody but yourself to blame. 

[Apostrophe]

Yeah but healing on dominating is a pain

[TheAverageGortsby]

Yeah but healing on dominating is a pain

Not at all.

First of all, if you're a psi crafter, you're going to have Biology because you'll need that for your gear.  That means you're going to have enough to make healing hypos and advanced hypos, at least.  Then all you need are a bunch of hearts, which are free, and a bunch of ampoules, which are cheap (in fact, you can just use the extra adrenaline glands you'll find to make a few adrenaline shots, and trade those in at the doctor when you're buying ampoules and flat beakers and syringes, and it should usually be a wash or even put a charon or two in your pocket) and you can heal right on up.

Secondly, once you've got Psionic Mania, you can just go back to Quinton if you're hurt, get him to heal you for free, then activate Psionic Mania a few times while you head back on out to wherever you want to go, to get your health back down into the ideal health window.

Finally, the game is just full of healing items even on DOMINATING.  Crates/lockers/boxes have them, vendors have them, enemies have them.  Between health hypos and bandages there's really a freakish lot of healing and if you're constantly running out, then it's because you're not yet playing well.  I say that as someone whose first thread on these forums was a request for more healing options, because I wasn't playing well and thought there weren't enough hypos =)

[Apostrophe]

It just takes too long, bandages heal for nothing and hypos are on CD. It easier to just spec into stoicism and aegis+morphice+last stand when you fuck up.

[mangoalloy]

Alright, put on your robe and your cave wizard hat.  Time to build a character.

Hey, just wanted to say thank you.
You basically made a game for me. Had a really good ~150 hours.

Cheers!