This build focusses around the insane critical damage of a Laser Pistol coupled with its low AP cost. Using Temporal Manipulation PSI, the build can shoot 7 times per round (70 AP) at level 20, doing roughly 500 energy damage per shot. When fully built, at level 26, it does close to 650 damage per critical hit, with 74% critical hit chance (both damage and critical chance can be even higher, see below). The laser pistol has a tight spread, so your damage will reliably be close to the average, a huge boon.
Counter-intuitively, this build has DEX 14, PER 11, CON 9 and everything else 3, incl. INT. This guy is not a scientist and probably only barely finds the on-switch on the pistol. With high INT, Laser Pistols (and Plasma Pistols) can get much higher critical damage, but I would rather delete 5 critters per round instead of overkilling 2 or 3. Even at DOMINATING, few enemies have more than 600 hp, so this is a sweet spot damage-wise. For bosses, you have to shoot more than once, yes.
Playstyle is to sneak into groups and attack from stealth/blindsiding. Setting up traps and tazer for opportunist does not hurt, especially early/mid-game, when your laser pistol damage is nowhere near that high. Before being able to one-shot easily, throwing nets, traps, force field and the tazer are your friend, for big groups grenades and flashbangs. Thematically, this fits nicely into a stealthy assassin playstyle (I wish Styg would remove the PER -2 on the brown robe, it really hurts on this build). Once you start speccing into Critical Power, the whole crowd control is no longer necessary, but with PER 11 you want to be sneaking close to your enemies.
The build is smoothly playable throughout the game, with rough edges in Depot A. You should get Elwood's laser pistol before even starting Tanner's first outpost missions so you can maximize your play time with a laser pistol.
Abilities: 3/10/3/9/9/3/3, +DEX+DEX+PER+DEX+DEX+PER
Feats (in order, feats in brackets not necessary): Survival Instincts (5 specializations into critical chance, after speccing Critical Power), Aimed Shot, PSI Empathy, Recklessness, Kneecap Shot, Ambush, (Grenadier), Psychotemporal Acceleration, Sharpshooter, Critical Power (10 specializations ASAP), Blindsiding, Opportunist, (Execute), (Nimble), Pack Rathound, Srcutinous, PER+2, (Trigger Happy)
Skills: Max Guns, max Stealth, max Electro (should be 115 or so with house bonus, I think), around 80 Lockpick, 100+ Hacking (see destroyor's guide on the necessary thresholds); in the beginning some throwing (30, more if you like your nets and 'nades), rush Psychokinesis (25 for force field, then after Depot A to 45 for Imprint), rush Temporal (to 35 for Temp. Dilation from Ethan in order to get the Psychotemp. Acceleration feat at level 10; this is easy to muck up in leveling, as this will happen in Depot A, and you need the PSI ability to select the feat; post Depot A, increase to 55 for Haste from Doc in Rail Crossing), After Depot A rush Mercantile for CoreTech shop stuff; you need some Biology for Gas Grenades, Tailoring later for the +10 Critical Chance Infused Rathound Leather, Chemistry for Grenades.
Ally with Core Tech as you will absolutely need high quality gear for laser pistol and goggles.
A note on low INT: I played many builds (including laser pistol) with high INT for better crafting and the QoL of Premeditation. I did not miss it here. You will be able to craft stuff later than usual (but you will have Elwood's laser pistol from level 3 on!), will need to make use of the house bonus and you will need other sources of stun than a free Electrokinesis, sometimes at the expense of AP. This is no problem. Later on, you will not need any crowd control as few groups are bigger than five or six people, and chances are, you will have killed them all in the first round after exiting stealth.
Gear: Laser Pistol (Q150ish for 20-27 damage, but don't bother once you are in the Q140ies, important is the Circular Wave Amplifier, which in the Q140ies translates into 280%+, this is sufficient but take more if you can get it), Critical Goggles (Q160 gives you +20% critical chance, Q140ish around 18%, which is good enough for me), Infused Rathound Leather (for maximal critical chance +10%), Tabis for movement and stealth.
Critical chance: 7 (Recklessnes) 30/35 (Survival Instinct, +5 Spec.) 7 (Scrutinous) 20 (Goggles) 10 (Infused Rathound Leather) 6 (Gun) = 85% (Focus Stim gets you a perfect 100%)
Critical damage: 20-27 base damage endgame, PER 13, Gun 160 (Eff.282) = 59-80 damage. With 288% Circular Wave Amplifier this translates into 972% critical damage bonus (includes Sharpshooter and fully specced Critical Power) and an average damage of 69.5 becomes an average critical hit of 745. With Blindsiding and Opportunist you are at 1043 energy damage. With 7 shots in an accelerated round, you deal an expected amount of 6244 energy damage per round (expected damage = mix of hits and crits).
With a critical chance of 85% and 7 shots, this build translates into 595 critical hits out of 700 hits (in 100 rounds of this sort) and likely killing 5 out of 7 enemies. You are really closer to 6 out of 7, but let's play it conservatively with our calculations.
I have played a lot of different builds on dominating, but I find this one extremely satisfying to play. I wanted to share it because I sometimes read on the forums how people say laser pistols suck. They don't. Not at all.
I had a lot of fun with this build, let me know if you have questions or comments.
