New player, last build hit a wall, need help with "Blood Mage" build (HARD)

[FanaticEgalitarian]

Hello,

I apologise for the long post in advance. Just got the game. Played until I got to SGS compound with a sort of Stealth/SMG/Thought control and temporal manipulation hybrid. Just found it so difficult to get past the robots, they would kill me instantly if I got spotted, three shots and I'm dead, and it would take me two turns of dedicated psi spells to kill one. So, I'm here to ask, what went wrong, and what about a new build?

This was the stats of my first build:
S: 3
D: 6
A: 7
C: 3
P: 6
W: 8
I: 7

Skills went into: Guns, Temporal, Thought control, hacking, stealth, lockpick, an then in support some traps and throwing, some intimidation.
By level 5 i had the feats: hit and run , psy empathy, suppressive fire, sure step, and tranquillity

I had intended to get crafting later on, but not sure what - mechanics and chemistry i guess. I found that my SMG and psi skills were independently reasonably useful, but it didn't synergise effectively. Intimidation wasn't that useful. I was very squishy, but against organic targets I could set up trap boxes with caltrops and bear traps, and spam temporal feedback, using SMG Burst fire against squishy groups of enemies, with neural feedback being able to take out individual enemies with decent effectiveness. Grenades were very useful. It wasn't terrible, but against robots I couldn't stealth or take down before they executed me i hit a wall (could have cheesed with temporal feedback and doors but felt bad).

Interested to see what went wrong here. but also looking to try something new.

I had this idea for a blood mage build. The idea is that they would soak up bullets, and their flesh would repair in front of the eyes of terrified enemies, as devastating bolts of energy burnt people to ash, and mind spells wrought nightmares into others. I really want to work melee, or at least throwing knives, into the build using poisons and bleeding (but i don't know if its possible).

I'm thinking High will, intelligence, constitution, and if possible some dex. The idea is to build around the feat that lets use HP to cast spells, and the feats that increase critical damage with low health, while using the feat that gives us more damage resistance on low health. For skills, I don't really want to be a pure psionic because its a pretty straightforward meta-build, I want to spice it up - so I'm happy to cut one or two psionic schools.

Any thoughts?

[TheAverageGortsby]

You're not going to like the answer.

Your build is fine.  The game is hard, and you played badly.  On Hard difficulty, any build can work if played well.

On the bright side, it's easy to fix your problems.  You don't even have to change your build at all.  However, I'd suggest you put two points into Will at some point so you can pick up Locus of Control.

Robots in the GMS compound killing you?  You need to go to the Underpassages (take the entrance just out front of SGS, where the three thugs were waiting for you if you took Jack's delivery quest.  Then, go east one screen) and kill the Lurker who's standing around wearing an aluminized tac vest.  Wear that so you can eat the hits from the robots.  While you're down there, pick up the AR from the lurker behind the locked door that's right in front of that aluminzed fellow.  You may be an SMG build but early on , that AR is straight up money.

Pick up Grenadier around level 6.  Since you aren't specialized, you don't have any huge I WIN buttons, so endless fields of explosive death will healp smooth out the tough patches.

Sprint would help you more than Hit and Run.

If you want to build a blood mage, you should really have 7 CON for Hemopsychosis, but I get why it might be tough to get the points for it with such a scattered build like that.

If you were willing to invest just 25 points in Psychokinesis, you could pick up Force User and that would be an enormous shift in the power balance of that build.