Psi Pistol Build/Theorycrafting/Questions

[PepperHawkins]

Hello All,

So after hours, days, weeks, of exploring this forum I have realized a few things. Metathermics and thought control, or the combination of, is not used often. The reason why, I could not find. So I thought to bring it upon myself (As someone who have been punished many times in depot) to try to theorycraft a build involving Mechanical Pistols and using Thought Control for potential CC and BiLocation (I saw it once in the Pillars, I was annoyed and intrigued) and Metathermics for minor buffs and AOE potential of Pyrokinetic Stream (As well as the fear effect). Now, I have limited knowledge of the game so I decided to try and make a build using the character builder. I saw that it was difficult to create due to the limited amount of feats that I thought I was able to obtain in making this build.

My overall goal was to make a sneaky (Or not sneaky, I am just experimenting here) speedy pistol build some cc and aoe capabilities using things that is not used often. I tend to steer away from persuasion and any other social abilities. I will try melee builds and such in another playthrough. At the moment I am trying to play as what the core player should be. I am open and willing to hear everyone out on the build and have an open conversation about it as well as how miserable of a job I did.

Gameplay will be involving using stealth to get in a opportunistic location depending on map and High Value Targets and use metathermic and thought control to the best of the situation and pepper everything down with high ap pistol shots.  Perhaps pistols can be ruled out and subbed with SubMachine Guns, or even tweak the stats to involve assault rifiles instead.

https://underrail.info/build/?HgMGBwMMCgXCoAAAAG7Cm3hkWgAAZDwAAGl4AMKgAAAAACsnwoN_HiQoAS5bLD0cMyFywqTCtd-_

[Shredded Cheddar]

I miss the old days where people actually played the game before they started trying to theory craft.

Anyway, you didn't mention what difficulty you're on. That will change things. I have several suggestions for you, but I am not going to make a build for you - that has been a lot of the fun for me playing this game.

- You are using strafe but plan to use pistols. Pistols don't have a move and shoot penalty and you don't have the strength or skill to use any weapons that do. Wasted feat.
- You plan to use pistols, but didnt take gunslinger (requires 7 dex) which is basically the number 1 pistol feat (and also gives you 7 initiative in addition to it's other affect - just the initiative bonus is better than trigger happy and it has an additional -3 ap on mechanical pistols)
- You have trigger happy and paranoia, but also over 100 points in stealth. Most of the time you will be initiating the fight from stealth - probably around 90% of the time. Imo these feats are wasted. Max initiative and run an antithermic coat or go stealth and save two feats. Some people may say it's nice to have both but unless you're doing DiD/Ironman, I wouldn't bother.
- You can pull those skill points out of dodge and evasion and put them into psychokinesis and temp manips. This will give you access to utility psi skills such as forcefield and psychotemporal acceleration/ dilation. You can use these skills to increase your mobility, and stop enemies from getting to you / attaining line of sight. In this way you can prevent the enemy from ever getting off an attack instead of relying on RNG to keep you safe.
- If you look at your feats, you don't have a single feat which requires 7 agi. That means you are dumping 4 base ability points on agi in order to get a 24.5% skill bonus on two skills you're not even maxing out. This is a huge waste of ability points.
- Hacking and lockpicking are luxury IMO - completely unnecessary and if anything a hindrance on hybrid builds. IMO you will benefit much more from having some bio and more electronics so you can craft psionic gear and energy shields (plus energy pistols for certain types of enemies).
- You don't have 6 int for premeditation. Get premeditation. Go read premeditation so you know what it is. Just to be clear... GET PREMEDITATION.
- You're gonna wanna take locus of control at level 14.
- If you drop 30-40 points into nades you can actually use them without having to worry about bopping yourself. Grenadier can go a long way in a drawn out fight.
- For some psychotic reason you have psychosis but not psionic mania. If you decide not to take the other two psi skills for utility, I would suggest psionic mania in the build. You can get massive alpha strikes with cryokinetic orb + nade. If you don't I would suggest skipping these feats completely (you don't have to take the other branch either you can just put the feats elsewhere) - the reasoning here is that psychosis increases the costs of psi abilities that don't do any damage (no benefit, just downside).
- Hypothermia is shit, skip it.
- SHARPSHOOTER WITHOUT CRIT POWERRRRRRRRR?!?!?!??!?! NANI!?!
- Point shot is actually quite good, I would pick it up.
- The more I look at this build the more I'm confused why you don't have temporal manips. Pistol builds tend to rely on special attacks for their damage - the best way to increase you damage then would be to get off more special attacks. Your biggest limiter is gonna be cooldowns. Limited temporal increment with future orientation will reduce your cds 1 turn every 2 turns. Let's say you stealth alpha strike and kill like half a group of enemies with cryokinetic orb followed by a nade. Youre gonna wanna - aimed shot (3 turn cd), rapid fire (2 turn cd), point shot(1 turn cd), kneecap shot, LTI, point shot again. Let's say you end turn there. Next turn, nade AGAIN (with grenadier), point shot, rapid fire, use a psi booster, more psi abilities, maybe a regular attack. Next turn point shot, aimed shot, LTI, point shot again, rapid fire, another fucking nade ?!?!? You get the point my dude.
- Mercantile can be real useful
- Combining metathermics/pyromaniac with ambush can be quite strong, lots of crits and lowers enemy evasion. Also ambush doesn't require agility.

I think that's all I got for now, have fun

[Shredded Cheddar]

I just read the patch notes and some of the psi stuff doesn't apply. Didn't read it all but looks like Styg nerfed using multiple psi schools as talked about. I'd still say some of your feat and ability point distributions arent good though.

[TheAverageGortsby]

- You don't have 6 int for premeditation. Get premeditation. Go read premeditation so you know what it is. Just to be clear... GET PREMEDITATION.

This.

As a result of getting Premeditation, with 6 Int you'll have 5 psi slots, which will be enough to get good utility out of two schools.  You don't need 7 Agi, so you can take one point from there and move it to Int.  You should probably do that.

[PepperHawkins]

Its been a while and I didn't think this thread will get some comments, I have played with someone else build and gathered more knowledge for this game. I think the main thing about building a proper build is general knowledge of features for later game. As regards for future theory crafting would be, End game Features and their synergies with said weapons and other abilities. Thats where my knowledge (And many other peoples) falters.

Currently I am using Vokair's(Sorry if I spelled your name wrong, I currently don't have your tab open) build just to see if I am missing something when it comes to beating depot a (Which is my game killer) and from messing around with that build for about 20 hours I have learned much much more than I have ever learned coming into this game with barely any knowledge. And from what I learned is the power of Perception, Dexerity, and Agility. Thus learning about those mechanics put me in a creative build limbo where as I would like to start trying EVERYTHING out.

(Heres the build I have been using. Its a sniper/pistol build except I am trying to use it without the use of psi until I get more familiar with the mechanics, required stats to run a successful build and what not. https://underrail.info/build/?HgUICAMNAwbCnUsAAADCncKdTTpLPmVlMDdlAAAAOAAAABcBMToeRjV-K8KHM0soAlswwrXCpOKnjAPip74I4rGWBN-_ )

My question being, As for running a proper build. What kind of feats should any build look for ( I am focusing on feats mainly because from my point of view seems to be more important than anything else)

Also, Thank you for the responses and feedback.