Author Topic: Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?  (Read 6966 times)

coopatroopa

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Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?
« on: March 28, 2022, 08:49:41 pm »
I've been doing my first PSI build (and my first dominating build) and while I'm only level 11 at the moment I'm relying on constant molotovs for basically every fight, as well as being perpetually at one health. Is this par for the course or have I just built terribly?

Here's my build so far (can't actually link it) /build/?CwQGBgYDCQgAQQAAAAAPMjIADyMjIyMjLUEAAAAAKCtQOSwUKmUW378

I'm using Electrokinesis, Telekinetic Punch, Forcefield and TK Proxy (intend to add bilocation and enrage at level 14 with locus).

KnifegaF

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Re: Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?
« Reply #1 on: March 29, 2022, 02:39:42 am »
You have really low will for being pure psi. With those crafting stats I imagine you don't have a great headband. Low crit chance as well without SI and focus stim which is a pretty big piece of being a psycho focused psi build.

Drizzle

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Re: Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?
« Reply #2 on: March 29, 2022, 05:13:16 am »
Yes, some of your stats are actually pretty worthless. As pure psi, you either dump strength to 3 since tacvests have no strength requirements or pump it to 7/8 if you want to do tincan, which is strictly Psychosis territory in higher difficulties. Agility is also a dump stat as some good tabis plus Nimble will give you decent base MP for no stat points when you're wearing a tacvest, and it gets better with contraction giving you MP as well if you take TM later on. 8 intelligence is okay but TC PK does not need very many slots to be effective, crit based psi still gets pretty crazy later on even without max will though. It's your choice whether you'll end up with 16 Wil 8 Int or 18 Wil 6 Int. I would also drop dexterity myself, but I feel taking Trigger Happy (and a root soda) will make Arena much less of a pain for you.

Your skill point distribution is all over the place. Lockpicking is too high, 35 base with 6 base dexterity and Jacknife will be enough for opening vents and you can invest more into it later when you're not starving for points. High electronics and don't get too much biology so soon as one doesn't need it very high by Depot A; you won't be crafting any good drugs yet but you do need a little for headbands. Chemistry also shouldn't be so high since if you're relying on crafted grenades for damage, then you built pure psi wrong; again you can put more points into it later if you wish. With stealth either you get around 40 base ASAP or leave it at 0. A proxy crit TK Punch with EK followup will make short work of a goliath beetle so you don't need to stealth Silent Isle. Always max Mercantile until 105 effective, or 100 if you want to use Jon's Special.

From all that, you can go for SI where you'll need 9 Con. Hemopsychosis is also an option, but it is its own playstyle. I would suggest restarting with something like this: https://underrail.info/build/?CwMGAwkDDAYAKAAAAAAAMiMAAChBDx4yQUEAAAAAQVBiKywUKmXCg9-_

Sykar

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Re: Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2022, 07:17:23 am »
Strength 4 is nice for Riot gear. It has lower bullet DR but the added DR against melee is pretty nice. Also you can get more HP out of the Sturdy Vest component. Tac Vest won't help much against the biggest problems, Snipers and Crossbowmen anyway and Riot gear has enough defense against other calibers that it usually does just fine.

Yes, some of your stats are actually pretty worthless. As pure psi, you either dump strength to 3 since tacvests have no strength requirements or pump it to 7/8 if you want to do tincan, which is strictly Psychosis territory in higher difficulties. Agility is also a dump stat as some good tabis plus Nimble will give you decent base MP for no stat points when you're wearing a tacvest, and it gets better with contraction giving you MP as well if you take TM later on. 8 intelligence is okay but TC PK does not need very many slots to be effective, crit based psi still gets pretty crazy later on even without max will though. It's your choice whether you'll end up with 16 Wil 8 Int or 18 Wil 6 Int. I would also drop dexterity myself, but I feel taking Trigger Happy (and a root soda) will make Arena much less of a pain for you.

Your skill point distribution is all over the place. Lockpicking is too high, 35 base with 6 base dexterity and Jacknife will be enough for opening vents and you can invest more into it later when you're not starving for points. High electronics and don't get too much biology so soon as one doesn't need it very high by Depot A; you won't be crafting any good drugs yet but you do need a little for headbands. Chemistry also shouldn't be so high since if you're relying on crafted grenades for damage, then you built pure psi wrong; again you can put more points into it later if you wish. With stealth either you get around 40 base ASAP or leave it at 0. A proxy crit TK Punch with EK followup will make short work of a goliath beetle so you don't need to stealth Silent Isle. Always max Mercantile until 105 effective, or 100 if you want to use Jon's Special.

From all that, you can go for SI where you'll need 9 Con. Hemopsychosis is also an option, but it is its own playstyle. I would suggest restarting with something like this: https://underrail.info/build/?CwMGAwkDDAYAKAAAAAAAMiMAAChBDx4yQUEAAAAAQVBiKywUKmXCg9-_

6 dex just for Trigger Happy? You can dump dex to 3, get Paranoia which is overall superior and only lose 2 initiative.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2022, 07:19:23 am by Sykar »

Drizzle

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Re: Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2022, 04:41:27 pm »
As psi you really shouldn't be letting melee NPCs get close in the first place. Regen vest is also superior to Sturdy and that doesn't get better with heavier armor. On top of that, riot gear uses the psi beetle carapace as a shield, which would prevent you from using Hoddurform without a massive Strength investment for Iron Grip, it's just bad all around. And if you REALLY wanted to wear Riot Gear, you can still equip the Power Glove. It's a wasted point.

Paranoia really is only useful for the Initiative, and since there's leftover stat points it's not much of an issue to just get Trigger Happy. Dexterity also helps with some skill points early on. Besides, 3 Dex + Paranoia is middling Initiative and that won't help win you the forced checks much more often than the minimum, while 6 Dex + Trigger Happy is pretty decent and will make Arena much less of a headache, not to mention most encounters.

Edit: There's also nothing stopping you from taking Paranoia later on too, for quite good initiative.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2022, 05:01:31 pm by Drizzle »

Sykar

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Re: Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?
« Reply #5 on: April 01, 2022, 09:46:31 pm »
Sturdy vest gets better with heavier armor. 50% of quality for tac vs 70% of quality for Riot. at 150 quality that is 75 HP vs 105 HP, a substantial difference, plugging in your build that is still 10% more HP at level 21. Furthermore you have more stealth since Sturdy also does not add yet another armor penalty.
Yeah in a perfect world melee does not get to you. Too bad that everyone screws up and no one is perfect. Yes you can get the power glove from Hecate but that prevents you from wearing boxing gloves which reduce enemy crit chance even further, combine it with Paranoia and you are nigh crit immune unless the enemy has specific rare crit gear/consumables on or uses Aimed Shot. Not that the 1 point means much anyway, it. Why would I want Hoddurform? Unless you rush Expedition, which I never do, it comes so late it won't be a game changer. Any build that relies on a specific item to work is just flat out bad anyway. It is a good item, but far from crucial, it is also better on Tranquility builds. If need be you can change gear anyway.
Paranoia stealth detection is golden on low Per characters. Add Stuffed Bat and you wont have to worry about mines early on so long as you walk slowly or just in stealth. Doubly nice once you get detection goggles but that is luck based until after Depot A though chances are decent once you reach it. Any extra point over the neccessary detection threshhold speeds up discovery so the detection is always useful unless you know exactly where every mine and every stealthed enemy is. Good luck with that though. Paranoia+Root Soda+Twitch+Eel Sandwich can give more than enough inititative. Most encounters will be opened from stealth so you will go first anyway. Arena and a few choice moments where you cannot initiate from stealth but you can far more often open from stealth.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2022, 09:56:00 pm by Sykar »

Drizzle

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Re: Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?
« Reply #6 on: April 02, 2022, 02:47:57 am »
At 150Q, a regen vest recovers 50 HP every turn, for a total of 500 within 10 turns from a full charge, and this isn't counting Fast Metabolism. The only situation where a Sturdy vest would be better is if you die in two attacks to any mook, or you're not Hemopsychosis and are trying to stay within SI range. 30 HP is no substantial difference anyway, it's barely 9 more HP within SI, and one knife attack otherwise.

Crit chance reduction/vulnerability is a worthless stat, even for tanks. Most NPCs won't pass 10% base chance, and it would take hundreds of attacks in a single battle for the reduced or extra chance to make a difference. I don't think I should explain why you won't be able to receive hundreds of attacks in anything other than a tincan build. Melee resistance is just really not worth the extra AP and the strength needed, not to mention, shields are shit. While the beetle carapace gives you extra threshold in the tacvest that's basically the bonus you would've gotten from the riot gear melee resistance. Hoddurform is just a nice bonus, and really good on TC builds to one shot late game bosses; I never said it was mandatory. And Psychosis can make use of it just as well, there's nothing that makes it better for Tranq.

Paranoia's detection bonus is so low that it won't let you detect stealthed NPCs before they attack on a low Per build, and on high Per builds you already have so much detection that it makes no difference. If you're really that worried about traps, you can equip detection goggles and get higher detection for no feat investment, just check the junk merchants. And all of this can be bypassed with meta knowledge anyway. Twitch is also an Expedition drug, and the blueprint is very rare in the base game so you'd have to CE refresh at Oculus for it. Again, Paranoia's only good for stacking initiative. There's no reason not to take both it and TH when you're very frail and need to go first as often as you can.

Sykar

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Re: Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?
« Reply #7 on: April 07, 2022, 04:02:44 pm »
What a bunch of nonsense. Prohibiting one and two shots is far more important than regenerating health. Few fights made me go "Man if only I could gotten some health regen". Most of the time you die to a sudden damage spike. This game is more about winning in the first 5 rounds than winning in 20 rounds. Those 500 health regenerating that you mentioned when will that ever happen? Never, so hyperbolic nonsense. Even worse if you go SI where you do not want regen at all. Crit chance reduction is not worthless. This is not about a single battle but all battles combined throughout the game which is plenty. Having roughly 50% less crits coming at you is helpful and if you claim that you never get attacks aimed at you well then I guess I cannot take you seriously anymore.
Paranoias detection bonus helps you to find traps early even if you could not find detection goggles. It stacks with other detection sources like bat and goggles and the higher your bonus the faster you discover traps and stealthers. The only enemy where you will get problems to the end are Death Stalkers but they are overtuned anyway so whatever.
Nice also how you focus on 2-3 things and ignore the rest.
All in all, bunch of rubbish dismissals. I guess I can repay you in kind then in the future.

Barry

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Re: Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?
« Reply #8 on: April 11, 2022, 04:41:56 am »
Assuming that you're a whole wizard and not a hybrid
1. Start off with 10 Will and 10 Intelligence, then increase your Intelligence to 12 first, that gives you all 8 psi slots
2. Psi has a lot of versatility in what else you can run it with, Intelligence will grant you many leftover skill points because you do not need to invest that much in crafting, personally I prefer Agility because mobility is more important than being tough on dominating because the enemies do more damage and pierce your DT easier, so moving around is just more convenient, plus you can better make use of stealth which is seriously godly on dom, but I don't increase dodge and evasion
3. Always increase the psi skills, but personally I leave TM at 70 base points because it's just enough to learn Stasis
4. Try to get Cryokinetic Orb. It has an extreme amount of damage that can usually wipe out most of an enemy group when it critically hits, after which you could mop up the rest with a frag grenade. An imprinter is guaranteed to spawn outside the Black Crawler's base if you have the stealth for it. Alternatively you can play the waiting game and wait for Constantine to stock it (I think)
5. Only take most of the psi feats if you want to build around it, typically people specialize their psionic characters into dealing damage through one mean or two, like Neural Overload, Electrokinesis and all that, for example if you don't really want to make use of Neural Overload don't take Cerebral Trauma
5a. You can't go wrong with Locus of Control and Neural Overclocking
6. Headbands are the shit, you'll learn to love them. Use Psionic Mufflers that reduce your psi costs if you have Tranquility, or one that increases your critical damage if you have Psionic Mania
6a. You'll want to increase your Electronics and Biology for this
6b. The effects of some components like Psionic Mufflers gets augmented if you don't use an Universal Psi Modulator as the basis of your headband at the cost of only doing its effect on the respective psi school, so if you have any spells you use in particular go for it, you can probably swap out headbands given the circumstances too since they're easy to carry around
6c. Increasing Mercantile to about 120 effective will seriously improve your quality of playing
7. If you go to the Black Sea you should philosophize with the Ferryman when you get the chance (either pass his initial Persuasion check or visit him a second time to get the option), that will give you up to +15 psi capacity which also affects your long-term psi storage
7a. If you're focusing on Neural Overload the Oyetspaetter (high spiriters) and Oyensorm (the boss) carry specific staves that drastically improve its damage, especially when using Psionic Mania
8. Implosion + Entropic Recurrence is an extremely effective boss killer on dominating since many of the bosses do not have that much mechanical resistance. Assuming that you capped out your Implosion damage at 75% of their current health and have 70 TM with 12 Will (117, roughly translating to 173% damage) then with no resistances in the way you do almost triple their max health in damage, and it's not until they have roughly 50% mechanical resistance that this combo won't kill them outright, and the damage gets higher if you have more effective TM. On a boss with 75% mechanical resistance the combo will only do half the boss' health
8a. If you do this don't use Implosion with Telekinetic Proxy, or else Entropic Recurrence will simply repeat the lesser damage
9. Carry a serious amount of inhalers. With your Biology skill you should be able to make them cheaply using sponges and oxygen tanks, and that way you won't be afraid of switching out your innervated psi spells for what the situation calls for
10. Locus of Control and Enrage will significantly help you when fighting enemies, not only providing plenty of distraction where they aren't immediately chasing you but also self-damage while they also waste their special abilities like Aimed Shot or shooting poisonous bolts at each other
10a. You can get Enrage as soon as you get to Rail Crossing, the doc sells the psionic mentor
« Last Edit: April 11, 2022, 04:44:25 am by Barry »

Hipsternity

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Re: Weak as hell early game PSI on dominating?
« Reply #9 on: April 11, 2022, 09:04:30 am »
You can also get Forceful Innervation perk. You gonna scale from Will, just like 'ol good time. The new content will also be there.

How to:
1. Downgrade game below 1.1.2.0
2. Make new psi char. Get psi-pill and save
3. Upgrade the game, load You save, now You have Forceful Innervation perk, old Will scallings with -10 penalty to psi points
4. Export You brand new char
5. Create new game, import You char and enjoy the last patch with old Will mechanics
« Last Edit: April 11, 2022, 09:24:32 am by Hipsternity »