Psi Blast. Total Rubbish or Completely Gimped?
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the devs where so terrified of it being FoTM in PvP (that joke, yes) that they nerfed it to oblivion.
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Pretty Much...
It's meant to be stronger because of all the mez types: -recharge, stun, sleep, knockup, knockback.
The normal attacks are actually not too shabby - the animation times of TK Blast and Will Dom are quite fast and overall ST damage output is somewhere between Energy Blast and Ice Blast... but sadly the recharge times of the later attacks are rather high, the AoE sucks and Psychic damage gets very highly resisted after level 40.
The latter problem is one of the reasons I'm having trouble convincing myself to go with an Elec/Mental rather than an Elec/Fire for my next Blaster "PBAoE tanker" experiment...
Never played Ice or Energy blast to anything significant so cant compare to them.
Compared to Sonic, AR, and Archery I feel im doing about 2/3 damage. And thats being generous, discounting the most feeble AoE potential you can get. And most of my damage seems to come from my secondary!!!
/Mental I have no problems with, its pretty robust. (Lvl 41 Archery/Mental. A lot more fun). At the end of the day, secondary is not so much bout damage, but utility. Your primary should take care of psi resistant mobs. Love the Drain Pyche and PSW!
EDIT: Thinking about it, I actually think my Grav controller disposed of single targets faster than my psi blaster!!! (Build up and Aim excluded)
I had a dig up at the resistance spreadsheet... Essentially Psi is at 40% strength versus anything metallic (Nemesis/Council/Malta Robots, Turrets, etc) and Hydra. 50% against lots of Arachnos, all Preatorians, Psychic Clockwork, Zombies and Banished Pantheon. 60% against all Rikti. 65% against all Vanguard. 70% against Longbow. 75% against Wolves, 80% against Carnies and Rularuu.
So Cinemorans and CoT are about the only endgame foes you aren't penalised for (CoT ghosts are weak to Psi, extra 30% damage). The "human" Council/Nemesis are also susceptable to Psi damage, but not wolves/robots.
Level 20-40 when you're fighting DE, Crey, Family, Warriors and Freakshow is really your "sweet spot".
SO I feel like im at 2/3 my other blasters during my "Sweet spot".
This set needs looking at!
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/Mental I have no problems with, its pretty robust. (Lvl 41 Archery/Mental. A lot more fun). At the end of the day, secondary is not so much bout damage, but utility. Your primary should take care of psi resistant mobs. Love the Drain Pyche and PSW!
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I like /Mental as well. In a fit of utter insanity I actually made a Sonic/Mental Blaster to be a teaming death machine. Why? Because it has a ranged cone attack even more powerful than the standard cone attack available in most Blaster Primaries. And Sonic has a couple of them.
The idea was to be able to throw out Howl, Psychic Scream and Shockwave in a rolling cone attack chain of DOOM, they're 'normal' attacks so they recharge quickly enough to just keep on hammering the pants off groups of mobs.....I haven't actually gotten her far along enough to see if it's really that good of a plan....
Chairman of the Charity of Pain; accepting donations of blood and guts.
Prophet of the Creamy Truth; "If it's empty, fill it with cream."
I have a psi blast/nrg blaster at the moment and during the hess TF I felt alost completely useless at range and had to get into melee to use my energy attacks. While this proved deadly for myself and the bad guys in equal measure I did have to wonder how it was going to fair in the higher levels. She's level 29 now and I have the temptation to swap her about and go Nrg/Mental. I thin I'll give her another half dozen levels and see how I feel. I know Council are 'machine heavy' as mob types go so I know I wouldn;t be much cop against them.
Defiant 50's
Many and varied!
@Miss Chief
I never looked into this. It's no wonder I given up on defender damage. I played an Emp/Psi and called the damage a tickle. Defender damage is still just tickling and hardly worth doing (for emps anyway) but now I know /Psi has it really bad.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
Actually, not true. Defender's Psy Blast is *very* different from Blaster's Psy Blast. For a start, Blaster Psy Blast has standard ranges, where-as Defender Psy Blast has 100ft as the standard rather than 80ft.
For Blasters, Telekinetic Blast and Will Domination take far longer to recharge than on Defenders. Will Domination is the weaker attack of the two on Blasters, but very strong on Defenders.
Then there's the fact /Psy Defenders have Psychic Scream. Psy/ Blasters don't, as Psychic Scream was placed in /Mental.
In essence, if Blasters had the Defender's Psy Blast powerset with Blaster modifiers, it would probably be far better than the existing Psy Blast? For this reason I've never touched it, as it seems somewhat average as it stands in single-target damage, and *severely* deficient in AoE damage.
And I really hope that when/if Psy Blast is proliferated to Corruptors, they get the Defender version.
So which part of what I said is not true?
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
That /Psi has it bad. I would agree that Psi/ does, but /Psi ranks among highest single-target damage for Defender secondaries.
If the world and his mum is resisting it then it isn't good besides defender damage is bad.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
The world and his mum also resist smashing and lethal damage. /Psi is very effective against some mob types (and devestating against clockwork).
I really should do something about this signature.
In my experience of Psi Blast on a Blaster, I have to say it suffers as one of the most blatently ported sets with toons having to close to almost within melee range with a power or two, that coupled with the long animation time for a blaster meant levelling a Psi blaster started to feel tiresome after its teens.
And regarding Shannons comments about the Defender Psi powerset being weak for damage: well, current PvP fiasco aside, PvE damage once slotted is fine for me, ok the set does have its inherant hold factor ingrained in it but slotting Will Dom(high), Dominate(high), Telekinetic Blast(moderate) are all around or above 100 damage for me and means nothing short of a 52 Elite Boss is a hurdle (but do-able) leaving only an AV on Inv an Impossibility when soloing.
The trade-off with psi is that it may appear to be taking you longer to take down a foe, but it is one of the few powersets where you can take down an opponent without them even getting a shot off because of the mezzes, holds and sleeps in the sets.
Cold/psi, storm/psi, rad/psi. Resistance problem solved.
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The world and his mum also resist smashing and lethal damage. /Psi is very effective against some mob types (and devestating against clockwork).
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Yeah devastating against clockwork...
Give me something to sing about...
Purleez!
Defender damage is cack. It's cack because it's not expected to be on it's own. Which is cack for empaths as its as good as on its own.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
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Cold/psi, storm/psi, rad/psi. Resistance problem solved.
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resistance resists resist debuffs.
Secondly, it doesnt apply to a blaster
if defender damage is so cack is that why rad/sonics, storm/sonics, cold/sonics eats stuff alive?
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if defender damage is so cack is that why rad/sonics, storm/sonics, cold/sonics eats stuff alive?
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Lol, might wanna look again what you listed.
Three combinations which do alot of -resist debuffing.
Sort of like saying "Yeah my electric car have great range... cause i have a comustion engine in it too".
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if defender damage is so cack is that why rad/sonics, storm/sonics, cold/sonics eats stuff alive?
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Lol, might wanna look again what you listed.
Three combinations which do alot of -resist debuffing.
Sort of like saying "Yeah my electric car have great range... cause i have a comustion engine in it too".
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And? Defenders can do good damage, shannon said it was cack.I replied.
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And? Defenders can do good damage, shannon said it was cack.I replied.
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...
I was gonna argue against it, but decided not to.
I'll just let it sink in on how flawed your reasoning it and hope you come to realise it yourself
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In fairness, there are a few Defender sets that do decent damage... Sonic, Cold and Archery spring to mind. The Defender version of Psy Blast is pretty damaging due to decent levels of damage output, lots of mez and fast animations. Not "AV Killer" levels of damage, certainly, but probably enough to kill an Elite Boss.
The point is pretty irrelevant though since this is the BLASTER forum... and the Original Poster was concerned with the BLASTER version of Psychic blast. As mentioned above, Psychic damage in general does ok until level 40ish, when high resists arise and it proceeds to suck royally versus anything other than Romans and CoT.
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do decent damage... Sonic, Cold and Archery spring to mind.
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If archery is classed as doing decent damage, i'm afraid what the other sets do, cause my Trick Arrows / Archery Defender does so little damage with her attacks i'm almost certain her arrows are healing the targets.
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Maybe he wanted to say... ummm Energy or Electric???
Because i know from my Rad/Archery, even with a strong primary like Rad, Arrows damage crippling on the floor. If they didn't buffed since ummm i10? i think that was a slip of a tongue.
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In my experience of Psi Blast on a Blaster, I have to say it suffers as one of the most blatently ported sets with toons having to close to almost within melee range with a power or two, that coupled with the long animation time for a blaster meant levelling a Psi blaster started to feel tiresome after its teens.
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Something's wrong here. All the Psychic Blast attacks have a range of 80 except for the snipe which is 150 and the nuke (Psychic Wail) which is a PBAoE.
The attacks in Mental Manipulation on the other hand are mostly melee or PBAoE.
Maybe you're confusing the primary and the secondary.
OK, My Psi blaster (Psi/Energy) is now level 39. Time to stop and pause.
Now, ive played this game for a while, never powerelevelled, never farmed. 15 Alts at level 50, and several more level 40+
Never, in all my playing, have a seen anything as seriously underperform as Psi Blast. And yes, I have a level 50 Trick Archer Mastermind.
What on earth is up with this set? It seems to do about 2/3 the damage of my other blasters (AR/Ice, Sonic/Fire, Archery/Mental, all level 40+)... and this is against non-robotic enemies. Its pitiful against council robots and I shudder to think of the upcoming joy I have against the Praetorian robots.
On top of this, only one AoE (exluding nova)... what on earth is up there?
And its not as if the secondary effects, or endurance costs are anything to write home about.
I can only imagine that the devs where so terrified of it being FoTM in PvP (that joke, yes) that they nerfed it to oblivion.. not that it matters now with issue 13 rewriting all the rules (and nobody pvping anyway).
Can somone explain what the hell is up with this set? Its the most blatant underperformer I have ever seen.