Psionic : worth the trouble?

So, I was wondering... Since it is such an specific type of damage and quite hard to achieve good numbers, is it worth to try making a tank against Psionics? If so, how to do that? Better to work more on Defence, Resistance or both?

I recently capped psi resists on a elec/em tank. It was not a budget build but it was a lot cheaper than most. It works wonderfiully.
Is it worth it to make the investment? That depends what you plan on spending your time fighting.
In the late game Arachnos, Psi Clocks, Carnies, Rularuu, and Rikti all have foes with substantial amounts of Psi damage. The more often you plan on facing these groups the more mitigation for psi will be worth. If your just going to run ITFs all day it would be a total waste.

Shield is probably your best bet.

It's very easy to cap a Shield to all positions (Melee/AoE/Ranged); the vast majorty of psi is ranged damage so a Shield has high defence to this

Other options are Elec/Dark/Stone/WillPower.

Aren't most of the truly dangerous Psi powers also non-positional? Malaise springs to mind.

I would think resistance would be the best bet if you want to be as strong against Psi as you can be in all situations.

Positional defence would still be best though, because that has the added bonus of protecting you against almost everything else at the same time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I'd say roll a Willpower, Electric, or Dark Armor tank and utilize your second build to work on Psionic for those occasions when you know you'll be fighting a loty of Psi users. That way you still have your main build for all purpose tanking and a specific one for Psi (since building for Psi resistance/defense tends to gimp other aspects of a build)

I wouldn't worry too much about it though.

Well, I've slotted for psi mitigation on my invuln: 24% def and 24.3% res. It's not great, but it comes in handy. Just the knowledge that i don't have to be afraid of certain enemies goes a long way.

Though i did it more to see just if it could be done. TBH it's probably not a smart idea to trade softcap'd DEF vs 90% of everything in exchange for some mitigation against 1% of everything else. W/e =P

As Sarrate said if you are wanting to hunt certain enemy types, then it is worth it. One of the reasons I am currently leveling up an electric tank is I enjoy making clowns cry, the carnies are one of my favorite villian groups. IMHO the carnies have some of the toughest regular bosses in the game. Otherwise if you can get it without seriously trading off for it then go for it.

Personally I've attempted to patch up an Invulnerability tank against psi. Attempting to get it to a level where it is at the same level as the defenses and resistances to other damage types will require sacrifices elsewhere, in my experience. Boosting resistance and defenses with the Impervium Armour IOs proved to be particularly expensive in my case, as that meant I wasn't able to soft-cap defense against other damage types.

In the end, I opted for a combination of psi defense and regeneration. It's possible to get psi defense on Invulnerability/Super Strength to the point where it is useful as leverage. By that I mean that starting off from a higher base psi defense, one small purple inspiration, the Vanguard temporary power or the Elusive Mind (?) accolade can cap you temporarily when it is needed. The Vanguard temp in particular is useful as it can cap you for minutes at a time before it runs out, which is useful in situations like a Mothership raid.
Given that Invulnerability lacks any form of psi protection (apart from the HP boost and heal in Dull Pain) it should be easier to reach a similar leverage point on other tanks.

As always with defense, you'll have to keep damage spikes in mind though. For a tank it's usually not as dangerous though, as they have a larger hitpoint buffer than other ATs.
The psionic Clockwork King and similar hard-hitting enemies can still be dangerous when they fire off their big attacks, so some psi resistance from orange inspirations or accolades can be used to mitigate a spike should it come.


If near psi immunity is your goal, then as others have said Dark Armour and Willpower are quite strong against psi out of the box. Adding extra resistance (for Dark Armour especially) or defense (only Willpower) against psi will have a larger impact on them, due to how defense/resistance scales. It may be superfluous though, unless you spend all of your time doing Mothership raids.

All of my tanks can survive PSI damage quite well. Some have it easy like Willpower/SS and Electric/SS. The Shield/SS is slotted well enough for positional that it can survive well.
The Ice/Stone has a hard time but because Stone has good mitigation, chilling Embrace reduces damage and slows attacks, and withe two health recover powers in Hoarfrost and Hibernate he can survive quite well.

The Fire/Fire basically tries to kill them before they kill his and his Healing Flames comes u very very fast ( about every 12-15 seconds ). He also has a few Impervium Armors and Crushing Impacts. Where he suffers is that the slows from Psi attacks can become a problem ( he does not have temp protection)

The INV/NRG survives very well have tanked Mother Mayhem, Malaise and done the LGTF which has many Psi attacks several times. He has several things working in his factor. Defense from Impervium Armors bought way back when Issue 9 first went live. Crushing Impacts which give Psi resistance. A healthy amount of regen and one thing that will save my bacon all the time...

Perma Dull Pain.. Thats right.. with hasten running he has enough additional regen built in that his dull pain is perma.. And the way regen works the more health you have the faster regen works.. This makes him very hard to kill because he is a huge bag of hit points all the time. He can take an Alpha from any Psi attack and keep fighting until dull pain recharges again.