This guide is intended to assist in making character development decisions. This is my opinion, and I don't claim that this is the only viable build. However, I do claim that this build is extremely effective and can easily defeat every enemy in the game.
Before I begin reviewing skills individually, a statement of design philosophy and some perspective.
My goal is to beat the game efficiently. This build is designed to win fights quickly and easily, not to do so with any particular style in mind. The things I value are power and consistency. Power means big numbers. Consistency means there's nothing your enemy can do to prevent you from using your strategy.
With that in mind, I will make the case that the Electric path is by far the best approach to building this character. Specifically that Shock Therapy is the best attack available to this character.
Finally, keep in mind the role of your team-mates. Roald is useless and the best job he can do is distract the enemy. Sometimes he grows a brain and uses a well timed stun or silence, and these are wonderful abilities if only he would use them at the right time more reliably. His damage will never be better than mediocre. Veradux on the other hand is a key player. His healing is the main thing that keeps you alive and you should keep him on defensive or phalanx stance at all times and work primarily on boosting his healing powers (it seems to scale primarily with Strength).
Here is the detailed review of each skill:
Starting Skills
Dark Infusion - This is extremely bad. You may need to use it at the beginning of the came to regen some focus (before you have access to Electric Storm). The damage is totally mediocre and having to deal with giving your enemy free focus is annoying. Using it on yourself is unacceptable except when you have no choice.
Corruption - this actually does very good damage during the early game, before you've developed a better attack. Its not unreasonable to set it up with a Dark Echoes or something. It does however, eat up Focus very quickly and should be dropped when better alternatives are available.
Dark Echoes - This is a reasonable attack but its damage never gets to be particularly good. The best thing about it is the low focus cost and the low cooldown, its a good set-up for stronger Shadow damage abilities. Ultimately you'll stop using this at some point in zone 2 when you switch to full electric and no longer use Shadow attacks.
Placebo - useless. low damage, weak debuff, nothing to see here.
Nerve Shock - same as Placebo. skip it.
Terrify - the damage is mediocre but the heal-over-time is moderately useful. However...Veradux is your healer, you shouldn't need any other healing if you're doing it right.
Free Will - One of the best abilities for the class. Recommend maxing this one. The dispelling abilities are critically useful and the damage shield will bail you out on a regular basis since sometimes Veradux falls a little bit behind. The heal-over-time is just bonus, it isn't the real reason you use this ability but its still nice.
Traumatize- Another extremely good ability and a low point commitment to max it as well, so its quite good. This is good for stalling for time to put hard hitting enemies out of the fight while Veradux catches up on healing. This is also very useful for managing cooldowns and ability durations. For example, you can stun enemies with short duration buffs on them so they miss their window of opportunity. The focus drain component is just gravy, though it is critically useful in the Baron fight.
Destruction - this can only be used on allies, not yourself. neither of your allies has good damage, not even Roald wearing full Strength gear. you're the damage dealer of the party. skip this one.
Betrayal - pure garbage. This only works when its set up ahead of time with Retrograde. If something goes wrong you either wasted two turns or perhaps you even just nailed one of your allies for a large amount. Way too tricky. Way too inconsistent. Leave it alone.
Retrograde - also garbage. way too inconsistent. yes i know this has funny combos with Nightmare and Betrayal and whatever else you can think of. Thats all tricky non-sense and you don't need to waste your time doing that. at 2 points you can also use this on enemies. there are no fights in the game that require you to do so though so you can safely ignore that tactic.
Confinement - this is actually quite useful against enemies that heal alot. however...you can view healing prevented as some form of damage dealt, in the end they're totally equivalent. if you can use the skill points (and slots on your ability wheel) to do more damage than the equivalent healing prevented than you should. i was always able to find a more effective damage increase compared to the healing decrease. damage increase is also generically useful against all enemies, even one that don't heal.
Shock Therapy - This is the best attack the class has. Max this, put 3 copies of it on your ability wheel, zap the crap out of every enemy you see. the 330% instinct co-efficient is superb, basically unmatched. the fact that this is ALSO a buff dispelling ability makes this unparalleled in its level of utility. Simply the best thing going and the focal point of this build.
Salvation - this is an extremely worthwhile buff. once you max this, you should find that Veradux no longer has any problems keeping pace with incoming damage. It also keeps him alive longer and boosts his focus regen. Really you couldn't ask for anything better. This is mandatory and the reason why you can trust Veradux to do all of your healing.
Insecurity - this would be an important skill if we were attempting to use Shadow damage. We're not though, so you can ignore it completely.
Overdrive - this is broken and bugged and totally malfunctioning. don't waste your time. even if it worked as advertise, you simply don't need to accept a life-loss penalty to get good damage. this is never a good trade-off. the risk/reward calculus fails on this one.
High Voltage - less damage than Shock Therapy without the dispel, and in fact it buffs your enemy. Super Awful. 1 point for pre-requisite advancement but never use this.
Tenacity - its very powerful but its usefulness is totally related to whether or not you're actually dying. You can use this as a place to dump extra skill points but if you're doing things correctly you'll kill so fast that the extra survivability of this ability isn't especially important. I usually just put 1 point in here.
Epiphany - this is an actually good Shadow damage ability but its so far down the tree and requires so many points wasted in other garbage abilities that I can't justify building around this.
Electron Charge - same as High Voltage. less damage and overall just worse than Shock Therapy. don't bother.
Electrical Storm - another core ability of this build. it does respectable damage (though noticeably less than Shock Therapy) but ITS TOTALLY FREE and it regens 40 focus. Max it, love it, lean on it, it drives the build.
Charged Blood - the damage passive that makes this build truly deadly. max it, no explanation should be necessary. this is what makes your crits gigantic.
Wraith Form - this is a very powerful ability but strictly speaking you don't need it. I use it because the Speed increase is gigantic and usually gives you 4 turns in a row of guaranteed massive crits. that kind of burst damage is devastating and most opponents can't withstand it. the focus regen from this is convenient but not that important since you've got Electrical Storm.
Nightmare - more tricky garbage. you can try to use this as a finisher or you can try to combine this with Retrograde and hit yourself with it, but in either case thats an inconsistent situation and you don't ever need this. Skip it.
Haunt - re-spec and get this 2/2 for the Baron fight. thats the only time in the whole game you need this. skip it otherwise.
Psychopath Form - this is exceptionally powerful but requires you to be invested in garbage like Betrayal, Retrograde, and Overdrive. If you could get this without having to take Garbage it would be ridiculously awesome. As is this is like the consolation prize for playing a bad build. It doesn't make up for the weakness of the rest of the Shadow Damage stuff.
Shock Coma - this is cute and mildly useful. Its versatile, as you can use it to crowd control an enemy for a long time or to recover your own stuff. However...you have better options for both crowd control and recover so really this is second rate at either task and thus should not be used.
Ultimatum - pure trash.
Sacrifice - this is funny. sometimes you might REALLY want to just eat Roald. ultimately though you may as well keep him around to absorb hits and save yourself the wasted skill points and ability wheel slot.
Implosion - i've yet to find a situation where this would matter. waste of points/slots. another one of those tricky Shadow abilities that requires way too much set up.
So if you've stayed with me this whole time, thanks for reading. I hope you found this useful. Before I finish I'll leave you with my most typical equipment choices and ability load-outs.
Ability Wheel Load-Out 1. Shock Therapy 2. Shock Therapy 3. Shock Therapy 4. Electric Storm 5. Traumatize 6. Free Will 7. Salvation 8. Wraith Form
Equipment Choices Primary Stats: Instinct and Lightning Piercing Secondary Stats: Vitality and Speed Tertiary Stats: whatever miscellaneous defense you can find
the Electric Armor set from Zone 4 (the Tunnel) is actually extremely useful. You can equip it starting at level 18 and is good enough to last through the end-game. If you're especially lucky you'll find a really good weapon with high Lightning Piercing like Poseidon's Trident (or whatever its called).
With this build its typical to crit for 3500+ with your Shock Therapy. More or less depending on buffs/debuffs and the Lightning Defense level of your opponent.
In Wraith Form you can go on Offensive kill streaks where you unload 4 attacks in a row for a total of about 14,000 damage in 4 turns (3 Shock Therapy crits, and 1 Electric Storm crit). This is enough damage to blow away any regular enemy in the game. Only bosses can survive a round of this. Bosses usually die in the 2nd round of Wraith Form though.
there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the shadow build described by Stone Devil.
you aren't using any of the tricky/crappy skills in your build (bad stuff like retrograde, betrayal, etc.).
the reason i advocate straight electric over shadow is simply that you get just as high damage without any of the flaws or limitations of shadow. (if not higher, since shadow damage is has alot of DoT stuff and thus cannot crit)
the shadow build has the many issues and points of comparison where it appears (and in my opinion absolutely is) inferior to the build described in my guide.
the top issues are these:
1. vulnerable to dispelling. not many enemies dispel and some moves are almost impossible to remove (Epiphany might be undispellable) but there will be circumstances where you lose gigantic amounts of damage because your debuffs come off. direct damage doesn't have to deal with that.
2. DoT based damage triggers at end of enemy turn. you'll always take at least 1 more attack from the enemy even if you kill in the same number of turns as a direct damage build. direct attacks can kill before the enemy attacks.
3. overdrive drains your own health. the closest equivalent for electric is Charged Blood (or whatever its called), which increases lightning piercing. Charged Blood takes more skill points but has no downside.
4. difficulty against multiple targets. Epiphany is the primary damage dealer for Shadow and it has a long cooldown. you'll often find yourself in a situation where you Imploded an enemy straight into the ground but have to attack his still living friend with much weaker stuff like Dark Echoes because your main attacks won't be back online for a long time.
5. difficulty recovering energy. Electric Storm and Wraith Form are the best focus recovery available to the class. Psycho Form works fine, but using Dark Infusion on yourself is terrible.
6. lacks an effective offensive dispelling technique. Shock Therapy is both a dispel and a primary damage move. there's no replacement for it. you can defeat enemies without dispelling them but often dispelling is the most tactically sound move you can make.
7. wasted ability wheel spots on debuffs that do not accomplish your primary objective. the electric build does its full damage without having to use any debuffs so it has room left on the wheel for powerful utility abilities such as Traumatize and Salvation.
those are my objections.
none of these are serious enough problems to prevent Stone Devil's build from being strong enough to beat the game on Heroic. there are multiple viable strategies in this game. i still believe however that the electric build is the most efficient and best overall build for the psycho class.
@transitive:Good arguments man and valid points all.I have no objections to these.The only reason I took the time to analyze the build i used was because of the kinda ignorant statements i saw when i entered the topic such as:garbage skills,waste of skill wheel etc.I tested the lightning build myself and found out that it is surprisingly powerful but not the "only way" as you correctly said and i couldn't agree more.
I don't use Dark Echoes with DOT. I'm not sure because I think it's pretty close, but I think you will do more damage by just throwing another Dark Infusion on the mix. That is, if you use DI.
DE seems to me to be for instant damage, since it only lasts one turn, and lowering shadow defense doesn't do anything for DOT attacks, just the piercing. Pretty much only good for Nightmare or another DE. But I'm not entirely sure about this .
Shadow sucks though. I wish you could actually attack multiple times in a row based on speed, instead of just rearranging the attack order. Then Nerve Shock would be actually cool. You could attack like four times in a row if you keep applying it. And then the build would actually be good for something, other than providing a defense for a lightning build.
Ultimatum with Free Will maxed is a killer combination: the shield of Free Will will easily absorb most of the Ultimatum damage, while damage from enemies becomes harmless. You can survive anything. Only a long-duration stun attack is dangerous. One Free Will equipped is enough for one person, two are enough for three persons.
Ultimatum and Free Will take up only 1 out of every 6 turns: the rest of the time you will be free to deal damage.
You still need some source of focus. And Epiphany can only be cast once in a while. So Electrical Storm comes to mind as an ideal supplement. Dispelling enemy buffs is rarely necessary while protected by Ultimatum.
Retrograde is an ideal spare life-saver for unforseen predicaments.
Jerkoid, you might not be right here, did you see how much damage does Infect against a Fire Claw? Those 3K my 19th bio does are way more than 345% his strength. He doesn't have an ED at first. I expect the lowering of shadow defence to amplify the DOT further than those 6-24% written on the skill. Also the debuff lasts 2 turns, since we are speaking about the DOT that's already running.
transitive, Epiphany is indeed undispellable, Krin stated that in the 1.3 (IIRC) changes.
I also want to disagree with the original post and put in my defense for a shadow build. I have not tried out the shock builds listed above, so I can't speak as to how powerful my build is compared to them, but I cruised through the game on heroic without much trouble at all.
The main source of my damage came from Epiphany + corruption. I found this to be a steady source of damage. Epiphany with overdrive does 240% of your instinct for 7 turns. So with a 450 instinct, which is about what I had in later stages of the game, that is 1080 dmg per turn. Adding in 2 or 3 corruptions, 300% on instinct AND strength, adds in another ~1500 x 2 or 3. You can do this b/c epiphany can't be dispelled and you can corrupt every turn as long as you have mana.
Another good thing about epiphany is that the high consistent dmg lets you do other things while still maintaining good dmg output, like the very common keeping your friends alive with free will. Usually this would be an attack opportunity missed, but with epiphany you still did the %300 x instinct.
Health loss due to overdrive was never really an issue b/c corrupt gives you back 15% health per hit, often times better than a veradux heal. So while casting corruption healing usually wasn't a problem, if it ever was then of course free will. In later stages I was using tenacity to increase this effect.
For mana recharge I actually used wraith form, and sometimes electrical storm. I usually started to use these when epiphany had run out and it was time to recharge.
Dark Infusion Corruption Epiphany Wraith Form Free Will x2
the other skills I varied on my mood.
Like I said at the beginning this might not be the "best" power build for the class, hard to tell without playing the shock builds, but it certainly is not a weak/useless build. The game was enjoyable and relatively easy to complete even on heroic.
I hear alot of people complaining about the psychopath tree think some of you are mising the thematic aspects of the class. The wraith being incoporial has no mass and therefor is weightless making it lightening fast (I think we all see the theam there), the psycho path is mentaly unstable, lets be blunt he frickin nutzo, have any of you ever seen a truly insaine person? The ycut them selves the rip ther hair out, they eat there own fecies, THEY DEAL DAMAGE TOTHEM SELVES. if Krin where to take out all the damage-to-self efects that plague the Psychopath class it wouldn'tbe the psychopath class anymore it would just be wraith form in his evening formal atire. Ther is more to a game than skins and stats. you need plot and you need uniquness. each build has something that makes it unique, the Psychopath form's uniqueness is that it sucks... well maybe not since the cold hydro sucks to, but fora difrent reason so my point stands.
I guess I was wrong. It looks like lowering shadow defense does increase DOT damage. I just did a 44 DOT with DI, then put a Dark Echoes on the guy and did 66 DOT (+50%, which is both debuff effects). When I used Insecurity, the same kind of thing happened, just more. When both were on, I did 136 DOT. I don't think it does anything for noncritical instant damage, though. I hit a 240 without a debuff, then 296 with DE (+23%, which is only the general damage increase thingie).
I'm not sure, so somebody as nerdy and OCD as I should re-check this.
Man I want some armor that lowers your defence, so I could look at the below-average defence to see whether direct damage is increased or not. At least I am sure that lowering the shadow defence increases the chances to crit with shadow damage, as well as the damage with critical strike.
Hmm. I have tried to evolve around Shock Coma being able to completely hold one person out of the fight, and avoiding the 4-hit-KO as a too lame a move for my taste. I have added Confinement and Shock Coma to the standard electric build, and seems that it becomes a bit stronger than just a wreck-it-down thing. The main tactics against a single enemy is Traumatize, Confinement, Shock Coma, wreck, wreck, wreck. This is a 6 turn advance, which lowers the need of getting high vitality or tenacity (though I had some skill points to put in there). If you have more than one enemy, just Coma out the most dangerous one and make it so that your dummy companions are targeting someone else. You are just to refresh the coma every 4 rounds.
