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.
Could you use nightmare and shock therapy over and over for massive damage? (nightmare is extremely strong, and shock therapy is strong and removes the healing buff from nightmare) You deal 850% of your instinct over 2 turns, and they only get healed about 75% of your instinct in the process- a total of 775% of your instinct. Is there a debuff that limits healing or HoT?
freewill. mass heal + shield. shields stop dmg. veradux finds it easier to heal. salvation. healing buff + focus restore. veradux finds it even easier to heal. (his heal costs 15 focus so...) freewill and salvation = this...
roald-healed a lot. you-shielded and hopefully if you have low viatality the main target. veradux-healing a lot.
if roald is hit then he will get healed. if veradux is hit then he can heal himself. if you get hit you have a shield. if your opponent gets pizzed and buffs himself veradux can zap him and roald can stop him doing it again.
you stil have to waste a turn throwing a salvation, while with ultimatum/FW you can plain sacrifice your kids (dress em up for vitality) and pwn enemies alone, just watch for the stun.
well you always could literaly "sacrifise" them. or at least as soon as the bug fixes up >8( but at least mirage doesnt do what it says it does... (no dmg increase!)
I think the Psychological class is best built as a hybrid using some of both sides of the ability tree. Here's a build I like a lot, and in PvP, no other character build of any class can beat him, except of course, the speed bio. Against a speed bio, he must either Crystallize the psycho Sonny immediately (kind of cheap IMO), or go right to Shadow Blend+Withdrawal on the psycho. And even then, sometimes Roald will get off a lucky shot and stun him.
Equipment: All Cryptic Armor except Hallowed Gloves + Wrath of the Council.
Abilities: Dark Echoes (4/4), Destruction (1/4), Salvation (1/4), Tenacity (5/5), Shock Therapy (3/3), High Voltage (1/4), Electrical Storm (4/4), Wraith Form (1/1), Charged Blood (5/5), Nightmare (4/4), Insecurity (3/3). That leaves 2 points left over at level 30, which I'd either put in Traumatize or Confinement, but would rarely use on the wheel. Confinement is a nice addition with Nightmare, and Traumatize is obviously good if you want to take someone out of the fight for a while.
The typical order of attack goes around the wheel in the order given. Sometimes I'll drop Dark Echoes out of the order if it's not needed. For most opponents the Insecurity+Wraith+Nightmare is enough to kill, and if not, the first or second Shock Therapy almost always does. Even against the Corruptor with her(?) high defense and massive healing, all you need is Confinement maxed instead of Dark Echoes, and cast it either before or after the Nightmare (can't remember off hand which turn she gets the big double healing).
One of the really nice things about this build is that nearly all of the attacks are automatic hits. Only Electrical Storm and Dark Echoes have a chance of missing. And both of those have very short cool downs, which is important for Electrical Storm if you need to regain focus.
in case a speed bio does not stun enemy Sonny, you Shock Therapy him as a matter of prophylactics, dispelling shadow blend if he did that
The corruptor heals?! The only trick he seems to do is Black Metal while both orbs are in place, so you just wail at him with whatever you have, and put your guys to relentless to avoid them hurting the lower orb. Or there was a case (a bug IMHO) when both orbs used their self-buffs on the corruptor, then a single attack blasted it to smithereens
And I wonder did you use this very build to pass the entirety of Z7.
psychological has very powerful abilities i must admit. only downside to the psycho builds is that i have seen ice mage hydros take a psychological out in minutes when the psychologicals are LVL 30 and the ice mage hydros are 20 levels lower then them. also i have noticed that it is possible although hard to make a speed psychological! one of the attacks decreases speed by something like 17 for 5 turns... 17 is dangerously close to 20 making permaspeedlock a viable option for the psycho. also if ultimatium didnt damage you for 10% of your max HP every turn then... (evil heavy weapons guy face)
in case a speed bio does not stun enemy Sonny, you Shock Therapy him as a matter of prophylactics, dispelling shadow blend if he did that
Right - it's amazing how often I forget the dispel effect of Shock Therapy. On a side note, I hate stuns in PvP. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't automatic. As it is, it basically ruins PvP unless you house rule "no stuns".
The corruptor heals?! The only trick he seems to do is Black Metal while both orbs are in place, so you just wail at him with whatever you have, and put your guys to relentless to avoid them hurting the lower orb. Or there was a case (a bug IMHO) when both orbs used their self-buffs on the corruptor, then a single attack blasted it to smithereens
I'm assuming she heals based on a double heal move _after_ the orbs have already moved once. One orb casts a "Greater Purpose", which heals her some, then I think she heals herself for about 7400, and iirc, she doesn't attack that turn. Either way, about every 7 or so turns she gets a huge combined heal - about 11000 total.
I wonder did you use this very build to pass the entirety of Z7.
Clearly not. There's no way to beat Dr. Kilma without Retrograde. But other than that, yes. It's great for the guardians. I honestly can't remember how I handled Yosuke though. But I'll know soon enough. I just did a Legend run with this build today to test it out. Perhaps it was partly because I was more familiar with the game, but it was by far the easiest legend run I've done. The only battle that gave me even the slightest trouble was the Knight + 2 Mages, but even that wasn't really bad. Traumatize is pretty necessary throughout most of the zones. Also, I ended up not getting Nightmare until very near the end of zone 5, so never really had a chance to use it until after finishing legend to get some gear like WotC, etc. In zones 6 and 7, though, Nightmare is very useful when combined with Insecurity and Dark Echoes, and followed by Shock Therapy. One of the nice things about Nightmare is that the healing buff it creates doesn't include the percentage boosts from previous debuffs. So, you can hit for 10k+ damage, and then that first turn of healing will only restore about 600.
From zone 2 on, my wheel changed very little. It basically always had 1 Dark Echoes, 2 or 3 Shock Therapy, 1 Electrical Storm, 1 or 2 Traumatize depending on the fight, 1 Insecurity, and Wraith Form as soon as I got it. I also occasionally used Salvation early on to boost Veradux's healing in fights with heavy hitters. The biggest surprise I had was just how much easier the 2 Hounds + Caretaker fight was. At that point, I had most of the Charged Armor with the Mining Helmet and Poseidon's Fury, and had put virtually all of the attribute points into Instinct (a few went into Vitality early on). Preceding Shock Therapy with Insecurity and Dark Echoes, I was doing around 3k-4k damage.
I'll let you know how zone 7 goes. I may just have to wait out Yosuke's ridiculous buff by keeping him Traumatized.
