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.
About corruptor heal - hmm, that's weird you know, when I was battling the corruptor, the top orb only healed bottom orb with its GP, while the corruptor remained like a blackmetal-hitter, and 300 HP/turn damage is crap. Either that has to do with me playing Sonny 2 Z7 at Kongregate, and Krin patching this site's version so that enemies do somewhing wiser than choosing topmost/bottommost targets for allied buffs, or this is something that's innate to Sonny 2 enemy AI.
Yosuke - well, IIRC Shock Therapy can punch through his shield if crits, or you can play with Shock Coma, a somewhat undervalued move of a psycho. Go Traumatize-Electric Storm-Traumatize-Confinement-Shock Coma-attack-attack-attack-repeat. Say, Dark Echoes-Nightmare-ST. Confinement should be maxed tho, it maxes at 90%, but then you could take Felicity with you, if she'd use Slash, this will add 10% to make 100% healing reduction - epic 4-turn stun of a psycho! If this will net you lowering HP of Yosuke, you're all set. Unfortunately, no room for Wraith form, and will have to make you alter your build a lot.
in order to get a nice DOT for a psycho, he either has to Dark Infusion, Epiphany (which is bad for any hybrid, either focus on this or get kicked) or 7HKO. The latter is preferrable IMHO Let Yosuke kick away Veradux so he won't dispel HVs, then do a supreme 120%HP DoT with subversion.
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.
I admit I'm not an expert with the Ice Hydro build, but I find that very hard to believe. Unless you ban stuns completely, PvP basically always comes down to which side goes first, and Hydros have the lowest speed of all three classes. With a "no stun" rule, I can see how an Ice Hydro could slow down the Psycho with Mind Freeze and Glacier, but a properly outfitted and played Psycho should crush a level 10 Hydro. At level 10, an Ice Hydro could only have 1 level of Shatter, it's only big damage capability. It would be over in a few turns. I think a Hot Hydro might have a better chance, since they can dish out lots of punishment every turn.
just DOT him. no DOT damage is affected by mass damage reduction. most bios pass yosuke either by crystalise spam or by infecting him.
Really? I thought it was all damage reduced by 10k. That's good to know. But like vesperbot mentioned, the only decent DoT attack for a Psycho is Epiphany. It can be devastating, but I kind of agree with the OP that you have to take a lot of junk to get it. My biggest problem with a Shadow Psycho is focus regen. Without Electrical Storm, the only viable way to regen focus is Psychopath Form, which has a 15 turn cool down. Granted, most of the Shadow tree has very low focus requirements, but I always run out before Psychopath Form is ready again. Dark Infusion on self is crazy, especially for a high level Psycho. It just does too much damage.
The 7HKO is too cheap. I'll mess around with some other strategies, and I may end up going Shadow with Epiphany if my Electric/Hybrid build can't get it done.
I've never played it on Kongregate, so I don't know if the Corruptor behaves differently there. I can tell you that it's infuriating to whale on her for 10-15k damage only to see her heal most or all of it back in one turn like that.
Interesting theory about using Felicity with her Slash attack and Confinement. I'll probably want Confinement maxed anyway. Not sure where I'll take the points from - probably Electrical Storm.
from firsthand experience i can safely say that if you pick any build in the world and let me fight it with the ice mage hydro build i will defeat it no matter what. except for the niggling little detail of stuns (curse you roald!) and being too low a level to equip 2 mind freeze and flash freezes on my hotbar (i always did have a problem for insane overuse of high-level skills) at the same time. its usually the ice hydro who comes off best in a fight with anything... even fire lord yosuke!
spartan, I will pwn you. Take speed bio, Crystallize Sonny, wreck your allies, Crystallize Sonny again, launch a ComboX. If only your hydro will survive a 40K attack, then you will have chances. If no stuns as a homerule, first attack with AE, (you presumably MF) I Shadowblend+Withdrawal, a 30K attack (15K if AE misses), again rarely a character survives.
Well, I tried a variety of tactics and combinations with the hybrid build, and I have to admit I was wrong about Yosuke - mostly. First off, you're right about Shock Coma, vesperbot. In this fight, you really need its two extra turns of stun. Second, the Wraith Form -> Insecurity -> Dark Echoes -> Nightmare -> Shock Therapy combo does blast him pretty good. The last two combine for about 12-13k of damage. The problem is that since it's not enough to kill him outright, he will start to heal that back, and if you use Shock Coma to keep him down, he heals most of it back as soon as Confinement wears off. The other main problem is that Wraith Form really screws up the timing. It gives you an extra turn when you first use it, but then he gets an extra turn when it wears off. I'm fairly certain I could work out the timing and come up with a combination that would do the trick.
But I'm not going to do that, because after sleeping on it, I decided to try out Epiphany on him. You're right about the DoT not being affected by his buff, spartandestroyer. It's weird, because the pop up text says _all_ damage is reduced by 4000 (I must have confused the 10k with Nostalgia in my earlier post). Anyway, I very quickly came up with a combination that seems to work every time. It's doesn't feel cheap like the High Voltage, Shock Coma, Retrograde gimmick. Better yet, it's simpler and quicker. Only five moves: Shock Coma -> Psychopath Form -> Epiphany -> Confinement -> Insecurity. The Shock Coma keeps him down right up until you cast Insecurity. Then he kills you. But Epiphany keeps ravaging him until he's dead. I had Roald in all Guardian gear, which is probably important, as it allows him to take two hits from Yosuke in case he doesn't stun or silence him after the Shock Coma wears off.
I don't have an account at Kongregate, but maybe someone could mention this on Einfach's outstanding Psychological walkthrough/guide over there.
Stuns or no stuns, nothing can consistently beat a speed bio in PvP, spartandestroyer. Nothing. If you want to test your Ice Hydro against my Psycho, post your code and tell me the strategy and ground rules you want.
face it. there isnt much anything can do without use of focus. hydro doesnt have that problem. mind freeze at max level is crazy with high instinct and it costs nothing. it even comes with 2 free turns to plot your next move! flash freeze isnt so powerful in the terms of effect but it lasts for 3 turns.
about the only builds that can compete with the ice mage hydro are...
crystaliser spam bio. ice mage hydro. wtf. psychos dont have many ways to win. ultimatium wont help cause i can stunlock you till you die. overdrive will kill you.
there isnt much anything can do without use of focus
Actually, yes there is. For a bio, neither Shadow Blend nor Withdrawal (among others) require focus. For a Psycho, Wraith Form, Electrical Storm, Shock Coma, and Sacrifice (among others) are all focus free. But none of that matters. What you don't seem to understand or accept is that the Hydraulic class is the slowest of all three. Both Biological and Psychological can be spec'ed and equipped to always be faster than any Hydraulic can ever be, meaning that both classes can be _guaranteed_ to get first move against _any_ possible Hydraulic. All three classes have the ability to stun lock, so if you guarantee first move, the opponent never has a chance. Here are the raw ability scores for each class at level 30, no gear and no attribute points assigned:
Bi Hy Ps 34 73 34 Vitality 68 49 15 Strength 20 39 97 Instinct 73 34 49 Speed
As you can see, the Hydraulic is the slowest, thus guaranteed to never get first move, thus no stun locking with Flash Freeze and no way to stop the first two or three attacks of a Bio or Psycho. If I knew how to post the export code here, I'd show you what I mean.
psychos dont have many ways to win. ultimatium wont help cause i can stunlock you till you die. overdrive will kill you.
As I mentioned earlier, my standard Psycho build doesn't have Overdrive. I respec'ed for the fight with Yosuke to get Epiphany, but that's certainly not the specs I would use in a PvP fight. Which brings me at last to my on-topic reason for this comment.
I'm hard-headed and was determined to figure out a solid strategy for beating Yosuke with my hybrid Psycho build. It became apparent that trying to solve the timing problems with Shock Coma and Wraith Form wasn't going to work. So with one of the two ability points left over from the build I mentioned yesterday, I took Ultimatum and also moved points from Tenacity to Terrify. I set up the ability wheel with the following: Ultimatum, Wraith Form, Terrify, Insecurity, Dark Echoes, Nightmare, and Shock Therapy x2. Sonny has the highest possible Instinct gear with WotC. Roald has all Guardian gear plus any weapon with good speed and vitality (Death Sentence or Platinum Baton are fine). And Veradux has all Dr. Kilma's gear with Supremacy. Both teammates are set to Defense. The first move is naturally Ultimatum, then Terrify to help offset the 10% health loss. Yosuke attacks and does 1139 in damage. Nasty, but not fatal. At this point, Roald should cast Greater Purpose, which reduces all of Yosuke's attacks to 1 point (and reduces Ultimatum's DoT). Next moves are Insecurity, Wraith Form, Dark Echoes, Nightmare, and Shock Therapy twice. It's not quite enough to kill him, but he should be down to around 3000 health. Another round of Insecurity, Dark Echoes, Nightmare and if needed Shock Therapy will finish him off. This strategy generally works, but can fail if you get unlucky. Roald sometimes gets lazy with his Greater Purpose and sometimes none of the Shock Therapy attacks crit and do any damage, but that's pretty rare. Even when the Shock Therapy attacks fail to dispel the Nightmare's Over buff, I've still managed to win by going into a third round of the Nightmare combo again with Wraith Form.
It's a tougher, longer and more complex fight, but I like that and that it's not a guaranteed win. Makes it feel more like you really worked for it.
hydraulic has about both of the other classes vitality put together and therefore it takes ages to kill him. in that ages all the hydraulics various powers (overuse of retrograde if your enemy is going to use withdrawl) (the absorby thing if you fight a psycho) can definitely kick in.
about Roald being lazy with GP: first, make him go relentless (he will likely place an Impale debuff over Yosuke, making all attacks deal 10% more damage, which will make your quest easier), and when you start needing GP, shift Roald to defensive for one turn - he will 100% cast GP (unless it's on the cooldown, it has either 4 or 5 CD). Also, IIRC Nightmare's Over is not resistant to dispel, so if your ST is level 2 or higher, it will get dispelled because then ST dispels more than one buff (equals to ST level).
About Epiphany killing Yosuke: Wow, a rare move of self-sacrifice And, I don't remember does Yosuke heal for a lot? If not, you can shift Confinement with Epiphany in the order (to have Shock Coma offset one less turn of Epiphany's damage) and then spam Dark Echoes until you die. Or first raise FW over self, then spam Dark Echoes. I expect they will go over 4k with Psychopath form on, and even if not, they will stack to make Epiphany do more DoT.
About hydraulic having more vitality than others: So what, all you are having there is a punchbag. I said, AE+SB+Withdrawal are 30k on a speed bio, focus or no. You waste 1 turn for MF, you have 1 turn to do something about impending DOOM. Heal self, or what? Even if not, this attack can be directed not against your Sonny but your Roald or Felicity, just for the lulz. Also, Leading Strike is one heck of a damage on a bio, it has a good chance to crit, and physical piercing is still there within some of the skills. And bios have Adrenaline to amp self. Well anyway, speed bio defeats a cold mage hydro any day of the week.
About other builds vs hydro - first taking lightning psycho. Shock Coma lasts 4 turns, which your hydro happily slumbers through, by this time you lose your allies. If no stuns, well, there's still Electric Storm 3/3, equipped twice (can do better) that does comparable damage to your MF/FF/other ice skills. No Overdrive in PVP of course Second build - poison bio. Well, not much I daresay, but LS does a hefty punch, since poison bios amp strength, and even without Shadow Blend and lotsa speed, Withrawal 4/4 is a greater damage dealer along with self-healing aftereffect (~20%HP/turn combined with Integrity). Also, Break does 220%str and takes no focus. Third - hot build hydro. Demolish-Demolish-Decimate-Decimate, and you suffer 4 attacks for 3k-4k each and 2k/turn DOT. No focus requirement, note that. And Vapour Cannon, yeeees.
Yes, by the way, if no stuns as homerule, cold mage hydro has only 6/8 turns of focus lock, as he's forbidden to use Flash Freeze. So, any char surviving 6 turns has 2 turns of ROCKING your hydro down. Unfortunately, cold hydro is not a PVP build, but a PVE build.
Retrograde (subversion), you say? Over yourself, it lasts 1 turn, which can be used by your enemy to whack someone else. Or skip it, or heal self up. I have however heard about a build, that uses Icewall self-attack-Icewall self-attack-Subversion self-repeat, but in PVP it's countered with Disrupt or Regulate, and a psycho could just FW self in midtime, making the battle a stalemate.
About posting codes - well, you copy it from the game, leave an empty line (Enter, Enter) before, paste, leave an empty line after. Or make a post containing only code. Copying it from the forum is to use triple click to select the entire set of symbols.
ok so imagine this situation. veradux has just healed while under the effect of retrogate and is down to 1 HP while sonny has got an icewall and other very strong effects that reduce your DMG to 1. who do you go for?
imagine that, I can order Veradux NOT to heal if he's hurt the most and retrograded, and as a psycho I can dispel retrograde In case Dux is down to 1HP and under a retrograde, and I'm a bio, I disrupt Veradux to dispel Retrograde so my allies will most likely wreck Dux apart.
