After experimenting with the Psycho class on heroic, i have concluded that the best build is a defensive hybrid. This is because the only good way of healing your health is in the shadow build, and the best way of recovering focus is in the lightning build.
Your main defensive ability will be free will. You want to maximize this. It really is excellent because it protects you and your team mates AND heals them. In difficult fights, you will have 3 of these on your bar.
In order to recover focus, you want electrical storm. The damage this thing does is also pretty nice at high levels, when you can afford to put points into charged blood.
Your main attack will be epiphany, along with also want overdrive. This strategy works well because the damage from overdrive won't matter as long as your instinct is high and your vitality isn't too big.
I find traumatize most useful for filling up my bar. It works especially well when you are against one enemy. It is vital for the baron. It just generally helps you defend, e.g. when your opponent uses "aim for the heart" and you don't want them to attack.
You can invest in tenacity later on, when you have nothing else to invest in.
You won't be doing HUGE damage with this build but it really is excellent for staying alive in heroic. The thing that makes this build unique is the fact that is usually has 3 free wills on the combat action bar. In easy fights, you will find that you often don't have much to do but in difficult fights, this is the best way to cope because in heroic Veradux isn't reliable enough- in zone 5, his healing is pathetic compared to your free will.
Only put 1 point in shock therapy. This build is hybrid but leaning more towards shadow: the only reason why you would ever want to go down the lightning tree is for focus regeneration.
The main things that set my build apart from the others are as follows:
- It uses, and relies on, skills from both the shadow and the lightning trees - It is the most defensive I've seen - It shows just how good free will is when you're on heroic.
Stats and Equipment
When choosing equipment, your main priority is instinct. This is because the higher your instinct, the more effective free will is. Also, too much vitality means that overdrive's side effect of making you lose health prevents you from getting the healing over time that you need from free will.
Put all your points into instinct.
You don't care about strength.
When it comes to piercing, lightning is what you are looking for. This is because piercing does not affect DoT, so it would be useless for epiphany.
Vitality is helpful, but, again, NOT TOO MUCH.
The Combat Action Bar
Your first priority is to max out electrical storm and free will, so don't even think about this build until you can afford to do that.
The next thing to spend your points on is max epiphany, followed by traumatize (which is vital for the baron).
After that, go for some tenacity if you are struggling to survive; otherwise, you'll want some charged blood to power up your electrical storm.
The standard build is fully maxed out at lvl 29. At this level, your combat action bar will look like this:
2x Traumatize - for stunning and destroying focus 3x Free Will - for healing (and blocking) 1x Epiphany - for DoT 2x Electrical Storm - for focus regeneration and extra damage
You will also have 5 points in charged blood and 5 points in tenacity.
At level 30, you'll probably want to spend that last point on one of the transformations. However, neither of them really fit into this build and it's difficult to find space for it on your bar so I'll leave it to you to decide which one to choose.
The Strategy
You will usually start off the fight by casting Free Will on yourself, to negate the effects of overdrive and protect yourself from you enemies' attacks.
After that, you'll probably want to use epiphany to get that lovely DoT going. In easier fights, you can use this on the first turn.
During the rest of the fight you will be using free will as often as you see fit, to keep you and your allies alive. Use traumatize when your opponent as an enraged-type buff active, or to simply put an all-out offensive opponent out of action for 2 turns, to help defend. Try not to use traumatize and epiphany on the same enemy, because epiphany will only do half the damage each turn.
Use electrical storm whenever you have a free turn, or whenever you need focus. In fact, you will use this very often and at higher levels, when you have maxed out charged blood, the damage will be very nice.
Future Plans
- A full list of THE BEST equipment (because i haven't worked this out yet)
- More in-depth analysis of every skill mentioned, along with more alternatives. EDIT: Eventually i might just go through every skill, say what it does, and comment on it.
- A better explanation of the strategy - Done
Updates
- Posted the guide on the armorgames forum. Previously, it was only on krinlabs.
- I just beat the mayor on heroic with this build. I was at lvl 26 and had all the abilities except full tenacity, which was only 2/5. But i had a fair bit of vit gear and my total health was around 3300, which was plenty. Hopefully this demonstrates just how good this build is =]
- Made it a bit more attractive by giving each section a unique colour, and making the subheadings bigger.
- I made a few corrections and changes. Also, I thank xsupernoob for the link to this guide in his post.
- I added the combat action bar section, so this whole thing is a bit more specific.
I could if I find the time to do it (I started classes a few days ago), but mainly I don't since most of the builds can actually be found here in the forums already (with some slight variations)
i.e. the build called shattering beast in the hydraulic guide is similar to one I used but I didn't spend points into frost or hypothermia, instead I went full on glacier since it's effect actually stacks and that allowed me to place points into other abilites. Also I always concentrate in just one attribute being str or instinct and in the lonely case of slash build, speed.
Now if you want specific advise on my point of view on a build feel free to ask and I'll answer as best as I can.
I respec'd from lightning to epiphany shadow speciality. I found that do do alot less damage. Especially since you can only equip one epiphany and it takes a absurd 9 turns to become available again (it stops doing damage 2 turns before it becomes available again)
I can do much more damage each round with lightning and more regularly.
The shadow build does allow some nice healing, but without good attack the battles take forever.
This seems more like a DOT build than a tank build to me. You didn't even mention Ultimatum (makes your shield 20x stronger! HOly!) or the cool team-buffing skills, or Tenacity, which is useful with Ultimatum.
Not that it's a bad build, it just seems weird to me. If you are going to spend your time staying alive, might as well let your teammates do the damage with Destruction.
Yes, there are lots of nice additions that can be added to this build, but there is only 35 available ability points and if you want to max out everything, then you are going to have to leave some abilities out.
Epiphany is the ONLY DoT for psychs except for dark infusion which really doesn't count. With only 1 equip and a 9 CD epiphany isn't that great, you have to weigh that 240 against that.
Firstly i would like to thank the person who stickied my thread =D
I'm trying to reply to several people at once now...
Don't say epiphany does bad damage. It damages your opponent while you work to defend your team mates- something that shock therapy cannot do. And you can attack with electrical storm at the same time.
Also, electricial storm only does slightly less damage than shock therapy. You can easily crit for over 3k damage, which is plenty.
Someone said i didn't mention tenacity? Try reading the guide next time.
And whoever mentioned ultimatum, I must admit i haven't tried it out with free will. Thanks for the suggestion. Forget destruction, it's a waste of time.
Seraph1013: This guide is designed for the higher levels, so don't complaign about not having enough points. I started using this on the hydra boss, and got through the rest of heroic with it. My shield held up most of the time, at i'm pretty sure it is the best way of surviving on a psycho.
Electrical storm does decent damage, but shock therapy does more and dispels stuff too(and does so better with more points) Dispeling things becomes very important in many spots (except for the first part of area 2, the ice area, since it can't dispel ice stuff)
If you want focus regen for such a build, use dark infusion. Free will obsorbs away its damage. Terrify easily counters for it and overdrive. And it can be used to boost allies short on focus too.
If your going to use electrical storm, I'd just give it 1, and max shock therapy. I don't know for sure, but I don't think the focus it gives changes with its level. Only its damage.
