The Psyker - Telepathy DPS

spinnytop

"But wait Spinny, Telepathy is terrible, everyone says so, the only thing it's good for is CCing dogs at Kiga and nothing else! The devs hate it and made it a bad powerset!" - Some crazy lady who lives next door to me and yells stuff about CO even tho she doesn't even know what a video game is o3o


So this one was easy cause I used to play a Telepathy DPS toon way back when and it's only gotten better cause now it actually has a Form it can use. That form being Mental Precision. That, along with TK Shield are the only powers being borrowed from TK, since Telepathy doesn't have it's own dps form or a block. Otherwise it's all Telepathy baby!

I love this build. I loved it back then, and I still love it now. It's basically exactly what I look for in a build: It does lots of things, it has lots of buttons to push, and there's lots of ways to use it. Due to that it feels like this build has a high skill ceiling. For an example, when I was recording me beating up the Nightmare Demolisher I ended up rerecording it and managed to do it about 30% faster just because I changed how I was using my powers. Most of my other builds don't really have that kind of variation in how you can use the build, so that's pretty cool. Telepathy is pretty cool. uwu

Not perfect though. It can run into energy and stacking issues, so to use the build well you have to be really aware of how you can stack, how you can get energy, and make sure you're doing those things, which can lead to slow starts. Also the single target dps rotation is kind of annoying because you're tap spamming pretty much non-stop.

"But wait Spinny, Telepathy has bad dps, I was told so by some guy who is always mad, and some lady who is always perfectly calm! ...and others!"

o3o Okay, weird, but I did 4200 dps on a training dummy with it using blue primaries and determined secondaries, and no damage mod ( since Telepathy doesn't have one ). So... I dunno... that seems like fine enough single target dps to me. It also has a bart-ton of utility that lets you do neat things like help heal people during Kiga's snowstorms, or debuff the damage that big monsters do by a fairly okay amount. Mind Break also makes for a really great burst of damage for dino DPS checks.

Enough blabber bloo! On to the video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPu_PNKzguI

And here is the build.
The Psyker Any / Multiple
v3.26:30

Super Stats
Level 6: Ego (Primary)
Level 10: Dexterity (Secondary)
Level 15: Presence (Secondary)

Talents
Level 1: The Hexslinger (Dex: 10, Int: 10, Ego: 10, Pre: 8)
Level 6: Showmanship (Ego: 5, Pre: 5)
Level 9: Finesse (Dex: 5, Pre: 5)
Level 12: Shooter (Dex: 5, Ego: 5)
Level 15: Indomintable (Ego: 8)
Level 18: Intimidating (Pre: 8)
Level 21: Agile (Dex: 8)

Powers
Level 1: Psi Lash
Level 1: Ego Blast (Rank 2, Mind Opener, Rude Awakening)
Level 6: Ego Sprites (Rank 2, Slave Mentality)
Level 8: Ego Sleep (Rank 2, Plagued by Nightmares)
Level 11: Mental Precision
Level 14: Telepathic Reverberation
Level 17: Mental Leech
Level 20: Mental Storm (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 23: Ego Form (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 26: Ego Storm (Rank 2, Malevolent Manifestation)
Level 29: Mind Drain (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 32: Telekinetic Shield (Telekinetic Reinforcement)
Level 35: Mind Break (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 38: Shadow of Doubt
Adv. Points: 36/36

Travel Powers
Level 6: Superspeed (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 35: Teleportation

Specializations
Ego: Force of Will (2/2)
Ego: Insight (3/3)
Ego: Follow Through (2/3)
Ego: Sixth Sense (3/3)
Avenger: Ruthless (2/2)
Avenger: Round 'em Up (3/3)
Avenger: Surprise Attack (2/2)
Avenger: Relentless Assault (3/3)
Vindicator: Merciless (3/3)
Vindicator: Initiative (1/2)
Vindicator: The Rush of Battle (3/3)
Vindicator: Focused Strikes (3/3)
Mastery: Avenger Mastery (1/1)

Devices​​

flowcyto

Looks neat, though I'd prob be using Sent + Overseer specs if using stuff like Sleep, MStorm, and Ego Storm, since it can help allies. I'd be interested in seeing the 4200 dps parse, just to see what attacks it entailed.

spinnytop

flowcyto wrote: »

Looks neat, though I'd prob be using Sent + Overseer specs if using stuff like Sleep, MStorm, and Ego Storm, since it can help allies.

Those specs, and even Pre primary, are certainly of interest with this build.

flowcyto wrote: »

I'd be interested in seeing the 4200 dps parse, just to see what attacks it entailed.

Tap spamming Ego Blast, and rotating Ego Sleep and Mental Storm 7 seconds apart, while keeping Ego Sprites stacked.

Another issue I forgot to mention is that at Cosmics you sometimes just don't get Telepathic Reverberation. Keeping your face buried in the cosmic seems to make this happen less frequently. I'm not sure what causes it... might be other people with TR there or something else. When I notice that happening I start doing full charges instead which still yields a decent 3200 dps.​​

flowcyto

Yea, the 'sprites' in TP Reverb seem to have been buggy against large targets for a long time. It has some interesting mechanics w/ the sprites seemingly being their own entities, but makes them harder to troubleshoot.

Thanks for the rotation outline too. It kinda makes sense the dps can still be decent despite being blast-heavy, since it can also use Mind Opener, and MStorm and Sprites are nice attacks on their own.

theravenforce

Just want to say, I am LIVING for the shade in the OP! hahaha!

As for Telepathy DPS, it's always been possible I helped Cyrone and others make their DPS versions. My own PTS Telepathy DPS builds usually took PRE/DEX/EGO or PRE/EGO/REC Sent/Over (cause why not), but I do think the build would probably be marginally easier to use with "throwable" Ego Sprites instead of reverting it back to original form for tank builds, but clearly both work (especially since enemies swarm in close now).

As for TP Reverb, the fix they created seems to be creating an invisible entity which grants TP Reverb somewhat more reliably, but I think because of it's shareable nature, it is a bit problematic, probably needs to be standardized so it can be more reliable unless a way can be found to make it work as is. Also very VFX reliant for energy which can be to your detriment in Cosmics.

spinnytop

theravenforce wrote: »

Just want to say, I am LIVING for the shade in the OP! hahaha!

Had a feeling you would like that ^_^​​

circleofpsi

Wow THIS is quite impressive, I always wanted to see how powerful the Psi set can get, I might give this a go.

I swear you did one for the Ego Blades too right?, if so, feel free to show me



I am a HUGE sucker for Psioinc stuff (Just ask Flow) lol

spinnytop

cryneting wrote: »

I swear you did one for the Ego Blades too right?, if so, feel free to show me

Yes I did, and it's the girl you see dabbing in my sig. Someone would have to be nuts to claim the devs hate Mentalist powers after watching my videos of me rolling the warzone with Mentalist toons O3O

https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1211294/tk-assassassin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNxDFb6ht2A​​

circleofpsi

Mu thanks

spinnytop

theravenforce wrote: »

As for TP Reverb, the fix they created seems to be creating an invisible entity which grants TP Reverb somewhat more reliably, but I think because of it's shareable nature, it is a bit problematic, probably needs to be standardized so it can be more reliable unless a way can be found to make it work as is. Also very VFX reliant for energy which can be to your detriment in Cosmics.

Another issue seems to be that the TP Reverb thingies come from the target's head, which means that something really tall like a Cosmic adds a lot of travel time for the sprites to get to you, meaning you count as being too far away much closer than you would with shorter things. That's why being as close as possible seems to solve the issue.​​

tkdieanotherday

Awesome build! Is there a substitute for Mind Drain? I haven't unlocked that power yet

spinnytop

tkdieanotherday wrote: »

Awesome build! Is there a substitute for Mind Drain? I haven't unlocked that power yet

You could use Life Drain. It'll be less damage and won't proc your energy unlock, but otherwise will perform the same function.​​

beerbane

Another great one! Thanks for posting - picked up a FF Slot to try this out on once I get a suitable concept together.

bladesta

Any advice for using this while levelling? Energy seems to be vaguely manageable (swapped dex for rec), but the form is very hard to stack between trash mobs (not that it matters massively to be fair!)

andondarkmore

HAs this build been updated?

rhymere

andondarkmore wrote: »

HAs this build been updated?

This build seems kinda close to this: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline/#/discussion/1216094/psion-envoy-telepathy-build

circleofpsi

rhymere#3035 wrote: »

andondarkmore wrote: »

HAs this build been updated?

This build seems kinda close to this: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline/#/discussion/1216094/psion-envoy-telepathy-build

Keep in mind that my builds tend to shy away from the "Meta" so it's not gonna be a fully updated version of the excat build (Given some powers are old and new).

@flowcyto can help you out if you need it. I'm sure they'll help you out.

spinnytop

andondarkmore wrote: »

HAs this build been updated?

Has TK been updated?

No I'm serious, has it?

flowcyto

spinnytop wrote: »

andondarkmore wrote: »

HAs this build been updated?

Has TK been updated?

No I'm serious, has it?

I believe that the linger adv on TK Shield changed since the time you originally posted the original build (it's now a 3-pt adv, so maybe not worth it), but I don't think there's anything else that's significantly changed w/ the powers in the build (referring to the mostly TP one, though I don't think that TK changed much either).