Gem Star (Tough TK Toon)

l1ghtstar

Gem Star

Sometimes you need a toon that is just right. Sometimes the craziest one-shot, 22k hit toon is so fragile you can?t even last long enough to one-shot stuff around. Sometimes the super tank toons deal so minimal damage that, well it get?s quite boring. Sometimes the same goes for all out healing toons.
Gem Star is a toon that you might recall in the mystic crafted travel power components farming video. She jumped from being a decent farming toon, to an extremely potent build with on-alert. What makes this toon pretty darn good is the fact of its overall effectiveness. Pretty high DPS, healing capabilities, and survivability. Elite Vikorin certified . All while still staying in theme; Gem Star is a member of the Star Sapphire Corps!

• 1. Kinetic Darts
• 1. Telekinetic Assault (Rank 3) High damaging single target attack. Very low cost, stacks Ego Leech, crits almost exclusively, no lockdown, 100 ft range. Very versatile power. Telekinetic Assault builds up your Ego Leech while damaging pretty hard, you might not need to use telekinetic Lance at all. Why not Telekinetic Burst instead to build Ego Leech stacks? Telekinetic Burst is only 50 ft, and I find the damage on Telekinetic Burst to be sub-standard. Telekinetic Assault is pretty damaging, and builds Ego Leech stacks pretty quickly. The enhanced mobility and range really helps it outshine Telekinetic Burst. When paired with Ego Sprites, which btw is highly recommendable, it truly becomes better than TK Burst.
• 5. Ego Reverberation. Reliable Energy unlock. Since your Primary Super Stat is Ego, and since you?€™ll be building Ego Leech stacks quite often, Ego Reverberation really does its job well.
• 8. Seraphim (Rank 3). Seraphim boosts all your Ego attacks (since its part of Paranormal damage), and allows you to go into Support mode, which enhances your heals for survivability and limited team support. In support mode, you?ll also be receiving more energy management, which boosts your overall damage output consistently while staying alive with the healing boosts. So Seraphim really is fundamental to make this build as good as it is. Ego Form just doesn?t provide the +heal and energy management the way Seraphim does.
• 11. Telekinetic Eruption (Rank 3) PBAoE, High Spike damage, no lockdown, crowd control via knocks, capable of stacking Ego Leech, and provides damage resistance and increased ego damaged when charged past a second. Great stuff, truly fun power. It?€™s your mob opener, and since you don?t have a lockdown, you can time your charge, rush in with your travel power, and baamm! Insta-kill hench-men by splattering them all over the wall!
• 14. Mental Discipline (Rank 3). Your Toggle form. Imo, it?€™s always been better than the pre-nerf Enrage and the current Concentration. I?€™ve always preferred the higher chance to crit more often while achieving similar damage. Not to mention you stay within theme.
• 17. Telekinetic Lance (Rank 3). Super spike damage. Single target, low charge time. Super spike damage when you got your full stacks. You can usually one-shot many of the PvE normal villains, and almost one-shotting the Master Villains. It?€™s really fun watching you pull off those hits, not to mention great graphics, sticking a whole giant knife-like weapon up an enemies gut when at close range!
• 20. Force Shield (Force Sheathe) It?€™s thematic and well, the advantage helps with the energy management, especially with your Ego scaling.
• 23. Conviction (Rank 3) This power has now become the staple in self healing. At least from what I?€™ve seen. With Seraphim and Support role going, this self heal can crit for higher than 4k! Even with only 70ish Pre!
• 26. Empathic Healing (Rank 3) Thematic heal, and crits fairly often for excess 1k. No lockdown when used on self. You can drop this for Bountiful Chi Resurgence, to keep yourself alive, but since Empathic can heal others, I?ve picked this up for the theme. Star Sapphires emotion is Love right?
• 29. Masterful Dodge. I?m assuming everyone knows that this is your Active defense, and requires no full description.
• 32. Ego Surge (Nimble Mind). With Secondary Constitution, this will give you ~29% crit chance, great stuff to break holds and to make sure you get that crit!
• 35. Evasive Maneuvers (Sleight of Mind) Optional, but goes well with dodge gear if you have that. For some reason, when no tank is around, this toon gets aggro easily. Often, when you really don?t want all the aggro, dump it!
• 38. Open Power Slot

Stats

Primary Ego-Ranged damage, and the Ego tree helps with a lot with damage and energy cost discounts. Not to mention your Telekinetic power scaling (TK Lance ?€“ Ego Leech stack scaling, TK Eruption ?€“ Knock scaling, Ego Reverberation ?€“ energy scaling).
Secondary Dexterity- Achieve high crit chance rate! With Mental Discipline + Ego Specialization + Dexterity + Crit Chance gear, you should see your crit chance close to 61%!
Secondary Constitution- This is where the big difference is in the old pre-alert and post on-alert builds. This toon used to have gear & talents for high Presence, to achieve high heals. But now, you Secondary Constitution for higher health pool and talent & gear Presence for higher heals. More on that in the Gearing section.

Specialization

Ego

• Force of Will (2)
• Mental Endurance sucks, doesn?t help much, at all. The more +Defense is better than having more +Offense (Aggression) since Defense doesn?t get hit hard with diminishing return like offense does. Not only that, but his also fuels The Best Defense from Guardian.
• Insight (3)
  Lowers your Ranged powers? costs. Definitely a must have.
• Follow Through (2)
  Since you?ll have high Ego, and with this build being crit oriented, you?ll need Crit severity to hit HARD. Another must have.
• Sixth Sense (3)
  You can?t have enough crit chance. The more the merrier right? This?ll push your crit chance up to around/close to 56% on standby.

Guardian

• Fortified Gear (3)
  More +Defense as stated in Force of Will.
• Ruthless (2)
  More Crit Severity.
• Find The Mark (2)
  Place Expose debuff, which is pretty decent. Helps you crit abit more.
• The Best Defense (3)
  Quite the popular specialization. And for good reason. It turns your +Defense into +Offense, thus making you stronger.

Vindicator

• Aggressive Stance (2)
  Paired with The Best Defense, these two boost each other in +Defense & +Offense.
• Merciless (3)
  Even moar crit severity!
• Focused Strikes or Offensive Expertise (2)
  Focused Strike boosts your Single Target Crit Chance. An extra 4% crit chance might make a difference when shooting a full charge Telekinetic Lance, more frequent crits. If your crit chance is pretty darn good, you can opt to have a cooldown reduction on Ego Surge, which will also boost your attacks further.
• Modified Gear (2)
  More offense. Helps boost Aggressive Stance.

Mastery Ego
You don?t have any Strength for the Vindicator Mastery, and no blast powers for Guardian Mastery. Ego Mastery is the only true choice you?ve got. But that?s not bad!! Ego Mastery helps you Gear & Talent easier by boosting your secondary stats.

Gearing

Stacking this with Seraphim means you no longer have to stacks lots of Presence for effective heals. This is a crit heavy build, so Using Gambler?s mods are the most desirable for this build. Talent (and only Talent, unless you really want to do Rec& End) for stats, as you won?t suffer from energy management. Sounds scary, but in Support, and Force Sheathe, and other energy efficient combos, you won?t need it at all at lvl 40. Gear/Mods are all out Ego/Dex/Con.

Final Words.

This builds is my new favorite for now. It?s so effective in staying alive and dealing great damage, and awesome for farming mods. Staying mobile really makes the experience really fun. Again, this build isn?t meant to shoot 22k TK Lance one-shots, neither is it to have absurd healing. This build is to be the X-Wing, the Jack of all Trades type of toon and then add some to it. It?s Vikorin certified anyways!!
For the optional power, I?d really like to suggest Ego Sprites. Ego Sprites paired with TK Assault does great damage, and had me thinking whether I really needed to have TK Lance. However, TK Lance is just way to fun to pass!!

Videos

Gem Star vs Elite Vikorin
The "Certification Test" See for yourself how Gem Star fairs against tough situations!

And more coming soon...

tammer316

Nice build. I'm still very new to the game. My current tk build isn't cutting it. Btw how do your stats look? ive been stacking dex and ego softcap with mine mostly. I would like follow your stat outlook so i have a better idea. I keep changing mine. Already bought 2 respec tokens...

l1ghtstar

Sorry for late reply, was sick for a bit....
stat destributions are my preference of having insane crit chance.
http://imageshack.us/f/109/sstats.jpg/
that's on standby, when you factor in MenDis/Ego Leech crit chance, you go up to 66.2%. TK Assault goes up to 76.2% due to it's built in crit chance buff. at such high crit chances, I always, always crit.
Quick tip, Ego is my primary, but with all my Ego primary toons I typically raise secondary stats higher than Ego, due to Sixth Sense.

xaogarrent

Try throwing BCR/RR and some Dodge and Avoidance into this and have yourself a good laugh at how silly effective it is.

l1ghtstar

Yup, had it for a bit when I was PvP'n casually. Then decided to ditch it for Emp Healing since convcition goes for 4k already.
Have you all seen the vid?

thedarkshadowen

I don't know why, but really can't get into Telekinetic Assault - graphics I think. Any alternatives there? Was thinking light construct type hero . . .

l1ghtstar

I kinda also dislike the graphics, but keep'm due to the functionality of them in the build. If you'd rather go for something that suits you aesthetically, I'd probably recommend TK Burst.
Wiki Link-- http://www.champions-online-wiki.com/wiki/Telekinetic_Burst

Tk Burst might be a better choice aesthetically, but won't be a 'strong' dps choice. Main reason to have this is to stack ego leech, then fire off TK Lance, your awesome 'construct' attack

thedarkshadowen

Thanks - will try. Waiting for some of the TK powers to come back in the PTS - wondering if Congress of Selves would be a good passive option for this toon?

l1ghtstar

oh, tbh, I haven't really checked much on telepathy changes, as this toon is thematically suppose to be a 'Star Sapphire' inspired toon.
Will check out the pts when they're back

lordhavelock

L1ghtstar thanks for posting this build. It's similar to my toon, Orb, who's a TK-based Freeform, though she's still leveling (in her mid-20s). Right now Orb has Concentration, but you stand by Mental Discipline, thinking it's better, eh? Hmmm... Mayhap I'll give that a try.

BTW, I have Ego Sprites on a different (Support/CC) toon, and I agree, they're a great "fire and forget" passive DPS weapon.

twilightwatchman

I was looking for a GL/Hard Light type build when I found this. Quasar is now level 28 and cruises through just about every encounter. Bags of DPS and great survivability. I might tinker with the later choices for theme reasons (really want a FF type defence rather than dodge) but the core effectiveness is so good I'll have that flexibility. Great build.

secksegai

I like it as it's thematic and viable.

And you didn't recommend the use of the lag machine that is tk maelstrom.

theravenforce

thedarkshadowen wrote: »

Thanks - will try. Waiting for some of the TK powers to come back in the PTS - wondering if Congress of Selves would be a good passive option for this toon?

Congress of Selves is a telepathy passive and focuses on buffing telepathy DoT, not at all suitable for a full telekinetic build.

theravenforce

Quick Question do you have any energy issues?

I'm not sure that you do, but just asking :biggrin:

ulyana13gru

Hi! This is a huge necro, I know, but how do you manage to get such high dodge %?

I'm using heroic gear (recently got back to the game) and 3 pieces of vigilante secondaries, and I am at like 18% dodge only.

Regards,

edit: My dex/con/ego is almost at your levels, I just don't fathom where the dodge is from. Some special piece of gear?

aiqa

It would have probably been better to make a new thread, and refer to this one.

But to answer your question, dodge rating was made quite a bit less effective some time ago.
In the past you could get to 45% dodge chance with just 1 lucky gem.

If you want to read to the specifics (and a huge amount of complaining) you can search on google for something like:
site:co-forum.perfectworld.com dodge nerf

ulyana13gru

Oh, I see - thank you. So around 20% is decent as of now?

aiqa

Yes, but likely not very useful.
On a low dodge build you are probably better of completely ignoring dodge and go for defense gear.

The only build (with recently updated gear) I have that uses dodge gear is a LR tank.

kallethen

Yeah, at the time this build was originally posted, you could easily push high dodge percentages without having to use a passive power with dodge built in. Not true now. Masterful Dodge is still a great Active Defense though, and Evasive Maneuvers with it's advantage is great for trying do dump aggro.

I do have a toon that is based on this build. Instead of dodge, I've focused on the defense stat, and am using Ego as primary.

ulyana13gru

Oh, I see. Thank you guys for the input! It's fairly hard to browse through builds when you're not certain they're up to date or not anymore.

I like this sort of build, I don't suppose you know of any similar but optimised for current mechanics?

What is a decent defense number to aim for at the moment?

edit: I used to play this very build back in the day, and it was awesome, but I do indeed feel a tad squishier now.

flowcyto

W/ Guardicator and Force of Will I'd expect around 50-70% Defense from gearing, somewhat depending on ur mods and the quality of the gear.

The original build is still very good, though I'd swap Mental Disp for Conc (better energy return), and pickup TK Maelstrom (for AoE and quick EL stacks) and/or Mental Storm (for a notable dps increase). Could also boost dmg via Ebon Ruin's ParaPara debuff if ya want to take it even further.

l1ghtstar

This build is one of my classics. It has been awhile since I've logged on. I'm still waiting for a Celestial revamp.