Kineticist and burn playstyle

[Razer]

Can someone explain Kineticist burn/playstyle mechanics? I've seen a couple of vids on how strong a Kineticist can become all stating infinite uses of abilities and whatnot, but from my own limited experience burn is your limit of what you can do and early game there's only so much burn you can take before becoming totally useless in a fight.

I'm refering mostly to a vid I saw from cRPG Bro (who makes amazing vids btw), where he stacks on empower, maximize, mud, bowling infusion etc and uses only gather power low in his examples. But from my understanding you can then only use this ability a couple times per day before reaching your burn limit. Yet in the video it is hinted on infinite uses of abilities.

So I'm confused. From my understanding burn is basically a manapool based on your HP for casting abilities and only the simplest abilities are free casts. So I'm imagining storming into a dungeon at higher level casting empowered/maximized/bowling infusion/magma in every encounter and keep doing that. But for some reason I think that's simply not possible due to the burn.

So. Can anyone explain how this works and how you play around your burn pool? Thx!

[Snemelc]

There are a few possibilities to lower the burn costs:
1st: at level 11 you lose one more burn if you channel short or medium.
2nd: There is a mythic ability that lowers it another point if you channel.
3rd: At level 16, the cost of composite blasts are lowered by 1.
4th: at level 19, you choose a metakinesis, which cost then is permanently lowered by one.
5th: At the levels 5,8,11,14, 17 and 20, the cost will be reduced by another point each time.
6th: there should be some items, which reduce the cost.

I hope this answers your question.

[Tyrendian89]

that, and you really dont have to stack everything every single fight to be effective. Save your full power for the key moments, and otherwise stay vaguely burn-neutral, which will be more and more power as you level. Except I do tend to take a couple of points of burn early in the day for the "passive" buff that gives, just not to the point where I dont have any HP left :D

[dataseer21]

I have been thinking about how people call kineticists the strongest class as well. I don't know exactly what a composite blast is but that according to the tool tip tops off at 20d6+20 damage right? 90 average damage.

Compare with a fireball that is 10d6 damage max. Empower spell and bolster make it 10d6+20 + .5 of 10d6(or 10d6+20 I haven't tested it yet because I'm doing other games. One is clearly stronger but lets assume the weaker.) That is 72 average damage but the thing though is that is with a 6th level slot with no burn. So you get that at level 11. When at level 11 the kineticist gets 10d6+10(I think because it is every two levels) average damage of 45.

So the clear highest damage dealer is hell fire ray. I forgot whether it is a 6th level spell or a 7th level spells. But i think it is a 6th level spell. So 3 levels higher that is (15d6 +30 + 15d6X.5)3 which is 326.25 average damage.

So kineticist can keep blasting but a regular caster can get more damage done in spikes. Plus a wizard can do something like make all level 2 slots mirror image for defense.

I don't know I haven't played through with a kineticist get. So I don't know if they have other tricks up their sleeve.

It should be noted that I don't know if the shenanigans of getting a level 1 in cross blooded sorceror work with kineticist. They do with wizard. That would add 30 damage to the average damage of the fireball and 135 damage to the hell fire ray if all three hit. I was going to test it out side by side with my evoker playthrough but I figured that I needed a tank instead. So I respecced. Kineticist still is subject to spell resistance as well from what little I played the class.

Oh I'm not considering mythic path shenanigans either. I know that you can reduce the level of the meta magics by one which would make a hellfire rays with a 9th level slot(if 6) that is maximized, empowered, and bolster do (15X6+15X3.5X.5+ 30)X3 which is 438 average damage. Though it is necessary to get ascendant element though because demons are resistant to almost everything.

Also for average damage I didn't consider saves and to hit chances as though differ between monsters. So maybe if kineticist bypasses saves but from reading the tool tip they don't.

[dataseer21]

Though due to the distributive property though it is easy to surmise what would happen if empower includes bolster. for a fireball that would be 10 more damage so 82 average damage and hellfire ray it would be 45 more damage so 371.25 average damage. Cross blooded sorceror fireball would do 15 more damage from the sorceror stuff so 97 average damage and hellfire ray would do 67 more so 438.26. Maximize wouldn't multiply up if the tool tip is correct though. So just 2.5X10 extra damage for fire ball and 2.5X15X3 for hell fire on top of those values.

[canuck250]

The kine isn't OP because it can blast, it is OP due to their AOEs, namely deadly earth. Fire - Fire is crazy good early on for it's touch ac ability... Later on tho, Deadly earth far out does it. You drop a DE and a Cloud, everything dies except things that can't be trip. You can even drop a wall with your double AOEs. You have so much power and CC over a large area. A fire ball hits and thats it. Double AOE and a Wall, knocking things down and pushing them over many turns while still having strong damage, is just too powerful.

[canuck250]

Originally posted by Razer:

So. Can anyone explain how this works and how you play around your burn pool? Thx!

So what I do, all trash fights, never build burn, or maybe 2/3 points of it. Then in a big fight, I will full open dropping my AOEs adding as much as I can. So then after that it is cleanup if anything is alive, your max burn blast blast will be more then enough, even helps on stronger single target.

Oh, one "fun" thing and one of the biggest enemies to Kineticist is post fight cut scenes that move your party, you will full wipe your team if it plops you onto your aoes... There is one brutal fight where all your buffs get stripped before it.. That one was the most painful to have to redo cause the cutscene made me kill myself.

[Snemelc]

1st: If you level up you choose up to three elements (one at level 1 the other two at higher levels) some elements can be fused to create a new element (for example fire+earth=magma) These combined elements are composite blasts. The damage then is more or less the damage of both elements added, so functionally you shoot both elements at once.

2nd: The opness of the kineticist does not come from the damage, but from the crowd control. You can change the form of your blast with infusions (some infusionscan be chosen for all, some for only one or two).
For example you can double the range, let it explode on impact, decrease enemies dc (more or less) or create a wall. One infamous infusion is bowling infusion you can combine with earth and all according composite blasts. this infusion lets you attempt a trip combat maneuver against every enemy, you deal damage with the blast. Combined with an area damage infusion (f.e. explosion), and you shoot inside of a group, and everyone must beat the save, or be tripped and be defenseless.

3rd: There are also Metakinesis, which is Metamagic, but for Kineticists. There are three (Maximize, strengthen, quicken) and you can combine them with your blasts like with magic, but it will increase the burn cost of the shots.

[Demaar]

Originally posted by Snemelc:

5th: At the levels 5,8,11,14, 17 and 20, the cost will be reduced by another point each time.

Wait, what? How does Burn cost get reduced at those levels?
EDIT: It's through "Infusion Specialization" which only reduces Infusion cost and does not affect base cost Or Metakinesis cost.
Also, there is one Pair of gloves that reduce Burn cost of Wild Talents by one and it's part of the Inevitable Excess expansion.