Is Psycho-temporal Contraction worth it?

[Feo]

I'm playing a heavy melee tank build and movement is a huge issue.
Does taking psi and investing 2-3 feats into this psi haste spell worth -20% hp in your opinion?
I have like 3 will and 6 int.

[fruit flavored ENERGY DRINK]

>is taking the most overpowered psi ability in the game worth it
yea?

[Voroff]

Investing into that, yes; with feats, maybe not.

There are a lot of psy powers that are usefull no mater what the skill investment is. Cryostasis, tele-grounding and the electro-trap, stasis ...

For your heavy chara, may i suggest you to bait ennemies to come to you ? And even if you're heavy, dont try to tank everything : between crossbows, plasma and laser, nades and knives and sledges ... something bound to penetrate.

Invest into feats for movement, not for psy. But please, invest a bit into psy powers.
Otherwise : boots with springs, jumping beans drug, and of course, correct positionning that depends on the terrain and ennemies, on your build, and on your current tools/preparation.

[King Fossil]

Originally posted by fruit flavored ENERGY DRINK:

>is taking the most overpowered psi ability in the game worth it
yea?

This is the correct answer.
Contraction is so overpowered that some people avoid taking it because it's too good. That's how strong it is.

[Serendipitous]

Originally posted by fruit flavored ENERGY DRINK:

>is taking the most overpowered psi ability in the game worth it
yea?

Wouldn't that be Stasis?

[Zeem]

Originally posted by Serendipitous:

Originally posted by fruit flavored ENERGY DRINK:

>is taking the most overpowered psi ability in the game worth it
yea?

Wouldn't that be Stasis?

Stasis is stronger, but more situational. I'd say they're pretty much tied. Either way TM is disgustingly strong for how little investment it requires.

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by Serendipitous:

Originally posted by fruit flavored ENERGY DRINK:

>is taking the most overpowered psi ability in the game worth it
yea?

Wouldn't that be Stasis?

Why not both? Stasis increases the duration of PTC.

[Exodus Of Sound]

Always.

[nightshift]

I play as a roguish sniper with great subterfuge and social skills and actually got a bit carried away with TM. Ended up taking Future Orientation and Premeditation (specialized with +2 in cooldown reduction) also Acceleration. Latter is great for more AP + MP and for the prolonged effect. I also ended up raising my Temporal skill to an effective 100 to boost the power of Recurrence after a fat Snipe on bosses with 5 WILL to grab the Hypno Goggles to boost my Persuasion further.

The buffs of TM are amazing, cooldown reductions and AP boosts are great. Stasis is too cheesy for me so I don't plan to use it, but it's certainly effective. Yet I rarely need to use spells as a Sniper, especially when I have enough distance - so I mostly use it as a quality of life feature. Having more CON and HP would be equally ok in some builds and someone who play as a tank also need to be sturdy and Adrenaline is still an option too.

[nightshift]

Sprint is something I never got where it's popularity comes from. I know I'm the minority here, Sprint is like a must-feat on every build regardless of ranged, melee, psi - everybody has it.I tried it and I think it's below meh'. It allow me to to go a one-time 3 tiles further if it's straight ahead, or 2 tiles diagonally - once per battle due to 10 round cooldown. That's it and you have to waste an actual feat slot for that. Also only works when you're out of stealth. Tabi boots, Hit and Run, Interloper all seem like much better choices to me.

Some Tabi's can get you more MP than that passively on every single turn. Hit and Run gives you potentially 25MP after each kill, so that can go up to 75 or who knows how much and again - granted passively. That after a stealth kill is great as you already start with severely low MP after starting your turn while being hidden. You step out from the corner where you entered stealth with Interloper's 15MP, Snipe, Aim Shot, Ambush whatever and still have enough MP to go back to cover or even switch location if you keep dropping enemies and it doesn't have a cooldown.

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by nightshift:

Sprint is something I never got where it's popularity comes from. I know I'm the minority here, Sprint is like a must-feat on every build regardless of ranged, melee, psi - everybody has it.I tried it and I think it's below meh'. It allow me to to go a one-time 3 tiles further if it's straight ahead, or 2 tiles diagonally - once per battle due to 10 round cooldown. That's it and you have to waste an actual feat slot for that. Also only works when you're out of stealth. Tabi boots, Hit and Run, Interloper all seem like much better choices to me.

30 MP is often enough to walk from behind total cover, perform all your attacks and go back behind total cover. It works on the turn you dropped stealth, when you would normally have 0 MP. It also works regardless of armor penalty.

Originally posted by nightshift:

Hit and Run gives you potentially 25MP after each kill, so that can go up to 75

Erroneous statements like this make your whole argument laughable. Just Saying.

[happybjorn]

I think that's really it. It's not that Sprint is great in some vacuum of oh look it's just 30 MP, but that it works so well with everything else and in so many situations. It's completely worth the feat and the only question is whether there an opportunity cost to using it right now instead of later in a fight.

An enemy managed to land a Knee Cap shot, it won't last but at least you can have 30 MP for one round instead of none. There is a greater coil spider across the room, use Contraction and Sprint to reach it and have full AP to attack (so long as you can detect traps anyway).

[nightshift]

Originally posted by Tamiore:

Originally posted by nightshift:

Hit and Run gives you potentially 25MP after each kill, so that can go up to 75

Erroneous statements like this make your whole argument laughable. Just Saying.

You missed the part when it's written to keep dropping enemies. don't let lack of basic comprehension abilities make you look like a fool in front of everyone.

Originally posted by gh0stwizard:

Best tabi boots + sprint is equal to run across half or even whole map.

With Sprint, you can run for 3 tiles straight. If you can run across the whole map, it means you already have tons of MP by other means - so you don't really need Sprint, thus proven my point that there are other, more reliable ways to get more MP and a LOT more often.

Sprint with it's 30 MP is just too insignificant to be useful, but the fact that it has a 10 turn cooldown makes it a complete waste. You don't need to use it, but maaaybe for some reason a certain situation comes around at the 3-4th turn when you've already striding across the map (due to reasons above) and 30 MP would make the difference.
You activate Sprint and there's no way the battle should last until you will be able to use it again. There are like 3 battles in the whole game like when you decide to not skip with hack but just fend off robots with Nevil solely for the toy robot oddity(and to justify yourself why you wasted a feat slot) and that's it.

[nightshift]

Originally posted by gh0stwizard:

It's not just 30MP, it's more.

Nope, it's just 30 MP.

What you're talking about is the highly unlikely situation where your whole build is dedicated around Sprint. You have 13 AGI for some infernal reason (for expert sprint) and even wasted third of all your spec points to get +15MP for the ability to move one tile away per battle.

[happybjorn]

Originally posted by gh0stwizard:

Originally posted by happybjorn:

oh look it's just 30 MP

Full spec'ed Sprint gives 45 MP, and it's very cheap 5 levels at all.

Originally posted by happybjorn:

There is a greater coil spider across the room, use Contraction and Sprint to reach it and have full AP to attack

On which difficulty do you play? :) On Hard+, usually near by a spider, there are others spiders too. So your tactic will lead to stun and death on 2nd turn. Man, there are plenty other spells and things than just Contraction + Sprint.

Sprint is good for very specific situations, it's not for rushing to a pack of enemies blindly. But, in these specific situations you don't need PTD after 2-3 turns and insta-death.

For instance, if you're in combat with many enemies and want to run away for a moment (to take a better position), your Contraction will grant you PTD very soon. A better position and PTD together do work bad. Just a better position will work good in most cases.

Plus, for most maps it's enough to use either Contraction or Sprint alone to cover/change position. Contraction + Sprint is good for the case when you want to hide and end combat mode. There are only a few maps where Contraction + Sprint + Tabi boots are required to run for a better position.

Plus, there is Expert Sprint feat: +10 AP for Sprint. Do you still don't understand that Sprint is OP? Expert Sprint + PTC = 25 AP, 60-75 MP for 2 turns, in total 75 AP, 90-105 MP, with tabi + regalia 135-155 MP and 5 AGI. I did not tried the last one case, but I think it possible to run from start to the end any map (except may be DC) forward and back :) With Adrenaline + Jumping Bean it's probably possible to run through any DC map in 1 turn.

Hmm, Sprint has side effect, +45% movement speed:
https://www.stygiansoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=Movement

It's not just 30MP, it's more.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that i'm disagreeing with you. I'm not.

I mean, I might now, since most of the above is nonsense, but why bother?

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by nightshift:

Originally posted by Tamiore:

Erroneous statements like this make your whole argument laughable. Just Saying.

You missed the part when it's written to keep dropping enemies. don't let lack of basic comprehension abilities make you look like a fool in front of everyone.

You missed the part where no number of kills with Hit and Run is getting you above 25 mp, much less "go up to 75".