Psy abilites

[Kasa]

Any one else feel they don't actually add much?
Rimworld of magic adds so many unique systems but i find i keep forgeting my pawns can teleport or douse things in water.
It seems like a case of cool but in practical powers, id much rather have stuff my pawns can make use if in their day to day.
Why daze some one when i can just shoot them?

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CoolButInefficient

[Rennoch]

TBH the ones i use most are skip and stun - skip is really situational, but if you're microing your psyker during a fight, it's a lifesaver. and stun against a target with heavy damage weapons or while escaping is the difference between dead pawns and live ones.

the rest aren't as useful... burden doesn't even slow most enemies down...

[Kasa]

And part of the problem is the abilities you get are random.

[Raymond]

I on the other hand find psy power very op when used strategically, especially since now you can over cast with little consequence. Stun, entropy link, vertigo pulse, smokepop, skip, wall raise and invisibility are my go to psycast set up. Most people who don't find psycaster powerful usually not making the most out of the mechanic. Entropy link is an extremely important psy cast skill that often get overlooked, and if you don't have or use it then your psycaster won't perform nearly at their max. Sadly most people don't include this skill in their psycast build, thus making their psycaster useless after a few casts. A pawn with mind screw and psychically hyper sensitive trait is extremely powerful as a psycaster, but both the implant and the trait are widely underestimated as well.

I always have active caravan team within 2 years so I have very little problem acquiring all the skills I need even if I get bad roll with skills.

Why would you want to daze your enemies when you can shoot them? because shooting in this game is rng and psycast is not. While you are trying to shoot at them, the raiders are rushing you in melee or shoot back. Meanwhile vertigo pulse can cc raiders for 20 seconds, that 20 whole seconds window for your pawns to shoot at meatbags that can't fight back and voluntarily move away from their cover. Psycast skills allow you to control the battle without being at the mercy of Randy.

And why would you want to choose dlc psycast instead of modded skills? It is like asking why would you want to build a colony from ground up instead of turn on god mode and build everything from the get go. You get the same thing, but you know which one is more fun. It is entirely your choice.

[Kasa]

A simple kill box stops raiders flat and i have yet to find a way to learn more spells, my pawn has to meditate 4 hours a day to stay at 70%

All this when i can just wear flak pants and chest, devil thread duster hat and shirt with a assault rifle and already out fight anything in the game.

Again most abilities are not useful day to day and the few that can be useful in a fight are redundant.
The cool thing about rimworld of magic is not being "OP" it's that the spells are unique and have utility use, necromancers can mass damage targets yes but at higher mana cost they can raise 1 to 2 corpse as zombies.
These zombies are pretty useless and are incapable of everything except dumb labour and mining/plant cutting. Which makes them a perfect labour force since they don't eat or sleep.

I dont know if i regret getting this dlc but so far im underwhelmed with these abilities, again "Cool But Inefficient"

[Raymond]

Originally posted by Kasa:

A simple kill box stops raiders flat and i have yet to find a way to learn more spells, my pawn has to meditate 4 hours a day to stay at 70%

All this when i can just wear flak pants and chest, devil thread duster hat and shirt with a assault rifle and already out fight anything in the game.

Again most abilities are not useful day to day and the few that can be useful in a fight are redundant.
The cool thing about rimworld of magic is not being "OP" it's that the spells are unique and have utility use, necromancers can mass damage targets yes but at higher mana cost they can raise 1 to 2 corpse as zombies.
These zombies are pretty useless and are incapable of everything except dumb labour and mining/plant cutting. Which makes them a perfect labour force since they don't eat or sleep.

I dont know if i regret getting this dlc but so far im underwhelmed with these abilities, again "Cool But Inefficient"

Kill box can't stop infestation, late game zapper raid, drop pod raid and the new cluster mech that occasionally come with imminent threats like mortar turret. Psycaster allow you to deter ANY threats a killbox can deter, and ANY threat that a killbox cant. Also, 4 hours for 1 pawns hardly going to damage late game colony production. By the time your have a psycaster lvl high enough that you need to keep their psyfocus above 50, it's unlikely you will have any manpower shortage.

Having better equipment only increase your odd, and they add up to your wealth,and the rng is still there. A stroke of bad luck can mean your pawn suddenly missing a limb or head. Psycast on the other hand is just point and click and done.

Focus can be casted outside combat too. New update remove post-psycast debuff, so you can freely use focus psycast to increase surgery chance, increase legendary product chance for inspired pawns, increase work efficiency,etc.. Consider most late game colony struggle more with quality workers than quantity workers, I doubt zombies are going to be more useful than some hauling animal. And if those zombies work like normal pawns, they will cause lag if they are left idle (everything is cleaned and hauled).
Psycast is extremely powerful if you know how to use them.

[HunterSilver]

Psycasts can be learned through Psytrainers that can be obtained through quests, trading, or found in hostile outposts/settlements.

Psycasting is insanely strong and has been nerfed repeatedly because of the shenanigans you can get up to with it, and it is still the best way to handle most situations.

Burden, Stun, Skip, and Beckon allow you to control the battlefield, pulling targets out of cover or leave them in the open. Skipping Centipedes into a group of melee attackers is one of the only ways to stop a heavy plasma gunner from firing once they've started (even EMPs and stuns will not stop them once they've already begun firing).

Burden and Beckon let a small team with assault rifles clear out large camps of raiders, empire soldiers, or colonists as you can move their gunners into the open or leave melee units in the open where one volley of shots will down or kill them, instead of prolonged, dangerous fire fights. Burden is also great to stop targets you want to recruit from getting away. Rather than shooting them, you can burden them and melee them to increase your odds of downing them. Great for getting early sets of Recon power armor from empire soldiers that would otherwise be destroyed on their death.

Melee psychics with Focus/Invisibility/Berserk Pulse and a monosword can cleave through entire armies on their own. Just one can shut down a siege or mech cluster with invisibility + mass bersrk.

Sure, a killbox can deal with most straight forward raids, but when you can berserk pulse through walls a psychic can shutdown sapper raids as well. Being able to bullet bubble drop pod raids also lets you quickly clean them up as your melee units move in. Berserk pulse and vertigo pulse can also keep overwhelmingly large raids effectively smaller. I've had 12 gunners deal with 320 raiders without taking damage by hitting them with pulse effects.

Powers like wall raise can be used to protect high value targets like unstable power cells for collection after a mech cluster fight.

In general, if you're a little bit creative, psychics handle so many situations that were incredibly painful otherwise. You can absolutely play without them and they're not meant to be used constantly, more as clutch effects in combat.

Also don't over-meditate. Unless you're meditating at an anima tree to get free psychic levels, maintaining higher levels of meditation confers no benefits and wastes a ton of time. If you're not a lv6 psychic there's no point in going above 50% meditation.

[Kasa]

But what's the point?
hardly any of it is any more efficient then what the base game has let alone the simlar things you can do with mods. So again why?

I know how to use them, they are just inefficient compared to literally everything else.

[HunterSilver]

But it is more efficient than what the base game offers? I guess if you're not running into any trouble with fights and bandit camps don't worry about it then.

Personally, even with proper defensive setups I hate handling mech clusters (and mechanoids in general) and larger raids without psychic powers. I just don't know how to handle 27 centipedes hitting my killbox without taking serious injuries and risking a lot of limb loss and death. If that's not a problem for you then yeah, there's no point, just keep on keeping on. =)

[Kasa]

*shrugs* I guess ya, I usally play on Randy rough perma death so switching over to cassy rough with a proper base has been a cake walk on my vanilla game.
May be it's just me but as I said I fine base game solutions more efficient.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Kasa:

*shrugs* I guess ya, I usally play on Randy rough perma death so switching over to cassy rough with a proper base has been a cake walk on my vanilla game.
May be it's just me but as I said I fine base game solutions more efficient.

In that case, it's high time you changed gears and play on savage or merciless, preferably Cassandra. Rough isn't a challenge and Randy isn't consistent.

[Rennoch]

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

Psycasts can be learned through Psytrainers that can be obtained through quests, trading, or found in hostile outposts/settlements.

Psycasting is insanely strong and has been nerfed repeatedly because of the shenanigans you can get up to with it, and it is still the best way to handle most situations.

Burden, Stun, Skip, and Beckon allow you to control the battlefield, pulling targets out of cover or leave them in the open. Skipping Centipedes into a group of melee attackers is one of the only ways to stop a heavy plasma gunner from firing once they've started (even EMPs and stuns will not stop them once they've already begun firing).

Burden and Beckon let a small team with assault rifles clear out large camps of raiders, empire soldiers, or colonists as you can move their gunners into the open or leave melee units in the open where one volley of shots will down or kill them, instead of prolonged, dangerous fire fights. Burden is also great to stop targets you want to recruit from getting away. Rather than shooting them, you can burden them and melee them to increase your odds of downing them. Great for getting early sets of Recon power armor from empire soldiers that would otherwise be destroyed on their death.

Melee psychics with Focus/Invisibility/Berserk Pulse and a monosword can cleave through entire armies on their own. Just one can shut down a siege or mech cluster with invisibility + mass bersrk.

Sure, a killbox can deal with most straight forward raids, but when you can berserk pulse through walls a psychic can shutdown sapper raids as well. Being able to bullet bubble drop pod raids also lets you quickly clean them up as your melee units move in. Berserk pulse and vertigo pulse can also keep overwhelmingly large raids effectively smaller. I've had 12 gunners deal with 320 raiders without taking damage by hitting them with pulse effects.

Powers like wall raise can be used to protect high value targets like unstable power cells for collection after a mech cluster fight.

In general, if you're a little bit creative, psychics handle so many situations that were incredibly painful otherwise. You can absolutely play without them and they're not meant to be used constantly, more as clutch effects in combat.

Also don't over-meditate. Unless you're meditating at an anima tree to get free psychic levels, maintaining higher levels of meditation confers no benefits and wastes a ton of time. If you're not a lv6 psychic there's no point in going above 50% meditation.

burden's effect is less valuable then stun, is the same level, and against a surprising number of opponents has no appreciable slow down. if there were a MASS burden, maybe, but as it stands, it's a psycast i almost never use. burden for preventing escapes is also again, less valuable then stun, and certainly less valuable then just having a few shock lances on hand.

beckon is definitely useful, except for the cost post-changes has made it difficult for managing, especially as it's lvl 3 makes it much more of an opening moves ability, much like skip.

berserk just plain hasn't worked in my favour yet, perhaps some experimentation there is warranted.

i did forget to mention the insane utility of raise wall and vertigo pulse, i should have mentioned those.

however, being above 50% with lower level (1-3) abilities affects psyker longevity in combat. these abilities i am using are not in tandem with heavy gear, my psykers are support characters, backing up the people in heavy gear, the two i have currently are in recon gear with ABP pistols following the heavies and knocking down/stopping the targets for heavies to plow. skip allows them to step out of combat range quickly if they become focused or injured early on, and the higher they start a fight with in terms of psy, the later they can bolt.

i would like some advice on trying to make berserk work, however, as it sounds like it'd be really potent, but i just can't seem to get it to land?

[HunterSilver]

You're right, in prolonged fights having spare psyfocus to burn through is valuable. I am so accustomed to short, big fights that that did not occur to me. Similarly if you're sending psykers out long distances, after a week or two they'll be basically tapped out just from passive drain.

Burden costs 50% less than Stun and lasts 0.5 hours vs 3 seconds, so it depends on the number of targets you're going after and how you're taking them down. Though I absolutely agree that psychic shock lances are amazing and if you've got them, use them. =)

Berserk and Berserk Pulse have some interesting interactions. Berserk Pulse will hit through walls and objects and can be a great way to provoke a raider siege to launch their doomsday weapons into their own units. Yes, insanity lances and Berserking an individual can work as well, but less reliably as you risk the target dying before the rocket launchers fire. Berserking a mechanoid can cause other mechanoids to continue to attack them even after berserk wears off, though I'm pretty sure this is a bug and I need to see if it even still works after the most recent update.

For individual berserks, against sieges I hit anyone near or on top of ammo so that grenadiers and incin launchers will set it off to blow themselves up. Inside of kill boxes target melee units. This will immediately shift their ranged fire onto the melee unit and stop the melee unit from advancing. This tactic is particularly useful against manhunting packs that are too large. I actually did not know you could berserk manhunters into attacking each other before 1.1. Tried it out of desperation and it worked beautifully to hold a huge group of elephants at the entrance to my killbox.

Inside of mech clusters scythers are the main unit to berserk. They're fast, hit often, and have a ton of armor penetration. Don't waste berserk on centipedes. They attack so seldom that you may only get a single shot off from them before berserk wears off and they'll shrug off most of the damage from their allies. Skipping centipedes into a zeus hammer and a couple of monoblades is still the most efficient way of dealing with them that I've found.

In general Invisibility + Berserk Pulse will cause most problems to solve themselves.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES1gn0JUUAAcFMQ?format=jpg&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES1hGgdUcAEhxBJ?format=jpg&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES1hIDUUUAEzklq?format=jpg&name=large

This was a 270 enemy unit raid with another ~270 coming shortly thereafter due to the quest. A berserk pulse killed 63 and downed 19. This was a really efficient way to prep for that fight to hit my kill box.

[Rennoch]

but berserk doesn't seem to land on many opponents?

maybe i'm having bad luck on the proc chance?

[Hykal]

Skip is just a general always useful ability. You can skip the caster, an ally, an enemy, away and towards you. A powerful tactic as mentioned before is skippong a centipede to a group of melee attackers, preferably with zeushammers. Chaos skip is useful if you ever find yourself shot by doomsday launchers, thought it is better just to beckon the enemy launcher towards you.

Invisibility basically makes you untarget-able. Bulletshield is useful to get your pawns into cover. Berserk pulse is great for siege enemies.

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by rennoch:

but berserk doesn't seem to land on many opponents?

maybe i'm having bad luck on the proc chance?

Oh, woops, you meant very literally how to get it to land on a target. There is no proc chance, it will always affect them if you can cast it on them. I'm sorry but I'm not sure why your berserk wouldn't affect a target.