Can Beam Rifle/Mental Manipulation be salvaged?

[Zhym]

I made a BR/Mental blaster purely on character theme.  And, like a lot of theme builds I've tried, this powerset combo is turning out not so great.  BR wants to be ranged, Mental seems mostly about the melee, it's very clicky and busy, and there don't seem to be any natural synergies. 

 

Before I abandon the alt entirely, is there anything I should be trying with this combo to make it fun—or at least usable?  Should I just take three or four of the BR powers, use secondaries and IOs to build up melee defense, and lean into the Mental blappage? 

 

I did find this post on the Mental secondary, which is a great help, but any advice on making it work with Beam (if that's even possible) would be welcome:

 

Edited November 11, 2021 by Zhym

[Meknomancer]

Its not a combo i've tried but i do have a dark/mental so i know where your coming from its hard work sometimes but not that hard, basically only hopping into mobs for drain psyche, hopping back out and blasting. Pretty sure you can do that with beam....and every other primary. I havent tried it as a hover type toon yet but that may work better i've seen a few good psi/mental that play the same way, hop in DP/nuke hop away you don't even have to stay that long with beam. With mental its all about getting DP perma and the safest way to go after that is hitting as much ranged defence as possible. Throw a build together show people what you have that will give them an idea of your playstyle and they can throw out helpful stuff from there.

[Meknomancer]

Mental guide maybe out of date the set got a bit of an overhaul still not sure if the shifting of powers was helpful.

[arcane]

I think it’s plenty workable. I agree about leaning into blapping. You could hop in and out if you need to to survive, but no major reason you have to.
 

Remember there’s a difference between “likes to be at range” and “doesn’t work well without range”. The only power in the latter category here is Cutting Beam. Which is pretty weak and poor with procs anyway.
 

You’re still getting fantastic S/T DPS with Beam in melee, and at least in melee you’ve got Psychic Shockwave shoring up Beam’s poor AoE.

 

Also fun fact, you’ve successfully paired the most -regen you can possibly get on a Blaster. Between Drain Psyche and Disintegrate, you’re beginning to compete with things like Heat Exhaustion or Benumb. The pylon time oughta look pretty good.

 

I have multiple builds on my Beam/Time and one has Future Pain / End of Time. It doesn’t feel wrong.

Edited November 14, 2021 by arcane

[arcane]

3 hours ago, Meknomancer said:

Mental guide maybe out of date the set got a bit of an overhaul still not sure if the shifting of powers was helpful.

So was I not imagining it when I thought TK Thrust was a crappy T3 or something the last time I played my DP/mental?

 

[Meknomancer]

Memory isn't great i think tk thrust was tier 2/3, WoC was tier 8 and psy shockwave tier 9 which felt right considering how good psy shockwave is, doesn't make sense that tk thrust which can be mildly useful/amusing is now a tier 9 power and minor damage when you look at other sets with melee attacks having midnight grasp/positronic fist/total focus etc.

[oedipus_tex]

This is a YMMV situation, but you may find a partial solution in Fold Space. The path to Fold Space will give you Combat Teleport which is useful for porting right on top of enemies for a blap, and Teleport Other is just a useful utility ability in general.

 

Fold Space and Drain Psyche are sitting in a tree kay eye ess ess you get the idea.

 

The fact that Fold Space won't yoink bosses above a certain + to you is actually a bonus and makes sure you only vampire off enemies who can't hurt you as bad.

Edited November 14, 2021 by oedipus_tex