Psi Melee - Am I screwed end game?

[Nezix]

So despite years of messing around in CoH / CoV I never took a character to 50 back in the day. I'm currently playing a Psi Melee / Super Reflexes Stalker here and really enjoying it (lvl 33) but I've started to read that there are some heavily Psi resistant mobs in the end game. Is it that bad or is there something I can to do offset that?

 

Thanks for the help!

[Lazarillo]

I had some issues with this on my Fortunata back in the day.  What I did was mix in a fair number of Patron Pool attacks and generally did fine.  Since it's actually possible to take even more of those in the game's current form, it may be something to look into.  For Stalkers, the Blaze, Dark, and Mu Mastery pools are probably the ones with the most offensive "oomph" to help you compensate.

[Erydanus]

No. Psi-Melee is a mix of psionic, smashing, and lethal damage.

[Chance Jackson]

No. Psi-Melee is a mix of psionic, smashing, and lethal damage.

THIS

[Justisaur]

By mix, it's ~ 75% psi and 25% other - which means when you get a mob with 60% psi resist you're still doing 55% of normal damage... assuming it doesn't also resist the other damage to some extent which it probably does since those damage types are pretty commonly resisted.  I find it's not enough to overcome regen at that level of resistance.

 

(edit) - I was told that the extra damage on crits do all psionic, so that makes the high resists even worse, haven't tested yet.

 

It's old but here's a link to the resistances by mobs:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20130902224627/http://www.culex.us/ig/coh/CHres.xls

 

I note that 189 mobs listed have 50% or better Psi resist, while only 71 have 50% or higher smash.  Unfortunately more of those are clustered in the harder content - AVs resist psi greater on average than any other type of damage. 

 

Mass Levitate is an exception - it's 100% smash, which is also commonly resisted (though not as much resistance when encountered) and it's an AoE so it's not going to do enough to bosses+ to be noticeable though.

 

I'd strongly suggest Soul Mastery to get the Moonbeam snipe and make sure you have enough +to hit to get it instant cast to add it to your rotation, that may help (or team and let others deal with those mobs.)  I got it after I couldn't kill Carney bosses, and didn't take it on my 50 test on Justin, so I'm not sure if it's enough yet.  My Psi stalker is shelved at 40 for moment partially due to this issue and partially due to my VG needing other ATs, but will see if I can find time to test on Justin.

[purexedz]

44 Psi/ here. The 40+ content is actually brutal for us. Even on 8-man teams with all kinds of support I'm struggling to down Lts/Bosses. A maxed Fulcrum shift won't help much either when an enemy is Psi resistant.

[Nezix]

Hmm, I'm getting a lot of mixed opinions here. I'm at 48 but I don't know that I've done a lot of 40+ content to know for myself.

[Erydanus]

At 44 I'm simply not having problems with the content I'm choosing.

[Williwaw]

The thing about psi resist is that it tends to be all or nothing for mobs.  So you'll run into one mob with 0% Psionic resist and steamroll them, and then the next will have 60% and they'll go down slower than molasses.  (Smash or Lethal resist, in contrast, tends to be more evenly distributed)

 

You can generally tell which ones have the high Psi resists, though: psionic enemies (Fortunatas, Seers, many Carnies, Rikti Mentalists, etc.) and machines (Warmechs, Rikti and Council Drones, Warworks, Praetorean Clockwork, etc).  (Edit: Right, regular Clockwork are psi-weak, not psi-resistant)

 

You'll just learn to hate them, and find other ways around them (via Epic Pools and Incarnate powers).

[Justisaur]

I just realized some of my issues on Justin were that I'd paired it with Bio to try that out (I'm Ninjitsu on live, still had trouble there though) and I had to go Defensive Adaptation all the time to survive the content I was trying to handle, and that also lowers your damage, so Defensive combined with the Psi resistances and regen stacked to make the damage very low.  I was still able to kill the non heavily resistant/renerating mobs at +4 though, and if you've doing content with /bio that you can put on Offensive Adaption that would probably help overcome resistance, or another secondary set like Shield, SR, or Rad that can increase your DPS.

[Leogunner]

The thing about psi resist is that it tends to be all or nothing for mobs.  So you'll run into one mob with 0% Psionic resist and steamroll them, and then the next will have 60% and they'll go down slower than molasses.  (Smash or Lethal resist, in contrast, tends to be more evenly distributed)

 

You can generally tell which ones have the high Psi resists, though: psionic enemies (Fortunatas, Seers, many Carnies, Rikti Mentalists, Clockwork, etc.) and machines (Warmechs, Rikti and Council Drones, Warworks, Praetorean Clockwork, etc).

 

You'll just learn to hate them, and find other ways around them (via Epic Pools and Incarnate powers).

 

FYI, standard Clockwork are weak to psionic damage because they are telepathically held together so attacking them with psychic powers weakens that bond.  They are only strong to Lethal damage and actually weak to Psionic and Smashing damage, if memory serves right...might not be weak to smashing, that might just be other robots.

[Solarverse]

Psionic is fairly useless for end game PvE, very useful in PvP, and good for leveling. What it needs is a triple damage type to bring it in line for PvE end game. Sonic damage, Psionic damage and Smashing damage. Split the damage evenly three ways and you have a winner.

[vegetableknife]

Yeah I'm wondering what problems people are having.  Apex, Tinmage, Imperious task forces, Incarnate trials, random 50 missions, other players...all the 50+ content has been fun and enjoyable.