Primary and Mental Manipulation and Drain Psyche

[Xaddy]

So, I screwed up, I think. Or I'm on the verge of being a mad scientist. 

I made a blaster. A combo that I haven't seen myself. Rad/Mental blaster. I think mental is accurate, lol. 

Drain Psyche is not a toggle like other sustains. The trade off is really sick regen/recovery rates. But only for 30 seconds. After playing a brute for a bit, and then a tank, I'm not as concerned about going into melee as I probably should be. Seems like a natural thing to do for any character, from time to time, running into melee. How else would you use Melee AoE powers if not in melee? 
A player told me about "jousting", and I've been hit or miss on using Drain Psyche with this method. It will just take me more practice. 

But my rad primary...I love the looks of it. But there're a few quirks with it. Like the range of these attacks seem exceptional - especially after getting my feet wet with a Sentinel for 25 levels. 

I think I should have gone ice/mental, for some soft controls like Ice patch, let them bounce, and then drain psyche. Because unless it's a joust (which I'm just not very good at right now) there's a fair chance that I get stunned, or even defeated because it will take some time to get tough, weave and maneuvers running. I can't rely on drain psyche to keep those toggles running, either. The recharge on it just isn't that good yet. Maybe at 50, it will be super, but at 25, I've got to be judicious with it's use. 

Are there any suggestions as to other primaries that might let me take better advantage of Drain Psyche, other than rad? 
It's my intent to try them all, but it might be nice to have a few suggestions.

[BlueBiohazard]

Like you said ice is good so is earth.

[ZorkNemesis]

Sonic/Mental.  Siren's Song can sleep the group and Drain Psyche won't wake them up (unless you feel the need to drop damage procs in it, which I ask why?).  You can then follow up with Dreadful Wail and Psychic Shockwave to delete the group with little threat (Dreadful Wail will Stun survivors, as can Psychic Shockwave).  Siren's Song can also take the Annihilation -Res proc to further weaken the group, as well as Fortuna Hypnosis Placate if you want extra safety.  Won't sleep bosses so you'll probably want to take some extra steps to protect yourself there.

 

Keep in mind World of Confusion will break the sleep so if you wanted a reason to skip it, this is probably a good one.

[tidge]

On 5/26/2024 at 9:30 AM, Xaddy said:

Are there any suggestions as to other primaries that might let me take better advantage of Drain Psyche, other than rad? 
It's my intent to try them all, but it might be nice to have a few suggestions.

 

Drain Psyche is IMO one of those powers that feels like it straddles the line between 'useful' and 'not useful'. I don't have much experience with it in the secondary.

 

The self-boosts are fine, and the enemy -Regeneration can be helpful, but a long-recharge click that requires enemies nearby... well, maybe just build +Recovery and +Regeneration without planning to use Drain Psyche?

 

Also the power takes almost no %damage pieces, it can't be leveraged like other similar powers. I'd probably start slotting it with something like this, and then try to improve recharge.

 (A) Touch of the Nictus - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50

 (*) Touch of the Nictus - Accuracy/Healing: Level 50

 (*) Touch of the Nictus - Chance for Negative Energy Damage: Level 50

 

 

[Auroxis]

Mental as a secondary really only pops off once you get more recharge into your build. It has only two excellent powers in Drain Psyche and Psychic Shockwave, both take a while to recharge. There's Mind Probe and Psychic Scream to help with leveling, but not much after that.

 

Radiation Blast is fine once you add -res procs into it. Its numerous AoE's also fit with Mental, which just like rad has both a Cone and PBAoE. So you can be versatile in that sense.

 

Sonic was mentioned as a good primary, its -res coupled with Drain Psyche's -regen give you corruptor levels of debuffs you can add to teams.

 

Fire shores up for Mental's weakness, which is the lack of good single target attacks. In addition, Fireball's versatility as an AoE works with the two AoE options (cone/pbaoe) you get from Mental.

Edited June 16 by Auroxis

[Meknomancer]

My 2nd blaster on HC was my reroll of a dp/mental i played on live, dp can slot a lot of interesting pieces and its ability to take force feedback + rech bits mean getting perma drain psyche is very simple. On live i ran this and a fire/mental, before HC's update to blaster secondaries /mental was the goto no.1 for blasters that liked to take on hard targets solo thanks to the -regen component. You see very few of them now but its still a top secondary if you can get enough recharge in the build.